#and another person said his favourite character in the show aside from sonic is amy

[mahoutoons]

can i just appreciate how good sonic prime did amy?

rusty rose is an evil version of amy. from what little we know about her she was mechanically enhanced to survive. while i was a bit disappointed with how she joined team sonic, it only being temporary, and us not learning much more about her, she was still so good. she's cold, stoic, and heartless in contrast to prime amy. i really hope we learn more about her in the next few episodes.

thorn rose is SUCH an interesting take on how amy's love of nature could be taken to the extreme. she's not evil unlike rusty but she will choose nature over her friends. she thinks she's doing everything to protect nature so when sonic shows her what she's done she breaks down. thanks to him she's able to realize that she wasn't protecting the jungle and was able to talk things out with her friends.

black rose isn't fleshed out as much as the other amys but she's still cool.

also can we talk about black rose and rusty rose seeing each other?? and how rusty kinda malfunctioned shortly when she saw black rose? none of the other character's alternate counterparts saw their other selves. what are the prime writers cooking with amy in particular?? or is it me reading too deep into things again??

whatever it is i'm happy to see all different versions of my girl done justice

[that-shamrock-vibe]

Movie Review: Sonic the Hedgehog (Spoilers)

Spoiler Warning: I am posting this review the day the movie is first released in the U.K, so if you haven’t yet seen the movie do not read on until you have.

General Reaction:

It's difficult with today's movie going audience to predict how movies like Sonic are going to perform and be received. Especially when the ad campaign did absolutely no favours for this movie other than convince Paramount that Sonic needed a more truthful redesign than what they originally put out.

Here's the thing. Sonic the Hedgehog to me is trying to be 2020's Detective Pikachu capitalising on that nostalgia of a beloved classic franchise.

However, I do feel that the haters and internet trolls out there are not going to be able to get past the comparisons this movie draws to 2011's Hop, which was a live-action/CGI-hybrid movie starring James Marsden who becomes the companion of a somewhat overbearing CG creature.

But, I encourage all movie goers, including the haters, to go into this with an open mind...particularly if you have any history with Sonic because you will get some enjoyment and walk away afterwards feeling happy overall.

My personal history with Sonic is slightly less-so than I would like. I played the original 2 SEGA games countless times and did watch some episodes of the earlier animated shows.

Having said that, my main Sonic fandom actually comes from the mid-noughties series Sonic X, which I feel this movie could have adapted but alas. Also I played the Shadow the Hedgehog spinoff game and more recently Smash Bros where I actually won as Sonic recently.

Now this movie reminds me of those shows and games practically in no way. I mean there is that opening sequence where you see Sonic running around and looping like he does in the SEGA games, I do also feel like James Marsden's character could easily be an older version of Chris, the boy from Sonic X, but aside from that, the gold rings and Robotnik...there's not a lot for the Sonic fans to spot.

I can't say this is a perfect movie, because it really is not. There are a lot of super speed gags and some of them do stick but some just fall flat and at times feel repetitive.

The worst crime this movie commits in my opinion is stealing Quicksilver's gimmick of speed scenes. By which I mean there are not one but two occasions when time is slowed down to almost a halt and we see Sonic running around still. They even have songs specific for these scenes.

Also, because I'm not fully aware of every Sonic incarnation, I did not understand why Sonic is effectively The Flash with being able to generate lightning. I mean I understand the laws of physics of generating enough friction can create static but I have never known Sonic to have any electric attacks.

I did like how the static electricity was preserved in his quills when they fell off though. In animation and the games you don’t think about Sonic’s realistic hedgehog qualities such as having quills so it was a nice touch.

I am also aware that Sonic has turned Super Saigen before with the help of the Chaos Emeralds I believe, so the fact we see a similar transformation here is quite good to see for that reason.

In terms of story I do think this is a simple plot that has been done numerous times, Hop is definitely one example that comes to mind, but I feel it’s also a very accessible story for non-Sonic fans.

I don’t know if Longclaw the Owl is an original character or one from Sonic mythology but I did not really vest much interest in her. Baby Sonic I thought was cute, but I refuse to accept anyone saying he is cuter than Baby Yoda as no one is cuter than Baby Yoda.

On the subject of age, it was good to see them acknowledging Sonic’s age for a change as opposed to just presuming because up until now I did always think he was some sort of teenager but this confirms it. If Baby Sonic is around 5-9 years old then Sonic in present day is late teens which makes sense with his temperament.

The gold rings being used as teleportation devices, I don’t know if they’re meant to be in the games but loved their use here.

I enjoyed the use of technology in this movie and particularly Robotnik’s commentary on how technology is more reliable than people which ties into his ultimate fate of being stranded alone without another soul on the planet he is sent to which forces him further into insanity.

The fact Sonic’s story is about fitting into society while James Marsden’s character is about figuring out what’s right in front of him are great parallels and do balance each other out rather well.

Also where he ends up with effectively being part of a family as well as a town hero was a nice way to wrap things up.

However, that mid-credits scene showing the arrival of Sonic’s faithful protege Tails to the real world looking for his friend screams for a sequel, especially if this means that more of Sonic’s companions could be introduced in the future like Knuckles, Shadow or even Rouge the Bat.

Characters:

Dr. Robotnik:

I don’t want to say he is the best character because I feel all four of the main cast members do a great job, but my favourite definitely is Jim Carrey as Robotnik. This is Carrey back on form and there were so many great shades of back when he was at the top of his game in the 90s with work such as Ace Ventura, The Mask and The Grinch.

From his first scene he stole every scene he was in. You could tell that he was taking the role seriously while also having the time of his life with it and this is why, back in the day, he was on such high form.

He may not have been the overweight bald megalomaniac, at least with the latter two not until the end of the movie, but he was the evil genius and mad scientist and almost every line he delivered he nailed.

I think “rockonnaissance” is going to be the new “joygasm” for him but it worked for The Riddler and it works for Robotnik.

I’m also happy he was nicknamed Eggman in the movie by Sonic because of the shape of his drones, I thought it was fitting. I can’t wait for Sonic to see the new bald version.

Sonic:

Yes Sonic is second but I said it before, there were times when he was overbearing.

Ben Schwartz by the way does a fantastic job voicing the character, I know he voices Dewey in the new Ducktales series and also for some reason voices BB-8 in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, but this is my favourite role of his voice is so realistic for a wide-eyed and somewhat innocent “alien” hedgehog.

I enjoyed how when he first came to Earth he was this urban legend around Green Hills who spent those 10 years people watching and either making up nicknames for the citizens while also longing to fit in with them but knowing not to.

Also the movie’s comedy was never as vulgar as Ryan Reynolds or immature as Russell Brand. I think they had one fart joke in the movie but the rest was generic comedy movie material which was hit and miss in comedy.

It was quite touching also that he was so protective of Green Hills and the status quo so much so that when Tom said he was planning on leaving to move to San Francisco, he was so offended and I thought it was going to be that trope of “Oh now they’re going to separate only to discover they need each other later” but instead it was a few digs and then they got over it.

I am so happy they did redesign the character because the movie’s original look for him was horrendous and did make Cats look reasonable whereas this is more like the Sonic everyone knows and I did not realise he didn’t have his traditional running shoes until Jojo, the niece of Tika Sumpter’s character, replaced them for him.

I will keep saying I want a sequel just because I am interested to see where Sonic’s story takes him next, especially with Tails now on Earth and the potentiality that others could join.

The Wachowskis

Again I thought James Marsden and Tika Sumpter did very pleasant jobs. This is my favourite James Marsden performance to date. Up until now his roles have been either corny or simply bland for me but here, yes there were a couple of dodgy jokes and moments but overall I thought Tom was a very likeable character and at the very least a driven character.

His wife Maddie, first of all props to the movie writers for having a mixed-race couple front and centre in the movie. But also, Maddie, who is also an accomplished career woman alongside her accomplished career husband, did not weigh Tom down or the story down as simply being “just the wife”.

I also enjoyed Maddie’s sister and niece, Jojo is quite cute and for the little screentime that she has does well with it for a child her age. While Natasha Rothwell continues to grow in my estimations after her fabulous turn in Love, Simon as the very sassy teacher.

Others:

As for the rest of the cast, this was a great who’s who for spotting the great jobbing actors as Lee Majdoub, Neal McDonough, Michael Hogan and Adam Pally all have minor supporting roles that do not go unnoticed.

Meanwhile Colleen Villard (née O'Shaughnessey), who voices Tails in the video games as well as voicing Wasp in The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes series and Sora in the Digimon franchise, reprises her role as the anthropomorphic fox in an uncredited mid-credits scene. I am hoping she returns for the sequel because it is good to hear her acting again.

Recommendation:

I do see a future for this movie in terms of a franchise. I do not quite see it crossing over with Detective Pikachu as I know there were rumblings of some sort of Super Smash Bros. movie cinematic universe.

However, if the movie does warrant a sequel, and with a current Rotten Tomatoes score of 64%, considering this seems to be a deciding factor for some cinema goers, I don’t see why not. I am hoping the future of this franchise does see the introductions of Knuckles, Shadow, Rouge and even Amy.

Potentially also spinning off from this franchise, there could be Donkey Kong, Mega Man and maybe even Mario to create that Super Smash Bros. universe.

Overall I rate the movie 8/10, it’s a great movie and definitely has some rewatchability to it.

Having said that I can see where some cinema snobs or even haters may come from as they inevitably target the movie but I encourage everyone not to be taken in by other people’s opinions, not even mine, make up your own minds and see it for yourself.

So that’s my review of Sonic the Hedgehog, what did you guys think? Post your comments and check out more Movie Reviews as well as other posts.

[toaarcan]

Sonic X, Sonic Heroes, and IDW, or: How a bad anime from 2004 spoiled a comic from 2019.

Now, I haven’t been following IDW Sonic all that closely. I get regular updates from Nemesis via Discord, and additional info from some of the Tumblrs I follow that are invested in it, but I don’t really have a desire to touch it myself. Here’s why.

There’s a multitude of reasons for this. Starting with the background of Sonic Forces wasn’t really a good place to begin from, and being based on present-day game lore in general was always going to hurt it, mainly because SEGASonic canon is currently a confusing mess of retcons brought on by Iizuka taking the J.K. Rowling approach.

Wait, no, he’s just saying stupid shit that contradicts previous canon, not trying to score woke points and hoping nobody notices the frankly terrible stereotypes and TERF tweets. Iizuka is taking the Greg Farshtey approach.

Added, as anyone that’s had experience with my opinions will tell you, I started falling out of love with Ian Flynn’s writing somewhere around Issue 200, and moved to outright dislike during Mecha Sally, and to make matters worse I started noticing that some of the flaws in the 200-247 era were also present in the 160-199 era, retroactively making those harder to go back to.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I kept up with Archie for the SatAM cast. SatAM reruns back in 2004 were my Sonic, moreso than anything else, and even now I still have way more attachment to those two seasons of animation than I do to most other aspects of the franchise, warts and all. So Archie providing me with additional content for said characters was a major draw for me. I’d generally put up with a lot just to get myself more SatAM content.

That in itself is a large part of why I fell off the Archie train during Mecha Sally. The entirety of the SatAM cast were removed from the regular lineup, just leaving three SEGA characters with their personalities stunted, even if that didn’t make sense in-universe. But that’s a discussion for another day.

So being written by someone whom I no longer enjoyed the writing of, set in a mess of a canon with a thoroughly shite game as the main basis, without the cast I read the previous comics for gave me little reason to invest in IDW Sonic. It wasn’t for me, I’d just keep reading Transformers and move on.

Then MTMTE/LL ended with a heart-twister and Ex-RID ended with a giant Unicron-shaped fart, and the new comic is dull as fucking dishwater and started by killing off one of my favourites, who was also one of the franchise’s confirmed LGBT characters. So now IDW is getting none of my money. Which is good because I’m broke.

Tangents aside, my lack of interest wasn’t something set in stone. If it turned out that the comic was actually really good, then sure, I’d try it. I was up for being proven wrong. But so far, I haven’t felt compelled by the responses from the internet. If anything I’ve been more turned off.

I could talk about how zombies are really fucking boring. I could talk about how SEGA’s recent confusion over what to do with Amy has combined with Ian’s need to include a Sally-esque character to make IDW Amy into Sally Lite. I could talk about how Ian seemingly fundamentally misunderstood everything that was cool about Neo Metal Sonic and somehow managed to reduce him to a boring Eggman minion in an arc where Eggman was out of action due to amnesia… But I won’t.

Instead I’m going to talk about how the comic has done something that would legitimately make me think twice about picking it up even if the FF were to debut tomorrow.

Yeah, I would pass up a SatAM fix because of this, that’s how much this ticks me off.

Now, I presume that if you’re reading this, you have a favourite Sonic character. And you probably feel pretty strongly about how your favourite character is portrayed. If they get a bad run in a game or two then you probably get a little salty about that. Tails and Knuckles fans in particular, as of late, seem to be the ones getting the short end.

Well, my favourite character in the entire franchise is Emerl the Gizoid. I will take Gemerl as a worthy substitute, they’re basically the same character. And the comics have been doing them dirty since the Archie reboot.

(Sidenote: I will be referring to Emerl with male pronouns from this point on. The Maria-soul thing isn’t as widely known as I’d like it to be, so I’m going to compromise for the sake of keeping the focus on the actual point)

However, not everything about this can be laid at the feet of Ian Flynn. Arguably his portrayal of said character is merely a symptom of a long-running issue that has plagued Sonic storytelling for roughly 15-16 years now.

But before we get into that, let’s get into something important: Why Emerl is my favourite Sonic character.

Part 1: Emerl in Sonic Battle, or “How I learned to stop worrying and love the Gizoid”.

This game doesn’t get enough love.

Now, I totally understand why it doesn’t get enough love. There are game design choices, like the grinding and the repetitiveness of the story mode that really drag it down, and because of that, Battle can become a slow-going and tedious experience, and that’s a real shame, because the story that’s hidden in this game is a thing of beauty.

Like most Sonic games from the 2000s, this game introduces a new character to join Sonic’s list of friends. Unlike the games that aren’t SA2 and Sonic Rush, this new character is actually good (This is hyperbole, Omega, Silver, and Shade were fine too).

Emerl enters the story as a mute, barely-functional robot that doesn’t do much of anything for a while, and only seems to come to life when Sonic locates it and attacks it. However, as the robot absorbs more Chaos Emeralds, slowly a personality starts to form, largely pieced together from other characters’ traits.

Emerl, as he is dubbed, is initially childlike and naive, but as he grows he develops a sassy streak, and his speech becomes a lot more developed. Maturity sets in, as Emerl grapples with his own nature, particularly the legacy he carries from the ARK, and Shadow’s ongoing turmoil with regards to the whole “Living Weapon” deal. Ultimately he becomes a hero, following in the footsteps of his mentor, parental figure, and closest friend, Sonic.

That’s right, Sonic, not Cream, is Emerl’s closest friend. We’ll get to that.

But this heart-warming story of Sonic becoming a dad for a robot doesn’t have a happy ending. Despite Shadow and Rouge finding a way to neutralise Emerl’s destructive Gizoid programming, Eggman has a way to reactivate it anyway, driving Emerl into a berserk rampage. This is kind of the one sticking point I have with the game’s plot, Eggman shouldn’t have been able to do this after Shadow and Rouge neutralised Emerl.

Additionally, while Emerl was on the ARK getting Maria’s soul crammed into him, Gerald also added a self-destruct mechanism that would trigger if he ever went Ultimate again.

So with Emerl quite literally exploding with all the power of the Chaos Emeralds, but his destructive programming forcing him to turn Eggman’s latest Death Star knockoff on Mobius/Earth/Sonic’s World, Sonic races up to confront his mecha-child, and things take a turn for the Old Robot Yeller.

In a moment that really deserves more attention, Sonic confronts his own child on the bridge of a space station, while Emerl is running on the power of the Chaos Emeralds and outputting more energy than he can physically take, and they fight. In the space of thirty seconds, they have a ten-round knock-down, drag-out brawl, and at the end, Sonic stands triumphant. Without using a single transformation. Yeah, that’s how powerful this guy is, that’s not travel speed, that’s combat speed. Looking at you, Death Battle.

It’s not really clear whether Sonic outright defeats Ultimate Emerl, or just survives long enough for his opponent to reach his limit and self-destruct, but the end result is the same. Sonic cradles a robot that became his own child over the course of the past few weeks, someone he raised from a baby-like state into a mature and heroic individual, and Emerl looks up at him and asks “Sonic… am I going to die?” And despite Sonic desperately trying to get him to keep it together, Not only does Emerl die, but he’s aware that the end is coming, and bids farewell to all of his friends as Sonic pleads with him to hold on. Shadow is equally distraught, his only friend with a connection to the ARK, someone he can call a brother, someone who carries the soul of his deceased sister within him, is dead.

Emerl: “Sonic I don’t feel so good.”

Like it’s canon that Eggman basically murdered Sonic’s kid.

And goddamnit this ending hits me hard. It frustrates me that Eggman was able to pull a means to drive Emerl into his Ultimate freakout mode out of his arse, but other than that, it’s so gutwrenching, I love it.

Gamma’s story from SA1 gets a lot of praise on the Internet, but for me, this is even better. It’s like Gamma’s story, but if Gamma was actually central to the plot of the game and the characters other than Amy gave a shit about him, and gave a shit about him for longer than a single cutscene, after which they are never mentioned again. Hell, due to Chaos Gamma being a thing, Gamma gets more love from the other characters in Battle than he does in SA1.

But, unfortunately, it doesn’t end there.

Part 2: (Sonic) Anime was a Mistake, or: “Sonic X ruins everything.”

I’ve made my dislike of this anime quite clear in the past. The characters are flanderized, Sonic is a B-lister in his own damn show, the villains are weaksauce or boring or both, the plot is only remotely close to good when its cribbing from two videogames which told the stories in question better, and for the first two seasons the entire show actually revolves around not Sonic, but the least relatable audience surrogate ever made. The third season would continue to include him, but shove him (And everyone else) to the side in favour of a Pokemon whose only move was “Flashback”, making audiences the world over question why he was even there in the first place.

Oh, and it also near-singlehandedly destroyed the thin shreds of character development that Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Eggman had received in Sonic Adventure 2.

All four of these characters had been significantly enriched by the then most recent console game. Eggman had been revealed to be motivated by an admiration for his grandfather, Gerald Robotnik, but in the same game learned that Gerald had lost his marbles and programmed the ARK to smash into the planet and kill everyone on it, probably including his surviving family, i.e. little baby Ivo Robotnik. Gerald betrayed Eggman posthumously, and it’s clear from Eggman’s interactions with Tails during the credits of the game that this is giving him a lot to think about.

Knuckles is a weird case because most of his characterisation in SA2 is conveyed via… the lyrics to his rap music. Yes, really. He gets minor growth through the cutscenes, most notably in his decision to shatter the Master Emerald early on. Having already reassembled it once after it was broken in SA1, he’s now confident that he can do it again, so is willing to break it to prevent Eggman or Rouge stealing it. Via the rap lyrics, however (Yes I just wrote that), we also learn that Knuckles is slowly warming up to Sonic, gaining a greater respect for him, that he is more in-touch with his history and ancestors after SA1 (Though fortunately not in a Ken Penders way), and that he’s also struggling with feelings for Rouge, a plot element that went completely out of the window after this game.

Tails and Amy, however, get it the worst, as both went through arcs in SA1 that are followed up on and expanded in SA2. Amy had come to the conclusion that she didn’t need to rely on Sonic for everything, and that she would make him respect her as a hero in her own right. And while Amy is clearly in way over her head throughout the events of SA2, she still makes a significant difference, not only freeing Sonic from his cell on Prison Island, allowing Tails’ invasion to be a distraction and stealing a keycard to facilitate it, but of course, she later saves the world by motivating Shadow to join the fight to stop the ARK drop.

Tails had a similar plot, about learning to believe in himself as a hero, without having to rely on Sonic, and in SA2 he gets to prove it, not only partaking in the same rescue operation as Amy and fighting Eggman on even footing, but effectively taking command of the heroes and becoming their new leader, and for the first time, Sonic defers to him.

And then Sonic X came along and fucked it all up.

Eggman became a clownish antagonist with no semblance of nuance, and he actually got off the easiest.

Knuckles became a loud, dimwitted loner who got tricked by Eggman constantly, which would go on to be his personality for the rest of the franchise, ultimately culminating in the travesty against all sense that was Boom Knuckles.

Tails was reduced to a wimpy taxi driver, incapable of doing anything without his giant mecha plane to sit in. This was largely exacerbated by the presence of Donut Steele, who usurped his role as Sonic’s best friend and sidekick for two seasons, a problem which only got worse in the third season when Donut Steele suddenly became a genius inventor too, encroaching even more into Tails’ territory. Tails did get himself some more focus in S3, but only to make googly eyes at the Pokemon, a role which frankly could’ve gone to literally anyone else and would have made no difference on the plot. I would say that Tails being involved in a romance story at all is weird, but given the comics and Boom the weirdest thing about this latest tragic love story for the kid is that the Pokemon was actually close to his own age, because outside of this it really does seem like Tails goes for older ladies. Though she did turn into an adult at the end so I guess that counts?

But Amy arguably got the worst of it. Not only was her crowning moment in SA2 taken away from her and given to Donut Steele, but the poor girl had her promising character arc cut short and replaced with an obsessive, unhealthy fixation on Sonic, combined with a violent temper and an eagerness to smash anything that displeased her, Sonic included, with a giant hammer. Her admiration and crush on Sonic were warped into her being a possessive, mean-spirited stalker, whom only got away with it because she was an anime girl and therefore it was cute rather than creepy.

I want to take the time at this point to stress that stalking is not okay, under any circumstances. A girl obsessively following an older guy and threatening him and everyone around him with violent assault if they ever so much as imply that he isn’t interested in her is not cute, it means it’s time for a restraining order. Sonamy is not cute.

Now that I’ve swatted that particular hornet’s nest with a cricket bat, let’s move on!

I’ve always found it ironic that, despite being the adaptation with the most oversight from SEGA and Sonic Team, and the most endorsement from them too, Sonic X had easily the worst characterisation of any of the shows at the time. But, for all its faults, I can’t blame everything that went down in the aftermath on it. It had a comrade-in-arms. Mediocrely-written arms.

Part 3: Partner in Crime, or “Sonic Heroes also ruins everything.”

Sonic Heroes has a lot to answer for. And I mean a lot. It was the beginning of the franchise’s obsession with references to the classic games, it codified the really awkward ages for certain characters, and it seemed to be dedicated to completely unpicking everything established in the Adventure duology.

Shadow’s sudden resurrection is one thing, at least they had the graces to include a means to preserve his sacrifice via having him be an android, the blame for that not taking should be laid at the feet of his own game.

But the rest of the cast? Ohhh boy. Sonic’s still fine, he didn’t change much in the Adventure games, but then there’s Tails. Despite all the development he went through in SA1, in this game he needs to turn to Sonic when Eggman returns, and honestly this whole setup could’ve been fixed if Tails sought Sonic out not for the sake of having him lead the charge, but rather simply to recruit him into the counterattack he was already planning. Nevertheless, throughout the rest of the game Tails is almost as wimpy as his X counterpart, not helped by the voicework he’s given. No offense to William Corkery, who was probably like six when he recorded his lines, but this what you get when you choose actors via nepotism, rather than talent. But at least he does something.

How about Knuckles? As the other side of his derailment, Knuckles just turns up in this game, buddy-buddy with the characters he was only just starting to warm up to before, and blatantly not caring about the Master Emerald until Rouge mentions she’s going to steal it at the end. This will combine with his becoming a dumbass in Sonic X and become basically his entire character for… ever. Even in Forces, where he’s supposed to be doing slightly better as the leader of the resistance… but he’s a dumbass, and even Ian Flynn, who kept Knuckles as competent and intelligent in the Archie comics (Making the best version of Knuckles we’ve had in forever), kept this ongoing in the IDW comic. The Forces prequel portrays him as deciding to become leader of the Resistance (To an empire that hasn’t actually formed yet) purely to be a glory hound, and then goes on to establish that he was basically a figurehead while the real work was done by Amy, of all people.

And speaking of Amy…

Yeah, poor Amy is basically her Sonic X counterpart. But worse. I didn’t think that was possible, but at least X’s Amy seems to care about her friends. In Heroes, we’re treated to an equally violent and stalkerish Amy, who ostensibly starts searching out Sonic because he’s implicated in the abduction of Cream and Big’s pets, but when they actually catch up to him, Amy clean forgets why she is looking for him in the first place and tries to force him to marry her. Despite being twelve.

Y’know when Amy said she wanted to marry Sonic in SA2, she was joking, right?

This is why I find the idea of Amy being the real leader of the Resistance frankly absurd: Because the only time she led anything, it was a team that consisted of herself, a small child, and a man less intelligent and aware of reality than said small child, and she completely forgot their actual objective the moment she set her eyes on Sonic. Add in an unfortunate stint of very poor eyesight that got less and less understandable with every instance, and we got Amy’s rough personality for the next decade.

While Knuckles mostly stagnated at the same level of stupidity during that time, Tails got worse and worse, losing all of his badass traits with every game, a factor only increased by the “Sonic only” mentality costing him playable status, until he reached his nadir in Forces, cowering in terror from Chaos 0, and crying out to Sonic to save him, despite knowing full-well that Sonic was captured already.  Amy, meanwhile, limped along at the same level until about 2014, where it seemed someone at SEGA finally realised that A) Having the only female character you regularly use be a pink-coloured gender-bent version of your male hero whose only function is lusting after said hero doesn’t and shouldn’t fly in this day and age, and B) violent stalkers aren’t cute, and dropped this trait. Unfortunately, this has been more of a lateral move than a fix, as, much like Antoine in the comics, they forgot to give her anything substantial or fitting after she lost her negative traits, leaving her a bland and dull character, and when you’ve had a character be consistent for ten years, even if they were consistently bad, then changing it without cause or warning is still going to be jarring and awkward.

Part 4: Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right, or “Why the fuck did this happen?”

As I said in Part 2, Sonic X was made under heavy oversight from Sonic Team, and was heavily endorsed by them at the same time. There were promos for the show inserted into Sonic Adventure DX, a few episodes were released on GBA cartridges, and it received a long-running comic from Archie that ran alongside the main book, even after the show had ended. Additionally, characters that debuted in games from 2002-2004 were restricted from appearing in Archie’s main book for years afterwards (Which will become relevant later). The third season was commissioned solely off of the response to the first two, and primarily overseas response, hence why the original sub was never aired in Japan.

Sonic X was huge. And with that in mind, it’s plain to see that the portrayals of the characters in Sonic X were intended by SEGA. Yeah, all that horrible characterisation was intended as the vision for the franchise going forwards, and subsequent games were adjusted to match it.

And unfortunately, not only did this have a serious impact on the main cast of the games, but it had an even worse effect on Emerl.

Part 5: Emerl in Sonic X, or “Emerl vs. ‘Emel’”

Sonic X’s original mission statement was to adapt Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, and Sonic Battle. Why they skipped Sonic Heroes, despite Shadow being a major player in Battle’s story, I don’t know.

For whatever reason, the show took a full season to actually get to the first game adaptation, SA1, and instead spent the first 26 episodes on bland episodic “adventures”, in some kind of strange reverse-Isekai series. However, once it got there, the adaptation work was fairly faithful to the source material, which the exception of Donut Steele’s being crammed in to the plot. However, he mostly followed Big around, and since Big was the least involved in the game’s plot, he didn’t disrupt too much.

Sidenote, after 26 episodes of filler, the actual SA1 adaptation only lasted six episodes.

SA2 was likewise only six episodes, but with the exception of Amy’s big scene, it likewise wasn’t too bad. Tails suffered this time around too, which is somewhat surprising since he was mech-dependent in the anime anyway.  

After some more filler, which introduced the Chaotix and then did nothing with them, Emerl finally made an appearance, albeit they got his name wrong.

‘Emel’ looks like Emerl, and somewhat works like Emerl, but might as well be completely  different. ‘Emel’ stays completely mute for the entire time he’s around, never advancing much beyond Emerl’s initial silent, pre-first Emerald persona. He does get better at fighting, but he’s limited to only absorbing a single skill at once (Except for when he isn’t).

Dispensing with Battle’s interesting, rich, and heart-twisting plot, Sonic X instead has ‘Emel’ linger in ensemble for three episodes, before condensing the entire game’s premise into a two episodes of really bland tournament arc, where Sonic himself doesn’t actually fight and we get two rounds of Donut Steele being a dick to his friend and his father.

‘Emel’ wins the tournament, and is given a Chaos Emerald, and just when you think it might kickstart him becoming an actual character, instead it just drives him insane and he immediately becomes a pathetically weak version of Ultimate Emerl. After kicking the crap out of the entire cast, he is defeated by Cream and Cheese, because even though he can take on Sonic, Knuckles, and Rouge at the same time and win, along with Tails, Amy, Donut Steele and everyone else, he… can’t handle two opponents at once.

This is stupid.

You’ll notice that I haven’t talked about Sonic’s relationship with ‘Emel’, and that’s because he doesn’t have one. The wonderfully-written parental bond that these two characters share in the games is completely excised, and instead the focus is put on Cream. Bare in mind, Cream is so inconsequential to the actual game that she doesn’t even get mentioned individually in Emerl’s dying speech like Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Shadow do. Instead she’s just grouped in with Amy.

This is also stupid.

And as a result of this, it means that what is arguable base form Sonic’s most impressive feat just doesn’t happen in the anime, instead Emerl dies because he is lightly kicked a bit by Cream. Yeah, unlike the Advance games, Sonic X’s Cream is not an unstoppable engine of destruction, she’s basically just a small child who can sometimes fly.

Instead of Emerl’s tragic speech and Sonic’s desperate attempts to keep his son alive, we get treated to a prolonged scene of Cream crying over the death of her “friend”, something that is probably meant to tug at heartstrings but doesn’t because Cream’s voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard.

And Shadow isn’t even there! He doesn’t come back until a third of the way through Season 3, and never meets ‘Emel.’

This is really stupid. And, for those keeping track, that means of Sonic X’s originally commissioned 52 episodes, and the full series run of 78 episodes, a stunning total of seventeen of them were actually adaptations of the games that the series was supposed to focus on, leaving us with 61 episodes of what might as well be filler.

And, unfortunately, that franchise-wide initiative had damning consequences for Emerl.

Part 6: Gemerl and Sonic Advance 3, or: “An incomplete resurrection.”

So, Gemerl. I know his name is apparently G-Merl now but fuck that I’m calling him Gemerl. If the comics can do it then so will I.

Gemerl is the worst thing Eggman has ever done to Sonic. Like, there is no contest. Some of his other schemes might be more destructive and generally evil, but in terms of personal pain inflicted, nothing has topped this.

Eggman salvaged Emerl’s corpse, and brought him back to life as a mindless murderbot under his control. So not only did he kill Sonic’s robo-son, but he also brought him back as a weapon.

Come the conclusion of the game, Gemerl predictably betrays Eggman, steals the Chaos Emeralds from Sonic, and goes on another rampage. I have… headcanons about this fight, but that’s something to worry about later. What’s important is that, once again, Sonic is victorious, and Gemerl’s defeated body plunges into the atmosphere.

Fortunately, Tails is able to bring Emerl back properly this time, presumably using the Chaos shard that was left over at the end of Battle’s finale. So, it’s all a happy ending, right? Sonic has his child back, Shadow has his connection to his history restored, and Emerl is alive and well, right?

Wrong.

See, the vile spectre of Sonic X rears its ugly head once more, and sabotages this conclusion. Gemerl doesn’t return to Sonic, in fact we never see him reunite with his father. Instead, Sonic X’s version has enough clout now to take precedence, so Gemerl is now Cream’s playmate.

Bear in mind that Emerl’s idea of a fun game is all-out combat against his friends, and Cream doesn’t like fighting (Even if she’s really good at it in Advance 2 and 3).

And then he never shows up again. Even when Cream is part of the game’s plot, like in Rush or Generations, he’s not there, and most egregiously, in Sonic Chronicles, where Cream is not only an active player in the plot, but so are Gizoids, the creators of said Gizoids are the main antagonists, and Emerl himself is mentioned… Gemerl is not there.

But he did make it into the comics, for better or worse. Mostly worse.

Part 7: Embargos, knock-offs, and misused tropes, or: “Ian Flynn dun goofed.”

For a long while, Emerl/Gemerl was barred from the Archie comics, due to the Sonic X embargo, and when it was lifted, he didn’t appear until the reboot. We did, however, get a suspiciously similar substitute in the form of Shard.

Shard was the original Metal Sonic, but when he was brought back and rebuilt for the Secret Freedom arc, he was given a colour scheme ostensibly derived from Metal Sonic 3.0, but one shared with Gemerl, and a personality that was a lot like a watered-down version of Emerl’s own.

On some level I can understand Ian’s decision to bring back Metal Sonic v2.5, rather than use the character that seems to have been an inspiration for this new incarnation in some way. He’d need a fully-formed Emerl, necessitating a skip over the whole story, since there wasn’t room for an adaptation during the Mecha Sally arc that the Secret Freedom story was framed within. Heck, for all we know, the similarities between them may simply be a pretty sizeable coincidence.

But then the reboot happened and Gemerl finally joined the comic cast. And to say it was underwhelming would be an understatement.

You’ll notice that I said “Gemerl” rather than “Emerl”, because his entire story was indeed skipped. The events of Sonic Battle and Sonic Advance 3 had both happened already. This wasn’t Ian’s decision, as far as we know, his intention was for the comic to start over from the beginning. However, due to the interference of Paul Kaminski, who wanted a softer reboot, Ian was forced to fill the characters’ active histories with a large chunk of the games’ stories. Battle and Advance 3 were among those that had already happened, so Emerl made cameos in both incarnations via flashback… which unfortunately led to a plot hole.

See, Advance 3 and Sonic Unleashed are rather difficult to keep in the same continuity, because both share a common plot element: The world breaking into seven pieces.

For a long while, it was generally assumed that the handheld games and console titles were only semi-canon to each other. This avoided the awkward question of “If the Gaias were already there, why didn’t they emerge when Eggman broke the planet in Advance 3?”

Ian shoved them blatantly into the same continuity, and gave no attempt to explain what was different about the Advance 3 world-break compared to the Gaia incident, which served as the backbone to the reboot’s three year long Shattered World Arc. Why didn't the Gaias wake up during Advance 3? Because that's now a question we have to ask of the comics' world.

When Gemerl finally showed up doing something other than yard work for Vanilla (Despite allegedly being Cream’s friend, Cream spends all her time with the rest of the cast, and Gemerl is basically Vanilla’s maid), it was to get effortlessly dispatched by a brainwashed Mega Man with a terrible name in the extremely lacklustre Worlds Unite event.

This one was more than a little bit of a slap in the face, considering that Emerl and Mega Man are very similar in concept- robots that can copy the abilities of other characters- but Emerl is demonstrably more powerful. Now, if Ian had established that Gemerl had been nerfed when he was rebuilt, either by Eggman or by Tails, that would be fine. But he didn’t. In fact, Gemerl is given the title bubble “Super Gizoid”, implying that he’s stronger than a regular Gizoid.

Worlds Unite is generally pretty bad for having its corrupted heroes easily curbstomp every other character around, to the point that the only thing that can stop them is each other, but in Gemerl’s case it really serves no purpose.

This is the only thing that he actually does in Worlds Unite. He shows up to get beaten up and make Mega Man look stronger. That’s it.

This is something that TV Tropes refers to as “The Worf Effect”, a trope wherein an established powerful character is defeated easily by a new character, in order to demonstrate the latter’s power. Now, there’s nothing wrong with using this trope, but please note that I said establishedpowerful character, which Gemerl wasn’t.

At the point that this comic released, Gemerl’s last appearance in any Sonic media was over ten years prior. None of the comic’s intended target audience would remember him, and they wouldn’t know why defeating him was impressive. And this was, in addition, a terrible way to introduce him to new fans. Though the worst part is easily that this was unnecessary. Mega Man had already defeated everyone else, and had established his power pretty well just on them, and he was about to get removed from play permanently in the next issue. There was really no reason to throw Gemerl under the bus for this.

He made one more appearance in the event, getting controlled by the Zeti along with every other robot, and after that he got bopped on the head and just flew away.

Later, he’d make another appearance in the Panic in the Sky arc, and while his portrayal was far from the worst thing about Panic in the Sky, it only adds to the issues caused by the previous showing.

Gemerl makes one appearance, and promptly gets pinned down by the Witchcarters and Team Hooligan. Bear in that one of those groups are the joke villains who nobody takes seriously, and the other are a gang that was defeated by Tails before he met Sonic.

Archie Gemerl was a character who only existed to lose to villains in a vain attempt to make them look better, and that’s legitimately all Ian ever did with him, which makes me wonder whether he disliked the character. And it didn’t even make the villains look good, when you think about it. For anybody that was actually the intended audience for this book, Gemerl had no significance. He was just a robot that got beat up all the time. But for anyone like me, who does remember the games he appeared in, it stands out, not as good writing, but as a blatant narrative device and misused trope.

In this situation, I would simply rather Gemerl never appeared in Archie. At all. If Ian wasn’t going to give him time to shine, or at the very least be an adequate member of the supporting cast, he shouldn’t have used him at all.

Part 8: A Fresh False Start, or: “Wait, how did this get worse?!”

And now we arrive at IDW.

The one nice thing I can say about Archie Gemerl is that at least his personality was mostly on point. He read like a generally accurate take on the character that Emerl was at the end of Battle, which is what he’s supposed to be.

The same cannot be said for IDW.

In the pages of IDW, Gemerl acts like the most generic robot. He speaks in emotionless, stilted sentences with little in the way of actual grammar, leaving him to read like a poor man’s Soundwave, or Soundwave in one of those comics where the writer can’t decide whether they want him to speak normally or adopt his speech pattern from the G1 cartoon, so they just sort of do both.

Emerl pretty much never talked like this, as far as I can recall. His speech development is much more reminiscent of a child learning words, and the only time when he did adopt a more robotic speech pattern, it was a clue that he was slipping back into his destructive programming. He only spoke like a generic robot when he was in mindless destroyer mode.

He gets thrown for a loop by a simple logic flaw, unable to reconcile “Protect Cream and Vanilla” with “Don’t kill the zombots”, and has to be talked out of killing everything around him, when the entire point of Gerald’s modifications to the Gizoid was to make him a bringer of hope rather than destruction, and give him a compassionate heart.

The part of Battle’s story where Cream imparts a pacifistic mindset doesn’t frame her as being right. In that part of the game, they are cornered and under attack by hostile but ultimately mindless drones, and when she convinces Emerl to stop fighting, he almost dies. It’s Cream that learns the lesson there, that sometimes fighting is okay.

This character is already compassionate, he shouldn’t need to be talked into not killing the zombots by a small child, nor should he need her to point out that they’re innocent people who have been made this way by Eggman, because he was made into a killing machine by Eggman twice, and the first time he did die because of it. The character that lay dying in Sonic’s arms, scared and bidding his last goodbyes to his loved ones shouldn’t be the one experiencing this struggle when Omega is also in this arc.

That’s it, really. He’s not Gemerl. He’s a second, less goofy Omega. And it boggles my mind that, despite getting Gemerl’s character, if not his combat abilities, down almost perfectly in Archie, Ian is now subjecting us to this travesty.  

Like with the Archie example above, therein lies the crux of why the steady decline of Emerl/Gemerl that began with Sonic X is pushing me away from IDW: I don’t want to read Ian’s take on this character, because, to me, No Gemerl is better than Badly-Written Gemerl,

This isn’t the first time I’ve said this, either.  Way back in 2016, when I complained about Ian’s portrayal of Gemerl in Panic in the Sky, I said that the way he handled characters that I liked tended to make them the least likeable parts of the stories he wrote. As well as stating my dislike for his handling of Gemerl, I also stated that I used to really like Fiona Fox, moreso in concept than in execution, but under Ian’s pen she was largely an insufferable antagonist, little more than a trophy to make his pet recolour look better, and almost every story she was in only added to the “List of reasons she needs to stop lying to herself and just start the redemption arc already”. Additionally, I said that I didn’t want to see him bring back Neo Metal Sonic or Mephiles in any context, and we got the former, and it was exactly as bad as I thought it would be.

So, that’s basically why I don’t want to read IDW. That’s why, even if the aspect that was a big sticking point for me back when the comic launched was to be undone soon, I still probably wouldn’t pick it up. Because I don’t want to see my favourite Sonic character continue to be written badly by a guy that should know better, and has done better in the past.

If he were simply screwing up Gemerl’s personality the first time he wrote him, I would file it away under the same category as “Emel”, but the fact that he’s done better before, in a book where he had greater restrictions on what he could do with the characters, really settles this as an interest-killer for me.

Well done, Mr. Flynn. I legitimately didn’t think you could make me actually miss SEGA’s tighter control, but you somehow managed it. I would be impressed if it weren’t so sad.

[crusherthedoctor]

Sonic Villains: Sweet or Shite? - Part 7: METAL SONIC

It's been a while, but it's time for another Crusher review and analysis.

There are some villains I like. And there are some villains I don't like. But why do I feel about them the way I do? That's where this comes in.

This is a series of mine in which I go into slightly more detail about my thoughts on the villains in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and why I think they either work well, or fall flat (or somewhere in-between). I'll be giving my stance on their designs, their personalities, and what they had to show for themselves in the game(s) they featured in. Keep in mind that these are just my own personal thoughts. Whether you agree or disagree, feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions! I don't bite. :>

Anyhow, for today's installment, we'll be putting the Stardust Speedway saxophones aside for a moment to discuss Dr. Eggman's notorious robotic copycat, who desperately wants to show us what he's made of: Metal Sonic.

NOTE: While I will be taking several of Metal Sonic's non-game portrayals into account, this will NOT include his Sonic the Comic incarnation, as I feel that Fleetway's Metal - or Metallix, as he's called - is so vastly different in so many ways that I feel there's no point, whereas his other portrayals in non-game media are considerably more consistent for the most part.

The Gist: Being a criminal mastermind slash world conquerer in the making has its shortcomings, and for Dr. Eggman/Dr. Robotnik/The Bad Guy, that shortcoming came in the form of a plush-sized hedgehog who frequently wrecked his machines, foiled his plans, and - worst of all - talked back at him. This literal thorn on his side made the good doctor a very unhappy camper, but one day, his brilliant brain brought a brilliant breakthrough: Why not pit Sonic against himself?

During his then-new scheme to use the Time Stones of the Little Planet to conquer the world through time, Eggman worked tirelessly on his new idea to ensure it was just right. It couldn't be too slow. It couldn't be too bulky. It couldn't be too un-Sonic-like, for he vowed to assert his technological dominance by making a better Sonic than the real one. He wanted this to be his greatest creation yet, and he wasn't going to half-ass that objective.

The result was Metal Sonic, a marvel of industrial automation who established himself as fast as Sonic, as deadly as Sonic, and... not talkative, unlike Sonic. No wonder Eggman declared him the superior of the two.

Eggman loves his creation so much that he’s willing to let him die if this goes wrong. That’s how you know he’s his favourite.

Sure enough, Eggman's efforts were not entirely in vain, as the blue droid was more than a match for Sonic in the speed department, as well as the "What's the best way to make it clear to Amy Rose that I'm not interested?" department via snatching up Sonic's pink hedgehog acquaintance, leaving her as the doctor's captive. Unfortunately however, despite giving Sonic the race of his life, Metal was not yet as quick in his reflexes as the genuine article was, meaning his initial reign of terror came to an abrupt end when he flew head-first into a wall, George of the Jungle-style. Eggman was devastated, except he wasn't, because he knew he could just rebuild and upgrade him. Which he did. Constantly.

He also rebuilt these guys for some reason.

Since his debut in Sonic CD, Metal has went on to appear in a sizable number of games throughout the years, and he's made some personal appearances in a few other continuities as well. Most of these appearances simply have him show up, attack Sonic and other heroes for a bit, then get his ass handed to him. Some of those ass-kickings even came with a tasty amount of hue hues. But every now and then, they'll have him do something more, the most famous example being Sonic Heroes, in which he took over Eggman's army by force and went on his own little crusade to gain everyone's data and become Metal GodJesus, all the while proving himself the real Sonic the Hedgehog... by doing a lot of things the real Sonic the Hedgehog would never do. (This general concept would reappear in the IDW comics, though he did not betray Eggman that time around.)

Overall though, Metal is generally considered to be a welcome face whenever he makes an appearance... when he’s not dreaded for being the biggest roadblock in Fighters.

“Well that’s the end of the playthrough, make sure to like, comment, subscribe.”

The Design: What is there to say about Metal Sonic’s design? It’s cool, it’s ominous, it’s sleek, it’s stylish, and it holds a palpable aura of dangerous badassitude while still fitting perfectly with the design philosophy of this franchise. Truly, Metal’s design alone makes him one of the all-time greats of the Eggman repertoire, and it's easy to see why the scientist is particularly proud of this one.

He’s the robot your robot could crash into a wall like.

He’s had a few transformations over the years though. In Knuckles Chaotix, he turned into a ginormous monstrosity commonly referred to by fans as Metal Sonic Kai, who terrified many juniors back in the day due to making the inexcusable error of not being blue. The bad ending might have also affected them.

E for Everyone.

Luckily, Classic Metal got the right idea two decades later, and kept his blue colour scheme when the Phantom Ruby brought the form back in Sonic Mania Plus. As for Modern Metal, he had a brief life (or lives, if you count IDW) as Neo Metal Sonic, who - despite being made with the intention to be a darker, cooler, more serious iteration of the character - went the complete opposite direction by looking less like a frightening metal monarch, and more like a shonen anime’s midnight seizure.

Look at this fucking thing.

Elf shoes. Ripped skirt. Starfish haircut. Vaguely phallic strap in the appropriate area. Regular Metal may have a semi-cutesy look even in his more dangerous iterations, but at least he doesn't come off as a compensating son who doesn't quite know how to come out to his judgemental father, which is more than I can say for whatever the hell this is supposed to be. Is this really meant to be a more intimidating design? A more badass design...?

Then, as if this wasn’t ridiculous enough for Metal already, they had him transform even further into MechaGodzilla Metal Overlord, a goliath made from the remains of the Egg Fleet, with a side order of spikes and artist’s regret.

"Sonic, I was created for the sole purpose of destroying you... but I can never seem to defeat you... That is why I purchased Freddie Mercury's wardrobe with my own hands!"

Said form also returned in the IDW comic, rechristened Master Overlord, who traded the clawed wings and the flamethrower in exchange for symmetrical hands and a more simplistic body structure, at the expense of looking even more like a children’s toy.

Needless to say, Metal's had some... interesting transformations over the years. But his original look will always remain iconic, and rightly so.

The Personality: Metal Sonic's personality is harder to specify compared to other characters in the series, because his kill-first ask-later demeanour in tandem with his usual muteness means we see him most of the time as little more than a Sonic-shaped extension of Eggman's will. That said however, there have been deeper glimpses here and there into what makes his mechanical mind tick.

The most obvious thing to note is that Metal holds the very un-Sonic trait of not having time for nonsense. Sure, he might not be above taunting his organic counterpart in a likeminded way occasionally, but that aside, he's generally a pretty serious and humorless individual, a stark contrast to his creator and master that nonetheless works in the latter's favor, as the realisation that the goofy manchild Eggman of all people made this thing helps shoot down the myth that the rotund madman is all talk.

"He's behind you!" "Shut it wee man, this is a serious play."

Then there's his insanity, by means of identity crisis. It's not known if this was something that was there from the beginning, or if it's somethng that developed and worsened with each defeat, but at some point in his life, Metal convinced himself that despite literally being made with the intention of exterminating the actual Sonic, he himself was in fact the actual Sonic, and that the actual actual Sonic that already existed prior to his inception was in fact the actual Not-Sonic (or a faker, as would be used to describe a certain other lookalike). This belief has caused him to do a bunch of crazy stuff of dubious logic, and don't try to question him on his reasoning, lest you want him to cut you open like a Terry's Chocolate Orange.

His relationship with Eggman is something of an enigma. While his teenage phase betrayal in Heroes is probably the most mainstream evidence of how he feels about his master, it's easy to forget that this was the exception, not the rule. In nearly every other appearance before and since then, Metal has shown nothing but stone cold loyalty towards the doctor and his cause. Even in IDW, when he regained his Neo form and basically did everything he could to remind everyone that Heroes was a thing that existed, he did it that time around for the purpose of finding his master, and helping to restore his empire. A far cry from Neo's first attempt, when he was ranting and raving about how he should have the empire.

Thus, I can only conclude that while his Sonic-esque AI may cause him to get a little reckless, he remains genuinely devoted to his creator outside of his brief cocaine rush in Heroes... and Free Riders, but I don't think anyone knew what was going on in that one. I don't think he knew what was going on in that one.

But perhaps most surprisingly of all - according to the OVA at least - despite all his black-hearted ways, he is still capable of good, as evidenced when he saved the President and the legendary Old Man Owl from dying a fiery death. Whether it's an inherent part of his own nature, or whether it's a side-effect of his Sonic programming, isn't fully clear... but either way, he might want to make sure Eggman doesn't find out about it.

The Execution: Metal Sonic's execution is a complicated case, because there's a dissonance between when he's merely an obstacle for the good guys, and when they've tried to make him more than that.

When he's merely Eggman's instrument of evildoing, he does the job nicely. Sometimes his appearances can be underwhelming depending on the game (read: Sonic 4), but he usually provides a memorable scuffle when it's time for him to put up his dukes. Even if half of those are actually races.

When he aims for bigger, on the other hand? Well...

I've already joked about Neo Metal Sonic's design, but don't be fooled, for his ridiculous fashion sense is merely one part of my beef with the overall concept of Neo. Simply put, everything about Neo Metal Sonic goes against everything that makes this particular character work.

Ranting, monologuing, and running his mouth off does not work for Metal Sonic.

Gathering everyone's data with the intention of becoming Metal Everyone does not work for Metal Sonic.

Transforming into a goddamn dragon does not work for Metal Sonic. (I can let Metal Sonic Kai slide since despite being bigger and more monstrous, you can still recognise it as Metal Sonic specifically. Colour scheme aside, Metal Overlord/Master Overlord might as well be a random monster entirely.)

These ideas aren't necessarily bad on their own. They could work for another villain, or another Eggman minion. But for Metal Sonic specifically? It just doesn't work at all, and while some may be willing to handwave it as the result of Metal's insanity, I firmly believe it's more than possible to establish and delve into his inner madness in ways that DON'T contradict almost everything about him. A character being insane is not an excuse for turning them into a completely different character altogether, nor is it an excuse for just plain handling them in a shitty manner. By all means, I'm all for giving Metal a bigger role, and I'm all for expanding his character and his dynamic... just not like this.

Metal doesn't need to do all that in order to be effective and leave an impression. His portrayal in the OVA confirms that. OVA Metal was everything that Metal was known for at the time: straightforward, loyal, and silent, bar one line towards the end. And he still managed to be a very intriguing antagonist who served as a believably major threat, and who gave Sonic the fight of his life, and thus earned the hedgehog's disgruntled ire and his begrudging respect. That is the Metal that writers should aspire to. That is the essence of what makes that character.

So, despite everything, I still highly enjoy Metal Sonic when he's Metal Sonic, and not Something Vaguely Shaped Like Metal Sonic. He's stumbled a bit over the years, but when he's done right, he's always an eventful burst of fun, and ultimately, my fondness for those portrayals overrides my disgust towards elf shoes. And I'd love to see them expand on his dynamic with Eggman, which a certain well-liked series of shorts has thankfully given us a small taste of. Here's hoping the future will follow up on it...

“Now, if you may be so generous, hand over the Emerald slowly, or else I'm afraid your little friend will face the consequen-ooooowwwww my FUCKING wrist.”

Crusher Gives Metal Sonic a: Thumbs Up! (and Neo Metal Sonic a: Thumbs Down!)

[notanothersonicblog]

Looking back, I think that Breezie was handled pretty well in the Archie Comics in spite of the redesign.

If you asked me a month ago I would have agreed, but I’ve since boomeranged on Breezie in the Archie book, and I realise why I didn’t really care for her to begin with. Now, this is all my own opinion so take this all with a good grain of salt. In fact, don’t take a grain of salt; this article is salty enough and you’ll need it to reply when you’re done reading.

Let’s leave the design aside, we’ll tackle that later. The biggest issue with Breezie is the fact that Ian just didn’t get her. On a superficial level, Breezie can be broken down into three or four key points: She’s a femme fatale who flirts with Sonic, she’s a robot, and she later goes on to become a TV presenter and marries Robotnik Jr., Ian does grasp some of these but does not fully realise them. For the most part Breezie is an example of lost potential most infuriating.

On the first point, that is what Breezie is most known and beloved for; people like shipping in this fandom (even I’m somewhat guilty of this) and they like how adorable Sonic was with Breezie. Now Ian can’t have Sonic be into Breezie because he’s a male going his own way and only wants adventure and chili dogs, which is fine. What isn’t so fine is that after a couple of flashbacks with flirting that amounts to ‘please take me with you because I’m a pretty girl’, ‘oh okay’. She then completely loses all interest in Sonic and becomes a ‘I have no time for such weak emotions as having friends’ type (well almost, we’ll get to that later). When Sonic turns up at the casino for the tournament she barely even tries to bat her eyelids at him. No interest at all, doesn’t even get a rise from Amy with a threatening glance. Lost potential number one, I won’t keep count throughout the writing though.

The second point, this is actually a very well done part and I do like how Ian has kept Breezie’s background deliberately vague and keeps some mystery about it. That is genuinely intriguing and it is the one thing that kept me interested in her and the comic as a whole. Good work, I approve.

Then we get onto the third point, now obviously we can’t have Jr. in the comic unless they managed to find a weasley way around it. Which is acceptable, no problem there. However the whole scene where Breezie flirts with Metal Sonic is really bizarre and out of place both in and out of context. In-context of the prior knowledge that Breezie will have file transfers with Robotnik Jr. one wonders why they’re beating about the bush with her being a robot when Ian is clearly writing her to be like Breezie in the cartoon and going off with another robot. Did he suddenly realise that he forgot the first point about Breezie and decided to make up for it by having her flirt with Metal so he could do a twofer, and be clever by having her flirt with someone who thinks he’s the real Sonic? Out-of-context one wonders why the Dickens she, an apparently flesh-and-blood Mobian, is flirting with a robot, is she robosexual? And if so, why on Mobius is she flirting with a cold, calculating, terminator-like robot, is she daft? Added on to this the whole scene lasts a page, has no buildup and is never brought up again. As I said it’s outright baffling and I don’t know if it’s meant to be humourous or a homage to the source material, or indeed if it’s meant to be taken seriously.

Why does any of this matter though? The reason it matters is because Breezie was brought into the comic to give something to the fans; specifically fans of The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. These things are indeed superficial but they are key points that made those people like Breezie and be interested in her to begin with, besides her design (which we will get to, wait for it). The biggest problem is that Ian intensely dislikes AoStH, maybe that’s a strong word I’ll admit, but you can practically hear his teeth grinding whenever it’s brought up. It’s clear he holds the show in contempt outside of a few memes. At the very best he possesses no interest in the show outside of the superficial. Now of course it isn’t necessary to be a fan of something to write an adaptation of it, nor is it necessary to just copy everything one-for-one, that’s redundant and it isn’t what I want. However you do need to understand it, and while I say you don’t need to be a fan, on the other end you wouldn’t allow Moriarty to write Sherlock Holmes stories, or have Joseph Goebbels direct your production of Fiddler on the Roof.

I admit these are very extreme accusations I am making, however I think you get my point.  If you’re a fan of AoStH and it’s characters, would you not hold some trepidation in entrusting them to a creative team who show zero love, or downright contempt for it? Again you may ask, why does this matter? Well it matters in this case particularly because the object of the exercise is to appeal to fans of AoStH and Breezie like myself, and so when the adaptation, quite possibly the only revival of said character is a bit of a hash-job in name only, you get a bit miffed.

So let’s get miffed.

After the loss in translation, the second issue with Breezie, and indeed the other AoStH characters in the Fighter’s story arc is that they’re just not that funny. Now when you’re doing an adaptation at the very least you have to get the spirit of things right, and so when you have a goofy cartoon you should at the very least expect some fun or goofy antics. Now you might say ‘but she’s a businesswoman! She’s supposed to be taken seriously!’ Well as far as I can see she is essentially a mogul who puts herself in front of her business. She is essentially like Vince McMahon of WWE fame, who along with people like Richard Branson and (dare I say it?) Donald Trump, are quite happy to make complete arses of themselves in front of the public for publicity. However they still remain serious and somewhat respected business people, heck, Donald even became President at some point, and he once hugged Grimace.

Seriously though, why doesn’t Breezie do anything in this story like this? She clearly has an ego, but the nearest we get to seeing this is on the Breezie TV segment where she’s chinking glasses with the President. You’d think a Vince McMahon (or rather Stephanie McMahon) type character; one in a funny animal comic (which Vince once played to everyone’s great disturbance), and one who in the source material actually was a television presenter, would actually get up and do some Vince-like showmanship.

This was a real thing made by real people who make a living pretending to fight each other. They’re richer than you.

Seriously, why isn’t Breezie doing something like this? It would totally work for a character of her type in a children’s comic, it would wouldn’t be out of place in the original show, and considering her and Vince’s character it would fit her one-to-one in the comic. Except Ian apparently hates fun if it’s mildly surreal. Instead Breezie is a straight-edge, no nonsense neutral antagonist who displays some signs of flair but never really capitalises upon them, which doesn’t feel like the original Breezie or AoStH in general. She just feels like a Breezie in name only.

Speaking of fun and slapstick, why don’t we look at the true stars of AoStH, Scratch, Grounder, and Coconuts. Who for the most part are handled well but still possess a few flaws. Grounder needs eyes, and gadget hands, there is little to no reason why he shouldn’t. Coconuts has been promoted to the first among equals among the trio, which is a nice change, but it doesn’t work in the context of the comic because we don’t see him being the butt monkey when he was working for Robotnik. Overall their slapstick is somewhat weak, at the least I don’t remember much of it other than Ian decides to reuse his ‘this character has drills for hands, how stoopid’ joke from the Mega Man comics with Grounder from time to time. It’s not as bad as Breezie but again I feel that they are lacking somewhat due to Ian’s lack of personal interest in the subject matter.

Then there’s Wes Weasley, who at first I rather liked; the design wasn’t buggered up, he wasn’t given a really prominent role so it feels short and sweet. Just what you want from such an adaptation, a wink to the old fans.However I now notice the chinks in the armour and how, again, Ian’s lack of interest in AoStH shows. His iconic mannerisms are gone (no pasly or any whiff of Phil Silvers) and when I stop and think about it, shouldn’t someone else be doing the announcements? Why Wes? Wes Weasley was a salesman, a man who you would think would be hanging out with Wentos in an Unleashed adaptation. The nearest thing he ever got to announcing was that one episode Hero of the Year where he did the television testimonial for Sonic as well as the various advertisement schemes he did. While he is doing some shilling here it isn’t really outside the realms of your normal announcer type. A much more fitting character to use in this situation would be someone like…

…Collie Chang, news reporter…

…Throbin Screech, game show host…

…Scratch, robotic cock…

And…

Breezie the flipping Hedgehog, chat show host.

In fact why doesn’t Breezie do the announcing? As I said earlier it would add some more flair and flesh out her character as she makes comments on the contests and, hang on…

Wes Weasley was a businessman, known for his amoral and mercenary behaviour, unlike Breezie.

Wes Weasley actually screwed over Dr Eggman and Sonic on numerous occasions, and was generally a neutral antagonist who only did what would widen his profit margin, unlike Breezie.

Wes Weasley has worked with Scratch and Grounder, but unlike Breezie he also worked with Coconuts and even showed him favouritism in ‘The Magic’ Hassle’, helping him screw over Robotnik.

Wes Weasley had a super fancy limo. UNLIKE BREEZIE.

WHY IN SATAN’S TROUSER PRESS ISN’T WES WEASLEY IN BREEZIE’S PLACE?!

Wes Weasley’s character fits the role Breezie was parash**ted into damn near perfectly, it’s downright uncanny. All you would need is to add a few palsys here and there and you’re set. Make Breezie into a presenter who works for the Weasley empire who has a thing for Sonic and wants to help him win the tournament because of her past encounter with him. Put Roxy Raccoon in the bar at the casino, Da Bears as bouncers, and Collie can be a news anchor on Weasel News (THE PUNS WORK TOO). There, in short shrift I have assigned roles to the characters from the show which actually fit them, appeal to old farts like myself and give underage losers stuff to have a hand shandy over because Collie has a cleavage line or because Roxy has a waist narrower than her hips. That is what you get when you allow someone who actually likes the damn source material do something with it.

Okay, tirade over, I admit I went a bit overboard there. Sorry about that.

However, I do hope you realise how frustrating this whole business is, as I said, it’s a huge amount of missed opportunity courtesy of thoughtlessness. Just so you know IDW, my door is always open, I enjoy writing for free, and at the very least I’ve actually spoken to people who’ve worked on the show and as such can have some inkling as to what the fans of the show might like. I will fully admit I am biased here as I am a fan of AoStH, and on a objective level (thought strictly speaking there is no objectivity in art) the Fighters arc is better than a lot of the comic and Breezie is serviceable, if only were she not called Breezie but Madame Mogul.

So… What about the design? It’s alright, except for the hair, why is it Honey is allowed her hair even though Blaze nor Big have any? It just seems like AoStH gets the short straw in everything. Other than that, not too big a deal to be honest.

Finally, I do not hold any ill will against Ian; while I do disagree with his decisions and some of his opinions, he is certainly not wicked or naturally bad. I will give him credit for managing such a difficult fanbase and keeping the comic going. I wish him the best in the future, though I would say I’d prefer a different writer or have him in a team of writers if IDW decide to bring him in. I also want to say, other than the realistic design (go with something more Unleashed than 06) Von Schlemmer was written very well and felt like a continuation of the character from the show.

[crusherthedoctor]

10, 11, 14, 15 and 24?

10. Most underrated Sonic game?

The Advance series. A lot of fans seem to ignore their existence, and that makes me sad, and not just because the first two were the first Sonic games I ever saw and played respectively. Advance 3 might have some questionable level design, but I think the series overall deserves more recognition.

Their soundtracks are also criminally overlooked.

11. Most overrated Sonic game?

Tied between Adventure 2 and Unleashed.

While more openly divisive nowadays than it was back in the day, Adventure 2 is still often hailed as one of the best Sonic games, and still often considered even by non-fans as the last good Sonic game. I on the other hand don’t care for it that much, because two thirds of the game involve a very slow gameplay style (mech shooting) and a decent gameplay style from the previous game made worse (treasure hunting). And despite technically having better control, even the usual Sonic/Shadow gameplay in itself isn’t as satisfying to me as Sonic was in Adventure 1.

Also, the story is really not that good. I can maybe look past one or two plotholes depending on what they are, but there are way too many here for me to ignore. And while I don’t outright dislike Shadow as a character, his backstory was already difficult for me to take seriously long before the Black Arms were shoehorned into it. I still believe that this game was one of the biggest catalysts for a lot of later problems with tone and storytelling in the games, because the tone in this game, while not as bad as ShtH or Sonic ‘06, is still pretty unbalanced if you ask me.

Meanwhile, Unleashed may not be the most popular game outside of the fandom, but recently it’s grown very popular within the fandom, to the point that many fans consider it a magnum opus of the series… A viewpoint that, with all due respect, I simply can’t agree with, because there are far too many elements that prevent me from considering it the best that Sonic can do. Like the Werehog’s gameplay, the Werehog dominating over half of the entire game, the medal collecting, Tails and Amy barely doing anything of real importance, yet another giant monster story that follows the motions, the plot going empty during the middle portion of the game, Chip being nothing more than a generic comic relief character until suddenly he’s Light Gaia, the game consisting of nothing BUT real world-esque locations aside from Eggmanland…

On a minor note, while not really praised that often as a game overall, Black Knight’s story is often considered one of the best in the franchise, and often considered to have some of the best writing. I can agree that there isn’t anything truly bad about the story or writing, but personally, it’s rather boring to me on the whole, and I think Sonic could do better.

14. If you could be any Sonic character who would you be and why?

Already answered.

15. Favorite rival?

Already answered.

24. Worst characterization?

Robotnik in Sonic X.

The rest of the cast have had their share of bad portrayals, make no mistake. Some of them I may even consider to be technically worse than this, like Amy’s portrayal in the very same show. But this portrayal grates on me the most out of all of them, not just because it’s my favourite character, but because it highlights something that many, many, many people get wrong about the doctor, official folk and fan folk alike:

Just because he doesn’t take active pleasure in his crimes doesn’t mean he isn’t still a nasty piece of work for going through with said crimes to begin with. Constantly sugarcoating his actions, and laying on the “he’s not so bad” routine too heavily, undermines one of the core aspects about the doctor, which is how surprisingly terrible he can be in spite of his comical appearance and personality. (Eg: causing forest fires, destroying entire ruins for the sole purpose of killing Sonic, the callous state of the Bad Futures in Sonic CD…)

I love Robotnik because of that contrast. So I don’t appreciate Sonic X disregarding one half of it.