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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/actually_a_demon on 2024-07-01 13:11:14+00:00.
Honestly? I find it absurd that no one has talked about this here. Don’t get me wrong, i love me some Archie Sonic and Ken Penders drama, but honestly this entire franchise is so full of weird shit that i find unbelivable that no one has ever tought of doing this. So i will do it myself. I wanted to make it all in a big post originally, but i then realized that it would be way too long, so i decided to split it up in two parts.
First of all, a proper introduction is needed.
What is Sonic exactly?
If you are familiar with video games or if you’re ever being on the internet, you have probably a pretty good idea of what Sonic is. But even if you already know, i’m going to explain some things that the general public probably isn’t aware of, so don’t skip this part. Trust me.
Sonic the Hedgehog is a Japanese video game series mainly belonging to the platform, action and science fiction genres, produced by Sega and developed by the Japanese studio Sonic Team. The series bears the same name as its main character, Sonic the Hedgehog, the current and official mascot of Sega. Born in Japan , the series landed for the first time ever worldwide on June 23 1991 with the first video game also called “Sonic the Hedgehog”, released on the Sega Mega Drive console. The series will continue to land on consoles made by Sega until 2001: In that year, following the decline of Sega Dreamcast, it continued its career on consoles developed by Sony, Microsoft, PC, mobile devices and Nintendo (particulary ironic because Sonic was originally created to rival Mario’s success). Over time, many of the original developers and producers (among which it’s worth mentioning the programmer Yuji Naka) left the company to found new independent companies or join other Japanese software houses. However, currently the series still has many veterans on its side including the game designer Takashi Iizuka, currently head of Sonic Team and producer and executive director of the series, the chief artist and designer Yuji Ukewa, one of the designers of the secondary and main characters of the saga since 1998 and Sachiko Kawamura, the main designer of the saga with her colleague Uekawa.
Sonic however suffered from a very evident case of adaptation inconsistency, particularly regarding it’s lore and characters. To be fair, it wasn’t uncommon in the 90s (and even today) for a japanese media to be potrayed differently in countries outside of Japan, but Sonic suffered particularly from this. Just to make an example, in the american cartoon “Sonic The Hedgeogh”(also called by fans “SatAM”) and in the very first game, Sonic and friends were described as the inhabitant of an alien planet called Mobius, whereas in the original Japanese manual the planet isn’t even slightly mentioned, suggesting that the game takes place on a moving magical island in our Earth. Beside that, the saga is also infamous for not being linear with the videogames itself and not caring about continuity. Long story short, each adventure takes place in it’s own little contained universe, with few exceptions. This caused some problems when Sega recently founded a Sonic Lore Team to fix some inconsistencies and do what is basically a soft reboot of the franchise, unifying it with the original japanese lore. They did this mainly by removing the ages from all the character bios on the official Sonic Channel and stating once and for all that Mobius doesn’t exist and humans are in a fact a thing. Additionally, they also tried to suggest that every game was always supposed to be connected, when it’s evident that it was never their main preoccupation over the past 20 years. I know that this part may sound like it’s condiscending, but in reality i find it just funny.
To make the point clear, in Sonic Adventure 2 the main villain literally destroys the moon with a laser and when people started to slowly relize that in later games the moon was still intact, when asked about it Takashi Iizuka replied that it was just rotating and that’s why we never saw it destroyed.I hope that’s all I need to make you understand that Sonic Team or Sega never really cared about an overarching narrative for the franchise. Which in itself is fine, but the way they managed to handle it was probably less great. It has reached a point where the american interpretation of Sonic is totally different from his japanese incarnation. Long story short evey non-japanese licensed media (mainly comics, cartoons and the movie that came out recently) contains lore that is new and, often, completely disconnected from the original video games. This as you can guess sparked a debate in the fanbase about what Sonic is even supposed to be. Some people really like the american adaptation of the lore, SatAM, Archie Comics and all of that, others despise it with all their beings. Sonic fans in general are infamous for being extremely divided: over which game is better, which version of Sonic is better, which character has suffered the worst character assassination, and who is the best. This context is extremely important to understand what happened in 2014 and what lead to the creation of Sonic Boom.
Interlude: the uncertain state of the franchise
Let’s be real: late 2000s/early 2010s was not a good period for the blue blur. After the Sonic Chronicles lawsuit, the disaster that was Sonic 06 (which can honestly be its own Hobbydrama post) and the general lukewarm reception of modern games, Sonic Team realized that maybe it was time to change their narrative approach. And so they did what was basically a soft reboot of the franchise.
The time is 2010.
All the crazy ass anime shit and melodrama the early 2000s games were known for were completely thrown in the bin, choosing instead to focus on a more light hearted tone and plot, similar in spirit to a Mario game. They also hired new writers for the american division of Sonic Team, mainly Ken Pontac and Warren Graff, which would go on to write Sonic Colors in the same year and Sonic Lost World in 2016. Those two are particulary infamous in the community because the way they wrote those games was universally considered horrible: the overall tone of the story is incredibly childish and immature, filled with the unfunniest joke you will ever hear in a children’s media and the characters were reduced to empty, stereotypical blobs of themselves. Sonic himself was written to be incredibly childish and annoying, but others major characters suffered worst fates. Amy Rose’s sprinkles of development in Sonic Adventure? They no longer exists, she’s simply Sonic’s fangirl who follows him everywhere. Tails’ self confidence after the events of Sonic Adventure 2? It no longer exists, he is just an insecure and scared kid who idolizes Sonic and follows him everywere he goes. He’s also now a tecnology genius and not simply a mechanic for some reason. And the fiery hotheaded strongman of the main trio, Knuckles? Now he’s just potrayed as a stupid himbo. Actually, remember this because it will be important later.
With this context in mind, we can FINALLY talk about what the fuck happened in 2014. And to do so we need to watch a…particular promo image.
Well, this was the first promo image we ever got for the newly announced TV series, Sonic Boom, coming to Cartoon Network during November. For the context of this story, is important to know that the cartoon is much more comical and it takes itself less seriously than other famous Sonic animations such as Sonic X, SatAM or the more recent Sonic Prime. It obviously takes place on another continuity and had also a cheaper budget, as you can probably tell by watching some clips. Basically it’s an episodic comedy where things happen and characters do stuffs, literally. There is not a plot, only character related drama. It lasted for two season before it was canceled and as it neared its end, the jokes and fourth-wall breaks became increasingly more unhinged, even bordering on full on shitpost. They even go as far as suggesting that Amy, one of the main characters, is bisexual. Which is a real thing that i wrote talking about a ugly looking Sonic cartoon. To be fair, the entire bisexual Amy affair goes way deeper than that considering it was a very specific inside joke, but we don’t have time for that. Also honestly i don’t care. Good for her i guess? The history of the downfall of the Sonic Boom cartoon as a whole has also the potential to be an Hobbydrama p…
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