General Sonic The Hedgehog thread

The Archie comics aren't really a continuation of the Satam series, but it follows along the same lines. All the characters are roughly the same, though.

I recommend reading them, honestly, if you liked Satam. I mean, yeah, there were bad stories, and there are some writers who seem a tad too eager to kill people off, but overall the good stories were worth it.

I only actually read them about once a year, though, because I get impatient when following them issue to issue. I have no idea what they're doing now.

So if anyone's interested, I spent the entirety of French writing my dream Level Order for Sonic Generations. Yay, school work!

On Archie: I've only just started reading, from the beginning, and I'm sorta liking it. It's not wonderful, but it's fun. It definitely picked up around issue 25, but got a bit weird around 50 (though the story soon after, the sorta film noir parody, I personally loved.) I've read a couple of Sonic Universe issues, though, and loved it, so I'll keep going.

On Satam: I've only seen a couple of episodes, and it's pretty cool. Jaleel White's voice is kinda grating though.

Serious Villain Dissonance abounds for me comparing War Minister Julian with the grandson of Gerald Robotnik.

It could be that I grew up with AOSTH, but I've always liked it. His portrayal never really bothered me.

That's probably it. I'm biased, because I grew up on Sonic Heroes and Sonic X, where he (Sonic) sounded younger. I'll admit White does have serious talent, it's probably just my nostalgia filter that makes him not as good to my ears.

edited 5th Feb '13 7:53:40 AM by GroovyNerd

My main beef with Archie is the same as Satam only amped to extremes, as in it tries to make Sonic much more 'mature' and gritty than it really is, and unlike Satam it doesn't even have the usual whimsy and character to balance it off. Most of the non-villainous characters are very bland or one note and it goes into subjects such as romantic drama and politics that don't really fit Sonic on the level they are used.

The new writer moderates things a bit better, but even then he writes most of the cast rather blandly and most of his arcs feature at least one huge off putting flaw.

And I liked Aosth too. It's just a harmless wacky cartoon, but that might be it's strong point. It's about the one cartoon that doesn't try to make Sonic more 'high up' than it really is. There are some really corny episodes and most of the original cast that aren't badniks don't add up to much, but you don't feel they're trying to push their new material as forcefully as the others do (even if Scratch and Grounder border as Villain Protagonists at points).

edited 5th Feb '13 9:12:45 AM by Psi001

There's nothing wrong with making Sonic mature. We weren't expecting Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 to be gritty, but they were able to make a very compelling story with mostly likeable characters. That's my ideal of how Sonic stories should be handled.

Sonic Adventure 1 was darker, but it remained loyal to the original mythos and didn't overstep the mark. Not to mention, despite it's cornyness, there actually a lot of personality in it (Gamma is about the one death in the whole series I found truly heartbreaking and fitting for the franchise). I'm mixed about Adventure 2 as it was moderated better, but it felt like it was taking things a bit far and making the series more an anime sci fi than a cartoon about a blue hedgehog.

My key problem with Archie is not just being darker, but it's incredibly pretentious about it. It takes cliche 'mature' concepts that barely fit Sonic at all and the final result is actually rather lacking in character. Most of the cast actually feel very bland due to them downplaying the cartoony elements and their 'development' is more along the lines of convoluted backstory than trying to establish real personalities for them.

Satam was at least a cerebus makeover of the basic mythos from the games and still had a lot of whimsy amist the drama, even if it did overplay things here and there (eg. the odd Angst? What Angst? moments). As said, Satam Sally and the other Freedom Fighters weren't developed brilliantly, but I can at least stand them since they have at least some amount of personality and quirks to make them entertaining compared to the Archie versions, which try too hard to be serious and dignified that they are actually rather boring.

edited 5th Feb '13 10:05:23 AM by Psi001

Actually, Archie comics are less serious and more goofy, just like the first issues, still, better than Marvel and DC

Archie does seem to be very pretentious about it sometimes. Like it can take itself far too seriously - a problem 06 and Shadow have. But at its best, I get X-Men vibes from it - which is a very, very good thing.

A big problem is that Archie has too much drama for so little personality. Most of the characters fall victim to loads of angst and needless backstory establishment, and at the same time a lot of them can be best specified as The Everyman. Most of the cast follow the same small number of archetypes with few enough differences, all the male heroes are Spiderman-esque snarky emotional basketcases, all the female heroes are down to earth Women Are Wiser foils, while most of the villains are Laughably Evil sociopaths. The remainder of characters are usually just blank slates.

I didn't feel for Sally being robotocized at all, or Antoine being comatose, or Bunnie leaving, since by this point they were dull unspecific characters that had been diluted to just their positive aspects.

edited 5th Feb '13 10:56:55 AM by Psi001

I've concluded that in the end, AOSTH is closest to the spirit of the games. It's silly and does a decent job of making Sonic and Tails enjoyable without coming off as jerks, Robotnick was shown to work great when having bumbling foils to play off of which even the games have noticed, and it had nods to the games even at such an early time featuring the Chaos Emeralds, robots based off the original designs, and even some of the music.

From. what I've heard SATM has good concepts but takes itself too seriously, Underground tries to be edgy and comedic but bland enough that it lacks either, and although the OVA was pretty good it still feels like a stereotypical comedic anime. And although X was debatable in it's characterization, I think it had some good spots when Chriss and the other humans weren't around. Which sadly, wasn't very often.

Sonic X had it's good points, and I don't think Chris and the humans were that much of a death warrant onto it's enjoyment value (Chris wasn't a welcome addition, but usually he was just boring and The Load than particularly insufferable), but yeah execution ruined a lot of it. Characters got Flanderized, Sonic suffered Designated Protagonist Syndrome and the show actually probably suffered the most jarring Mood Whiplash of all medias. It didn't actually seem to know what it wanted to be, and could be goofy and silly one minute and absolutely macebre the next.

Ao Sth could have certainly been done better in places, and a lot of the John K/Tex Avery-ish environments and characters didn't feel Sonic-like at all, but it was more humble in execution and didn't play itself as being more dignified than it really was. It was just a cute silly cartoon.

edited 5th Feb '13 11:34:15 AM by Psi001

Chris and humanfriends ruined Sonic X for me, and then stuff like cosmo just made it worse.

They weren't the best additions and like many original characters in alt Sonic medias, the writers seemed to milk them more than they were really worth, but truthfully there was other stuff that bugged me about the show a lot more (eg. Sonic becoming a bland supporting character, Flanderization of games cast such Amy turning into a cliche "violent anime girl" and Knuckles turning into a Butt-Monkey even Cream and Cosmo kicked around, the over the top Mood Whiplash already mentioned).

Funnily enough, despite being done by the same writer as the mainstream comics, I actually enjoyed the Sonic X comic a lot of the time, which fixed a lot of the show's problems and kept up a similar harmless light hearted fun as Aosth.

edited 5th Feb '13 12:08:54 PM by Psi001

Metal Sonic appears a lot though,I mean Mecha Sonic was much cooler. Metal Sonic doesn't have a super form,no Metal Sonic Kai or Metal Overlord don't count. Sure Mecha Sonic had to rely on the Master Emerald,but it was pretty cool. And I doubt we will see a Silver Metal Sonic that has the colour scheme of Sonic 2 Silver Sonic.

True, many characters had a lot of flanderized moments, but at times it did give some interesting twists to the characters when it was being downplayed. And Sonic only became a supporting character because of Chris, honestly I liked his dad and think the show would have been much better if Chris simply never was around. Plus the adaptations would have been awesome if he didn't steal the show. As an Amy fan, I wasn't happy with her diminished role in the SA 2 adaptation. It would have been great to see what an anime could really do with the plots. Also, Heroes would have been fantastic, all the cast was already there and it could have made the branching plots and transitions work with the story rather than working in the limitations of the game. I mean who wouldn't have wanted Metal Overlord drawn in a fully detailed style? Plus we got Sonic Battle in a medium that wasn't painful to look at.

One thing I can certainly say for Sonic X.

The animation is wonderful.

And it is nice to see something that's /alllllmost/ game canon, with game characterisation. And as a kid I never had a problem with Chris, though with Tails being my favourite character back then, I did always wish he had more lines.

I liked Sonic X's art style and the Sonic Adventure and 2 arcs, but everything else was forgettable for me.

Speaking of, are there any fanartists that can emulate the Sonic Channel/Sonic X style?

I'm not sure of the specific artist, but over at Project Möbius, they've got modern style art for some, if not most, of the forgotten characters.

Playing Sonic Rush Adenture for the first time.

Why are those 2 art styles slashed together? They're completely different in every way.

The art style was okay, and the animation was pretty crisp for the first dozen or so episodes, after that however things slowly took a downward spiral. Look at the Chaos battle in episode 27 for example.

Truthfully even without Chris, Sonic seemed rather dull in Sonic X. It's almost a reverse of what happened to him in Satam, while the latter had him labotomized for the sake of upkeeping their own original character as The Straight Man, Sonic X Sonic was a one note Ace for the supporting cast to idolize. The comics improved him however, making him more like his games version.

As for SA/Sonic X style art, try Deviant Art. They have LOADS of it.

edited 5th Feb '13 5:10:08 PM by Psi001

Sonic X did one thing right: They had a kid in a wheelchair to be a modern-day dead ringer for Maria Robotnik :3

I loved AOSTH. Long John Baldry's Robotnik was one of my favorite villains in any show ever, and the wacky backgrounds and characters were fun too. Also, Youtube Poop.

SATAM on the other hand, I felt was pretentious and lacking character. The whole plot revolves around freeing the planet from Robotnik's tyranny and stopping pollution and whatnot, but you very rarely actually see any of his robotized slaves, and he has exactly one city as part of his evil, planet spanning empire. One city, that is almost totally empty of anyone or anything of note. The whole thing could have been a He-Man show or in Spider-Man Unlimited and I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. SATAM Robotnik was literally a Captain Planet villain, he actually commented on how much he enjoyed polluting the world (from his one city) and he no motivation besides "I'm evil". At least he was voiced by Jim Cummings.

Say what you will about Sonic Underground, but they at least established the tone of toppling the evil nation. There were tons of opressed folk living in the big city, aristocrats close up to the fat man himself, other kingdoms and empires Robotnik was actively screwing with, Knuckles & the Floating Island & the Chaos Emeralds, and all that jazz. Robotnik was funnier, too, and was closer to his oafish and somewhat neglectful appearance in all other media.