Sonic not being interested in romance was pretty much only a game thing. It had nothing to do with said cartoons(or comics), which are their own continuities. Him hitting on Sally didn't seem odd at all to me, but you have to remember that CD debuted later, same with Sonic's idea of him avoiding romance too. Hell, Amy was in a manga first, where they were romantically involved. So it's clearly not a universal Sonic trait. It's just a game-specific trait at best. He isn't really against it in Sonic X either, just that Amy's psychotic nature is legitimately off-putting(where they took the worst traits of a single scene in Heroes, and her entire Sonic Battle nature, to do so. She was nowhere near that nuts otherwise in the other games. A little obsessive due to her first crush, but not that bad, not even with a pretty poor joke in Adventure 2. At least they rerailed her back in Shadow and 06, focusing on her being more loyal but still having a crush on him blatantly, at least when he came up. Sonic's interactions with Amy don't really exist in Shadow, but the game has some odd endings/etc. either way. More importantly, her major caring side was emphasized).
Shadow?I thought it was a cartoon that got a widely popular video game spin off
have a listen and have a link to my discord server"Sonic not being interested in romance was pretty much only a game thing. It had nothing to do with said cartoons(or comics), which are their own continuities."
Why are you misquoting what I said to ignore the context? Please don't do that. If you want to reply to what I specifically said, I'll give a rebuttal, but not before that.
Shadow?
Sorry, I genuinely missed that context.
I will say that I am sure that there are people like me who look at all adaptations through a lens of deviance from the games though.
Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Dec 22nd 2022 at 8:38:24 AM
My musician pageAh, so they aren't paying attention to how different each side material is entirely. Fair enough.
Cause let's be real, they aren't much of a deviance as more of a completely different thing to such an extreme degree that it took till Sonic X to have a faithful show in any way.
...It is also worth noting that Sonic legitimately made a date with Amy that he had to cancel in Sonic Unleashed, so it's very clear even the games don't say he's against romance. It's more that things come up that it's hard for him to do so. He's not a loner, either. That's something that sometimes comes up as a concept in other places(that he's constantly a free bird. However, it's barely present in the games too to the point that it's more of an informed ability, not a consistent trait. It's even suggested in Sonic X, which enrages Amy that it could be a thing. This is clearly not all that true there).
Edited by Irene on Dec 22nd 2022 at 7:56:20 AM
Shadow?When it comes to Sonic actually dating in the games, what I remember most is the ending of Black Knight, when after apparently recounting the events of the game to Amy off-screen, Amy just accuses him of forgetting about their date.
(Also, it may just be me, but I get easily put off by changes to core franchise identity. I didn't get into any adaptation until the previously noted to be the first Truer to the Text one Sonic X.)
My musician pageWell if that's case, how many Spider Man or Batman adaptations have you watched? Cuz they're even more varied and different than Sonic.
I used to be a lot more against Sally when I was brainwashed by the purists game fans in the late 2000's, but once I got over that I realized she compliments Sonic in a way no other character really does, even in the main games.
Because when you think about it, how many video game mascots were in a committed relationship? Even Nintendo can't really decided if Mario & Peach are a thing or not.
But Sonic and Sally were an item, 100%. They opened to each other emotionally and complimented each other's weaknesses. The SATAM writers designed her to be Sonic's match essentially and those fans loved her for it.
Naturally fans who came into the series after the 90's hate her for that same reason, since a lot of people feel like she makes Sonic "less cool".
But naw, Amy was conceptualized with a very different purpose. The whole conceit was now Sonic was "too cool for romance" and Amy was just the lovestruck fangirl who chased after him. It was predicated on a joke compared to what they were trying with Sally. Their characters are inherently imbalanced.
Even when they dialed that back and made things somewhat more mutual, Sonic and Amy still aren't explicitly a couple in the way Sonic and Sally were. And I know its because Sega refuse to change the status quo of this series at this point.
Which is my biggest issue nowadays; the series was way more willing to experiment with newer ideas in its infancy when it had something to prove to the audience. Now that Sonic is a household name and an iconic multimedia franchise, everything has more or less settled into stable status quo where nothing changes or progresses anymore for the sake of brand familiarity.
Which I get from a business and marketing standpoint, but is still pretty disappointing from a creative perspective.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Oh, extremely few. I'm not especially attached to either franchise, though I do have some fondness for Spider-Man.
My musician pageIf only Sonic had an identity.
Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.No, not slight deviation. But to me, the Archie Comics come across as In Name Only.
My musician pageArchie Comics were actually 100% Sonic, because it was specifically based upon the second Sonic show as is. And as I note below, Sonic had no personality to establish.
He didn't have a personality till Adventure 1. He barely existed and looked kind of cool, which is actually what all 3 Shows before Adventure 2 did. He always acted cool.
Him having a love interest was already intended in the games with Amy during CD, but it was downplayed due to a major lack of storytelling in said games till Adventure 1. Thus, it's impossible to really show said romance. The only show between Sonic CD and Adventure 1 was Sonic Underground(the only show to completely deviate from the source material, as the others were still heavily based upon its concepts).
Basically you're looking at past products in a lens that doesn't make much sense. They were created with Sonic's lack of personality in mind and didn't actually deviate at all from how he acted. He was always quick to do things his own way and was "kind of cool". They kept this fully.
SATAM was fully with the idea that only Robotnik and Sonic existed(with some Tails there too), and Amy wasn't in the US yet, so they couldn't establish her very well. In the story, he turned animals into robots in the games and show. However, it made little sense Sonic and Tails were the only possible anthros around, so that was changed up. Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog is pretty much the same, though that one took more from Sonic 2 despite showing first. So they didn't deviate at all. There was kind of no story to deviate from, and if anything, SATAM was very faithful to the core story that Robotnik had polluted the world with his machines and turned animals into robots. Adventures did the same thing, just with more comedy than serious storytelling.
Archie Comics didn't really actually change anything, because it had no story to adapt either. In other words, they're faithful, it's just you didn't take into account the time in which it was originally released in. It's also that they can't really adapt the newer games perfectly due to their old characters existing, so deviation is outright required.
Shadow?Meh, I'm the kind of guy who started with Sonic 2 and is baffled when I hear the name "Eggman" wasn't in common use in the US until adventure.
I mean, just look at this screenshot
◊.
Oh, wait I get what you're saying now. The reasons I don't like Archie, SatAM, and Adventures aren't because of deviance from the source material. They just chose to fill in blanks in ways that don't work for me.
Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Dec 22nd 2022 at 10:24:39 AM
My musician pageI never found that odd. It's just a US name at best. Robotnik and Eggman, regardless of the name used, has done some atrocious things as is. That's not a creation of the side materials. The first game, as I noted, established he polluted and took over the entire world. ...That's the premise of SATAM entirely.
To be honest, your attachment does feel unhealthy here, since you're actually seeing only tiny deviations as way bigger than they legitimately are. Eggman was always a horrible human being in-universe. He just had some comedy to back it up. Robotnik, his US take, was more serious(sometimes). But other than the name, nothing changed. The key difference was in the shows, where they showed both sides of Robotnik pretty accurately, to be honest. Either a dark individual with no redeeming traits(something that Sonic 06 repeated, heh) or a more comedic but sociopathic villain who is abusive(but was also heavily abused). Overall, they didn't really deviate his being so much as add more so he had established character traits. Eggman acting poor to his minions continued as his normal personality, so Archie, Shows, or otherwise, he was never non-faithful.
Basically? It was actually a lot more accurate than you think, because the key difference is that Sonic X had a story to directly adapt. The others didn't, but still were quite faithful given the material they could legitimately work with. Archie Comics however did legitimately deviate to quite a degree(as did Sonic Underground), but the first two shows weren't truly like that.
Ah, I didn't need to type this post. Yeah, that sounds about right. It wasn't a direction you liked. That's fair~
Edited by Irene on Dec 22nd 2022 at 9:28:18 AM
Shadow?Something I could see working, if they wanted to lean more into Sonic not being not romantic for an adaptation, is if they took a Loved I Not Honor More approach. Not sure if that would appeal to the demographic the franchise usually targets though.
My musician pageSince the modern branch of Sonic is pretty ubiquitous nowadays, people discovering SATAM for the first time are usually put off by the changes made to the canon, usually ignoring the context those changes were made for in the first place. But eh...that's never really stopped people from complaining about things.
Ya know, even as someone who didn't grow up wth and have the same emotional attachment to the Western adaptatons of Sonic, its kind of a shame how Sega all but disregard them which only validates the belief that they were "mistakes" as adaptations and now they're only remembered as those weird variations where Sonic kissed a chimpmunk or was an asshole.
Amy is by far Sonic's most popular love interest(?) nowadays by a signficant margin, but her relationship with Sonic is nowhere near as explored as Sonic's with Sally. But history is written by the winners I guess.
At least there's a fan continuation of Archie.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Well, I think we can all agree that SatAM and Adventures were very nineties, which was quite a different time.
My musician pageJapanese Sonic at the time was a very kiddy kodomo series. By the time of the OVA, where we see a Sonic more akin to what we expect, the damage was already done with the American versions doing their own thing.
To win, you need to adapt, and to adapt, you need to be able to laugh away all the restraints. Everything holding you back.No doubt not helped by the whole Right Hand Vs Left Hand thing going on between Sega of Japan and Sega of America.
My musician pageA lot of the Freedom Fighter hate nowadays comes from people just hating the idea of Sonic as a soldier/cop, and Sally is just the most emblematic of that.
In the Archie comics, it was clear that the Satam stuff didn't cleanly mesh with the world of the games, and everything they did with Tails and Amy for years is proof of that.

Sonic's image among kids was that he was too cool for romance and that's why he avoided Amy.
So him trying to hit on Sally in SATAM is utterly alien to me.
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"