Have Sonic and Shadow even really fought each other much? I don't read the comics or anything, but in the games at least they haven't actually fought much after Shadow's own game.
- Rivals & Rivals 2: Kind of, not really a Shadow problem. Everyone in those games (including Sonic, Knuckles, Rouge, Silver, and Espio) acted overly obstinate about everything for the sake of justifying them racing or fighting each other because that's what the gameplay was about.
- Chronicles: I recall Shadow fights the party for no real reason when you meet him, he says something about doing things on his own, Sonic's like "that's dumb, just work with us," and Shadow's like "okay," and joins the party. That game wasn't written by anyone from Sonic Team though, it was all Bioware, and they didn't seem to really get Shadow, he was kind of out-of-character the whole game.
- Black Knight: Wasn't actually Shadow, it was an alternate dimension version of him that didn't know Sonic. So this doesn't really count.
- Free Riders: They raced each other, it wasn't a fight. And they raced because it was a tournament, Sonic also raced other characters too. So also doesn't really count.
- Generations: Some weird time shenanigans that put Sonic in the place of his fight against Shadow at the end of SA2 for the sake of fanservice, but made weirder by present Shadow then being around with everyone in the ending having seemingly been the one to fight Sonic in that past fight. Also not just a Shadow thing, the same applies for Silver as well.
- Boom: Alternate universe and he was brainwashed (in the 3DS game at least, and it looks like Japanese version of the Wii U game?). It also didn't have much involvement by Sonic Team.
- Forces: It wasn't Shadow, it was a magic cyber clone.
- Team Sonic Racing: They didn't really fight, just raced each other. But it does kind of count since, since Sonic and Shadow act unusually aggressive about it. This was also a game though that didn't have a much direct involvement by Sonic Team and was written by Pontac and Graff.
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Yea, that's the point I'm making. If the rivals are there for them to overcome Sonic, as a form of development and they ultimately learn their lesson and become friends, what do you do with them next if Sonic striving to beat them makes no narrative sense as Tobias pointed out? For instance, once the misunderstanding between Sonic & Knuckles was cleared up and the former helped the latter return the Master Emerald, there should really be no impetus for a rivalry anymore. Yet manuals still insist there is and even Frontiers leans into it too...albeit in a severely downplayed angle, but you get the idea.
And yea, nobody likes it in Dragon Ball when the old rivals become irrelevant, but what else was going to happen if Goku is continuously going to get stronger and fight progressively stronger people? They've had to contrive ways to keep Vegeta on the same playing field as of late to...mixed effects.
You not caring about it is irrelevant to the point at how often the two fight because it still feeds into the perception of it at the end of the day. Especially if they're intentionally linking themselves to the games, something that is reinforced by Frontiers acknowledging comic exclusive elements.
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Mar 19th 2023 at 4:27:15 AM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.But they don't fight often. Even if you count the shows and comics. And at least, not more often than in the past.
Canon "fights" in canon games:
- SA 2
- Heroes
- Shadow (I think they fought in this game? I dunno for sure)
Canon races in canon games:
- Rivals (everyone raced here)
- Free Riders (everyone raced here)
- Generations (Metal and Silver both also had friendly rival races)
- TSR (everyone raced here)
Other media (that I have firsthand recollection of):
- Boom show: Shadow was intentionally written as an over the top edgy villain
- IDW comics: Actual fight when Shadow was a zombot, ideological spar with fists regarding Mr. Tinker
- Prime show: Ideological spar with fists in attempt to get Sonic to slow down and look at the bigger picture
If anything, game canon Shadow has been fighting Sonic less frequently in the Boost and Wisp eras. In other, more current media, they mostly just have one or two goes to set up an Establishing Character Moment as rivals to that setting's audience.
As far as Knuckles and others go, Vitriolic Best Buds exists for a reason. Hell, Sonic and Knuckles are the page image for Friendly Rivalry. Sometimes you have friends you compete with, and that's normal.
Edited by wanderlustwarrior on Mar 19th 2023 at 3:47:47 AM
Yea and the point being made is that to do those establishing fights, the writers have to usually contrive a reason to justify them fighting to begin with.
The original point that was being made is that Sonic having an ongoing rivalry, at least in the context of the games and the adjacent media accompanying them, doesn't work from a writing standpoint due to Sonic not really caring about rivalries to begin with.
But because the powers that be so desperately want Sonic to have an ongoing rivalry, regardless of how much sense it makes for the character, will usually have to force some type of conflict to justify it.
Hence the whole "Vegeta the Shadow" complaints as of late.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Honestly the more I think it, the more I think Shadow might be the character that's most suffered from the lack of spin-offs in the last 15 plus years. Him just having his own series where he could hypothetically develop over time (or at least interact with different characters) probably would have him a world of good. I'm not even that invested in him, and even I think specifically the contrived rivalry with Sonic has stunted his potential far more than any jerky characterization has.
Edited by BorneAgain on Mar 19th 2023 at 6:58:50 AM
Kind of reminds me how when popular comic characters get spin offs and then they bomb hard, and they're re-absorbed back into the main book to languish.
...Oh wait, that's exactly what happened to Shadow wasn't it? Think his game their attempt at trying to give him a spin off series and then it bombed hard and now they're like "Fuck that shit, never again"
It doesn't help that game development is expensive as hell now, which just increases the risk of spin offs.
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Mar 19th 2023 at 6:56:10 AM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Not that contriving Shadow into the plots of Unleashed, Colors, or Generations would have been that much better, but small campaigns (DLC?) with Shadow doing side stories? It might have not have been the worst idea to at least take advantage of his popularity and give him some space outside the dynamic with Sonic. Doing that via portable games on the DS/3DS would have been more ideal, but even still some little bits here and there would have been something.
Shadow's The Lancer, you can't really keep them apart for too long. It's kind of inevitable they meet at some point.
Personally I don't think he (and Knuckles since we're talking) needs to be used that much.
But sadly that's not how it works and people would naturally be mad they can't see their popular favorite character and devs feel pressured to add them in....
Ahh so this is the crux of Wolverine Publicity huh....
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.The original point that was being made is that Sonic having an ongoing rivalry, at least in the context of the games and the adjacent media accompanying them, doesn't work from a writing standpoint due to Sonic not really caring about rivalries to begin with.
Weren't you just
saying:
That's why I never agreed with how up in arms the fanbase gets when things are inconsistent. It's like comic books; every new writer is going to come in with their own ideas, respecting what came before is optional.
If you want "self contained adventures and anything that happens to them is specific to that game [or other media]", then you need to accept that a self-contained media will have to find "a reason to justify them fighting to begin with," if they're going to establish in that self-contained media that Sonic and Shadow are rivals in that self-contained media.
When you say you don't want things connected, but also complain about something only happening "frequently" because you're connecting separate things, you're saying two things in direct opposition with each other.
It's fine if you don't want a character to be used. But when they are used, to complain about how the specific way them being used is contrary to what you want sounds a bit like you're calling for
Edited by wanderlustwarrior on Mar 19th 2023 at 7:19:30 AM
But they're not self contained. That was the whole crux of my point...
If anything, you're proving my point on why trying to all of this together isn't really working. If IDW and Prime were their own thing, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
Notice how I didn't specify Boom, because that actually is a separate universe.
And more to the point, you're bring up a conversation that has nothing to do with the current one, because that quote is from a broad generalization of the entire series where, and correct me if I'm wrong, we're only talking about Shadow specifically aren't we?
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Mar 19th 2023 at 8:36:21 AM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.That conversation was about consistency in characterization. For Tails there, but it's still relevant here, because we're talking about consistency in characterization again, but for Shadow. It's the same context. So much the same, that my further response will be the same as it was then:
- Game canon - all mainline platformers and some spinoffs.
- IDW comic canon - starts immediately after Forces in game canon. May or may not overlap at other points in the future.
- Movie canon - just the two movies.
- Prime canon - just the episodes seen so far.
And just as you were then, you're making a big deal about how three distinct forms of media (IDW, Prime, and the games) that are not confirmed by the games to all overlap, are doing the same thing. Hell, before you say once again that an out of canon Word of God statement for Prime said they're the same, consider what's actually shown in the show itself: there's a multiverse. It can be handwaved as similar but distinct worlds in the multiverse at any point in time. They're three different sets of media, telling different stories, and potentially to different audiences. Just because you and I and others have consumed them all doesn't mean three different stories are repeating the same thing amongst themselves. If you're going to pick and choose that you prefer the games as being self-contained, why can't you do that for different media entirely? What's stopping you from doing the same thing you favored Jojo for, in having "a new cast and setting",
and recognizing it here and treating the different continuities as distinct? It's even more appropriate here than it is in Jojo:
- In Jojo, parts 1-6 are explicitly the same universe, told in the same media, with every single series in that set having at least one character carry over between themnote , where that character is clearly identified as being the same one from the previous part.
- Between the games, IDW, and Prime, the three are in completely different media, and even setting aside that Prime doesn't explicitly state within itself that the characters are the same as the games, there are explicitly different characters and settings between the three: IDW has Jewel, Starline, Rough and Tumble, Belle, Whisper and the Diamond Cutters, etc., and its various villages that have never been seen in any other canon; Prime has Nine, Rusty, the Chaos Council, doesn't have Wisps or Koco, and again is explicitly set in a multiverse.
I, personally, would like if the IDW comics and games were confirmed to be in the same continuity. But what you're complaining about has prompted me to poke so many holes in that, that until the games outright confirm within them something that only happened in IDW or Prime happened, I'm more convinced than ever that they're distinct. But you are the one who took one out of series statement about Prime from one person, and have used it to complain for days about all of Sonic media. If you're going to keep complaining that "trying to all of this together isn't really working", then stop treating them as all together. No one is making you.
Edited by wanderlustwarrior on Mar 19th 2023 at 8:58:51 AM
The point I made is that that's not what they're doing at all. They are not trying to separate these different medias due to their differences into different verses, otherwise each medium would have its own, separate continuity and characterizations. IDW in particular makes explicit references to events that have happened in the games and, as you yourself mentioned, takes place specifically after Forces. How else am I supposed to interpret that? You can't just assume "Well it might be a similar universe that's like the games" when there's more evidence to the contrary. Both Prime and IDW are both operating under the assumption that the audiences are at least somewhat familiar with who these characters are and what their respective dynamics with each other are, based on the games.
Jojo explicitly doesn't do that despite taking place in the same universe. There might be one or two characters it shares between parts for the sake consistency, but its more or less an entirely new story arc with a fresh set of characters. And even then the returning characters tend be different due to the passage of time; Joseph in particular has three distinct characterizations where he's 18 (Part 2), 68 (Part 3), and 78 (Part 4) respectively.
The main conclusion I'm drawing here is that Sonic applies a very extreme Broad Strokes to how it handles continuity and characterization between medias nowadays, including the games themselves. Its kind of like they can say "this may or may not share continuity" and not really give specific details about it to avoid any contradictions.
That's what I was referring to before when I said the games are self-contained unless they specifically want to reference something from a previous game for the sake of a plot point or a Continuity Nod, otherwise they're mostly ignored. The alternate medias apply a similar rule.
Hell, I wish they did explicitly make them different universes altogether like the Movies and Archie comics, where this would be more justified. Tails acting cowardly, or Sonic/Shadow going to blows makes a lot more sense if it happens in a universe where the history of those characters may not be intact from the games.
For instance, Knuckles fighting Sonic as a result of being tricked by Eggman I'm fine with in the movie, since in that continuity those characters have no prior history. Now if that happened in IDW, which again presents itself as in continuity with the games, that would be an issue because Knuckles would and should know better than to trust Eggman's words.
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Mar 19th 2023 at 11:37:33 AM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.I only need two words to prove you wrong about Jojo: Stand Arrows. Or, Speedwagon Foundation. Or just "DIO". The fact that these stories are connected is important. Hell, it's even a plot point that Stand users (and prospective Stand users) are drawn to each other. That world is designed to be connected.
The IDW comics have the same start as the games, but there is no confirmation that that continues. And even if it does, that's not a problem when it comes to introducing new consumers of a new media to the story. Did you have these same complaints about Sonic X or any of the other shows having a similar starting point as stemming from Sonic 1 through K?
It hasn't happened in the comics, so you're getting worried over nothing. You're making a mountain of an echidna-hill.
But fine, even returning back to Shadow, even if you did consider IDW, Prime, and the games all as canon, Sonic and Shadow still haven't fought often recently, as we've pointed out. Going back to 2010:
- 2011: Generations has the rival battle vs Shadow. A reenactment of a prior fight, or effectively a friendly spar for an Emerald, like with Silver.
- 2018: IDW had a light skirmish mostly settled over words as Sonic reminded Shadow of his own redemption, and Shadow accepted that. And that fight wasn't in any way personal. Rouge stated Shadow would've fought anyone, and she just engineered it to be against Sonic since Sonic can handle Shadow.
- 2022: Sonic and Shadow fight in part because Sonic won't slow down to explain or better understand what's going on.
Three times total, in 3 different media, across eleven years.
Edited by wanderlustwarrior on Mar 19th 2023 at 11:15:38 AM
Now?
Nothing, his course has crashed already.
Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.The first of the three content updates for Sonic Frontiers is dropping on March 23rd!
Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Mar 20th 2023 at 5:31:43 AM

None of those characters have attempted to surpass Goku in ages, Yamcha and Krilling specifically opting for more mundane and normal lifestyles when they realized that Goku is too far ahead. The most recent arc of Super has specifically put Vegeta on a different from Goku to find his own meaning and goals.
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Mar 19th 2023 at 3:52:49 PM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.