The Sonic 1 Story Manga

[Osmium]

I created this topic to discuss one of the most obscure pieces of Sonic media out there. 

 

The Sonic manga. No, not the Shogakukan 1992-1994 manga that was based Around Nicky transforming into Sonic and the one introduced Amy.

 

I'm talking about this manga. 

 

 

These were published in the Japanese magazine "Mega Drive Fan" between June and July 1991, in three volumes. 

 

They were created to promote Sonic 1 and were an adaptation. The story actually follows Sonic 1 closely, but the first volume starts with Sonic performing with his band(you know, the dudes that were supposed to be in the sound test for Sonic 1), and Eggman attacks in the middle of the performance.

 

The manga featured Green Hill Zone, Marble Zone, "Sparkling Zone",Starlight Zone,"Clockwork Zone", and Labyrinth Zone, in that order. You can tell that these were created when Sonic 1 was still developing and wasn't finished yet.

 

The Egg Mobile-H, and The Spiked Egg Mobile show up(From Green Hill and Spring Yard respectivley, even though Sonic fought the Spiked Egg Mobile in Starlight Zone in the manga). 

 

Several badniks are shown, including Crabmeat and Orbinaut.

 

All the animals in Sonic 1 show up with their respected Japanese names, and are able to speak. 

 

Issue 1 even shows Sonic's band. They only appear for a few panels, and are close to their beta designs, except for a few colour changes. 

 

Issue 1 also brings up the Chaos Emeralds, and they basically have a similar explanation as they do in the Japanese manual. 

 

Unfortunately, I cannot find any scans of it, so I will just post links to these videos which show all three volumes. They are translated into English, and beware of strong language in the third video. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN6p_9dhVXo

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyWIQKKSbbY

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnkAU0MMVgA

 

Now for my opinions of it. 

 

The story is clunky dialogue wise, but it gets the job done. I don't like how it brings up the Chaos Emeralds in Volume 1 but never refers to them again. 

 

The artwork is really great, and it reminds me a lot of Naoto Oshima especially in the second and third volume.

 

I overall like it, and think that more people should see it, and form opinions about it as it is some of the earliest printed Sonic media in existence. 

 

You can discuss the manga here and what you think of it. I don't think that many people have heard of it, and when people refer to Sonic mangas, they are usually talking about either the Shogakukan manga from 1992-1994 or Dash and Spin. This is a very overlooked piece of early Sonic media that deserves more attention. 

 

 

And yes, Sonic just said "Fuck off yourselves". 

[DaddlerTheDalek]

Looks kind of cool.

[Aero]

Who's the anime cat/hedgehog girl? e_e I can only guess Madonna from the early concepts of Sonic.

[Osmium]

Who's the anime cat/hedgehog girl? e_e I can only guess Madonna from the early concepts of Sonic.

 

She's one of the ladies in Sonic's bodyguard platoon. I don't think it's Madonna, but she definitely has a resemblance to her, and was probably based off Madonna. 

[Mauro Fonseca]

The swearing isn't really an element of the manga, but clearly a translator going hardcore. Just like the insistence on calling the Mega Drive a MegaDora or having Eggman speak like he's Death's Head, yes?

 

I've the scans of this and Shogakukan, I'm just not sure yet how to upload them to the Retro wiki.

[Osmium]

The swearing isn't really an element of the manga, but clearly a translator going hardcore. Just like the insistence on calling the Mega Drive a MegaDora or having Eggman speak like he's Death's Head, yes?

 

I've the scans of this and Shogakukan, I'm just not sure yet how to upload them to the Retro wiki.

 

I should have thought that the swearing was just some translator trying to make it sound more cool or something. The "Fuck off, Sonic!" And the "See you in hell, Sonic!" should have said that to me. 

 

And you have scans of this !? I would sure like to see those! 

[Mauro Fonseca]

I can't remain angry at the translator because that scene is just hilarious to me. There's a very angry Motobug going FUCK YOU SONIC and Sonic goes FUCK OFF YOURSELVES and it's great

[Osmium]

I can't remain angry at the translator because that scene is just hilarious to me. There's a very angry Motobug going FUCK YOU SONIC and Sonic goes FUCK OFF YOURSELVES and it's great

 

It really is hilarious because how out of nowhere it is. 

 

What makes it even more hilarious is how the rest of the manga contains relatively harmless words like "Darn" and "Heck" and "Dag-nabbit!" and then just FUCK OFF SONIC out of the blue. 

 

It warms the cockles of my heart that there's some obscure official manga that contains the words "Fuck off Sonic", and has Sonic reply "Fuck off yourselves".  

[Mauro Fonseca]

The translation was done by fans, incidentally, in case you didn't know. Basically a few years ago a Brazillian Sonic site got their hands on a bunch of raws and started translating them to English, posting on a specific page for it. Eventually they took it all down, which is why it's since kinda fallen into a sort of limbo. I recently reached to them and they sent me the scans, but as mentioned, not sure yet how to upload them.

 

Incidentally, Adamis also has them, IIRC, posted on his Pencil Hill tumblr.

[Osmium]

The translation was done by fans, incidentally, in case you didn't know. Basically a few years ago a Brazillian Sonic site got their hands on a bunch of raws and started translating them to English, posting on a specific page for it. Eventually they took it all down, which is why it's since kinda fallen into a sort of limbo. I recently reached to them and they sent me the scans, but as mentioned, not sure yet how to upload them.

 

Incidentally, Adamis also has them, IIRC, posted on his Pencil Hill tumblr.

[Adamis]

I don't think I've uploaded them before. Anyway, I've uploaded the untranslated pages now

 

http://pencilhill.tumblr.com/

[Osmium]

I don't think I've uploaded them before. Anyway, I've uploaded the untranslated pages now

 

http://pencilhill.tumblr.com/

 

Wow, I've never seen the full scans of them before. I can't thank you enough. 

 

 

I really wish that SEGA could have made of more of these kind of mangas for Sonic 2, CD, and 3&K. 

[Your Vest Friend]

Sonic 2 did get manga, the Shogakukan serial manga where Amy and Charmy came from. One of the preview pics showed a yet-unuploaded story that looked to be an adaptation of Chemical Plant Zone (albeit with Charmy as some sort of guide). 

 

Dunno why they stopped after that.

[Osmium]

Sonic 2 did get manga, the Shogakukan serial manga where Amy and Charmy came from. One of the preview pics showed a yet-unuploaded story that looked to be an adaptation of Chemical Plant Zone (albeit with Charmy as some sort of guide). 

 

Dunno why they stopped after that.

 

I've think I've heard about that manga, but I've never seen it before and I have no idea where it would even be hiding. And I must have missed that preview picture.

 

A Shogakukan adpatation would have been cool, but I would have preferred a manga series made in this style, which I find a lot more appealing than Shogakukan. 

[Pengi]

I figure it's better to add to an existing topic rather than creating a new one.

I saw an auction for the July 1992 issue of Shogaku Ninensei (the second grade magazine). Unfortunately it had already ended. But I figure any picture of it is of interest. Interestingly, this one has Anton's family. Can anyone make out the names?

 

On 5/23/2015 at 12:24 AM, The KKM said:

The swearing isn't really an element of the manga, but clearly a translator going hardcore. Just like the insistence on calling the Mega Drive a MegaDora or having Eggman speak like he's Death's Head, yes?

 

I've the scans of this and Shogakukan, I'm just not sure yet how to upload them to the Retro wiki.

 

 

Do you still have the Shogakukan scans? It would be really nice to have the raw, untranslated images. Do you have scans of the chapters that were never uploaded/translated? What format are they in?

 

[MetalSkulkBane]

I read it once a long time ago, but completely forgotten since... all I seem to remember are Sonic human fangirl.

And people say Sonic 06 started it.

[ClassicKnuckles]

If I recall correctly, they used to pass around bootleg versions of this in school a long time ago...

[Your Vest Friend]

1 hour ago, Pengi said:

Interestingly, this one has Anton's family. Can anyone make out the names?

Since it's always written in Katakana at this level, I can at least attempt some translations. 

-Anton's name there is アントン (literally Anton translated out), so we know that this isn't going against previous information.

-The left-most little lizard is the easiest to work from there. That name is マッド (Maddo), which is in line with what we were told in another Shogkukan years ago (in fact, it was the only existing image of it for years). This can be simplified to Mad. 

-Centre little lizard seems almost identical to that except for a character change, making it ルッド (Ruddo). I suppose it can be simplified to Rud, but for reasons I'll get to later I think it's supposed to be Rude in English.

-The only other lizard we see is the father, but only one of the characters is legible, ギ (Gi). 

Anton actually has a canon surname, べルーカ  (Beruka). This has often been translated to Brooke, but it's not totally set in stone, and I think it's actually supposed to be Verruca* (See: Bekuta being the translation for Vector's Katakana). With this in mind, the kids being themed as they are, and the general shape of the illegible Katakana, I'd say ボ (Bo) would be a sensible guess for that other character, forming ボギ (Bogi). This is the most up in the air though so a better scan would help that one. 

*The Sonic Wiki claims that the letterman jacket being AB is a drawback to this idea, but that's not really the case considering they'd go off the romanisation. 

The mother and the third kid obviously can't be seen. Wouldn't be surprised if said third kid had the same Katakana pattern as his siblings. 

[KoDaiko]

31 minutes ago, VEDJ-F said:

Since it's always written in Katakana at this level, I can at least attempt some translations. 

-Anton's name there is アントン (literally Anton translated out), so we know that this isn't going against previous information.

-The left-most little lizard is the easiest to work from there. That name is マッド (Maddo), which is in line with what we were told in another Shogkukan years ago (in fact, it was the only existing image of it for years). This can be simplified to Mad. 

-Centre little lizard seems almost identical to that except for a character change, making it ルッド (Ruddo). I suppose it can be simplified to Rud, but for reasons I'll get to later I think it's supposed to be Rude in English.

-The only other lizard we see is the father, but only one of the characters is legible, ギ (Gi). 

Anton actually has a canon surname, べルーカ  (Beruka). This has often been translated to Brooke, but it's not totally set in stone, and I think it's actually supposed to be Verruca* (See: Bekuta being the translation for Vector's Katakana). With this in mind, the kids being themed as they are, and the general shape of the illegible Katakana, I'd say ボ (Bo) would be a sensible guess for that other character, forming ボギ (Bogi). This is the most up in the air though so a better scan would help that one. 

*The Sonic Wiki claims that the letterman jacket being AB is a drawback to this idea, but that's not really the case considering they'd go off the romanisation. 

The mother and the third kid obviously can't be seen. Wouldn't be surprised if said third kid had the same Katakana pattern as his siblings. 

Yeah, wish there was a better scan. The diacritic can be somewhat seen, but the words are still blurred slightly. The center lizard's name looks like バッド (Bad) or ハッド(Had, or Hat pronounced wrong?), and the chef looks like ホギ (Hogi, whatever that is). 

 

[Your Vest Friend]

If it's Hogi, it's likely a romanisation of Hoagie. It's a nickname for a sandwich which has existed since at least WWII, and would also fit given his garb. Certainly has no meaning in Japanese; the only results I'm seeing are for a medical company called that.  

[AzureLakeSanic]

The swearing happens in unofficial translations all the time. The Rockman and Forte SNES fan translation, for example, and probably the most well-known example in my opinion: the Touhou 8 Imperishable Night English patch. Thing is, when I was younger I thought that was official. So when Marisa and Alice said "Bitch get out of the way" and Remilia said "Shit is it the brats' night out", I thought "oh no they can't curse in a kids game" cuz I thought Touhou was for kids back then.