E-122-Psi

I prefered the original SatAm design really since it kept the streamlined 'lightbulb' head with no chin, while Archie gradually tried to make him more human-like and kind of generic. Concerning Snively's competence, it felt like they were going for the same thing as Megatron and Starscream, where Snively was a weasel not nearly as threatening as the main villain, but seemed to have more common sense in terms of scheming, only to be ignored because the boss only valued them as a kiss ass and stress ball. Granted this worked better for Megatron because Megatron was SUPPOSED to be a prideful buffoon with a track record for failure (and also because Starscream was far more openly impudent and effectively treacherous towards Megatron giving him far more justification to not believe a word he says), while Robotnik was meant to be sinister and competent enough to keep hold of the whole planet for nearly a decade, and yet kept making big blunders based on his arrogance and refusal to accept some lackey telling him a rodent might ever one up him (no matter how many times it happened before). I could argue this is where Eggman does fine tune the dynamic, since while he is dismissive towards Snively and makes mistakes because of this, the plot seemed better woven to make this work, especially since Eggman is at least smart enough to have multiple backup plans and be an opportunist. He will also begrudgingly listen to Snively SOMETIMES if he knows there's no other way about it. Eggman also seems wiser in how he KNOWS Snively will betray him at any moment but just let's it slide because he enjoys this 'game', while again Robotnik just assumes no one would ever dare usurp him (but Naugus maybe, the one guy he's legitimately terrified enough of to listen to Snively's warnings of right away). Comics Eggman does admittedly still seem in this odd situation with the status quo, where they do intentionally play off his failings as a villain but still want to keep him on top like Robotnik, even if they can explain it better than the show did (I feel like Eggman also benefits from having more than one sapient underling in the comics, explaining how the scales can tip either way depending on who other fractions in his squad favour). Snively and Robotnik's dynamic by the end of the show seemed to exist to show how incompetent both of them were because they couldn't work together (basically a contrast to how Sonic and Sally's co-dependence developed), and to show how ultimately Robotnik was not just very cruel but also a very narcissistic and complacent being who never learned from his mistakes, a very Eggman-ish trait admittedly, which might be interesting as a dynamic if they weren't trying to give this Robotnik a huge threat level to amount to on his own. How exactly did this dynamic have any success rate in the past decade of rule? I think this is why the more buffoonish Eggmen work better with minions, because often they punctuate his negative qualities and pomposity, something that works when he's MEANT to be a failure.

I'm flattered, but be prepared, I'm not always this positive on here.

Again this is why I'm not big on nearly all the comics enforcing this 'resistance group' approach where pretty much everyone HAS to band together into a professional unit. It kinda puts everyone on automation and downplays the potential for more character driven adventures and plot pivots. SatAm and the earlier Archie issues kinda made it work for the most part because this unit was a rag tag group themselves and there felt like a lot of times they were kinda working against their own impulses and inexperience to maintain a professional regiment about it (even Sally had a couple odd delusions of grandeur about adventuring like with the Freedom Stormer) but as the Freedom Fighter occupation became more global scale and elaborate, things became tighter and mission driven to a fault. I think this is also why Season Three of Sonic X struggled to maintain personality depths and characters like Amy just succumbed to becoming one-note comic relief, being stuck in a spaceship on a mission plan limited the ability to be a proactive distinct character. Reboot Archie wasn't as bad but it followed a similar premise and thus occasional underplays as well. I mean, I liked the idea of promoting Big and having him part of the main group for odd arcs could be a humorous dynamic, but him a full time squad member felt a bit off with him, he's meant to be the rando minding his own business until he's dragged into an adventure. I find it a shame that the IDW comics were made JUST as Forces had adapted this dynamic into the games really. I would have loved more stuff like the same team's work on the Sonic X comics. Sure they were just silly episodic plots, but they were fun and made entertaining use of the characters (and if dumbing down Eggman's threat level just led to stuff like El Gran Gordo I'd gladly take it).

I think probably the best comparison to X era Amy in the west is Miss Piggy, however they tend to beat around the bush less about Miss Piggy's abusive behaviour making her unlikeable a lot of the time and there's generally a lot more jokes played at her expense than Amy (especially in the original Muppet Show where a lot of her karate chops intended for more sympathetic cast members actually backfired onto her). Generally the sympathy level of a character's flawed aspects are proportionate to how much the plot undermines them. This is why say an actual villain can gain audience sympathy if they are a big enough butt monkey like Eggman, and yet a more moderately asshole-ish character can't if they never suffer consequences for it, or even worse ANOTHER CHARACTER does instead. I think this is why a lot of the time in fiction, the female cast ends up the most divisive, since writers are more liable to dither inflicting the same fallibility and misery onto them as the male cast, even if they deserve it more (Peanuts and Spy vs Spy are creator confessed examples). Kind of ironic for a character who has a pratfall as part of her moveset in Advance 1.

It can also depend on if the character's annoying habits are at the expense of another likeable character. This is particularly common with anime tsunderes like X Amy because they tend to routinely abuse other characters (usually male ones) for what are often petty infractions, only sporadically getting karma for it (you can't really have a male character fight back). You sympathise with Sonic and Knuckles then you are liable to think Amy is a 'bully' and get sick of her lack of comeuppance and what not. I suspect those who dislike Eggman's villain decay would also consider him getting one sidedly owned and even cowering before Amy another low point as well, considering the fact he was defiant even in the face of Sonic or the Meterax was one of his redeeming qualities. It's all mostly gag purposes sure, but it's a gag that encompasses more than one character this way. This is why you see characters like Misty from Pokemon and Sakura from Naruto as divisive in likability since gags about their flaws and abrasiveness are at the expense of other fan favourite characters more often than their own. Compare this to say Marine and Charmy, who have what can be considered annoying habits but mostly ineffectual and self contained to their own personalities like talking loudly and obnoxiously. At worst you're just wondering why the others don't have a constant headache from listening to them. (This is something Boom Amy also generally avoids since SHE is usually the butt monkey when at her most obnoxious.)

Blaze truthfully felt shoehorned into Next Gen to complete Silver's team. It felt like they continued their dynamic afterwards despite not really fleshing out a proper chemistry for them any further. A shame they pretty much forgot about Marine really, on paper that trio could be pretty fleshed out, giving Blaze both a blue and red oni to get both sides of her personality (and who knows Marine could work well against Silver, who likely would prove helpless against a 'take charge' sort of character like Marine).

I feel like the Boom creative team understood one thing about Amy in managing her positive and negative qualities. They stated that Amy would always be the first to show sympathy, the first to think even guys like Eggman get a second chance if they show remorse......until she realises they've played her for a fool, then the gloves are off. I think this is a good management, that Amy DOES have a temper, but she has to be pressed first, Boom admittedly was probably the one most TRYING to keep reign on her moods and be the better hog, even if she was still clearly getting frustrated. This is better than Amy flying off the handle and threatening people at the drop of a pin or alternatively having little to no temper at all, especially since there's often an instigating positive quality that sets it up (ie. her charitable side, which just leads to her being exploited). This is maybe why Mania Adventures' Amy short worked okay with her character, just in that case Metal Sonic was in no state to really betray or mistreat Amy so we saw an Amy who wasn't getting her nerves pressed for a reason here.

I tend to judge limelight episode by if they're the title character or if the plot or parable is mostly directed towards their character (eg. Closed Door Policy is arguably ensemble focused, but it is Amy's personality that is driving it and is the one who is forced into the dynamic role of acknowledging and amending a mistake she made).

Fortress of Squalitude. Chez Amy. Closed Door Policy. Fuzzy Puppy Buddies. Cabin Fever. Give Bees a Chance. Sticks and Amy's Excellent Staycation. Sure it's still not a huge amount and some of them are shared with other characters but Amy did get center stage in more than two episodes. There were also some group episodes that felt like Amy was getting a key role (while Into the Wilderness is mostly a butt monkey episode for Sonic and Knuckles, I like how Amy gets something of actual character development learning to adapt). I do agree with the whole nagging flanderization (shame since she did keep a lot of her old energy in the early episodes) though even then the later Amy was still something of a rounded character instead of a one note gag, just not one as closely associated with Amy (I still think Sally could have fit that persona better).

I feel like Boom made her feel more effective as a supporting character since she had that voice of compassion more fleshed out and proactive (compared to X and Archie where she was usually just comic relief when not getting top billing). She was the one most liable to call out when a situation was going pear shaped or someone was acting up (or she THOUGHT it was, they let her be fallible). In other medias this element of her is kept kind of secondary and passive at best and as a voice of empathy/reason, she kind of ends up overshadowed by many other characters, especially when Amy's petty temper at the time was more liable to make her look like a hypocrite. I mean in the 06/Storybook era Sonic was a fluent voice of wisdom, how could she compete with him? I remember Boom giving her a reasonable amount of episodes though, at least in Season One. Maybe not as many as Sonic, Tails and Eggman, but I definitely think she got more than Sticks and maybe even Knuckles. I think this is still an issue with current Amy since she's not so much mature as she is well behaved and knows her place in the background.

Flanderization isn't ALWAYS bad, punctuating on certain traits can help a character stand out more (generally spin offs making Omega more comedic help him seem more memorable for example) but the problem is when it starts effecting their role or likability. The character loses their human qualities. I think this was the issue with going more and more with the 'unstable stalker' approach with Amy, that's a VERY worrying archetype to grant to a hero you're supposed to root for, not to mention diminished Amy's chemistry potential, since then pretty much everyone was in 'please don't let her kill me' mode around her. It's the worst side effect of flanderization; making the character an unlikeable single gag. Of course deflanderising Amy to the point she has no punctuated characteristics wasn't a good idea either since now they don't really have ANYTHING, not even that one gag. The best that can be said about current Amy is that she is at least more likeable, if unremarkably so.

I feel like Sonic X might have been the 'franchise original sin' for Amy though, since while it kept some degree of depth for her, it was the start of Amy's negative traits being taken to their extreme and being rude or violent to even her friends with little provocation (it was an anime, can't be one without a token violent tsundere). The third season underplayed Amy's actual involvement and the end result was pretty much her flanderized self fully fledged. I do think Sonic X had a negative effect on other medias since they tended to borrow the more exagerrated flaws from the anime rather than the better depths they established, resulting in them just taking stuff like 'dumb Knuckles/psycho Amy/passive aggressive Cream' for gags without any of the more positive elements to balance it (though even then I could argue games Amy never got quite the same 'unhinged' dent to her as her spin off counterparts did, anime and even Archie Amy felt like someone even her closest friends were afraid would maim them in a psychotic rage for the slightest indiscretion, while games Amy was openly treated as just an annoying brat at her worst most of the time).

Pretty much, Amy being a lovesick character that has a bratty temper isn't a bad concept, the SA series didn't do a horrible job of it, and even in Heroes her worst moment is limited to one scene where nearly everyone drops the ball. The big problem was that it was WAY too easy to depict that in the most obnoxious way possible for laughs. She's lovesick? Let's make her an obsessive stalker. She has a temper? Let's make a 'scary nutjob girl' everyone's afraid of getting beaten up by. Works GREAT with the stalker route. Let's just make Amy crazy. SO FUNNY. Never done before. This is the general problem with flanderization, writers get lethargic with a character and overplay or skew their key characteristics into obnoxious gags to squeeze jokes out of them more easily, likability and depth be damned.

I kinda hope. I have to say I'm not really big on the whole 'have every hero in the same group on a mission plan with no personal agendas' setup. I tend to hate when it seeps into the games as well (eg. Shadow and Omega working for GUN when they could have been unpredictable lone wolves). It feels like an excuse to keep these characters automated and not driven by their own personalities and individual agency. I'm genuinely left worried after Forces whether SEGA thinks that's the structure the fanbase want out of Sonic. Everyone regimented and never having their own personal arcs like in Adventure again.

I guess it's more that the games less often try to pretend that the personality they have given Sonic DOESN'T EVEN EXIST like it does with Sally, leaving it feeling less undefined and vague as her's. Only X debatably has the same issue of wanting a more idealised take than they offer, and even then they seem to be aware Sonic's a bit of a cocky asshole, he just doesn't let his guard down enough that he suffers repercussions for it. Also I put emphasis on most works, that includes stuff besides the games. Boom in particular fiddles with Sonic's flaws a lot more.