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Why haven't they retconned Amy's age?


Her0

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Really it doesn't make much sense when you think about it. Her official profile always listed her as 12, and Sonic Generations' age boost would make her 13 by now, but does she even remotely sound or act like she's a tween? Maybe in the earlier days of the Adventure era you could argue that, but even then she still sounded and acted like what a "typical" teen would be stereotyped as. Not to mention the way she's drawn and how she looks physically closer to Sonic in terms of age (as opposed to say Cream who would be about half her age), and the way she's always paired with him, it just never made sense to me that they would have that much of an age gap between them. It's certainly a lot more noticeable these days in both the main and Boom franchises, even with the early use of the "Minnie Mouse voice" Cindy Robinson still made Amy sound significantly older than you'd expect a 12-13 year old to sound, and Boom Amy? Hahaha, yeah no, there is no way that girl is 12, the way she talks, acts, and sounds it feels much closer to that of a young college student, a mid-high schooler at the very least. It's clear that with everything they do with Amy her age is never really a factor in anything, so why even bother with such a bizarre age anyway? I know most people run and hide when the word "retcon" is even thought of, but for this sort of thing, it would be the one retcon I would welcome with open arms. She's acting as mature as a teenaged girl can possibly get, why not just cut the pretenses and make that her age, or at the very least be the same age as Silver or Blaze, one year younger than Sonic?

 

I don't know, is anyone else bugged by this, because this always confused me. Whether you ship her and Sonic together or not, you got to admit the way she is portrayed these days in any context heavily contradicts what Sega decreed should be set in stone. And in the event that you do ship them (like me), the age difference is kind of a weird thing to address. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, age really is just a number, and as long as you aren't dealing with the society of school or are both above the legal age threshold, 3 years really doesn't seem like that huge of a gap. And it's not like I'd expect the two of them to start banging right away anyhow, but at some point at least one of them is going to have to wait 3 years bored out of their minds. But at the same time, the levels of maturity between them doesn't really support the "official" ages Sega swears are sacred. I get that girls tend to mature faster than boys and this can sometimes lead them to be interested in slightly older boys that would be on that same mental and emotional level, but there are plenty of times where it seems Amy out-matures Sonic (again, especially in Boom), and to suggest that a 12-13 year old can be more mature than a 15-16 year old? That's...a really rare, bold, and bizarre thing to suggest.

 

I don't know, would anyone else be fine with this being the one thing they would ever retcon in the franchise? Because I swear, it confuses me so much that SEGA's name has taken on a whole new meaning to me. "AGES" spelled backwards, as in their perception of how ages work is all backwards. XP

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In the games, it honestly makes a lot of sense. Amy is known for showing fangirlish behaviour towards Sonic, which is something commonly seen in the Tween bracket, plus she's still got a fairly brattish temper on her a lot of the time. 

Boom Amy is more arguable, but the writers for that more just squeezed her into a common Western stereotype than think to consider how a 12-year-old acts, so while they may make her act older and even think that she's older amongst themselves, the official line is always going to stay 12. 

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Japanese franchise largely made by Japanese people and usually ripping off (subtly or otherwise) existing Japanese media.

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6 minutes ago, VEDJ-F said:

In the games, it honestly makes a lot of sense. Amy is known for showing fangirlish behaviour towards Sonic, which is something commonly seen in the Tween bracket, plus she's still got a fairly brattish temper on her a lot of the time. 

Boom Amy is more arguable, but the writers for that more just squeezed her into a common Western stereotype than think to consider how a 12-year-old acts, so while they may make her act older and even think that she's older amongst themselves, the official line is always going to stay 12. 

Again, that may have worked in the early days, but it's just not as convincing to me anymore (especially when that same stereotype can be applied to a lot of older teenagers anyway). They've heavily toned down the fangirlyness, or at least have been heavily inconsistent with it as of late. And again, anyone can be a brat at any age, Sonic even acts bratty at times, I don't think that can really be used as an excuse anymore. I like how they're writing her to be a little toned down in the fangirly-girly department, but I just wish that the age supported that better.

And in what part of the US is a 12 year old expected to act like how she does in Boom? She acts more like girls around my age group, and I'm 23! The only time I've ever seen her act in any way that was considered "typical" of 12 year olds was in the episode where she and Sticks are freaking out over a Justin Bieber parody. To be quite honest, I don't think the Boom team was ever even considering her "official" age when writing the material, they just wanted to get the character and interactions down in a fluid and entertaining manner, which I appreciate. The only drawback is that they still have to adhere to Sega's rule and if questioned, answer that she is 12/13.

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 Boom amy could easily be 18 as could Sonic, Knuckles & Sticks.

 

  As for SEGA amy, yeah they should really push her age up abit.

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2 minutes ago, SonicComicFanboy said:

 Boom amy could easily be 18 as could Sonic, Knuckles & Sticks.

 

  As for SEGA amy, yeah they should really push her age up abit.

At the very least Sonic and Knuckles, I could understand if Sticks was meant to be a bit younger (actually, is she the only one not given an official age. I guess she can be anything she wants now).

Honestly it feels less like this show was made for kids and more like it was made for fans my age, with the snarky witty banter, fanbase jokes, and again the way that most of the characters act feels more reflective of college students. But maybe I'm just stuck in my bubble of college friends who talk like that and love to keep making references to video games, shows, and movies from our childhoods, and for all I know the stereotypes of ages below me have changed. But I kind of doubt it.

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I don't think Amy's age is that unbelievable compared to some others in the franchise. How about Tails? Amy actually used to be the same age as him, but when they aged her up in Adventure they left Tails as 8 because, uh...they wanted her age to be a bit more believable but not the 8 year old who can fly a plane?? That's kinda weird.

That said, they probably just don't really put much thought into the numbers they put next to "age" on these characters' profiles. :P Also kids / teens in fiction acting older than they really are is pretty common anyway, so I wouldn't say Sonic (or SEGA) is unique in this regard.

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I wouldn't think too hard about the Boom-verse, not because its an AU, but the fact everything about Boom's lore/circumstances is vague. We know nothing about how the cast met or why they're even on Bygone Island in the first place. There's a lot more holes than just Amy's age. I don't think it will be addressed since the writers are more interested in what kind of jokes they can make with the Sonic characters, rather than establishing the universe itself. 

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5 minutes ago, Her0 said:

At the very least Sonic and Knuckles, I could understand if Sticks was meant to be a bit younger (actually, is she the only one not given an official age. I guess she can be anything she wants now).

Honestly it feels less like this show was made for kids and more like it was made for fans my age, with the snarky witty banter, fanbase jokes, and again the way that most of the characters act feels more reflective of college students. But maybe I'm just stuck in my bubble of college friends who talk like that and love to keep making references to video games, shows, and movies from our childhoods, and for all I know the stereotypes of ages below me have changed. But I kind of doubt it.

Most TV shows have their characters act like the age a little bit above the audience they're aiming the show at.  Kids always want to be just that little bit older than they are, so such characters are cool to them etc.

Plus I know it feels like Boom is loaded with snarky jokes only "us older fans" would get, but that's because they stick out as something special and they're often generous with them.  The vast majority of the humour is still pretty standard cartoon stuff.  Knuckles hits his head on things or says something silly.  Sticks comes up with a LOL SO RANDOM conspiracy theory.  Amy gets all huffy coz she's the mother figure of the group and they're misbehaving.  Tails says something sciencey then repeats it in simpler terms with a look of disdain on his face for his less smart friends.  Sonic makes a quip and then points out how great his quip was.  All kinda repetitive by the numbers stuff (obviously they do clever stuff with it occasionally but a lot of it is played straight, and as adults these are jokes we've seen a million times before in other shows etc).

 

 

But yeah, the age of the characters really doesn't matter all that much, as Diogenes said.  They pretty much never come up in the actual canon anyway, has a character's age EVER been stated in-universe even once?  It's all just triva in manuals etc.  If you try to apply any real life logic to the character ages, Amy will frankly be the least of your concerns.  18 year old well-established government spy?  Detective agency consisting of a 20 year old, 16 year old and 6 year old?  Oh and Elise is 17 so that'd be awkward for her and Sonic's smooching in a year's time.

Oh, and finally Sonic's birthday in Generations is very much just a generic cartoon birthday and shouldn't be taken as any kind of actual canon occurance.  Sonic will be perpetually 15 in canon until they say otherwise.

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3 minutes ago, Celestia said:

I don't think Amy's age is that unbelievable compared to some others in the franchise. How about Tails? Amy actually used to be the same age as him, but when they aged her up in Adventure they left Tails as 8 because, uh...they wanted her age to be a bit more believable but not the 8 year old who can fly a plane?? That's kinda weird.

That said, they probably just don't really put much thought into the numbers they put next to "age" on these characters' profiles. :P Also kids / teens in fiction acting older than they really are is pretty common anyway, so I wouldn't say Sonic's unique in this regard.

Actually I don't believe they ever gave Amy's age back in the classic days. It wasn't really until Sonic Adventure when every character had a profile that stated their age at that time (I think Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles were the only ones with any sort of facts/profile thing before Adventure). The only time an age was placed on her back then was in the Archie comic series where she indeed was the same age as Tails, 8, before an item in the story was used to artificially age her body 4 years (again, still pretty developed for a 12 year old, but whatevs). As soon as she was officially inducted into the Freedom Fighters as a full-on member, her age was pretty much never brought up, referenced, or even relevant again, and that trend has carried on into the post-reboot era of the comics.

3 minutes ago, JezMM said:

Most TV shows have their characters act like the age a little bit above the audience they're aiming the show at.  Kids always want to be just that little bit older than they are, so such characters are cool to them etc.

Plus I know it feels like Boom is loaded with snarky jokes only "us older fans" would get, but that's because they stick out as something special and they're often generous with them.  The vast majority of the humour is still pretty standard cartoon stuff.  Knuckles hits his head on things or says something silly.  Sticks comes up with a LOL SO RANDOM conspiracy theory.  Amy gets all huffy coz she's the mother figure of the group and they're misbehaving.  Tails says something sciencey then repeats it in simpler terms with a look of disdain on his face for his less smart friends.  Sonic makes a quip and then points out how great his quip was.  All kinda repetitive by the numbers stuff (obviously they do clever stuff with it occasionally but a lot of it is played straight, and as adults these are jokes we've seen a million times before in other shows etc).

 

 

But yeah, the age of the characters really doesn't matter all that much, as Diogenes said.  They pretty much never come up in the actual canon anyway, has a character's age EVER been stated in-universe even once?  It's all just triva in manuals etc.  If you try to apply any real life logic to the character ages, Amy will frankly be the least of your concerns.  18 year old well-established government spy?  Detective agency consisting of a 20 year old, 16 year old and 6 year old?  Oh and Elise is 17 so that'd be awkward for her and Sonic's smooching in a year's time.

Oh, and finally Sonic's birthday in Generations is very much just a generic cartoon birthday and shouldn't be taken as any kind of actual canon occurance.  Sonic will be perpetually 15 in canon until they say otherwise.

Well if that's the case and I shouldn't be taking the age thing seriously, then why can't I just ignore any un-updated profile and assume all the cast members are meant to be 1 year older than their bios originally said? Kind of weird to suggest I should disregard the meaningless trivia and then suggest that I should believe the trivia over the franchise's one reference of a character getting older until the meaningless trivia agrees with it.

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Wait, are we talking about the Boom or the entire series in general? I'm not so familiar in Boom, so I won't say anything on that.

For the overall series, I assumed mobian/Sonic-species isn't the same as humans. As in, not supposed to really reflect realistic human behavior of that age. I mean most of the characters are teens but have varying matureness and personality; with the 6-8 year old kids w/ Tails as child genius, and the 20 yr old crocodile as outlier. As you said, it's just numbers. That's common in fiction. The best reason I can think is so she isn't considered too young, but also not too old/closer to Sonic's age. VA isn't a good evidence because if then I'd say the Japanese VA are just fine.

And yeah, the Sonis series is timeless. They go through countless birthdays and anniversaries but stay the same age. 

2 minutes ago, Celestia said:

I don't think Amy's age is that unbelievable compared to some others in the franchise. How about Tails? Amy actually used to be the same age as him, but when they aged her up in Adventure they left Tails as 8 because, uh...they wanted her age to be a bit more believable but not the 8 year old who can fly a plane?? That's kinda weird.

Maybe it's to emphasize that he's a child genius? I just said age is just numbers, but being a genius is one of Tails's main characteristic. Lower than that is too young, and older than that would categorize him as a (pre-)teen like everyone else. And a smart teen isn't a big characteristic in Sonic's world. Also the age difference makes him feel more "little brother" to Sonic.

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1 minute ago, Celestia said:

Wasn't she described as 8 years old in material for Sonic CD, too?

Not Sonic CD, Sonic Jam. Still classic official material. 

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Japan has a fetish for little girls. If they made her older she'd lose appeal in the East and they need all the appeal for the franchise they can get over there. lol

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1 minute ago, Chris Knopps said:

Japan has a fetish for little girls. If they made her older she'd lose appeal in the East and they need all the appeal for the franchise they can get over there. lol

But she's literally drawn nearly the same as Sonic. At that point all they would be selling you is just a number that you could easily make up for any character at that point. So, most anime in general I guess.

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1 minute ago, Her0 said:

But she's literally drawn nearly the same as Sonic. At that point all they would be selling you is just a number that you could easily make up for any character at that point. So, most anime in general I guess.

Ah... another thing. The age gap isn't seen as much of a problem there as it is in western culture. I believe the biggest reason for why Amy's personality suddenly 'matured' was because most western fans were tired of her manic-pixie girl behavior.

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Just now, AtomicPencils said:

Ah... another thing. The age gap isn't seen as much of a problem there as it is in western culture. I believe the biggest reason for why Amy's personality suddenly 'matured' was because most western fans were tired of her manic-pixie girl behavior.

Well again, not that I disagree with the change in her behavior, I just wish her age backed it up better, at least from a more global perspective. I'm well aware that 13 is the age of consent in Japan, so if it's a matter of cultural difference I supposed that makes a little bit of sense. But everyone's personalities are largely based off of more Western interpretations of these character models (the cocky teenager, the boy genius, the bossy fangirl, etc), these days more than ever. If it really does come down to a matter of cultural differences, it seems really odd that that's the one Eastern thing left in there that isn't shared with the West. But on that note I must ask, how many 12-13 year olds get to live on their own in Japan, because unless I'm mistaken you have to be either 15 or 16 before you can do that?

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1 hour ago, Her0 said:

Really it doesn't make much sense when you think about it. Her official profile always listed her as 12, and Sonic Generations' age boost would make her 13 by now,

There was no age boost. Sonic was canonly 15 before and after his birthday on Generations. If you look carefully you’ll notice zero candles on his birthday cake… That was on purpose. The company has no desire to truly age the characters… because if they do it once where they stop? Sooner or later they’d have to reset the ages and reboot the series after they gone to far. And you have to remember series like Sonic are a product first beyond everything else. Meaning keeping the character concepts roughly the same overtime is more marketable, and aging your characters continuously opens up a big can of worms in a series not really meant to ever end.

So no, Amy isn’t 13 or older because of any in story moments you might see that’d be logical for her to be older now, and she never permanently will be older unless the company has a HUGE change of heart of how the series functions.

Regardless in the end the character ages on this series shouldn’t be took to seriously as it’s more a loose idea for the concepts of the characters then it is any kind of a point in the stories/series. It’s better if you just look at the cast as mostly ageless like a Mickey Mouse character.

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6 minutes ago, Her0 said:

If it really does come down to a matter of cultural differences, it seems really odd that that's the one Eastern thing left in there that isn't shared with the West. But on that note I must ask, how many 12-13 year olds get to live on their own in Japan, because unless I'm mistaken you have to be either 15 or 16 before you can do that?

She's also a globetrotter if Unleashed is anything to go by. But yeah, when it comes down to it, the series is more of a mish-mash between western and eastern influences. I don't want to say "oh its a cartoon, nothing has to make sense", but it's pretty clear that certain aspects are crafted to appeal to an audience. Like, just take a look at this snippet of an interview Sonic Team did from 2005.
tumblr_inline_oc9k0gPjZp1sg0db7_540.png

...it's canon. :U

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58 minutes ago, Her0 said:

Well if that's the case and I shouldn't be taking the age thing seriously, then why can't I just ignore any un-updated profile and assume all the cast members are meant to be 1 year older than their bios originally said? Kind of weird to suggest I should disregard the meaningless trivia and then suggest that I should believe the trivia over the franchise's one reference of a character getting older until the meaningless trivia agrees with it.

You've kind of treated two seperate points of mine as if I meant them in the exact same way.  To clarify:

The trivia "doesn't matter" in the sense that nothing about their canon stated ages has any real consistency with how they act.  Amy's 12 year age is just one of a bunch of ages that don't really match what the character does, alongside Charmy, Rouge, Cream, Tails, Silver, etc.

Sonic's birthday in Generations "doesn't matter" in the sense that Sonic is a cartoon character that isn't bound by the laws of real time.  The Sonic franchise follows the same sort of logic as how, in The Simpsons, there have been 10-20 christmas episodes and yet the characters have barely aged more than a year or two (if at all, I'm sure there must have been episodes set on character birthdays but I dunno if they did actually canonically age them when those episodes occured).

I mean, if Sonic was 15 in Sonic 1, and he aged in Sonic Generations... that would mean every Sonic game beforehand took place in the space of one year, meaning Past Sonic and Present Sonic in Generations have less than a year of age between them, when Sonic and Tails's past selves are suggested to be significantly younger than that in their mannerisms.  This is what I mean when I say it "doesn't matter", you cannot apply logic to CERTAIN elements of Sonic lore, character age is one of those elements.

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2 minutes ago, Lord-Dreamerz said:

There was no age boost. Sonic was canonly 15 before and after his birthday on Generations. If you look carefully you’ll notice zero candles on his birthday cake… That was on purpose. The company has no desire to truly age the characters… because if they do it once where they stop? Sooner or later they’d have to reset the ages and reboot the series after they gone to far. And you have to remember series like Sonic are a product first beyond everything else. Meaning keeping the character concepts roughly the same overtime is more marketable, and aging your characters continuously opens up a big can of worms in a series not really meant to ever end.

So no, Amy isn’t 13 or older because of any in story moments you might see that’d be logical for her to be older now, and she never permanently will be older unless the company has a HUGE change of heart of how the series functions.

Regardless in the end the character ages on this series shouldn’t be took to seriously as it’s more a loose idea for the concepts of the characters then it is any kind of a point in the stories/series. It’s better if you just look at the cast as mostly ageless like a Mickey Mouse character.

Okay I'm gonna have to call bull on that. That only works convincingly if you never gave a character's age to begin with, like Mickey Mouse. How else is anyone who knew of Sonic's 15 year old age prior to Generations supposed to interpret that scene? You don't explicitly need candles on a cake to signify you're a year older, it's just an optional ornamentation you can do to that end. I can agree that they never tried to be specific about his birthday details (No "Happy 16th Birthday Sonic" or anything like that), but you're trying to suggest to me that they're trying to maintain this illusion that Sonic can literally have his cake and eat it too? How is anyone supposed to buy that? You could pull that off with characters like Mario cause you never put an age to that name, but as soon as they gave Sonic an age they should have seen this as a possible problem later down the line. If that really is the case though, then they seriously DO need to change how they feel about that, cause that honeslty makes me feel more used than catered to. XP

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9 minutes ago, Her0 said:

If that really is the case though, then they seriously DO need to change how they feel about that, cause that honeslty makes me feel more used than catered to. XP

I can almost promise you that is the case here. And if I worked on this series... while I may had handle things little differently...however I would had done overall the same and never age the characters... the difference with me is I never would had given exact ages to the cast and would had just called Sonic a teen, ETC in general.

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49 minutes ago, Chris Knopps said:

Japan has a fetish for little girls. If they made her older she'd lose appeal in the East and they need all the appeal for the franchise they can get over there. lol

 Another reason most anime & manga creep me out. :P

 

 But given Sonic was made with Western appeal officially aging Amy up shouldn't be a problem.  At the very least push her up to 15 in the SEGA cannon, make her on par with Sonic.  And again would love if things like Archie & Boom could cannonize her and others to 16 & 18 respectively.  

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56 minutes ago, Chris Knopps said:

Japan has a fetish for little girls. If they made her older she'd lose appeal in the East and they need all the appeal for the franchise they can get over there. lol

Kind of a gross/unnecessary oversimplification.  It's definitely the case that loli/shota fetish is more culturally acceptable over there (as long as it's kept to realm of fantasy etc) but personally I've never gotten the impression that that's what they were going for.  I get the feeling you were intentionally exaggerating for jokes but seems people like the above poster buy into that stereotype and such stereotypes get perpetuated by jokes like these.

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