Megathread IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog - Megathread

[Empire88]

8 minutes ago, Ricochet said:

Concerns about gender representation over a bunch of cartoon characters?. Cringe.

I don't plan on going into a deep discussion on this (because it just causes arguments with people who don't come in good faith), but it isn't about gender representation for tokenism or whatever you think it may be. 

People talk about gender representation because a lot of times it is easier to connect or get engaged when you see characters that are relatable to you. A lot of young girls for example don't get as interested unless there is a female character because it might be harder to relate even if they like Sonic overall. Similarly, female characters usually act at least slightly differently than male characters and bring a different dynamic. I don't know how having different types of characters is a bad thing nor why we can't discuss females in the comic. 

[CertifiedNobody]

10 hours ago, IWriteAlright said:

"Male Hedgehogs can only go super " I think is proof enough.

Think about this, instead of providing an actual explanation justifying why maybe she wasn't quite ready yet to go super. Even if they were never going to commit to at least provide a gateway for those in the future to allow that sort of transformation for her. They would literally rather have it be canon that the chaos emeralds, objects that have no sentience, are sexist and detect if you are not the correct gender to use the emeralds.

This rule likely exists to justify why silver a character who at his debut wasn't the most popular guy could go super and she couldn't.  Said character also for a period changed blaze's canon in a way that did not fit her own so she could play second fiddle. Despite that being retconed the effects of this persists to this day where as he can show up in games without her and not vice versa.

I don't know about you, but to me that seems like the people in charge of the games value one gender so much that they made a rule about it that has to be followed to this day. You don't make that kind of rule if you aren't sexist, its in the wording.

"Male hedgehogs can only go super" isn't an in-universe rule, it's an out-of-universe guideline to keep the focus on Sonic and his rivals. It doesn't really seem rooted in sexism, especially since they have no problem with Burning Blaze.

Blaze couldn't go super because she was dead. Blaze rarely played second fiddle to Silver from an in-universe perspective, but her being in 06 isn't as egregious of an issue as you make it out to be. Sonic Rush and Sonic Rush Adventure came out around the same time. There's nothing inherently wrong with letting her be a side character to someone else's story. Silver's appeared in maybe one more game than Blaze? That being Forces, which centered around a story that Blaze has no knowledge of or stake in.

I guess they're also racist against non-hedgehog characters.

[Mega]

2 hours ago, Ricochet said:

Concerns about gender representation over a bunch of cartoon characters?. Cringe.

Cringe culture is stupid and immature, and people have a right to care about representation. :u It matters to a lot of people, and I think especially for a book targeted at kids, it's good to have more cool female characters. The Sonic cast has always had more dudes in it, and I think it's neat that IDW balances things out more while having a good range of characters.

Anyway, I also think "only male hedgehogs can go super" is stupid. Especially when Knuckles, of all people, should at least be able to transform given his ties to the emerald. ...Plus, a super Amy would be awesome.

[KoDaiko]

I'm a bit wary about "representation" because sometimes the whole "inequality" part isn't that bad or feels like part of the aesthetic/charm, and if not done right the newly added features may stick out like a sore thumb.

 

IIRC in a Bumblekast Ian was saying they were adding more female characters to balance out the male-dominant cast, but was surprised & said it was complete coincidence when asked why all the new Good guys were girls and all the new Bad guys were male (which a lot of readers noticed).

I think that was when Belle & Clutch was introduced (last year?). He was saying there wasn't any upcoming female villains at that moment, but if he was to make one it would be a ground-level villain who will fight Sonic directly/hand-in-hand instead of removed/ruling from the top. That and he'd want an irredeemable one that let girls know they can be as bad as boys. And now we have Surge. Which makes me wonder when/how fast it took to create her...?

[Mauro Fonseca]

As with any "creator answering behind the scenes stuff", sometimes stuff that was already in development gets hinted at as just "hmm, wouldn't that be nice to see".

[SBR2]

3 hours ago, Ricochet said:

Concerns about gender representation over a bunch of cartoon characters?. Cringe.

Yeah why would anyone want more female characters in a franchise? Women existing is so cringe. *eyeroll*

[Wraith]

One of the ways the Sonic brand feels a little dated to me is both the lopsided gender ratio and how those female characters are presented compared to their male counterparts. I think anyone who gets their hands on it is probably going to feel tempted to address that and IDW is the "best possible scenario" where they kept most of the existing women the same but just added new ones that filled different niches.

Even if you don't really like it you're lucky that IDW is worked on by people that like these characters. Sonic Boom saw it fit to change Amy's entire personality because compassion is boring and girly I guess.

[CertifiedNobody]

38 minutes ago, Wraith said:

One of the ways the Sonic brand feels a little dated to me is both the lopsided gender ratio and how those female characters are presented compared to their male counterparts. I think anyone who gets their hands on it is probably going to feel tempted to address that and IDW is the "best possible scenario" where they kept most of the existing women the same but just added new ones that filled different niches.

Even if you don't really like it you're lucky that IDW is worked on by people that like these characters. Sonic Boom saw it fit to change Amy's entire personality because compassion is boring and girly I guess.

I wouldn't call the "lopsided gender ratio" dated. It's just a result of franchises trying to appeal to the majority of fans. As an example, Sailor Moon has far more female characters than male, but it's not out of sexism or being dated, it's because girls make up most of the fans and are the target audience. Same for Sonic.

[Wraith]

24 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

I wouldn't call the "lopsided gender ratio" dated. It's just a result of franchises trying to appeal to the majority of fans. As an example, Sailor Moon has far more female characters than male, but it's not out of sexism or being dated, it's because girls make up most of the fans and are the target audience. Same for Sonic.

Maybe 'dated' is the wrong term since I don't think a majority male cast is necessarily a bad thing, nor do I think an old school approach to something like this has to be bad either. It's just not something I'm used to seeing as much these days when every kids brand aimed at boys has at least one strong "action girl" type character. Usually multiple. The closest thing Sonic had to that was Blaze and she's not around much.

[Kuzu]

Sonic is a series coded more for boys at the end of the day, so its demographic leans more towards that. Don't think its a coincidence Amy gets the least amount of attention of the "main" characters and tends to be stuck playing second fiddle to the boys. And she's the franchise heroine, and for better or worse, her defining trait is loving the male protagonist. Not exactly good representation.

I don't agree with altering her entire personality, but I get why they did it because having a female character be mostly defined by their feelings for a male character is simply not politically correct in today's climate. Unfortunate but understandable.

 

The other females, even Blaze, suffer from a similar issue. Rouge in particular was way more sexualized in her initial years before they toned it down. 

[charmsb]

This exact discussion happened like 100 pages ago or something like that, thought I'd reiterate my thoughts to add to the pile:

While I think Sonic, as a franchise built for and aimed towards boys, has no obligation (because of that) to have expansive female representation, it absolutely doesn't hurt, and I fully welcome it. The female representation though, whether small or large, should still be respected and not shoved into meaningless, derogatory, and stereotypical roles. I honestly think it'd be better to have 10 males and 0 females than 10 males and 1 female who just gets used as the "girl character."

[DabigRG]

On 9/20/2021 at 5:51 AM, Endy said:

the videogames ignore the master emerald all the time because their tone is light and continuity is entirely secondary so it stands to reason the comic can do just do that too

or, they can just say that his pet dinosaur from sonic underground is guarding it. your move, sega

Whetr do the Underground original characters stand legally, now that you mention it?

On 9/20/2021 at 10:18 AM, Meta77 said:

More to the sheep than meets the eye.   I forget her name but the new character in idw the sheep. Is it just me or is she giving off future villain vibes. Also to add to this ABT drew a picture last week of her either jumping up in surprise or shaking while smiling., and in the second panel her eyes shift (while her body does not) to sorta give a glare at the viewer while still having the same smile. Ive tried everything I can think of to find the picture he deleted but pretty sure its gone now.

Oh? Was there an official reveal like what the other characters got or something?

On 9/20/2021 at 12:27 PM, bingboomer said:

so crabby lanolin turning evil huh? crikey. i wander what orson and his friends would think of that. 

On 9/20/2021 at 3:02 PM, MetalSkulkBane said:

I though Mimic was impersonating her, but after longer observation her palms are clear. So no.

And turning her evil would be pretty weird move.
Most people won't even know who she is.
Those who do know and care might be disappointed she turned evil.
But Lanolin has no personality so it's not much of a twist or character development.

It would be Fiona Fox all over, only on much smaller scale.

Yeah, as someone who liked the goat the moment she appeared on the cover, I would be rather disappointed if they suddenly pulled an outright Evil All Along twist with her.

The sorta background arc she had from frightened civilian to skittish volunteer to persevering soldier was interesting and I'd hate to see it effectively be wiped clean away. It doesn't help that she's basically the last vestige of Amy's wasted potential at this point.

On 9/20/2021 at 6:42 PM, CertifiedNobody said:

I'm going to have to be careful about how I say this, but I feel like the majority of new IDW characters beings girls is a double edged sword for me. Sure, it's good to have a few more, but the girl characters in the series often just have a different style to the male characters that I find a lot less intriguing. I wouldn't call them worse but they don't hook me nearly as much as characters like Dr. Starline, Knuckles, or Gemerl have. So far Lanolin is the only one that I've really liked a lot, and she's not much more than a glorified background character.

Also I disagree with the idea that Sega or Sonic Team are sexist, and haven't seen much evidence for that at all, but I'd rather not start that argument here after dealing with a thread that discussed that not too long ago.

Yeah, admittedly, they have a degree of generic cuteness. The IDW cast have generally messed with this, to be fair, but they do tend to share aspects between them

It's part of the reason Surge, who wasn't as visually striking as Kit initially, is kinda in the love to hate zone after her proper reveal--she looks obnoxious and I kinda like that.

On 9/20/2021 at 7:42 PM, Razule said:

I think it was said that the reason a lot of the new characters are girls is to balance there already being a lot of male characters in the main canon. There's only, like, three canon female characters who are able to appear regularly without a caveat (never mind that Cream can't fight). Wave is tied to the Rogues, Blaze (and Marine) is in another dimension, Tikal is dead, Sticks is in limbo, the rest are one-offs. Searching up "Sonic characters" on Google, and wow, there really isn't that many.

Cream could always fight, she just shouldn't been as big about it as most characters.

[DabigRG]

9 hours ago, KoDaiko said:

I'm a bit wary about "representation" because sometimes the whole "inequality" part isn't that bad or feels like part of the aesthetic/charm, and if not done right the newly added features may stick out like a sore thumb.

 

IIRC in a Bumblekast Ian was saying they were adding more female characters to balance out the male-dominant cast, but was surprised & said it was complete coincidence when asked why all the new Good guys were girls and all the new Bad guys were male (which a lot of readers noticed).

I think that was when Belle & Clutch was introduced (last year?). He was saying there wasn't any upcoming female villains at that moment, but if he was to make one it would be a ground-level villain who will fight Sonic directly/hand-in-hand instead of removed/ruling from the top. That and he'd want an irredeemable one that let girls know they can be as bad as boys. And now we have Surge. Which makes me wonder when/how fast it took to create her...?

 

8 hours ago, Mauro Fonseca said:

As with any "creator answering behind the scenes stuff", sometimes stuff that was already in development gets hinted at as just "hmm, wouldn't that be nice to see".

Surge was supposed to be introduced alongside Starline to begin with, so unless they changed her gender(which would likely be done for different reasons) in between the years, it's a happy coincidence that he probably didn't recall in the moment. 

4 hours ago, Kuzu said:

Sonic is a series coded more for boys at the end of the day, so its demographic leans more towards that. Don't think its a coincidence Amy gets the least amount of attention of the "main" characters and tends to be stuck playing second fiddle to the boys. And she's the franchise heroine, and for better or worse, her defining trait is loving the male protagonist. Not exactly good representation.

I don't agree with altering her entire personality, but I get why they did it because having a female character be mostly defined by their feelings for a male character is simply not politically correct in today's climate. Unfortunate but understandable.

She was also kind of a joke character to begin with, so there's that too.

4 hours ago, Kuzu said:

The other females, even Blaze, suffer from a similar issue. Rouge in particular was way more sexualized in her initial years before they toned it down. 

To be honest, I think the intent of the character may also be important factor to keep in mind. Rouge being "drawn that way" helps emphasize the dubious jewel thief turned spy angle she has going on while contrasting Knuckles a fair amount and Blaze being slimmer than the other girls gets across her dutiful nature while visual cues like her ponytail and heels nonetheless read her as still being female.

IDW also has that quality to half of it's characters, who would likely blend in with the very similar characters within the male cast.

 

[CertifiedNobody]

40 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

Whetr do the Underground original characters stand legally, now that you mention it?

Oh? Was there an official reveal like what the other characters got or something?

Yeah, as someone who liked the goat the moment she appeared on the cover, I would be rather disappointed if they suddenly pulled an outright Evil All Along twist with her.

The sorta background arc she had from frightened civilian to skittish volunteer to persevering soldier was interesting and I'd hate to see it effectively be wiped clean away. It doesn't help that she's basically the last vestige of Amy's wasted potential at this point.

Sega has full ownership over the characters from the DiC cartoons IIRC (Sally, Scratch & Grounder, Manic, etc). They just don't want to use them right now.

I'd be interested in seeing her become evil, if only because we rarely see characters go dark, and she'd be a different flavor of villain. Her development wouldn't necessarily be wiped clean, and maybe it could play into her betrayal.

[Razule]

1 hour ago, DabigRG said:

Cream could always fight, she just shouldn't been as big about it as most characters.

I could've sworn Flynn said that Cream wasn't allowed to be an active fighter back in the reboot Archie days, but I can't find it. 

[DabigRG]

8 minutes ago, Razule said:

I could've sworn Flynn said that Cream wasn't allowed to be an active fighter back in the reboot Archie days, but I can't find it. 

Active as in constantly leaping into the fray, one would think. Especially since she still participated in at least two different battles.

1 hour ago, CertifiedNobody said:

Sega has full ownership over the characters from the DiC cartoons IIRC (Sally, Scratch & Grounder, Manic, etc). They just don't want to use them right now.

I'd be interested in seeing her become evil, if only because we rarely see characters go dark, and she'd be a different flavor of villain. Her development wouldn't necessarily be wiped clean, and maybe it could play into her betrayal.

What you did there, I see it

I suppose. It'd depend on the execution and how she's developed, possibly with ADB's okay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[IWriteAlright]

22 hours ago, CertifiedNobody said:

"Male hedgehogs can only go super" isn't an in-universe rule, it's an out-of-universe guideline to keep the focus on Sonic and his rivals. It doesn't really seem rooted in sexism, especially since they have no problem with Burning Blaze.

Blaze couldn't go super because she was dead. Blaze rarely played second fiddle to Silver from an in-universe perspective, but her being in 06 isn't as egregious of an issue as you make it out to be. Sonic Rush and Sonic Rush Adventure came out around the same time. There's nothing inherently wrong with letting her be a side character to someone else's story. Silver's appeared in maybe one more game than Blaze? That being Forces, which centered around a story that Blaze has no knowledge of or stake in.

I guess they're also racist against non-hedgehog characters.

The fact that there is an out of universe guide line that is " No only boys can do the cool form " is sexist.  And burning blaze is a something that has not been used in years and I don't just mean in games. I mean merch and toys. Burning blaze doesn't get a lot of play. The buried that form and the character that uses it. Even in this very comic , silver's super form got this grand moment and blaze destroyed some robots and fixed somoene's memory.

I dunno if i can say that sonic team is " racist " because these are animals and these things aren't compatible. But gender or at least our perception of it is a somewhat universal concept and its really easy to point out they treat girls different. But I would say it is really weird that no one except hedgehogs can go super, but that's another discussion.
 

17 hours ago, Wraith said:

One of the ways the Sonic brand feels a little dated to me is both the lopsided gender ratio and how those female characters are presented compared to their male counterparts. I think anyone who gets their hands on it is probably going to feel tempted to address that and IDW is the "best possible scenario" where they kept most of the existing women the same but just added new ones that filled different niches.

Even if you don't really like it you're lucky that IDW is worked on by people that like these characters. Sonic Boom saw it fit to change Amy's entire personality because compassion is boring and girly I guess.

If I am being honest I think IDW might be interesting if there were more writers who weren't intimately familiar with the brand personally. There's quite a few issues that have that might be fixed if the people writing the stories didn't feel like they could skip so much.

You have brought up something interesting though. If people continue to address that and sega continues their sternness on not adding characters from supplementary material will we end up with a scenario where a bunch of relevant women characters get reconned out of the spotlight every few years. Because that's not the greatest look

17 hours ago, CertifiedNobody said:

I wouldn't call the "lopsided gender ratio" dated. It's just a result of franchises trying to appeal to the majority of fans. As an example, Sailor Moon has far more female characters than male, but it's not out of sexism or being dated, it's because girls make up most of the fans and are the target audience. Same for Sonic.

 

16 hours ago, Kuzu said:

Sonic is a series coded more for boys at the end of the day, so its demographic leans more towards that. Don't think its a coincidence Amy gets the least amount of attention of the "main" characters and tends to be stuck playing second fiddle to the boys. And she's the franchise heroine, and for better or worse, her defining trait is loving the male protagonist. Not exactly good representation.

I don't agree with altering her entire personality, but I get why they did it because having a female character be mostly defined by their feelings for a male character is simply not politically correct in today's climate. Unfortunate but understandable.

 

The other females, even Blaze, suffer from a similar issue. Rouge in particular was way more sexualized in her initial years before they toned it down. 

In regards to this , I actually don't think this is the case. I think if you actually had data on the people who present as men to women ratio it would be a lot more even. I don't know if you all are familiar with cartoon network and what happened with it behind the scenes but that channel is a lesson in " Don't assume just because a company does something its in their own self interest , rather the idea of their own self interest " Cartoon network over the years canceled multiple shows because it didn't have a big enough male audience. These shows were successful some of them like young justice came back through streaming. Cartoon network only valued the young male audience because in their mind only young boys buy toys.

And I have no issue believing that sega that has sexist stuff built into the brand is operating under this logic. Shadow is an excellent example. Shadow is even after everything the 2nd most popular character. A good chunk if not most of his fan art is by women, same with his fanfiction the person who has the largest collection of sonic merch known to twitter is a women who loves shadow and has mostly shadow stuff. One of his creators Maekawa  admits shadow was purposefully designed to appeal to women down to the honorifics he uses in japanese to come off less harsh. Shadow's change into an uncaring friendless weirdo has turned a lot of people off. This change in my opinion wasn't made to " focus on the majority of fans " this change was made because of the biases of those in charge and their warped view of what a " character for boys " is.

Sometimes, often times companies aren't run by the most competent people and the choices that they make aren't made because they have done the numbers and calculated what will work the best. And there are plenty of times when that method wouldn't work either. But it comes out of the biases of those in charge and what they think will work rather than what would.

I could be wrong, the numbers could bare out mostly boys like sonic. Even then though you could make and I would make the argument that maybe the reason those numbers skew that way because they haven't tried appealing fem presenting people as much. Which is a problem that I haven't even discussed. How the culture you make can dictate your audience and limit it. But, I don't think anyone in this thread has any reason to believe that sega is all of sudden is acting competently with this in regards to sonic. We have seen so many times where there is objectively observable data and the people in charge of the brand will ignore it and walk the other way, why wouldn't I believe they would do the same thing in regards to this sort of thing.

[Meta77]

I assure you Sega probably has run the numbers that is what a business does. Granted where they drive them from is the big thing.  And CN cancels shows that are not bringing them money. A show can be good and fun like YJ but if it isnt making them money regardless how good a fan thinks the show is it will get canned.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

CN canceled Young Justice because “girls don’t buy the toys.”

And that is a sexist as shit reason to cancel something. You can run numbers on anything, and still focus on the wrong part of the brand, as even Sega should be aware of. They can still be sexist about it too, so don’t try to defend the bad excuses they make.

Edit: Not that I’m saying Sega is sexist (I don’t really know anything about that), but a spade is a spade.

[Mega]

Also, why should it matter if the series is aimed at boys? It always irked me that IPs aimed at specific genders have so few of the opposite when we should teach boys AND girls that both can be awesome. Gender-based marketing creates this unnecessary divide and can put a lot of pressure on kids to fit into stereotypical molds. It's totally cool for guys to enjoy stuff like Sonic, Transformers, TMNT, too, but it's just as good if they like shows like She-Ra or Amphibia that have female leads. Idk. I just think having more active girls in the cast doesn't invalidate the male characters, and it seems like IDW strikes a good balance there?

Basically, I think balanced casts can still help even when the target demo is boys. It can teach 'em that, hey, girls are cool, too. This idea that boys can't enjoy female characters honestly always struck me as a problem in how kids are socialized and the arbitrary "boys vs girls" mindset in a lot of stuff geared at kids.

[StaticMania]

3 hours ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

CN canceled Young Justice because “girls don’t buy the toys.”

I feel like this is the exact opposite of what that link is saying...

[Razule]

2 hours ago, StaticMania said:

I feel like this is the exact opposite of what that link is saying...

Girls were watching the show, but not buying the toys.

[CertifiedNobody]

4 hours ago, Mega said:

Also, why should it matter if the series is aimed at boys? It always irked me that IPs aimed at specific genders have so few of the opposite when we should teach boys AND girls that both can be awesome. Gender-based marketing creates this unnecessary divide and can put a lot of pressure on kids to fit into stereotypical molds. It's totally cool for guys to enjoy stuff like Sonic, Transformers, TMNT, too, but it's just as good if they like shows like She-Ra or Amphibia that have female leads. Idk. I just think having more active girls in the cast doesn't invalidate the male characters, and it seems like IDW strikes a good balance there?

Basically, I think balanced casts can still help even when the target demo is boys. It can teach 'em that, hey, girls are cool, too. This idea that boys can't enjoy female characters honestly always struck me as a problem in how kids are socialized and the arbitrary "boys vs girls" mindset in a lot of stuff geared at kids.

Not calling you out because this was a different person but it's funny how it's being argued both that we should have more female characters because boys should like them regardless of gender, and that we need more female characters so that girls can have characters they relate to.

One thing this thread has made me realize is that if they're going to add more girl characters, they shouldn't all be part of the same "clique". Male characters like Tails, Shadow, and Espio all know each other, but they're very different in terms of personality and wouldn't be part of the same group outside of emergencies. The covers for the newest comic bother me because it's exclusively starring a group that doesn't resonate with me at all, and I'm glad Surge is going to be different when she debuts.

[StaticMania]

20 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

...they shouldn't all be part of the same "clique".

Amy's shtick (before she became flanderized) is being able to make friends with anyone, she's the genkii...

So here we have Amy, Tangle & Jewel (who already are friends) and...Belle, who they may just wanna get to know better.

It's not like "every" girl is here, especially Wave, Rouge, Blaze, & Whisper.

28 minutes ago, Razule said:

Girls were watching the show, but not buying the toys.

Well cancelling the show due to this by itself isn't sexist and it probably should not the focus point.

[CertifiedNobody]

4 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

Amy's shtick (before she became flanderized) is being able to make friends with anyone, she's the genkii...

So here we have Amy, Tangle & Jewel (who already are friends) and...Belle, who they may just wanna get to know better.

It's not like "every" girl is here, especially Wave, Rouge, Blaze, & Whisper.

Yeah I guess. I stand by my point but I'm really just kind of bothered that none of the characters I like have been getting much attention in the more recent issues. Seriously, I love IDW Sonic, but what I wouldn't give for a new Sonic Universe...