Tone in the Sonic series

[RedFox99]

As the title may suggest, I wanted to talk about in general the different kinds of tones that the Sonic series has had and what some of you may think is that proper one for the series. 

To me, I mad prefer if it tried not to be a Comedy like in recent games and Boom mostly because the jokes are often hit or miss and they tend to disrupt the narrative. Now, I don't think it should be ShTH or Forces since while they were trying to be darker, the former came off as trying too hard while the latter had too many bad jokes. 

What do you guys think?

[Osmium]

Should be cartoony and crazy, in the vein of Looney Tunes and early Nickelodeon and the like. Because Sonic is a cartoon. 

[AzureLakeSanic]

Let's look at it manga-style.

I'd call Sonic a kodomo, it could be shonen but the addition of Amy and others like Cream could mean it's also a shojo. So I think it's kodomo, and for the genres, it's action-adventure mostly.

[Dee Dude]

Due to personal tastes and bias, I would say a Shonen tone since it actually fits Sonic’s appeal of being a cool, fast, action-y, robot ass kicking, Japanese created series with interesting story and character arcs people can get invested into.

But knowing this site, a majority would disagree with me. :U

Anyway, Unleased had the right blend of action, comedy, light and dark storytelling.

I actually don’t mind a more comedic Looney Tunes/Aosth esque tone either since that also fits the appeal of Sonic being a wise cracking, hard to catch, talking hedgehog lol but that tone is better suited for Classic.

Nothing gritty obviously, but no Pontaff/Boom/Modern cartoon levels of humor we’ve had for the past few years either.

That kind of tone doesn’t fit Sonic at all, Sonic is a grand action adventure series, not a fucking college sitcom.

[Osmium]

34 minutes ago, Dee Dude said:

Due to personal tastes and bias, I would say a Shonen tone since it actually fits Sonic’s appeal of being a cool, fast, action-y, robot ass kicking, Japanese created series with interesting stories and character developments people can get into.

I'm not much looking for a conflict now, but the place of setting for a creation really doesn't mean much for what it should be. I don't get why just because it's Japanese means it should be super anime-like. Like, you never see this kind of thing with any other place, no one ever says that something made in western Europe should look completely different from something in North America for sake of geography. 

There of course have been historical deviances between different settings and entertainment made there, but we shouldn't hold things to a standard like this just because. Sonic was made in Japan but was designed to appeal to western audiences. It's not meant to be super anime-like in the first place. What about Sonic and Eggman's designs especially scream anime or shonen? They look like they belong in a late twenties cinema short. 

 

[Dee Dude]

15 minutes ago, A crocodile said:

I'm not much looking for a conflict now, but the place of setting for a creation really doesn't mean much for what it should be. I don't get why just because it's Japanese means it should be super anime-like. Like, you never see this kind of thing with any other place, no one ever says that something made in western Europe should look completely different from something in North America for sake of geography. 

There of course have been historical deviances between different settings and entertainment made there, but we shouldn't hold things to a standard like this just because. Sonic was made in Japan but was designed to appeal to western audiences. It's not meant to be super anime-like in the first place. What about Sonic and Eggman's designs especially scream anime or shonen? They look like they belong in a late twenties cinema short. 

 

I get where you’re coming from but where the shonen aspect comes from is not necessarily the art and design (even though charcaters like Blaze and Shadow would beg to differ) style but from the spectacle of the fast paced battles that happen and Sonic’s free spirited teenage attitude that sort gives it a cheesy anime vibe, I agree it wasn’t like this with the Classic but they decided to change it up a bit with the Adventure era.

Eggman I get looking cartoonish (Although he wouldn’t look out of place in a Tezuka or Toriyama creation lol ) but are you sure Modern Sonic isn’t a bit anime-ish lol? (I am aware he was inspired by Mickey and Felix so keep that in mind)

I’m all for Sonic having a blend of both western and japanese influences while not over exaggerating either of the two. 

You don’t really even have to take my argument to heart since I admitted above that’s it part of my personal bias/preference.

[Osmium]

1 minute ago, Dee Dude said:

Eggman I get looking cartoonish (Although he wouldn’t look out of place in a Tezuka or Toriyama creation lol ) but are you sure Modern Sonic isn’t a bit anime-ish lol? 

Fair enough for most of what you said. 

But with modern Sonic, ehh...I get a lot more of the "totally radical" Crash Bandicoot sorta thing going on with it, especially during the Adventure days. I think of crazy gaudy early Nickelodeon type stuff with modern Sonic before anime. The Adventure style added a lot of folds and curves and honestly with a few tweaks it wouldn't look too out of place with something like Rocko. 

Then again, that just may be my impression of the style and how I prefer things to be. 

[ShadowSJG]

I think Sonic should not be crazy and wacky like Looney Tunes/Busby/Colors/Lost World but not dark and edgy like 06 and Shadow. A right balance is needed, which I think Flynn did well.

[Diogenes]

The premise of this series is pretty ridiculous and I think whatever tone it takes should be fully aware of and in tune with that. For that reason, I don't think "serious Sonic" works. That's not to say that there can be no serious elements, that there should be no tension or meaning and that everything should just be jokes, but the "serious" games in the series like SA2, '06, and Forces feel like betrayals or rejections of the series' premise and original nature. The moments where the series does gets serious need to mesh with the baseline ridiculousness of the series, and that can't happen in a game that is fighting against that nature and trying very hard to be taken seriously the whole way through.

[Kellan]

I’d say that the Storybook series is what really nailed the tone for me. That, and the Adventure games.

[Wraith]

1 hour ago, A crocodile said:

I'm not much looking for a conflict now, but the place of setting for a creation really doesn't mean much for what it should be. I don't get why just because it's Japanese means it should be super anime-like. Like, you never see this kind of thing with any other place, no one ever says that something made in western Europe should look completely different from something in North America for sake of geography. 

There of course have been historical deviances between different settings and entertainment made there, but we shouldn't hold things to a standard like this just because. Sonic was made in Japan but was designed to appeal to western audiences. It's not meant to be super anime-like in the first place. What about Sonic and Eggman's designs especially scream anime or shonen? They look like they belong in a late twenties cinema short. 

 

The series was regurgitating anime tropes though most of its outings and media from aruond 2001 to 2012. It's not hard to understand the Shonen label comes from, because that's literally what the series was for a significant chunk of it's life. Shonen tropes.

[Kuzu]

47 minutes ago, Josh said:

The series was regurgitating anime tropes though most of its outings and media from aruond 2001 to 2012. It's not hard to understand the Shonen label comes from, because that's literally what the series was for a significant chunk of it's life. Shonen tropes.

Let's cut out the middle man, a lot of this series owes its longevity to a lot Shonen Anime tropes, even nowadays.

One it's most iconic elements is ripped straight from arguably the most popular Shonen of all time, and one it's most popular characters is the literal embodiment of the Shonen Anime rival.

 

 

To say that Sonic doesn't resemble Anime in the slightest tells me either you don't watch Anime, or you never watched DBZ in your life.

[Cuz]

My go to points of reference are early Dragon Ball, the slapstick of Loony Tunes, and a healthy degree of spectacle. 

Oh, and surreal landscapes.

The Egg Carrier, the rock snake in Lost World... (the SA stage), orcas smashing boardwalks, jumping out of a helicopter and boarding down the highway, or running over the golden gate bridge, Bingo Highway, Pumpkin Hills, twisted and winding terrain. Planets chained to other planets, angelic ruins in the clouds. Ice sheets with magma rushing through them. The special stages being abstract creations of a giant panda (that one's on Archie), Heck, I was on board for the Lost Hex and it's tube levels; conceptually.

If there's one thing I universally love about this franchise it's the surrealism.

 

[Ultimate Victory 64]

I don't mind a serious Sonic story if only the characters are the characters. You can have a your jokes but don't let it overstay its welcome like Colors (or in other words don't make it like its an MCU movie). SA2 and Unleashed are the Sonic games that do it the best.

[Nestor]

I thought the whimsical, fast-paced, fun tone seen in the classic series (especially thinking of the Sonic CD/Mania intros) had the most fitting tone - I think going full on Looney Toons though is possibly going a bit too far. I think a bit of humour is good too, as long as it doesn't dominate to the exclusion of everything else.

[A person, that exists]

I'd prefer more of a Shonen Sonic, ya know, something with the Adventure/X style and the visual spectacle of the Riders intro/Unleashed intro. To me Sonic was always like a weird, Japanese action-oriented Felix the Cat, so I think this would fit him perfectly. 

Nothing too dark or extremely edgy (I don't want to have a poor man's HNK with Sonic slapped on it), but nothing too Mario-esque or "LOL OUR FRANCHISE SUCKS, LAUGH!" kinda stuff. Mario is Mario, and Sonic is Sonic, there's no point in blending the two together. Ya know, something in the E-10 rating. 

[Nuggets]

There's always a lot of talk as to why a serious tone in Sonic can't or doesn't work - I will always rebut that with the fact that this series has just failed to do it right so many times. I don't need to say why Shadow or 06 or, to a lesser extent, Forces, don't work. Even as a fan of Adventure 2 and it's story, I'll admit that by the end the sci-fi government conspiracy and child murder cover-up plots got... Weird. But there's absolutely no debating the holy trinity of Adventure, Unleashed, and Black Knight, which all strike a perfect (and somewhat similar) tone for this series, in my opinion.

Adventure takes the genocide of an entire species and contextualizes it into the backstory of the games in a way that isn't too dark, although it might seem a bit dated. Unleashed is a world traveling adventure that, while corny at times, is a light fun romp with a lot of amazing moments - the opening cutscene in general is probably what all Sonic games should strive to be, story-wise - and Black Knight is the best character study of Sonic to date, and actually uses side characters in the best way since, well, Adventure. What works about these is that there is balance.

We criticize Colors for the emphasis on jokes, not just because they land badly a lot of the time, but because when it is time for shit to get serious at the end, it feels paper thin because the game has been a joke factory up to that point. We criticize ShtH because it takes the concept of an anthropomorphic alien hedgehog toting a gun and swearing and dares you to take it seriously. Both of these things don't work, because this series isn't a giant joke, and even when it unintentionally devolved into one, it was never self-aware enough to make fun of itself (say what you want, but a version of ShtH where the writers are aware of how mindfuckingly absurd the whole thing is would make for a hilarious game). Adventure works because first and foremost, it's about the characters, which is to say, it's about people. It's not asking you to swallow anything big or ridiculous beyond what's already been established. It's simply a game about how the individual characters face (sometimes intersecting) problems that manifest both mentally and physically. Tails is having an identity crisis. Knuckles is trying to piece together his history, his sense of self and basically bring back order into his life. Gamma spends the majority of his short life doing bad things before he realizes his own moral code and decides to do things according to his heart. Big just wants to find the goddamned TV remote his pet.  There's obviously the backstory of Chaos, but boiled down to their true essences, these are just stories that respect their characters enough to characterize them beyond one simple trait, and the tone reflects the different moods a person will go through. Black Knight understands who Sonic is. So it's funny and adventurous, but when some end of the world shit starts to go down, the story isn't afraid to step up and follow Sonic as he delivers a speech to a supervillain about how the end of a story or a life can be a beautiful thing.  And it's not corny, or forced (heh), because dammit, Shiro Maekawa knows how to write Sonic the fucking Hedgehog. except 06 but let's pretend he didn't write that ok

It's 2018. We can elicit tearful reactions from people when a bunch of living toys are about to burn in an incinerator, or when we learn that an Ice Wizard was really just a regular guy before he lost his mind a thousand years ago,  or when a kid with a shiny rock in his stomach cries for one reason or another. Just because something is inherently ridiculous absolutely does not mean that we cannot take it seriously. Serious doesn't mean grimdark, it just means that the writers have enough respect for the material they're writing about to treat it with nuance. You have to balance between extremes like Colors and SA2, and when a writer that respects the material enough to find that balance starts writing for the games, I think this series will be much better off. 

tl;dr this shit shouldn't be all jokes and shouldn't be weird melodramatic penders/06-esque bullshit either, but a happy medium between dark and whimsical that is sometimes serious (and jfc it's ok for a series like this to get serious in the right way regardless of how silly the premise is) is ok

[ShadowSJG]

The idea of Sonic can't be serious is absurd. For example, series like Kirby can be serious at times, so Sonic can be too.

[ClassicKnuckles]

Sonic should be serious. Not always Forces-level of serious, but no Orbot or Cubot, please. Robotnik is supposed to be menacing, and supposed to give you something you truly despise and want to see perish. This is why I hate Boom, AoStH, Sonic Mania,  and Sonic Colors. Classic Sonic and the Dreamcast era got this right. With Classic Sonic, you have Robotnik who truly hate Sonic, and wants to see him dead and he truly wants to enslave all of Mobius. This is also why I hate the cutesy Sonic Mania opening... Sonic can be bright and flashy like in Carnival Night and Studiopolis, but he also needs his dark and gritty settings like Chemical Plant and Sunset Heights.

 

tl;dr basically, more like 06, 3 and Knuckles, Unleashed, and Forces and not like the tire fire that is Boom and AoStH.

[Diogenes]

4 hours ago, ClassicKnuckles said:

Sonic should be serious. Not always Forces-level of serious, but no Orbot or Cubot, please. Robotnik is supposed to be menacing, and supposed to give you something you truly despise and want to see perish. This is why I hate Boom, AoStH, Sonic Mania,  and Sonic Colors. Classic Sonic and the Dreamcast era got this right.

Excuse me? I'm supposed to think the guy who makes ladybug robots deserves death?

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

And also creates world ending death machines, sets rainforests on fire, will electrocute someone without a second thought to make an escape, and the long laundry list of things that would be criminal in real life on top of building an amusement park just because. Sure he’s not a Bond villain, but that doesn’t make him one who shouldn’t be treated as any more than an antagonist from a Carebear cartoon either. Which gets me into the absurdity of this tonal dichotomy that people seem to have developed.

As far as tone goes, really you’d think if the likes of Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks can put things like regicide, war, genocide, allegories for prejudice, and a bunch of other things that change the tone from slapstick to horibly tragic in their numerous cartoony works for a family friendly audience it can work for the likes of Sonic. Being a cartoon makes little difference to what the tone should be as opposed to the delivery and execution of them. Kung Fu Panda is a heavily slapstick work with talking cartoon animals for example, but no one batted an eye when outright genocide was shown in the second movie as part of the main character’s origin and his connection to the equally slapstick villain who was responsible for it—this doesn’t prevent Sonic from pulling it off either, the only thing holding him back being either incompetent or hamstrung writers.

[Diogenes]

5 minutes ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

And also creates world ending death machines, sets rainforests on fire, will electrocute someone without a second thought to make an escape, and the long laundry list of things that would be criminal in real life on top of building an amusement park just because.

Yeah and Sonic games aren't real life. Your Bowsers and your Wilys and your Eggmans are never treated as they would be if they were actual real-world dictators and terrorists, because they're silly cartoon characters in silly cartoon worlds where justice isn't served through arrests, trials, and imprisonment but through some plucky kid bopping them on the head a few times until they run off to scheme for the sequel.

[andrewtuell1991]

5 hours ago, ClassicKnuckles said:

Robotnik is supposed to be menacing,

I'm sorry, what!?  Unless you're talking about SatAm Robotnik which you might be since you're bringing up Mobius of all things.  And Sonic Mania is every bit in line with the rest of the classics in terms of tone.  The series began as a blue Felix the Cat recolor fighting a morbidly obese evil Teddy Roosevelt and his army of colorful robots that look like they crawled out of a happy meal.  Any seriousness should be in small, self-aware doses.

[A sonic fan]

Unleashed got it perfect imo 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

1 hour ago, Diogenes said:

Yeah and Sonic games aren't real life.

Which you knew full well wasn’t even my point.

Quote

Your Bowsers and your Wilys and your Eggmans are never treated as they would be if they were actual real-world dictators and terrorists, because they're silly cartoon characters in silly cartoon worlds where justice isn't served through arrests, trials, and imprisonment but through some plucky kid bopping them on the head a few times until they run off to scheme for the sequel.

And being silly cartoon characters doesn’t stop them from being put under arrest, through trials, imprisonment, and whatnot for their crimes because those are not outside the range of family-friendly franchises, and this dichotomy you have is ridiculous and blatantly dishonest given the loads of such characters being put in those very situations whether it was Bluto from Popeye, Yosimite Sam of the Looney Tunes, or even Tai-Lung from Kung Fu Panda. 

For all your talk of them being cartoons, you of all people should be aware of being arrested and imprisoned or whatever can subject to the same nature. Especially when in many of these cartoons, they are put in all three and then break out of prison for their next scheme.