Fan Attitudes to Eggman

[Shadowlax]

46 minutes ago, Ashwalking Bat said:

Yeah, I'll give you that one. And the irony is that I am one of those older fans, but I have at least tried to keep an open mind to new stuff. Not everything has come off as appealing to me, but I honestly see nothing wrong with Shadow. Well, aside from his odd portrayals in some games. And with Eggman/Robotnik. I guess it can be a preferential thing. Though a lot is split down the middle with him, regardless of what side of the argument you are on.

It depends on what you grow up with right, they were younger so Imagine they just have a higher tolerance for the stuff they grew up with its fine. I just think its funny in an ironic way

[JezMM]

The one part of the OP I disagree with is that the moments where Eggman DOES perform deadly actions aren't necessarily out-of-character for me.  Eggman fires the missile at Station Square in a moment of utter frustration, and we only see that moment and then the situation is diffused.  While I doubt Eggman would sink into depression over it or anything - he's still a pretty self-centered guy - I imagine he would still regret the loss of life due to his rash actions had the missile actually been detonated in his own small way (particularly since he would've been in the dang blast radius had he beaten Tails to it).  Though even then, in the alternate narrative where it does go off, civilians would've still been magically evacuated, just as they always are in Sonic.

 

Basically I don't think it's out-of-character for Eggman to get frustrated and without thinking, put bystanders or PARTICULARLY Sonic and his friends in mortal peril - and in the situation where he succeeds, he'd end up feeling less victorious than he thinks he would in the heat of the moment (we'd get that classic villian breakdown where they end up "missing" their arch-nemesis once they're not around to challenge them anymore).

Of course the scenario where Eggman actually succeeds in murdering people would never happen, but the fact that Eggman tries doesn't necessary mean he's acting out-of-character.  We just never get to see the part where he then regrets what he's done (which as far as I can tell from the personality that we do get to see, he would to some degree).

[Eurisko]

Nah man , I’m not up for a dark super evil Eggman. For a start he’s called EGG-MAN. There’s absolutely nothing menacing about that name ( yes I know his name originally is/was Dr Ivo Robotnik but I’m talking in general terms here) He’s so much more suited to just being exactly how he is. He’s a jolly villain with a slight maniacal twist and I’d have him no other way.

[SBR2]

2 hours ago, Shadowlax said:

Nah

All the people who want him dark are older fans who also want him to be called robotnik

And call the Eggman Empire "Robotnik Empire" and Eggman Nega "Robotnik Nega".

[Wraith]

I disagree that Eggman needs to be too dark, but it's rarely happened. Not sure why the paranoia still leaks into so much into discussion. 

I also don't really want Eggman to loose his "teeth" so to speak. He's not a Bowser type villain. He has a real endgame in mind with consequences that are shown off a few times throughout the series. This doesn't mean he can't be a true larger than life character who tells jokes or animates wildly or anything, but he should be dangerous enough that the player should feel motivated to stop him, imo. I don't care for Eggman in the stuff where he's just a joke machine

 

[DabigRG]

11 minutes ago, SBR2 said:

And call the Eggman Empire "Robotnik Empire" and Eggman Nega "Robotnik Nega".

 I actually prefer Nega having the name Eggman over Robotnik. Really drives his issues home.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

1 hour ago, Eurisko said:

Nah man , I’m not up for a dark super evil Eggman. For a start he’s called EGG-MAN. There’s absolutely nothing menacing about that name

There’s nothing menacing or dark in the names Batman or Joker, but that’s not how stories make characters menacing, now is it?

[Nicky Nicardo]

I love Eggman when he's a total incompetent goofball, like in the Sonic Boom cartoon. That being said, I also really loved the more 'serious' version from Sonic Adventure 2 - he was still silly, but it really felt like he was menacing and legitimately capable of taking over the world in that game.

[Eurisko]

5 minutes ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

There’s nothing menacing or dark in the names Batman or Joker, but that’s not how stories make characters menacing, now is it?

That’s a fair point , I hadn’t thought of it like that. Batman has a few sides to him especially. I think the name Eggman has always seemed a little strange to me I think that’s why I have that view on the name.

[BaronGrackle]

Did somebody say something about Dr. Robotnik? Something about dark and creepy?

[Skull Leader]

1 hour ago, BaronGrackle said:

Did somebody say something about Dr. Robotnik? Something about dark and creepy?

Considering how Diogenes nailed the description of the Sonic universe as "It's a world of softer consequences and simpler problems, designed to be fun and exciting and fantastic for us to experience", that image of Eggman's grandfather, an old man broken, being chained and forced to confess after a most likely "Guantanamo" style treatment really looks like something that is simply out of place, like a lot of the other stuff from the 2000's era.

[BaronGrackle]

I just realized that Eggman's glasses (aka Robotnik's eyes) changed from blue to black in Sonic 2 and stayed that way through the Genesis Era, fluctuating a bit on the Saturn and Dreamcast..

Blue for Sonic 1.

Black for 2.

Blue for CD.

Black for Spinball (and with the pince-nez glasses more clearly defined than ever)

Black for 3&K.

Black for 3D Blast.

Black for the OVA.

Blue (and original Japanese design) for Fighters and Sonic R.

Blue for Adventure.

But ah, much darker blackish-blue for Adventure 2! And I think he kept this color in future games. Compare:

Funny. Other than Sonic 1 and Sonic CD, you could argue that Modern Eggman's optics are much closer to what we saw in the Classic Era.

Of course, Mania is blue.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

1 hour ago, Skull Leader said:

Considering how Diogenes nailed the description of the Sonic universe as "It's a world of softer consequences and simpler problems, designed to be fun and exciting and fantastic for us to experience", that image of Eggman's grandfather, an old man broken, being chained and forced to confess after a most likely "Guantanamo" style treatment really looks like something that is simply out of place, like a lot of the other stuff from the 2000's era.

I think that winds up falling into the fallacy that Sonic shouldn’t be dark because it’s cartoony. But if that’s not the case, how would you style the gravity that image is suppose to evoke without feeling out of place?

Cuz mind you, there have been a number of works that have scenes like this.

[Almar]

He just needs to be there and be flashy.

Forces Eggman fails since among the other problems with game he actually has little presence, in both secreentime AND having an impact on the world around him. The game comes off as more focused on shiling Infinite as the new edgy villain ala Mephiles that Eggman, even in a game hyped up as his finest hour, plays second fiddle with the "Eggman World" part being so absent you could have cut it out.

I already got in arguments over this but I say that between the two, Colors Eggman is the better villain since he's more of a presence in his game's world than Forces Eggman. Both fail to be sold as threats to the world on their merits, but Colors Eggman is the one who does better to show he's abusing an innocent world for his schemes.

[Skull Leader]

7 hours ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

I think that winds up falling into the fallacy that Sonic shouldn’t be dark because it’s cartoony. But if that’s not the case, how would you style the gravity that image is suppose to evoke without feeling out of place?

Cuz mind you, there have been a number of works that have scenes like this.

And wouldn't the same apply in that, just because there can be dark elements, some people think that is a free ticket to add things like a girl getting shot by soldiers or an old man being tortured and executed, which I feel was done for shock value and to try to one up the previous game which handled dark elements like death in a more subtle manner with E-102 Gamma's story.

The moment the franchise starts including more complex issues and try to give realistic consequences, that's the moment it loses it charm and things are less fun just because the developers decided to embrace whatever trend kids were into, like shounen anime, instead of remaining true to what it once was.

Why else do you think they had to bring back Classic Sonic and the tone you see in things like Mania Adventures if not because of how modern Sonic was turned into a mess with no identity due to the constant experimentation and inconsistencies (gameplay, lore, tonal shifts) that resulted in people seeing the franchise like a joke compared to Mario, which can handle dark elements without betraying what it is nor giving into the whims of the audience like Sonic did when it's fans asked for more "mature" stories that where ironically anything but that.

Maybe this is also why the complains of Eggman not being "threatening enough", even when he is pretty much dangerous despite his goofiness (he can cause the planet to shatter or even play with the very fabric of existance without thinking of the consequences due to being so very self-centered in his ambitions) since fans are trying to meassure him next to the likes of supervillains from other franchises where there is a more gratuitious dark tone or who kill for fun and without remorse.

If the cartoony appearance of the franchise is not enough hint of how there is some stuff that would simply feel out of place, then I don't know what is. Maybe people commit the fallacy of thinking that Sonic is going to accomodate to the things they are looking for or that they see in other works like you suggest, and ST was IMO in the wrong for having obligued with a lot of the stuff seen in the so called "dark ages" of the 2000's that marked the bumpy road for this franchise and that contributed to damaging it's image.

[JosepHenry]

I really understand how Eggman shouldn't be taken seriously, yes he is goofy, but I felt like he was a threat even back in the genesis games, Sonic 3K's final boss felt really menacing. 

Can't he be both goofy and menacing? He was always like that.

[Osmium]

1 minute ago, JosepHenry said:

I really understand how Eggman shouldn't be taken seriously, yes he is goofy, but I felt like he was a threat even back in the genesis games, Sonic 3K's final boss felt really menacing. 

Can't he be both goofy and menacing? He was always like that.

He's meant to be taken seriously within the context of the Sonic universe itself and comes off as extremely goofy to viewers looking in from an outside perspective. 

[Salamander]

Exactly.  The characters don't realise they're living in a cartoon, but we do.  This arrangement is not unusual.

[Almar]

6 hours ago, Skull Leader said:

And wouldn't the same apply in that, just because there can be dark elements, some people think that is a free ticket to add things like a girl getting shot by soldiers or an old man being tortured and executed, which I feel was done for shock value and to try to one up the previous game which handled dark elements like death in a more subtle manner with E-102 Gamma's story

Even that's an iffy example since the bird used for Gamma's construction was freed after the robot shell's destruction. For it to count as a character death, you need to seperate Gamma from the bird instead of seeing Gamma as the bird trapped in a metal prison.

6 hours ago, Skull Leader said:

The moment the franchise starts including more complex issues and try to give realistic consequences, that's the moment it loses it charm and things are less fun just because the developers decided to embrace whatever trend kids were into, like shounen anime, instead of remaining true to what it once was.

I'm reminding of Shadowlax's claim that GUN and by extension Eggman's suggested backstory brought in tangents for the series and implications for Eggman's character that haven't been followed up on, so anybody trying to reboot the franchise would do well to to scrap it all.

6 hours ago, Skull Leader said:

Why else do you think they had to bring back Classic Sonic and the tone you see in things like Mania Adventures if not because of how modern Sonic was turned into a mess with no identity due to the constant experimentation and inconsistencies (gameplay, lore, tonal shifts) that resulted in people seeing the franchise like a joke compared to Mario, which can handle dark elements without betraying what it is nor giving into the whims of the audience like Sonic did when it's fans asked for more "mature" stories that where ironically anything but that.

Sonic has failed to find and maintain a sure tone or direction for itself yeah. You can play a Mario game and expect to find tonal loyalty. For Sonic, his handlers have thrown in about whatever they could including the kitchen sink. Classic Sonic even being a character shows that they've resolved to continue fracturing the franchise instead of holding themselves to actually letting Sonic have some direction for his gameplay AND his tone.

6 hours ago, Skull Leader said:

Maybe this is also why the complains of Eggman not being "threatening enough", even when he is pretty much dangerous despite his goofiness (he can cause the planet to shatter or even play with the very fabric of existance without thinking of the consequences due to being so very self-centered in his ambitions) since fans are trying to meassure him next to the likes of supervillains from other franchises where there is a more gratuitious dark tone or who kill for fun and without remorse.

Part of it could be that yeah. I'm sure a lot of it stems from how Eggman, even in his finest hour game (Sonic Forces), has repeatedly been used to ultimately introduce the new villain who may be edgy and share his spotlight. Combined with the suggestion that Eggman's unable to be much of a threat on his own and you have Eggman not being threatening enough.

[JosepHenry]

2 hours ago, FFWF said:

Exactly.  The characters don't realise they're living in a cartoon, but we do.  This arrangement is not unusual.

That's every fictional character ever then.... That just doesn't make sense.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

9 hours ago, Skull Leader said:

And wouldn't the same apply in that, just because there can be dark elements, some people think that is a free ticket to add things like a girl getting shot by soldiers or an old man being tortured and executed, which I feel was done for shock value and to try to one up the previous game which handled dark elements like death in a more subtle manner with E-102 Gamma's story.

No, because Sonic is capable of having such dark moments as much as he can lighthearted ones. A girl getting killed by soldiers and an old man getting executed isn’t out of place of Disney or Dreamworks film who pulls that and more on a frequent basis—Kung Fu Panda 2 was a highly acclaimed, family friendly action comedy film who’s introdution began with attempted genocide of anthropomorphic pandas by peacock (and a legitimately sinister one at that) before moving onto comedic parts, so I have a hard time believing that somehow a girl getting shot off screen and an old man in chains is out of the reach of capability for Sonic. And don’t get me started on the classic moment of Bambi’s mother getting shot off screen.

This on top of the fact that the previous game, SA1, highlighted why Knuckles was the last of his kind after they were slaughtered off screen by Chaos, or that the game’s introduction shows Chaos flooding a street full of civilians, and yet no one since has batted an eye to that on the same frequency as they do with the similarly dark elements in SA2.

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The moment the franchise starts including more complex issues and try to give realistic consequences, that's the moment it loses it charm and things are less fun just because the developers decided to embrace whatever trend kids were into, like shounen anime, instead of remaining true to what it once was.

Why hasn’t Pokemon fallen victim to that then? Because they’ve been doing that for years, and their most recent game has been far darker and more complex with such consequences than previous titles. (To say nothing of their movies)

Heck, Batman’s done it over the course of his existence, going from a simple detective stopping crime to one stopping major acts of terrorism. Much of DC has done it in fact with their animated works (that and their Cinematic Works aren’t so great despite covering the same things). As has the Marvel franchise, which frequently does it with their Cinematic Universe. A number of Disney films have done it even more than previous films with works like Zootopia who have underlying themes of prejudice and bigotry and the consequences of a government playing on those among its populace,  or Inside Out that actually deals with emotions people have in everyday lives (and that’s not getting into their older films). None of them lost their charm, and yet they actually have realistic consequences that people can relate to or make parallels with in real life.

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Why else do you think they had to bring back Classic Sonic and the tone you see in things like Mania Adventures if not because of how modern Sonic was turned into a mess with no identity due to the constant experimentation and inconsistencies (gameplay, lore, tonal shifts) that resulted in people seeing the franchise like a joke compared to Mario, which can handle dark elements without betraying what it is nor giving into the whims of the audience like Sonic did when it's fans asked for more "mature" stories that where ironically anything but that.

I don’t think they had to do anything, because they weren’t under any great obligation to bring Classic Sonic back to begin with given that prior to them doing so they had decent success with Unleashed and Colors. If anything, bringing back Classic Sonic was more of a market move, much the same reason they decided to make the Boon sub-franchise a thing. The main difference being that Mania was more of a success compared to Boom. And one could easily argue that Mania was also made at the whims of faction of fans who dislike everything after 1994 ever since they’ve made their voices heard on the matter, and they let someone take charge on it—one only has to look at how they attempted to push Sonic 4 (and failed) to see that.

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Maybe this is also why the complains of Eggman not being "threatening enough", even when he is pretty much dangerous despite his goofiness (he can cause the planet to shatter or even play with the very fabric of existance without thinking of the consequences due to being so very self-centered in his ambitions) since fans are trying to meassure him next to the likes of supervillains from other franchises where there is a more gratuitious dark tone or who kill for fun and without remorse.

Or maybe they just feel that Eggman doesn’t have enough bite as a villain thanks to them abusing the Monster of the Week formula since it’s success with the Adventures series and are getting tired of him not measuring up to how he should be. That’s more likely why they measure him up to villains from other franchises—they don’t get upstaged every iterative entry to the point Eggman had up until Colors (or arguably Unleashed).

Mind you, they’ve always been consistent in that they don’t want Eggman to be an ineffective villain. Most of the time people like the juxtaposition of Eggman being this silly goofball who is nonetheless a serious enough threat that he’ll destroy half the moon in a show of force or be one of the few in the franchise to make a fool out Super Sonic, so I don’t think they’d have too much of an issue with comedy in his character so long as he still has enough bite as a villain to be a threat—much like the Joker, but without the serial killer aspects. Or maybe a better example would be the ones you brought up earlier, the Shredder and Cobra Commander?

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If the cartoony appearance of the franchise is not enough hint of how there is some stuff that would simply feel out of place, then I don't know what is. Maybe people commit the fallacy of thinking that Sonic is going to accomodate to the things they are looking for or that they see in other works like you suggest, and ST was IMO in the wrong for having obligued with a lot of the stuff seen in the so called "dark ages" of the 2000's that marked the bumpy road for this franchise and that contributed to damaging it's image.

I’d say that’s because ST has a habit of poor implementation of these things than anything on top of the fandom’s tendency to overgeneralize an entire concept that gets brought up. Anytime something does poorly under Sonic Teams influence, people call the entire concept poison, potential be damned.

Like aliens—the Black Arms would have people saying “aliens don’t fit in Sonic,” yet then come the Wisps, who are also aliens, and yet you don’t hear as much bile towards them by comparison (well, outside gameplay mechanics, at least. That’s the main area people get uptight over with them.)

Or if that’s not covnincing enough, there’s the idea of multiple playable characters, which lead to the Sonic-only gameplay we’ve gotten over the past decade until Forces came around, because people were convinced that having any playable character other than Sonic was the main cause of the problems—this despite the fact S3&K all the way back in 1994 showed it can work, and the main issue wasn’t even the characters than it was the mechanics they were given. It was only until Unleashed made only Sonic playable, but threw in the twist that was the werehog did they realize they were wrong.

I could go on really, cuz heck, even Classic Sonic is starting to get heat for being a possible catalyst to Sonic Team deciding to split the franchise into separate entities and widening the divides that fracture the series and it’s fans. But the real matter simply centers around Sonic Team not being all that capable of handling this franchise well in recent years.

It’s that old saying that continues to be said in these discussions: it not the idea, it’s the execution of the idea. That’s why you see fans, for example, giving cheers for when Forces goes in a darker direction without pulling ShTH levels of ridiculous, only for those same fans to be disappointed when it didn’t deliver. Or when Unleashed looked like it would finally break out of the bad mold the franchise was in, only to make a few hiccups with the werehog. Or when fans were excited for Sonic 4 until they saw it in action and thought it wasn’t anywhere near what they wanted (the specifics of which I think it best not to get into for this topic).

None of this really answers my earlier question regarding that image of Gerald tho: how would you style the gravity that scene is supposed to evoke without it feeling out of place if that’s how you feel about it?

[Osmium]

2 hours ago, JosepHenry said:

That's every fictional character ever then.... That just doesn't make sense.

Tom and Jerry are masters of dismemberment and torture, doing unspeakably horrible acts to one another constantly. Within the universe this is the main conflict and the parameters of the universe in question create the required amount of seriousness. They suffer things that would kill a normal organism but always come out of it with a comedic scream or all crusty and black with angry eyes. It is these parameters that make Tom and Jerry a comedy and not a dark survivor work or something. Their fights are extremely intense within the context of the universe but it always comes out funny due to how the universe works. 

Dr. Eggman in the Mega Drive games is a eccentric scientist who powers robots with flowers and rabbits and usually is grinning wildly. This is extremely silly to the audience but in-universe he is a large threat. He wants the whole world to admire him and he'll do whatever it takes to get there. He looks very silly but to Sonic's world at whole he is dangerous. Sonic doesn't take him very seriously either but that's how Sonic rolls. AoStH takes this to the most extreme level with Robotnik trying to destroy cities and all sorts of destructive and murderous plans which in-universe makes him very dangerous and evil but he is portrayed as ten levels of ridiculous because the universe is a humorous one. SatAM is the other way, with Robotnik's plans having explicitly very serious implications since that's how the universe works and so actions we think of as dark are portrayed as dark as that is how the universe works. 

Every piece of fiction has a set number of parameters for how actions are interpreted within it and how the audience interprets them. Dark universes will take what we think of as dark and play them as dark to the audience while cartoons will take what we think of as dark and make it humorous top the audience as it is comedically inclined. The implications of actions varies from world to world both in universe and how the audience will take them. That's why fiction is so varied. 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Not every cartoon a comedy.

People really seem to not get this, believe it ir not.

[Osmium]

7 minutes ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

Not every cartoon a comedy.

People really seem to not get this, believe it ir not.

I used cartoon just as a quick way to distinguish light works from explicitly darker pieces of media. I even mentioned SatAM with it's explicitly dark implications being treated as so. Poor choice of words. 

[JosepHenry]

25 minutes ago, A crocodile said:

Tom and Jerry are masters of dismemberment and torture, doing unspeakably horrible acts to one another constantly. Within the universe this is the main conflict and the parameters of the universe in question create the required amount of seriousness. They suffer things that would kill a normal organism but always come out of it with a comedic scream or all crusty and black with angry eyes. It is these parameters that make Tom and Jerry a comedy and not a dark survivor work or something. Their fights are extremely intense within the context of the universe but it always comes out funny due to how the universe works. 

Dr. Eggman in the Mega Drive games is a eccentric scientist who powers robots with flowers and rabbits and usually is grinning wildly.  is extremely silly to the audience but in-universe he is a large threat. He wants the whole world to admire him and he'll do whatever it takes to get there. He looks very silly but to Sonic's world at whole he is dangerous. Sonic doesn't take him very seriously either but that's how Sonic rolls. AoStH takes this to the most extreme level with Robotnik trying to destroy cities and all sorts of destructive and murderous plans which in-universe makes him very dangerous and evil but he is portrayed as ten levels of ridiculous because the universe is a humorous one. SatAM is the other way, with Robotnik's plans having explicitly very serious implications since that's how the universe works and so actions we think of as dark are portrayed as dark as that is how the universe works. 

Every piece of fiction has a set number of parameters for how actions are interpreted within it and how the audience interprets them. Dark universes will take what we think of as dark and play them as dark to the audience while cartoons will take what we think of as dark and make it humorous top the audience as it is comedically inclined. The implications of actions varies from world to world both in universe and how the audience will take them. That's why fiction is so varied. 

I still disagree, Sonic is not a comedy like Tom and Jerry (nor a dark survivor work), is an action adventure series. yes is silly but devoid of seriousness? No way. Sonic CD's bad future shows that Eggman's world is bleak and without life, and that's not exactly humourous. I don't want to say that Sonic is a serious... series but Eggman is not entirely goofy.  silly and serious can work you know, Eggman is the embodiment of that.