Humans in Sonic

[Yoshman]

The place of humans in certain non-human centric franchises has generally been a subject of debates among fandoms. Could the same be said for Sonic?

What's your take on human inclusion in Sonic's world? Should Sonic live on Earth or should we settle with Eggman as the only human character?

Personally, I've always felt humans other than Eggman felt out of place, or, rather, that Sonic felt out of place among humans and worked better alongside his fellow animals. My first exposure to Sonic were Sonic SatAM and Underground, where Robotnik ruled over animals and Sonic and his furry friends fought back against him. It was pretty fitting since Robotnik was originally meant to embody the danger of industrialization and pollution over nature, which made him the perfect antagonist for an animal hero like Sonic.

Then there was Sonic X, and you could say it was always not the best inclusion of humans. Not all of them were bad per say, some were certainly entertaining, but elements like Chris tended to bring the show down. I found the humans "tolerable" (not trying to sound mean) when recently playing SA and SA2, and I enjoyed the movie a lot (particularly Tom), but my opinion remains that Sonic and his fantastic character belong more on planet Mobius in Sonic's world than on Earth. Still, despite my reservations, humans have played an important role of Sonic's franchise on occasions and they should not be omitted. I'm no fan of government conspiracies in Sonic, but I can hardly imagine Shadow's character working without Maria and Gerard Robotnik.

I guess it's a matter of execution, in the end, like most things.

[King Conne]

Well, isn't Witchkart a human too?!...

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

This franchise started with a man and an animal. I see no reason why humans shouldn’t be allowed.

Personally, I preferred the style done in Unleashed, their Pixar-ish designs meshed well with Sonic standing beside them. And each had various heights and sizes just like the animal characters.

Seeing more of that and having the animals blend with them in cities like Station Square and the likes would make it seem more normal that there’s a blue hedgehog running around the world.

That said, I’m not entirely against portrayals in movies and shows like Sonic X, as they explain why Sonic is more an outlier, but my preferences tend toward a more unified setting that make Sonic seem more part of the world he lives in as opposed to being more alien to it, and I just feel that same standard should apply to humans too.

[Yoshman]

10 minutes ago, King Conne said:

Well, isn't Witchkart a human too?!...

That's some pretty obscure territory. Tbh, there are better concepts for new villains than generic witch.

[Speedi]

I like humans in Sonic as long as it's clear anthros are standard to their world and they coexist in the same society. Basically what Archie was doing in post genesis wave, I guess. My biggest problem with the Adventure era humans is how segmented their two species are, like Sonic and his friends are just occasionally intruding on a society completely alien to them and it always felt kinda off to me. On an aesthetic note. I'd rather they be stylized and cartoony as long as it's not overboard with the deformation like Unleashed. Sonic X is a good template for what I mean but they don't need to be that anime inspired lol.

[Dr. Mechano]

3 hours ago, Yoshman said:

Personally, I've always felt humans other than Eggman felt out of place, or, rather, that Sonic felt out of place among humans and worked better alongside his fellow animals. My first exposure to Sonic were Sonic SatAM and Underground, where Robotnik ruled over animals and Sonic and his furry friends fought back against him. It was pretty fitting since Robotnik was originally meant to embody the danger of industrialization and pollution over nature, which made him the perfect antagonist for an animal hero like Sonic.

Yeah, but as the early western Sonic cartoons go, there was also AoStH, which ended up remarkably close to the 00s-era games in a lot of ways. AoStH Mobius was populated pretty evenly by both humans and anthropomorphic animals (as well as a fair few creatures who weren't really either), and I honestly loved the wacky variety it had.

Sonic has friends and allies who were animals, humans, robots, weird aliens, etc. It never really felt like there was any animosity between the species; Just that Robotnik wanted to conquer everyone, and the planet pretty universally agreed that was a bad thing.

Obviously, while I'm not saying the games should be as cartoony and out-there as AoStH was, but I do think its even-handed mix of animal and human populations was neat, and it's something I'd like to see the games follow.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

31 minutes ago, Dr. Mechano said:

Sonic has friends and allies who were animals, humans, robots, weird aliens, etc.

Hot dog people. You can’t get any weirder than that in this franchise.

[Diogenes]

I've never really had a problem with humans existing in Sonic (and it'd be hard to justify if I did, given Eggman), but I have had trouble trying to figure out what it means to have both humans and animals in this series. The distinction just doesn't seem to have a deliberate purpose to it, at least not past the first few games. The animal characters have just ended up being funny-shaped humans; that he's Sonic "the Hedgehog" is practically vestigial at this point. And considering the series pretty quickly built up a cast of "humanimals" as compared to the singular human antagonist, you could make an argument that humans would be redundant and unnecessary, that they should keep the focus on the animal characters acting as humans, and just accept Eggman as a weird outlier.

But that doesn't sit right with me. Regardless of how the series minimized it, it all started with an animal and a man. Turning the animals into funny-shaped humans feels like missing the point. That's not to say I want the animal characters going feral or anything; human-like elements are too integral to the characters to remove them completely. But I think they should strike more of a balance, and find some way for the difference between humans and animals to mean something. So to swerve back to the main subject of the thread, I think maybe humans aren't just acceptable but necessary, to be what the animal characters aren't.

[Wraith]

I've honestly never given it much thought, and I never thought it was worth much thought. This story started with an animal and a man and it turned out there were more of both species than we thought. 

Some good points are being made in this thread though. It might be better to draw some line in the sand between the humans and the animals since that's the core conflict of the series.

[Domino]

To their credit, the anthro animal characters do possess abilities and characteristics derived from their real-world species. Sonic curls into a ball, Knuckles digs, Ray glides, etc. So we do have some clear reminders that these characters aren't just humans in animal suits.

Though if you mean societally, that's trickier. The franchise has loads upon loads of examples of human civilization, but the overall anthro animal population has always looked pretty sparse in comparison (until recently). One of the few (if not only) times we saw a full-on animal-populated society prior to Forces was the ancient echidna city in Sonic Adventure. Aside from that, any time we saw an animal character's home, it was either in a majority-human city or a house in the middle of nowhere. Despite the main cast being nearly all animal people, it once really seemed like humans were the "main" species in the world of Sonic. And, hey, there's nothing really wrong with that setup. Having the animal people be rarer does lend itself to a dynamic that makes the two demographics feel less interchangeable.

 

But anyway, how much do we really need to delineate the differences between the humans and animal people? Anthropomorphic animals have coexisted with humans in media for ages without much head-scratching on the audience's part. The Wind in the Willows was doing it well over 100 years ago.

[Dr. Mechano]

48 minutes ago, Domino said:

To their credit, the anthro animal characters do possess abilities and characteristics derived from their real-world species. Sonic curls into a ball, Knuckles digs, Ray glides, etc. So we do have some clear reminders that these characters aren't just humans in animal suits.

Though to be fair, Tails and Knuckles can curl into a ball too. The spin attack and spindash went from a "hedgehog" ability to a standard series-wide move pretty quickly.

This culminates in an odd situation where in Sonic Advance, a fox and an echidna can curl into a ball but Amy - another hedgehog - can't. Somethingsomething about Amy living in Station Square and being more "culturally human" than the other animals and not having learned to tap into her natural hedgehog abilities.

[Plumbers_Helper]

32 minutes ago, Dr. Mechano said:

This culminates in an odd situation where in Sonic Advance, a fox and an echidna can curl into a ball but Amy - another hedgehog - can't. Somethingsomething about Amy living in Station Square and being more "culturally human" than the other animals and not having learned to tap into her natural hedgehog abilities.

Actually, Amy does curl into a ball in Sonic Advance (At 15:00)- she just never does it while jumping. She curls into a ball while jumping in the sequels so she must be choosing not to do so in that game deliberately.

[Eurisko]

Said it before and I'll say it again with the exception of the movie Humans in the games should be kept at arms length and comical like they are in Unleashed. 

The games where they have tried to include them in a very serious way like SA2, '06 and Shadow The Hedgehog just comes off as absolute cringe.

[VO.SUPER]

I'm fine with humans, but I hated the overly human direction of the SA-Unleashed Era. It was so stupid to me that Sonic and friends seemed to be the only animal people. It was just awkward. 

I also prefer the unleashed style humans because they feel like they fit with the cast stylistically. Though the movie definitely showed me that realistic humans can sort of work. But Sonic had to be redesigned around them. 

[Guest]

17 hours ago, Eurisko said:

SA2

The only ones really in the story were Eggman's relatives though. Unless you count the 5 seconds they showed the President. I don't see a problem with that.

[UberHoax]

Honestly? I think they can be a great addition to the series!

But, truth be told, humans have been poorly introduced since Sonic Adventure.

On the other hand, SEGA / Sonic Team should drop the idea of portraying humans realistically.

[GOAT]

Have you guys ever actually read and followed the human npcs dialogue from Sonic Adventure? There is actually a little substance there behind the scenes. Kinda cool looking back. It's in order with the main story too. 

[Meta77]

I enjoy humans in sonics world. Long as they are well written and do not look like those abominations in unleashed.

[VO.SUPER]

12 hours ago, GOAT said:

Have you guys ever actually read and followed the human npcs dialogue from Sonic Adventure? There is actually a little substance there behind the scenes. Kinda cool looking back. It's in order with the main story too. 

There's a surprising amount of substance in the NPC dialogue in Adventure. I think the effort was kinda wasted though. Most people outright ignore that stuff outside of a small subset of Sonic fans. 

And again, them ALL being humans I think was a turn off for people wanting to interact with the NPCs. Its like making everything much more mundane in a way that would be fine for an RPG but a level by level platformer like Sonic is a little unnecessary. 

[azoo]

Humans are 100% fine. It would’ve been nice to have more anthros than just the main characters involved in human spaces, but I think a lot of that had to do with Naka’s idea that humans lived on the mass continents while anthros lived on islands.

It’s never well communicated in continuity, but I think it’s a neat idea that doesn’t contradict anything the series has done, and I far prefer it to Iizuka’s answer (two worlds).

[VO.SUPER]

31 minutes ago, azoo said:

Humans are 100% fine. It would’ve been nice to have more anthros than just the main characters involved in human spaces, but I think a lot of that had to do with Naka’s idea that humans lived on the mass continents while anthros lived on islands.

It’s never well communicated in continuity, but I think it’s a neat idea that doesn’t contradict anything the series has done, and I far prefer it to Iizuka’s answer (two worlds).

I feel in an RPG starring human characters it would be more appropriate because in RPGs its the mundane (humans) meeting the weird (animal/monster people) but for Sonic its the weird meeting the mundane and I can't see where the appeal in that is in having them so segregated like that. 

Ian Flynn Archie did this so well by just having humans and animal people walking about together. The weirdness just feels more like a cool new normal for this world. But having Sonic and co just talking to a bunch of humans who hardly comment about the animal people they are talking to is just really off-putting and boring if you ask me. 

[Mountaindewandsprite]

I don't see why it's such a problem. Just do like the Archie comics did where humans and anthros coexist.

[Blacklightning]

8 hours ago, VisionaryofSUPER said:

There's a surprising amount of substance in the NPC dialogue in Adventure. I think the effort was kinda wasted though. Most people outright ignore that stuff outside of a small subset of Sonic fans.

Having recently replayed SA1, allow me to float an alternate reason for that - it's not necessarily just because fans want to hurry up and get over the fluff so they can get to the meat of the game, but also because SA1's absurd jank makes intentionally interacting with anyone a massive pain in the ass. Not only do you have to be in a very specific position and facing to trigger dialogue in the first place, but it's triggered with the same button that most characters in the roster use to attack. Best case, people start feeling like assholes for punching people just for trying to get a word out of them and start abstaining out of respect, and worst case you're playing as Sonic and zip to the opposite side of the map every time you miss because you just triggered a spindash, so they start abstaining out of frustration instead.

I'm sure the stronger designs and better written dialogue are still key reasons why a lot of people prefer Unleashed's NPCs instead, but I have little doubt that the quality of life improvements that Unleashed brought to hubs was itself a huge factor that a lot of people have taken for granted. I do wish it didn't come at the cost of a nerfed moveset whenever you're in a hub area with NPCs in it, but I also recognize it's kind of a necessary evil until some madman figures out how to make that shit work without compromise somehow.

[Domino]

Just make a button prompt appear over the NPC's head when you're in the right position to talk to them. That way, the player doesn't have to wonder what's going to happen when they press the button.