Who is Amy Rose really supposed to be?

[Scape]

Is Amy supposed to be an ordinary civilian or a hero on par with Sonic, Tails and Knuckles? Is she a running gag or is she Player 4? What is the core entity? Where was the failure point, before the series fully stopped caring about anyone besides Sonic?

For transparency's sake, I historically believed I liked Amy. But after falling in and out of the fandom and hearing stories about other people wrestling with their own disillusionment, I've come to the conclusion that I like certain things that I think the character represents. I like the sincerity and unironic optimism. I like how her feelings towards Sonic can range from excitement and admiration to genuine frustration. (Sound familiar?) I like how her combat style pays homage to the slapstick cartoons that partly inspired Sonic's creation. So it bothered me that she would be excluded from the S3&K trio. But maybe that's okay.

But is it, though? Yes, she's less vital than the trio but who cares? Not every character will be appropriate for every story.

Should she be retired permanently? Why? That won't make the games better. Sonic Colors Ultimate would still cause seizures. Because Blaze is a better role model for girls? Emotionally repressed and dedicated to a duty that makes it difficult for her to even appear? She's our replacement?

If being a Sonic fan shouldn't be so complicated, then please make it make sense. What is Amy supposed to be? What should be there and what shouldn't be there? 

[MetalSkulkBane]

She was made the former, now she must be the latter. And that's kinda her problem.

("Problem" being only as big as you make it. Some would argue that Flynn wrote her for decade just fine.)

I suspect that 3 things happened that forced her into a main role
- seniority
- need for female representation
- Sonic 06 an "Sonic has too many characters" trend.

So after years of putting her in secondary roles, behind Ultimate Life Form, Time Travelers and Sol Princesses, now Sega says that girl with big hammer and a crush is totally a big deal. And I'm sure she's a nice girl, but that's like making Frozen movie where whole plot centers around Anna.

But like I said above, when it ACTUALLY becomes a problem? IDK. I remember way back in Archie's Worlds Collide that "Rose Woman" was hyped as much bigger treat than Shadow Man, Blaze Man etc. That made me roll my eyes. But that's pretty petty complain.

[TailsGotTrolled]

I'm voting "hero on par with sonic tails and knuckles."  Loops, rail grinding and all.

If you gave her all the different abilities shes had in various games and make her as fast as the main 3 she could be a pretty fun character, at least in the modern-style games.

[Wraith]

She's both. She's largely a joke character but her surprising strength and inexplicable superpowers are part of the joke. If you let her guard down, she'll mess you up. You're not supposed to read much deeper into it than that.

Her being a role model for girls was always a dumb point to make because there's not one male Sonic character that has to be a role model for boys. There are a lot of male characters, and they all have positive attributes to aspire toward and negative attributes that they get punished for indulging in. Amy should be allowed the same nuance. If Sega are afraid she's not representing the entire spectrum of womanhood very well on her own there's an obvious solution to that problem.

[KnuxDLX]

Amy so far has just been a seriously nerfed Sonic with one OP hammer. She has a lot of the same humor, sarcasm, and cockiness as Sonic yet somehow occasionally finds herself all but helpless. 
 

However, Amy Rose is actually one of the most popularly referenced Sonic characters, possibly only behind Sonic and Tails. There is inexplicable hype for her that kind of outsizes her actual role in the universe, which has been severely underutilized this past decade. She’s Sonic’s girl with grits and goals. She’s somehow always connected to what’s going on and always has her place in the larger story. She’s just been a bit MIA…

 

I think the movies have a real chance to properly reintroduce her into the series along with practically every other character. 

[KnuxDLX]

So I used Google Trends to compare the popularity of Amy, Tails, Knuckles, and Eggman, and I was not-so-surprised to find that Amy is in fact about as popular as the rest of the gang.

 

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today 5-y&geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F01h4t2,%2Fm%2F01mx1l,%2Fm%2F015dxd,%2Fm%2F01rk30

 

edit 2: looking at the 2004-present graph actually suggests that Amy is (or at least was) the second most popular character out of the whole series. Am I forgetting Shadow, would he be more popular? I don’t know much about how the searches are grouped here but playing around with different terms gives similar results.

Edited February 6, 2022 by KnuxDLX

[Coz483]

Amy is a very inconsistent character, I don't think Sonic Team has a good idea of who she's supposed to be. I mean Amy has practically changed every game or has had different levels of extremes every game.

[TailsGotTrolled]

Yeah I dont know how many supporting characters are going to appear in frontiers (doesn't sound like many based on the setting) but its going to be interesting to see what Ian does with them in the games.