How will Sonic 3 handle this? The important question (S2 Spoilers)

[VO.SUPER]

On 5/15/2022 at 3:34 AM, Scritch the Cat said:

Whoa; is that a joke?!  If not. 4Kids is worse than I thought.

Saturday morning regulations wouldn't allow a child to be openly gunned down or even implied dead. 4kids could get away with killing monsters on Kirby, but that's because they are monsters. Regulations are different for humans. 

[Zadent]

On 5/15/2022 at 3:34 AM, Scritch the Cat said:

Whoa; is that a joke?!  If not. 4Kids is worse than I thought.

No, it’s not what is said, to my remembrance. Gerald says in his recording that she was taken from him. It’s a..less direct way to say they killed her., and the G.U.N. Soldier still has trauma over the moment. If there was another moment in the dub that suggests more clearly they didn’t kill her, then i missed it. But I mean, even in SA2, Gerald has the phrase “all you ungrateful humans who took everything away from me shall feel my loss and despair.” Same word, same context.

edit: the dub is not nearly as bad as it makes it out to be. The only time they actually changed a death to a not death is Molly. She just flies away and is never seen again, they still have that last close up look between her and Shadow, but they cut the explosion, suggesting she flies off to survive and fight elsewhere at that point.

[VO.SUPER]

2 minutes ago, Zadent said:

No, it’s not what is said, to my remembrance. Gerald says in his recording that she was taken from him. It’s a..less direct way to say they killed her., and the G.U.N. Soldier still has trauma over the moment. If there was another moment in the dub that suggests more clearly they didn’t kill her, then i missed it. But I mean, even in SA2, Gerald has the phrase “all you ungrateful humans who took everything away from me shall feel my loss and despair.” Same word, same context.

I mean, Mr Schmidt says, "They took her away and we found nothing else." 

 

Of course, if you want to be morbid. You could say they took her corpse away. 

[Zadent]

22 minutes ago, VO.SUPER said:

I mean, Mr Schmidt says, "They took her away and we found nothing else." 

 

Of course, if you want to be morbid. You could say they took her corpse away. 

Going to that specific episode, things of note in the commentary.

- the reporter said that Schmidt was now the only survivor and that everyone else was “lost”, saying it while getting emotional, and owing it to all the innocent people. Unless they went for a hike and couldn’t find their way back, that sounds akin to me like something tragic happened there beyond “oh, we closed the facility, sent everyone home.”

- in the flashback, he has his gun trained on her telling her not pull the level. She does, and it cuts to the present and him talking sadly about how she was so young and he’d never forget her face. That is very suggestive of he did shoot, even with the “they took her away.” It’s not overt, but the details are still there. Plus, the idea of “well where is she” if it was meant that they just put her somewhere else. I..honestly don’t see any other read making sense of context of Schmidt’s conversation.

edit: like, I’m sorry, it feels like those moments of “let’s take this at face value.” I’m still reeling at how people take Shadow’s “like taking candy from a baby” line in his game as “he likes taking candy” or the “we’re on our way to the ARK, so I guess that means we’re going too” as “when you’re going somewhere so you guess you’re going there too” when it’s “the aliens are going to space. We’re going to the ARK, so I guess that means we’re going to space too.” The context of the scene speaks just as much volumes as the words spoken, and even those can point to “yeah, I ended up shooting her.”

[VO.SUPER]

Part of it is also a lot of bad blood towards 4kids during the early 2000s and their practices. So exaggerating their censorship practices is pretty regular around Sonic communities. I myself forgot about the reporter scene. 

[Zadent]

That could be a factor. If they messed up enough localizations, I can see the perspectives. it might’ve helped me that I had watched it recently and was..actually fairly unaware of most other 4kids stuff or just forgot.

[Mangoaxe5]

13 hours ago, batson said:

It's dumb if we can show things in childrens video games that we can't show in childrens movies.

Especially since most of the people who watch Sonic X have already played Sonic Adventure 2, and know that Maria died.

Little kids are not special little snowflakes who need to be protected from the concept of death.

[Zadent]

To be fair, the game didn’t actually show it either. They talked about it. She’s leaning on the console, but we never actually see the shot or the death, to my knowledge, and it’s the dialogue that confirms that she did die. From what Jeff and the screenwriter have said about Shadow, I’m sure they’ll handle that properly. If anything, I feel Maria might get aged up a bit? I forget what age she was supposed to be at the time.

21 hours ago, VO.SUPER said:

Part of it is also a lot of bad blood towards 4kids during the early 2000s and their practices. So exaggerating their censorship practices is pretty regular around Sonic communities. I myself forgot about the reporter scene. 

I totally forgot, and just remembered now that when Shadow is flashing back in the finale of that arc to Maria’s true wish, she’s lying on the floor as Shadow is in the pod. There’s a bit of continuity error as it’s a different room than when the soldier found her, but either they ran or they used that room in the finale because it was the room in SA2. I dunno.

[The Deleter]

Just do SA2 one-to-one. A frantic, fragmented memory (with no visible guns or wounds) that introduces the tragedy from the drop as his motive - then allowing the audience to become attached to Maria afterwards with the fonder memories, after establishing and "skipping past" the trauma. If kids had to care about Maria before she got shot, it would definitely be too much, but since it's the other way around it works perfectly for kids, as they're unlikely to fully understand what happened at first.

The fact that people complain about its portrayal in SA2 of all things is dumb because of that. I can buy that people view the addition to the canon as a step too far beyond the series' established identity and stakes, but it's never been too much for kids, and it's never been too much for ratings. I have more doubt that GUN itself will be allowed to be portrayed in a negative light comparatively, considering they're basically the US government now and how the US government typically wants itself to be portrayed in hollywood movies.

I'd accept an explosion death but it really cannot be understated how well the "Worst of humanity, best of humanity" dichotomy works for Shadow as a villain and then hero. Give the kids their mini-Meruem and leave them in peace dammit.