consider a quality character to have one or more of the following things:
1) Decent characters who you can relate to.
2) As this is a children's show, characters who can be funny, yet sometimes display other emotions.
3) Having a theme song that doesn't make me want to throw my TV remote at the TV.
4) Good, clever storylines. If you can't accomplish that, I'll take insane up the wazoo (i.e. Ren and Stimpy).
5) Passable art and animation.
SatAM Sonic only contains #2 and #5 of the things I listed above.
First of all, that all is subject more to personal preference than anything else. If I had to pick numbers on what SatAM contains, I'd say 1, 2, 3 and 4 (I'm not fond of the often-times wonky animation seen in American shows. It may be smoother than anime, but it bugs me with how disproportionate everything can get).
I was a fan of the video games. So when I see Sonic on the screen running around in a dark, depressing robot city of the Hilter-esque Robotnik, who wants nothing more than to track down animals and turn them into evil robots for his own selfish purposes, I think to myself: "This is pretty goddamn depressing and dark for a children's show"
SatAM was aimed at the 12-14 crowd as I recall. AoStH was aimed at "kids" as the traditional defenition recalls (Pre-teens). I've heard many reasons for this, such as trying to cover the breadth of the market or something; but I liked the fact that SatAM was so dark. This was before me or anybody ever knew that Robotnik (as the games saw him) was supposed to be a outrageously insane mad doctor - and the thought of Robotnik being portrayed as "Cyber Hitler" made you fear him. He was the bad guy, you know? The best enemies, in my opinion, are the ones the show actually makes you hate, and not in a "love to hate" sense either.
To me, it brought a sense of reality to the whole thing. The characters in the games could not talk, could not even really express any emotions on what was happening. SatAM filled that void for me. The games always mentioned Sonic's "animal friends", but once they bounced off screen you never saw them again: SatAM made them essential to the plot, with full speaking rolls.
And during the few times an episode where it wasn't depressing or filled with angst, the jokes were cheesy and unfunny. Sonic got annoying very quickly, not to mention being an overconfident jerk. Video game Sonic, even back in the 16-bit games, helped out people because he was a nice guy. And he did it all by himself, along with assisstance from Tails.
According to the American manuals, yes. But it's well established that those are pieces of shit. ("omg! now tails was spinning just liek sonic!111") Sonic's always been an overconfident jerk since then. See: Sonic OVA, Sonic X, Sonic Adventure,
et al. And I prefer that; "generic cut-and-paste hero Sonic" is so boring - you could replace him for Captain America or Superman or anyone and it'd be the same sickenly sweet, overbearingly cliche action hero personality. Yawn.
In the SatAM universe, though, Sonic can't do ANYTHING by himself without a ring or back up, and everyime he does try to do something by himself, he fails. He wouldn't even bother to help out anyway if he wasn't (1) bored out of his skull living in a forest, and (2) trying to impress a whiny, angry, naked chipmunk princess named Sally.
He.. couldn't? 75% of the time Sonic, as I recall, did most of the heavy-action stuff. Zipping around, trashing Swatbots, giving Sally or Rotor or whoever time to do the brainy stuff: Cracking locks, hacking databases, etc. You really expect Sonic to stand around with a computer in his hand waiting for some data to decrypt? That's retarded.
His friends aren't much better: Rotor was a tool guy who was rarely, if ever, helpful, Antoine was annoying and even more stuck up than Sally, Bunny was never used enough, and Tails...well, he's barely there. And he's weak-ass and useless.
And here you contradict yourself: Sonic can't do anything on his own, yet everybody he works with never does anything useful? Doesn't that constitute that Sonic usually does all the work?
You mean, besides lame characters you can't care about? How about bad art and animation? Using the same five backgrounds over and over and over again, with a frame rate only slightly better than AoStH.
Another contradiction: On your list of things SatAM had, you mentioned it had passable art and animation... Now it doesn't? Make up your mind!
And don't forget the bad writing. Jokes fall flat, Sonic's quips are annoying really quickly, and stories are dragged out way too long just to fit the 23 minute requirment of the episodes (and don't get me started on the 11 minute episodes in season two. Ugh). Plus, nothing is ever revealed. What is Robotnik's reason for being evil? Who the hell is Snively? Why is Robotnik want to turn all animals into robots, and for what purpose?
You honestly were thinking about this stuff at 10 years old? (that's the age I was when SatAM aired in 1993-1994) You have to realize, most shows of this day and age never really said why it's badguys were bad. Shredder, from TMNT, for instance. Yeah, the comics said why he wanted to kill Hamato Yoshi, but did the Cartoon? No way. He was just "evil". And hey, look! Archie filled out Robotnik's backstory (before they killed him off and the comic took a nosedive).
SegaSonic is quality. Archie Sonic is NOT. Archie likes to take characters, take them out of character, thrown in their own lame characters (Sally, Rotor, Antoine, crap villains after issue 50), and call it official. We're supposed to believe in the crap of Sonic and Sally, that Knuckles isn't the last of his species (and that he can turn green), that Robotnik is akin to Hitler, and that Shadow is still alive because he was abducted by aliens.
I don't see a better explanation for Shadow's existance besides "Hey, look! Shadow Clones! What're they here for? Nobody knows! Let's destroy them!" I mean, seriously, what the hell? That's SegaSonic Qualityâ„¢ alright! Lame Villans I'll give you - but when you have to create a monthly comic series, you start to run out of options. Superman, Spiderman, Flash - all have had their fair share of dumbass villans over the years. I bet if Sonicteam was releasing a new Sonic game every month we'd start to see the same kind of retarded villans that Archie employs to destroy the Freedom Fighters.
It's like bad fanfiction in comic book form, and it even contains the same amount of grammar errors and plot holes of an early draft of a fanfic. Most of the people in this forum could be a more clever, more fun comic book involving Sonic than anyone from Archie. ANYONE.
And I'm not even getting into the art of the comic, which ranges from good to god-awful, sometimes in the same issue.
Heh heh...green Knuckles. What were Archie smoking when they thought of that? What's next, purple Tails?
I don't hate Archie Sonic just because it's unloyal the the games and makes shit up on the fly (even though that's partially why I hate it)...I hate it because it sucks in general. And I bet you NO ONE would read the Archie comics of Sonic if they didn't use the Sonic license and made up their own characters from day one.
Archie != (does not equal) SatAM. Once Issue 50 hit, Archie decided their fate and stopped mooching off old SatAM plots. Ken Penders is a moron, and having an inept editor and a roulette of 10-or-something pencillers rotated in and out can explain the terrible artwork. The Comic is supposedly in repair mode right now, with a new editor who sounds like he knows what he's doing, but only time will tell.
