Media Essays: The Top Recent Sonic Characters

Written by The Wandering Fox

Freddy: At last he’s doing a non Doctor Who essay.

Teddy: Maybe he’s gonna get more views on this?

Freddy: Well we’ll see once this goes up.

That we shall guys. Hello it is me, The Wandering Fox. You can look at the title and assume instantly what I’m talking of but let me give you some extra context.

Sonic the Hedgehog has been going for up to thirty five years (well next month) and in those years we’ve had hundreds of characters come along to the franchise, some of whom stuck around, others have faded into obscurity or are exiled under ownership of other creators. While we’ve had a new character every few years there’s been a recent swarm of new characters that have taken the Sonic fandom into a whole new era of debates, fan art, fanfic and intrigue. Not all of them have taken to the characters and have given their reasons, which I can respect. For this list I will go over what I like or at least find interesting about these new characters, where can they go and what can they improve on?

Freddy: Oh? So it’s not so biased?

No, not really. I’ll always love Tails, even if I feel they kinda mucked him about even in Frontiers, but this list isn’t Tails Levels of praise. There’s some characters who are on the list whom I find interesting.

Teddy: Well who will you start with? Oh and is it in any order?

No, not in any particular order. I think I should start with maybe the most interesting and debated character to appear in Sonic.

Sage

Yeah, Eggman’s AI daughter who debuted in Frontiers, she’s left a bit of an interesting impact on the fandom. Some have taken to her and feel she’s a good addition to the franchise and potentially bring a new side to Eggman. Others feel she’s a bit too bland and doesn’t fit within Sonic and the inflow of Eggdad art and fan fiction or headcanons has done little to impress them.

With me I’m kinda in the middle with Sage. I think she is interesting to be brought in as a “daughter” figure for Eggman and I like she starts to overcome her logical side with emotion, as well as her interactions with those like Tails and Silver that gives more to her outside of being constrained to Eggman, I can’t help but feel she’s a bit of a slippery character SEGA and Flynn haven’t gotten a grasp of. You see, in Frontiers we’re mostly told but not shown Sage’s views on Eggman and vice versa, which doesn’t help as the most we have of her and Eggman is him complaining to her of being trapped in Cyber Space and giving her some little praise here and there, as well as Eggman’s observations being constrained to his Egg Memos, we don’t get a proper sense of their relationship hence his “Dear daughter” comment is a bit hollow. That and while we see Sage is dedicated to protecting Eggman from the End, the most of her development in perceiving him as her father is how she comes to see Orbot and Cubot as her brothers while she comes to respect Sonic and Tails greatly and reflects on her relationship with Eggman, it just feels a bit empty. It’s like they wanted to give us more but ran out of money to do this.

Sage’s character arc of respecting Sonic and Tails feels quite isolated to Frontiers as she’s now helping her dad take over the world and trying to kill Sonic, be it Murder of Sonic, to her trapping Vector with Sonic in Chaotix Casefiles, it feels the connectivity is rather loose and not well thought out. I’m not saying she should be friends with Sonic but at least do a more in depth exploration into her character. You can’t have her respect Tails, be abrasive with Silver or question her connection to Shadow without doing some hard work. With Flynn there as well he does what he does: takes it into a whole other vision than SEGA. I just wish he would stop acting like he’s a restrained creative who’s “talent” is held at gunpoint by SEGA and just do as he’s told and find common ground with them, especially if it’s a new character like Sage. Especially how Flynn said “Sage will make Eggman worse”. Worse than what exactly? The guy cracked the bloody planet open in Unleashed and killed thousands of people in Forces, mate! So far Eggman is still Eggman.

However, while I have my issues with Sage and how SEGA and Flynn are currently handling her, I do at least like some things they have introduced, be it her own sense of humour which is so dry it baffles Vector or how she has her own overconfidence that when it backfires she starts to panic. In her debut in IDW after Starline takes control of Metal Sonic and nearly infects Sage who’s now cut out from the Eggnet she starts to panic after spending a few issues being quite confident about herself.

It’s a nice character flaw that forces her to be humbled and accept that she needs help which could be worked on in a later game. The fact she even thinks of what her connection to Shadow is leaves it open to maybe exploring a deeper side to her character as she wonders how strong family is and what it means to love and believe. Again, she’s interesting. Of course for all we know SEGA and Flynn could really screw the pooch with her in their next big game, but for the moment I’m interested in where they go. If they can work on the positives i presented, like her overconfidence being a flaw, her relationship with Shadow, even pitting her with Tails to explore her respect for him, it could work, while explore where to improve with her like her relationship with Eggman. While he’s “proud” of her, this is the same guy who didn’t give a toss about Maria dying. They need to work on that.

But hopefully they can sort it out with Sage.

For the next we have:

Tangle the Lemur

I was a bit “eh” with Tangle at first but after she got a voice in Casefiles I came to like her a lot more. Tangle debuted in IDW, meeting Sonic after the events of Sonic Forces while keeping her village safe from a Badnik takeover. I at first didn’t really like her as according to Flynn who felt no female Sonic character fit the “kick butt action girl” after Blaze (ROUGE SAYS HELLO AS DOES AMY), it just seemed like she was inserted in there to boost his ego. However, I will say I came to like her as thanks to her voice you can easily imagine her fitting within the games. You add that with her cheerful persona and she stood out from the more grimmer Archie Sonic universe before IDW, she was a nice standout from Flynn’s other creations. Even then they do go a bit further with her character by having us see she tries to overcorrect a few things or even does something she thought was right to do, like restarting the Diamond Cutters to make Whisper happy but didn’t ask Whisper’s approval, to her throwing herself into the fight against Mimic and nearly dying in the process. Or how after she gets infected she gives Sonic a boost of confidence before she goes to hold back the Zombots to let her friends escape.

She can make mistakes which is good, which helps her character a bit more, they need to try and work her on from repeating those mistakes.

The girl has my sympathies as well for having to cope with Lanolin. No, we don’t hate her because she’s a girl, we hate her because she’s a horrible person who was verbally and physically abusive to Tangle and Whisper, lost her temper repeatedly, and endangered multiple lives trying to catch Sonic, which forced Tangle to clean up after her bloody mess and even after this Lanolin is soft blaming Tangle and Whisper for everything going wrong. If you’re gonna try to use the trauma excuse, then why is Lanolin here? She shouldn’t be in charge, she should be working on her issues. I mean, look at how scared Tangle was here.

Seriously, this lemur went out with a smile against the Zombots and all that bravery and hope was crushed out by a bloody sheep. It’s no wonder I come to like her more because I can’t stand seeing people being bullied. But the fact here we see Tangle still having faith in Sonic shows she’s incredibly faithful to him and that she won’t jump to conclusions like Lanolin does. Tangle might be a bit aloof at times but she’s got a good heart.

The voice she was given in Casefiles gives you a bit of warmth that truly brought a smile to your face. The only issue I would say with Tangle is try and not have her and Whisper together too much. I like them, but they need to broaden their friend space. Here’s to Tangle being treated better and hopefully gets away from Lanolin and has more turnouts in other Sonic works.

We have next.

Whisper the Wolf

Whisper was another standout of IDW’s, from her quiet nature to being a badass with her Wispon gun and having a friendship with her Wisps as well as a dark past, she is a lovable wolf. Whisper is a legend, having battled alone in Sonic Forces and the last survivor of the Diamond Cutters, she had a pretty good story arc of opening up bit by bit to others with Tangle being who she was accustomed to the most out of everybody. What I like about Whisper’s story is that it’s dark but not dark to Archie Sonic standards, you get the betrayal of Mimic and the non graphic end of the Diamond Cutters at the hands of the Shadow Androids, it’s just done well enough for you to have it work in the games universe.

Whisper comes with her flaws as she doesn’t take well to her friends’ being in danger and will go to a lot of means to keep them safe, even if it means keeping Tangle out of her fight with Mimic. But with this comes her being more open as the series goes on, showing she is incredibly good at battle coordination that is helpful in a fight, while showing incredibly good instinct and faith in her friends like managing to shoot Infinite who was disguised as Tangle. Like that was just enough for you to see Whisper is no fool, having lived with Mimic for a while was helpful to her. Having a voice for Whisper only helped her even more as she sounds appropriately quiet with her voice but still has this combo of mystery and cuteness to her.

The only thing I wished for Whisper was her not losing to Surge. I mean, Surge tripped over a flipping bolt and couldn’t defeat Sonic, it just felt cheap to have her defeat Whisper of everybody. And Whisper IMO would’ve decked Lanolin for her abuse. No way was the Whisper we know gonna take that laying back.

Other than that, Whisper is a cute addition to the Sonic universe and has her own corner of the franchise you can do lots of work in.

Well, now we move onto.

Trip the Sungazer Lizard

Please note I will not include the Knuckles IDW special in this, that was more proof Flynn doesn’t get it. Trip “trips” because of her armour, mate!

Trip was a new character introduced in Sonic Superstars. There was a lot of intrigue to her character as we saw her in her armour mostly with no idea of what she was or what she was doing working with Eggman and Fang. It was nice to find out ourselves as we played the game or watch the gameplay online, as well as the pre-game animation that showed us clearly, with no dialogue, Trip was being forced into working for Eggman and Nack, the poor girl tried to stop them by herself but was outmatched and outnumbered, hence she had no choice but to help them around the island and set up traps for Sonic and friends. Thanks to her clunky armour, Trip kept tripping up and made mistakes that got Nack in trouble that left her on the receiving end of his abuse until finally Trip fell into her own trap where you saw this dear little girl cry her heart out. You gotta feel bad for her, a strange man and a jerboa come to your home, make her do all kinds of things to her home she never wanted and there she is being abused and left at the bottom of a pit. You’d be like that. But all it takes is a bit of kindness to get you back up to find hope again. Amy gave her that strength in helping her out of the pit and gave her an apple. This gave Trip the courage to stand up to Nack and once he shoved her this little girl had it.

Throwing all that armour from her, using the Chaos Emeralds to turn into a DRAGON and bust up his Mecha was awesome! Then she goes back to being shy around Sonic, Tails and Knuckles, she’s just a sweetheart. You gotta love the kind warriors, it’s so entertaining to see them go to ultra badasses in a fight and then suddenly they go all shy and nervous. Oh and she’s clearly a nature girl with how friendly she is to the animals of her islands, so what’s not to like? It’s great as well that you get to play as her in the game, given her own abilities that lets her rip through Badniks that shows Trip is a force to be reckoned with and getting the final win on Nack is rewarding to see.

I hope Trip returns in future and we get to do some extra work on her lore and maybe some new skills we get to play with. Oh and a voice. Let this little lady get a voice.

Now let’s switch things up a notch. We now go to live action with:

Agent Stone

This guy is so funny. I mean, he’s a henchman of Robotnik’s who is ultra loyal to him, even ditching the government to work for him. It’s funny because he wasn’t gonna have that big of a role in the first film but thanks to Jim Carey wanting somebody to bounce off of in his Robotnik scenes Agent Stone was bumped up! Stone is so comically serious and goofy at the same time that Lee Madjoub perfectly balances, from his disgruntled attitude with Knuckles to happily fetching Robotnik a coffee or making a latte of his face in it, he’s superb. In fact, he’s not just there for that, Agent Stone shows he’s actually incredibly clever and manipulative as he worked his way to the top of the Mean Bean Machine Coffee Shop and got rid of the old employees to convert it into a secret Eggman base. The guy set all this up alone so he’s not an incompetent man. He proves as well he’s a slippery man as he managed to cover his tracks after the Death Egg robot was destroyed and kept Robotnik hidden from GUN, making a epic entry in Sonic 3 on his motorbike.

But despite this, Agent Stone had a good character arc in Sonic 3 which was thanks to his conversation with Tails. It’s a nice little scene between them in the old research lab Shadow was in, how Tails humbly says he’s not Sonic’s sidekick he’s his friend and says it’s like him and Robotnik. It gets Agent Stone wondering where he is with Robotnik and while it gets a bit comical with him being left out of the fun with him and Gerald, he at least has his doubts about Gerald and tries to make Shadow comfortable with his food. You do feel for him as Robotnik ditches him and then calls him back to hurl a somewhat respectful insult at him. I honestly would have liked it if Agent Stone’s story ended in the third movie but he’s back in the fourth. I don’t doubt at all he will be entertaining in it but hopefully they continue his character’s story.

I think what I like about him more as well is that he’s incredibly loyal to Robotnik and doesn’t think of backstabbing him. Cos while Snively was pretty good for what he had you don’t need every Eggman sidekick to be a Snively, that’s why Agent Stone works and the fact he just goes along with Jimbotnik’s antics makes him so funny and worth a watch.

Special Mentions

Ariem: A pretty likeable Dream Guardian who is kind and thoughtful of others, she has a lot of potential in her side of the Sonic universe to be explored. Whether they will or not we shall see.

Tom and Maddie: I don’t mind them to be honest with you. They managed to avoid the cliches that you’d normally get with characters like them in these live action movie works. Helps James and Tika play them well and we have Sonic’s relationship with Tom be a suitable “Wise father passing advice onto his son”. It’s great as well how they’ve made sure to accommodate Sonic, Tails and Knuckles being at their home, while getting themselves involved in saving them and the Earth from Robotnik. I’m interested in what they will do with them in the next movie, whether this will be their last appearance or they stay on we shall see.

Longclaw: For a character who only had small appearances in the first two movies she left a big impact, looking after Sonic since he was a baby and passing on much kindness to him, this owl fought like any mother would in protecting her child. Tails sadly revealed the echidnas did kill her which is a shame but she gave her life saving Sonic. I’m curious if they will ever revisit Longclaw’s order in future films? Do you guys think?

These are at least the characters I think are worthy of being on this list. Not all of them are perfect but they at least have some potential going forward.

Teddy: Hmmm not bad.

Freddy: I concur!

But what do you lot think? You think these have any right to be here? I would like to hear your thoughts. Thanks for reading, take care.