The OLD pilot of Sonic X

[Badnik Zero]

I wasn't trying to express a particular love for the term 'Mobian' or an endorsement of its validity in the Archieverse so much as a desire for any kind of short, in-universe term to be used in the games. It wouldn't need to be that word in particular and frankly I'd be pretty surprised if it was (although given the recent resurgence of chili dogs, you never know). Just... anything, you know? If we had something proper to call them, they might be more likely to appear en masse as background characters and we wouldn't have stupidity like Black Doom's spouting on about "the humans" for an entire game.

I like to call them anthro, Mobian, or furry characters. Since the SatAM-Archieverse consists mostly of anthros, I think of them as Mobians, whatever that means. I have every intention of naming them Mobians if I create a fan comic, just because I'm fond of the name, and maybe redefining it to mean any kind of anthropomorphic animal.

[Dr. Mechano]

Am I a bad enough dude to skip the entire thread and respond to the OP? Of Course!

The issue with Sonic X was not that humans were in it. Quite frankly, regardless whatever the original games said, if people going into Sonic X hadn't gotten used to the idea that there are humans in Sonic games by 2004, than they really shouldn't have been paying attention to the series anymore anyways. And to an extent, it wasn't even that the humans had more screen time than the game characters (except the whole "Chris Show starring Chris" thing, but even that wouldn't be inherently problematic if handled well). It was that they were all one dimensional and boring (and in Chris' case, an unlikeable asshole), and they stayed that way throughout the course of the show.

Precisely.

If Chris were an animal, he'd be just as bad. Chris sucked because he was a horrible character, not because he was a human.

[Djawed]

its the whole package. I honestly think that sonic would get more attention if he went back to how he started. Not many humans. Lots of animals. Good story and a lots of action.

Sonic x became one of the worst cartoons ever. I mean... Everr.. nothing i can thing of that could surpass the suckiage of sonic x. And i say this while i watched every single one. The cosmo tails thing just... o my god..

Animals or human. It dont make a difference. But more animals would be welcome!! And they looked awesome in the early pilot.

[Flyboy Fox]

Precisely.

If Chris were an animal, he'd be just as bad. Chris sucked because he was a horrible character, not because he was a human.

Thing is, I don't think Chris would have been created as anything OTHER than a human. Or, if he was, he would have served a very different role. He was supposed to be a go-between between 'us' (human kids, the target audience) and 'them' (the Sonic animal cast). Little kids were supposed to imagine that they could be Chris if Sonic ever came to their world.

[Tornado]

Not that this means anything, as the pilot doesn't really imply anything either way, but an easy variation would have been simply to make Chris show up in Sonic's world from the start rather than have Sonic and co. go to Chris' world. I do think it is safe to say, at the very least, that a Chris-like character of some sort (animal or human) would have shown up eventually regardless of the actual setting. Its rather obvious that they ran out of actual "Sonic X" ideas almost immediately when they actually went to produce the show, so the Chris character had to have been put together well before they actually had any plotline ideas brainstormed.

Edited November 17, 2009 by Tornado

[Dr. Mechano]

Not that this means anything, as the pilot doesn't really imply anything either way, but an easy variation would have been simply to make Chris show up in Sonic's world from the start rather than have Sonic and co. go to Chris' world.

I just... dislike the "two worlds" concept altogether.

The games did a good job establishing that Sonic's world had always been a human-populated Earth, and it looked like Sonic X could have been a faithful adaptation of that concept, but no- They threw in a "Sonic, Eggman, and everyone else are from another planet" story that creates gaping plotholes later.

Has anyone given this thought? Eggman's grandfather is from Earth, and Eggman is not. This conundrum is never ever explained. Eggman talks about looking up to his grandfather as a child, yet clearly has no idea what Earth is in the earlier episodes, and is just as unfamiliar with this new world as Sonic is. This makes no sense. And while I like Sonic X, this plothole bothers me so much.

[HunterTSF]

I mean, this kind of raises another question though- Tails and Amy are the only animal characters who seem to have normal surnames. The rest simply go by the format of "[First Name] the [species]", which in the context of the social structure of the series does strike me as a little odd.

Charmy's got a last name, and I suppose you could throw in Grand Battle Kukku 15th and his son Speedy as well... but it is certainly odd how their name structure is set up. It doesn't appear to be exclusive to Sonic's current time or dimension either, seeing as Blaze, Silver, and Marine both fall under that classification. However, the fact that some anthros do sport standard formatted names proves that surnames aren't unheard of for them. There's always a possibility that "The" and "[species]" are actually their respective middle and last names. It's definitely strange that "The" is capitalized quite often in the subtitles of some of the more recent console outings.

Marriage also appears to be part of their social standards as well, if Amy's desires are anything to go by. The concept of Amy Rose Hedgehog just sounds so blah to me though though, personally.

Edited November 17, 2009 by HunterTSF

[batson]

It certainly would be nice to see a term that differentiated the anthros from the humans - it's quite evident that humans aren't the only sentiment beings on Earth, and it's quite annoying how the general term of "humans" is used for describing the general populace by most everybody.

As far as i can remember, the only instance in the entire series where the "anthros" were all collectively referred to by a common term (as in, opposed to either being called by their respective particular species, or inexplicably being placed under the "human" label) was in Chronicles when Omega referred to them all as "furry forrest creatures". Of course, this could be considered just another way of saying "animals", but then again, Chronicles also showed that the anthros themselves uses the "animal" term to specifically refer to the non-sentient, normal animals in their world.

[Phos]

I just... dislike the "two worlds" concept altogether.

The games did a good job establishing that Sonic's world had always been a human-populated Earth, and it looked like Sonic X could have been a faithful adaptation of that concept, but no- They threw in a "Sonic, Eggman, and everyone else are from another planet" story that creates gaping plotholes later.

When did this happen?

Has anyone given this thought? Eggman's grandfather is from Earth, and Eggman is not. This conundrum is never ever explained. Eggman talks about looking up to his grandfather as a child, yet clearly has no idea what Earth is in the earlier episodes, and is just as unfamiliar with this new world as Sonic is. This makes no sense. And while I like Sonic X, this plothole bothers me so much.

They nebulously explain this as "Their worlds are merging". It seems to me as though Sonic X was originally intended to have taken place after Sonic Adventure (Tornado 2's transformation, for example), probably some time around Sonic Heroes, but changed their mind when they decided they wanted to do some rehashing.

[HunterTSF]

As far as i can remember, the only instance in the entire series where the "anthros" were all collectively referred to by a common term (as in, opposed to either being called by their respective particular species, or inexplicably being placed under the "human" label) was in Chronicles when Omega referred to them all as "furry forrest creatures". Of course, this could be considered just another way of saying "animals", but then again, Chronicles also showed that the anthros themselves uses the "animal" term to specifically refer to the non-sentient, normal animals in their world.

...but then again, that was all BioWare's doing, and Chronicles didn't really apply to Sonic Team's pre-established canon anyways.

Speaking of which, I didn't particularly love how Omega was handled in that game. "Meatbags"? "Orange forest creature"? Those simply don't sound like words that would even be in his vocabulary. In his previous outings in Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog, he never once referred to organic beings in such an inferior manner. Nor did he use such silly phrases to describe the anthropomorphic cast members. He's a robot built by the goddamn Eggman. He uses sophisticated terms!

Oh, and I'll still never get over the fact that they referred to Green Hill as Green Hill Zone. I was half expecting there to be villages there named "Act 1" and "Act 2".

Edited November 18, 2009 by HunterTSF

[Tornado]

Speaking of which, I didn't particularly love how Omega was handled in that game. "Meatbags"? "Orange forest creature"?

Probably intentional KoTOR references.

[Blazey Firekitty]

Speaking of which, I didn't particularly love how Omega was handled in that game. "Meatbags"? "Orange forest creature"? Those simply don't sound like words that would even be in his vocabulary. In his previous outings in Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog, he never once referred to organic beings in such an inferior manner. Nor did he use such silly phrases to describe the anthropomorphic cast members. He's a robot built by the goddamn Eggman. He uses sophisticated terms!

While I've warmed up to most of the characterizations in Sonic Chronicles, I have to admit, the portrayal of Team Dark still kind of bugs me. It seemed like whoever was writing the script for the game exaggerated their negative qualities. Rouge is completely self-absorbed, Shadow is always angry,and Omega is little more than a soulless killing machine. I can't say that, in regular Sonic Team canon, Rouge was never selfish, that Shadow didn't have a temper, or that Omega didn't like to blow things up for the sake of it. But these characters, no matter how bad they were on the surface, always had a sympathetic side underneath. While it was kind of humorous seeing these characters as caricatures of themselves, it still felt jarring for everything that made them likable to be removed.

[Phos]

Probably intentional KoTOR references.

Them doing this irritates me, to me it says that they think Omega is boring enough that they need to throw in references to robots from their other games.

[Daisoku]

Shadow is always angry

...And a bit snarky, if ya wanna call it that.

"I see several ways out. For me. None for you."

[Blazey Firekitty]

...And a bit snarky, if ya wanna call it that.

"I see several ways out. For me. None for you."

I honestly like him better when he's snarky.XD Kinda makes him feel like a more subtle version of Sonic in a way.^^

[Kiljoy]

Them doing this irritates me, to me it says that they think Omega is boring enough that they need to throw in references to robots from their other games.

I highly doubt that. Bioware has a strong following, I know people who will buy a game from them simply because it's Bioware. The references were not because the character was boring, but because the character they were referencing was hilarious and a fan favorite.

[Blazey Firekitty]

I thought the Omega HK-47 reference was funny, too. It's just that I'm kind of sad that Bioware had to basically turn Omega into a heartless douchebag to make the joke.;;

[psikeout]

I know you posted this about two days ago, but I just noticed it.

I just... dislike the "two worlds" concept altogether.

The games did a good job establishing that Sonic's world had always been a human-populated Earth, and it looked like Sonic X could have been a faithful adaptation of that concept, but no- They threw in a "Sonic, Eggman, and everyone else are from another planet" story that creates gaping plotholes later.

Has anyone given this thought? Eggman's grandfather is from Earth, and Eggman is not. This conundrum is never ever explained. Eggman talks about looking up to his grandfather as a child, yet clearly has no idea what Earth is in the earlier episodes, and is just as unfamiliar with this new world as Sonic is. This makes no sense. And while I like Sonic X, this plothole bothers me so much.

To be honest, I never thought about it too much because my mind zoomed to the default, and just "assumed" it to be true, that being:

At some point in history, the Chaos Emeralds ended up in the human dimension (perhaps after their abuse at the hands of Pachacamac). Eggman was born on Space Colony ARK in the human dimension, and raised by Gerald there. When the emeralds disappeared from the human dimension, and ended up again in Sonic's world, I presumed it had something to do with Eggman himself. Maybe he tinkered with something he shouldn't have and got transported between worlds—Who knows.

I guess it's pretty fanon-y for me to assume that much without any real foundation, but it's just what my mind automatically filled in the gaps with as soon as Sonic X laid down the two-worlds business. I doubt it was ever honestly intended to be that way at the time of SA2's creation, though.

[Kuzu]

This is what Sonic X could've been, so I ask you think it would've been more watchable if it stuck to the original pilot.

[SchemingMinor]

Didn't we already have a topic for this from last year?

[Diogenes]

Honestly, what did they change? Sure, it's apparently set in Sonic's world, but that just means shitty furry side characters rather than shitty human side characters, and no culture shock or worrying about how they'd get back to their world. Seems like the same shit otherwise.

[Kuzu]

Honestly, what did they change? Sure, it's apparently set in Sonic's world, but that just means shitty furry side characters rather than shitty human side characters, and no culture shock or worrying about how they'd get back to their world. Seems like the same shit otherwise.

Well the lack of Chris for one.

[Blacklightning]

Well the lack of Chris for one.

Unless they changed writers after the pilot or something, I'm almost certain they would've thought up a furry equivalent in lieu of that. Removing a species isn't exactly going to avert much.

[Kuzu]

Unless they changed writers after the pilot or something, I'm almost certain they would've thought up a furry equivalent in lieu of that. Removing a species isn't exactly going to avert much.

Considering we saw no one else other than the cast from the games, I really doubt they would've done that. I think Chris was just made as an audience Surrgocate.

[Sean]

I've never seen this clip in anything higher quality than a piddling <5MB video file. Does anybody know if this was released on DVD?

...Not that I particularly care about it anymore, but I remember looking all over for it back when I actually gave a shit about Sonic X.