Just to note, it is still possible for changes after the split to occur. Events shape us to be who we are and if events took a different course you could potentially have a different person. While it's a bit jarring to consider Mania's events changed these characters away from their original characterization (which I'd argue wasn't exactly solid to begin with) it is potentially possible. I guess the crux here is where Chaotix takes place.
The questions is when the classic side of Generations takes place. Chaotix clearly has to take place after Sonic 3 & Knuckles due to Knuckles and Eggman being at odds and Metal Sonic existing. Meanwhile, classic Knuckles doesn't exist in Generations, making the most straightforward conclusion one that assumes Generations takes place after Sonic 2. Sonic 3 & Knuckles can still happen in both timelines, but Generations could just take place after it. Of course, they could forego this timeline split, Chaotix takes place after Sonic 4, the design changes are non-diagetic and Sonic Heroes doesn't explicitly confirm that the Chaotix have never tangled with Eggman before (unless Black Hole is about to pull up a sound clip stating otherwise that only plays in Chaotix's rail canyon if you manage to remain on a rail for 13 minutes while holding the X button on a controller plugged into the fourth port).
While I’m not the biggest fan of them kinda retconning Bean and Bark to be like the comics, I doubt there was much of any official characterization for those characters. The profiles of Bean and Bark that I translated were from fairly obscure material and Sonic the Fighters is a niche game made by a separate development team from Sonic Team. As for Mighty and Ray, there wasn’t really anything to go on. You had the brief description of Mighty from the Chaotix manual and you can kind of glean some of Ray’s personality from his animations. Giving them new characterizations isn’t much of a big deal because for all intents and purposes they were just a step or two above blank slates. And I’m not exactly sure how much of their Mania depictions are from SEGA themselves and how much was Christian Whitehead and his team. Did they just use those characterizations and SEGA said “sure, why not? That’s how they are now.”? Or did someone behind the scenes come up with the current iterations of the characters separately? I remember when talking about Mania Adventures, Tyson mentioned that SEGA had a very clear concept of how Ray and Mighty should act. (If he’s still reading this thread he can correct me if I’m wrong!) I’m not sure when or how that concept was formed, but I would assume Mania Adventures didn’t invent it.
I would wager it's heavily influenced by the Archie comics, particularly under Ian's pen. They were the primary source of material for the characters after Fighters and they were generally well received, so why fix something that ain't broken?
Oh, for sure. I didn’t mean to suggest there wasn’t any comic influence there. I was more-so trying to say that their different characterization probably wasn’t just the Mania or Adventures people trying to change them to their comics interpretations.
It was previously mentioned that Sega opposed to Ian making Bark a bad guy. So I think they give their characterizations more importance that you'd think. As for Mighty and Ray being blank slates. While that probably holds true for Ray (at least until someone uncovers some mega obscure untranslated profile on him ), I'd say Mighty being called a nature-loving pacifist does give him some established personality and exclude him from that label. Maybe not an awfully complex and well-developed personality (in fact, I'd personally say that "nature-loving guy who roams the world" sounds a bit too close to Sonic... maybe the profile was originally written for him and they later tweaked it when they swapped him with Mighty?), but a personality nonetheless. And regardless of who was the "culprit" behind it, Mania ignored said characterization. Come to think of it, weren't Mighty and Ray in the Sonic manga? I haven't paid much attention to it. I wonder what they were like there?
Charmy asks "who'sat" when talking about Robotnik in the first boss. This is debatable, however, as Espio reacts with alarm and familiarity otherwise. Charmy could just be goofing, especially with Robotnik blowing up the Moon with the ARK recently and hijacking the TVs to announce the act, which would be fairly noticeable: 1:20
Mighty being a nature-loving pacifist doesn’t really seem to have been replaced or contradicted by anything. It’s not like there’s much of anything in the way of characterization for him in Mania proper. In Mania Adventures he seems to be a nice guy who goes on adventures and likes training himself. I’m not seeing how that changes his personality at all. As far as manga goes, I know there’s an illustration of Ray and Mighty with the manga characters but I don’t remember if they are featured as part of the cast in any of its various iterations.
The absence of a Classic Knuckles in Generations does not imply that the game takes place before Sonic 3K. Generations doesn't even explain Classic Tails' presence, since he was not with Classic Sonic when captured.
Yeah, the modern Chaotix were treated as completely new characters. They could always retcon it though. It wouldn’t be the first time character dialogue was contradicted… even in the Adventure games themselves there were some oddities regarding who recognized what. For example, despite Sonic 3 being referenced and an NPC mentioning that Sonic saved Angel Island, if you stand still long enough in the shrine island section of the Mystic Ruins Sonic will say “So this is Angel island…” like he’s seeing it for the first time.
He didn't seem to be that pacifistic to me when he decided to chase Metal Sonic and kick his ass (even if it was justified) Also, if he was a guy who is always on the move, wouldn't his close pal Ray be aware of it and not take him for missing when he couldn't find him?
Well, Metal Sonic Robotnik does react to them and call out their names. Quick thought process: do Team Chaotix ever actually introduce themselves in Sonic Heroes, or is Metal Sonic Robotnik aware of them from a prior encounter? "Espio! Charmy! Vector! This place shall be your grave!!" Is that in the Japanese? Could be someone botched a translation. I think Windii had idle chatter translated, but alas...
Yeah, that was a mistranslation. I have that video archived and he says "Isn't this Angel Island...?" in the Japanese dialogue.
And this is why I always use the Japanese oriignals. Do you have all her work archived? Could use them if so, please. Also, people to kick up a fuss with YouTube to get her channel returned from the false strikes.
I believe I should have all her translations of cutscenes and idle dialogue somewhere. I haven't uploaded them anywhere for obvious reasons, but I can look up anything you need to know.
I mean, I speak fairly decent Japanese so if there’s a line you want me to translate just let me know. I checked it out (11:11-ish) and the line is just エンジェルアイランドか？ which directly translates to, well, “Angel Island?” but would generally be understood to mean “is this Angel island?” If it were explicitly “isn’t this” the sentence would be エンジェルアイランドじゃないか？ It doesn’t actually establish his level of familiarity with it though, so I guess you could interpret it as “isn’t this Angel island?” if you think it’s inferred that he knows about it already. I think that would make more sense personally but the line sounds to me kinda like he’s unfamiliar with it, just based on his inflection. I guess it’s up to interpretation! Either way it doesn’t really matter though!
Could be he's unfamiliar with the shrine: he does go through a mountain path, so it could be the intention is him realising "wait a minute, I'm on Angel Island?"
Interesting. I think in the context the line is presented, though, it clearly means he's recognizing it. Even if you assume he has amnesia and doesn't remember his previous adventures, him going "So this is Angel Island huh?" would only make sense if he had come across a sign saying "Welcome to Angel Island", which isn't what happened. What happened is that he just entered a tunnel in the mountains at Mystic Ruins and arrived at a place that looked just like AI.
Sonic is just confused because the last time he went to Angel Island the Master Emerald was hidden inside a palace.
Well the Sonic Channel website says the order of Blaze appearances was Rush, Rush Adventure, 06 and Black Knight. And I am going to accept that until SEGA says otherwise. https://sonic.sega.jp/SonicChannel/special/comic/25th/20161007_001180/ To further confuse things though Shiro Maekawa has said he thinks Blaze was still dealing with Iblis during Sonic Forces to explain why she wasn't in the game. https://twitter.com/mizuhano/status/930660908040417280
