I definitely can't disagree because it's simply the truth. it's been showing since Sonic Boom and outright stated by people like Ivo Gerscovich in a reddit AMA. Remember all those one time when Sonic directly had to rescue Amy with no chance for her to escape by herself? Sonic Boom was the point where SEGA really started pushing this angle. I think it was meant to stay isolated to the whole Boom sub-franchise but then the only things people took away from Boom were "the characters were funny in low-budget TV show" so I guess they figured that it would be okay to push for those characterizations in the main games and give up on the whole "western-oriented Sonic" angle because it's cheaper to just take control of the scripts to the JP games whenever they come out.
Sonic Team desperately trying to memory-hole Amy's crush on Sonic really feels like a solution in search of a problem to me. I don't know who this supposed silent majority of fans are who have a problem with a girl liking a guy but if you ask me they're being silly. It's not like it necessarily limits Amy's character considering both Adventure portrayals where she mostly does her own thing, or say SA2B's multiplayer or the Advance games where she's just as capable as Sonic despite still having this so-very-inhibiting crush on him. I don't see the problem and I question how popular it actually is that the old Amy was bad to begin with. Seems like just a tired fandom overreaction to her portrayals in Heroes and 06, games both full of obnoxious 1D characters with or without Amy. She was predominantly a damsel in distress only in CD, a game cherished by Amy fans and one Sonic Team absolutely loves to remind you of. SA1 solved that "problem" of hers 26 years ago.
Oh its 100% an overcorrection, but this is what people complained about, so they """fixed""" it. Just like how they """fixed""" Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Eggman too. And they're going to """fix""" Shadow in that Generations update later this year. Y'all hated how Shadow was in that one IDW issue from three years ago? Don't you fucking worry, they're going to walk back all of that and throw in tons of SA2 and 06 references to make y'all feel better. The Brand™ has got you covered.
The way I see it, Sonic's brand of 90's edginess is just way too dated. Nowadays, when you think edgy, you think of black wearing, knife loving, murder obsessed people, not Sonic. I love Sonic because his style is dated, but ultimately that's not what the general consumerbase wants
Flippant trickster characters were popular long before the 1990s. I don't see Sonic as any edgier than say Bugs Bunny or Spiderman.
Sonic doesn't necessarily need to be 'cool' or edgy to succeed, but they just found a winning formula to make him cool with Frontiers. If he needs to be cool, just do more of this. It doesn't even need to have Super Sonic, cool action sequences + metal (or just generally edgy) music is all you need to win over the general public.
I think I'm entering that part of a Sonic Fan's lifetime where you realize the series isn't what you liked initially anymore, and you just get really sad and mopey about it. Makes me wonder why this stuff happens to Sonic, I can't particularly name any other franchise with a serious overcorrecting problem. Or in this case correcting things that weren't issues in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I get why they wanted to tone down Amy's crush. If the main girl of your media's most known character trait is being really in love with the main boy, I wouldn't say that's a good look for you. My issue is primarily, again, her being super dull now. Amy was always passionate about things she did, even unrelated to Sonic. But they toned down that stuff too, which just leaves her with her caring, compassionate side. And I do like that Amy, it's a very important part of her, but it's not enough on its own to carry a character. It reminds me of what The Simpsons did with Barney around season 12 or so, just taking character traits away and not putting enough thought into replacing it with anything substantial. If we're lucky we can get Cardcaptor Amy in a few years. (Not a joke, that'd be rad)
Those characters have also been severely toned down compared to the decades they debuted, so it's really not just Sonic. It's just something that happens when a brand lasts for this long.
Bugs Bunny in particular is probably a bad example considering he has cartoons where he kills native americans, wears blackface, among other incredibly racist things
Sonic is more "cool" than "edgy" as a kid, the early 90s' sense of "cool" died out, but I still thought the guy was cool. Sonic doesn't really have a date to his personality. Do kids these days still think the dude is cool? I sure think so.
I always thought it was an Ian Flynn thing. I remember listening to the Bumblekast and he does not like early 2000s Amy iirc.
He would be right not to. Amy post-SA2 became such an exaggerated caricature of herself that her antics ceased to be any fun. They could stand to make her sillier now, but it is utterly ridiculous to me to suggest that the current idiom of the character is anything but a massive improvement on likability. It comes across the same as the waves of "actually Shadow the hedgehog is a good game" or "what we REALLY need is more giant hub worlds" posturing. I've seen more actual fans of Amy now than I ever did a few years back, and that's probably because even if the writing still has some flaws, establishing a basic precedent of boundaries to your characters does wonders for getting people to accept them. Even if we take the descriptor of "Bland" as writ (I personally do not), that's never going to be worse than "insufferable" in a series where Amy is just one piece of the puzzle that doesn't monopolize screentime.
Yeah, while I never minded Amy in SA1 or SA2 (Though i still didnt like her, and mind you she does literally get kidnapped in SA1 as well), Everything past that was absolutely insufferable to me. Even post 06 I feel like her few appearances just felt like such a waste of space. She definitely had fans back then but I never knew anyone who liked her back when I was young, but she seems to have tons of fans now. I do agree that I want them to make her a bit more interesting, though
I would never say that I particularly liked Amy back in the 2000s, for all of the reasons outlined, but I don't think the solution to that was to basically change her whole character to something more palatable for a general audience. Every character is not going to be everyone's cup of tea and I think that's fine, I wouldn't want them to change just to accommodate people like me. I understand it from a branding standpoint, but that kind of goes back to my statement from before. Amy's change in character wasn't made as a natural evolution to her personality, but so they can sell her as a female action hero alongside the other main characters. I don't really mind that, but I wish people would see it for what it is and understand why some might have preferred when she had a lot more edges to her even if it wasn't always executed well.
I wouldn't call it "edges" at all. Amy was one of the dime-a-dozen clingy "girl" characters who existed solely to be girly and have a crush on the hero. She's still generic now, but she was absolutely generic back then too, in a way that gets more grating the more time passes.
Amy is still just as girly and her having a crush on the really cool main character still isn't a problem in of itself.
when it's just her personality though, it's annoying. you saw it all the time in cartoons, stuff like lola bunny or minnie mouse or Generic One-Time Girl Character To Have A Crush Or Be Crushed On #12938123. It was even more annoying when she got character development in SA1 and then she went back to being annoying as hell in SA2. I wouldn't even argue that it was a character flaw because it was never condemned by the narrative (aside from her epiphany in SA1 that just gets dropped) - it was either played straight or played for laughs, and she's never called out on it, so I wouldn't call it "sanding off the edges" when they decided to tone that down.
Look at like this. This series has a dozen action heroes who can all fight. But how many characters were like Amy in the context of Sonic itself? Like I said, I get WHY people prefer how things are now, but to say Amy didn't have any unique traits before just feels demonstrably false. There hasn't been a character like her before or after. You don't have to like her, but at least understand the fact that she occupied a unique niche in the cast. The only character in the franchise who has expressed explicit romantic interest in Sonic has been exiled from the series, so it makes Amy stick out even more.
