Sonic the Hedgehog & Dragon Ball – Influences and Inspiration

I have to ponder: in Chaotix, we get an 'alternate' set of Chaos objects, the Chaos Rings. One is used to grant Metal Sonic Kai a new form, where it becomes big and red, looming over the heroes...

 

I'm fairly certain Metal Sonic Kai is a reference to traditional japanese Oni:

 

Metal Sonic Kai is the Metal Sonic, not the large red form.

Also, oni are various colours, not just red, so that's unlikely:


EDIT: However, checking the release dates, Chaotix came out in 1995, and Dragon Ball GT came out in 1996, so the red form predates Ultimate Shenron.

 

It's not the color, it's the features. The pointed horned ears, the large fangs, the curved eyes. These are all characteristics that define oni, the boss incorporates them.

Reminder that Alex Kidd himself was a hasty reskin of Goku. The character is a thing because they couldn't secure the Dragon Ball license, Miracle World was supposed to be an adaptation of the first arc of Dragon Ball (which, upon reflection, becomes obvious). So The Lost Stars referencing Dr. Slump might be further cross-pollination.

 

I would still disagree: beyond the fangs, the design features are just design elements from previous Mecha Sonics. The ones from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (8-Bit) and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles both have a slit eye, while the latter has pointed ears, the red form simply exaggerate them.

Also, Oni seem to be bug eyed: if you mean the frown, that's something all Mecha Sonic have featured.

However, as noted, Chaotix came out around a year before Dragon Ball GT introduced Ultimate Shenron, so the latter literally can not influence the former.

 

Is it possible that Tails' flight was influenced from Kid Goku's Tail-Helicopter Technique in the 21st Tenkaichi Budokai?

 

I feel like this is important to talk about. In this very thread you have people suggesting those words on that paper surrounded by abandoned concepts are some how more valid. When pretty recently one of the creators of the character had confirmed vegeta wasn't just not an inspiration he didn't want the character to be like vegeta. This is combination with maekawa talking about other inspirations, one of which being a film/manga called "Please save my earth"

Why its important is, so many people assume DB influences are more numerous than they really are and were dumb founded and confused at the idea thet vegeta was inspired by comic book anti heros and dark heros and not vegeta. When this has been outwardly stated multiple times over the course of two decades. And is fairly obvious. Some fans have even taken to conspiracy to suggest that iizuka is hiding something. Oh hey can't mention vegeta. Where here he is vehemently denying him.

https://www.thegamer.com/sonic-x-sh...ka-not-like-dragon-ball-z-vegeta-not-friends/

While its fun to point out the emblems are based on dr slump or that Dr. Gerald Robotnik is phonetically really close to gero. The 7 chaos emeralds emeralds or hey the super forms have clear inspiration from this thing. Sonic himself is inspired by bill Clinton and Micheal Jackson. Acknowledging the actual inspirations for these characters i think furthers appreciation rather than trying to fit them into a mold because to be very blunt, most of us weren't born in japan likely our first anime was DB and our perspective of the animation from that country and a lot of the media from there has been warped because of it.

I've seen people suggesting its a conspiracy while shadow is literally turning into venom

 

While I agree that people mistakenly see DB everywhere when it isn’t, them going out of their way to conceal a mention of Vegeta is very curious. Are there any examples of references to other IPs in any of those sheets?

Personally, I don’t see much resemblance to Vegeta in Shadow. Maybe in some posing/attitude stuff, but not really in his characterization at all beyond being a ‘rival.’

 

Outside of shadows shoe being visually ripped from gundam. Don't think so. But even then it doesnt matter. We have direct confirmation of multiple characters being based on other ip and real people and alot, heck most of that isnt written down. The specific comic book influence goes back as far as his original game in 05 i think? Where previews mention Constantine and terminator as influences as well. ( constantine influence would be confirmed again when one of developers talked about how excited for keanu for that reason)

As for the obfuscation, they are a brand and want you to think of the characters in specific ways. Unlike db that despite its massive success, is at its core a story some guy wrote, and alot of media is based in it usually treat that text in a sort if sacrosanct way. Sonic was conceived as a mascot from conception and was a brand immediately. While the need for "mascots " is long gone sonic (unfortunately) still treats its brand as such. In the intview i linked he doesnt just say "shadow isnt vegeta" its "i dont want shadow to be vegeta". This, along with many other iizuka interviews as of late especially about shadow how you view shadow aesthetically is important to sega. So even if isnt an influence, its written down and some of those who dont quite get how concept art works, might get confused. So they covered up. And considering people made up conspiracies about toei suing him or all many tall tales, they were right to do so.

 

Judy Totoya has gone on record to say that the 7 Chaos Emeralds were not inspired by the 7 Dragon Balls.

 

Oh
Thanks for that info. Can i get a reference as of where this was said you can? This actually reinforces my perspective quite a bit

 

Judy Totoya's tweet
My post with the tweet's content and a translation by DeepL

 

FYI, the Encyclo-speed-ia has retconned Metal Sonic Kai as the name of the big red one, while the small blue one is just Metal Sonic.

Also, I'm pretty sure that they're supposed to be two different robots altogether, not just different forms of the same one.

 

I'm well aware of the Encyclo-Speed-ia.

There's nothing suggesting a second robot: Metal Sonic Kai arrives at the scene damaged from its fight with the Chaotix, flies off with Robotnik and the Chaos Ring, then a giant red Mecha Sonic that attacks them. The red Mecha Sonic also has the Plasnar Beam that Metal Sonic Kai has, suggesting they're the same, just Metal Madness'd.

 

This is a rough topic because many of the influences can be vague and diffuse.

Dragon Ball (as any other media) is influenced by culture, and then it becomes part of culture itself, so it becomes hard to discern what is the actual source. So when trying to make assumptions about things that happened 30 years ago, on one hand we can have a better perspective, but also, many times I've noticed dots being connected when they were actually not.

So this is a curious case: In Spanish magazines I remember reading that Knuckles' quills were inspired by Trunks' hair style. This clashes with a popular knowledge/belief that they're actually inspired by rastafari dreadlocks, even backing it on the fact that Knuckles' shoes sport the rastafari colors.

These are the first appearances of both characters, sharing the same unusual perspective.


Spanish media has proven to be an obscure source for curious information, but many times also unreliable (they used to make notable mistakes or even make some things up). Trunks' soaked hairstyle was trendy in the 90s, you can see old photos of Di Caprio or Brad Pitt with it, but it's true that Dragon Ball was one of the first manga to have a character with it. Then would be hard to tell if this was actually true or they were just inspired but that trend, or even if this was all made up and the rastafari thing was the only inspiration. But then...



When they added the super transformation for Knuckles they chose the iconic Trunks transformation and this very obvious: it's not just the hulking, it's the exact pose and it's the only time when both characters (and only these two in their respective series) go with blank eyes. So there's some hint that there's something of Trunks in Knuckles' design.

So if you ask me, Sonic Team probably disgned him with nods for both american and japanese markets, probably Spanish media might had translated some japanese magazine in which they mentioned Trunks which would not be mentioned in american media because nobody knew that character at the time.

I'm pretty much on this boat and at the same time not.

An example: "Shadow is a Vegeta". Shadow fills the same archetype as Vegeta: the eternal rival that is the one character that shares the most traits with the hero and eventually can cooperate. But that same archetype can be seen in Ryoga from Ranma ½ or Kojiro in Captain Tsubasa, they predate Vegeta in Dragon Ball, and probably they have inspiration in some character of the traditional chinese literature. The thing is that Dragon Ball is so huge that the archetypes have become synonymous with the characters in the current culture (and specially in Japan).

So from the draft for Shadow saying "Vegeta" that might just mean the archetype and they want to draw a distance from that draft to avoid legal issues. And I believe Izuka's words when he says the inspiration for Shadow is Spawn and not Vegeta: Vegeta's rivalry and anger against Goku comes from him being the prince surpassed by a peasant, that's pride and envy, and that is something very iconic that I don't see in Shadow.

My point is: if you just know Ghibli and Dragon Ball and you think you're making a connection, try to be humble and realize that you know 0.1% of the japanese culture of the 90s, you may be missing on some Doraemon episode, some live action movie or some Sanrio gashapon collection. I'm missing that skepticism and self criticism in many posts. But at the same time I think it's fair to assume that Sega and Sonic Team have taken a lot of inspiration (and more than inspiration) from those two cultural behemoths, because the amount of coincidences is sometimes overwhelming, and their strategy might be trying to bring things that work in anime to videogames, for a safer and more successful product.

 

It was the western side that came up with Knuckles' name, wasn't it? I wonder if they also had a hand in his design.

I could see Sonic Team designing Knuckles with inspiration from Trunks' design, then STI/SOA/SOA's marketing team saw his "hair" and thought they looked like Jamaican dreadlocks, so they proposed to tweak his shoes with those colors (possibly without even explaining that they were Rastafarian colors).

There were even old western sources that made Rastafari connections, but AFAIK that connection was never present in Japan.

 

Everyone knows the true inspiration for Shadow is Phoenix Ikki from Saint Seiya, right down to him having the blonde girl he cares about getting murdered in front of him and coming back with a revenge plan.

(JK, but just a little bit)

 

I think it's not just a connection: If I remember right, in Spain Knuckles was presented just as "a rastafari", like in "a rastafari hedgehog", in all promotional materials and was not until Sonic & Knuckles that was explained he was an echidna and what the hell was that (for long Sonic was presented as a porcupine and not a hedgehog, so go imagine the mess). This is a weak memory, but I remember the term first mentioned to explain what "K·T·E" meant in the lives counter.

For example, in the promotional video "Se te va a erizar el pelo" that Sega distributed in VHS cassettes with one those magazines (I believe this was with Hobby Consolas, that same one cited in your link) they literally say "Knuckles, a mysterious rastafari that you never know what he's up to."


(4:57 in this video)

(And by the way, as mentioned before, at 0:31 Robotnik calls Sonic "that damn porcupine.")

What I don't remember is anything about his shoes at the time.

EDIT (forgot to comment on this): Spanish videogames media was a mess at the time: some were quite amateur, in general had a good funding, some could attend to conventions, and their main sources of content was promotional material provided by the companies. On the other hand manga/anime media was more serious, had way less resources and much of their content came from trasnlating japanese content. Within time there were collaborations between those "universes" and there's where I think I read the Trunks reference.

And a fun fact: one of the writers of Hobby Consolas has commented that he has many press beta games that he rescued from being destroyed for the sake of preservation and have yet to be made public.

Yup, and Metal Sonic Kai's transformation is inspired by Ikki's master, Guilty.

 

Trunks hair style is called an undercut, and i had this hair style when it was popular. That was well after Sonic 3 released, that hair style was popular around 1997-1999, not 1994. There were, of course, examples of it existing back then, like Edward Furlong had one in 1992, but it was not a very popular hairstyle until the late 90's, not early to mid.