Yeah, the Prime VA is definitely the best Rouge we’ve had since the original. The current game actress didn’t sound as “off” here as whatever was going on with her Dream Team voice direction, at the very least.
For a Shadow focused episode, they hardly touched his backstory compared with previous episodes. Probably because the movie and Generations will focus on that, but i still felt a bit disappointed.
You were so close this time, Kirk. During the first half of the video: Dead serious, laser-focused, ALMOST loved it. But the moment the script diverts into comedic territories, the impression starts to fade. Just because Sonic/RCS is a silly doofus doesn't mean Shadow has to be as well. ShtH made the character seem like a joke. Never buy into that, it's bogus. I'm gonna watch it again now ...
Honestly I think Thornton’s gotten really good at the voice now. I think Humphrey’s still my favourite for having more natural and varied inflection with a bigger range of emotion, but Thornton has absolutely nailed the single-mode Shadow that SEGA’s decided to turn the character into. Would be really interested in hearing Thornton be able to work with some emotionally diverse material that’d let him stretch his legs.
I am absolutely a "Kirk-Truther", I believe the man is more than qualified for the role and is only really held back by his Voice Direction The man has the makings of being my 2nd-Place Shadow (1st will forever be Humphrey) if he's given the right director.
I really hate the way that these VTuber models animate. They look like they're strapped into straight jackets and can't move their facial muscles. The games suffer from bad animation, but I'm glad they don't look like the HD evolution of Flash movies from 2003. This episode was a bit dull. Shadow's personality is so tightly controlled these days. If all he can do is stand uncomfortably still whilst saying he dislikes Sonic, he's better off not having these kinds of appearances. And yeah, could have done without that Prime clip too. So many TV, films and game franchises in the 2010/20s have become absolutely obsessed with the themes of interconnected universes, canons and timelines. Sonic is a bit late to the party, but really nothing good has come from SEGA's trend chasing here. Prime would do so much better as its own thing, just as the movies do and all the old cartoons did. Why does everything have to be canon?
I still don’t like current Shadow’s voice or the direction. Griffith Was the ultimate version to me, and Humphrey Was also a pretty good choice for the time. Thornton Shadow sounds like he’s trying to impersonate someone. as much as I don’t like RCS portrayal of the Blue Blur either, at least he plays the character well, and understands how to make Sonic sound cool.
Apparently when asked about this episode, one of the game designers claimed that this is merely a comedic exaggeration for the sake of this short. But then Ian Flynn in a recent podcast says that no, this is just how Shadow is now. So who even fucking knows at this point. You'd think there wouldn't be this much confusion about this franchise internally in 2024, yet here we are. I guess some things just never change.
God, I hope Shadow is actually Shadow in the new game. I'd find it hard to believe that someone like Iizuka, who led SA2's development, is actually satisfied with how he is being portrayed. I mean ShtH clearly showed there was a difference between Maekawa's and his takes, but unless it's just been way too long since I played ShtH, Shadow wasn't as 1D as he currently is. As corporate-robot as Iizuka comes off in most interviews and PR materials, when he talks about the Adventure games and especially NiGHTS, you can tell the guy actually did approach things with passion and artistry.
Oh man, that was fun! Hearing Sonic impersonate Shadow made it worth it just for that! ...yeah, I genuinely think Shadow is better this way. *runs*
I genuinely cannot be bothered to care about Shadow discourse anymore. There's a new complaint about him every week.
The label of "canon" further enables the idea of headcanon. It promotes a holistic view of the franchise as a universe. Yes, this makes it even more annoying when they fuck up with continuity or worldbuilding errors, but that's par for the course at this point, and if you would rather ignore all that and say such and such doesn't count anyway, there's nothing actually stopping you from treating each story as its own separate instance. This series is episodic, there aren't massive pillars that every new entry needs to rely on, it's not really that big a deal. Personally, if I have to think of Sonic Prime as a universe unto itself, then the fact that it is so similar to the games universe makes it the weakest and most pointless continuity distinction ever. I'd much rather believe that Sonic being surprised by Chaos Sonic or treating Green Hill as a shorthand for the home timeline are continuity errors or just for the sake of the audience, because at least then you can find something interesting about its depictions of the world and characters within the greater context of the series. It's much more a victim of SEGA enforcing a stylistic consistency across the property than these stories all taking place in one continuity, and that started way before it was all one canon. Hell, Prime was almost certainly well underway before it was made canon, which means canon isn't what's holding it back (and let's be honest, if it were a 10/10 with all these same mistakes, almost nobody would care about the continuity mistakes or canon). See, I feel like the primary fear of all this is that we're gonna get Sonic stories that require you to do homework first, or else being beholden to "canon" will prevent them from telling interesting stories. But the former just isn't happening and I really think it won't happen (again, this series is episodic, I don't even think the next game will follow up anything from Frontiers in particular), and we've seen that glaring contradictions can still happen even in this cartoon that is supposed to be canon. I would much rather see weird experiments in the tone, style, characterization and storytelling get considered "canon" anyway than split the timeline into a bunch of little pieces because Sonic should have remembered meeting himself in Generations or whatever.
Swap what you said about Griffith and Humphrey, and this is how I feel. Also liked Ian Hanlin's voice for him, would probably be my second choice overall. Thornton is a very distant last place for me.
