I guess this is an unpopular opinion now, but Shiro Maekawa's writing sucks and he is the last writer I want to see return to this franchise (excluding Penders). I mean, the dude wrote this fucking thing.
To be fair, even people who love Shiro Maekawa, knows that this scene is shit. Re: Sonic falling off; there's a definitely a chicken or the egg situation here; did Sonic's declining quality lead to his declining popularity or vice versa? Think it's a little bit of both. But the fact of the matter is that Sega's poor business practices and financial woes eventually caught up to them in the worse way and it unfortunately led to them falling out of the console market and suddenly they had to learn how to adapt to other consoles instead of being able to use their own in-house. Like imagine Nintendo having to develop a Mario game for the Xbox of Playstation? It'd be a nightmare probably. While it's easy to just say Sega and Sonic Team are incompetent developers and be done with it, I do think there's enough evidence to establish just how much their backs were against the wall in that era. It's honestly a miracle that Sonic is still around to this day, even if it's not exactly in the most ideal state some of us would want it to be in.
Maekawa is good at continuity and not much else, yeah. A lot of the dialogue in his games just kinda spews exposition.
He was one of two writers and he's the second one listed, so he may not even have wrote that scene. Also, he's notably credited under "script writer", not "story writer", "event planner", or "scenario writer" like he normally would be, implying someone else was responsible for the main story and he was only responsible for piecing it together with the dialogue and such, or characterization. Which for many is the highlight of 06. I don't know if anyone's actually asked him about this over the years to confirm though. I don't think he did though, since the "script" leak only included dialogue correlating to specific events. Even if he WAS responsible for the main story (which I doubt), saying Maekawa sucks because of one game is like saying Ian Flynn sucks because of House Of Cards, or Worlds Unite. Or hell, Frontiers. I mean, if you still don't like Maekawa's writing regardless, that's fine, but calling him bad solely for 06 doesn't seem fair to me, since we don't even know the full story there.
I personally remember there being a ton of outrage against GRIFFITH being the new voice of Sonic in the games, and I was pissed about it at the time too; it was An Issue™. Though I don't remember there being any concerted efforts to boycott anything. Granted, that could simply be because social media as we know it today wasn't a thing back then. And for what it's worth, I don't remember there being one when Roger was potentially getting dropped either (so there could have been one for the Griffith situation too that I simply didn't know about). Unpopular Opinion: let Sonic (as a story) be fucking stupid.
Sonic "fell off" when I was a teen in 2003, 2005 or 2006 depending on who you ask. I also was not really aware sonic was so culturally relevant as a kid/teen as I hardly had internet access. I'm talking about what a lot of people call "soul". Whether you like Lost World/Forces or not there just isn't that same soul to it. I find it difficult to describe which is why I asked if others felt it.
Way back in the ancient year of 2007, when he wasn't holding the Noid hostage, Spax3 made a concerted effort to protest against Jason Griffith and to bring Ryan Drummond back. He even made his own voice reel of himself voicing Sonic. He's since regretted doing everything I mentioned. Spoiler: note before replying (Trust me guys, I know some of you don't think it's that long ago, but it's been 16 years. It's so long ago it's in high school.)
He even made a forum for it, which I used to post to a long time ago. Spax was pretty abrasive and got ousted by the rest of the admin staff. There was some plan to bombard Nintendo with letters to not hire Jason Griffith for Sonic's representation in Brawl and I think the whole thing just kinda petered out when that obviously didn't work. I think the forum actually had some contact with Ryan Drummond and he treated the whole thing like a parent humoring their small child, but this was such a long time ago that I might be wrong on that
Holy shit, I didn't know about the forum part. Thank you! Somehow I'm not too surprised that Ryan caught wind of that conniption lol
Yea, Sonic fans have always been annoying when their favorite thing is changed or replaced. I was a teenager when the 4Kids fall out happened, only difference is was mostly just contained to forums and some YT videos. Now with social media being such a common thing, people's voices are much louder and the height of Roger hate came in the early 2010's right as the Social media was taking off into the mainstream. The fortunate part is that Roger has been Sonic for so long at this point that the people just got used to it. He literally is Sonic for an entire generation. He's been Sonic's voice longer than Drummond and Griffith combined. He's too ingrained at this point. It's only natural that people would start pushing back against the haters the second people had the ability to do so. The people who hate him aren't as loud as they used to be because they just bored and moved onto to something else.
God, post-06 Sonic discourse...It was impossible for my early teen fanboy ass to escape the brainrot. As if the 4kids voices weren't like 00.01% of Sonic Next's problems. Like oh if only Sonic's dead body had a different voice while Elise kisses it! It's funny how nostalgic I am for every late-2000s internet fan culture I was a part of except for Sonic lol.
I agree completely. Heroes was where it first felt like things fell off for me when it first came out. I didn't get why so many plot threads were basically dropped. Why isn't Sonic more surprised/excited to see Shadow? Why don't they really talk at all? What happened to the character arc Eggman went through in SA2? He does help the heroes at the end of this game, but afterwards he just goes back to his old self like none of it ever happened. What happened to Knuckles and Rouge? Whatever romantic plot was there dried up completely. I know now that Heroes was a soft reboot before I had any idea what a reboot was. I think that with rare exceptions (like Doom), once a franchise reaches reboot territory it is basically artistically dead and drifting. But I agree that all the way through 06 (which I have also never played for myself) it feels like there was some soul and artistic vision there. One can see that they were trying to make something cool, it just failed hard in execution. One chili dog spin is worth a thousand words. I don't need Sonic to adhere to some literary standard of quality, just want him to have a personality and a bit of attitude.
You are correct that there was outrage even back then over Sonic VAs. But my point still stands that the cult-like behavior Sonic fans form around VAs is frankly disturbing and I'm sorry, but I just don't see that in any other fandom. Sure, fans might get upset when someone like David Hayter or Charles Martinet is replaced, but generally once the new actor has come in, the controversy is pretty much gone and everyone's accepted it and moved on. For Sonic it's different, because it goes for years and years, long after the replacement happened, out of some desperate hope for SEGA to fire their new talent and bring back the old. They do it for character designs, they do it for gameplay styles, and they do it for voice talent. The difference between the Sonic fandom and other fandoms is that Sonic fans don't know how to let a controversy go. When something makes them mad, they're mad about it for decades. You could probably say something about how Sonic fans have trouble moving on because they fixate on Sonic and won't simply try and experience other media, but I digress.
The population of Sonic fans dedicated to idolizing and crusading for specific casts or actors, if it even exists now, is an extremely vocal minority that isn't worth judging any more than that dude who bought all the Rosalina amiibos. What fucking "cult-like behavior"? Where are you going where the existence of Roger on the series is still an active "controversy"? Are you just exaggerating people who say they wish the VAs from their childhood would come back because they like them? I barely see people talking about the firing-not-firing of 2021, and that's way more recent. This is sounding more and more like a problem that only exists in your head.
I wanna know the guy who still battles in the trenches of World War 4kids and ask him how he's doing tbh. Even Spax like I mentioned has moved on lol
