Who's to say it isn't the other way around? They wanted Silver to be more cutesy-dorky in the comics, so they changed the eye shape to reflect that and make him look less serious. It's not just the way he's drawn that causes that perception in the fandom, it's how Ian Flynn writes him. Silver was written and drawn to be "cuter" as far back as 2011, long before the fandom made his "smol cinnamon roll" personality popular. And if Team Sonic Racing is any indication, that personality is canon now.
Team Sonic Racing is the worst Rouge has been portrayed in any media ever. I don't think I've ever been as annoyed by her dialogue, or cringed as hard at it. Just take a listen to some of this crap sometime.
Idk, i think its fine, and letting them be more loosely interpreted allows these characters to be even more expressive, which considering its a comic, yes please
Post-Colors Rouge voice is generally just bizarre and I have no idea what direction they're trying to go with it. Which I guess make sense since her character itself has been struggling to find any reason to canonically exist after 06. I remember when everyone was crying about Kathleen's Rouge voice saying she sounds like a guy etc (which is an awful take as someone who also didn't like the 4kids voices back then) and I wonder if all the forced high-pitched sauciness in her newer voices is in response to that. Just let her sound like a femme fatale again and stop doing this squeaky southern belle(?!) thing.
Other than just being one more reason to stay the hell away from Sonic Twitter, the conniptions I've seen people in over the minutia of eye shapes just reminds me of the freakouts over the Dragon Ball Super Broly film, where Tadayoshi Yamamuro's rigidity had been so long-established in the series that Shintani's designs had people treating them as an ontological crime against the franchise, breezing past whether they were actually aesthetically pleasing or efficient for the animation. I think it's kind of ridiculous to say that a character's personality is being received a certain way in the fandom because of this, but even if I were to agree, the original isn't even worth wanting? His personality in 06 is trash, just like the entire rest of 06's story. Leave it where it belongs. I actually think it's good when a franchise plays with the style a little bit, and saying "it's not the style it's a real eye shape trope"...is just saying it's the style. I could give a name to the different ways Sonic's quills are drawn and claim that people who aren't adhering to that are doing it wrong. Who cares. Also, WOW. I have not listened to TSR's voice acting pretty much at all, what the hell is going on with Karen Strassmen? I think ClementJ64 said that Delaney sounded too old and raspy for Rouge, but this woman sounds like an old person trying to sound like a horny teenager. I never thought anyone quite surpassed Minella, but I did not realize just how creepy she is currently.
The eye shape is not the only reason. It's the writing, too. But the eye shape does play a part. I mean, a character's general disposition/mood is a part of what we're talking about when we mention how a character is portrayed. And for Sonic characters, a character's general eye shape does play a pretty large part in showcasing their disposition and mood. And I am not exactly in love with Silver's portrayal in 06 and other stuff before they turned him into what he is now. But I do find what he is now kind of freaking annoying if I'm being honest,and I'd personally rather be bored by a character than annoyed by them.
I don't think that off-model, wide-eyed, bean-mouth thing is at all exclusive to Silver in Archie/IDW anyway. It's just part of this meta era thing of making everything as memeable and self-aware as possible. I imagine they're aware of that Shadow/Marine reaction meme and might be trying to make similar memeable reaction faces with other characters.
My counter-take is that he kind of really is just a big dork. Even and especially when he's trying to be super serious in Sonic 06, anyone who pays enough attention (in universe) can see right through it. Dude just wants to stare at trees and sand and watch people be happy because for the most part he hasn't been able to have a life. His entire story in 06 is showing how far he's willing to go, but it's also showing where he's willing to break. How much a story is willing to express a dorky nature is then up to what tone it's going for. For TSR, he's just sort of there for no reason, so he gets to relax and pretty much be himself, while in Forces he was there for buisness (whatever that means for that story) so he's pretty constantly just doing his job. Idk about the art style thing but honestly the personal touches and choices from the artists like that is one of the few things IDW has going for it in terms of its art anyways so I'm not bothered by it.
It seems like Silver is always drawn incorrectly for the specific purpose of almost canonizing his personality from the Christmas With Sonic series. The way Evan Stanley specifically draws Sonic and Silver most of the time bothers me. Totally off model faces that can be irritating to look at. Making Silver look like a dork is one thing, making Sonic look like a dork is just stupid. This is definitely one of the most annoying things I've noticed in the IDW comics. They try to force memes in the art and it really is obnoxious at times. It's especially egregious when they make overt visual references to hyperspecific existing meme images. The recent reveal of the "Silver as Charlie Day" cover is a good example. They just don't need to do that sort of thing. I can appreciate small visual references to things the artist likes, such as Sonic being drawn like Charlie Brown in the 30th anniversary special. But some moments become needlessly distracting.
Everything leading up to and following Death Egg makes up for amazing storytelling. You can feel it, hia desperation, his swift responses -- to which you have to have even quicker answers. At some point you'll ask WILL HE EVER GIVE UP, and your at your wit's end too because by then you have like three rings and can't afford to fight yet another mech. And yet Eggman flees, yet again. The only time I think they did anything similar was, very curiously, in Sonic Heroes. For its lighthearted tone, it tells the surprisingly sad story of a clone that was made to surpass the original, but in its efforts to do so, completely does away with its own essence as hating Sonic means hating itself. Metal Sonic is absolutely desperate and the monstrous, final forms show his agony -- and, ultimately, loneliness -- quite well. In the end, Metal Sonic loses because he is a fucking loser nerd with no friends.
The most irritating part is that it's working. As much as Sonic fans claim to want the "old Shadow" back, and as much as they claim to hate the "meta era", Twitter fucking loves drawing Shadow as an angsty, angry, gun-toting blood knight. They love drawing him being an irresponsible uncle for Cream and drawing HER getting into guns. They love drawing Knuckles as an absolute dumbass. They love drawing Silver as a nervous, dorky cinnamon roll. And that "Pepe Silvia" cover? People love it. I've seen fandubs of it already. Sonic gets stronger in online meme culture every year because of this. SEGA is well-aware of it, and they're riding it to the bank. The Sonic franchise is no longer targeting fans who actually give a shit about who these characters are actually meant to be. They are targeting fans who want memes. They want the audience who only cares about these characters, their personalities, and their development, as long as they are funny and memeable. It's the audience that boils down Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima to "dame da ne guy" and "funny eyepatch man". The audience that misinterpreted Rick & Morty so hard during its first two seasons that the show started catering to relatable meme culture. The audience that is directly responsible for why flanderization of characters exists in the first place, while simultaneously, paradoxically, being the same audience that complains about said flanderization and thinks they don't contribute at all.
I miss the old Silver, straight from the 'Go Silver Chop up the soul Silver, set on his goals Silver I hate the new Silver, the fun mood Silver The always good Silver, spaz in the books Silver I miss the rude Silver, chop up the crates Silver I gotta to say at that time I'd like to meet Silver See I invented Silver, it wasn't any Silvers And now I look and look around and there's so many Silvers I used to love Silver, I used to love Silver I even had the green boots, I thought I was Silver What if Silver made a time line about Silver Cried "I Need A New Future, " man that would be so Silver That's all it was Silver, we still love Silver And I love you like Silver loves Silver
Nice but I don't particularly miss the I MUST FULFILL MUH SHONEN DESTINY Silver either and generally kinda hate that anime archetype. I think he's fundamentally a character with a bit of a crisis of identity since his 06 personality was so intertwined with its weird story no one cares about.
I always liked how in Sonic Rush during boss fights your rings would spread out and disappear faster on consequent hits. No idea why this mechanic was never implemented anywhere else as a way of preventing damage boosting
If you don't like how Silver is drawn in the IDW comic, you could try contacting the artists and telling them your opinion on how Silver is being depicted.
If only just one of us sent an angry email to Sega, we all could've prevented 06.... TBF I think you and I are getting old and the "old Shadow" they're referring to IS the gun-touting SHTH Shadow (who they see as the same as SA2B Shadow because Gamecube) and the new Shadow they're inferring is Boom Shadow (like anyone even remembers) or maybe his incarnation from those comics I don't read. Sonic fan culture can't escape the meta era because modern culture in general is deeply irony-poisoned whether we like it or not. At least even Colors never went full MCU where Sonic looks in a mirror and goes "WOW I LOOK FUCKING STUPID"
Never played this game, so I was ready to be all "it can't be so bad!"... Dude, I'm 51 seconds in and....yeah, that's pretty bad. Ho-ly SHIT! Penelope Pittstop meets any number of ancient cutesy-ditzy-damsel-in-distress tropes. They managed to squeeze a generous portion of that in with all the "gotta seduce EVERYTHING!" stuff, which doesn't seem so out of place for the character, but is over the stop enough to stand out in the wrong way. The former, on the other hand, is both overacted and sounds out of character. Rouge always struck me as the-flirtatious-charming-badass-who-isn't-really-a-villain-but-likes-to-cause-trouble-for-her-own-entertainment type. Never struck me as the damsel in distress-y "Ohh [male character] hunny, won't you be a dear, and help a gal [verb]?" type, but then again I don't really watch or play anything that she's in that much and tend to steer more towards the classic stuff so I don't know the character well enough to really say lol.
I don't care at all what tone Sonic has as long as whatever emotion they're striving for in the characters feels earned. Nor do I care how darker themes are depicted. This has been my stance seeing the Metal Virus arc in IDW, though I have other issues with that arc.
Mike Pollock kinda becomes a boring joke when he has to sound any more serious than S1 4kids Sonic X. I thought it might've just been bad direction in 06 but Frontiers affirmed exactly why I've missed Gene so much and for so long. And I don't know, is anyone else just sick of his voice at this point? At least Roger is trying to do something actually different. It's just becoming ironic at this point just how hard the rest of the 4kids voices were suddenly shafted for Colors and yet here we are still stuck with only 4kids Eggman for whatever reason.
No one is going to like this. I don't even like it. But that's what the thread is for. Sonic relies too hard on crutches. Kind of want a game where they just stop. Poor visibility combined with (comparatively) more slippery controls making it harder to deal with oncoming hazards? Ring system. Except now, you just made people care significantly less about taking damage, and possibly denied people the immediate satisfaction of an opportunity of improvement that would come from dying instantly. Taking damage has no consequence at all? Throw in a special stage system to incentivize holding onto rings, except a lot of people probably don't care about that and those that do are going to have the same issues mentioned above. Didn't fix the first problem? Throw in a rolling mechanic. Except now your making it to where simultaneously you don't have to think at all about some hazards like enemies and where you are now stripped of the control to deal with the hazards that still damage Sonic anyway. Still have a problem? Naturally slow Sonic down so he doesn't run into stuff by using ramps and inclines, except now you are missing an opportunity for engagement and reaction based challenges.
