Sonic Frontiers Thread - PS4, PS5, Xbox, Switch, PC

Somewhat unrelated, but Naoto Ohshima has some obvious influences and some very unobvious influences. The obvious one is Walt Disney, with creations like Sonic being roughly designed in Mickey's image with other pop culture stuff mixed in, NiGHTs being a mix of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, and the obscure Artoon series Pinobee being a robot bee Pinocchio. (No clue if anything else went into that. Also, he's cited Akira Toriyama as an artist who's work he's "been moved by", right after Walt.)
The unobvious one I don't think we've ever seen pop up in a work itself and isn't talked about often is Marvel. It seems like he's a gigantic fan of Marvel (potentially more specifically the movies and shows) and he has a pretty impressive collection of a bunch of Marvel related figures that he's put side by side with some other usual suspects, and he calls them "my Avengers." It's pretty cool actually.

 

I'm sorry for this long post but it really wanted to be written. I promise I'm not trying to bog the thread down with this conversation, and I do tie it back to Sonic.

The tenants that The Office and Friends (and all other sitcoms) share is in their structure for delivering comedy, as contrasts with sketch comedy and stand up comedy. The core tenants that make Dragon Ball and Evangelion groupable are...?

That they're just oversimplifications isn't the problem. They're also, in the way they get used often, misnomers, misuses of terms, often used out of ignorance. "Battle shonen" seems a lot more useful as a descriptor when one doesn't realize just how many of these works given the label are wheeling and dealing in old fantasy martial arts story genre tropes, which are being used because they're running in the same magazine where Dragon Ball (and previously Fist of the North Star) showed them to be very popular; turns out boys love stories about dudes who train to master martial arts techniques, and fight each other in tournaments so they can speak to each other through their fists. Insofar as these are "Dragon Ball-likes", that's exactly what they're doing, because that's exactly what Dragon Ball is doing. It's a fantasy martial arts action comedy (thanks to Akira Toriyama being a funnyman). Those are genres. I feel like people also point to things like an "ensemble cast", or characters using "powers", and those are such nondescript labels that they can apply to all kinds of shit like the Justice League and the Avengers.

Language evolves, sure, but words do also mean things, otherwise we wouldn't be using them to communicate with other people, and in some cases a new word gets coined when it doesn't need to because words already exist to communicate those ideas. I guess that doesn't make the term invalid (and one word is definitely shorter than five), but man is it tiring and eyerolling and cringe to read at times. People will employ the terms for deeper-than-surface-level analysis of works, but won't let their analysis go the tiny step further to get a little clearer and better understanding of the stuff they're working to make insightful points about. It's just lazy "scholarship", if we can call it something like that. That applies more to, say, hour long video essays about how, for instance, "Hunter x Hunter deconstructs the shonen genre", than to this thread, but the latter here is something of a symptom of the former. Debating over if Sonic got/is "too anime" or "too shonen" is definitely beyond surface-level "Sonic analysis", so it's disheartening to see the analysis end up so sloppy.

Sonic was and continues to be inspired by anime (ie: Japanese cartoons like Dragon Ball and Evangelion), some of it targeting the shonen demographic (like Dragon Ball), some of that dealing in fantasy martial arts action comedy tropes (like Dragon Ball, ie: Super Saiyan with its ki aura and Bruce Lee inspired glare). This kind of thing should come as no surprise, given that Sonic originated as a Japanese IP, so of course the creators would be inspired by cartoons from their own country. While Sonic was also strongly influenced by western cartoons, such as Felix the Cat, his past and present anime inspirations, things like Evangelion and Dragon Ball, were inspired by Astro Boy whose author, Tezuka was inspired by other western cartoons, namely those by Disney. So the "grandfather of manga" was a Disneyhead, but so was Toriyama (who we could possibly call the "grandfather of battle shonen", insofar as such works are Dragon Ball-likes). So, Sonic is "like a shonen anime" and also "like a western cartoon", but "shonen anime" is also "like a western cartoon" in many respects.

So I guess there's some divergent evolution (because as you mentioned, Japanese cultural influence plays a role too), but then Sonic becomes a point of those divergent threads reconnecting and doubling back on each other ("East meets West" as you put it well). Which is interesting! I guess I can understand someone preferring Sonic to lean more towards Japanese cultural influences than Western ones, or vice versa, but I don't think there's anything wrong with the series aiming for some sort of balance or blend. A lot of popular media today would be hard-pressed to avoid such a balance/blend!

And this is exactly what I'm talking about. Avatar: The Last Airbender is not an anime, because anime is not a genre. It's been influenced by anime (ie: Japanese cartoons), but that doesn't make it an anime (a Japanese cartoon). Astro Boy was influenced by American cartoons, but that doesn't make it an American cartoon. Astro Boy was also basically the manga/anime that gave us the "anime eyes" that people associate with the medium, but not all anime (ie: Japanese cartoons) use that style. Does that make those Japanese cartoons "not anime"? That's a weird question to have to ask, honestly.

Now, I get that words can carry multiple connotations. "Anime" can mean both "Japanese cartoons" or "cartoons with Astro Boy eyes" depending on the context; "Shonen" can mean both "anime and manga aimed at young boys" or "fantasy martial arts action comedies as inspired by Dragon Ball" depending on the context. Context clues can often make it clear when one meaning of a word is meant rather than the other, but "anime" and "shonen" are problematic examples, because in each case one sense of the word either overlaps with or is itself a subcategory of the other sense. Dragon Ball, for example, is an "Anime" in both senses of the word, and a "Shonen" in both senses of the word. Sonic just as well, insofar as "Anime" is "Japanese animation" and all video games feature animation, an "Anime" in both senses of the word, and (depending on the time period in question) a "Shonen" in both senses of the word. And I feel like that's just needlessly confusing when more clear terms and language are already available.

 

“Anime” and “shonen” are simply shorthand by people who are referring to Japanese/eastern-style story-telling and visual/narrative elements. While there are people who will automatically go, “Japanese = good, Western = bad,” pointing out their idiocy does not invalidate the opinions of those who do prefer the Japanese-led media.

Here’s a pretty simple guide for people who want to express what they want in terms other than “anime” or “shonen”:

 

When people say they want Sonic to be a shonen hero again they often don't really define what that means and just assume understanding. I often find that framing unhelpful and misleading because the underlying grievances are usually easily understandable when it's focused upon narrative. People are usually talking about something very simple and fixed in the here and now of Pontac and Graffs writing.

Often people just wish Sonic was a 'nice guy' again after he was much more flawed under Pontac and Graff. To such an extent a lot of people thought his character became unpleasant. I think a problem with this argument though is that Sonic was certainly kinder in the 2000s but barely had a character. The blandness of his personality in Frontiers was popular and its because people just wanted him to be kind but not really much else. Frontiers Sonic was very similar to the bland but kind persona which inhibited the 2000s. Pontac and Graff at least gave him a personality.

There's also the Shonen aesthetics wishes and I really don't know enough about that to comment.

 

Geez... That's so overgeneralized I can't even save it to use as referrence.
- Many japanese stories (like Dragon Ball, Hunter X Hunter, even One Piece, to name a few (shounen-style)) have selfish and self-centered protags, despite the whole "nakama" schtick in many cases.
- Many japanese light novels (a more practical example) tend to be told on first-person perspective, majorly focused on protag's PoV.
- Many japanese stories focus much on internal discovery, exploration and growth, either alone or in group.
- Western stories tend to be more "protag progresses by making best use of the world around" while japanese stories tend to be more "protag grows by interacting with the world, willingly or unwillingly".
- Many japanese stories center around conflicts of interests and/or ideologies, either by individuals or groups. There may be "good VS evil", but many japanese antagonists may be a bit more human than western antagonists. And it's not that usual for most (if not all) characters to die, it depends on the story.
- Some stories have either open or ambiguous endings, leaving it open for the audience to think and/or decide their preferred outcome.

 

I've seen the opposite stated tbh in that Sonic is too nice and chill, though I suppose that might be in relation to his classic self, who's more impulsive and an up-start. At any rate, as far as I've seen it, "shonen" is what people want from the tone of the series rather than Sonic himself necessarily, (both favourably and otherwise) compared to Pontac and Graff's work that's usually compared with western Saturday morning cartoons. I've not read/watched a ton of shonen stuff (my experience goes about as far as Dragon Ball, JJBA, One Piece, Naruto and My Hero Academia), but I think what people want is stuff that's more serialised with a persistent world and more mature in tone. I think the best way to quantify this is to look at the stretch of games between Adventure and 06. Adventure and Adventure 2 had a lot of connective tissue between their settings, with the backstory of Gerald hinging upon his research into ancient echidna civilisation, leading to stuff like artificial Chaos, as well as events like Tails saving Station Square informing plot points in Adventure 2. Heroes and Battle then picked up and expanded upon the threads of Shadow's "death" and Gerald's research, while Shadow of course incorporated a whole lot of stuff that appeared in Adventure 2. Finally 06, while something of a soft reboot, finished Shadow's character arc that ran from Adventure 2 through Shadow the Hedgehog.

After this, the next big game was Unleashed (not a Pontac and Graff work, but I think where this shift begins, albeit not yet in full force). The cast of established characters is just Sonic, Tails and Amy, the Chaos Emerald lore is new and not based off anything established within that previous era and in general the story just goes off in a different direction. In Colours, none of this is referenced nor informs the story. The only piece of connective tissue apart from the presence of Sonic, Tails and Eggman being present is the SA-55 being redesigned as Orbot. The trend continues after this. Generations and Lost World make light references to previous adventures, but not in ways that they use to develop their story, while Forces pretty much just has the Wisps and Chaos showing up without any real acknowledgement for the former or meaning for the latter.

Frontiers, meanwhile, draws on Forces to inform where Tails is at in terms of his identity and psyche following that game, while Knuckles' arc tangles with his status quo as it was in Adventure and Adventure 2, where he's tied to the Master Emerald and his heritage and needs a reason to be away from all that. The ancients are a bit of a weird one because they're basically a reverse of what I've been describing in terms of connective tissue. They're new concepts, but created against the backdrop of what's previously been established and brings new information and perspective to those old concepts within the story (i.e. how chao are descendants of the ancients, with Chaos' mutation awakening his latent ancestry).

In terms of tone, Pontac and Graff is...weird. Colours was unambiguously light hearted, albeit with some mild horror with regards to what Eggman was doing to the wisps; Lost World was similarly light overall but contrasted with dark moments and frankly jarring dialogue choices ("I'll get fat from eating your black hearts!" isn't as cold as I think all involved hoped it would be, imo); and Forces generlly does take a darker tone superficially but doesn't really grapple with it on a deeper level, compared to stuff like Knuckles' and Shadow's backstories in the Adventure games, nor...well pretty much all of Froniters' setting and backstory. I think it's fair to say the Ponatc and Graff stories are focused more on events rather character arcs and development, too.

I guess, in a word, it's about consequence. The world of Sonic and those inhabiting it changed between 1991 and 2006 in a way that was persistent and could be seen in each new game. Since 2007, stories have happened pretty much independent of each other, with the world and characters remaining largely static, with the exception of some of the wisps remaining on Earth. Which approach is right isn't for me to say, since I see merit in both, but personally I do prefer Sonic's story trending more towards that light serialisation. While Frontiers does make steps to build on the state of the setting as it exists post-Forces, I don't think we'll really see if we've returned to the 00s style of storytelling until we get whatever follows Frontiers.

 

Yeah, as a big fan of that era, I'll say Frontiers Sonic bears only a superficial resemblence to the character I loved in the 2010s games. It's still there in a few choice cuts of dialogue, but mostly it just feels like Sonic with all of his edge sanded down, and it's a big reason I don't care for Frontiers' story. I don't mind light serialization or stories with higher stakes at all, but I don't think Sonic should have to lose so much of his personality to get there.

 

I've basically made peace with the fact that, story and characterization-wise, these games are not for me. I'm in it fully for the level design and gamefeel.

 

I don't think it has to be a matter of "Saturday morning cartoon" VS "moody intense melodrama". They're two opposite extremes that I think have both garnered a lot of ire, with the fanbase loathing Pontac/Graff's works, and the general public mocking the mid-00s era to this day.

The Adventures were proof you could do a "shonen" action plot but still have goofy characters with silly interactions, and those games are second only to the classic games in how admired they are. Hell, Murder of Sonic was maybe the most unanimously loved character-driven Sonic thing in ages, and it treads that line well. If they could lean into that with the next game, I feel like that's the sweet spot the series has been looking for.

 

I didn’t make the chart, I simply googled “western vs eastern storytelling” and grabbed an image. It’s from a longer academic paper, so maybe divorcing it from context was a bad idea. It communicated a lot of the differences, so I don’t mind if it’s not the end-all-be-all of explanatory charts. A more important element to early Sonic’s “shonen”-ness is probably kishōtenketsu which refers to the story structure.

That said, the point of a chart like that IS to be general. Anyone can point to exceptions to trends. Anyway, outside of the first two bullets (the first of which are characters who are made to be outliers, and the second is for a specific medium), none of what you said disputes the chart, so I don’t get your point.

 

I feel like it should not be that hard to articulate that Sonic's stories should have a lighthearted tone and brisk pace while still respecting the player's intelligence.

 

I...never said it was?

Yeah I think that's all valid, just wasn't on my mind at the time of the post. Shadow in particular, but also 06 at times, goes overboard with the moodiness, Lost World, as I alluded to, has some jarring lines and moments because they just shoot straight into grimdark territory and I was deliberating as to whether I wanted to put Frontiers in the "too moody" category, but I think it avoids it as a result of the character interactions being generally less dour in their tone, which I think balances things out.

The comics have honestly been doing this brilliantly for years, bar some erring here and there. I think probably the upper of the sweetspot you've referred to would be stuff like Antoine being hospitalised by Metal Sonic or the Metal Virus saga. At the same time, there's plenty of jokes and silliness in their, oftentimes in the artwork itself, but certainly in IDW (which I'm citing moreso because I remember it better than the much older Archie book) I don't think there's ever a time where the balance has been off so far.

And yeah, Murder is pretty good at it too. I would put it into the "Saturday morning cartoon" bucket due to its premise and generally being a more lighthearted affair, but it (in my mind) exists in this bucket and triumphs, which I guess leads me to the conclusion that, yeah, both can work, and really both are necessary for Sonic because, while I do personally prefer the seralised stuff, I think the series would be hurt if everything needed to tie together. Whether other people feel this too, I don't know, but I'd wager perhaps a big part of this is less that Sonic has to be one or the other and more that the balance has been lacking I suppose since Heroes.

 

Not that I wanted to properly dispute the chart, just point out what I think I know about japanese stories, in comparison to that chart.
It deriving from an academic paper is meaningful, but yet it didn't exactly explain well most japanese stories (since people were talking about SA2's plot structure).

 

The main issue I see when Sonic fans wanting more serialized storytelling is that it's kind-of incompatible with the perpetual state of the series.

Franchises like One Piece, Dragon Ball and other Shonen franchises that people make superficial comparisons to, have an endpoint. It might take them decades to reach it, but they will end once the author decides to do so.

Sonic is not that, Sonic is a series that is designed to continue for as long as humanly possible. To that end, it has had multiple creators working on it through the years. It's a lot like Comics in many ways.

Stories that build towards a climax and ending versus one's that are episodic in nature but are designed to go indefinitely. In other for Sonic to be like those Shonen franchises everyone loves, it would need to eventually end otherwise, simple and episodic is the more ideal route for a series like Sonic. This is why Mario games never have or will commit to any meaningful plot. It also makes the games very easy and accessible to anyone, which is important for a series like Sonic that's aimed at primarily children.


Otherwise you get the current state of American comic books. Which always tease progress and change, but will always eventually walk back on it due to the constant turnabout of writers. So new writers have to clean up and make sense of older writers' nonsense. And if this sounds like what Ian Flynn is doing, then you understand the problem.

Stan Lee called this "the illusion of change" where authors need to balance maintaining reader interest with the tease of change, but not change so much that the product Unrecognizable from what it was.

Sonic Adventure, for better or worse, let the genie out of the bottle though. Every game after was a constant escalation of what came before even if they weren't always directly connected. Characters like Shadow are built on the foundation of change and growth, and just do not fit in a static setting where things are stagnant, hence his controversial writing in the 2010's onwards.

Once you do that, you can't really walk back on it without backlash and we've seen that. So now the series is trying to balance being episodic and welcoming to new fans versus rewarding the longtime fans who are invested in the growth of the setting and characters.

 

SA1, despite concluding plot elements from S2 & S3K, still felt like an episodic adventure.
It kept the spirit of the classics, in many senses, but managed to revolutionize the series.

Then comes SA2 (which at the time I deemed the pinnacle of Sonic storytelling), breaking the mold in plot and storytelling and (IMHO) causing the very first rift in the fandom (even after the aesthetic change).

 

A lot of Sonic Adventure is built on what Classic established. It's a game that can absolutely be played by itself, but a greater appreciation of it comes having played the previous games. Hence why Classic fans call it a 3D Classic game compared to SA2.

And even then, if you subscribe to the theory that Shadow is based on the Sonic 3 mural, that ties that game back to Adventure too. Especially since Gerald researched Echidna lore.

SA2 isn't as disconnected from its history as some think.

 

The issue with the chart is that in fact it is not general

it started alright, but then things like “every character eventually dies” ?????? I experienced lot of japanese stories in different mediums and handful of chinese stories, not usual at all, i can count stories where that happens on one hand, like i am just wondering where that came from and what stories they refer to

sure a lot of other points in the chars i get and understand, but then i see a point like this and it just ruin the whole thing for me you know

 

Are comics a genre
is animation a genre
is music a genre
what are you talking about

EDIT: to be more constructive, the answer is you're wrong. On multiple aspects, I'd say. There's a separate discussion about how (often) American media insists on anime being an art style and thus that they get to claim they make anime (Last Airbender, Castlevania). I think that's stupid and wrong, but the problem here is you went a step further and claimed it a genre. How are Panty and Stocking, Genshiken, Astro Boy, the Sonic OVA, .hack//sign, and Tokimeki Memorial the same genre?

This is what's being talked about when people are pointing to you guys that using the wrong terminology just makes discussion muddled and impossible. Even if we accept your premise that Last Airbender is anime (it isn't), how is it the same storytelling genre as Serial Experiments Lain?

EDIT EDIT: And this without getting into the fact "shounen" isn't a genre, it's a demographic

Shounen "genre" means Dragonball, a martial artists ensemble cast long-running action franchise, Azumanga Daioh, a comic strip with down-to-earth daily life jokes of a bunch of high school girls, and To Love Ru, a borderline pornographical harem story, are all the same genre. You see the problem, no?

 

Again, I'd argue a mixture of both is necessary, and having no endpoint hasn't stopped comics from having major status quo shifts that have stuck. Superman getting married, him and Batman having sons, Miles Morales making the jump to the 616 universe, Peter revealing his identity to Jameson who's now one of his most steadfast allies, etc.

Even if none of that were true, they could still do runs of connected games with arcs with episodic stuff in between...like comics.