Sonic the Hedgehog

"What you see is what you get: just a guy that loves adventure. I'm Sonic the Hedgehog!"

- Sonic the Hedgehog 2001

Sonic the Hedgehog (ソニック・ザ・ヘッジホッグ Sonikku za Hejjihoggu) mostly known simply as Sonic, is the video game company Sega's mascot (and also their current and longest-reigning mascot, succeeding Sega's previous mascot, Alex Kidd) and the main protagonist of the video game series he is named after.

A blue anthropomorphic hedgehog with plenty of attitude and personality, he lives up to his name by being able to run at supersonic speeds.

Why He's Way Past Cool

 * 1) Just like Super Mario and Crash Bandicoot, he is one of the most famous mascots in video game history.
 * 2) *Not only that, but he is also one of the most iconic characters ever created apart from characters such as Mickey Mouse, SpongeBob, Mario.
 * 3) * He could very well be considered the Bugs Bunny of gaming, while Mario is the Mickey Mouse of gaming.
 * 4) As a blue anthropomorphic hedgehog, he has a very creative character design, arguably better compared to many iconic characters out there. #* His design was inspired by a combination of Mickey's head and Felix the Cat's body.
 * 5) Unlike most other video game mascots, Sonic actually has an interesting personality that can actually be integrated into stories. Thanks to this, Sonic has not only interesting stories in his video games, but he has a bunch of good stories in comic books, cartoons, and more.
 * 6) His famous rivalry/friendship with Super Mario, which was famous enough to put them both in a crossover game together since 2007: Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games.
 * 7) In his various incarnations, he has shown these character traits:
 * 8) * When there is a crisis, he intensely focuses on the task at hand.
 * 9) * He is an unpredictable thrill-seeker and sees his heroics as an opportunity to have fun.
 * 10) * He always manages to remain cool under pressure.
 * 11) * He often jokes around to lighten the mood and has the tendency to hilariously taunt his opponents.
 * 12) * He never forgets about his friends and believes in working as a team or, as he put it, the power of teamwork.
 * 13) * He follows his free-spirited nature and does not dwell on the past or allow painful experiences to weigh him down. Instead, he lives in the present and always looks forward to new adventures, which is a good moral for anyone.
 * 14) * He is always ready to risk his life for his friends, with little regard for his own safety.
 * 15) * He has shown to have a habit of forgiving. One example is how he forgave Silver for trying to kill him.Twice.
 * 16) He is also shown to be good at swordsmanship, like in Sonic and the Black Knight.
 * 17) Most of his various voice actors have done a good job voice him and capturing his personality.
 * 18) He has a buttload of quotable lines, such as "STRANGE, ISN'T IT??", "That's NO GOOD.", "Ah, yeah! This is happening!", "No copyright law in the universe is going to stop me!", "Uuuhh.. meow??" and the fan-favorite "You're too slo-ow!".

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Sometimes, he can be a little too narcissistic, impatient, and prideful to be likable. In other words, he can be a bit predictable at times.
 * 2) He kinda overreacts when his species is mislabeled, like in Sonic and the Secret Rings, when Erazor Djinn called him a "blue rat".
 * 3) Along with his friends and foes, he was horribly flanderized in the video games during the 2010s (also known as the Meta Era by the Sonic fans). He never took anything seriously in Colors and Generations which often resulted in him spewing unfunny jokes, was a big jerk in Lost World, an overconfident, unfunny jokester in Boom Rise of Lyric (as well as Shattered Crystal), and became blander in Forces.
 * 4) He had an annoying side in Sonic Underground, though he redeemed himself once the series ended.
 * 5) His addition to the Smash Bros. series was one of the reasons why Super Smash Bros. Brawl took so long to release.
 * 6) * Not only that, but he has a very poor moveset in all the Smash Bros. games prior to Ultimate. As most of his moves simply consist of him attacking in his ball form and his D-air is poorly-executed, as it disqualifies him from recovering especially after meteor-spiking or edgeguarding. Fortunately, this was fixed in Smash Ultimate.
 * 7) Unlike his other English voices, his voice in the Sonic OVA isn't that good, as it sounds like he has a southern accent.

Trivia

 * Sonic has a total of 5 animated shows (AoSTH, Sonic SatAM, Sonic Underground, Sonic X, Sonic Boom), 2 web cartoons (Sonic Mania Adventures, Team Sonic Racing Overdrive), a short CGI movie (Night Of The Werehog) an animated movie (Sonic the Hedgehog OVA), and also an exceptionally successful live-action/computer-animated duology of movies in 2020 and 2022.
 * After having been around only three years, he had already surpassed Nintendo's Mario in popularity according to a June 1993 Q-Survey in Gameplayers magazine.
 * Even after Sega settled on the hedgehog, an idea proposed by designer Naoto Ohshima, the company tried out a taxonomically confusing name for the character: Mr. Needlemouse.
 * In keeping with the spirit of the above, Sonic 1's soundtrack was scored entirely by the Japanese pop group Dreams Come True, formed as a trio in 1988.
 * For his cameos, Sonic has proven to be an extremely popular character and he is also a fighter in the Super Smash Bros. games since Brawl in 2008.
 * Sonic's personality is loosely based on Michael Jackson and in Bill Clinton's "get it done" attitude.

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