Difference between revisions of "Sonic the Hedgehog"

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* [[Chris and copyright]]
* [[Chris and copyright]]


==Sauces/notes==
==Sources and notes==
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Revision as of 10:02, 5 October 2011

File:Sonichuripoff.jpg
Some poorly drawn rip-off of Sonichu.

Sonic the Hedgehog is a shitty recolor of beloved comic book hero Sonichu. Sega's blatant plagiarism has given renowned Sonichu creator Christian Weston Chandler many sleepless nights.

Chris claims that Sonic has been his life hero since June 1990 [sic][1], replacing The American Rabbit.[2]

History

Chris likely first learned about Sonic from watching the cartoon show Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, involving the basic plot of Sonic and Tails running around to defeat Robotnik, who was portrayed as a plump, egotistical man who would endeavor to conquer Mobius and destroy Sonic, failing spectacularly each time. At the end of every show, a small segment titled "Sonic Says" (humorously misspelled "Sonic Sez" by Tails) would begin. Each segment would involve Sonic teaching a small moral lesson for kids to learn, such as when to call 9-1-1, what to do if someone attempts to molest or kidnap you, and telling kids not to play with guns.

The show was promoted via a contest, with the grand prize being a $1,000 video game shopping spree. Chris was one of the two winners of the shopping spree and was featured in a news story about the contest, one of the biggest moments (if not the biggest moment) in his early life, spreading its influence far and wide, from his decisions to enter contests (cf. GameStop Be A Star Sweepstakes, Chop Chop Master Onion's Rap Showdown, Harvey Birdman Commercial, Pixelated PS3) to the eventual creation of Sonichu.

Apparently, at one point, Sonic was more widely recognized than Mickey Mouse. He was also intentionally designed to be easy to draw, had an incoherently random daily cartoon and a dead-serious pseudo-cyberpunk Saturday cartoon to cover both ends of the kids' cartoon spectrum, an army of merchandising, and, oh yeah, most of the games actually didn't suck back in the day. That and its enormous popularity (he likes all popular music, after all, why not all popular cartoons?) almost certainly drew in Chris.

The reason Chris remains so unerringly loyal to Sonic is unknown. As the years went by, the games became steadily worse until they fell into a randomly spawning black hole of supercrap and seem doomed to dwell within its depths forever. The cartoons both ended, were replaced by something almost as godawful as Sonichu, and the latest cartoon is dumb enough to suck, yet not enough to be ironically entertaining. Many more pop culture trends have come and gone, some good, some heinously bad, but Chris has stuck by Sonic (and Pokémon) like an abused wife. Judging by the large amount of pages about Sonic-loving lolcows (autistic or not) on ED, there's obviously something about Sonic that we don't see. Given how rabid a fanboy Chris has become, perhaps brand loyalty has transitioned into a sort of fannish Stockholm syndrome.

Chris's loyalty was so strong that he was visibly upset when told by bullies that Sonic was dead.[3] This was an early example of trolls being able to find one of Chris's 'tard rage buttons.

Role in the comics

Sonic first appears in Sonichu #0 as Super Sonic battling the Perfect Chaos Monster in Station Square. Whilst battling him, a Pikachu comes to fight Perfect Chaos and is tackled by Sonic. The power of the Chaos Emeralds mutates said Pikachu into Sonichu, who then defeats Perfect Chaos.

In the following issue, he crashes into Sonichu again. After recognizing each other, they team up in order to rescue Rosechu from the clutches of Black Sonichu.

Other than being the catalyst for the creation of Sonichu and teaming up with him in the second issue, Sonic serves no other purpose. He disappears after issue #1, never mentioned again until Sonichu #11, where Robbie sickeningly refers to him as "Uncle Sonic".

Tails's lack of a role in the comics

Miles "Tails" Prower is Sonic's sidekick, and has been in the franchise since Sonic the Hedgehog II was released in 1992 for the Sega Master System. He has been featured in almost every form of Sonic-related media such as cartoons, anime, and comic books. As such, many have been perplexed on why neither he nor an idiot ripoff (likely named "Prowerlo Sonichu") has made an appearance in Sonichu.

Christian has refused to include Tails in his comics, despite ripping off Knuckles and Shadow and featuring an Autobot named "Prower". It is likely Tails was omitted because of the rumors (made by thirteen-year-olds on GameFAGs and Failgrounds) that Sonic and Tails were a gay couple. Christian said that "I just did not feel need for a Tails-like Character in the stories. I disagree with all the rumors against Tails; if you read the Sonic the Hedgehog Comic Book Series from Archie Comics, Tails gets a Girlfriend."[4] He later claims that he "did not feel it appropriate for Tails to be in my comic."[5]

Despite this, Chris did create a Tails-like Pokémon named Evails, though he only appeared on the Wall of Originals. Tails also gets a mention in "Sonichu & Rosechu… The Genesis of the Lovehogs", a Sonichu short story which predates the comics.

Amy Rose

Amy Rose is a Sonic character created in 1993, making her first appearance in the game Sonic CD. She serves as the self-proclaimed love interest of Sonic the Hedgehog. In fleshing out the world of Sonichu, Christian Weston Chandler quickly ripped off the character to serve as Sonichu's girlfriend, Rosechu.

File:Chrischan traced.jpg
Yep, definitely different.

While Sonichu is essentially a recolor of Sonic the Hedgehog with a Pikachu tail shoved up his ass, Chris couldn't even be bothered to employ that tiny amount of creativity in creating Rosechu. Like Amy Rose, Rosechu has green eyes and pink fur, with the spines on her head arranged to resemble a bob haircut. Both wear red boots and dresses, with Rosechu's having a blue trim in a slightly different pattern to Amy's white trim. Visually, the only obvious distinction between the two is the Raichu tail Rosechu has, and the spines on the center of Amy's forehead, which Rosechu lacks. It should be noted, however, that when Chris draws Amy, he fails to draw the forehead spines properly.

MAJOR Differences between Amy and Rosie; Amy never had spikes on her back, the clothes are Different; Rosie’s Headband is White, not Red, and Rosechu has a modern girl kinda attitude, and lucky for her, Sonichu RARELY runs away from her charms. And, of course, she has her Electric-Type Attacks to boot.
Christian Weston Chandler, damning himself with faint praise.
File:Rosechu-AmyRose2.jpg
Even Chris is bored with this sexist gabfest.

As Christian points out, the only real difference between Amy and Rosechu in terms of characterization is that while Amy's crush on Sonic is not reciprocated, Sonichu has been sucking face with Rosechu since the day they met. Obviously, this hardly marks a difference in their personality. If anything, it says more about the differences between Sonic and Sonichu, since they respond differently to affection. Since she's already made her romantic conquest, Rosechu is free to pursue the life of a "modern girl", which apparently means face-raping people and producing amateur pornography. It should also be noted that unlike Rosechu, Amy at least does have some notable moments within the Sonic series, such as single-handedly defeating the ZERO robot in Sonic Adventure and breaking into a military base to free a captured Sonic in Sonic Adventure 2, whilst Rosechu's defining moments are considered facerape, sucking Sonichu's pickle, and getting captured at every given opportunity.

Sheesh, they even think the same words.

As an epilogue to the Sonichu/Sonic team-up in Sonichu #1, Rosechu happens to meet Amy in CWCville Mall. With no hint of irony, the two remark upon how similar they are, and engage in a vapid conversation about shopping and relationships.

Shadow the Hedgehog

Introduced in 2001's Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow the Hedgehog is an anti-hero version of Sonic the Hedgehog. Quickly becoming a fan favorite among the Sonic family of characters, it was only a matter of time before Chris decided to "create" another Electric Hedgehog Pokémon...

Unlike Rosechu, who is virtually identical to Amy Rose in every relevant respect, Black Sonichu (Blake) only resembles Shadow in his color scheme and tenuous allegiance to the forces of evil. While Shadow is primarily motivated by his desire to learn about his mysterious past, Black Sonichu was informed of every aspect of his creation by Naitsirhc. Most notably, while Shadow is supposed to be a dark and edgy character, Black Sonichu is basically just a punk, committing blatant mischief for very transparent motives.

While this might seem to make Black Sonichu halfway original, it really only means that he's a poor copy of Sonichu instead of a slightly less poor copy of Shadow. Blake's only real claim to individuality was that he acted like an asshole; since falling for Bubbles in Sonichu #7, he doesn't even have that going for him.

Shadow makes one appearance in the Sonichu canon when he shows up as a drummer for Christian and the Hedgehog Boys, but is later replaced by Punchy Sonichu.

Comics

More likely than not a bigger inspiration than the games series itself. At its lowest points, it rivaled Sonichu in all but art.

Like with the cartoons, Sonic had comic adaptations up the ass, but in an even more bloated sense, as each comic series was specific to the region of the world they were released in. Japan got a series of crazy manga involving Sonic being some sort of alter-ego of a picked on misunderstood nerd (bizarre coincidence?), Europe got a clichéd comic series published by Fleetway (the same company that once published 2000 A.D.) that appealed to the gaming demographic of the 1990s, that was more or less the glorified SEGA advertisement for the continent, and the U.S. got a comic book series based on the Saturday morning cartoon Sonic SATam. Despite the video game franchise more or less crashing and burning, the comic series is still alive and running to this day, although it's unclear if that's due to popularity or just a small, dedicated fan basis of creepy furries and SEGA's endorsement to squeeze every penny they can from this dying franchise.

The majority of Chris's inspiration from the comics seem to come from the work of Ken Penders, who is also an egotistical jerk who tries to claim copyright on the Knuckles recolors he made during his run on the comics. Since 2006, however, Ken was fired and replaced by someone who actually knows how to write a children's comic. Sadly this is not the case with Sonichu.

Chris has hinted at and mentioned that he is familiar with this comic series, and the layout of his comics tends to replicate the style of early Archie Sonic covers. Reldnahc's calling Chris "Prime-Chan" in the comic may be a reference to the character Scourge the Hedgehog, an evil version of Sonic from another dimension; Sonic is referred to as "Sonic Prime" when dealing with inter-dimensional storylines. Chris has also been known to trace images from an early special of the comic, "Super Sonic vs. Hyper Knuckles", for the basis of some of his fight scenes, and one of the early shorts, entitled "Sonichu 25 Years Later," takes its name from a 2004 arc called "Mobius 25 Years Later." Whether he still reads the comics now or not is unknown, but it is probable that he does. He has stated that he would like Sonichu to be published by Archie Comics.[6][7] If Chris still reads it, it will probably be a source of plagiarism and mass-debating for years to come.

Starting in April 2010, Sony began releasing the Archie Sonic comics for download via the Playstation Network.[8] The likelihood that Chris has purchased them? Close to 100%.

Plagiarism

Main article: Ripped_off#Sonic_the_Hedgehog

To put it bluntly, Sonichu is a copyright infringement. He tries to work around this fact by claiming that Sonichu is a parody of Sonic the Hedgehog but Sonichu does not really derive humour or provide commentary on the original franchise. For exact details as to what is ripped off, see the main article.


Sega's response

Sega's reaction to the discovery of Sonichu.

After being scarred by the shitty drawn comic by Christian Weston Chandler one fan finally decided to let Sega in on Sonichu.

While Sega would probably do nothing while Sonichu is just an obscure online fan-fiction/webcomic because Sega does tolerate equally bad abominations (Furry Bomb for example) created from their Sonic franchise and suing a somewhat retarded fan would bring them bad publicity but if Chris ever did get his comic professionally published (spoiler: he wont) he would likely be sued.

Sonic's reaction to Chris Chan

Gallery

See also

Sources and notes

  1. Sonic the Hedgehog wasn't released until June 1991 - see here. Ironically, this is also a question on Chris's Sonic the Hedgehog MyBuzz quiz which Chris assigns the right answer of June 1991. Of course, there can be Rad Mobile by Sega released in 1990, but that would have not made much sense either seeing as Sonic only made a cameo appearance as an air freshener and nothing more, despite the particular appearance in that game predating Sonic's own first game. That, and Rad Mobile was a very less-known game from Sega, so the chance of Chrissy playing the game during 1990 (and failing miserably at it) would be highly unlikely.
  2. CWCipedia article on Sonichu
  3. Jackie Chat #9
  4. Mailbag #21
  5. Mailbag #38
  6. IRC (22 December 2008)
  7. Mumble Chat #6
  8. PlayStation Comics Store Update

External links

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