7 replies to this topic

[Jackal]

Sonic in the games and most other media is able to take on entire fleets of robots, take down gigantic egg-shaped killer space stations and take on powerful gods (Chaos, Solaris), and yet in SatAM he finds it difficult to take on a small group of SWATBots without a Power Ring. Don't get me wrong, I actually see the point to this handicap; SatAm is a much different universe compared to the others; if he was too powerful, Robotnik weren't of been sinister, he would just been a goofball.

The Power Ring also adds to Sonic's weakness, he shows he isn't as great as what the games make him to be; he can be defeated and sometimes, he needs a Dues Ex plot device to save the day. But what of the other Freedom Fighters? Sonic was obviously "weaken" to help show off their strengths, but what have they got? Bunnie's stronge? Sally's smart and has NICOLE? Rotor can fix things? Tails can fly? Antoine can...be a coward?

And yet, regardless, none of these really come into play; vary rarely do we see Bunnie do anything besides busting some doors open (why does she use karate? Surely Sally would benefit from that better); Sally comes up with plans and uses NICOLE but what good is she when faced in battle? Nothing, she's just the damsel in distress. Rotor in Season 1 was probaly the best all-round, showing his traits as a handyman off screen and still being an active member of the main party; shame they dumbed him down to a fat "Q" in season 2.

Tails having no mechanical skills, thumbs up, that*s what Rotor's for (disagree? Then look at how confusing it is in Archie), his flying abilities, thumbs up, being a "scardy-cat", thumbs down; Tails matures alot as the series progress, but he still seems to reley on Sonic saving his ass too much. And Antoine? Comic relief he may be, but his useless. Pure pointless to have around and a complete clutz. Archie did right by giving him a sword, but SatAm season 2 made the character even more unbearable. The maragerine scene is still priceless though. And finally Dulcy; hate her. No point to the character.

[Bakuda]

I will agree with you with Dulcy (ugh) but you have to remember when this show was produced. This was the 90's when anything Sonic related was selling like crazy. It's good that they handicapped Sonic to throw a small sense of reality and balance out the two sides be he was still the star of the show. Make Sonic cool and the kids will love it! I believe the show was starting to develop more of a plot but thanks to our friendly neighborhood power rangers that never came to light.

[LaserX5]

Nice thread you made here.

To be honest, I agree with alot of your evaluations here.

Bunnie should have been used more since she did have a metal arm and legs. Why not let her smack up some Swatbots since she has the power to do so? That was a move I never understood by DIC. They seemed to lessen her role as they series went on.

Sally IMO was portrayed pretty well I thought. No, she didn't have the ability to fight back for the most part, but what did we expect? Her strength is being a strategist and leader.

Tails was another I thought was handled well. I mean, he is a young fox. He had no business being on the battlefield at such an early age. DIC was smart in letting him mature as a character, and then get ready to join the team in stealth missions.

As for Sonic using Power Rings as a Deus Ex Machina weapon, yea, they are in a way, but no more than when Mario would use a fire flower or a star to defeat Bowser. The idea is that they have those powerful weapons at their disposal, but only in limited quantities, such as the idea of having only one Power Ring made a day. It basically put strategy into the mix, instead of him being able to use one anytime he wanted.

And yea, I agree with you about Dulcy, Rotor and Antoine. They definitely needed to be refined as Freedom Fighters. Their personalities and value as Sonic's comrades for the most part was very poor.

Anyway, to answer your question as to whether or not the Freedom Fighters were underpowered, yea, I believed they were. I think the writers of DIC should have given them more weapons to work with. I know the idea was to make it that Robotnik was very powerful and they had to tread lightly whenever they battled him, but why not give them some firepower to help defeat him?

I mean, I saw some episodes where they did have weapons, like the armed canisters, but those seemed to be in few in number when I really think about it.

[DMoney]

I'm afraid I'll have to disagree here. I do not think the FFs were underpowered. They had everything they needed. Like you guys said, Sally was smart and strategic, Bunnie was strong, Rotor was Mr Fix-it, and we all know what Sonic can do. These little personal traits may not seem like much, but when you put them together, then they are dangerous. The biggest reason for the FFs success was because they were RESOURCEFUL. They constantly found ways to defeat Robotnik at everything he tried. They found secret scrolls, metal eating plants, an oil reserve, deep power stones, hidden underground tunnels, and even a storm cell to use against Robotnik. They even found ways to use Robotnik's technology against him, like the giant dino-bot they used to stop a crystal from being removed and save Mobius's ecosystem (Ultra Sonic) or one of Robotnik's rocket propellers to reach his space station and bring it down, or using Robotnik's 'bugs' to spy on him.
I think this was the show's intention, the whole man vs nature theme, and to teach us about how powerful you can be by just being resourceful, showing true teamwork, and using your head to outsmart your enemy. A good example of this is how Tails, the youngest of the FFs, outsmarted Robotnik with a fake deep power stone plan. And you can see examples of their teamwork in nearly every episode. I dont think weaponry and firepower are a good fit for the FFs. In cry of the wolf, they tried fire power and weapons to bring down that pod but it didnt work... what ultimately worked was luring the pod into that giant storm cell. Same thing with Doomsday; they tried their 'heat' charge detonators to destroy the brain room. Didnt work, they had to use the deep power stones, a natural resource.

But I do agree on the other points. Yes Antoine and Dulcy were very annoying and useless. Yes Bunnie was under-used throughout the series. I didnt think it was that bad in S1...but in S2 she was virtually never used. I only remember her going on 2 missions in all of S2, and she didnt even use her stregnth for either mission. And I also hated the new chubby Q-like Rotor in S2.

[InvaderMeer]

The main thing that frustrates me about SatAM is the fact that these animals are cleary capable of using computers and technology, why don't they invent guns and firearms and give Robotnick/Eggman a good spin dash to the face? Okay, I know that would be a bad idea for a kid's show but the Transformers were aimed at kids and they had guns...I think. I never watched that cartoon.

[Gojira007]

The main thing that frustrates me about SatAM is the fact that these animals are cleary capable of using computers and technology, why don't they invent guns and firearms and give Robotnick/Eggman a good spin dash to the face? Okay, I know that would be a bad idea for a kid's show but the Transformers were aimed at kids and they had guns...I think. I never watched that cartoon.

a.) Yes, the Transformers did indeed have guns; not terribly realistic guns, mind, and they fired lasers instead of bullets, but pretty clearly guns nonetheless. Heck, Megatron transformed into a gun in the original cartoon.
b.) Honestly, making guns isn't as easy as you'd think. They may have had the knowledge required to make them (and given that even the oldest among the main group was a teenager, there's no real guarantee they even had that), but I rather doubt they had the resources. Remember "Super Sonic"? Remember what a big deal it was that they could make a water wheel only capable of fueling a single lightbulb? True, they could try to capture those resources from Robotropolis, but given that they already have bombs and other explosives at their disposal, I doubt it would be a terribly high priority.

[InvaderMeer]

The main thing that frustrates me about SatAM is the fact that these animals are cleary capable of using computers and technology, why don't they invent guns and firearms and give Robotnick/Eggman a good spin dash to the face? Okay, I know that would be a bad idea for a kid's show but the Transformers were aimed at kids and they had guns...I think. I never watched that cartoon.

a.) Yes, the Transformers did indeed have guns; not terribly realistic guns, mind, and they fired lasers instead of bullets, but pretty clearly guns nonetheless. Heck, Megatron transformed into a gun in the original cartoon.
b.) Honestly, making guns isn't as easy as you'd think. They may have had the knowledge required to make them (and given that even the oldest among the main group was a teenager, there's no real guarantee they even had that), but I rather doubt they had the resources. Remember "Super Sonic"? Remember what a big deal it was that they could make a water wheel only capable of fueling a single lightbulb? True, they could try to capture those resources from Robotropolis, but given that they already have bombs and other explosives at their disposal, I doubt it would be a terribly high priority.

I never watched Transformers so I would not know. I never watched SatAM either as a kid. I remember sitting down to watch a Sonic cartoon and it had a dark feel to it but I didn't have the attention span to sit through it. The Sonic franchise is very new to me. Maybe it's becuase I've grown up around guns and firearms and my parents are avid NRA supporters. and was taught basic gun safety and young as three. I always thought Sonic and his friends (with the exception of Tails of course) were supposed to be adults because they seem too socialy aware but then when I was a teenager, I only had a teenager's body. I still had a child's mind. I was basically one of those kids Temple Grandin talks about as having to skip adolesence and go straight to adulthood. Okay, a little off topic there so let's get back on topic. If they did have bombs and exposives they sure did not use them very often. I have a sketch somewhere of me as my Sonic OC holding a glock to Robotnick's face and Sally jumps in saying, "No! No! We're contractially obligated to keep stalling for another season and two hundred comic issues!" The ewoks from Return of the Jedi, which is what the Freedom Fighters kinda remind me of, were better at protecting themselves. Maybe if there ever was a third season we would see more of the explosives.

Now that I think about, it SatAM and Underground kinda has an anti New World Order feel to them. Espicaly Underground. If they had guns or weapons I somehow dobt it would still have that feel to it.

[Mithrandir]

The concept of the heroes being underpowered compared to the villain was crucial to SatAM as a story. It's steeped in the archetypes of free will vs. imposed order, nature vs. machine, and small, rag tag rebellion vs. monolithic empire. Once you start giving too much power to said rebellion, the drama is ruined.

Think back to Star Wars - a big factor in the original trilogy being so vastly superior to the prequels (ignoring the writing quality for a moment, which is a big enough reason) was how small and desperate the rebellion looks when compared to the vast, gigantic power of the Empire. Hell, the OPENING SHOT of the first movie is showing a small rebel ship being dwarfed by a Star Destroyer. The second movie opens with the Empire routing the Rebels in a battle, and even Luke, who becomes a powerful Jedi, can't just take out entire platoons of stormtroopers on his own.

It's a big reason why the prequels lacked drama and emotion: the heroes almost never seemed endangered, given how overpowered they were. Granted, they weren't part of a small rebellion in those films, but you catch my drift.

Just so for SatAM; the allure of the story is that Sonic is so vital to their ability to win, and even he, on his own, can't do much in the face of the power of Robotropolis.

As for the abilities of the other Freedom Fighters, let's not forget a slight issue the series faced: Season One was an "establishing" season, with a number of different creative voices, with self-contained episodes. There was only so much room for character development in that format, though it did work alright. Season Two, in some ways, was a big change; Ben really took the creative reins, the story now spanned over the whole season (remember how early on Doomsday is mentioned), and now the story took more precedent, so the writers had to pick and choose who would get the best character development, and when they would. Clearly, the main choice in Season Two was further developing Sonic and Sally. By Ben's account, Season Three would've focused on the development of Tails. I also bet we'd have seen more for the others, as well.

Alas, there wasn't enough time to get to that point. To this day I hate how we didn't get to see Antoine finally man up and really establish his place on the team...though he could still be a bit of comedic relief when needed, of course.