A professional animator explains why the Hollywood version of beloved video game icon Sonic the Hedgehog looks like blue cancer.
Hollywood’s meddling with this wildly successful Japanese character is doubly stupid because, if you read Console Wars, you know that Sonic the Hedgehog has at least as much American as Japanese DNA, perhaps more.
Sonic originated from an art contest held by Sega of Japan to design their planned game’s protagonist. The winning entry was an anthropomorphic hedgehog called Mister Needlemouse.
Who is Felix the Cat’s head on Mickey Mouse’s blue, pantsless body.
Sega of America took the rather more crudely drawn and aggressively named Needlemouse and applied the finishing touches that completed his metamorphosis into Sonic.
The Hollywood idiots trying to “Westernize” Sonic the Hedgehog couldn’t do Western art if their salaries depended on it I wish that was just a joke. Sonic already is a product of the West. The movie studio is just making him ugly, which is all Western animators are capable of doing these days.
Art-Eater’s killshot:
Pokémon, another Japanese IP captained by a Disney-inspired cartoon mouse, is running rings around its Western forebears. Hello Kitty is right behind.
[Insert pun about cat and mouse games.]
This episode does give us a handy visual representation of Western artistic degeneration, though.
