TailsTube No. 4 (feat. Amy Rose)
Original Release Date: March 16th, 2023
The end of the previous "TailsTube" referenced Amy Rose, which was all but a confirmation that she would be the featured guest in the fourth episode. That certainly tracks with the character's standing in the franchise these days. Throughout the nineties, Amy Rose could easily be considered a second tier "Sonic" character. She only appeared in a few games, most of them stuck on other consoles than Sega's most popular invention, the Genesis/Mega Drive. She wasn't in any of the cartoons and only had a small role in the comics. Despite a pink girl version of Sonic being an enormously commercial idea, even Sega seemed to consider Princess Sally the female lead of the franchise. That all changed with "Sonic Adventure," which positioned Amy Rose as Sonic's primary love interest and the female face of the franchise. Since then, the she-hog has easily eclipsed every other missuses and madam in the "Sonic"-verse in terms of popularity. I have a lot of complex feelings about this but the way Sega has largely moved Amy past being solely defined by her obsessive crush on Sonic and into a more nuanced character has made me like her a lot more. (Though teasing a romantic tension between the spiny mammals remains an impossible to remove element of their dynamic.)
Not that "TailsTube No. 4" does much to disprove the idea that Amy is obsessively fixated on Sonic. Tails introduces her as a "Sonic expert." All the questions she answers are more about Sonic than about her. If Amy has a personality outside of being the blue hedgehog's number one fan girl, we certainly don't see much of it in this episode. About the only interest she shows, aside from an encyclopedic knowledge of Sonic, is using fortune telling cards at some point in the past... And even that was something she was doing mostly to give her clues about how to meet Sonic. It really seems to me, at least in this four minute cartoon, that Amy is as fixated and hyper-focused on Sonic as, well, real life "Sonic" fans are. Does this mean Amy writes fanfic and creates OCs in-universe? She pretty much did in "Boom," didn't she? Dang, no wonder fans love her so much. She's one of us.
I've previously described "TailsTube" – or The Sonic Scoop, as it seems to call itself in-universe – as a channel for Sega to educate new fans about the basic backstory of its characters. Tails actually refers to the show as more-or-less this here, also amending that it's here to remind hardcore fans of tidbits they might have forgotten. However, the actual purpose of "TailsTube" is apparent the more of it I watch. With "Sonic Frontiers," Ian Flynn would officially begin adapting the scripts for the mainline games into English, after years of him toiling away in the comic tie-in trenches. Flynn is a nitpicking fan boy all about straightening out continuity and putting inconsistencies to rest, the main thing he did when he started writing for the Archie series. While Sega hasn't let Flynn run amok and totally re-shape the "Sonic" universe into his own vision, the writer has devoted himself to creating a more consistent version of Sonic's world, retconning away things that didn't make much sense and establishing more concrete details. Such as Amy's aforementioned interest in divination, a minor detail from the "Sonic CD" manual that was basically overlooked for years but now has returned as a primary aspect of Ms. Rose's personality.
In other words, "TailsTube" is a forum to distribute these new decrees about the franchise's world to the wider fandom, something that can be whipped up and put out that is less labor intensive than a new video game and not as concerned with telling a narrative as a comic book. While the first three installments were not that concerned with rewriting official "Sonic" lore, episode four does some much heavier lifting. After tossing away the much loathed Two Worlds premise – the idea that Sonic regularly travels between his world and an Earth populated by humans – this episode gets rid of the almost equally hated idea that "Classic" Sonic and "Modern" Sonic are residents in alternate universes. This convoluted explanation emerged sometime between "Sonic Generations" and "Sonic Forces," Sega going with the premise that the shorter, squatter Sonic that didn't talk was an entirely different entity from the taller, spindlier, more talkative Sonic present in most of the games these days.
When asked why a "second" Sonic is sometimes running around, Amy and Tails explain that Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic are actually the same guy, the "Superboy is Superman as a little kid" explanation. That's a lot less confusing than bringing in the idea of multiple universes, even if time travel is no less a far out sci-fi premise. This decree also removes what was probably the most disliked element of the Classic/Modern divide, that it essentially cast the older games as non-canon with the newer ones and prevented any of the older characters and concepts that only appeared in those games from showing up in newer ones. Sega still operates as if Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic are two separate branches of the same franchise. I don't think Mighty, Ray, or Fang will be showing up alongside Shadow, Rouge, or Blaze any time soon... But the possibility that it could happen is at least there. Those guys aren't necessarily locked behind an impenetrable barrier nor have they been cast aside as no longer relevant to the series as it exists now. Not only is simply saying all of those adventures happened to Sonic sometimes in the past a lot less complicated than sticking them in a separate universe, it's also a decision that's far less alienating to old fans like me that rather like those elements and don't want them to be totally discarded.
Funnily enough, using this idea to explain the Classic/Modern schism doesn't mean "TailsTube No. 4" throws the idea of parallel realities out the window. After the first question about two Sonics – asked by Knuckles, who predictably does not seem to grasp the concept of internet usernames – Amy receives follow-up question about the possibility of many more Sonics running around. That's when she acknowledges that various time line shenanigans means there could be an infinite number of Sonics running This leads to a short montage of images, showing Sonics wearing speed tape or with blue arms, among other possible scenarios. This seems to be a laidback acknowledgement that a “Sonic” multiverse does exist, at least implicitly. That little moment seems to be Sega nodding softly at other iterations of the character across cartoons, comics, and god knows what else. Considering this “TailsTube” broadcast was released a few months after “Sonic Prime,” this certainly wouldn't be a foreign concept to fans by this point.
These are obviously the biggest details this episode expands on. Amy seems to know everything about Sonic, not the nature of time travel and the multiverse. This episode also puts another, more minor detail to rest: Is Sonic the Hedgehog homeless? Most of the animated series or comics have shown him as having a regular place to sleep, sometimes shaped like a race car. Sega's official word on the matter, it would seem, is that Sonic is a vagabond who travels from place to place. His home is where his spirit roams. In other words: No, the hedgehog has never paid homeowner's insurance. In fact, “TailsTube” seems to confirm that he crashes at Tails' place quite a bit and is more than happy to eat any chili and wieners the fox has laying around. Which means Sonic is a bum in the “does not have a home” sense as well as the “leeches off other people” sense. What other context would it be okay for a sixteen year old celebrity to be spending the night at his ten year old friend's house?
Other than being informative, this episode of “TailsTube” did make me chuckle once or twice. The bit about Knuckles not entirely understanding Twitter would've been funnier if he typed entirely in caps too. Also, there's a brief line about the data speeds up on Angel Island, seeming to confirm the thoughts I've had about internet providers on Sonic's world. Also also, one of the folders on Tails' desktop includes a reference to Lego Ideas, which suggest that Legos also exist in-universe. Tails definitely seems like the Lego kind of guy. Anyway, I guess these things are still worth watching. [7/10]