SERIOUS SONIC LORE ANALYSIS

hi I'm Harris bomber guy and welcome to serious lore analysis [Music] it's fine it's fine it's fine [Music] today we're looking at the truly radical Sonic the Hedgehog I remember commercials with people chanting Sonic's name in urban environments like he was a revolutionary coming to rescue them from their plight so I grew up assuming Sonic was some kind of deep social commentary about fighting a revolution against the desolate urban terror of Americana and after finally playing them I can tell you that those commercials were spot on Sonic's really dark and serious if you stop think about it for like 12 seconds I mean let's begin with the name he's Sonic the Hedgehog YV because he's the last one what happened to all the other hedgehogs well maybe the genocide doomsday robots have something to do with it the world of Sonic is threatened by the evil dr. Robotnik but that's in the inferior Western dub for the gaijin's out there in the original Japanese version I got an import his name is far more thematically relevant he's called dr. Eggman because well he looks a bit like an egg Donnie robot Mega Man has almost completely taken over the world of the story with his machines leaving very few free animals remaining and doubtlessly killing many others Sonic is the Hedgehog because he's the last one sonic has decided to identify with this status making it his literal title it is a message of peace and justice to the free animals that remain hiding in the cracks of the world as long as any of them are left even one there is still hope but to his enemies it is a reminder of what they have done the things they have taken and of the sins that will be repaid for the forces of darkness the last Hedgehog is like an emissary from Hell an angel of vengeance the level progression functions to represent the transition from the idyllic prelapsarian world to the man-made dystopia of Robotnik you slowly go from lush greens rolling fields so free they have naturally-occurring loop-de-loops all the way to the star light zone a massive industrial superhighway for Robotnik's new world where the loop-de-loops our mechanistic and devoid of soul the game designers reuse the loops just enough that by the time you get to the areas taken over by Robotnik they feel like a silly gimmick the Mona Lisa used to be a unique beautiful spectacle that many would come to see for miles around hanging in whatever museum it's in but now you can google it or get on a postcard and the image has become replicated so endlessly that it's meaningless thus also to loop-de-loops in mass-producing the loopies Robotnik is thereby ruined them and reduced their spectacle it sends a strong message that his world is technologically advanced but feels fake and uncanny a copy of something beautiful reused so much that its value is lost or you could say it just represents house a go we're running out of ideas which is a pretty accurate reading probably but in the words of Roland baths off just off all right it works as a metaphor and you can't stop me at the end of each level instead of taking over the castle of an inferior King and raising the flag of his personal favorite in the style of a certain authoritarian monarchist war criminal sonic simply graffitis over a sign with robotics face on it in an act of pure symbolic protest this is important characterization for sonic Sonics devil-may-care attitude as a method of dealing with the utmost depression he feels fighting a near impossible battle as he copes with the loss of his race imagine having to get up every morning and fight a one-man revolution knowing that you'll never have a hedgehog wife to hug 2.5 Hedgehog children to watch get on the bus to school or a white picket fence and fluffy Hedgehog dog hedge dog all those moments will be lost in time like my train of thought once I thought of the pun hedge dog what a terrifying fate to have to live with every day that's why Sonic goes into the fetal position every time he attacks every moment of his battle is an attempt to stave off his existential angst beneath that happy smile ooh and waggy finger lies a hearty serving of Despres of personality disorders more like Sonic the Hertzog am i right death set after crossing the highways and miraculously not getting run over like most actual hedgehogs I've seen on the motorway Sonic enters the scrap brain zone one giant literal machine a nightmare of steam and steel the scrap brain zone is egg man's vision for the future a world of grim uniformity and pure order everything in its rightful place but devoid of life for a soul this zone features numerous allusions to the Charlie Chaplin film modern times specifically the sequence where Chaplin's character falls onto the conveyor belt he works on and into the machine within it spits him out as a bizarre monstrous version of his former self his mind warped by the experience this was a metaphor for the effects of capitalism's work environments on its workers it literally altered them made them more like machines themselves Chaplin would revisit this idea in the Great Dictator in which the Nazi ideology metaphorically turned people into machines with machine minds and machine hearts but not machine penises because robots don't need to have sex the poor bastards there I've just taught you everything you need to know about film interpretation now you can share my degree and by unpayable amounts of death as a true successor to Chaplin Sonic is fighting a battle against the evil robots in order to free the good people trapped within them inside the heart of your enemy is a good person who has lost their way but you can't make a freedom omelet without breaking a few Robotnik's Robotnik leads sonic into a trap and then violates the Geneva Convention by attempting to kill a prisoner of war sonic falls into the garbage dump re-appropriated piece of the labyrinth that runs throughout the planet covered in sewage and the waters tinted purple by the pollution spewing from the machines above luckily Robotnik left a spring here that leads directly into his office I'm not sure what this is a metaphor for and the sonic wiki is too busy figuring out Robotnik's cannon height and weight to figure out the implications of the spring that causes Sonic not to die in an otherwise inescapable sewer but don't worry we've carefully chronicled that he's 282 pounds and his skin is beige yes that is a word that we use to describe colors of skin yeah yeah at last it's over Robotnik's dead okay look I was told this game was for children right but I just helped the last of an extinct race gank a dictator by sabotaging his flying hover chair thing and watching as he crashes and burns and dies in the immolating flames of vengeance what kind of child is supposed to play this officially an actual literal murderer Sonic returns home to a hero's welcome and leaps towards the screen thanking the player directly for their help making you complicit in an act of terror with Eggman dead all that's left of civilization is a bunch of tiny animals he'll probably need years of therapy to undo the horrors of being trapped in a machine and forced to watch it destroy their entire family but if you got all the Chaos Emeralds there's a couple more flowers oh that's nice Sonic the Hedgehog is a surprisingly morally complex story about the importance of extrajudicial murder and there's some deeply resonant themes going on in there about man's battle with the machine you can't really rate a depth on any kind of scale because it's a kind of nebulous concept to begin with but if you could I would give Sonic the Hedgehog a 7.5 out of 10 of the depth scale that I just made up it asks a vital question of our society is it right to unleash bloody war and death against authoritarianism and answers yes definitely kill those guys you can say that blarin Bush's invasion of Iraq had a needlessly high civilian death toll and ignored the will of the international community and they deserve to be locked up and you'd be right but you can't say they aren't nineties kids at heart by which I mean if they had a single heart between them they probably stole it from a child if you have a suggestion for the next game you want me to do a deep lore analysis of please let me know in the comments and I'll look for the one that's the one I already wanted to do and pretend you picked it see you around buddy always come on just show me what you got [Music] danger zone and sonic speed suit or you are not Sonic the Hedgehog a hot new game from Genesis game system 1500 hey thanks for watching this week I'd like to thank Aaron Salzburg Alex Len kovitch Alexander Corbett Alicia Parker Martel Amy B Ben Adamson bill mock Bob Brennan arts KC Schnabel Kieran closu Corwin light Williams Damian Edney David rose Derek prank ed Costigan Eric hunter feminine juh graph and black poor hero room war jack ryan Joanne York John Cantwell Joseph Greco lady Naga Laden Pierce Luke Gould malarkey bingo Marco chard uh-oh mr. xenophobe never mind her Olivia mellow Ren Slayer Robert Phillips Samael scar thorax Lord of the roaches Scott get it Sean Higgins Siegfried pinzer spilt coffee Stefan Lindbergh Thad was a loose key Thomas Johansson - armed blues and red drapes Zachariah Taylor I am turnip and Rick hammy thanks so much and eyes are killing me

Channel: hbomberguy

Views: 671,861

Rating: 4.9177208 out of 5

Keywords: hbomb, hbomberguy, serious lore analysis

Id: 3Oco4WYRdaU

Length: 11min 7sec (667 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 28 2016

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[u/queer_bolshevik]

let's be real, hbomb is a bit of a furry

[u/SpiderInStockings]

A classic video