Why Eggman Was A Threatening Villain And How He Became A Joke

you know when you think of the sonic franchise most people often turn the sights to sonic tails and knuckles huh it looks like i left one character out yes it's finally time to dissect the character of dr ivo robotnik or eggman if you prefer he's been here since day one appearing in the original sonic the hedgehog game on the mega drive or genesis if you're outside of europe and he shows no signs of disappearing anytime soon but his character has also like many others undergone a huge tonal shift over the years turning him into another outlet of the comic relief of the series huh i wonder why i'm getting a sense of deja vu here but i'm getting a bit ahead of myself let's get to breaking down his character starting from the classics and working our way up as per usual but before we crack on i just want to thank today's sponsor of the video atlas vpn hey have you ever been sitting in your alpha gamer pad one day and feared for your internet security this is terrible well fret no more 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empire up and capture free roaming animals in order to convert them into bad nicks which were his brand of robots or are his brand of robots i'm still confused about that is it still max or did they switch it back to bad knicks for the modern era i mean lost world couldn't decide between the two and jumped between the two names are they just synonyms for each other somebody clear that up for me in the comments please but getting back to the point that was all he needed to be at the time he was the villain because of his villainous actions he converted these animals into bad knicks he stole the master emerald and he manipulated knuckles in sonic 3 and knuckles he literally created a horrible lifeless future on little planet in the bad future of sonic cd and he has no problem in destroying the environment in order to progress his ideals no matter how goofy he looked or how big that [ __ ] eating grin was robotnik meant business and so he was treated like a genuine threat and that's a word you're going to hear me say several times in this video threat but i'll explain that a bit more later so so far at least based off of what i've said you're probably thinking wow robotnik seems a bit generic for the main villain of the series well to whoever was thinking that you are dead wrong eggman has always had several traits to set him apart from the pack of mediocre villains and some of these pretty much span the entire series one of these traits is his narcissism and just how full of himself he is he believes himself to be better than everybody and has no problems displaying his presence eggman isn't the type of villain who would sneak around and fade into the background silently taking out the protagonists one by one he would gladly charge head-on and make his presence known similar to megamind it's all about presentation he has his face plastered everywhere from the walls to his robots to even his gigantic death egg in space that's literally called the death egg even in sonic unleashed he has statues of himself again he has this narcissism but also this degree of goofiness about him but neither one of those traits stopped him from being a force to be reckoned with you have to remember that he isn't just some idiot who's full of himself he does have an iq of 300. that's the kind of iq that would make shikamaru blush but there was an almost perfect balance that was achieved here between the goofiness and the seriousness and these characteristics carried over perfectly to the adventure games [Laughter] [Music] in adventure 1 eggman's plans needed to step up to something just a little larger so he decides to use chaos the ancient water-based god of destruction and also the guardian of the chow he once defeated the seven chaos emerald so that it would use perfect chaos to destroy station square and why does he do this well to build robotnik land of course the absolute pure overkill of using an ancient godlike creature to level a city in order to rebuild that very city in his image is crazy but it's never treated as a joke sure sonic pokes fun at eggman but those moments are few and far between eggman is still treated like a serious threat as much as chaos is again because of his actions like with how he tries to blow up station square with the giant missile or how he's able to steal the emeralds from sonic and tails in order to fuel chaos hell he even has these awesome moments of flying the egg carrier over station square and the mystic ruins just to assert himself and would you look at that not only does it have his face plastered right on the side but it's also called the [ __ ] egg carrier just what you would expect from him also there's the voice actor and i'm just gonna say it dean bristow is my favorite voice for eggman it's just so intimidating and you buy what eggman is saying because of it when eggman says something she will like you know that he isn't messing around nowadays though it's a bit of a different story but i'll talk about that eggman a bit later but also an adventure the trend of dr eggman being betrayed began here for example chaos turns on him but does eggman stay down hell no this man has way too much pride and is too full of himself for that he immediately gets on his feet and uses the egg carrier to try and take chaos down if he wasn't gonna control chaos he was gonna destroy him unfortunately though eggman does underestimate the strength of chaos and his ship is destroyed but hey at least he went down fighting that's the kind of moment that felt true to his character but we can see here from adventure 1 that his character was maintained and still great he still has that narcissistic eggman charm that we've come to love but he isn't just spouting jokes and being made out to be a fool he is a force to be reckoned with and so is treated as such but then there's sonic adventure 2 where we got hands down the best interpretation and representation of eggman eggman's character here was just elevated and given a much larger chance to shine a lot of which is due to him actually playing a much larger role in the story as one of the playable characters he's just in control here throughout this game he has everything planned out he single-handedly busts his way through a secure government facility in order to retrieve project shadow he blows up prison island whilst retrieving the emeralds all in order to power this eclipse cannon the eclipse cannon when charged with the seven chaos emeralds can be used to destroy entire planets oh but he didn't need seven to make his statement with the help of shadow and rouge he retrieves six of the emeralds and what does he do he puts himself on every tv screen and monitor in the entire city and blows up half the moon as a threat for control of the country to be turned over to him this just shows you how much of a presence he has and how egotistical this man is i mean think about that for one second he blew up half the moon as a statement but nothing and i repeat nothing will ever come close to this scene that i've talked about several times already but it's just too perfect of a showcase of these characters to not talk about eggman needs the 7th emerald in order to activate the eclipse cannon and knows that sonic and his team possess it but tails had created a fake emerald that would destroy the eclipse cannon when it was placed in it so eggman literally holds amy at gunpoint and gets tails to tell sonic to meet him when sonic arrives eggman wants him to hand over the emerald but both sonic and tails think that they can kill two birds with one stone by giving him the fake emerald but there was one problem eggman knew about the fake emerald or at least very highly suspected it we know this from the cut scene earlier when eggman says this is strange but showing energy readings from two separate chaos emeralds if they really think they could trick me with that fake but there's another overlooked piece of evidence that points to him knowing this in a previous cutscene eggman specifically said details to tell sonic that means that he knew that sonic was doing something with the chaos emerald and he knows for a fact that they aren't going to help with activating the eclipse cannon so logically they must be stopping it which supports his suspicion of there being a fake emerald and then in a truly high iq moment he tricks tales into confirming this suspicion for him whoa you thought you could trick me with that fake empty didn't you so how did you know it wasn't the real one tails because you just told me fox boy now eggman has sonic captured and prepares to fire him out into space and he knows for a fact that the real chaos emerald isn't on sonic which means that it won't get destroyed alongside the capsule sonic reassures his friends and then eggman releases the capsule and blows it up eggman had just single-handedly outplayed every single person in that room and one kinda i mean sonic survives but nobody thought that he would not even sonic himself in fact if not for shadow showcasing the chaos control earlier in this game that would have been it eggman would have finally won eggman even in respect to sonic lowers his head after saying farewell to his admirable adversary just what a brilliant scene that showcased eggman in all his glory and for anyone concerned this eggman does still have that standard degree of goofiness about him that naturally blends into his character instead of sticking out like a sore thumb it's the little things like him scratching his ass while he's watching the news or the animated movements and facial expressions it just works and then there's the last story after the chaos emeralds were placed into the eclipse cannon it didn't fire as it turns out gerald robotnik had programmed the ark to crash into the earth at a high velocity as an act of revenge for the death of his granddaughter maria and so for the first time eggman teams up with sonic and his cohorts to help stop this crash from occurring the very fact that eggman did this in spite of his grandfather who he had so much respect for and looked up to goes to great lengths to show you more about his character for the first time he was a hero even in the final stages he helps guide the other members and tells them how to proceed and that ending cutscene during the credits man it just felt so real as a child i looked up to my grandfather because of all the great things he accomplished in his life he was my hero and i wanted to be a great scientist like him what did he really mean to destroy us i don't know but what i do know is we all did it together you're right is there anything more i need to say here anything this for me is the definitive eggman where he peaks as a character which unfortunately means that his character starts to go downhill from here sonic heroes is a bit of a strange situation as you never actually fight eggman it's just metal sonic who's assumed control of his armada weirdly enough you actually have to help eggman as team chaotix so this is technically the only game where you only help eggman strange isn't it but even after he's freed in the lost story he has this defeatist attitude and talks about how they can't beat metal sonic and if only they had the seven chaos emeralds then they could actually do something about it just what the eggman i know wouldn't whine and [ __ ] over whether he could win he would use his entire armada of ships and weaponry that were showcased in cut scenes and in the last two levels to take the fight to metal sonic directly you know like he did in adventure 1 but no imagine how awesome it would have been if during the fight against metal sonic eggman was helping on the side providing a distraction or even injuring metal sonic to allow for an opening so that sonic could attack it would kinda be like how chip aided sonic using the gaia colossus when they were fighting against a dark gaia but no we gotta deal with this eggman who literally does nothing this entire game you know it started to make sense why i still get comments from people who question my heroes is my favorite game in shadow the hedgehog he was just underutilized i think this may be more of a problem because of the amount of characters and villains in that game constantly taking the spotlight so the focus is kinda not really on anyone but even then you can still have character consistency even if the screen time isn't quite there but the game doesn't really do much with eggman anyways he unleashes his army to combat the black arms and military but the entire power struggle is moved to the background of the whole game he doesn't really do anything here he does do one thing which is that during the final fight he confirms that shadow is in fact the real shadow but again more could have been done with can you hear him this might be the last chance i have to see yourself what i said about having created you it was all alive everyone died during that horrible incident but i rescued you with one of my robots you lost your memory that's all you really are the ultimate life form my grandfather created to be fair here he does have that eggman charm we know and love but that's all there really is though i will say that i do really like the eggplants that were introduced in heroes and used here ah sonico 6 the game that most people love to hate has eggman once again kinda doing nothing sure he has a goal which is to obtain the flames of disaster from elise but he never really does anything to achieve that goal you know aside from kidnapping elise 47 [ __ ] times but he doesn't do anything with her and he does very little else in this game oh he manages to send sonic to the future that's cool i'll wait he's back literally two acts later ha on top of that eggman here is just boring and i mean boring none of that trademark charm no laughing no goofiness no narcissism no buildings with his face on it and even the robots here just look plain boring even his design here is weird he has a slimmer build and for some reason has dalek nipple strapped to him and why can i see his eyes that's not something i should see this eggman sucks he's serious but not serious enough to really do anything noteworthy in this story he just kind of blends into the background which is unlike eggman at all like i said he has that huge personality that's quite prominent but here that's just gone he does work with sonic and the others during the last story but he's just on comms unlike adventure 2 where he directly helps the others and had his own playable segment like my other videos i'm not counting his appearance in secret rings as he plays a completely different character in the form of king sharia and also because i know i'm going to be asked about this he's okay in the riders games i'm more talking about original zero gravity here [ __ ] free riders he has those normal quirks and i once again like the design of his robots in this game you know they feel like an extension of his personality but he does start to get treated like more of a joke character here nothing on the level of some games we'll be talking about real soon but he doesn't have any moments on the level the essay 2 eggman did overall not horrible but nothing particularly amazing either then there's unleashed unleashed had such a promising start for him we kick off showcasing his giant armada of ships which i'll admit does seem to be lacking with the standard eggman empire insignia but i love that this is exactly what eggman would do over compensate through his technology i mean does he really need all these ships and on top of the several eggman style laughs we finally get to see some more of his cunning nature after so long by him deceiving sonic into using his super form in order to trap him and then proceed to use a machine that strips him of his super form and the chaos emeralds of their energy and why so he can fire a giant laser out of this floating dildo to split the world into pieces in order to awaken an ancient entity that dwells within the core of the planet known as dark gaia we immediately get an eggman that's an established threat and is well in character from what we know and love it's too bad that it becomes a joke for the rest of this game no i'm not kidding in pretty much every cutscene involving him past this he's either acting quite obliviously or is constantly undermined by other characters including the first appearance of orbot and this sucks because eggman finally accomplishes his goal from sa1 he builds eggmanland and i love the design here it looks like a dystopian hellish amusement park with eggman insignia all over the place including a gigantic gold statue of himself but it doesn't quite have that feeling to it because you spend the entire game laughing at eggman instead of seeing him as a viable threat this was just such a huge missed opportunity although i will say that the egg dragoon boss fight and sequence was pretty badass the cutscene that plays beforehand was great you know it didn't treat eggman like the medium of comic relief and eggman actually tries going for the kill here if he drags sonic towards the center of the earth sonic even at one point has to tell eggman to calm down [Music] wing units deploy you were lucky sonic but luck can't last forever this and the opening cut scene is proof that this game could have achieved that adventure 2 level of balance with eggman's characteristics but they chose to go with that more comedic route which in my opinion was the downfall here look i don't have a problem with eggman being a bit more comedic as that does play into the goofiness of his character but i do have a problem when the comedy is so overdone to the point where it starts to take away from the character and turn him into a joke but now it's time to move on to the dreaded meta era of the games oh [ __ ] here we go again sonic colors made eggman into a joke through and through there are no redeeming qualities here which sucks because the premise is actually pretty cool more on that in a few minutes but he's constantly ridiculed never taken seriously and doesn't even take himself seriously he's just a comic relief punching bag here and nothing more and i may as well talk about this now but i like mike pollock i think he's an awesome eggman voice it's mainly the material that he has to work with that i can't get behind the thing with mike pollock is that people say he suits a more comedic style of eggman and i can agree to an extent but i think given the right script he can work wonders with the character look at the opening for unleashed that had great tones for the character with a nice mix of goofiness and seriousness that's all i really need here but no we need the funny jokes to make the children laugh and the jokes aren't even that funny to begin with and this extends to his character and sonic generations he appears at the very tail end of the game as the reveal for the final boss but he just spouts jokes and gets made fun out of it doesn't feel very climactic at all and any tension that they could have been for this fight is suddenly removed just why lost world is weird when it comes to eggman he gets the colors treatment a lot of the time but there are cutscenes where he's actually kinda serious but not the serious that we're used to if that makes any sense he spends a lot of time bickering with sonic and tails and everybody still treats him as though he's no threat but then you have these cutscenes that feel so out of place like eggman practically mourning the death of tales or how about that cutscene where he goes absolutely mental bananas and threatens to eat the zetty's hearts whilst forcing them to watch as he destroys the things that they love most you eggman [Music] wannabes i will burn your world you rebellious scum i will destroy everything you love and make you watch boss your hands as long as i can still strangle a zeddy my hands are fine oh you thought i was joking no that that actually happened because of this weirdly toned egg man it just comes off as poorly written with no real direction for the character and when it's revealed that he's the final boss of the game like generations it doesn't feel earned again the premise here was solid but i'll talk about that in a minute oddly enough forces of all things was a step in the right direction he's taken a little more seriously and even has multiple backup plans after sonic thinks he can beat eggman but nothing feels earned here sure eggman supposedly kills sonic and takes over the world but nothing is done with that the environments look the same before and after his takeover like green hill just being green hill this would have been an excellent opportunity to show alternate dystopian designs of these iconic places like green hill and chemical plant instead of just rehashing them for the sake of nostalgia pandering hell these burning cities and landscapes don't look like anything eggman has conquered you know for a fact that he would have had eggman empire posters all over the place alongside statues of himself as almost this militaristic dictator and the place would look like an absolute hell hole but no eggman's takeover is not treated as though it's a big deal and that sucks so much because it should be and the worst part is that eggman's takeover isn't even shown on screen it's told to us through a [ __ ] windows movie maker text box what the actual [ __ ] all this makes it feel like there are no stakes especially because eggman once again isn't taken very seriously so even after we liberate the world from the eggman empire we don't really feel any relief or satisfaction it's just something that kinda happens the big problem with the meta-era games is that eggman isn't a threat the stuff that he does you know enslaving an alien race to use his fuel destroying the timeline enslaving the zetty using energy absorbed from the world which slowly destroys it and taking over the world are genuinely villainous actions but because eggman isn't a threat as we need to laugh at him all these actions are immediately undermined and not taken seriously because we don't take eggman seriously this stops him from feeling like a true villain and now he feels like a joke of a character and sonic boom took this jokey comedic eggman to a whole new level i honestly think he can be pretty funny in the tv show and i think the character of the eggman in the tv show has the best suit for mike pollock's eggman and his delivery but i don't need that frenemy style jokey eggman in the main cannon but we do have that and it means that we can't have a serious proper eggman because of it the only medium right now that halfway does his character any justice is once again the idw comics he like pretty much all the characters isn't perfect here but he's a lot better than what we've been getting in the games it does have a bit of a focus on the comedic side so it is leaning more towards an unleashed style representation of the character so he does have a ton of great moments here but unfortunately some of them do get bogged down because of this through everything that i've talked about and through all the games and appearances it's clear that eggman has had a serious downfall from his glory days he is no longer that cunning goofy threat but is just the subject of the franchise's comedy even in official animations like team sonic racing overdrive well you can see exactly what eggman has devolved into i hope to god that he gets sorted in the upcoming sonic frontiers game but as always only time will tell well thank you all for watching and i hope you enjoyed the video if you did why not leave a like and hey if you really loved it then feel free to subscribe and turn notifications on to keep up with future content i can't thank you guys enough for the crazy amount of support this channel has received and i hope to keep delivering great content to you but thanks for watching and i'll see you guys next time [Music]

Channel: ThePJShow

Views: 1,570,608

Keywords: sonic, sonic the hedgehog, sonic character analysis, knuckles the echidna, knuckles character analysis, tails character analysis, shadow character analysis, mephiles the dark, mephiles character analysis, eggman character analysis, thepjshow, ThePJShow, Why Eggman Was A Threatening Villain And How He Became A Joke, shadow the hedghog, sonic heroes, Eggman, characters in depth, sonic 3 and knuckles, sonic adventure 2, sega, sonic analysis, sonic movie 2, sonic unleashed, sonic 06

Id: IOkXwiRPRwk

Length: 28min 39sec (1719 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 26 2022