Sonic 2: What The New Knuckles Says About The Fanbase

gamerant.com:

The Sonic the Hedgehog fanbase is a strange and difficult demographic, often unfairly reduced to their least charitable or most embarrassing representatives. The general ecosystem of fandom seems to make fools of many, but there's something unique about the cultural negativity surrounding fans of the Blue Blur's adventures.

There is a substantial contingent of the Sonic fanbase that loved the character as a kid and fell far away from its offerings over the past decade or two. Sonic is fundamentally a kids' property, aimed towards audiences in the general area of preschool to middle school. However, there's a huge market for media that grew up with their audiences, and Sonic has not shaken off that demographic.

And Knuckles: How Did Sonic's Strongest Ally Change For The Big Screen?

Knuckles the Echidna is often characterized as a physical powerhouse that lags behind the rest of the group in terms of wits. It's a pretty common kids' show archetype. Sonic is the cool main character, Tails is his intelligent but cowardly sidekick, Amy is the heart, and Knuckles is the big guy. His earliest appearances were heavily built around him being gullible or easily misled. Later iterations of the character played up his lack of intelligence for comic relief. It wasn't always particularly well-handled, but many of Knuckles' best moments come out of his lack of intelligence. The Sonic Boom animated series arguably perfected this version of the character by both playing into his dumbest moments and occasionally subverting them for comedic gold. The new film plays into much of the same tone, but with a slightly different angle.

The Knuckles of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is, like Sonic, a visitor to Earth from a distant alternate world. He routinely