#sonichu 9

[taffysannotatedsonichu]

Sonichu 9 Page 99

Caption: Epilogue: Agust 9, 2008, CWCville Forest…

WILD: No way! Is that…?

MAGI-CHAN: It is.

WILD: Okay. But how?

MAGI-CHAN: The moment has finally arrived. It is time to rescue our master and creator from the void of time.

MAGI-CHAN: Your Vine Whips are required as a form of rope.

MAGI-CHAN: I will go in, secured with the vine, then I will tile a portion around Chris as well, and after I tug three times, you pull us out of the void. Whatever you do, do not cut or let go of the Vine Whip.

WILD: I’m secured to this tree. Just go, I’ve got you.

Caption: A minute later…

CHRIS: Cool, let’s get out of here.

Caption: Fifteen minutes of dialogue, and a transformation, later…

CHRIS: …And that’s the plan. Y’all will meet up with me in Tennessee at 2:30 PM, eastern. I have my to-do list to check-off. !Hasta luego!

WILD: Good luck, Christian!

We cut to two months down the line, when it’s finally time to revive Chris. Wild and Magi-Chan find a time portal over the jungle, they retrieve Chris from the Time Void lickety-split, and it’s like nothing ever happened. In contrast to the whole issue’s worth of plot that preceeded Chris getting lost in the void, his rescue happens in the space of a page. Chris even lampshades how much he just wanted to get this scene out of the way by cutting out the dialogue and the transformation sequence entirely by way of a jump-cut and a joking caption. That said, given what Chris and Sonichu do in Tennessee the next day, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was intentionally done to obscure the true nature of the plans he was concocting.

Chris seems to have had a wardrobe change in the Time Void as when he fell into the void he was wearing The Classic, now he’s wearing what’s called “The Impostor”.

Chris insists that everyone meet with him in Tennessee at 2:30 Eastern Time (Chris’s time zone), despite the fact that their destination of Clarksville is in the Central Time Zone. Why not just say you’re meeting at 1:30 local time?

[taffysannotatedsonichu]

Sonichu 9 Page 75

CHLOE: Noooo!!!

CHLOE: Sarah’s panda-ear headband… she knew she couldn’t escape, so she set us free so we wouldn’t burn with… waahhh!!!

BLAZEBOB: I know, Chloe, but you and I, we have to move on and continue in honor of Team Panda-Halo.

CHLOE: You’re right… but I just can’t believe she’s really gone…

Caption: In memory of Sonichu/Rosechu fan, Sarah Cassandra McKenzie, who died January 2009 in the Australian bushfires. She remains my good friend in my heart forever.

Flung from the inferno is Panda’s Mickey Mouse ears panda-ear headband from which she got her screen name. Her Pokemon immediately understand their circumstances and that their master is no more. Chloe is appropriately upset at the sudden death of her beloved trainer, but BlazeBob implores her to immediately move on and continue to fight in her honor. This incredibly quick to pick up the pieces attitude that BlazeBob and later the fireman show is, in addition to Chris’s own difficulty processing grief, a reflection of how long it took Chris to memorialize Panda in his comic. By the time Chris was writing this comic, more than a half a year had passed since Panda’s alleged “death”, and Chris not only had already moved on from her, but he’d already had another girlfriend fatality in Ivy’s alleged suicide in May of 2009. With his three gal-pals that allegedly died (Sarah Jackson, Panda, and Ivy) he felt more a bit of an obligation to memorialize them, regardless of how far down the line he did it, as opposed to simply forgetting they ever existed like Blanca. Note that in the memorial at the bottom, Chris doesn’t call Panda a sweetheart or a girlfriend, but rather a good friend and a Sonichu fan. Even in “death”, her betrayal stung hard enough for Chris to not call her a sweetheart.

[taffysannotatedsonichu]

Sonichu 9 Page 98

MARY LEE {thought}: Oh well… he wins this time. I’m tired and I’ve done enough for now.

MARY LEE: Count, ensphere me and take us home.

COUNT GRADUON: Yes, Slaweel.

COUNT GRADUON {thought}: She’ll fall soon…

Caption: Meanwhile, below…

SONICHU: Thank you for catching me, sweetheart.

ROSECHU: That’s okay, honey-bolt. We watched your bought from down here. Why did you save her?

SONICHU: Well, as a hero, I could not help but to answer her cry. Besides which, the true final blow on that witch belongs only to Christian. Now, let’s help put the city back together, then let’s head home for dinner and “Mary Poppins” with our children.

Sign: Country Cookin’

Sign: CWCville Shopping Center

Let’s be clear here - Sonichu retreated. No one said that Mary Lee accepted defeat until she said she accepted defeat. Mary Lee was just saved by Sonichu, then he ran away, and then she said “I’m going to throw in the towel”. And despite the fact that Graduon just said that he was more than okay with letting Mary fall to her death, she tells Graduon to make a bubble, they’re going home. Graduon even ominously states “she’ll fall soon” - but Graduon, you’re carrying Mary several hundred feet above the ground. Unless removing this psychic bubble at this height would be liable to kill you too, why don’t you take the opportunity to kill her right now? Nevertheless, we’re meant to take away from this that Graduon and Mary’s formerly solid relationship is now on the rocks and their partnership will soon come to an end.

As an inverse of the earlier scene where Sonichu caught the unconscious Rosechu, Rosie returns the favor by catching Sonichu. She questions why Sonichu didn’t let Mary fall. He answers with the expected “I’m a classical, bleeding-heart hero who saves friend or foe”, with the added note that he believes he shouldn’t be the one to finish off Mary Lee, rather since this has been Christian’s vendetta all this time, only he has the motive to do her serious harm.

Team EHP gathers at the bottom of the screen, and Sonichu says that they’ll put in an appearance at the cleanup, then head on back to watch Chris’s favorite film, Mary Poppins, with his three children, seen here for the first time. From left to right (and oldest to youngest) we have Cerah, Christine, and Robbie. The three will get more individual characterization in the issues to come, but until they evolve, the three are just there to be cloying. Cerah is the only one of the three without a common name, though it’s assumed that she’s named after one of the many Sarahs in Chris’s life, most likely either Sarah Hammer or Sarah Cassandra McKenzie (Pandahalo). Christine’s name is a bit more obvious, and in fact Tomgirl Chris would later share the same name. Robbie was likely named after Chris’s father, or possibly the titular character from Chris’s second favorite film, The Adventures of the American Rabbit, Robert Rabbit, or less likely Robert Simmons V.

[taffysannotatedsonichu]

Sonichu 9 Page 92

MAGI-CHAN {telepathy}: Just an update for you two; we’ve managed to take out some of the baddies, all of the other electric-hedgehogs are aiding the medics with transport of the injured citizens and to-be-unbrainwashed jerkops, all though some of them didn’t make it sadly. The Autobots are cleaning up the the PVCCitizen Decepti-clone parts to be transported to the army bases for recycling. The CWC-Power Rangers took down the super-sized B-Manajerk and Merried Seinor Comic with survivable injuries. Then they both shrunk down to their original sizes. Our police and army forces held their ground very well, again, a few casualties within. The mall’s protective dome is starting to weaken, and Slaweel is closing in now. Our defense volunteers are worn out from their hard labor. We had one casualty here; Ivy was trapped in the elevator; the tremors made the floor under her break; she got her neck tangled in the cable. Billy Mays tired to rescue her by breaking her fall, but she got caught, and he tried to climb up to disentangle a rescue. He could not reach and the walls were slippery… just terrible.

MEGAZORD: !Go-Go!

EXCELINA: Have a safe trip back!

Caption: *In memory of Sonichu-Girl, **Ivy O’Niel**

It seems like every other page Chris tops himself in the massive text block department. This one spills over the background! Magi-Chan summarizes the remainder of the battle that Sonichu was not privy to. The hedgehogs have come out victorious in the battle with the jerkops, though not all of the jerkops pulled through. This is the first mention of the deaths of non-named characters - at this point the only fatalities have been Sarah Jackaras, Pandahalo, and, according to supplementary materials, Punchy’s master Shinabe. Now the masses begin to die, a trend that would continue to spiral downward next issue.

But if you were worried that broken Decepti-clone parts would litter the streets of CWCville, don’t you worry, they’re being gathered up and then sold for scrap. Keep CWCville Beautiful!

While we were watching the fight in CWC-Central Park, apparently Mary Lee Walsh had a case of the Rita Repulsa’s and made her monsters grow - in this case, B-Manajerk and Merried Seinor Comic. Chris countered with the obvious choice to fight a giant monster, the aforementioned team of Power Rangers CWCville has on standby (you can see their Megazord in the back there). Despite the idea of Power Rangers fighting a giant B-Manajerk and Merried Seinor Comic being the awesomest idea ever put forth in this comic, we don’t ever see it. This is the greatest waste in the history of the comic. At least we’re told that the two of them survived.

Alas, Ivy wasn’t so lucky. Granted even less of a memorial than Pandahalo, Ivy’s death was explained in Magi’s massive info-dump. Now, the real Ivy supposedly “died” in July of 2009, about two months after he was last in contact with her, apparently a suicide by hanging. Chris attempted to fit her method of death into the context of the comic, that for some reason she was in an elevator (what elevator we’re never explained - since the section before this was about the CWCville Mall, maybe Chris means the elevator there? I always actually assumed that she was supposed to have died in the same apartment that killed Sarah.) So she was hanging around in an elevator shaft, when the floor out from under her broke, and her neck was trapped in the cables that pulled the elevator, so when the floor broke she was hanged by the elevator cables. Okay, what? There is no floor in an elevator shaft. Either she was standing in the elevator when its floor crumbled (which probably would have sent her plummeting to her death but probably wouldn’t have gotten her hanged by the cables), or she was standing on the roof of the elevator with her neck wrapped in the wires when the roof she was standing on gave way and then she was hung by the cables while inside the elevator car? My head is starting to hurt. Anyway Billy Mays, apparently now working for the CWCville Mayorship, tried to break her fall… before she got hung by the cables? Then he tried to disentangle her body, but the walls were wet? WHAT?! WHY?! Why were the walls wet when it’s an elevator that’s indoors?!?! Whatever. Farewell, sweetest Ivy. So much for your GodJesus blessed romance.

At the bottom of the page, I suppose Son-Chu and Excelina are seeing off a helicopter carrying a crate of Decepti-clone parts headed for a dump or something.

Meanwhile, Magi-Chan mentioned that Patti’s psychic dome was weakening, so Mary Lee is heading off to do away with the dome once and for all, so her surviving jerkops will be free to ransack the mall.

[taffysannotatedsonichu]

Sonichu 9 Page 80

Caption: *Rock Throw*

SONICHU {thought}: Obviously a Rock Type.

Caption: *Iron Tail*

LIQUID CHRIS: Augh!!!

SONICHU: Ah-ha! Just as I thought, paper-thin and Robotnik-powered. Doctors! Take this man in for medical treatment, and check his head too.

Sonichu and his doppelganger in brown prepare to duke it out in a proper, turn-based Pokemon fight. Liquid Chris throws the first stone (literally) with Rock Throw. Since Rock Throw is a Rock-Type move, and Liquid Chris wears brown not that unlike the iconography of the Rock-Type, Sonichu immediately jumps to the conclusion that Liquid’s Sonichu form is also a Rock-Type. Chris doesn’t seem to realize though that the moves a Pokemon uses aren’t necessarily indicative of its type, and Mudkip, which is a Water-Type that evolves into a Water/Ground-Type (and in fact resists the Steel-Type move Sonichu’s about to use on Liquid), can learn the move (later generations would add the Timburr line and Landorus as non-Rock-Types that can use Rock Throw).

Sonichu dodges the rocks and counters with his own attack, the Steel-Type attack Iron Tail. Sonichu, being part Pikachu, using the Iron Tail move to counter Rock-Types has its basis in the Pokemon anime, wherein Ash’s Pikachu was taught the move during the Hoenn arc, in order to battle Rustboro Gym’s Roxanne and her team of Rock-Types (though the species was able to learn Iron Tail as early as the Johto games). Ash’s Pikachu has known it ever since and the move has become quite tied to it, though unlike Sonichu here Ash’s Pikachu actually had to train for a whole episode in order to use the move properly. Also note that Pokemon famously can only know four moves at a time, and Sonichu has now used Mega Kick, Double Team, Thunder, and more recently, Rolling Kick and Sky Uppercut. Alright, Sonichu, which ones did you forget? Or have you been blessed with infinite Pokemon moves by the all-powerful CWC?

Liquid crumples like a leaf when hit with Iron Tail (though if he was Rock/Electric-Typed as you would expect from an Electric Hedgehog, he would have taken neutral damage from this Steel-Type attack), and this presumably hit him in his transformation spot on his chest, much like the spot that Chris has on his chest to reverse his Sonichu transformation. He transforms into the human brown shirted impostor we all know and love, his paper Sonichu medallion rent in two. This paper Sonichu medallion was apparently not Anchuent Prophecy-based, hence the fragility of his Sonichu state, but rather the doing of Doctor Robotnik’s, though canonically he’s more inclined to build robots than engineer something to transform people into other living things (though since he is involved with the cloning of Sonichu early in the story, it’s possible he’s broadened his scientific horizons).

[taffysannotatedsonichu]

Sonichu 9 Page 79

MAGI-CHAN {telepathy}: Sonichu, the Punislav is taking Rosechu to CWC-Central Park; Giovanni, his crew, and Robotnik will be there with a bad deal. But you will be aided with a slam-dunk and a slice.

SONICHU {telepathy}: Thanks for the horoscopic heads-up, Magi-Chan.

Caption: *Earthquake*

LIQUID CHRIS: So, Sonichu, we finally meet.

LIQUID CHRIS: I B A Chandler, and I’m here to copycatly sieze claim of you hedgehogs and this city from your absent mayor’s domain.

SONICHU: I do not know your true name, but you only wish your false ID claims were true. I won’t let you continue your pretend game anymore!

Magi-Chan’s back as the deus-ex-machina guy by giving Sonichu the rundown he needs to save the day. He outlines the plot of the next few pages: Sonichu will arrive in CWC-Central Park, possibly an amalgamation of both New York’s Central Park as well as Charlottesville’s McIntire Park, to find the Punislav that caught Rosechu in the possession of Giovanni, Doctor Robotnik, and Naitsirhc. They’ll attempt to force him to choose between her safety and the city, but Sonichu will never have to make a decision as Bionic (the slam dunk) and Darkbind (the slice) will save the day for him.

Sonichu’s path towards his beloved is interrupted when an earthquake causes a bump in the road (or maybe the bump was already there and there and there was a coincidental earthquake), Sonichu goes flying, and when he lands he comes face to face with his greatest enemy yet - the brown-shirted impostor.

This is technically the first appearance of Liquid Chris in the comic, although I already covered the later written Gun Comic. Clad in brown, like his real world counterpart, Liquid appears in a Sonichu transformation, not unlike Chris-Chan Sonichu, dubbed “I B A Chandler”. Confusingly, IBAChandler was Solid Chris’s handle, hence the “Ian Brandon Anderson” moniker he came to be known as, while Liquid’s handle was “CChanSonichuCWC”.

IBAChandler Sonichu declares to Sonichu that he is here to claim CWCville and all the Electric Hedgehogs away from Solid Chris while he’s lost to time. Sonichu rebuffs him and clarifies that he is not, in fact, Christian Weston Chandler, not in the real world, not in the comic, not in any world. Solid Chris always got very defensive regarding accusations that he was an impostor and that Liquid was the actual Christian.

[taffysannotatedsonichu]

Sonichu 9 Page 60

Caption: *Makes gun do a 180*

“Makes gun do a 180” is perhaps the most infamous “sound effect” in the entire comic. Much like “crash to grass” and “straight as a miracle bullet”, “makes gun do a 180” is less of a sound effect and more of a descriptor.

The action on this page is a mess, and that’s saying something considering the rest of these pages surrounding it. What I think was supposed to happen is that thing in the top left is an SAV pulling out a gun to shoot at Blake. It looks like on this page that Blake is grabbing his tail, but I think he’s supposed to grab the gun, then shoot a pink laser back at the SAV that pulled the gun on him, as well as the other remaining SAV.

On the bottom of the page, Blake and Bubbles make out in front of the army of SAV robots that lie before them, apparently not having moved from where they started. You can also see the discarded crown of the King SAV on the right. Also, I suppose Bubbles has always had waist length hair, so it should theoretically cover the base of her tail, but on this page it looks like her Marill tail is coming out from the same level as her armpits.

[taffysannotatedsonichu]

Sonichu 9 Page 12

Wild’s card: Wild Sonichu, aka SpiderShock38, matched with DigDugette416

IVY: I’m not going to look yet. I’ll hold out for Chris,

Simonla’s card: Simonla Rosechu, aka DigDugette416, matched with SpiderShock38

Florence’s card; Florence Fisher, aka FLoreDora127, matched with Sneaselfox

GEORGE PHILLIP {thought}: Oh! Got smudged!

George’s card: Aka SolidBLUcoat, matched with, SweetestIvy

Caption: George Phillip

Wild and Simonla find themselves paired up with each other, this dating class being the Capulets’ ball that unites our Romeo and Juliet and sets them on the path to romance and eventual tragedy. Wild’s SpiderShock screen name references his tendency to use his Vine Whips much like Spiderman uses his webs, and Simonla’s DigDugette name references the 1982 arcade game Dig Dug, wherein the player character digs under the ground and defeats monsters underground.

Ivy doesn't want to know the identity of her partner, because she doesn't care about whoever he may be, since he's not Chris and thus not nearly as divinely blessed. This despite the fact that if she doesn't want to fail this class, she's going to have to talk to the boy on the card (George). I suppose that, unlike the rest of the class, she doesn't have to marry her chosen partner, but then you can make the argument that she's stringing George along. Then again, if she decides to drop the class, that means George would be stuck with Ms. Jackasras’ mysterious “associates”, so maybe she's stringing him along to save him from that. George oddly smudges his own name off of his card, and leaves Ivy's stunning calligraphy unaltered. Both his outfit and screen name allude to his being a blue palette swap of Kenny from South Park. Alas, unlike Kenny, George makes it out of this issue alive.

Florence is shown in full here, and she has the distinction of being the first notable character of color to be portrayed positively. There were a few Manajerks who were black, but Florence, however small her character may be, is sympathetic and her role as the beleaguered partner of Reginald is played as her having lost out on a good experience. I suppose this odd title is at least a little understandable - up until this point, pretty much every human character has been based off of a real person, and it just so happens that all the heroic humans Chris has shown so far are based on real caucasian individuals (Chris himself, Sarah Hammer, Megan), and even a lot of the villains as well (Mary Lee, Bagget, Wes Iseli). Even the villains of Chris's own invention have all been white (Count Graduon, Naitsirhc). It just so happens that most of Chris's world has been white, and he doesn't want to do any race lifts.

As a quick run down, in order of appearance, the humans of Sonichu are: Chris (based on a real white guy), Kel (loosely based on the white Kellie Andes), Naitsirhc (an extension of Chris's psyche and thus white), Dr. Robotnik (a complicated case, between anime's tendency to downplay racial features and the differences between Japanese and English dubs and then all the differences between the various Sonic the Hedgehog media, but probably basically white), Giovanni (ditto, the Japanese dubs of Pokemon media gave Team Rocket a Yakuza motif that the English localization recontextualized into being mafia motif; English language Giovanni is presumably supposed to be Italian), Sarah and Wes (based on real white people), the Cherokian characters (nominally Native American, but since it's quite likely Chris's only experience with Native Americans is through pop cultural osmosis, they resemble caucasians), Mary Lee Walsh (a real white woman), Count Graduon (an invention of Chris's, white in his human form, Jerkief (a real black man), Hanna (a real white girl), B-Manajerk (a real black man), MSC and WM (based on real white guys), Crystal (Chris's hypothetical sister and thus shares his genes), Scotpalazzo (real and white), Bagget (real and white), Megan (real and white), Allison (Chris's only invention of a heroic character, white, possibly so because she's a replacement for Crystal in a sense), Jason (real and white), and Ivy (presumably Irish from her troll persona). Florence is only the second human in the comic that Chris truly invented.