What's your favourite character in the Sonic franchise?š
I don't think I've mentioned it on this blog before, but it would have to be this guy.
Yes, it's surprising. You wouldn't guess since I've never went in-depth on him compared to the more famous greats like Davy Sprocket, Antlion Boss, Luppy Luppy Man, Yellow Shadow Android, and I'm Not Funny.
It's always been him. He became an immediate favourite when I first got into the series in 2003 via Sonic Advance 2, along with Tails because a fox with two tails used for flight was the coolest concept ever. Lucky me, fandom infantilizes both of them. There are plenty of mad scientists in fiction, there are plenty of villains who hide their true malevolence behind a goofy exterior, there are plenty of villains who [insert other trope that appeals to me]. I enjoy many of them in their own respectful right, but Dr. Ivo "Thaddeus Chadrizz" Robotnik is in a class of his own, and despite how many times he's been used less than ideally in way too many games and adaptations, his foundation at its best simply can't be beat. Like Pac-Man.
Right out the gate, him being the recurring boss in every zone via a new latest and greatest creation was such a fun and captivating premise to me, and growing up with the Genesis games and the Advance trilogy, it was always exciting to imagine what he'd pull out next time. I understand why this schtick is not as feasible in the 3D games (and not because "the Classics had no story", we don't take that slander around here), but either way, he still pulls his weight in those games too, and overall, someone who's this willing to be hands-on is most certainly not a coward.
Considering his opponent is as unyielding as Sonic, who himself is frequently backed up by a plethora of equally powerful and relentless accomplices with more colours than the entire triple A gaming catalogue, this man has the extra balls required to fulfill the role of the hedgehog's mightiest foe. Sonic's determination is legendary, but Eggman's is exhilerating in its own right, and often leads to the hedgehog's own greatest moments like a true symbiotic relationship. If you do Eggman dirty, you're essentially dragging Sonic down by proxy, because how can the hero flourish if his most prominent nemesis is cheapened. There's a reason why I consider S3&K's endgame to be among the greatest in the series. Do I need to mention Unleashed's opening too?
The lengths of Eggman's ego borders on parody, yet manages to be sincerely compelling simultaneously. Yes, a sufficiently ambitious villain will show some pride, but when they're completely fucking obsessed with preserving their ego, when it's their single most defining imperative as opposed to a mere bullet point on their profile, I in turn grow obsessed with the petty, insane, brutal, extraordinary, and occasionally self-sabotaging results that follow. I've said it before: it's one thing to make a statue of yourself, it's a tremendously different can of supremely audacious worms when you desecrate Ancient Egyptian structures and obelisks to put your grinning mug on them. If this goober redecorated Mount Rushmore, you just know he'd change all four of them.
And it's made all the more satisfying because... yes! He is brilliant! He's not a charlatan who has to rely on someone else's brains for his creations that he takes credit for. He made all those robots. He made all those fortresses and airships and spaceships. He devised his own plans. He said those memes. He brags and flaunts, but credit where it's due, that humpty dumpty son of a gun puts his money where his mouth is.
I especially get my kicks when he gets to reveal himself for the monstrous reprobate that he truly is. It will never cease to furrow my brows when people say that only villains who want to destroy the world can be considered "real" evil, and not just because in Eggman's case, he explicitly doesn't give a damn about its inhabitants and their safety, or even what state the planet itself is actually in, so long as it exists and is there for him to conquer. Did any of them play Sonic CD? Did they ignore the whole point of the Bad Futures? Though I suppose it doesn't help that this franchise is a little too fond of propping up destroy-the-world-type villains so that they're always inevitably the true final boss-level threat that must be stopped... or that one of said examples is Eggman's own recolour who had to steal his more sinister traits and pass them off as his own. Regardless of that particular bad habit of the series, anyone who pays attention can see that Eggman will stop at nothing to get his desired kingdom, and if he's defied too many times, he'll drop the grin and get real nasty. You know that meme of K. Rool telling his kremlings to hit the second tower? That's basically Eggbotnikman.
Also like K. Rool, Eggman's silly exterior IS genuine, which elevates his presence and actions even more. So many villains who act similarly wacky tend to put it up as a mere front, which isn't necessarily bad by design, but does often run the risk of Disney Twist Villain Syndrome in which the character we've spent time with didn't actually exist and the guy in their place is someone we barely get a feel for. Any chump can pretend to be eccentric or be deceptively disarming, but for Ivo to be every bit as ridiculous and childish as he appears, yet still manage to shock with his ruthless depravity, and impress with his ingenuity and sneakiness, that takes a special level of balance in characterization that's so intoxicating and delightful to watch play out.
(Speaking of, I haven't kept up with the DC/Sonic crossover IDW's been doing due to my usual aversion to IDW shenanigans, so I can't comment on its overall quality for now, and I'm sure there are details I'm missing since the only reason I even found out about this particular plot point was through all the admittedly knee-slapping memes about Lex Luthor fucking Rouge, but with that said - and I can't believe I'm saying this about something to come out of the infamous "Eggman never has a plan" comic - it might actually have provided a genuine, straight up, no-strings-attached example of what I'm talking about and like to see in the form of our egg boy outplaying Sesbian Lex, and being more than prepared for the latter's betrayal. Congratulations IDW Sonic: it took you nearly a whole decade of your existence, and it wasn't even from the mainline comic, but you seemingly finally managed to tell a story arc with the main villain of this goddamn franchise in an integral villainous role that didn't cop out with him... or maybe I'm speaking too soon. There might be some nonsense later on since it's IDW we're talking about, and the zombot arc taught me to never lower my guard completely when comics are involved.)
While it's never the most prominent detail, I even take delight in all the apparently endless ways Eggman funds his resources. Whether they're at the forefront of the plot, like MeteorTech in Zero Gravity, or him selling outdated models to willing buyers in Battle (I presume he does that anonymously), or they're unspoken but no less prevalent, like the literal ocean of oil in Sonic 2, the newspaper factory in Press Garden, his various mining operations for scrap metal, and the countless casinos and carnivals that were brought about by yours truly. Even in the realm of something so mundane as making moolah, the doctor keeps his horizons expanded. Money never seems to be a problem for him (Sonic 4 Episode 1 doesn't count, he saw what game he was in and knew not to give it his 100%, that's my headcanon and I'm sticking to it). Yet still, he wants more, such is his greed.
And not to be biased for the character I'm biased for, but his aesthetics do so tickle my sweet spot as far as villainy goes. I don't mean the plump pioneer exclusively, though he does indeed qualify, I'm also referring to all that he creates. Metal Sonic is a rightfully celebrated design for how iconic and badass it is, and all his other robots, whether they're the big doomsday bots that our inflated intellectual pilots like the Egg Dragoon, or the animal-themed badniks he deploys, they all have this indescribable middle ground. I can be embarrassingly picky about the designs for my killer robots/mechs in fiction, I can look at famous examples in other works and find them a bit generic or cluttered for my liking, but Eggman-patented designs consistently have the perfect blend of just enough detail to keep you hooked, enough eccentric touches that are visually pleasing, and enough deadliness to have an unironic edge in tandem with all the silliness. Sometimes I'll look at random badniks or other robots and think "Man, that really is a neat design."
Then there's his bases, which have equally striking designs and tend to say something about their creator beyond the obvious. Did he build Scrap Brain over Labyrinth Act 4 because he knew Sonic's weakness to water? Why is there a fish motif with the Egg Fleet? Why did he put cathedral windows inside the Titanic Monarch? Why did he build a circus while aliens were invading? Who else could bring top tier stuff like Eggmanland and MY FLOATING MASTERPIECE THE EGG CARRIAAAHHH to life? (It took a whole empire to build the Death Star in Star Wars. This man built the Death Egg solely by himself and through the robots that were also built by him. Then his ripoff would go on to be more durable than the source of its inspiration. Legend.)
Eggman, Robotnik, Ivo, Jamie Hyneman, whatever you choose to call him by, works because despite all the cartoonish bullshit he pulls out of his ass that could rival the reality warping tomfoolery of Bugs Bunny, he is still very much a serious villain. His threat remains serious, and a good writer will not forget that detail. When he breaks the planet into pieces, or takes control of the Time Eater, those are legitimate and scary feats. A lot of villains in the mad scientist ballpark tend to be written as a deliberate joke, or they devolve into one over time. Many of the traits that Eggman presents, such as giant over-the-top mechs, tend to be used for parody like in Sonic Boom, or referenced as something attributed only to villains who are supposed to be laughed at compared to, say, a guy with demon powers. So it's easy for people to look at Eggman at a superficial glance and lump him in with those type of examples.
Not to be mean, but they're wrong and I judge them with the passion of Isaac's libido. Eggman is not a wannabe bad guy. He's not some loser getting over his head who can't even take over a small town. He is consistently a threat to the entire world and frequently to other worlds if not the whole universe, having come close to victory so many times, one time achieving victory temporarily, and is only foiled by an equally overqualified supersonic hedgehog. If there's one good thing to come out of fandom's take on Eggman, it's the acknowledgement that anyone else VS Eggman is rarely fated to go well for the former. (On a more exaggerated note, the idea of Eggman being able to effortlessly threaten nearly all of fiction when he locks in, only getting tunnel vision when it pertains to that infernal hedgehog that he loathes so much, is both utterly horrifying and absurdly hilarious. What a shame for Mario and Vivian that Sonic is not there to distract him, hmmmm?)
But on the subject of fandom, all of this is why the ongoing and unnecessary Eggdad gimmick with Sage is so tedious for me, especially so with the way fans and YouTube essayists now talk about his pre-Frontiers self. They say he was generic and one-note before Frontiers gave him depth. No. I refuse. The doctor was always a fascinating and well thought out character and villain not in spite of his straightforward attributes, but because of them. Some villains can work by giving them a softer side, or making them not truly evil at heart, I don't want to come off as though I despise those archetypes by principle, but that is absolutely not how one should approach the guy who teamed up with himself because no one else could match his intellect. Despite the so-called intention for nuanced writing, it's ironically shallow to assume there's only one universal way to expand on a villain's portrayal, just as it's shallow to think the only solution to "fixing" every heroic character is by turning them into the Punisher. Some of the most beloved baddies out there have pitch black souls, with little in the way of moral redeeming points, yet they're praised and remembered not only because they excel in being the cuntiest cunt that ever cunted, but also because they tend to be engrossing and multi-faceted in other ways alongside it. And of course, the journey for some villains come from how much worse they get over time. I find that a far more fitting continuation of Robotonic's character than to see him awkwardly be inserted into a template that he has no business being part of. You can't make him the exact same as Bowser and expect it to work.
There is even more I could say, but I think I've made my point clear for today. No matter what dodgy writers and questionable fandom chooses to turn him into, Dr. Eggman, the real Dr. Eggman as you truly imagined it, will always be my favourite Sonic character among all my other favourite Sonic characters, and he will always be my favourite villain period. Here's to another century of this bald bastard. <3
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