Shadow The Hedgehog, easily the one of the most popular and well loved characters in the Sonic franchise. I mean, the only character who beats him in terms of popularity is Sonic himself, and even that is sometimes up for debate. So with that in mind, I'm sure you may be asking "how can you hate this character that pretty much everyone loves?" As well as exactly what made me do a complete 180 and consider him to be among my top characters? Well let me attempt to explain myself. Though to do that, I should probably start when how I was first introduced to the character and what made me hate him in the first place.
So my first exposure to the character wasn't actually his debut game, but rather in the Game Boy Advance title, Sonic Battle. I thought his design was pretty cool, but didn't really know anything about him, so I had just assumed that he was either some evil clone of Sonic or his brother (keep in mind I was like 8 at the time). And from there, I would continue to see him appear in more and more stuff. Sonic Heroes, Sonic X, I mean, he even got his own game. He really was everywhere, but I didn't really care all that much. Outside of his unique design, I didn't really feel all that strongly about him one way or the other.
Once I got into high school, that's when I started getting deep into the Sonic fandom. Now keep in mind when I say this, the Sonic fandom can be a really cool community filled with some of the most creative people you'll ever meet. However, the Sonic community is infamous for the toxic side of the fanbase, And surprise surprise, that's the part of the fandom that teenage me would end up being a part of. And to make an extremely long story short, it was that side of the fandom that made me hate the character. It also didn't help that he was getting shipped with every other Sonic character, which I admittedly was way more bothered by than I really should have been.
And that's pretty much how my feelings of the character would remain from then on. Seeing him appear in games and comics, and hearing people constantly talk about just how cool he was would always annoy me. Then cut to 2024. It was the Year of Shadow, a year (technically 2 year) long celebration of the character. This was all to help promote the upcoming Sonic Movie 3 at the time, and I decided to at least attempt to see why people loved this character so much. So, I played Shadow 05 via a mod that fixed a lot of the original releases issues, watched the Dark Beginnings prologue, played Shadow generations, and went to the Sonic orchestra, which because of the upcoming movie, had a heavy focus on Shadow.
All of this, including the movie itself, caused me to have a change of heart on the character. I made me realize exactly why people love this character so much , and its definitely more than just because "he's a cool edgelord". In fact, now that I understand the character better, I wouldn't even call him an edgelord, even if he does give off that vibe sometimes. He's easily one of the most complex Sonic characters with one of the most interesting back stories that help flesh out the world of the Sonic franchise. I'm glad he's getting the spotlight lately, as not only are diehard fans of his eating well in terms of content, but its also doing a really good job when it comes to turning people who were cold on the character, or maybe didn't know much about the character in to fans of not just Shadow, but of the franchise as a whole.
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