Sonic The Hedgehog: Return To Robotropolis (Fan-Funded)

[zarius]

I'd brought this up in passing in the "favourite series finale" thread, but I wanted to share it because of how unique and important it's becoming in the every sketchy world of crowd-funded entertainment.


In the 1990s, there were about three different Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons running,  the comedy based Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog, the musical drama Sonic Underground, and the dystopian nature vs technology drama Sonic the Hedgehog (or Sonic Saturday Morning-Satam)

Sonic Satam remains the most iconic and fondly remembered version to this day, chiefly due to two things

1. It's long running comic book spin-off produced by Archie, which ended in a most dramatic fashion in 2017 that involved a legal dispute which cost the publishing arm a large percentage of their characters

2. The finale of the animated series and it's notorious cliffhanger

Since then, there has been a very driven fan movement determined to provide closure to the second season cliffhanger and continue the story, this manifested in an online web comic continuing the series called 'Sea3on', which runs to this day (though is now very sporadic in updates), eventually the creators decided they wanted to further the story with animation, and thus in 2018, they set up a patreon to crowd-fund a full animated 'industry standard' pilot episode to pitch to Sega at some point.

Here's some of their progress so far

Official trailer








Q+A

[Spark Doll King]

A nice idea but I think theirs to much legal red tap involved.

The Archie comic had a major legal problem due to a guy named Ken Penders. He created a lot of the new characters in the comic and would eventually won the rights to all of them thanks to a big legal screw up.

Ken’s actions spelled the end for The Archie Sonic comic. Hard reboots we’re done, tons of popular characters removed, storylines erased or never finished. It’s so bad Archie can’t reprint large chunks of the series and even Sega have had issues dodging around Ken’s copyright claims to anything that even vaguely resembles one of his story lines.

I wish this team all the best but they are really wading into a horrific mess on this one.

[zarius]

Nov 29, 2022 12:08:40 GMT Spark Doll King said:

A nice idea but I think theirs to much legal red tap involved.

I agree, I'd much rather this just be a Youtube project and not some attempt at reviving the series with all the legal woes this part of the franchise has. 

They're also starting to sell merchandise for this project (no copyrighted characters or logos are used), with all fees going into production costs. The prices for those hats are quite steep, and they're bound to end up on e-bay for a small fortune too.

[zarius]

Nov 29, 2022 12:08:40 GMT Spark Doll King said:

Ken’s actions spelled the end for The Archie Sonic comic. Hard reboots we’re done, tons of popular characters removed, storylines erased or never finished. It’s so bad Archie can’t reprint large chunks of the series and even Sega have had issues dodging around Ken’s copyright claims to anything that even vaguely resembles one of his story lines.

Do you read the fan produced Archie Online Comics? They follow the original timeline and have resolved various plotlines and threads left dangling by the legal disputes. They even did a finale for Sonic Underground.


archiesoniconline.com/

[zarius]

[zarius]

I briefly left the Sea3on patreon for a few months and have signed up again now that the updates are increasing.

The January update stated they were closer than ever to the finish line and will soon be able to start shopping the pilot around to legit studios to finish off for them.

Also I have a theory on one other thing I found on their patreon that I'll spoiler tag

Apparently the Doomsday Project cameos in the pilot, somebody asked if it was a flashback, and the reply was 'perhaps', I think there's a possibility that it'll be revealed the project is trapped in the void and we'll get a last minute appearance by Robotnik to show he survived and we end the episode on that

[zarius]