The Antoine and Bunnie Retrospective - 67

“Surprise” - Sonic the Hedgehog #68

So we finally come upon another birthday episode for Sonic. Keep in mind these’s are important since they are our only marking for the passage of time in the book. And this one is extra important, since we are finally given an age for Sonic himself. 

This gives us approximate ages for the rest of cast. Sally should be the same age as Sonic and according to issue 9, her birthday is right before his. Back in issue 46, in the fan letters, Rotor’s age is given as 16 already. Depending on when his birthday lands, he is either the same age or just a year older than Sonic. Bunnie’s age is stated in the fan letters of issue 90 as being 17, meaning she is definitely one year older than Sonic. As for Antoine, we are give two points of reference for his age, in #46 he is 18 and in #90 he’s stated as being 19. So Ant is two years older than Sonic and his birthday possibly comes earlier in the year than any of his friends. There is no point of reference for Amy or Tails, but canonically I think they’re suppose to be ten here. 

So the real question is how old was everyone back in the beginning of the comic? Because most sources don’t give a timeline for those years. Sonic’s age wasn’t stated in the last birthday issue. And given just how many events occurred between the two, one could make the convincing argument that it was more than a year.   

Between the two birthdays, we have approximately 95 individual adventures. Not counting certain solo adventures that could overlap with with those, (the Knuckles series for example) or untold stories that’ll be filled in later through flash back. Even if every adventure happened approximately with in a week’s time of each other than we are still looking at over a hundred weeks. An earthly year is only 52 weeks, and even if Mobius follows a different calendar it still wouldn’t be that far off to ours given what we’ll find out later with the planet. 

To further back up this claim, the Mobius wikia has this issue during the year 3236 while placing both the Mecha Madness arc and Endgame at the beginning of and end of 3235 respectively. Anything before Mecha Madness is simply stating as taking place before 3235, but with no indication of precisely when. 

So we are effectively missing a birthday story. One that should take place in around Mecha Madness. So here’s my timeline of everyone’s ages based of the information given. 

I’m going to theorize that three years have past since the first issue of the Sonic Miniseries, and that this is the start of the fourth, and the starting ages for the FF’s was thus….

• Sonic, Sally, & Rotor - 13
• Antoine - 15
• Bunnie - 14
• Tails - 7 

So where to place the missing birthday….hmm…. well everyone was attending a big dance party at the end of issue #30.  The event could be Sonic’s birthday, and would roughly align with the rest of the timeline so I’m going with that as a place holder for now. 

   Anyway’s this story also formally introduces Elias to the rest of the Freedom Fighters and hints at the larger story arc with the satellites from issue 62 causing a meteor shower.