The Antoine and Bunnie Retrospective - 89

“Picking Up The Pieces” Negative Relations I - Sonic the Hedgehog #88

So if you remember back in SSS #14, we left Knuckles floating out in the middle of the ocean. Well his mystical grandfather Athair finds him and tells Knux that he needs to go to Albion to find his missing friends and family. He gives Knuckles a “guiding star gem” to teleport there.     

Honestly it just looks like a mini chaos emerald. In fact that’s probably what it is and Athair just gave it a fancy name to make it sound more impressive than it really is.  

Meanwhile back in Mercia, we find that Rob O’the Hedge and Mari-An have married and now have a kid called Little John.   

Except it couldn’t have been much more than four or five months since they met. Remember that we have a time frame between The Lost Tribe arc and The Back In Business arc because of the satellites, which activated approximately a week apart from each other. There were 8 satellites, so more less two to three months between the two arcs. Then figure in that only a couple of weeks would have past between Robotnik’s return and Sonic Adventure. A story arc that, despite its length, wouldn’t have taken more than a week in comic time.  

So yeah, does this mean that Mobians don’t have a nine to ten month term? Honestly, there’s no real reason to assume that they would. They aren’t actually human after all. And from a narrative perspective it’s more convenient to have shorter pregnancies so you won’t have to sideline a character for what would undoubtedly take up years of real world time. 

You know what, I’m all for Mobian’s only needing four to five months to develop before being born instead of the nine to ten that a human needs. Still, even with that factored in, both Rob and Mari must have wasted no time in getting busy. ;) 

Anyways, Rob comes across Antoine, Bunnie, and Amy in the woods and attacks them thinking that they’re foes. 

It’s still creepy that Amy’s obsessive crush is on a guy who is essentially a recolor of her older cousin. Especially when your remember that said cousin is more or less her legal guardian. Seriously, what the fuck writers?! 

He doesn’t trust them because A) Bunnie’s part robot, B) Amy no longer looks like her old self, and C) Antoine is apparently the spitting image of his dad minus the whole being a robot thing. Fortunately, Knuckles shows up just then to verify who they are. 

I really love this scene and it’s for the same reasons as to why I liked Antoine’s small appearance in Knuckles #19. Allowing the characters to interact with other characters who fall outside of their usual social circles helps to make the fictional world more believable and connected. 

I also really like that it’s Knuckles who stands up for Antoine here. They’re not really friends, not yet. They don’t hang out together. They rarely hold conversations with one another. They’re essentially acquaintances who sometimes work together, that’s it.  

But they both respect each other. They’ve worked together enough to know that the other is someone who’d be worth getting to know more. Basically the foundations for a closer friendship are being laid out during this era and I appreciate that.