“Love and Loss” - Sonic the Hedgehog #144
So first off a real life update. I’ve taken on extra shifts at one of my jobs and business is picking up on my art/graphics side. Therefore reviewing will have to take a backseat for a while. This series will still be getting priority, but reviews will come out once a week rather than the three or four a week. So be on the look out on Fridays/Saturdays for the latest update. As for my other review series I’ll get to them whenever the time permits me to.
Now on to the review…. Where we take a break from all of the Antoine drama and look at Bunnie’s feelings during all of this mess.
This story follows five women in the comic and their romantic entanglements thus far. See, the Knothole newspaper has a “Dear Abby” type column called “Dear Ally” and this week’s theme is relationship drama. Theses people are as follows, Bunnie, Mina, Amy, Sally, and Rosie at the very tail end. (Apparently she has a crush on Uncle Chuck, which we’ll sadly never see come to fruition)
Of course we’ll be focusing on Bunnie for this review, but I’ll give a brief overview of the others at the end.
Regardless of who wins out concerning Antoine’s character development, Bollers or Penders; this breakup really effects Bunnie deeply. Weather it’s Evil- Antoine or Anti-Antoine she broke up with, she’s still lost the real Antoine. The man whose been the emotional rock she’s leaned on for years.
But hey, don’t take my word for it. Read this letter in her own words.
“I miss…knowing who loved me regardless of my appearance. I feel like my whole world has fallen apart”.
That line pretty much sums things up. There’s a level of co-dependency in the Bunnie and Antoine relationship that is both immensely endearing and arguably unhealthy. And make no mistake it can be found on both sides of the relationship; as Antoine needs Bunnie to reassure him of his worthiness, and Bunnie needs Antoine to constantly help her through her identity issues.
It is precisely this idea, that two people so broken can fix each other through love and understanding, that makes the audience so invested in their relationship. That when something inevitably goes wrong, we are concerned for their well being. We know that one can not live without the other, and so we want to see them together always. That’s good story telling. That is good drama born of natural character development.
Unfortunately its not sustainable. Eventually either life and/or death will separate us all. And since Archie Sonic is an ongoing series without a definitive ending, there’s no way they can remain together forevers and evers. Even if the separation is only temporary, it’s still an inevitability at some point. If only for the sake of story progression and preventing the comic from stagnation.
That means at some point one or both characters will need to learn to function without the other. In order to progress as people, they’ll need to break away from the band-aid solution of constantly having someone else reassure them and learn to be confident for themselves. That point is not today however as we see Bunnie’s reaction to Ally’s response letter.
We see her preparing to leave, either to find Twan and confront him or to run away as she usually does. (I’m betting it’s the latter) Only to break down into an emotional wreak unable to do anything because she is just that lost without him. That’s how dependent upon Antoine she really is. That’s not healthy. But it is understandable, given what we know of her and her former relationship.
I know we all like to joke about how Buntoine is the perfect couple and yes they are near perfectly written imo, but relationships aren’t perfect and their’s is no exception. Co-dependency is a problem, but it’s a flaw that makes them interesting.
As for Ally’s advice for dealing with this problem, it is fairly sound. (except for that whole “males can’t communicate their feelings” thing. We all know Ant is better at doing precisely that than Bunnie ever was) But we all know it doesn’t apply to this situation because outside forces are manufacturing this particular breakup. Weather Evil or Anti, simply talking to him wouldn’t have done anything productive, so I guess it’s for the best she never tried.
PS: I translated Antoine’s note at the bottom of this picture. It means;
“I will always love you my beautiful flower forever - Antoine”
“I will always love you my beautiful flower forever - Antoine”
Antoine calls Bunnie his beautiful flower!
This is an accurate representation of my reaction to this particular news.
As for the other girls; Mina decides to give up on Sonic for good and pursue a more serious relationship with Ash, Amy rejects Ally’s advice to keep herself open to other possibilities as oppose to single mindedly chasing after someone who is currently uninterested in her, (remind me why Bollers wanted to push for SonAmy again?) and Sally is told to go talk about her feelings to Sonic in a more mature manner instead of blowing up in his face constantly. Good advice she promptly ignores. Which is all the more stupid when you realize who “Ally” was meant to be all along.
no. No. NO. NO! NO! NOOOOOOO!
This is BULLSHIT! and let me explain why;
- Sally is the last person who needs to be giving relationship advice to anyone. Even before Daddy Dearest went and fucked with her head, Sally was terrible at communicating her feelings and had a continuing “will they, won’t they” relationship with Sonic for years. To hear her go on about “honesty” and “you need to talk” is hypocrisy of the highest order.
- Sally apparently took up this hobby to deal with her grief over Sonic’s “death”. She wanted to help others rather then focus on her own loss, which is fair enough. That’s a very Sally thing to do. But she’s already a princess in a war torn country! She already helps people every fucking day! And she no doubt has more important things to do then write letters to random strangers about love! Especially now that her dad is gone and left her in charge as acting ruler.
- This smacks of a last ditch attempt to rescue Sally’s character after “the slap” by acknowledging that she was wrong and showing how she is still a helpful, wise, and likable character but it backfires horribly. Mainly because she never acts upon this sound advice she gives herself, making her come across as a self-righteous jackass as oppose to the selfless heroine she’s meant to be.
The only way I can accept this ending is that it’s really Nicole who is writing all of this advice. That “Ally” just transcribes it all down for her cause she doesn’t have hands to do it herself.
PSS: Can we call Anti-Sally Ally now? It’s short for both Sally and Alicia and separates her further from the Queen. So you can talk about both without contusion. Also we can spell it like Ali.
Anyways the other story this issue is the finale chapter for the M25YL arc. Hurray!
Next time on the Retrospective we finally reveal who won the custody battle over Antoine’s character development, Bollers or Penders.
