Thinking about the differences on Japanese and English Sonic, I can't stop but remember the "
Sonic Adventure Stylebook", it had both English and Japanese profiles for the characters, and they are... very different. Here are some comparisons:
Sonic the Hedgehog
English: A quick bolt of lightning and Sonic's his name. Helping the needy - that's Sonic's game! Speed is his glory, it's what he does best Sonic's the fastest north, south, east & west!
Japanese: 自由気ままが大好きで、曲がったことが大キライ。 直情的で短気だが、 困っている人がいると放っておけない優しさも併せ持っている。 とにかくじっとしちゃいられない。 サウンドにはうるさい。
Japanese (Translated): He loves freedom and hates crookedness. He is impulsive and short-tempered but is also so kind that he won't ignore when someone is in trouble. He just can't sit still. Can be picky about sound.
Miles "Tails" Prower
English: A sweet little guy, his tails let him fly. Sonic's best pal 'til the day they die. He'll follow Sonic to the ends of the earth. He's been the spunkiest sidekick Since the day of his birth.
Japanese: ちょっと引っ込み思案だが、 気が優しくてまじめ。その特徴といえる二本のシッポをからかわれていじめられていたが、ソニックの姿を目にし、 あこがれ、後を追って走ることにより、 勇気と前向きな気持ちを持つようになる。
Japanese (Translated): He is a bit withdrawn but kind-hearted and serious. He was teased for his characteristic two tails, but when he saw Sonic's figure, he admired him and ran after him, gaining courage and a positive attitude.
Knuckles the Echidna
English: On Angel Island, up high in the air Guarding the emerald, he's stubborn but fair. Descended from a noble warrior clan, When there's business to be done, Knuckles is your man!
Japanese: 古の戦闘民族の末裔。 一本気で生真面目、 それゆえいささか融通がきかない。 エンジェルアイランドという空中に浮かぶ島で マスターエメラルドを守護して暮らしている。 そのためか純真で素直な面があり、 だまされやすい。 女の子が苦手。 ナックルズというのは一族の名称であったが、 残された最後のひとりとしてその名が名前になっているようだ。
Japanese (Translated): A descendant of an ancient warrior race. He is single-minded and serious, and therefore somewhat inflexible. He lives on an island called Angel Island, where he protects the Master Emerald. Perhaps because of this, he has an innocent and honest side and is easily deceived. He is not good with girls. Knuckles was the name of his family, but it seems that he is the last one left and his name has become his family's name.
Eggman
English: Evil and mean, full of ego and greed. He lives for robots and other machines. Late at night, dreaming, all tucked in his bed, His nemesis Sonic will fill him with dread.
Japanese: 自分勝手でわがままな、 自称悪の天才科学者。 三度の飯よりメカが好き。 己の美学を重んじるため、そのメカの設計思想は必要以上にデザインやギミックを重視していたりする。 目的は自らの理想とする都市 「エッグマンランド」の建設。 そのためにとった様々な行動が、 たまたま一般常識に照らすと 「悪いこと」 だったりするのである。 本人に悪気はないのだ、あくまでも。
Japanese (Translated): A selfish and self-indulgent self-proclaimed evil genius scientist. He loves mecha more than three meals a day. Because he values his own aesthetics, his mechanical design philosophy places more emphasis on design and gimmicks than what is necessary. His goal is to build his ideal city, "Eggman Land". The various actions he takes to achieve this goal happen to be "bad" in the eyes of common sense. He has no bad intentions, of course.
The constant way that the English profiles are made seems much more like one-note characters without nuance and more on showing "jokes and coolness" than anything else. The Japanese profiles, however, focus a lot more on their backstories and more detail on their way of thinking.
Eggman's profile is the one with the biggest difference in my opinion, as the English profile just jokes about Eggman being "evil and mean", while the Japanese profile goes in more detail about his way of thinking and the detail that Eggman doesn't see himself as "evil', that is just the common sense view of what he does because of his desire of creating the ideal city using modern machines. This has been mentioned on other Japanese profiles as well and explained by Naoto Oshima as Sonic is showing the battle between "modernity and nature, humanity and animals" with Eggman embodying the modern progress over the animals, but he doesn't do anything "evil", so much so that he never would attempt to destroy the world and he helps to save it in the ending of Sonic Adventure was a showcase of that.
Eggman would of course change a lot even on the Japanese side as in Sonic Adventure 2 (Which makes sense considering that Sonic Adventure was the last game that Naoto Oshima was a part of), but the fact of how a lot of details are Japanese exclusive even though Sonic is a series that is more famous and developed on the west just feels "wrong".
If anything, this is the one aspect that I fear from Ian Flynn becoming a lead writer for the games as I feel he could miss a lot of important background information because of the lack of knownledge from the Japanese lore (It doesn't help that SEGA seems to have no archive for that as well). I remember that for the Encyclospeedia there were some things he just made up from that and contradicted the Japanese lore such as Maria being on Ark because that would help her be cured due to the low gravity, when the official Japanese setting was that due to Ark being in space, she wouldn't be affected by Earth's disease, because NIDS was based on HIV. And fans discovered this just by asking Adventure 2's writer on Twitter...
I feel like if Sonic doesn't get someone who archives all of this stuff, they will just retcon the previous material again and again as Origins did. If the answer is on an old book or material, they shouldn't retcon it "because it's obscure", they should just make it more accessible. This is one thing that I'm liking from Digimon as there are people who work on the series that are archiving a lot of old lore and they are doing great things by reusing it, I feel like they should do something similar with Sonic.
Can't want for Windii or someone to look into that and translate the Japanese script.
