Welcome to part 4 of my review of "Sonic SatAm!" Rotor’s not only out of focus and artificially incompetent, but he’s just always felt lame to me. They don’t make him an outright comedic character, which stinks because in the comic, I found it charming with those occasional moments where he sat on a seesaw and his weight sent Tails flying to the ceiling, or when he got all excited and giddy over something as boring as an ant farm. Moments like that, where he makes silly mistakes or where he shows he has a sense of humor with his dialogue, making puns, so he could work as a dorky geek.

But he said in SatAm that he doesn’t want to be just the nerd. His character is so weak. I like the rare comedic moments with him in the comic giving life to his character, and I liked the rare moments in SatAm where Rotor was serious; he said he wanted to turn Robotnik into a can opener, and he fiddled with the fake Sally saying he’ll have a surprise for Robotnik, and he asked Sonic in annoyance if he was going to just walk into a robot bar and ask where the spy sensors were hidden. Moments like that where he’s serious and irritated make me respect him, he could work better as a tough guy which his design shows him to appear like because he’s a big walrus guy, so I’d expect him to be a lot more active in the action.

He could be the ” Shoot the Dog to do the right thing, ” serious person, like he was when he met Bunnie in the Archie Sonic comics since he was worried she’d have a tracking device to locate Knothole in her, while Sonic just wanted to save her when she was tired. Even Ian Flynn wrote him better in "Other M" where he was an angry tough guy, even if he had that pointless revenge for his family fixation that never gets proper resolution since the culprit dies to Knuckles instead of him. Rotor’s not comedic or an angry tough guy, so he’s just stuck in the middle and he’s boring. And I hate that they ruined his design in SatAm later making him skinnier and look like he’s covered in chimney soot because I don't think the "Sonic SatAm" people picked a good design for Rotor when they did that. At least his ruined design makes me not care that he’s out of focus anymore because I don’t have to look at that.

As for Bunnie, she’s a bland nice girl who’s just a ditzy dumb blonde. I liked her when I was first reading the comic, but eventually I got so bored of her seeing that ” oh, this is all your character is, huh? Just having a Texas accent doesn’t make you an interesting person!” and by issue 40 I almost hated her, and since she barely has any friendship moments with Sonic in either continuity, I can’t forgive her for her threatening to murder Sonic in issue #40. It’s a million times worse than any slap (yes, even Sally's slap to Sonic in Archie Sonic comic #134!!!). But yeah, she’s a dumb blonde, there are so many times where she’s an idiot in both the comic and the show and she’s NEVER called out on it, making it feel like sloppy writing because it feels unintentional.

For the comic, well out of multiple examples she once wanted Antoine to go down the stairs on crutches and a broken leg, not to mention she temporarily retired WITH HIM when he was hurt when she’s way more useful than he is in theory. She also was reluctant twice to escape the Iron Queen’s city when she knew she could be controlled by her from experience. And for the show, she took forever to get the idea to extend her legs to save the kidnapped terrapod when that idea was obvious immediately, and when she asked if she could make a suggestion, her only brilliant idea was to get out of there, which no duh. I can’t really respect Bunnie as a result, so maybe someone else should’ve been the cyborg? Maybe Antoine or Sally could have been a cyborg and Bunnie could just be Sally’s hairdresser.

Bunnie's got barely anything to her character, she’s so boring and not that respectable aside from her cool cyborg strength, which she doesn’t think is worth being a cyborg just because of the way it makes her LOOK, never mind that it makes her awesome. Her cyborg angst is the only thing remotely interesting about her character and it doesn’t even make sense, because someone cheerful and ” all brawn and no brains ” should be nothing but grateful for her cyborg super strength, but ” oh no, I don’t look pretty enough, I wanna have my nails manicured! ” And it’s just even more proof that she’s not a smart person. And it takes until the last episode of Season 1 for Rotor to get the idea to make her legs extendible, another proof of how useless he is in this show since she has tons of abilities in the comic like flight and a force field, and then in Season 2 she’s completely pushed out of focus in favor of Dulcy. I'll talk about Dulcy in part 5 of my review, which will be in my next post, so until then, toodles:)