Every superhero has a fun-loving sidekick, helping them take down the main villain, covering their weaknesses, and aiding with smoothly saving the day. For the Sonic franchise, that sidekick fighting beside the hero is Tails, or Miles Prower, the smart, fun-loving geek who uses his brains to help Sonic save the day.
Just like our hero Sonic, Tails has also gone through drastic character change and mischaracterization; in my opinion, he has faced the worst. First appearing in Sonic Two, Tails was introduced as a Sonic fanboy who then became his friend and sidekick by helping him fight Eggman. He was a silent, non-speaking character, so he too had his personality left up to interpretation and wasn’t fully developed into a genius type of character until later in games.
Starting in the late 90s, SEGA’S first 3D game, Sonic Adventure, was where Tails got his own storyline. The beginning of the game has him extremely dependent on Sonic, coming to him for all his questions or mistakes, needing guidance and learning from him for anything, being used to standing next to him but never in front of him when times get tough. As the story goes on, he fights on his own and in quite dangerous situations where he’s forced to act quickly, he does; he realizes if Sonic isn’t there to help him, he must stand up and save the world. He gains confidence in himself on a journey of self-discovery that makes him grow into his own fleshed-out character.
In the later Sonic Adventure Two, his character stays consistent. When everyone assumes Sonic has died due to an Eggman scheme, Tails instantly jumps to take charge and fights Eggman to avenge Sonic’s death. These two games are his best moments of characterization, showing he can be relied on to take care of the world and doesn’t need Sonic in a dire situation; he’s capable and can save the world.
After this, every few games he would begin to downgrade Tails, making him a coward. Completely incomparable to his peak in Sonic Adventure One and Two. In Sonic Heroes, he’s scared of everything, screaming about ghosts and freaking out constantly from fear; this makes him seem like a scared cat and a child. While Tails may be a child, he never displayed the childish fear of ghosts or monsters, being more mature and grounded in reality.
They took away the confidence he gained in Sonic Adventure, reversing all his character growth previously and making him always cry for Sonic. Some other games, such as Sonic Colors, take a drastically different approach, making him a smart-aleck who cracks jokes but is useless to the story; he has no other importance or reason to be around other than to make those terribly written jokes.
He’s further mischaracterized later down the line in Sonic Lost World, where Sonic and he must team up with Eggman to save the world, but the majority of the time Tails complains about it and even picks unnecessary fights, all being extremely out of character while also being inaccurate. He and Sonic have many times teamed up with Eggman to save the world, all in different instances, and he has never acted that way before.
There’s even one more game where his character is walked all over, Sonic Forces: in this game, Tails is cornered with a few civilians against basic Eggman robots he could easily take down, but Sonic shows up and does it for him. He also stands by as Sonic is ambushed and beaten up, later on also calling for Sonic at the near sight of a villain.
All of these instances show writers who dumb down the genius Tails, undoing all of his previous character development that made him who he was. Hopefully, in the future, he will be re-empowered and will rely more on himself instead of Sonic.
