Latest / The Autistic Mile / The Ideal-ist: Episode 9 (Miles "Nine" Prower)
Transcript
- Shane: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Autistic Mile. My name is Shane Gaffney and this is episode 9 of the Ideal-ist about well, Nine, from Sonic Prime, otherwise known as Miles Prower. Getting a little meta with the title in this one. And some of you who are more familiar with the Sonic franchise might be looking at that name and being like, "Nine? I thought that this character's name was Tails." Well, that is true, but also false. Because the thing about Sonic Prime is that it's a premise set around Sonic going in and ignoring his friend's advice in shattering a crystal that has the power over reality itself. And so because of that impulsive decision, all of reality ends up basically shattering into pieces, those pieces manifesting as different worlds that are spitting images of the original. To put it in simple terms, there's like a world where there is everyone that Sonic knows, but they're all pirates. There is a world where there's everyone Sonic knows, but they're all prehistoric, and so on and so forth. And Nine happens to be a variation of Tails from a dystopian universe where Sonic never existed. And that one change really causes a huge ripple effect that you're able to see for yourself just by how drastically everything has changed from what we know. All of the characters were affected in different ways by it, but Nine's situation is a bit more personal than simply losing the world he knew to Eggman and his empire of robots, in that the thing about Tails, or Miles Prower, hour is that as many Sonic fans know, he had a bullying issue back before he met Sonic, and it's because of Sonic standing up for him that he was able to effectively overcome those issues and really blossom into his own sort of hero/sidekick. slash psychic. But as I just said, Sonic doesn't exist in this world, and so there was no one to save Miles from his predicament. As such, Nine, as he now calls himself, ended up going through a very horrible upbringing in that he spent day after day suffering harassment like this, and in the face of such unending torment, it caused him to basically lock up and harden in himself in a sense Coming to the conclusion that no one was gonna come to save him, and so he had to save himself. And that may sound like an admirable solution on paper, one my old man would definitely be very proud of, but the difference is that it manifests in a very troubled sense, in that While Nine is technically more independent and assertive than the Tails we all know, he is also very bitter and miserable, and most notably he has no friends because he was never able to open up to anyone, because Sonic was never there to really form that first bridge for him. And even after fending off those who tormented him, sadly, it didn't really solve his problem, which is realistic, because even if you get rid of the immediate crisis, now what? The world still functions the way the world does, and stuff like this is just kinda baked into it. You kinda have to take the bitter with the sweet, there's no other option. And so, for the sake of his own emotional self-preservation, he decided to just isolate himself in his workshop and never allow anyone in, which is obviously a very blatant metaphor for his current psychological state. And he remains that way until the Sonic that we know ends up stumbling across him and accidentally setting him off. And after a sort of fight and misunderstanding the two form a sort of alliance similar to the Sonic and Tails that we know, but there are noticeable differences that become much more obvious as the show goes on in that though Sonic, being Sonic, sees Nine more as just an edgier version of Tails, which is technically right, but also kind of an oversimplification, And though they worked together to take down Eggman and try to restore things to the way they were, Nine makes a series of decisions about how to go about it that are drastically different than what we are familiar with with his original character. Namely, Nine as a survivalist first and foremost. There was one instance where the rebel alliance was pinned down by Eggman's forces, the rebels having helped him and Sonic before, and as Nine was escaping the facility and came across them, he decided to leave them to their fate, and sorta just bail. And obviously that may seem cruel at face value, and it is, but the decision-making making behind it is that Nine always looks at these situations and believes that people are selfish at their core, and so as a result, they would not hesitate to betray him in the same way if given the chance. So it's really every man for themselves in his mind. Same thing happens once he ends up getting that same reality controlling crystal that I mentioned before, or at least part of it. He decides to basically escape to a new world and just abandon the rebels once again. And that is something that Sonic very much brings up to him as an issue, but Nine more or less shrugs it off as he views it as not being his problem. And all this coalesces into Sonic and Nine assembling the crystal that they can then use to bring reality back together again. But at this crucial juncture, Sonic's optimism ends up being his downfall once again, in that he unintentionally lets it slip that his goals are vastly different from Nine's in how he wishes to use the crystal. Nine wants to effectively create a perfect world where there is no capacity for anything to harm him, or judge him or anything like that. And Sonic just wants to recreate the world as it was before he destroyed the crystal in the first place. He desperately tries to convince Nine of this vision of his, but obviously just trying to willpower your way of thinking into someone else, it doesn't really work. Because unless you meet someone on their level, unless you really try to understand their way of thinking, then it's really just gonna fall on deaf ears. And that's exactly what happens. Nine decides that Sonic was using him all along and decides to betray him right then and there without hesitation. And at that point he sorta becomes the big bad of the final season. Becoming a much bigger threat than Eggman ever was, in that he's able to use the crystal to make reality his plaything, and sorta just relentlessly attack Sonic and his friends without even having to physically be there. Even going so far as to create his own robotic army to hunt down Sonic on his behalf. And understandably a lot of people can be confused as to the sort of vision that Nine had for his perfect world in that it's just a sole fortress in the middle of a featureless dry desert with no one and nothing besides himself and his robots. And that leads to an interaction between Nine and Sonic that I found very interesting In a relatable sense, in that Sonic asks him, "is this really what you want? To live alone with nothing but robots for friends?" And Nine retorts saying that "At least I could trust them." and that is a very sad thing about people in general. With things like say chatbots, they're limited by their programming, and because of that, they're very easy to understand and you really hold the control in the relationship. They're not really gonna blindside you, and even if they do, it's not in ways that are devastating or emotionally taxing. Worst comes to worse, you know they're not real. They can't turn you down because they were never given that choice in the first place. And that's sort of what Nine's thinking throughout this whole process is. It definitely reminds me of my own very complex relationship with people in general. Though unlike Nine, I have learned to place my faith in well, a select few, and that's good, because you don't necessarily have to have like a truckload of friends to keep yourself content. All you need is just like a few good apples to really make you feel like you're accepted here. Now my biggest gripe with this is that the reconciliation at the end of the show between Sonic and Nine was very rushed and definitely very geared towards Sonic's perspective, instead of really validating any of what Nine feels, but despite that, I deeply enjoyed what Nine had to offer as a character, and it was his story, especially when you compare it with Tails, it definitely paints a very clear picture of just how powerful certain moments or relationships can mean to someone, especially someone who is on the spectrum. Sometimes gestures that you might see as a nothing moment can really be a make or break difference in deciding what kind of person someone else decides to be. And that is something that is equal parts empowering and terrifying in that you know just how much power you really have without even trying. But I guess what I want to look into particularly is Sonic's relationship with Nine. The ideological dynamic, if that makes any sense. Sonic is adventurous, he's proactive, but he's also somewhat naive and too self-confident confident. Because as a reminder, this all happened because Sonic decided he knew what was best and chose to disregard the advice of his friends, and in doing so he caused all this mess in the first place. And even after doing so, Sonic is a guy who's taken on evil scientists, gods, and all manner of unearthly abominations in his career as a hero. And so despite the disastrous effects of his actions, he still approaches us like, well, even if I did cause this problem, I could just fix it if I just believe hard enough. And that same mindset causes him even more setbacks that were easily avoidable if he had just thought things through, such as Nine's betrayal. This is even embodied in a very literal sense in the robot copy that Eggman makes of him in this dystopian future known as Chaos Sonic, who is Sonic, but with all of his worst traits cranked up to eleven. He's arrogant, he's annoying, he doesn't stop talking, and just like the real Sonic, his weakness is that he rushes into things without thinking and causes his own downfall as a result. That was something I definitely liked. A good bit of self-awareness awareness in terms of character writing. And that is actually one of the big points of this whole series, in that Sonic's character arc is learning how to humble himself and really ground himself in practicality. During the final battle against Nine, Nine banks a lot of his strategy on trying to bait Sonic into rushing at him and luring him into a trap. And Sonic has to stop and fight that instinct in order to actually gain the upper hand. Heck, many of Sonic's allies in the final battle fail at first because they're all thinking too small-scale. scale. They're all trying to fight against Nine, but they're not unified. They're all arguing with each other and all getting in each other's way without necessarily meaning to, and then getting aggravated with each other when they do. And Nine correctly points out that this sort of chaos just isn't sustainable. So this is a setting that really forces the characters to defeat their worst attributes if they wanna prevail. And that's always something that I deeply appreciate. As for Nine though, he obviously has his own weaknesses as well. He's so bitter and pessimistic that he can't really imagine a possibility where people overcome these hopeless odds through their own quality of character because to him there is no quality of character. There's only people pretending to be noble and chivalrous because it just makes them look good. And by proxy makes them feel good. And him really underestimating and not believing that anyone has any good in them is precisely what allows the good guys to get the upper hand on him when things get dicey. I will say that this dystopian timeline that Nine came from, it includes a lot of characters that I view as improvements over the originals in some ways, improvements in that I find them more relatable or more easy to root for. My biggest honorable mention would be Rusty Rose, obviously she is a villain at first. But I find her more easy to associate with than the regular Amy in that she's more logical and down to earth and less guided by passion and emotion. Plus, I will admit that I do like the times where she is snarky towards Sonic. That is definitely a part of the show I really enjoyed. But that's about all I have to say about Nine. Strangely I like him and Tails equally in a sense, but for different reasons. I like Tails in that he is a very likable character innately. He's a character who is nice and smart and sometimes a little bit unsure of himself, all qualities that I definitely took a liking to. But then there's Nine who is the flip side of that, who Is more functional on his own, and more in line with the darker aspects of the world. But it's also because of that that he's so drowning in his own darkness. And unable to see any good in those around him. It's not very easy to pull off that sort of yin and yang situation where both characters feel valid and appealing for their own different reasons, but somehow they managed to pull that off in this show. But yeah, if you have anything you want to say, feel free to say so in the comments. Like and subscribe, and I will see you guys next time. Thank you.