My overall impressions on this...on the one hand, it's nice to see Tails and Cream interacting with each other one on one, that's not something we've seen since the Sonic X days, and even that was done sparingly.
I do like that Cream is seen as the resident expert on all things Chao. It at least gives her something special she can offer since her role as Amy's little sister/sidekick has been thoroughly removed over the last 20 years or so. It was amusing to see her stressing over all the shenanigans the Chao got up to while she wasn't looking. Anyone who's played the Chao Garden back in the Sonic Adventure days knows exactly how she feels. NO, you can't swim yet, stop jumping in the water!
What it does remind me of though is that it's ASTOUNDING that we still don't have a new Chao Garden even after all these years. We have so much new technology to be able to give access to the Chao Garden to Sonic fans everywhere...and you're telling me you can't even make a free to play mobile game for Chao? Pfft.
Now onto my main gripe, and I've probably voiced this before as well...why, oh why, is Cream being so formal with Tails? Sonic I understand, Knuckles I understand, Shadow, Rouge, Espio, Vector, all of those make sense! Cream isn't SUPER close with them and they're all older than her by a lot. No problems there.
But I'm sorry, you can "retcon" the ages all you want, pretend that they're all just colorful ageless androgynous blobs that can be in the same realm as Mickey Mouse. "They're as old as they need to be in any given situation!" No, just no. No one buys that. The only reason anyone ever uses it as justification is when they want to make NSFW artwork of the characters. Cream and Charmy AND TAILS are kids, around the same age. Being a genius doesn't make Tails any less of a kid.
So when Cream goes out of her way to call Tails "Mr. Tails," that was already pretty bad. But now she's gone fully formal by trying to call him "Mr. Prower." I briefly thought we were going to see the end of that when Tails corrected her, but all that ended up doing is putting it back to Mr. Tails instead.
Why is this an issue you may ask? Because it puts Cream at an arm's length to everyone. Back in my day (and I can say that because I'm old now), Cream used to call certain people formally and certain people with a first name basis. Amy, for instance, was her big sister, she just called her Amy. Because why would you call your sister "Miss?" You wouldn't. But now she does. Big on the other hand, was ALWAYS "Mr. Big," so that's normal.
There's a certain level of intimacy that gets left behind when using formalities. Instead of being close friends, Tails and Amy and even CHARMY for some reason, now are referred to in a very "respect your elders" or "teacher" kind of way. That takes away the special connection they had before.
I hope that someday we'll be able to get back to when Amy and Cream were a dynamic duo, I hope we can back to when Cream was allowed to recognizes that some of the other characters were just like her and didn't require "special respect" but rather just friendship. In the meantime, I'll keep trying to push that idea in my own projects.
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