Sonic Team boss and Shadow the Hedgehog creator Takashi Iizuka revealed in an interview that he’s fed up with people comparing Shadow to Dragon Ball’s dark hero, Vegeta. Speaking to the site, Iizuka informed them that Shadow the Hedgehog is his favorite Sonic character because of the “tragic backstory” behind him that makes the controversial character both “interesting and believable”. The interview then asked Iizuka if Sonic fans have interpreted Shadow in a different way over the years than he originally expected or intended? Here’s what he had to say:
“So there are some ways people interpret the Shadow that aren’t what the team intends,” Iizuka begins. I think the biggest one is, if you look online, everybody’s like, ‘Oh, this is Dragon Ball Vegeta.'”
“Vegeta actually starts out as an enemy and later becomes a friend and an ally and kind of, like, fights for justice and tries to save the world and whatnot. The shadow is not like that. I never want him to be like that. Shadow does his own thing, he’s not friends with Sonic, and he’s going to go and, you know, do whatever he thinks is right or right, or what needs to be done. And it’s not like, ‘Well, we used to be enemies, but now we’re friends. Let’s save the world.’ He is not that kind of character, and [I don’t] I want him to be that character.
“So when people are always online and they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s Vegeta, that’s Vegeta,’ it’s like it’s not Vegeta,” he laughs.
