>>17983421I'd say that applies basically for all 3D sonics onward, 2D sonic was similar in popularity to Mario for a time. Generally in the 90s, Sonic was known as a blue dude who ran fast with an occasional cheesy quip being all he was known for. In the 00s that moved over to being inextricably tied to a large group of a bunch of talking animal characters, some of them overtly sexualized, which is where the problems began.
If you'd noticed, Pokemon avoided this fate by not having teh pokemans (meowth aside who was basically a mascot) actually-talk and be anthropomorphized too much - there is distance keeping them as animals like you'd regard any non-humans in reality, sonic blended talking animal people alongside actual people. It's not surprising what happened after that and I think the Japanese were too naive to realize what was going on until it was too late.
