Sonic X during 53 through 78, honestly, while can be a little ridiculous, has some extremely sincere moments, really disturbing and difficult content that it covers, and actually treats it incredibly seriously. The whole episode dealing with Molly on Episode 68, is probably one of the most disheartening and depressing stories in the franchise, given what happens throughout the episode, and what Molly ends up doing at the end of the episode in response.
Really, the whole Metarex arc of Sonic X has some of the strongest writing in the series, which was lead by Kiyoko Yoshimura, who also wrote several of the Sonic games (including Sonic Unleashed). I absolutely get that the first year (1 - 52) has serious issues, but the second series/season is really strong overall. Almost wish she'd done all the first year's worth of episodes, but we did get some good episodes out of it (the story about what happened on Arc, which the games never quite covered outside of the Japanese guides, the whole episode centering around Chris with Eggman's speech to him, and 51 in particular, analyzing Sonic and Chris's relationship at a much more deeper level and explaining why the two had the relationship they did, which, ironically, is the strongest aspect of Series 1 despite I know the fandom's general distaste for Chris).
Sonic Forces is a bit odd. I think the writing is "fine" per-say, but it feels disjointed, due to the development issues (the game's engine had a good healthy development time, but the problem is it feels the writing, while good on paper in theory, had to be hastily put together in the game itself, as reportedly the actual core development was within a year and it really shows). It was also the first time the game had been written in Japan since Sonic Unleashed, as prior to this, English writers took over the script writing process, which resulted in different characterizations that just felt odd to me at times (not that they were bad, but they worked better in the Sonic Boom personalities, since it distance itself from the Japanese Sonic, where the English written Japanese Sonic games seem some sort of weird hybrid that just doesn't feel right to me).
That said, yes, Sonic absolutely can work as a serious project and series. We have examples of it working, even if it's intermixed with some issues. But Sonic as a serious character can absolutely work. I just think we need the write amount of time for the team to be able to do so and not having it rushed out the door, per-usual
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