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Amy Rose (エミー・ローズ), is a fictional character from the Sonic the Hedgehog series. She is a pink anthropomorphic hedgehog with a driven, competitive personality, who is infatuated with the series' titular protagonist, Sonic the Hedgehog. She serves as the first playable female character in the series, and is Sonic's self-proclaimed girlfriend.

Originally named Rosy the Rascal, Amy debuted in the Sonic the Hedgehog manga created by Kenji Terada in 1992. Her first video game appearance was in 1993's Sonic CD, and she was first playable in 1994's Sonic Drift; her first playable appearance in the main series was Sonic Adventure (1999). Amy has appeared in several more Sonic games since her debut, sometimes as a playable character. She also appears in some comic books, and television shows based on the series, as well as other Sonic merchandise. Amy has garnered a mixed response from critics, as some critics have found her cute and powerful, while others have criticized her voice acting and personality.

Conception and visual design
Amy is a pink anthropomorphic hedgehog created by Kenji Terada for the Sonic the Hedgehog manga, which had debuted in 1992. Originally shown to have long hair with a ponytail, the character was redesigned the next year for the Sega CD game Sonic CD, which marks her debut in a video game. Her in-game graphics were created by artist Kazuyuki Hoshino, and many staff members contributed ideas to her design. Her headband and trainer shoes reflected Sonic CD director Naoto Ohshima's tastes, and her mannerisms reflected the traits Hoshino looked for in women at the time. An early grayscale concept sketch of Amy for Sonic CD shows her very similar to her eventual appearance in the game except for her shoes, which were made larger. Initially, her fur color was red, and her skirt was orange. The character had two other names in game previews: Rosy the Rascal and Princess Sally, the latter of which was also used in the Sonic CD manual. The name Rosy the Rascal would later be used for an evil version of Amy from an alternate universe for the Archie comics, while Princess Sally was a character created for the Sonic the Hedgehog TV series and comic. Amy received her present design, with a red dress and boots in 1999 with the release of Sonic Adventure. This redesign was done by Yuji Uekawa.

To match Sonic Boom's shift in tone, Big Red Button Entertainment wanted her to be a more capable character and stand out from Sonic, to offset her frequent placement on game sidelines. She became more "agile and graceful", able to perform some difficult physical tasks with ease.

Personality and abilities
Amy is characterized by her cheerful and energetic personality. She has a obsessive crush with Sonic the Hedgehog, and spends much of her time chasing after him, trying to get his attention, or making sure he is safe while demonstrating her affection. While sometimes annoyed by her antics, Sonic does not dislike her. Former Sonic Team head Yuji Naka said that Amy was designed "to always chase Sonic", and has made it her life goal to one day marry him.

While Sonic CD portrays her as more of a damsel-in-distress, by Sonic Adventure, she is shown to be more independent and able to fend for herself.

Because of her obsession with Sonic, Prima Games described her as "very stubborn," and to have a "one-track mind." They also observed that Sonic may actually have "some feelings" for her too. Despite her obsession, Amy has also been shown to be rather smart, and she's also an archaeologist.

Like most characters in the Sonic series, Amy can run at superhuman speeds, but cannot keep up with Sonic. She attacks foes with her signature weapon, the Piko-Piko Hammer. She also has been shown to have acrobatic skills. In Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, she can perform triple jumps.

Character biography
Amy Rose marks her first video game appearance in Sonic CD, where she develops a crush on Sonic, and is kidnapped by Metal Sonic. After a race with Metal Sonic, she is saved.

Amy was meant to make her first playable appearance in the main series with Sonic X-treme before the game was ultimately cancelled. Amy was also intended to make an appearance in Knuckles' Chaotix, but she was scrapped from the game before release, and only appears as a small cameo in the sound test.

In Sonic Adventure, Amy is shown to be protecting a bird, and pursues Sonic again. She is kidnapped again, this time by one of Doctor Eggman's robots, but is once again saved by Sonic. In Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic is kidnapped this time instead, and is rescued by Amy and Tails, the former of whom asks him to marry her; Sonic refuses. While in pursuit of Sonic, she runs into Shadow the Hedgehog, whom she mistakes for Sonic.

Amy is a playable character in Sonic Advance, as well as its sequels Sonic Advance 2 and 3. With Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Cream, she frees animals from inside Eggman's robots to keep him from building an empire. Amy's attacking power was restricted by her inability to spin while jumping, nor could she perform a spindash. While she was playable by default in the original, the sequels required her to be unlocked first.

Amy appears as a playable character in Sonic Heroes with Cream the Rabbit and Big the Cat as part Team Rose, where she is the "speed" character, and the leader of the team. Searching for Sonic once again, she eventually catches up to him in the Power Plant area, and asks him to marry her again, but Sonic and his team fights Team Rose and escapes. In the game's climax, Amy and the rest of the playable characters fights and defeats Metal Sonic.

Amy is featured in non-playable roles in a number of other game plots. Her attraction to Sonic is useful to Cream and Blaze the Cat in Sonic Rush, since they are also looking for him. In Shadow the Hedgehog, Amy appears at Cryptic Castle to ask him to help her find Cream, whom has not returned. In the 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog game, she mistakes Silver the Hedgehog for Sonic; when he tells her he is looking for someone, he escapes. She also rescues Elise from confinement. Amy appears to flirt with Sonic in Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Generations and the Nintendo DS version of Sonic Colors. In Sonic Lost World, Amy and Knuckles care for forest animals while Sonic and Tails rescue the animals' friends. The Deadly Six control one of Eggman's machines to drain life from the world; Amy and Knuckles die, but are brought back to life when Sonic and Tails replenish it. In Sonic Forces she joins the resistance, and helps Sonic by communicating to him through a walkie-talkie during the game's levels.

Amy was originally planned to be included as a playable character in Sonic Mania, but was cut due to time constraints; she was later added as a non-playable character in the expanded Sonic Mania (Plus) content. Amy is also featured in the cutscenes for Sonic Origins, but is not playable in any of the included games.

She is a playable character in a number of Sonic spinoffs in several genres, including the fighting games Sonic the Fighters and Sonic Battle, the racing games Sonic R, Sonic Drift, Team Sonic Racing and the Sonic Riders series, as well as the party game Sonic Shuffle. She is also a playable character in Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, a platformer set in a different continuity from the main series. Amy has also appeared in games outside the series, such as some of the Sega Superstars titles, including Sega Superstars Tennis and Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, and its sequel Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. She also appears in the RPG game Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood and the "storybook" game Sonic and the Black Knight. She is one of the several Sonic characters to feature in the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series. She is also a collectible trophy in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, as well as a non-playable "spirit" in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. In Lego Dimensions, Amy appears as a non-playable character as part of story mode called "Sonic Dimensions", where Amy assists Sonic in defeating Chaos by stealing the last Chaos Emerald from Eggman.

In other media
Amy has appeared in various other Sonic media. She is a major character in the Sonic the Hedgehog manga. She is the girlfriend of protagonist Nicky, whose alter ego is Sonic, and is unaware that they are identical. Antagonist Anton Brooke is also attracted to her; he kidnaps her a number of times, forcing Nicky to become Sonic and rescue her. In Sonic Adventures, a 1994 two-issue French comic book published by Sirène, Doctor Robotnik (Eggman) uses Amy as bait to lure Sonic. When Sonic, Amy and Tails fall into a pit of lava, they are saved by a giant ring which transports them to a different location. Amy also appears in the Sonic the Hedgehog series from Archie Comics, where she learns about Sonic from folktales in her home kingdom of Mercia. In the crossover spinoff series Trouble on Two Worlds, Amy battles Dr. Wily and other Mega Man antagonists with Sonic and Mega Man.

She is a major character in Sonic the Comic during its run from 1993 to 2002. Amy is arrested early by two of Eggman's robots for associating with Sonic when she claims to be his girlfriend. Annoyed, Sonic rescues her and realizes she is a fugitive and must remain with the Freedom Fighters.

Amy is also a major character in the 2003–2006 anime series Sonic X. During the first and second seasons Amy and her friends are frequently together, capturing (and recapturing) Chaos Emeralds from Dr. Eggman and adjusting to their celebrity status on Earth. The series moves to outer space for season three, when the animal characters return to their world. Early in the series she and Cream befriend a plant-like creature, Cosmo the Seedrian, and they are frequently together.

Amy is also one of the five main characters in the computer-generated image series Sonic Boom, along with Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and the new character Sticks, the latter of whom she is best friends with. Her personality has been changed into a stronger, more independent role, being a natural-born leader and the backbone of the team.

Amy starred in Sega's Sonic Mania Adventures animated holiday special, in which she took pity on the recently-defeated Metal Sonic and returned him to Doctor Eggman.

The character has been used in Sonic merchandise, with a 2010 toy line reflecting her Sonic CD design instead of her modern one. The character was also featured on a special Amy Rose-themed set of tarot cards. Exemplifying the culture of the decade, Amy and Sonic appeared in the Simpsons episode "That '90s Show" on a billboard promoting abstinence: Sonic proposes to Amy with the caption, "Sonic the Hedgehog says wait until marriage."

Reception and impact
Amy has received a mixed response from critics. While some journalists have called Amy cute and powerful, others find her annoying. Jeff Tozai of the HuffPost expressed an interest in "more Amy Rose" from the Sonic series, such as a game featuring her and Tails, in an article critical of the series' overall direction. Jem Roberts from the British version of Official Dreamcast Magazine observed Amy as "kind-hearted" but "intolerably whiny". The character's voice has been criticized since Cindy Robinson took over the role, with Rogers and Farren comparing it to Minnie Mouse's. Mean Machines expressed general displeasure at her introduction in Sonic CD. Anthony Fertino at TheGamer had a more positive reaction towards Amy, naming her as the ninth best Sonic character, observing that "her peppy attitude could be infectious or annoying to some, but she is undeniably popular, and recognizable for her decidedly feminine features." IGN's Lucas M. Thomas wrote, "One of the coolest things about Amy is her enormous, walloping hammer," and hoped she would be a playable character in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. In a similar list, Ozzie Mejia from Shacknews in 2014 listed her of one the characters they had wished to see playable in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, reasoning "Given her ability with a mallet, crafting a move set for Amy would hardly be any trouble. Amy is far from a helpless character she's better equipped to transition to a fighter role better than some of the other fighters on the roster." Zackari Greif of Game Rant is critical of the fact that Amy is not a playable character in Sonic Origins, adding "While it makes sense that the new intros and outros to these beloved titles would focus on Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy, it makes the absence of Amy as a playable character in Origins more clear than ever."

The developers' treatment of Amy as a female character and its implications for gender representation in video games have also been questioned; the Electronic Gaming Monthly staff found her pink coloring and tendency to run from danger to be stereotypical and common in Japanese-created female characters. Anita Sarkeesian in Feminist Frequency cited Amy as an example of a "Ms. Male character", where "Instead of creating an original female character with her own features, game designers transform a male character into a female character by adding [stereotypical] feminine attributes to the original body" such as red lipstick and long eyelashes. Although this allows players to quickly identify the character as female, it reduces the character's personality to its "girly-ness". Similarly, Mark Jason Jimenez Noble, author of the journal Video Game Presentism: The Digital Now and Identities of Interactive Media, used Amy as a "Ms. Male character" example, saying "Sonic is essentially nude with the exception of shoes, yet Amy wears a dress. Nudity poses no problem for the male, but it was suddenly necessary to include a dress to further designate Amy as female." Gabrielle Trépanier-Jobin and Maude Bonenfant of the Université du Québec à Montréal further added that "when a female character is the only woman among a group of male characters", she becomes a token "Smurfette" type character which enforces the message that men are the norm and women the "variation". Meanwhile, Alice Atkinson-Bonasio, writing for Gendered Representation in Computer and Videogames, would state "The arrival of Sonic's "girlfiend," Amy Rose, completed the gender division of Sonic's world. Her pink hair contrasted with his blue spiky look, reiterating the fact that he had been a boy all along. The main issue would seem to be that the obvious female nature of Amy Rose reaffirms femininity as an exception to the rule, while at the same time making it impossible for Sonic to be interpreted as anything but a male character." Amy has also been a subject of progressivism in the episode "Eggman’s Anti Gravity Ray" of animated series Sonic Boom, where Knuckles tells her "You know Amy, anytime someone calls attention to the breaking of gender roles, it ultimately undermines the concept of gender equality by implying that this is an exception and not the status quo." after Amy asks "It all comes down to this one penalty kick. Can the young woman break the glass ceiling and prove once and for all that a female can be just as good as an athlete as a male?" This scene has been discussed by Polygon and Entertainment Weekly.

Some publications have suggested that Amy should be featured in the Sonic the Hedgehog live-action film series. In 2019, Robert Workman from Comicbook.com listed her as a character they wish to see in the then-upcoming 2020 Sonic the Hedgehog film, stating "C’mon, every movie needs a love interest, right? Even one that Sonic the Hedgehog may not entirely be invested in .... And who knows, her mallet may play an integral part in the story – there might be a Chaos Emerald inside or something." Similarly, in a 2022 article by MovieWeb, Matthew Kang included Amy as one of the characters he wanted to see appear in the 2022 film Sonic the Hedgehog 2, adding "Amy has always been a very joyful and cheery character whose inclusion could inject the Sonic film franchise with lots of fun energy," while Tom Power of TechRadar would had liked to see her voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Power reasoned "Another British star who seems like a solid fit for Sonic’s primary love interest. Waller-Bridge’s down-to-Earth personality, coupled with her ability to change her character’s persona and mood on a whim, would suit Amy Rose well." At Collider, Kevin Tash listed Amy as one of the characters they want to see in the sequel to Sonic the Hedgehog 2, adding "...if playing up the more silly aspects of this [love interest] dynamic it could be an amazing new dynamic to see in the films. It would just be a matter of finding the right person to cast that would work well with Ben Schwartz sense of humor." Likewise, Amy was listed as one of the things Alex Donaldson from VG247 wants to see included in the upcoming film, opining "Casting Amy seems easier than Shadow; I can imagine a number of comedians who could do an incredible job as her."