I regret to inform you that it’s been a very shockingly controversial aspect of his character in recent years, despite him being the main villain of the series and it confuses and frustrates me to no end lol. I think part of it is because of small things outside of the game canon media, where he has vastly different portrayals and isn’t anywhere near as evil. Which is all fine and good for them to like of course but then they dislike and can’t accept that the original Eggman in the games has always been pure evil without any genuine good morals and traits, and no chance of redemption. And they’ll get mad and judge one’s character over those who actually like it.
And as a result of them liking those lesser evil versions of him more, they will attempt to ignore or highly misinterpret Eggman’s scenes in the actual games, because he’s one of the most unpopular versions for actually being a lot more evil and doing so is the only way they can like him there at all. And if someone actually likes that he’s evil and chooses to acknowledge and embrace those things and correct the misinformation instead, they will tell them to stop ruining their fun and accuse them of being a bad person for caring. I’ve unfortunately been a target of this for appreciating his evil and making passionate analysis and writings based on that.
Eggman has become the subject of a lot of tropes based around giving him redeeming qualities that he doesn’t have that doesn’t make sense for the character he was established to be and has remained consistently so. The most popular fanon Eggman interpretation is vastly different from the game canon and liking him as he appears in the games and expressing that openly gets you alienated. It’s at the point where I’m being kicked out of the fandom by newer fans that have only liked him for as long as the nicer versions and fanon of the character has existed and some older fans that latched onto them while ignoring and misinterpreting game canon.
And yeah you’re absolutely right and that’s especially wild about it, he doesn’t have anything going on canonically in the games that doesn’t involve his evil in any way at all. Even if people like his charming funny and casual moments, his evil is still a part of everything he does, it defines him, his personality, his actions, his beliefs, even his humor. He was even given the first name “Ivo” because its pronunciation is supposed to sound like “evil”! So his name is literally “evil” and 99% of what he does on screen in the games is evil – yet that’s controversial, disliked by Eggman fans, and it gets fans that actually enjoy it shamed. It’s so ironic.
I can’t imagine that fans of him enjoy actually consuming the game media much when they don’t actually like anything he’s doing. And I don’t know what they actually want him to do, if not be evil because they want him to become a better person despite everything he does coming from the fact he’s evil, his entire character is built around it as the villain. In all the games where he doesn’t have an active villainous role, he’s just sat there doing nothing. If he somehow stopped being the villain after 30 years then he’d barely be used as a character anymore. I don’t think that’s worth occasional scenes of nice pure wholesome Eggman for people to coo at.
All of the things that make Eggman so charming, entertaining, and lovable all stem from his evil and it’s involved and evident in every aspect of his characteristics and actions. He’s a very evil and selfish character that will gladly do terrible things to accomplish his just as evil goals in conquering the world, he’s motivated solely by that and even finds sadistic enjoyment in it. The way most the games’ adventures even begin is by Eggman kicking it off with another evil scheme. It’s a very important part of his character at the very core and it’s important to the overall plot in most games, nothing would be the same without it, there’d be no conflict and nothing interesting left.
It saddens me that it’s something that’s so disliked or ignored by fandom but you know people can be when it comes to villains, they don’t like it when they’re genuinely evil and don’t have good redeeming traits so they can have something to be interested in and feel justified in liking them because they don’t like his evil and think it’s wrong to enjoy it like I do. But I love seeing Eggman being his best true self as a super evil and dangerous threat and all the thrilling badass scenes that come out of it when he’s in action and being a real diabolical bastard, which is 99% of the time he’s on screen, and I’ll always give it the love and appreciation it deserves! 🥰💜💕
I can’t imagine that fans of him enjoy actually consuming the game media much when they don’t actually like anything he’s doing.
I feel like a lot of modern “fans” do this to themselves with various characters and media. I wish I understood it.
More power to you and your villainous egg, pal. <3