Miles Prowler

Miles "Tails" Prower

Miles Prower (マイルス・パウアー, Mairusu Pauā?), better known by his nickname Tails (テイルス, Teirusu?), is a video game character in the Sonic the Hedgehog series of video games, comics, and animated cartoons released by Sega.

The name “Miles Prower” is a pun on “miles per hour”, a reference to the famed speed of the Sonic the Hedgehog series. He is a young, male, golden-yellow, anthropomorphic fox with two tails (similar to the mythological kitsune, or “yoko”, which was often depicted with up to nine), hence the nickname. He is able to use his two tails to propel himself into the air like a helicopter for a limited time. His debut was in October 16, 1992, taking part in the 8-bit version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2; the 16-bit version was released that November. He is 8 years old, stands at 80cm (2ft 7in), and weighs 20kg (44lbs).

During his first appearance in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, his fur was an orange color, but the color was changed to yellow-orange for Sonic Adventure, and light-yellow for Sonic Heroes. In 1993 and 1995, he starred in his own games, Tails and the Music Maker for the Pico, Tails Adventure and Tails' Skypatrol for the Game Gear. Tails is the third most popular character of the series, behind Sonic and Shadow, according to official polls.[3]

Origin

In the arcade SegaSonic, Sonic had 2 companions Ray the flying squirrel, and Mighty the Armadillo. Arguably these character can be considered to be precussors to Tails and Knuckles. Yasushi Yamaguchi, originally the main artist and zone designer for Sega's Sonic Team, designed Tails for an internal competition for a sidekick to the speedy hedgehog. Tails was originally intended to be a tanuki, a strikingly raccoon-like canid native to east Asia, and extremely popular in Japanese folklore. The designers decided to change him to a fox, however, to avoid possible comparisons with another popular game character.[4] His entry won, but Sonic Team decided to change his character's name from “Miles” to “Tails”.

Yamaguchi ended up with a compromise. He sneaked the name “Miles” in as his legal name; “Tails” would be his nickname, ending up with the full name of Miles “Tails” Prower.

Tails was redesigned (along with all of the other Sonic characters) by Yuji Uekawa for Sonic Adventure. His fur changed color to a slightly orange shade of yellow, and he gained visible blue irises.

In the American Sonic comic book, along with the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons, he was originally a brownish color, but the comic artists eventually decided to change this to match his in-game appearance.

Game Appearances

Tails was first seen in Sonic 2 for the Game Gear, where he was kidnapped by Robotnik for ransom. He was first made playable in the Genesis version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, playing the part of Sonic's sidekick. He was a playable character from the second controller and could be chosen as player one for the main game. Sonic Chaos (1993), on the Game Gear/Master System was the second game where the player could control Tails, and the first time the player could control his flight.

Tails made his third major appearance in 1994 when Sonic 3 was released, this time acquiring the ability to pick up Sonic and use his tails to fly him to other areas, rotating his tails like a helicopter. He also gained the ability to swim under water, something Sonic has never been able to do.

Tails has also starred in games without Sonic. His first solo game was Tails' Skypatrol, which is a puzzle-like game for the Game Gear released exclusively in Japan. This was followed by Tails Adventures later the same year, which is a Metroid-esque platformer with RPG elements.[5] Tails is also the star of Tails and the Music Maker for the Sega Pico.

In later games, Tails has had roles that require unique modes of play. For example, in Sonic Adventure, Tails is one of the six playable characters[6] and his gameplay is standard platforming stages, but the goal of each stage is to get to the Chaos Emerald before Sonic, or to the missile dud in the final race against Dr. Eggman.

In the sequel to Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, he is featured in third-person shooting segments, seated in his “Cyclone” mech.[7] This third-person shooter style of play, along with Dr. Eggman's shooting levels in the same game, were the first third-person shooter levels in the history of the Sonic franchise.

He still often resumes his role flying other characters around, such as in Sonic Heroes, where Tails appears on Team Sonic as their flight-type character.[8]

Comic and TV Show

Tails has appeared in three cartoon shows: Sonic the Hedgehog, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, and the anime Sonic X. However, he is absent from Sonic Underground.[9] He has also appeared in several Sonic series comic books.

Adventures of Sonic the Hedge Hog

In Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, he is supposedly significantly younger than in the games; he is “only 4 and a half.” In the games, he is eight, and the youngest besides Charmy the Bee and Cream the Rabbit. As with the game canon, his real name is Miles Prower. However, his fur is brown in the cartoon as opposed to orange in the games.

While Tails is indeed useful to Sonic in many situations, he can be a hindrance. Because he is very young and cannot defend himself, he is incredibly susceptible to kidnappings. Sonic appears to know of this flaw and does his best to protect him, but his protection methods are often the reason why Tails gets kidnapped in the first place. He also seems to have a very large appetite, and like Sonic, his favorite food is chilli dogs, but apparently Tails likes extra cheese on his. (In the anime and games, his favourite food is mint candy).[10]

SatAM

Tails' role in the Saturday morning Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon (dubbed SatAM by fans for short) had him in a supporting role, quite low-key compared to the games and the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon series.

Here he was just another inhabitant of the village where the Freedom Fighters lived, and Princess Sally Acorn's protégé.

He became a full member of the Freedom Fighters near the end of Season 2. In the canceled Season 3, it was rumoued that his relationship with Sonic would draw closer to that of the video games.

Archie Sonic Comics

In the Archie Comics Sonic the Hedgehog series, Tails is one of the many inhabitants of the planet Mobius. A member of the Freedom Fighters, he is one of the many heroes on the planet.

Origin

Tails was born the son of Rosemary and Amadeus Prower, also having an uncle named Merlin. Due to the machinations of Dr. Robotnik, his family was scattered. His parents trapped on the other side of the galaxy and in hiding, Tails ended up living in Knothole Village with Sonic the Hedgehog and the other Freedom Fighters. Among them, he became particularly fond of Sally Acorn, referring to her affectionately as “Aunt Sally.”

Freedom Fighter

Once he became old enough, Tails joined the other Freedom Fighters in their efforts against Robotnik. For all his technical knowledge, he was thought to be too inexperienced to participate in the more dangerous missions for some time. This eventually led him to embark on a solo adventure to the land of Downunda, a supposed parallel of Australia, where he worked together with the Downunda Freedom Fighters to defeat their arch-nemesis Crocbot. During his journey to this continent, he also confronted Octobot, whom he had defeated on a previous occasion. It was also during his time in Downunda that Tails met Athair, great-grandfather of Knuckles the Echidna, who revealed to Tails his destiny as the Chosen One, a being fated to reach divine status and become an even greater hero than Sonic and Knuckles. Explaining that greed and evil often spouted from desire of the Chaos Emeralds, Athair added that the Chosen One was destined to bring about something known as The Great Harmony.

While Tails' heroic role led him to conflict with villains such as Ixis Naugus, the Destructix, and Scourge the Hedgehog, his main nemesis is the villainous Mammoth Mogul. Ancient and powerful, Mogul is determined to prevent Tails from achieving his destiny. The two have battled on numerous occasions, the first time following Mogul's theft of the powers of Enerjak to become Master Mogul for the first time. Working together with Super Sonic, Hyper Knuckles, the other Freedom Fighters, the Chaotix, King Acorn's Secret Service, the Brotherhood of Guardians, Athair, and few other allies, Turbo Tails was able to defeat Mogul by draining away his powers with the Chaos Syphon, creating the Master Emerald and trapping Mogul within it-at least until Dr. Robotnik shattered it to feed the then monstrous Chaos.

From Sidekick to Hero

Mogul, badly weakened by his imprisonment, used the embers of his power to strike a lethal blow against the Ancient Walkers, the deities who had long been his nemeses and who had made the prophecy of Tails' rise to divinity. Seeking power once again, Mogul captured Turbo Tails and held him prisoner, apparently creating a doppelganger of Tails to replace him so that no one would notice. Once Mogul had accomplished his goals in draining off much of Turbo Tails' energy, the fake Tails vanished and the real one was set free, though the Mammoth secretly placed a post-hypnotic trigger in his young enemy's mind. Unfortunately, Mogul obtained enough power to challenge Chaos Knuckles, resulting in the Guardian's death. Worse, when Knuckles returned from the afterlife, he came back without his powers and left the Chaos Force off balance, allowing Mogul to seize it and become Master Mogul once again. Using his near omnipotent abilities, Mogul proceeded to devastate the multiverse. Alerted to this threat by Zonic the Zone Cop, Tails joined with innumerable alternate versions of himself to become Titan Tails, who defeated Mogul and sealed him in his Chaos Emerald. Mogul would later escape, and Tails joined the battle against him and his various minions, including Ixis Naugus and the Destructix.

Later, Tails was abducted by A.D.A.M., who intended to use Tails and Shadow the Hedgehog to collect every Chaos Emerald in the universe to give himself unimaginable power. However, A.D.A.M.'s plan was brought to a halt as Eggman woke him and Shadow up. Turbo Tails, working through intuition, had Super Shadow use his time-space warping abilities to access Zone of Silence; they then sent the collected Chaos Emeralds there, with Tails saying he hoped it would cause “something special.” When Tails and Sonic went into the Zone later to retrieve an emerald, they were met by Feist, who gave them the grey Chaos Emerald composed of thousands of others-one of seven he had created-as thanks for them sending him the jewels in the first place. Thus, the Chaos Emeralds had been limited and hidden in the newly-created Special Zone, in part fulfilling the prophesized “Great Harmony.” Later, Tails was reunited with his parents with the help of Sonic, Knuckles, and his uncle Merlin. He was then one of the few members of the Freedom Fighters to have escaped being captured by Eggman's forces during the assault on Knothole that resulted in the city's destruction, and assisted Sonic, NICOLE, Amy, and Knuckles in the ensuing rescue mission.

Unfortunately, Tails' tense relationship with Sonic deepened to an argument as to how they should proceed with the rescue. This stressed to the point of breaking as the pair found themselves on opposite sides of a schism in the Kingdom of Acorn, Tails supporting the side led by his father and Sonic remaining loyal to the House of Acorn. When Tails helped his mother break Amadeus out of jail, long suppressed hostility was released as he and Sonic fought with each other. Tails was quick to bring up his fury at Sonic's lack of sensitivity, and refused to explain it to the baffled Hedgehog since he felt that Sonic would probably just ignore what he was saying again. Finally, the young Fox revealed that his main dispute with Sonic was over Fiona and Sonic's seeming dismissal of his feelings for her, and Sonic admitted that he had known about Tails' feelings and apologized, explaining that he had hoped that it would help Tails get over his crush. Reconciled, the two headed off to stop a duel between Amadeus and Elias Acorn, only to find out that Sally had beaten them to it. With his father returned to duty, his mother running for a seat on the new ruling council, and his friendship with Sonic restored, Tails' life seemed destined to make an upturn.

Sadly, this was not to be the case, as Dimitri the Echidna arrived with an urgent message for Knuckles: Enerjak, the Guardian's most powerful foe ever, had returned-and just after Knuckles had left for Angel Island by himself, only to disappear mysteriously. In an effort to appease the Chaotix, who were determined to go after their missing leader, Sally sent Tails along with Sonic to look for Knuckles. After narrowly missing Enerjak on Angel Island, Tails accompanied Sonic as they raced back towards New Mobotropolis. What awaited them was the ultimate nightmare: Knuckles, their strongest ally, had become the new Enerjak and thus their worst enemy. After bringing Sonic back to New Mobotropolis, however, Tails had virtually no role in battling the brainwashed Knuckles, and in fact remained in the city for the duration of the battle in which Super Sonic-aided by the sacrifice of Knuckles' father Locke-freed Knuckles' from Finitevus' spell.

Tails then returned to Knothole to help with repairs on Freedom HQ, and was there when Mina Mongoose arrived home from her concert tour. Both of them, along with Mighty the Armadillo, were then revealed to have all had a hypnotic suggestion implanted in them by Mogul years before, who used his telepathic abilities to bring them into his service. When a similar attempt on Sonic proved less than successful, the trio were sent to aid their master's attempts to recruit the Hedgehog into a new Fearsome Foursome-by force. Sonic proved too much for the trio, however, so Mogul commanded Tails to fly into the stratosphere, effectively forcing Sonic to deliver the grey Chaos Emerald to him or else see Tails faint from the lack of oxygen and die from the eventual fall. His demand met, Mogul freed Tails and the other before departing, having decided that he would use his regained immortality to wait until his foes were either dead or too old to fight him before continuing his open campaign of world domination.

Potential Future

Tails was one of several characters featured in Mobius: 25 Years Later. In the first version of this possible future, he had married Mina Mongoose and had two children, both of whom echoed their parents' relationships to Sonic with Sonic's son Manik-their son is Manik's best friend while their daughter has a crush on him. For some reason, Sonic was also not on speaking terms with Tails, not even showing up when the Fox's family left for Downunda.

Despite not being among the team who was working to correct the cataclysm threatening Mobius in the first 25 Years Later, Tails suspected that something was wrong and thus took measures to protect himself and his wife and children. As a result, when history was altered and Shadow the Hedgehog became King of Mobius instead of Sonic, Tails and his family were neither robbed of their memories of the original timeline or erased from existence. With knowledge that things had changed, he sought out Knuckles in hopes of finding a resolution, only to be rebuffed.

Fortunately, Tails found help in the form of Knuckles' daughter Lara-Su, who also retained her memories of the original timeline. Together, the two managed to locate the missing Sonic, only for all three of them to be arrested by Knuckles. Shortly afterwards, Knuckles revealed the arrest to be a trick, and he helped the trio escape. Freed, Tails then joined in the final battle against Shadow and his Dark Legion minions.

Abilities

As is the case with several characters, Tails has all the same abilities in the comics as he does in the games. Through various methods, he has been seen transforming into several super forms, namely Turbo Tails, Hyper Tails, and Titan Tails. Following the move to New Mobotropolis, he has apparently been taking lessons in combat from Knuckles-similar to what Amy is doing with Knuckles' girlfriend, Julie-Su.

Romance

During Tails' solo adventure to Downunda, he met and befriended the Downunda Freedom Fighters, among them Barby Koala. He developed a crush on her, and while she felt that she was too old for him, she admitted that he was cute and usually flirted in front of him. Shortly before this, Tails encountered a disguised robot named Fiona Fox, a robotic duplicate of a young vixen. He fell in love with her before discovering her robotic nature. After discovering he was falling for a robot, he “dumped” her. But then when the real Fiona turned up, he was in love with her(even though Fiona was now dating Scrouge and pretending to be in love with Sonic. This was revealed later in the comic series.) It has seems that Tails was still in love with Fiona. As he qouted “But I was hoping for Fiona and me..” In the comic where Antoine and Bunnie get married. (But his crush for her seemed to fall down.)

Fiona's organic counterpart later joined the Freedom Fighters, and Tails (now 11 years old) seems to have a crush on her, although she is less than interested in him as she is several years older. To make matters worse, she started going out with Sonic, severely afflicting the relationship between Tails and his friend. In issue #172, Fiona has revealed that she is actually in love with Scourge the Hedgehog. Tails tried to stop the betrayal, only to be slapped fiercely across the face by the treacherous vixen. Afterwards, Tails was left even more brokenhearted than before, which he reveals openly to Sonic when attending the wedding of Bunnie Rabbot and Antoine D'Coolette. Sonic says to get over her, and that she wasn't even worth his time. Even so, Tails fights with Sonic some time later over Fiona. He knew Fiona wasn't worth his time and didn't love him like he loved her, but still, he was upset that Sonic apparently took her away. Sonic explains he was going out with Fiona because she didn't have interest in Tails, so if Sonic dated her, He thought Tails would move on. But before he explained this, Tails said “I dont care if Fiona went out with Scourge!”. By this qoute, it seems that Tails still has feelings for Fiona.

Mobius: 25 Years Later depicted Tails as eventually growing up to have feelings for and get married to Mina Mongoose, whom he would have two children with. However, this was only shown in two possible futures, and Mina is currently involved with Ash Mongoose.

Alternate Selves

As is the case with many characters from the comics, Tails has numerous counterparts in other dimensions. One of these is Evil Tails, a member of the Anti-Freedom Fighters. Another was a supposed descendant of his and member of the Freedom Fighters of the Galaxy. Tails also worked together with innumerable alternate selves in a battle against Master Mogul, who managed to achieve mastery of the Chaos Force.

Sonic the Comic

Tails also appears in the British Sonic the Comic, published by Fleetway. In this series Tails was initially portrayed as a bit of a push-over, who constantly allows Sonic to insult him and gets flustered in dangerous situations. As time went on, Tails became more competent and heroic.

Sonic X

Throughout most of the anime series (and accompanying Archie adaption of the series as a comic) Sonic X, Tails mirrors his game role in various stories and game adaptations, though he often plays a smaller role in the series due to the presence of Chris Thorndyke. He quickly befriends fellow inventor Chuck Thorndyke, who built the X-Tornado jet with him.

In the third season of Sonic X, Tails is the commanding officer of the Blue Typhoon, and over the series develops leadership. Tails becomes attracted to and eventually falls in love with Cosmo, a plant-like female alien introduced during this season. The strength of Tails' love is shown in Episode 73, where Shadow, in an attempt to kill Cosmo, clobbers Sonic, Chris, and Knuckles, but, despite his best efforts, can't manage to get past Tails despite severe beating and threatenings, who is determined to protect Cosmo no matter the cost. He had an emotional breakdown when he was forced to kill Cosmo himself to stop the Metarex.

Personality

Tails is a very sweet-natured[2] and humble fox;[12] who, before he met Sonic, used to be picked on because of his two tails.[1] As a long time friend,[2] he admires Sonic and dreams of being just like him.[14] Though he lacks courage,[1] he wants to prove he can be counted on. He loves mint candy,[16] tinkering with machines and flying mechas.[1] But Tails has a fear of thunder and a tendency to ramble, which can sometimes cause him to annoy others or accidentally blurt out secrets or plans (for example, in Sonic Adventure 2, he tells Eggman that the Chaos Emerald Sonic has is a fake, thus ruining the heroes' plans).

Moves and Abilities

Like many of the other characters in the Sonic the Hedgehog universe, Tails can race around at high speeds, which he achieves by propelling himself forward by spinning his tails in a fan-like motion, allowing him to keep up with Sonic's basic cruising speeds in the process. He can also perform different forms of the Spin Attacks.[17] Additionally, Tails also has several unique maneuvers, such as his trademark maneuver in which he can achieve flight by rotating his tails like a helicopter rotor, and can also use his tails for defensive and offensive purposes, since one quick swipe of them packs enough speed and force to slice weeds in two or puncture Eggman's robots. He can also swim quite well by dog paddling, which is an ability Sonic never had. Tails was first able to swim in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and the ability has appeared again in Sonic Advance and Sonic Advance 3.

Tails has been described as having mechanical skills that rival or match Dr. Eggman's. With them, he has designed and maintained many vehicles and technologically advanced weapons. Some of his attacks have centered around these devices, such as Dummy Ring bombs. However it has been said that he has yet to realize his full potential.[19]

Like many Sonic characters, Tails can transform into a Super Form, but needs the Super Emeralds instead of the Chaos Emeralds[20]. He also has other transformations in media beside the games (such as Turbo Tails). However, he hasn't appeared in a super form since his “supposed” transformation in Sonic Heroes. His only official last transformation was in sonic and knuckles and informally as a secret debug character in sonic 2.

References

Miles "Tails" Prower- Wikipedia, 05/06/08

Tails (Comic Character- Wikipedia 05/06/08