>>536667608
>"Retire Tails, Knuckles and Amy."
You have to be joking. This is the single most retarded take I have ever read. The cast is bloated because of SEGA's addiction to creating new, disposable characters, not because the CORE FOUR exist. Your solution is to bulldoze the foundation of the house because you don't like the color of the curtains.
The franchise IS about them. It's about Sonic and his relationships with his closest companions.
They are the pillars of the series. Without them, you don't have a story, you have a mascot running on a treadmill. We're back to Sonic the Hedgehog for the Sega Genesis, the fucking first game. This "they don't exist off-screen" logic is the exact brain-rot that gives us the current state of the series. It's the thinking that turned Tails into a walking toolbox instead of a hero in his own right. It's the thing that gave us terrible crying lesbian OCs stealing the show in IDW. Rather having these characters given depth and meaningful interactions in SEGASonic canon.

You don't want a tangible cast, you want an empty, sterile world where nothing matters beyond the immediate plot point. Everything is episodic Maekawa slop like the storybook games. Every adventure is a new cast. Nothing lasts. You want to gut the series of its heart because you can't handle characters having their own lives and motivations. Go watch your shonen slop if you want something that simple. This franchise isn't for you, tourist.