Overview

Year Of Shadow refers to a promotional campaign announced by SEGA to celebrate Shadow the Hedgehog throughout 2024, similar to Nintendo's "Year of Luigi" promotion. The promotion centers around several Shadow-centric releases in film and video games. It also led to a surge in fan art around the character in the wake of the announcement.

Background

On April 9th, 2024, SEGA announced that 2024 would be the "Year of Shadow" through a promotional video called "Fearless,"^[1] gaining over 167,000 views in two days (shown below).

The campaign was announced primarily to celebrate the release of the Sonic x Shadow Generations video game and the upcoming third movie in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.^[2]

Developments

The announcement led to a surge of Shadow fan art on social media celebrating the character. For example, a redraw trend of a specific image of Shadow was started on April 9th, 2024 by Twitter user @GamesCage_.^[3] Popular examples of the trend include an April 11th post by user @MrOwendingo^[4] that gained over 300 retweets and 1,600 likes in a matter of hours (shown below, left) and an April 9th tweet by @SoDaft_Potato^[5] that gained over 500 retweets and 2,600 likes in two days (shown below, right).

Other popular pieces celebrating the promotion include an April 9th tweet by @USA37107692^[6] that gained over 2,600 retweets and 13,000 likes in two days (shown below, left). On April 10th, user @kumo_zd^[7] posted a more humorous piece of Shadow fan art, gaining over 1,400 retweets and 8,100 likes in one day (shown below, right).

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References