Christopher Thorndyke

"Don't miss it!"

- Chris at the end of the sneak peek of the next episode (Japanese version)

Christopher "Chris" Thorndyke is the main human protagonist of the Sonic X anime series. He is the son of a wealthy father and mother, however he is very lonely due to the fact that his parents are always busy.

Chris met Sonic when the hedgehog was drowning at the bottom of Chris' family pool (due to the fact that Sonic cannot swim). After befriending him they went on multiple adventures together and had a practically unbreakable bond. Eventually, when Sonic had to go back to his homeworld to prevent the two dimensions from merging, Chris turned off the portal before Sonic could go in and ran off with him, unwilling to let his new friend go. Chris had some sense talked into him by Sonic and he was last seen being carried off by Sonic back to his parents before Sonic went home.

Reception
Even though Chris was received positively well in Japan, he's often disliked by American and European audiences. They believed he took Tails' role as Sonic's sidekick, he stole Amy's role in redeeming Shadow the Hedgehog in the Sonic Adventure 2 arc, and he had more to do with the Anime than Sonic. However, most of this criticism is nonsense because the only thing Chris was is just another best friend for Sonic, and Chris's sidekick role was only used in season 3 when Tails was too busy to help Sonic, and that is called a fill-in. And Chris taking Amy's role to redeem Shadow was just a form of variety. The Sonic Adventure arc was an adaption of the Sonic Adventure video game, making an adaption without giving it a little variety would make the adaption less interesting because viewing something that you have already seen in the source that the adaption was based on would be boring and uninteresting. And the Anime was equally both about Sonic and Chris, that is because they are both the main protagonists. Audiences believed the Anime was more about Chris because Chris had a little more screen time than all of the other characters including Sonic. That has happened in some episodes, but the other characters still got as much screen time as Chris.