Digimon: Complete Series Retrospective | Billiam

the following video is a compilation of reviews posted to my channel from August 2017 to June 2019 it covers the entirety of the Digimon anime now while watching this there may be some weird continuity errors and that's because I'm presenting this series as if it were going in chronological order for all of the Digimon anime even though I didn't really cover the anime in chronological order also it includes a brand new version of my original Digimon review which I decided to redo in order to fit in with my current style also this video is not sponsored but I am selling a Digimon t-shirt in order to celebrate the finishing of this retrospective it's modeled after the Digimon Tamers logo so the links to that are pinned to the top of the comments and also you can look at my little store shelf at the bottom of this YouTube video so anyways enjoy Digimon digital monsters unfortunately too many people look at Digimon and dismiss it as a Pokemon clone and well that's not totally true it's not totally untrue while Pokemon had its first released in 1996 Digimon was introduced a year later but besides starring monsters and having a similar naming convention Digimon and Pokemon don't share too much in common Digimon is a sister product to Tamagotchi but it was marketed directly towards boys so instead of Tamagotchis pure baby essence muscles weapons and this the original Digimon V pet had the player raising a Digimon from an egg until it would either die like all of mine this literally happened like like literally what after the other this Tamagotchi is dead and my Digimon died are you kidding me or eventually transform into more powerful Digimon that you could then battle by connecting devices it was successful and it spawned videogames manga a card game and an anime released in 1999 Digimon Adventure [Music] if that should always surprises me when i rewatch it while the production quality and a questionable English dub makes it harder for newer fans to get into it there are certain qualities of it that holds up remarkably well it's an adaptation of a very simple concept yet it does so much with it there are dozens of interpretations an alternate universe in which Digimon takes place the Digimon franchise is like a sandbox that allows pretty broad freedom of storylines and themes however some are less like sand boxes and more like a litter box I actually feel bad for that joke when looking at Digimon it really feels like a product of its time you have a slew of you in clean monsters that are simply designed because they're adapted from sprite art that would fit into a sixteen by sixteen screen but that's also contrasted by Digimon that radiates 90s Marvel Comics energy Rob Liefeld straps and all and that's by design the Digimon look from this period was defined by American comics which were having a major surge in popularity in Japan at the time this digimon isn't just a t-rex it's a t-rex with a metal war helmet in packs made out of cannons and a turtle that doesn't only have Bowser's shell but Thor's hammer and the face of Jamie Hyneman it's pretty rad although I make videos about a lot of nostalgic properties the ones I really hold close to my heart are Digimon and Animal Crossing and for Digimon it's because behind that overly masculine artillery carrying weapon holding muscles and muscles it's a very sincere story about kids their relationships and growing up Digimon adventure starts with seven kids at summer camp after a weird series of weather events across the globe it begins to snow right in the middle of summer suddenly each of the seven kids are given a small digital pocket watch looking thing called a Digivice and suddenly a wave comes out of nowhere sweeping them up and transporting them to the digital world a narnia asked fantasy world that is also home to the Digimon suddenly they all meet their own partner Digimon well I would argue that most of the Digimon don't go through character development themselves their personality is compliment or contrast the kids they're paired to there's tie that the facto leader of the group he's got goggles he's athletic and he's quick to make decisions his partner is Agumon Sora is the helmet wearing tough but caring level-headed member of the group her partner is B Oman there's Matt and TK two brothers who come from a divorced household Matt comes off as kind of cold and distant but he's very caring and passionate his partner is Gabumon TK is the little kid of the group he's very excitable but often is getting into situations where he can't protect himself because as Digimon Patamon can't digivolve to stronger forms as soon as the others come on a TK kind of go back and forth between guiding each other and having to be guided by the other it's really quite cute Izzy is the techie big dork big brains of the group he's infinitely curious and is always trying to learn more about the digital world which helps us to learn more about it his Digimon is tenth amman who may just be my favor of the original seven Digimon he's super supportive of Izzy and is always concerned with his well-being it's adorable Joe is the oldest member of the group and although he has some basic first-aid knowledge he's very squeamish and cautious his Digimon is gomamon who serves as a more fun and outgoing contrast to Joe Gotham on may just be my favorite of the original seven Digimon he's adorable and finally we have Mimi Mimi is initially presented as a shallow valley girl type who just wants to get home but she eventually steps up now there have been previous watch throughs where I hadn't liked Mimi but I really like her now she's great she never grows out of her lover fashion or shopping or whatever but she's still very useful I like her because many of those qualities are usually associated with a mean girl type character and are seen as negative however these are just her interests and they don't impede on her ability to be useful her Digimon his pal Mon who out of the other Digimon is closest to resembling the personality of the partner the Digimon cast their personalities are so well defined and strong I feel like you could drop two of these characters into a troublesome situation and you would know exactly how they try to solve the problem how they disagree with each other etc they're characters that present themselves through an archetype of another character we've seen before or are familiar with so we kind of understand them at face value immediately it's inviting but as the series progresses our idea of that kind of character deepens and evolves the first few episodes of the show are very light on plot but it takes time to introduce us to the characters and to the world it begins with a kind of formula each episode features eight digimon attacking the group and one of the kids gets put into danger so their partner has to temporarily transform it to a more powerful level to protect them from either a bad Digimon or a good Digimon infected by a black gear which makes them more violent while the did you might have six stages they can reach they usually remain in their third form their base form while the Digimon have different names in different stages I'll only be referring to them as their base form to avoid confusion and I'll be referring to the Digimon characters as their English names because I'm an English speaker therefore most people watching this video speak English and probably grew up with the English dub and I know this is a controversial opinion but I value clear communication over you know flexing my Digimon knowledge to the 10 of you who will care so I understand if you want to refer to characters as their original names but please if you really really need to hear Chi and tail and young blank oh if those extra syllables really mean that much more to you please go elsewhere or rage comment down below an algorithm you know how it is a few episodes in its revealed a digimon named devimon controls the black gears and he's planning to defeat the children for some reason that's pretty evil dead even separates all of the kids and while they're trying to find their way back to one another we get to see some of the characters interact with each other one on one the pairings are great and it continues to explore their character my favorite things in ensemble based storytelling is when characters you wouldn't expect to interact do seeing Izzie and Mimi having to problem-solve when one is an impatient airhead and the other is a socially unaware dork is great the highlight for this part of the series has always been Matt and Ty having their alone time ty wants to head back to where they saw Debbie Mon in Matt wants to find the others especially TK their arguments result in fighting which causes Matt to break down and explain how he feels responsible for TK's safety especially because he feels guilty for not being super involved in his life ever since their parents got a divorce throughout the whole show we're given glimpses into the characters home life which helps to inform their behavior in the digital world while the world is fantastical with all sorts of variations of monsters the emotional core of the characters are grounded in real-life domestic troubles personally the kind of fantasy I gravitate towards are one with a grounded emotional reality if the emotional struggles the characters are going through don't have an analogue to real life it's something that's very difficult to identify with and I truly believe that Digimon finds a great balance one character I'm sure many younger viewers gravitated towards is TK well Digimon are evolving left and right and all over the place TK's Digimon Patamon just can't this makes TK feel useless and padam ons evolution is teased pretty explicitly there's even an episode where you think they're finally going to evolve beginning a transformation sequence and everything but it's just a tease it's edging even when the kids finally get back together they're told about their destiny by Leo Mahon a very good-looking rugged lion man maan they explained there that digi Dustin's chosen children brought to the digital world to protect it from evil the Digivice links the child to their digimon giving it the power to digivolve and that's pretty neat the best chance to get home is to fulfill their destiny and defeat devimon and devimon is like no and right when everyone has had a good and embarrassing but kickin release Patamon digivolve to Angemon I'm sure plenty of people do Angemon beats devimon by using all of its energy and reverting back to a digi-egg although Digimon don't die they need to restore themselves after death and my Digimon died this shows TK is just as useful and maybe even more so than the others despite being just a little guy and also despite his Digimon now needing to take time to reincarnate meaning once again he may be just as useless I'm sorry buddy the Devi monarch serves to introduce the world and the characters until the last episode or two there really isn't a clear plot or goal other than for the kids to survive so it leaves a lot of time for character and a world exploration but it doesn't me and err to the point of feeling purposeless we see a lot including quite the variety of Digimon from bears squishy guys slithery guys sludgy guys and rhinos it's really imaginative and interesting no I always knew that Angemon came around to finally beat devimon but I'm not sure I ever actually saw the episode as a kid there are a lot of Digimon episodes I didn't watch while growing up I didn't see the whole series in its entirety until I rewatched it on YouTube and from around the 2006 or 7 and it's not like I really had the option to watch the whole series in North America we got five volumes of Digimon Adventure on VHS with the first three being sequential in the next to being climaxes two later arcs the first three volumes almost completes the first story arc but is four episodes short however there was a really rare DVD release in 2002 that had the first 13 episodes on it there wasn't a proper home video release or even an official streaming release until 2012 and even that release just featured broadcast tape quality episodes with TV ratings either still present or just blurred out in the corners the original Japanese version was available on streaming platforms a few years ago but it was taken down in front Meishan who apparently owned the rights to it haven't done anything with his sense also update as of 2019 Digimon has once again been removed from streaming platforms and digital marketplaces meaning the only way to watch the original series is to track down the 2012 DVD release and I'm not even sure if that's in print anymore pumpkin Digimon primarily tells its story through four distinct arcs all of which have a clearly defined final boss to defeat well I used to think this was a big negative for the show I've grown to appreciate this almost video game-like style of storytelling especially after watching the later Digimon seasons with 54 episodes to get through there's definitely opportunity for this story to outstay its welcome but with a three-act structure being spent on the 10 to 20 episodes as opposed to all 54 episodes at once the show never quite loses its pacing it doesn't drag on and while defeating the villain is always the climax of an arc it's never the driving factor of the story the story isn't simply defeat the villain rather the villain stands in the way of a different goal at least until the show's final arc well Digimons narrative is serialized episodes feel distinct and separate from one another it can feel formulaic at times but the wide cast of likable characters creates enough variation to stay entertained after defeating devimon the kids are sent on a mission across the ocean to collect tags and crests little emblems that may help their Digimon reach the next stage and hopefully get them home however while traveling across the new continent of server' the group is being chased and pursued by a super powerful Digimon that also happens to be a chimp doing an Elvis impression he wants to stop them from collecting the crests that's pretty mean well the first arc was a kind of mindless exploration of the digital world with the most evil looking villain ever the second arc gives a clear goal while being hunted down by a super powerful they'll be a very silly villain however the real purpose of the arc is to introduce the crests which is one of my favorite character development devices ever the crusts remain a prominent part of the story through pretty much to the rest of the series while the crests enable the Digimon to digivolve to their fifth stage it's also tied to a particular value or trait that each kid exemplifies whether they directly realize it or not courage friendship sincerity knowledge hope love and faith or reliability if you're watching the English dub well did you man wood digivolve to the champion level if their partner was in danger the next stage is only reached if they are able to discover or uphold their particular value in a difficult scenario so while they all find their crests rather easily activating them is another issue entirely at one point tide tries to force his crest of courage to activate by throwing himself into danger but this just corrupts it causing Agumon to transform into a spooky scary stable skeleton Monster Mash Digimon who goes on a rampage you gotta have that rampage of scene however it activates truly for the first time during a much more intimate moment Ty briefly convinces himself the digital world is like a video game and has no consequences however he learns the danger in the digital world is real and suddenly becomes really fearful when he has to put his life in danger to protect a friend it's not during a big fight he just has to cross through a safe point in an electrical fence but the point is he's scared to do so when he builds up the courage to do it his crest activates and Agumon digivolve using the highest tech animation in the business whoa I love the crests it's not just reaching a new form and getting more powerful it's a reflection of how the kids are growing as people often when shows have power-ups and transformations they can seem like a cop-out or an easy way to defeat a powerful villain but having the kids have to earn it really helps to justify what may have been seen as a deus ex machina in a similar scenario it's really clever and I like it after the fight ty accidentally opens a rift in the Digi time continuum and ends up returning home alone yeah gotta have that mid series returned home episode this episode kind of serves as an intermission it's very odd no time has passed it's still the same day from when they left and nobody is home except for Ty's sister curry this episode always feels off to me and that's clearly intentional the colors are subdued no one seems to be noticing the giant Digimon attacking famous landmarks on TV anti sister has this creepy demeanor to her and that's aided by the fact she mysteriously knows who Agumon is now a few years ago this episode's director Mamoru Hosoda who is one of digimons most influential creative voices even interview comparing Ty and Corey's relationship in this episode to that of a married couple with Agumon being this new younger girl taking away Ty's attention from Carrie now many people took this quote to mean that Ty and Corey had an incestuous relationship however I and many others don't please don't make me believe that not seeing incest is a controversial opinion this episode just feels off it's completely different than anything else in the entire season and I think Hosoda wanted Corey in ty to have a strange and uncomfortable dynamic to make Ty's return to the human world seem off and uncomfortable something's wrong and it's not that too prepubescent siblings are romantically involved ty eventually receives a distress call from the digital world and has to make the hard decision to return to the digital world ivory watched this episode randomly outside a full series viewing its melancholy and I feel like this episode's off tone makes it one of the highlights of the entire series it's just a different flavor and it explicitly introduces a series long arc while the kids need to get home at some point there's also been a responsibility thrust upon them to protect each other and this new world they've been introduced to from danger it's not just about the self-serving goal of returning home it's about helping to make the world a better place when ty returns to the digital world everyone is separated and has to find their way back together once they do they are confronted by the mysterious new villain who has been keeping the kids separated while hiding in the shadows myotismon what a spooky guy the kids are able to find out myotismon wants to get to the human world to find a secret missing 8th digidestined and everyone is like oh my otis mom is able to escape into the human world before the kids get a chance to follow them thanks to the help from Gotham on myotismon stop henchman but eventually the kids are able to go through myotismon s gate and return to the human world this is where she gets good so we learned that Ty's younger sister Cory is the eighth child but nobody else realizes it they do discover the reason they were chosen as digi Dustin is because they all witness a Digimon to fight when they were very young that was mistaken for a terrorist attack so it's set up that the audience knows who the new digi Dustin is but no one else does however myotismon has Cory's tag and crests so he clearly has the upper hand in the situation I love this arc taking the action from the digital world to the human world raises the stakes in such a way that it makes the show feel suddenly really fresh the Digimon are no longer guides the kids are and after being teased of the kids home life we finally get to see it front and center and of course that's all while they're trying to find creative ways to hide their Digimon and now while many of the parents are just kind of background and side characters Izzy's parents Jo's brother and Matt and TK's dad become characters heavily involved in the plot at this point in the show as well not all of the kids have had their crest activate so the activation of their crests happen as a result of their family life or being close to that well of course there is a bunch of insane action in this arc or at least the implication of insane action there are also some nice moments in somber moments as the kids finally get a moment to rest and reunite with their families well the kids are searching for who the eighth digidestined could be myotismon is out wreaking havoc with the super strong Digimon in sucking the blood of young women we learned that khari is the 8th digidestined before anyone else does however God Tommen starts to suspect Corey as the 8th child however wizardmon got omens BFF forever or at least BFF for now starts to suspect got omen as Corey's long-lost Digimon however this turns out to be the case and it's the reunion of the two that makes Corey's identity known so God omen may be my favorite of the original 8 Digimon that's because God Tommen is the only Digimon that is actually their own character now God Amon is a villain however eventually we learned through God omens best friend for soon wizardmon that got Amon was not always a villain khari was supposed to go to summer camp with everyone else but she was sick so she couldn't so all the other partner Digimon got paired up the kid got it on waited forever and was eventually taken him by ODIs mom where they became a villain after years of abuse myotis mark figures I've got Amon is the eighth Digimon and uses that to discover that khari is the 8th child resulting in a big battle to rescue her wizardmon got omens best friend for no longer sacrifices themselves to protect Cory the crest is returned it activates and [Music] [Applause] yes Angela Mon so anyways and you would defeats myotismon but he reforms into a a big strong form and luckily ty and Matt unlocked their Digimons final form or I guess this isn't even their final form to defeat the super-strong myotismon in my opinion that myotismon arc is the climax to Digimon Adventure well not every personal issue is nicely wrapped up at this point there are confrontations in small glimmers of closure that could potentially come at a later point one of my favorite moments comes towards the end of the story TK and Matt have proven themselves to be a value in strength to their parents who haven't seen each other and however long in TK being the young naive kid he is thinks this reunion is happy and although he's not wrong there's a kind of somberness surrounding the whole situation that he really doesn't understand you know obviously their parents aren't going to get back together but it's oddly hopeful like maybe this is a start of their family not being as distant as they were before and this closure or hopeful confrontation of these issues is relevant for all of the characters personal struggles although god amon is just a good character they're able to overcome their abuser by letting others come into their life to help it makes myotis mount a very personal villain in the only Digimon Adventure villain that isn't just bad guy evil baby boy as a kid I loved the conclusion to the my onus monarch it really justified liking Digimon to me not just because it was super cool but to a certain extent I understood that these more personal issues weren't things that were generally confronted in children's media and I think that's why Digimon has continued to mean so much to me despite what's holding it back and I guess we can discuss what's holding it back the first and most glaringly obvious issue with Digimon especially now is the English dub I grew up with the English dub I like it I consider the voices of these characters to be defined by the English cast however early on in the dub you can tell someone involved was embarrassed by Digimon jokes are consistently added where they shouldn't be in 90% of the time this is fine but more often than it should it undermined the emotional tone a scene is going for and sometimes they even point out and make fun of the limited animation still here they're also a lot of character whose voice is based on famous comedians or actors including Peter Lorre Rodney Dangerfield and Marlon Brando I'll take you there myself but I think the best voice in the whole dub is toga Mon Pokemon is pallemans first evolution and you know they thought it was silly I mean it's a cactus with boxing gloves how it is it type with those boxing gloves on you could tell they had a blast voicing and writing this character and while not a major critique of the dub there are also some dubbing airs like the wrong voices coming from the wrong characters and this odd moment where some kid broke into the recording studio and sent off the broadcast tape before anyone could notice it's so much there is still no official explanation from this and people have asked the English producers like any dub of an English anime there are also many censored changes that are made because of cultural norms some mild swearing is cut out mild nudity and references to alcohol are cut to green the dub also uses its own music while a lot of the music is recycled from other shows several tracks were written exclusively for the Digimon show including the main Digimon theme which I love and nostalgically but is a major turnoff for new viewers there were also victory songs written for when the Digimon were winning a battle the folksy hey Digimon excels at killing the mood of the scene it's played in [Music] but nothing is as bad as the ditch around however there are also great orchestrated tracks that I still associate heavily with Digimon including the instrumental version of the main theme that plays during heroic moments however what's lost in return are two of my favorite anime songs ever Braveheart the awesome guitar riff and song that plays during evolution sequences and butterfly which I can say may be one of the best anime opening songs ever while there are many questionable changes made and the English dub the dub was not handled by 4kids so many things you would expect to be cut out aren't there a lot of mature themes and concepts that are fortunately kept in including references to the number of the beast six-six-six that's so metal and mention of terrorist attacks but this was before 9/11 furthermore all references to the story taking place in Japan are kept in well I would definitely recommend newcomers track down the original Japanese version I do think the English dub is forgivable because it makes an effort to respect to the material eventually Matt's dad are you smoking not in my Christian English dub of course the second thing holding did you mine back today is the production quality although there are some great shots in Digimon that are animated well and the transformation sequences are phenomenal the vast majority of action is very simple with still frames being motion tween attack animations being recycled over and over and sometimes the same shot repeating Matt where are you going also the evolution sequences often take up huge chunks of the episodes but fortunately they will speed them up cut out shots and split screen the evolutions occasionally in order to keep up the pace of action sequences and occasionally there are whole episodes where characters are just off model it's very odd after defeating myotismon a rift between the digital and human world opens up in the sky and the kids learn they have to travel back to the digital world to finish off of the final bad guys the dark masters for full level Digimon that once wrecked havoc across the land but were defeated by the group of original D G destined business I note this one frame inspired so much curiosity as a kid like they gave no more detail other than just mentioning them well I like the dark master's storyline it's definitely a classic last battle kind of story their strength is tested their relationships are tested and their roles within the group are tested throughout this entire arc everything has changed the Digimon they all met along the way are dying all around them and the source of reincarnation for Digimon has been put on pause meaning the stakes are higher than ever it's a pretty tense arc and there are some great character moments but I think the purpose is to just give the kids one final test to show how much they've grown and while there is certainly continued character development some lore development and more it's really about the kids taking responsibility just because they have the power to do so there are some highlights like in the return of leo maan just to have them die you gotta have that leo maan death I also like how the other kids don't take a backseat here there's a massive power gap between them tie into Matt which is something that definitely becomes a huge problem in later seasons but fortunately they don't take a backseat the final Dark Master is defeated when TK's crest finally activates after a whole series to forget that it hadn't already a big fun final battle follows that's just what you'd expect from a large ensemble action piece but now the first time the angel came out of nowhere to save the day it's like that's pretty great he's pretty handsome too the second time the angel came out of nowhere to save the day was like that's pretty great she's pretty handsome too but then the third time the angel comes out of nowhere to save the day it's like that's pretty repetitive regardless of how handsome you are the first two were punctuation for a character arc and here it's finally the activation of TK's crest but it seems like it was only withheld to have this cool reveal however the dark masters aren't the final villain there's another final villain the evil epochal Amon that's pretty scary but they beat him - pretty good the celebration for their victory is short-lived the series ends very suddenly and it comes as a shock to the audience into the characters the gate between the worlds are closing and without much time they have to say goodbye to their Digimon it's really sad to see them say goodbye but it's not a depressing ending they'll see each other again someday and we know they're ending their adventure as more complete people than when they started Digimon Adventure has remained one of my favourite pieces of childhood media it's a story that is very silly at times and the issues surrounding it are not insignificant enough to ignore but this is a story that succeeds in spite of pretty glaring flaws that's because the character work is very sincere even though it's surrounded by silly concept crazy monsters and edgy try hard to thousands character design the good qualities are able to shine through in spite of it I mean as long as what they're trying to shine through is not the show's biggest flaw which is the digi wrap the next video is a review of the first Digimon movie now if you hear me say a number throughout this entire video that means I am covering one of the movies and the number is just signifying which movie it is number one Digimon Adventure released in 1999 this film was released as a part of a towaway Film Festival which aimed to preview upcoming TOA projects it was directed by Mamoru Hosoda who would later go on to direct some highly critically acclaimed films including the girl who left through time and the boy and the beast although the film serves as a preview for Digimon Adventure within the series itself it actually ends up playing a pretty important role in the plot also side now I am going to be using the English names just because I think it's what my audience will be most familiar with one day Corey and her older brother ty receive a special egg through a computer screen it hatches the fun and energetic choral mod who as the movie progresses grows into larger forms at one point quorum on escapes with Corey and Ty has to chase after them eventually a much larger egg comes from the sky and hatches a giant parrot Digimon Cora man grows one last time to defeat it before disappearing in the Digimon movie I always loved this segment but while watching the original version it's clear a lot of the tone and style is lost it's mysterious it's slow building and when the final battle hits it's exciting and terrifying I mean this shot wasn't in the English dub I loved giant monster films and although Digimon always features giant monsters it never truly feels kaiju but in this the low angles property destruction and human perspective really makes it feel like a proper Godzilla Mon film even the final Fire Blast from Greymon feels like Godzilla's atomic breath I also love how much like small small children Carly and Ty are although they are kids in the anime it's definitely an anime protagonists kind of kid they're small but they're just as intelligent as a young adult but here they're little kids totally helpless it's fun and exciting indefinitely worth that 20 minute runtime number 2 children's war game or our war game as the posters and most wiki articles call it this film was also directed by Mamoru Hosoda it has a 40 minute runtime and was released on March 4th 2000 as a part of the same festival which showcased Digimon Adventure March 4th is also when the film takes place what a neat and fun fact this film wow I truthfully think our war game may be the crown jewel of all the Digimon films and maybe even of Digimon itself well not as a standalone work but as a part of the Digimon Adventure series taking place over spring break the year after the kids get back from the digital world a Digimon has invaded the internet and begins tampering with computer systems around the globe as he is the first of the original digi destined to take notice and heads over to Ty's house to warn him of the danger it can impose after nearly a year is the entire able to get back in contact with the Digimon but this time over the Internet unfortunately for a multitude of reasons they're unable to get ahold of the other children to help tackle the threat together eventually Matt and TK are contacted and they try to take down the Digimon before it can detonate a nuclear warhead in Tokyo Bay our war game is tense it's heartwarming and it's entertain as Peck what makes it interesting is the logistical challenge between accessing the Internet in the early 2000s and a fight against a strong enemy if it were just one of these things they'd be fine but it's the combination of two which makes it cool I really like it in action scenes when there's multiple things to worry about it's not just a fight but there's something else going on as well when Ty and Izzy are having trouble contacting people have their internet connection go out or and Matt and TK can't find a computer connected to the Internet it helps make the action relatable because everyone with an internet connection has run into similar issues when trying to do a much more mundane task like sending an important email or submitting an assignment even the solutions the characters find to these problems feel real like the satellite cellphone the voicemail tag etc also because we feel for the characters already when warGreymon and metal guru mon have their butt kicked it's pretty hard to take if this were a standalone film I don't think that would be the case but that's the benefit of working with established characters you can do mostly plot-driven stuff because the audience is already sold on the characters and the world I mean Matt is barely in the movie but we're still sad for him when his Digimon is hurt when warGreymon a metal guru Ramon combined at the end of for Mom naman it's awesome and that final stab to dia Bora Mons head is wicked cool in fact I sort of like this film so much that he ended up taking a lot of the concepts and remaking it from the ground up without Digimon in a film called summer Wars both summer Wars and our war game are definitely worth a watch [Applause] [Music] but once you dive deeper you discover it's actually a tamagotchi clone but for boys Digimon style was influenced by cool things like Marvel Comics but I think they took a little too much influence from Rob Liefeld look at this dinosaur with pecs the concept is simple enough you have digital pets digital monsters Digimon as you raise them you take care of them and they transform into bigger Digimon the anime adaptation digimon adventure which really only existed to promote and sell a line of toys and video games took this simple concept and made a heartfelt story out of it seven kids on summer vacation are transported to a magical world the digital world while trying to survive in this new environment and get home they're each given a partner Digimon and eight digivice which helps them to channel the bond between them and their Digimon the animation in this show sucks you probably start to notice it around the 78th time and attack animation is recycled in the same episode so characters are used as a crutch for the lack of exciting action as the kids grow up and develop their Digimon are able to reach stronger forms or digivolve eventually the kids take on the responsibility of digi destined to save the digital world from evil it's flawed it's silly but it also grounds itself within its characters the original series holds a special place in my heart nostalgically but for some reason despite watching it on TV just as much I can't say the same for adventure oh to the sequel [Music] I think it's because there weren't as many home video releases so maybe not having access to it all the time resulted in less of a connection it's weird because as a kid I remember liking Oh to significantly more than the original but that's probably just because the main Digimon was blue and my favorite color was blue my critiquing skills haven't grown up that much Adventure o2 has more animation than adventure it's not high quality animation but there's more of it just like how there's more characters they are high quality characters but there's more of them adventure Oh two takes place three years after the original show it's not Digimon Adventure 2 it's specifically o2 referencing 2002 the best year the year of blue if you're watching the English dub all the original kids are now in high school except for the younger ones TK and Karan for the most part the older kids are sidelined for the new team TK corioli Cody and Davis all of whom are introduced and reintroduced at a messy first two episodes there's a lot of exposition yet hardly any time is spent introducing the new kids to the world 0-2 aired only a week after the original series finished so the audience didn't have to be reintroduced to anything but hearing the new kids spit out digital world jargon is odd because they haven't had anything explained to them yet the key narrative difference with the original is the fact that no one is trapped in the digital world the new team has given a new digivice called a d3 which can be used to open up gateways to the digital world from any computer so if the older kids have to catch a ride with the new ones usually one or two of the older kids will tag along so they're not completely absent just completely useless the D threes are an important plot point and tie into the show's primary villain the Digimon Emperor the first human villain in Digimon the emperor uses a dark Digivice to take control of wild Digimon and block the original kids Digimon from transforming to higher power levels he amplifies this power throughout the digital world using dark cell phone towers called dark spires the new kids get around this through a new transformation by using power from digi eggs and the new digivices to equip their teaming with digi armor to armor digivolve into armored Digimon now that's branding on a sidenote digimon adventure bread all of these cool transformer style toys where you take one Digimon and transform it into another Digimon Oh two had a similar line but instead it was just eggs which is lame the ability to go in and out of the digital world kind of eliminates the greater sense of adventure that adventure had there's no camping or scavenging for food they just go home to their beds at the end of the episode there's less urgency and sometimes it's tedious they go out for a bit destroy a couple control spires maybe find a new digi egg rinse and repeat often it feels more like they're running errands rather than having this great adventure it's also hard to accept these new kids are automatically invested in what happens to the digital world they take on the objective to defeat the Emperor immediately an adventure their objective at first was self-serving they had to get home it was only later they took on the greater responsibility of protecting the digital world poor format aside when the show is on it's really strong we're soon introduced to Ken the real identity of the Digimon Emperor in episode 8 Davis plays a soccer game against Ken without knowing he's the Emperor I love it dramatic irony but by the end of the episode Ken reveals his identity and runs away from home to live in the digital world getting rid of Ken's human world storyline makes this side of the story more of a weight onto the plot this could have been a great opportunity to build dramatic irony and differentiate the sequel from the original maybe Ken gets close to the team without them knowing he's the Emperor he could find out information about the kids lives and use it to his advantage but the only dramatic elements that come from the human world side of the story are the kids having to hide their Digimon from and find excuses to tell their parents when they've been spending time in the digital world at this point it's stale and a missed opportunity for something new still Ken is the most interesting villain from either of the series this is the first human villain Digimon has had and it's also the first villain with death there's a lot more depth than a monkey doing an Elvis impersonation ohoho I mean he kicks a puppy Ken's partner Digimon war mon tries to act as it's conscious and we get a sense that ken hasn't always been the puppy kicking type he's messing around with the darkness of the digital world which is something he really doesn't understand when he tries to make his own Digimon he ends up stealing data from devimon the first villain from the original series and a bit of a sore spot for TK TK is Digimon died in a battle with devimon did you Mon get reborn so don't worry about that so seeing Ken screw with devimon is the turning point it's one thing when four turtle jamie hyneman mom attacks the magic vampire but it's another feeling entirely when two kids are punching each other in the face when you can't think of anything to say do you always resort to fighting yes the scene where TK confronts Ken is so totally different from any other part of the show but that's why it works no other villain and Digimon has ever doubted themselves their cartoon villains unable to question their moral alignment but Ken is human and able to change and when I say change I don't just mean the kitty cat turning into a scantily clad angel whose figure now cost $4,000 I mean character development Ken getting his ass kicked and losing his Digimon opens his eyes to all the dumb [ __ ] he's done we learned ken hasn't always kicked puppies but his turn the darkness began through his grieving after his older brother was hit by a car and died Digimon has always dealt with these heavier domestic family issues but having a character become a villain and go through a Redemption arc as a result of their problems takes the concept to another level that's what a sequel should do ken is eventually brought into the team and becomes a core member but all that development is throw out the window when they explain Ken just had an evil spore inside of him which made him evil because why have a complex character when magic digimon adventure oh two spends its first 21 episodes dedicated to the Digimon Emperor Ark which eventually wraps up but not without distraction and there's a reason for that after adventure wrapped up two new creative directors were put in charge of the story replacing the original director who left to protest a sequel being made between their disagreements and studio meddling the show never found a clear direction after the Emperor storyline new storylines are introduced and dropped new antagonist come in and distract from developing plots and plot lines are introduced only to have a quick anti-climatic ending we eventually learned that someone has been controlling ken then we learned that person was controlled by somebody else before finally learning that myotismon the best known to villain from the first series was behind it all its inclusion feels tacked on and that's only because it was between it there are small moments where they attempt to recapture the emotional moments from the Emperor storyline and attempts to expand on the lore but it's ultimately lost amongst the rest of the mess the show ends with an epilogue which sees much of the cast pursuing out of character careers it left a bad taste in my mouth speaking of bad taste there are two major storylines which were dropped entirely the first was hinted at as early on as episode 13 we get a totally strange episode apart from the Emperor storyline where curry is brought to this weird alternate dimension between both worlds called the dark ocean at the end of the episode we hear this sinister music as this dark giant silhouette and evil Cthulhu ass looking Digimon rises out of the ocean who is this evil dark undersea master don't miss the upcoming Digimon digital monsters yeah we never we never hear from it again Digimon wiki says it's dragoman wow this is so much cooler than what we ended up getting episode 13 also sees the return of the show's greatest villain the digi rap the second drop storyline is Damon who shows up only a few episodes before the series is over and is defeated a few episodes later filler within the final eight episodes Damon is defeated when it gets sent to the dark ocean to dropped plot lines resolve each other instead of myotismon Damon should have been the final villain and have been revealed to be devimon fully evolved Damon is in devimon evolutionary line and it would have book end at the beginning of adventure with the end of o2 and nice little tie-in to the original series there are some nice nods to the original series which are nice and the plot of the Digimon film our war game is important to the new characters the new kids were chosen to be digidestined after witnessing the internet battle featured in our war game this also leads to hundreds of digidestined around the world my favorite series of episode post Emperor and actually probably in the whole series is the Digimon World Tour this sees the old kids teaming up with the new kids and travelling across the world but I think maybe the reason I liked this short saga so much is because it takes place over winter and all the characters are in cute winter clothes aesthetic we see new digidestined and get a chance to see the characters interact one-on-one and there also some nice episodes which allow us to see how the original team has grown up over the years the quiet personal moments of Digimon are where the show shines however I like this arc because we got to spend time with the old cast and that's a problem the original show had this really simple plot so character was always the focus but the convoluted nature of o2 makes it harder for the characters to develop because it's always changing direction TK is shown to have trauma but it never manifests itself in anything but anger TK is the obvious choice for team leader but because Davis has goggles he's chosen despite being totally incompetent in a leadership position these are the least interesting character and a little [ __ ] khari like in the original series unfortunately never has time to grow the drama and dark ocean storylines seemed like it would be dedicated to her but her relationship to the dark ocean never manifests itself and anything other than her grabbing her head and screaming Yoli well I like Yoli she's fun but Cody Cody is the worst let me rephrase that Cody is treated the worst he's the youngest member of the team his arc is him coming into his own and being seen as a valuable member and the original TK also had to prove himself as the youngest member but the difference is the reason why they had to do so TK's brother Matt was overprotective of him in adventure but everyone in a - the characters supposed to like are just totally dismissive of Cody so his Ark requires everyone else to be a jerk ken is the only character who's fleshed out and everyone else's development has to do with their relationship to him an adventure the kids were given crests representing a trait they best exemplified courage friendship love etc which tied directly with their Digimon getting stronger the Digimon transforming was really symbolic of their own growth however in OH two most of the transformations are tied to the digi-egg so most transformations are earned through finding an object instead of character growth however to continue to make the old team completely useless it's revealed that they gave up their crests to protect the digital world in their absence this creates a few tiny massive plot holes but that's just a nitpicking so let's not really get into that I mean I don't mind when they make an exception to the rule the new kids get around this by dna'd is evolving which sees two of their Digimon combining into one this should be tied into a big character moment but it actually helps create a big character moment when Ken and the team are still unsure about working together Ken and Davis's Digimon come together to form pi yield Ramon it's only then that they start to consider the possibility of Ken joining the team pi elder mom should have only been possible after they all forgave Ken it would have symbolized their coming together even later DNA Digimon feel underwhelming and unearned it's just a result of the other kids deciding it's time to let their Digimon come together that's for the new Digimon they serve the same purpose as they did in the original series they're either character complements or character contrasts for the human characters which works a lot better than having them be their own unique characters the new Digimon are armadillo mana of Western armadillo Hawkman a hawk and v-mon whose English voice sounds like Sid from Ice Age jumping about Carrie human girl you make human boy yak short a weird Digimon is known for its odd English dub and the dub is as dumb as ever the actors do a good job but moments in between drama and action have bad jokes stuffed inside them most of them miss but some actually had me laughing out loud then there's the story of the birds and the bees goal later miss now's not the time huh what do you guys want to play how about stupid unlike the original series dub dramatic moments are allowed to play out without added humor but the choice and sound effects will often be used to undermine the violence one thing Digimon has always been good about were references to Japan being kept in which is unusual for an English dub especially for a children's show the show isn't afraid to call a doughnut a rice ball so I made you some rice balls for your trip these doughnuts are great I don't mind the dub so much this time around because the show is a lot more tedious this plot with a serious tone would just be boring there are a lot more pop punk songs featured into the dub all of which are on the Digimon movie soundtrack which would be the greatest film soundtrack in history if it were not for the digi rap and here's a little side note on the official DVD release of the English dub sometimes a TV rating stamp will appear in the corner I wouldn't be surprised if a clean version of the English dub just didn't exist there are blu-rays of the Japanese dub available all of which have great quality but it's doubtful that there would ever be a new master of the English dub because Digimon has been relegated to a very niche thing the new characters just aren't nearly as strong as the original and they're still splitting screen time with the old cast who always steal my attention when they're on screen because that's who I care about I don't hate the new characters I enjoy watching them interact with the old cast and you know Ken but the show would have worked a lot better if more focus was put on to them or if they were just taken out entirely this show could have worked with the old cast while only introducing Ken as a new character this is a show based on characters and when the new characters don't add anything that's a problem Digimon Adventure has an ongoing sequel film series called Digimon Adventure tri and within the first few minutes of the first film we learned the new characters introduced in Oh to have been defeated and are nowhere to be seen the older kids don't seem to miss them very much and much of the audience doesn't either if Digimon tri continues after its sixth movie run I'd like to see them return but it's not something I'm disappointed about did you find adventure o2 is such a mixed bag when it's on it's really strong but it's good moments are so far and few between once it gains momentum it quickly drops and interesting ideas are forgotten before they have time to develop even though it's cast as a whole isn't as strong as the original the more complex ideas are more interesting when the show is willing to explore them the cool thing about the Digimon anime series is despite the fact that this really is just a glorified film and video game commercial the creative team behind it really cares and really tries Digimon Adventure OH - did it fail because people didn't care about it it failed because two creative directors fought for their own creative vision and at the end of the day that's really cool number three Digimon hurricane touchdown slash transcendent evolution the golden digi mentals that's a long title because it's actually two titles this phone premiered during the summer to--a Film Festival only a few months after our war game it aired in two parts with another short airing between the two and it was later released on DVD before I made this video this was actually the only Digimon movie I hadn't seen in its original form and because of that it totally surprised me it's pretty good while visiting me me in America TK and Kari come across a boy named Willis who's tracking down an evil Digimon Mimi along with the other original digidestined are captured the rest of the 0-2 gang Davis Yoli and Cody get word of this and traveled to America to help TK and Kari rescue the original digidestined once there the gang meet up with Willis and his Digimon Terrier Mon as they head to summer memory a spot where Willis Terrier man and his twin kokum on the original form of the evil when dingo Mon originally met at some point coke Amon was struck with a type of virus and turned evil it meets up with Willis years later but is unable to recognize him so he starts kidnapping all the other characters with the same Digivice and turning them younger in hopes he'll recognize them as Willis the other kids help Willis track down Wendigo Mon who gets progressively more and more removed from its original form in hopes that they can save the other kids while these shorts are by no mean excellent they are pretty good in the Digimon movie they received the worst treatment with nearly 30 minutes being cut from the original hour runtime what resulted were these frantic nonsensical action pieces cut together with awkwardly paced dialogue scenes the original piece is the exact opposite it's slow it's filled with these little funny quiet moments and the action is anything but exciting in fact it's a bit depressing when de goemon is Willis's Digimon and because it has become a danger to others Willis has to come to the conclusion to kill it in that storyline is never lost within the tone of the film what should be exciting action scenes are undermined by this slow creepy music and the characters getting genuinely stressed when they see their Digimon get hurt [Music] you really feel that this is a hard decision for Willis to come to when Windigo mon is finally defeated there's not a big triumphant attack it just ends almost anti-climatic Li I mean of course there's a cool new digivolution and Andhra woman shows up which isn't related to anything but I still enjoyed it this wasn't what I was expecting it to be it's a little bit of a bummer and alone oh but if you like Digimon I definitely recommend watching it it's interesting to see these characters in a cleaner constructed plot than 0 to 0-2 is such a mess that's really easy to nitpick and the characters are more likely to get on my nerves but in this context I think they work for example because of the more subdued tone Davis's frantic personality works a lot better it balances out also if you look at it it appears many of these plot points were repeated in Digimon try just what the cast swapped I mean the original kids go missing and due to an infection a new member of the group has to come to the conclusion to kill their Digimon the only difference here is the zero two kids care about finding the original digidestined and in try they quickly forget about it huh I guess the difference between the 0-2 cast in the original cast or the fact that the 0-2 cast are actually good human beings apparently hey so this spot used to have my original Digimon the movie review however I used a lot of copyrighted music in that video and this video kept it in copyright claimed so I decided just to remove the segment altogether we want to go see my original Digimon movie review which is very angsty and over exaggerative I'll post a link in the description or at the end of this video number four the Digimon movie okay so I know I talked about this one in a whole 20-minute video but I wanted to have another go at it because it made it seem a lot worse than it actually is since going back and watching a lot of Digimon I've realized I really do appreciate the Digimon movie for what it is it's silly it's funny at times and it's soundtrack is truly awesome it introduced me to a lot of music that I grew to really appreciate as an older teenager and it definitely is a fun watch for Digimon fans even if it's a total disaster from outside observers what I'm saying is it's fun and it the one thing every other Digimon movie is missing the digi Raptors number five The Revenge of dia Bora mod well the first three that 3.5 Digimon movies never received a proper adaptation many actually did in 2001 Disney bot Saban and with it the rights to Digimons English dub to promote reruns over the first four seasons on Disney's new programming block jeddaks Disney brought the original English producers on to do a dubbed adaptation of the then remaining four Digimon movies including The Revenge of dia Boram on the redundancy of Boreham on is a potentially cannon may be non-canon sequel to Digimon Adventure 0-2 taking place three months after the show's finale via Boram on the virus digimon from our war game is back and this time it's got a different plan it's going to escape into the physical world it sets a trap for some of the digi destined but then start sending itself as tiny low data versions of itself through people's cell phones before it can finally come together and get big revenge idea for aman is probably at the bottom of my list for digimon adventure movies it's not bad it's just not that interesting the idea of dia Boram on sending itself as smaller bits of data is clever but in a huh kind of way not enough oh that's awesome kind of way like in our war game the final battle between Omni Mon in Armageddon Mon and Tokyo Bay and later Imperial German is awesome the highlight of these films are the higher quality animation and it really shows in the choreography like omnimon blasting armageddon Mon in its mouth that will always be cool and there's little moments to like the sound of Matt's harmonica and carries whistle coming together to be a representation of Omni Mons energy that really gets back to the heart of Digimon which is the kids interacting with giant monsters Omni Mon is defeated and so is Imperial German but their energy combines to make a new version of Imperial German paladin mode which finishes the fight it's cool and the half hour runtime makes the film's lack of substance enjoyable I wish more dumb action movies were 30 minutes they'd be fun that way instead they're two and a half hours and the lack of substance becomes apparent all too quickly the Digimon movies are cool because it's an opportunity to see these characters animated well the action is cool the expressions are fine in all around they're just enjoyable Digimon digital monsters a line of digital pets created to be an extension of Tamagotchi but marketed towards tiny little boys so muscles and guns and motorcycles and innocent cats turning into scantily clad angels hmm like everything else at the time Digimon was aiming high to be this giant multimedia franchise an anime video games card games comics toys no Digimon did not start because of Pokemon but Pokemon affected the entire toy industry and the way Digimon expanded was in direct competition Pokemon also helped to popularize the pet monster genre where the first two Digimon anime played into this genre creating its own unique world the third series Digimon Tamers is a bit of a meta-narrative taking place in the real world where Digimon is a popular media franchise so complete fantasy I'd always watch the TV show I used to play the card game I even made up my own imaginary Digimon response to all of these well-loved popular and remembered pet monster franchises every kid who grew up watching these kind of shows wanted their own pet monster and Digimon Tamers fulfills that fantasy but it also uses a foundation created by Digimon to challenge the audience's expectations Digimon Tamers is weird it's dark it promotes diversity and its story and characters are a whole lot better than it has any business being I've revisited the original digimon series Digimon Adventure over and over again over the years but I really haven't done that with tamers so I'm able to look at the series without to nostalgia goggles but it's digimon so huh I need my goggles Taymor's was written by Tia Chiaki Chiaki an anime writer who's best known for being dark and weird Kanaka considers himself to be a Lovecraftian writer so he's killing that late-night tumblr game the storyline he contributed to Digimon Adventure zero 2 was totally offbeat and creepy now make that 51 episodes that's Kanaka Taymor's is known for its darker tone but it's never depressing it's still a hopeful story which uses the dark tones to increase the level of tension when needed and to play off the characters emotions I like it when kids shows tastefully tackled dark and weird instead of violence and blood being used to creep audiences out it's character actions and surreal imagery yeah it can be just as effective by the end of adventure zero - there were a total of 24 main characters but Taymor's takes a different approach including the Digimon the core cast is a 6 the main gagal wearing protagonist is Takato Takato is a normal kid with normal emotions he's scared when he meets Gillman a Digimon based on his own drawing for the first time after all it is a fire-breathing monster high guilmon guilmon is newly created so unlike every other digimon in the series it doesn't have this deep knowledge of the digital world it's figuring out how other Digimon work just as staccato is I'm taquito man I'm not a Digimon Takato is very anxious so dealing with the unpredictable childlike guilmon creates a great chemistry Henry or Lee if you're watching the Japanese dub is a non-violent morally driven kid who doesn't even like to make Digimon fight into the video game so he's a little dweeb in the best way possible Terry Arman is Henry's partner it's an excitable little rabbit Digimon who always wants to get into a fight Henry the pacifist and terrier mod who turns into Garga man Wow side note I love how the English dub makes all the gun sound effects Laser sound effects what a simplistic solution to that problem but like how do you censor something like this well at least it's not guns Ramon it's not very smart to mouth off to someone bigger than you mo and Ty it means no worries for the rest of your days then there's Rica or Ruki if you're watching the Japanese dub Rika is the Digimon Queen she's like a really good at the Digimon card game because of that everyone thinks she's cool as I said complete fantasy world Rika is a violent and sort of serves as a first antagonist for the series she's always picking a fight hey what a lousy fighter but a fights a fight right Amano Rica's Digimon wants to be the strongest so at first they have less of a friendship and more of a working relationship but eventually they admit to caring about one another Brenneman is a fan favorite for reasons which can only be explored with safesearch off you all are nasty one of the benefits to having a smaller cast is the Digimon are now their own characters with unique feelings perspectives and development there's also more focus on side characters we learn about two kados friends the villains the families of the characters and get some side character arcs which take the whole series to pay off other characters which later gain more importance include Callum on a silly light-hearted digimon who holds the power to help other Digimon transform imp mana sort of rude and pathetic Digimon who renounces his partners Jerry a quirky girl Takato has a crush on Jerry is the only realistic character in this whole show people like Jerry but it's because she keeps her love of Digimon a secret just like me from age 11 to 20 put your beard on you're embarrassing yourself did you want a MERS plot is a slow burn the entire focus of the first third is how did you mon interact in the real world however to make this concept fresh the digimon now are less like little ugly people and more like well digital monsters their animalistic it's and their programming to want to fight and human-like emotions are now learned rather than something Digimon are automatically equipped with when guilmon sees a threat its eyes contract and it's instinct kicks in the kids have to learn with the Digimon and the Digimon have to adapt this helps to contrast the dangerous fantasy monsters with the mundane town of Shinjuku which features real-world locations fighting Digimon has never really been a huge problem in the series because they've always been relatively small but guilmon is like a buff Velociraptor Takato can't just hide him inside so a lot of the early episodes are dedicated to finding guilmon a place to hide which is complicated by Gilman's desire to explore and play Digimon transform into stronger larger versions of themselves this is called digivolving and past shows digivolve and came quick and easy happening very soon after the series started and once it was done did you not had no problem turning back into their base form for the sake of convenience it takes a while for guilmon to finally digivolve for the first time and after it happens he can't easily go back to normal the next episode has Gillman stuck as growl mana giant t-rex sized Digimon what follows is a series of attempts to get Gillman to transform back to normal and find a place for this giant monster to hide it's cute it's funny but also Takato has ladies about losing guilmon it's a great balance it creates a problem out of something which was previously normal between the challenges the kids face just having their partners they also have to defeat evil Digimon which appear in the real world Takato and Henry are in the mindset the Digimon are living creatures but Rika wants Ren Amon to kill them all and absorb their data to become more powerful one of the things I don't like about Tamers is how they handle the enemy Digimon this layer of fog automatically forms which blocks the outside world from seeing what's going on in tamers so much of the focus is Digimon interacting with the real world it would be much more interesting for the characters to have to try to hide what's going on while the Digimon are fighting each other it would also make the worries of the government organization hypnose much more meaningful if we see the damaged Digimon are causing Digimon is known for its action sequences being interrupted by long transformation scenes but now there are digi modifying sequences the kids use cards from the official Digimon card game to give their Digimon extra powers and for just $4.99 a pack so can you sometimes it's cool and sometimes it's funny watching little old Terry Herman with a giant hammer I like the concept of digi modify but they play it off as if the kids are using a strategy when it really feels like they're just throwing down modifications until something works if the rules of the game were explained it'd be more interesting to watch the kids develop the strategy with the cards it does work to make them more involved but it doesn't really invite us into their thought process with digi modifying digivolving as a means of victory is downplayed for one it's not always accessible usually Callum on has to be present and eventually a special card has to appear to activate the next stage when it does happens the sequences are crazy cool when they're animated in 2d matrix there's this whole black in green matrix vibe to them which really helps to sell that digital aesthetic Taymor's tells one story with a beginning middle and an end which is why it feels like such a slow burn by episode 12 of Digimon Adventure the first story archive completed but tamers is barely getting started by episode 12 first time the show may feel like it's dragging but I watched in the first half a second time for this video and I have to say it's a lot better on a repeat viewing the show does feel like it's sort of starting this simple story arc when twelve Digimon based on the Chinese zodiac start attacking Shinjuku each episodes has the kids beating one of the twelve daiva so you think it's going to be this clean boss battle style arc where they beat one every episode but then everything changes course when Cal Amon is captured and brought to the digital world and sets up a simple predictable storyline just for the purpose of changing course that's great even when they finally arrive into the digital world it's nothing like the way it was an adventure instead of the Narnia style fantasy world it's this desolate wasteland filled with scraps of data trying to form into something more meaningful it's specifically withholding the familiar but if you're part of the Japanese audience eventually someone familiar does come along Rio oh yeah yeah uh whoo Rio was supposed to be this familiar face for Digimon fans a character who's back of the head made a 2-second non-speaking cameo in Adventure 0-2 and he was the main character in some Japan exclusive games for everyone's favorite console the wonderswan good old Rio on the good old wonderswan if you didn't have a wondrous Wan growing up did you even have a childhood reading through kanakas notes which I highly recommend to any fan it seems like the role Rio plays may have been considered for one of the characters from adventure but I guess from a story standpoint it makes more sense to use Rio as a connection as we learn rio is from the tamers universe but it doesn't provide that feeling of familiarity it's supposed to for an American audience and if you've seen any of my videos you know the way I mispronounce words means I'm very American so like all of my other reviews I'm watching it the English dub I do that because it's what I grew up with sure it's a different product than the Japanese dub but it's the one I want to talk about because it's what I have a connection to but tamers dub is more respectful to the source material than the other two are it's worth noting tamers dub wasn't handled by the same team and often its chillie steve blum of sexy voice fame writing the dub he also plays blond spike Spiegel and guilmon that's right the same guy who did this love the kind of woman that could kick my ass also does this I wish I could the theme song is still the same from the previous shows but it's remixed with this grittier electric guitar I really love the casting in the English dub except for Suzy one of my biggest pet peeves are the way that English dubs handle little kids I can't stand it how dare you I particularly like David Wittenberg as Henry and Brigitte Hoffman as Jerry there is a realism to their performance it's imperfect one of my biggest problems with the dub however is actually the music in the first half of the series they reuse a lot of the music from the English dub of the digimon adventure series it's more fantastical and does a disservice to tamers attempts to establish this as a different world but at least Digimon Tamers doesn't have the did you wrap the series is all about perspective and change all of the main characters have different philosophies which drive them but they grow with time every time a new villain is introduced we learn they're not really the villain one of the benefits of having a smaller cast is the focus on side character development specifically in Mon and Jerry whose stories kind of coincide with one another a big change which is made as a Down play on destiny the kids in adventure work chosen to be partnered with their Digimon but in tamers the Digimon in the human have to agree to be partnered there's more of an effort to make the kids involved in the fight and this idea of kids in digimon choosing to work together pays off with the Digimons final evolution bio merging Takato Rika Henry and good old Rio all combined with their Digimon to become super strong as a kid I hated this but as an adult I love this I understand what they're going for now focusing on the partnership as a two-way relationship makes the relationship more meaningful these characters weren't chosen for one another they picked each other however that also makes it possible for Digimon to renounce their tamer it makes it even more brutally heartbreaking when one of the maaan dies imp Mon can't digivolve because it abandoned it stammers - little brat kids but Nathan Mon makes a deal with the leader of the daiva the Zhu Zhu Zhu quia Moltres it'll help him digivolve if he destroys the kids this isn't a threat which was suddenly introduced like many of the villains in Adventure this is a character we saw develop and get desperate enough to come to this point we also see Jerry want to become partners to lio monde and how much the partnership means to her when it finally agrees that's why it's so effective when M Fon as abhi L Zaman kills Li omen and absorbs its data implants character arc continues when it later reconnects with it stammers and becomes desperate to earn Jerry's forgiveness leading up to one of the most emotionally resonant moments in the entire franchise in an act of desperateness Beelzemon calls upon li omens data and uses the fist of the beast King Leo Mons signature attack tamers dark tone really expresses itself within the final third of the series after Jerry loses glioma and her body becomes possessed by something called the D Reaper we get a nightmare from her and her emotional Espada inhabited by this emotional assist unsettling the scene that got under my skin specifically was Jerry attacking her little brother something about little kids being violent just the final villain isn't a Digimon the D Reaper was a program created to clean up scrap data and AI files which were too large it was created by the team who created Digimon as a sort of cleaning software all the villains are good guys in their own eyes but the D Reaper has no philosophy it's just cleaning up a mess which happens to be you know life the forms it takes are just so unsettling and it uses Jerry's voice to communicate which is also just it gets under your skin the ending of tamers gives no time for celebration it's sudden and it's more bitter than sweet but it leaves the audience with a small glimmer of hope that the kids may one day see the Digimon again tamers is something truly unique it creates something that is great and genuinely creative out of a franchise which is really just meant to sell toys and I think that's why people love it so much it's not a toy commercial I mean how do you sell this it's a sincere and emotionally grounded story using the desires of kids to create a well-meaning fantasy with the 15th anniversary blu-ray of Digimon Tamers there was a special audio drama CD which featured all of the characters in 2018 and ended on a cliffhanger Kanaka has expressed interest on a proper return to the tamers world but of course I love the series and I would be open to it however after watching Digimon try I uh I really don't want to see where did you bond would bring Wrentham on y'all are nasty number 6 Digimon Tamers battle of adventurers this one originally premiered on July 14th 2001 at the toe a summer Film Festival and it's English counterpart aired on October 16th 2005 on Toon Disney Digimon Tamers is one of the most unique in plot-driven children's anime it's weirdly dark very character oriented and had a continuous plot which didn't leave a lot of room for filler this description can be said for a lot of anime which is why I am ever so baffled at the expanding list of non-canon or Canon ish anime movies there's a never-ending fan theory community dedicated to figuring out which two episodes of an anime a movie can fit between you know without affecting the plot too much that's what Digimon Tamers battle of adventurers is except a movie exclusive character shows up towards the end of tamers so I don't know battle of adventurers is 51 minutes long so it's the longest of the films based on an existing anime part of the reason it's this long is because there's a lot of moving parts I also think it's a good time to mention that the a tour of tamers Chiaki J Kanaka no involvement with this film as tamers was still ongoing when it premiered so Takato and Henry two of the main characters from Tamers are spending their summer vacation in Okinawa Takata wants to hang out with his cousin but Henry wants to see some nerd stuff meanwhile Rica is in Shinjuku just hanging out then all of a sudden omnimon possibly from Digimon Adventure is in the digital world and he needs to stop him a fist Oman who's the reincarnated version of epochal amman also possibly from digimon adventure from destroying humanity meanwhile some girl who lost her dog to drowning is sad about the virtual pet her dad made her to replace her actual dog using these virtual pets Mephisto man unleashes Digimon onto the world but the virtual pet replacement dog is really a Digimon V pet and vaccine made to kill all the other virtual pets and it does and now they're all dead like all of my other V pets then the fisherman turns big and they beat him up at the end okay there are so many ideas and things at play here and a lot of moving parts that end up having to come together Minami the girl who lost her dog is treated so horribly the film is almost mean-spirited towards her she sad about her dog and her virtual dog comes to life and then the virtual dog dies and that's her story poor girl does the dog die calm has about half of their servers dedicated to this one movie battle of adventurers looks really nice however the tropical aesthetic the animation it's all beautiful there are some really cute moments with Gillman and taqaddas cousin Kai but ultimately it's not playing to tamers strengths Digimon Tamers is so dark and so visceral this is just a bad Digimon with an evil plan in tamers the kids were so worried about killing Digimon and here they're just taking them out like their little flies murdering them and it's a shame too because Mephisto man is so cool-looking it's just basically the torso of satan and the thighs of Jonathan Joestar I wish something more was done to play to the strengths of tamers especially in a non cannon flash cannon ish movie there's a lot of room to whenever you want with the characters and story like including characters from adventure so it is implied this is omni montt from digimon adventure but my question is why couldn't you just let the kids from tamers meet matt in thai that would be fun it's harmless in this context just give us a small little crossover because what are these movies besides kind of being fanservice I said I believed revenge of dia Borman was the perfect bite-sized movie for mindless action but battle of adventurers drags on a lot it definitely has its moments and it's truly beautifully done but I do want it to be more like the material it's based on so quick question have you seen these movies or heard of them cuz I know they did err in English on Disney Channel but I'm not sure if they ever aired more than once so they may be pretty obscure to an English audience and if you have seen them which ones do you like because it's also hard for me to find out what the common consensus is for these films number seven Digimon Tamers runaway loco - one first premiered at the spring to--we anime festival in March 2002 it takes place six months after the end of Digimon Tamers so all of the Digimon have returned to a human world and they're planning something for Rica which she seems pretty mad about all of a sudden a train misses its stop and we soon find out it's a locum on a train Digimon who's speeding all over the place all fast like Takato gets on the train leaving guilmon behind in Rika and Ren Amon are able to get on as well the rest of the cast including the hypnose agents are all working together you catch a local mod Takata finds out that local Mon is being controlled by a parasite Digimon who also controls Rika the parasite makes her remember some pretty sensitive childhood memories they all find out lo c'mon is heading to a digital rift and if they don't stop it in time it'll unleash chaos onto the world making evil Digimon come out and attack the team finally catches up to it and defeats the parasite Digimon lo c'mon rides off and we find out everyone was planning a surprise party for Rika how nice Rika sits away from everyone appreciating what they've done for her but at a distance like battle of adventurers this movie did not have the direct involvement of Kona but both the writer and director were heavily involved with digimon tamers so it still feels really connected to the world Kanaka even complimented the work they did on the film what I like about many of these Digimon movies are the self containment of them they're usually well paced and it's always a treat to see Digimon animated well and I say this a lot because it really is awesome to go from this to this while I did enjoy it I wish the tension and consequences of locum on hitting its destination were more dire and urgent I get that unleashing bad Digimon into the world is bad but that's a problem that characters could solve and overcome in the event of it happening not to compare this to the golden child of Digimon movies but the consequences of our war game is something that the children couldn't solve if it were to happen in fact I kind of want to see local maaan hit its destination because that just wouldn't mean more giant monster fights and I do like a lot of giant monster fights I think a lot of the character interaction along the way in this film is really nice and cute like Henry accidentally taking lopmon his sister's Digimon by accident yeoman is just this pure baby boy and watching him trying to get to Takato is so great and seeing BL zaman for even two seconds before getting rekt is a bit of a treat however I think the highlight of this film is Rica's arc we know through the series that she has a strained relationship with her mother due to the fact that she had Rika out of every young age and is busy working on her career so Rika was primarily raised by her grandmother throughout the series Rica's father is nowhere to be seen and her relationship to him is never explored however here we get glimpses of their relationship what I love about Rika as a character is the fact that she's so quiet and reserved and the way this relationship is explored in the film is also very quiet and reserved we know Rika has complex feelings about this but her reaction to having this memory just come back to her in such an extreme way is to quietly reflect on it it really shows her growth from the angry character at the beginning of tamers to a more plaintiff won now her anger are being replaced by a more contemplative yet still emotionally distant character leaves a lot of room for her character to continue to grow and it really makes me want more from the series because I truly believe there is so much more to explore here did you find those one of the first serialized shows I was exposed to but it was hard to watch it all I didn't originally see every episode when it was airing and there was no complete set of VHS volumes released just a few here and there it wasn't until after YouTube came around that I was able to completely and legally watch all of Digimon together I finally got to rewatch all of an adventure into the other Digimon series which I only caught a few episodes of as a little guy tamers and frontier a show it's just completely turned me off part of what makes Digimon Digimon are the partner Digimon a special digital monster chosen her handpicked for a certain kid the kids relationship to the Digimon will often act as a surrogate to show how the kids learn and grow up the relationship between the kid and their Digimon was something that I really valued in the series I was so in love with the partner concept of the idea did you model to get rid of it was genuinely upsetting and frontier the cast did it partner with Digimon they turned into Digimon but this seems to be many people's only complaint about Digimon frontier I remember liking frontier when I rewatched it all those years ago so it's time to realize something there have been tons of great stories where the main character doesn't have a Digimon the Iliad Citizen Kane Gossip Girl Digimon frontier isn't bad because the kids transform into Digimon no it's bad for completely different reasons means they've gone off without again you are a small sliver of light in this dark dark world but first I really don't want this to be an angry review I'm not coming at this from a place of anger or from a desire to rant I was just bored while watching frontier consider this my catharsis frontier takes place in its own universe separate from the other did you on shows it begins one evening with every child ever getting a phone call by a mysterious adult telling them they need to pursue their destiny and board a train right before 5 p.m. the kids are all taken to the digital world although so the children go home 5 in particular start hanging out with one another their cell phones turn into detectors which allow them to transfer data from the digital world and channel the power of the legendary warriors allowing them to turn into Digimon they eventually learned they were chosen over every other kid after arriving in the digital world to put an end to some ancient evils the plots the frontier is simple but it's genuinely well constructive there's early foreshadowing to things that don't pay off until the very end of the series and the conflict of the entire show involves this ancient feud between the higher powers of the digital world but there's a lot of filler in the world bill doesn't seem to reflect what we're told about the lore we learn about this ancient war between beasts type and human type Digimon eventually the war ended in 3 celestial Digimon took over to govern the digital world cherubi mana beast type along with a fond iman and seraphim on to human types kuru Biman turned evil and raised a beast-type army to usurp the other to which it was able to raise due to the belief that beasts type Digimon didn't have enough political power this backstory is told over and over again but we never see this conflict between the two Digimon types outside of when the backstory is explained the kids get beast type and human type transformation but that's really all that's mentioned from it there's also a lot of filler and filler can be great a single episode does not have to drive the plot forward filler can be good for world development bone it feels disconnected from everything else the world seems to be less real and let me tell you this world is already not very real we'll give you back to your partner in exchange for all women so initially the cast of frontier is made up of five characters Takuya Koji Tomi Zoe and JP besides their perceived role in the show leader little kid angsty boy I couldn't tell you much about their character I can't tell you what happened to them and the character beats they want you to recognize but it all feels so OneNote Tommy is a little kid who needs to learn to fend for himself okay he does like five times and every time he learns this exact same lesson they frame it like it's the very first time he's ever even thought about it JP and Zoe had trouble making friends but now they know the true meaning of friendship and Koji while Koji has attachment issues because his mom died when he was very young and now he doesn't want to get too close to his stepmom oh but but there's a big twist in the middle of the series it turns out his mom isn't actually dead his dad just lied to him so he can get his dick wet yeah you don't need to play nice with stepmom anymore she probably knew about the whole thing also turns out Koji has this secret twin brother whose primary conflict as he's being controlled by an evil digimon once he finally joined the team he adds nothing to their dynamic Takuya well Takuya wears goggles so he's the main character I think a lot of the problems I have with these characters is I don't really understand their dynamic I'm not sure I'll ever understand them I feel like with this many filler episodes there should really be a strong chemistry between these characters but the filler is always used to explore a new set of digimon characters the character drama which is introduced is either repeated until it's obnoxious or completely not relatable of course in fantasy stories there are unrealistic situations but the good ones have human emotion lying underneath everything it should be drama from character interaction with magic not character drama because of magic and the original Digimon show the problems the characters faced were fantastical and whatnot but the motivating factors for the human characters weren't worrying about a loved one living up to high expectations being attracted to your sin Digimon frontier there's a lot of situations where an external magical force causes character conflict like a Digimon infecting Tommy's dreams not being able to control a powerful spirit an evil dark force controlling your actions and obscuring your memories it's boring because there's no proxy for that feeling in a real life jeremy renner I get it now I hope you're doing okay frontier also has a way of making its villains overstay their welcome there are one-off villains here and there which are fun like ice demi-monde but that's only because his English voice is a Christopher Walken impression do have tasty data like those others yummy but a large part of the story involves five evil legendary warriors who are just the worst okay I actually do have a dub specific critique if you're gonna come up with an obnoxious quirk for a character's voice like talking like Gollum no business of you a mobster yo you want her to rough them up for years an English man now should study an opponent face or a southern belle make sure they're not characters who are around for nearly 30 episodes and please make sure there are extensive scenes where they're all interacting with each other with their silly voice every time they're going up against a villain it's the same exact thing the villain wants to scan data from somewhere to gain more power the kids lose the villains win and tell eventually the kids get more power I feel like Digimon Adventure and tamers did the right thing with their villains although the same power dynamic happens between those kids and the villains usually there's another story unfolding while the characters are either trying to reach a similar goal or stop the kids from succeeding an adventure they got to get home and maybe stopping this villain will help that or they have to save a kid before the villain gets ahold of them it isn't until the end of the series where the plot is solely we have to defeat the villain and when they do decide that saving the digital world should be their primary objective we've had over 40 episodes of meeting characters and understanding the importance of this place it's something they have to learn to care about but frontier is literally driven by the fact that the kids don't know what they're supposed to do and they're on their way to a location where hopefully they'll find out what they're needed for there's no motivating force the characters always have the option to go home they choose to stay in the digital world because I don't know it'll be fun I guess I think the backstory to frontier is well thought out but how the characters interact with that story is not I really don't want this to come off as an angry review I think getting angry at media you don't enjoy is kind of silly if you enjoyed frontier that's great and just for you here's a list of things I actually liked about Digimon frontier that really didn't fit into an organized setting I really enjoy the dynamic with the kids guides Pokemon and Niemann they have this really adorable chemistry I like it when cherubi montserrat faman and ofany mana are reborn as their rookie stages and I'll play around with each other it's adorable I like how there's no strict adherence to the power scaling of Digimon levels if you want a champion level of Digimon stage 4 to beat up a mega level Digimon stage 6 it should totally be able to as long as it serves the story I really appreciate how the English dub cut out fanservice for an 11-year old and also I love the English dub theme it kicks ass which is such an upgrade to the weird original theme song which I love nostalgically but it really isn't so good y'all this video gets 10,000 likes I'll do a cover of the frontier song I don't even sing but I'll do it I feel like Digimon frontier gets a bad rap for changing up the formula and you could argue it was doing something new but I really don't think it was the concept of kids turning into superheroes through a transformation sequences seen all throughout anime it was Digimon doing something different but it wasn't trying anything new it was conforming to something that already existed I wanted to like the show because the only bad thing I've ever heard about it was the kids turned into Digimon but that's only the reason why people dismissed it I wanted to be able to say give frontier a chance but it's not good its characters are boring the world isn't consistent the story moves slowly it's repetitive and then it also changes the formula I consider Digimon frontier the end of classic Digimon in America Saban had been purchased by Disney who took over dubbing with frontier in and did you mom took a 3-year hiatus from producing anime I can't help but to feel like the lack of an interest in Digimon frontier is what forced the series to take a hiatus which caused American interest in the franchise to begin to fade shows need casual viewers to succeed not everyone can be a hardcore fan and whenever I talk to anyone who even barely watched Digimon growing up they always say they stopped watching with the one where they turned into Digimon I feel like if the show were engaging people wouldn't have dismissed it regardless of the big change but unfortunately those who are skeptical of the change those who needed to be convinced of the concept had nothing to grab onto Digimon was so heavily perceived as a Pokemon clone to get past that stigma it had to be better than Pokemon and when it wasn't people stopped paying attention all right now that I've done Digimon frontier I think I'm going to take a hint from that Digimon production team and take a little bit of a hiatus from Digimon content and by that I mean I've already started watching the next series because I have already started getting requests for it love y'all number eight Digimon frontier revival of ancient Digimon this one premiered at the summer to--we Festival in July 2002 in October 23rd 2005 in the United States this was also the final Digimon movie to be translated into English until Digimon Adventure tri now I want to say I'm not a huge fan of frontier to begin with so if you liked this movie and like frontier that's okay this is just me expressing my opinion it's not meant to disprove your opinion while traveling through the desert the cast of Digimon frontier come across two groups of feuding Digimon continuing what the conflict of the show one side is comprised of human type Digimon and the other side is comprised of beast type Digimon the human types are led by darkman and the beast types are led by hippogriffs maan the kids try to take sides in the conflict but ultimately decide to try to foster peace between both groups because two of the Digimon are children and Friends and their friendship is threatened to be torn apart by all of this fighting me while part of the group discovers an ancient mural telling of ancient Greymon ancient guru mana nor nice maan ancient guardians who both sides want to return in order to bring peace however someone takes the time to you know actually read the mural and they find out that or nice maan is actually quite evil and if the conflict continues enough digi code will be collected to bring or nice Mons return it's revealed that hippogriffs Minh and darkman are actually the same digimon being a slide evolution version of mermoo cos this one or nice man is resurrected but so is ancient Greymon and ancient guru ramon who helped to defeat or a nice maan and then everyone is happy this one bored me I was bored by it once again I'm not big on Digimon frontier so if you like frontier you may enjoy it I know there's a lot of slow build-up here but it does seem slow I don't really get in the conflict between the two groups beyond the existing conflict which exists in the show and by this point I've kind of forgotten why all of it happens but I assure you I have not forgotten that I promised I would do a cover of the song I just need to learn this gosh-darn instrument first also I don't understand why the kids choose the sides they did beyond the fact that that's the side they were introduced to first however I do like the twist that Hippogriff Montand Darkman are the same character that's a smart decision which plays into the Digimon mechanics introduced in frontier itself which is something I'm always a fan of this one disappointed me because I did like the zero two films even though I'm not the biggest zero to fan so I was kind of hoping this one would make me want to give frontier another chance but alas it did not however I'm still open to it in the future number nine digital monsters X evolution so first and foremost I'm sorry the quality for this one is bad from my understanding the only DVD release of it is quite rare or just doesn't exist and I couldn't find a better quality version of it anywhere online airing on Fuji TV on January 3rd 2005 X evolution is the first original feature Digimon movie and if you couldn't tell X evolution was the first and only entirely CG Digimon film and the only film which was made-for-tv unlike the other Digimon movies X evolution is not based on an existing anime instead it takes many of the plot elements from a line of Digimon toys and turns them into a 77 minute feature-length film the Digimon X pendulum which was the fourth variety of Digimon v-pet was the model for the digivice featured in chronicle and d cyber and a lot of the lore that still sticks with Digimon to this day seems to have gotten its first stories in the chronicle based toy line the story of Chronicle is about the digital world being cleansed by its primary ruler and the primary server of the digital world Gyges troll or as the English adaptations call him king drasil using a virus called the X program Drazen hopes to eliminate 98% of Digimon basically the clear hard drive space however certain Digimon develop an immunity to the X program called the X antibody which causes them the mutate into slightly different versions of themselves at the same time there are new species of Digimon being born who naturally have the X antibody trayzell oil mites are called in to slaughter the remaining Digimon you know for kids I've always been aware of X Digimon but I never really was aware of their lore the best way I can describe him is that they're the edgy or cooler version of Digimon I mean this in a better way but it kind of reminds me of things like loonatics unleashed or that xavius lee force cartoon that homestar runner did a few years ago knowing the general story of X Digimon beforehand helps a lot because for the most part X evolution drops you in thinking you are kind of already familiar with it the film follows the story of door room on a small Digimon who carries the X antibody through a strange stone on its forehead the stone makes Doraemon an immediate target for Digimon looking to gain the vaccine and also makes it a social outcast Doraemon lives in a digital world already being wiped out by Dre's 'el and its royal knights however some stronger X Digimon help to defend the world all while Doraemon tries to protect itself and a tokomon which it for friends one of the Royal Knights defects from King Drasil due to the moral conflict it's having by carrying out all of the orders along the way many stronger digimon died leaving the protection of the world in the hands of doraemon the head of the royal knights omnimount continues to kill Toru Mons friends but eventually they just keep coming back to life Doraemon eventually did evolves into the same kind of Digimon trayzell is using to wipe out the world and all of the other Digimon are like OMG what are you Doraemon confronts omnimon who decides to also deflect from king drasil and then Doraemon ditch evolves into alpha man alpha man and omnimon defeat the big bad evil to Roman and King Drasil Daruma and dies but then comes back to life and tokomon comes back - like - but now was an ex Digimon and then they laugh and play the end I was really excited to watch this I remember enjoying it when I was really young but it's just kind of a chore now first I had absolutely no prior knowledge to the X antibody storyline before I watched this so I spent a lot of my brain energy while watching this trying to figure out the story now it's not super confusing and I was able to put all the pieces together alright but it wastes no time jumping into it I mean the first scene is a Leo man hunting Doraemon then the Leo man dies and then the Leo maan asks Dora want to live for it even though it was just trying to kill it I mean date wastes no time killing Leo man this time it happens immediately and now I don't know what to expect from the story once again the story isn't incredibly difficult to understand but following the story is how I expended my mental energy while watching it which totally distracts from anything else going on the movies just grin and depressing I mean nearly 98% of Digimon have been murdered and now we're watching this lone Digimon survive that's all of its friends get murdered I'm not saying everything needs to be upbeat and excitingly happy but it's not engaging it just bums me out finally the aesthetic of this movie is ugly well I appreciate the attempts to do 3d especially on a TV budget in 2005 I'm watching this in 2018 and it's really hard to judge the film as a piece from its time it looks like unrendered Dreamcast or early ps2 cutscenes and that would be fine but the Digimon are animated with zero weight they move around with ease and land with absolutely zero impact its floaty and super distracting if I'm distracted from what's going on because I'm trying to follow the plotline I'm disinterested in the movie aesthetically and I'm just bummed out from when I am able just to sit back and watch I'm not really going to be interested well I appreciate this movie for forcing me to do research about something in Digimon lore that I only really had a passing knowledge of the movie itself didn't do anything to inform me or to really entertain me Digimon was consistently airing from 1999 to 2004 sure there were four different series with four different sets of characters but they aired within weeks of each other the final of the original run Digimon frontier was the largest departure in terms of the original concept although finding critical consensus and audience reaction from its initial release is hard the original Japanese ratings were abysmal when compared to the other series it would be nearly three years before the next digimon series Digimon savers would air in Japan and the English adaptation Digimon Data Squad had a four and a half year gap between it and frontier now I never watched data squad but I did watch Digimon savers as it was airing through uploads to YouTube but when I watched it illegally on YouTube that was like 12 years ago so I think the statute of limitations is up I remember liking Digimon savers but in the same way that I liked Shadow the Hedgehog it just felt like a more grown-up version of something that I already liked but looking back on it that was very superficial while doing this Digimon retrospective Digimon Data Squad frontier infusion have all come up as the ones people consider to be the worst I don't think Digimon Data Squad is good but the problems it has are totally inoffensive there aren't major structural issues boring characters or boring concepts it's just kind of soulless Digimon Data Squad has a slightly older cast than the other Digimon sear the main character Marcus Damon is 14 years old and he meets up with Ana Goom on the same kind of Digimon from the original series he's told he'll either have to let Agumon go back to the digital world or join a special government organization called the Data Squad dat's more like dad ass was edited out of the English dub am I right homies dats is essentially the men in black but for digimon they even have those little memory eraser sticks they'll receive a call about a Digimon causing trouble or investigate something weird which ends up being caused by a Digimon then they have to deal with it by beating it up although the premise begins with this concept as its foundation the series evolved to tell more of a traditional Digimon story they meet enemies with increasingly stronger power levels and they have to digivolve to transform to a more powerful level to beat them a lot of the Digimon series after adventure felt like a spin on what you'd expect from Digimon but tamers so far has been the only series to take advantage of its unique concept the Data Squad is like a detective agency there should be questions and intrigue there are mysteries and secrets throughout the show and revelations that may result in a hmm kind of reaction but there's not an ongoing investigation into these things while at least not on-screen who killed Laura Palmer wouldn't be interesting if every episode of Twin Peaks didn't involve an investigation into her murder Digimon Data Squad mentions of mystery spends enough time to have you forget about it before handing you the answer to a question you forgot you were briefly curious about why our Digimon coming into the human world isn't interesting because one we've seen it before and two because it's not an answer being actively worked towards in each episode we learned Marcus's dad went missing in the digital world okay but for that to be shocking we should have asked about him and wondered where he was before that revelation came instead it's just presented as if it were sort of a fun fact the Data Squad premise feels abandoned and although it plays into the pot later on they literally abandon it the main cast goes against what the federal government wants and basically have to play by their own rules which essentially means fighting and no investigating but Digimons strength has never ever been because of the plot so let's take a look at the characters I don't know who you are but you're standing in the middle of my turf our main should be wearing goggles character is Marcus Marcus is an aggressive little lad Marcus wants to be the world's ultimate fighter so he goes around challenging everyone and punching Digimon in the face Agumon gained some respect for Marcus and decides that follow him around because Marcus is the boss Marcus has this attitude that the best way of going about a situation is to jump into the fight and be the first one to hit somebody at first this sort of gets him into trouble but he never quite grows out of this attitude and continues to start every fight by punching a Digimon I really wish we saw Marcus get his ass kicked at some point the characters age into Agumon were added to attract older fans back into the series there's a sort of edge to Marcus's character in Agumon Marcus has to punch other Digimon to activate a DNA charge to get Agumon to digivolve when Agumon does digivolve he turns into a more aggressive looking version of the original evolutions to augment instead of the bubbly Greymon there's geo Greymon complete with red stripes and a spiky body instead of metal Greymon there's rice cream on with a really really detailed crotch a lot of people don't like the fact that Marcus has to punch Digimon but I don't mind it it's fun to an extent but I I really wish he got his ass kicked at some point then there's a Yoshi an eighteen-year-old member of dats who first tries to convince Marcus to join she's a sort of mentor figure to Marcus and the other younger members of deaths she and Lal Aman her Digimon have this great chemistry it's almost like they're roommates who happen to work together lalamon turns into Roseman who doesn't have a 500-dollar figure yet oh by the way look at this look at this slick English dub edit then there's Thomas the final main dance member Thomas is a 14 year old super smart super rich boy who needs to analyze everything he's a sort of foil to Marcus his personality and eventually the two learned to respect one another Thomas's partner is Galman a little wolf creature who's always calling Thomas sir I feel like the relationship between the dots members and their Digimon are more of a working relationship rather than a friendship of maaan is always calling Marcus boss and gal Mon calls Thomas sir it's a subservient role which makes it hard to accept how fondly they discuss their friendship it also doesn't help that the Digimon are huge when compared to other seasons and sometimes they're drawn super anthropomorphic sized they're too human they could almost just be another employee of debts there are moments of comfort and reassurance from the Digimon and other series which help the kids to learn from their mistakes but that is not the case here it's not a sweet relationship their work friends I don't buy it when they talk about how important their relationship to their Digimon is because if they didn't directly tell me I would never know however there are also a lot of charming side characters in Dana squad Marcus's sister and mom are fun and have a great chemistry with Marcus who's like this super aggressive teenage boy his mom is just super relaxed but she's also this strong parental figure for him then there are the other Dana squad members you really get the feeling that the Data Squad is a team who all operate well with one another the commander and the two communication people are fun and they've all seen action before we even get to see their Digimon Digimon not something common in other Digimon series and finally there's Keenan a young boy who was lost in the digital world when he was small he was raised by Digimon so he's grown up to have this resentment towards humans but also he thinks he is a Digimon which is why he speaks in broken English me hate them you know because he was raised by Digimon who all speak perfect English Tina's partner is falcomon who acts as a sort of older brother to keenan being a much less aggressive a more level-headed character with the same views towards humans pal c'mon and keenan have more of a proper relationship falcomon often guides keenan and helps him to realize the good relationship Digimon and humans can have their relationship works because they help each other grow as I said there aren't inhairent to the plot the show begins as an episodic almost procedural show about the deaths team this time has really used to introduce the audience to the concept of Digimon as the show goes on however we're introduced to a more stream plot which builds on top of previous plot points the center of the show revolves around the relationship between Digimon and humans on a political level the story doesn't reveal how everything plays together immediately but as different characters are introduced and different viewpoints are given the individual puzzle pieces are eventually brought together to make a more holistic story essentially when Kenan first went missing a small team including the commander of dats and Marcus's dad I went into the digital world to find him one of the search party members grew at distaste for Digimon and basically attempted genocide canon grew to hate humans because of this Marcus's dad stayed in the digital world the same as friends the commander went on the form dots and the relationship between human and Digimon continued to sour I like the idea of different parts of the plot revealing themselves over time but the way it's revealed the optin feels stupidly cheap the first time we learn about Marcus's father is from one of the prominent Digimon in the digital world it asks Marcus if he's related to Spencer Damon Marcus tries to answer but the Digimon literally cuts him off and says we're done talking Damon is it possible you're Spencer Damon son my father why'd you ask man why'd you ask everyone in the show knows about Marcus's dad his mother the commander the villain but Marcus and the audience doesn't know about him it's not information the character has to learn but it's information withheld from him which makes the revelations feel really unearned any of the characters could have decided at any point to reveal this information to him but they just decided not to until it was dramatically convenient the plot which eventually unfolds is just this generic story with themes and ideas which are no different than any other Digimon series before it which is a shame the idea of the Data Squad is really a unique spin on Digimon although the characters are technically teenagers it often feels like young adults working their first job but they didn't lean into that too much it's just like they didn't lean into the investigative work of dats too much either this is a show which should have been intriguing and interesting but it ends up playing it safe and because that it's only passively interesting savers and Data Squad wanted to be digimon for a teenage audience but the way it goes about that is through a slightly different coat of paint the characters are older they're drawn more realistically and through superficial means the story seems somehow darker I mean a human villain commits Digimon genocide and then becomes Satan because that's metal as heck but when you start diving into the content of the show it's very shallow if you take the time a show like Digimon Tamers can be thought-provoking it uses darker themes and tones effectively to engage the audience build tension and to raise snakes but data squad doesn't solely to make the show appear cool to adolescent kids who are afraid to admit they still watch a kids show I mean it worked on me when I was 11 for the most part I wasn't bored while watching Digimon Data Squad the boring moments pass quickly but I wish I could say more than just well I wasn't bored did you my data squad is the first of these series I've reviewed that just sort of blends in with the rest of Digimon there's nothing about it that makes it stand out it's not horrible it's just kind of there and hopefully one day I'll have a rosemont figure and it will just kind of be there on my shelf and finally number 9 Digimon savers the movie ultimate power activate burst mode I love how so many of these movies just have these titles that are never-ending released on December 26 2007 this movie takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where an evil plant Digimon has overgrown the city and taken all of humanity captive the Digimon from Digimon savers and Data Squad Agumon Galman and al alamin have to traverse through the city to defeat the evil Digimon while accompanying another digimon who looks like a human girl named rhythm eventually they get to the very top of the city where the bad Digimon awaits Agumon burns it allowing his partner Marcus to be released Marcus punches the bad Digimon because he has a habit of doing so and Agumon digivolve to shine Greymon but the plant Digimon Digimon too luckily shinegreymon gets the ultimate power activate burst mode the movie they beat the bad guy up and then they win the end so if you watched my review of Digimon Data Squad you know I didn't totally dislike it but it definitely was in the bottom half of the Digimon shows for me however I really enjoyed Digimon savers the movie ultimate power activate first mode the movie I mean at the end of the day it's just a 20 minute short film with three strong personalities going to save someone they care about it's easy to grasp it's just a journey movie and it's genuinely charming and fun also it's technically post-apocalyptic and it's technically a darker story but it's not depressing part of what I like about it is for the most part the Digimon are in their base form they're tiny so a lot of the action is in these smaller locations I know I've said multiple times that I like as a giant monster fights but I also like the little monster fights the highlight for me is the Galman fight into the restaurant and of course l-'alamin using sausage links as nunchucks it's just genuinely adorable and funny I was even glad to see Marcus at the end of the movie I don't mind him like most people do I think his kind of Dom loud and obnoxious character helps to counteract the more serious and dark tone of Digimon Data Squad of course the film has an environmental message the plant Digimon kidnaps the humans for pollution reasons and whatnot I feel like besides the Digimons monologue this theme completely doesn't carry any weight throughout the film it seems like it was just a motivation added on because the plant Digimon is kind of cool-looking and they wanted to use it which that's fine I don't need a super deep villain motivation just use something that works however after seeing this plants pipe Digimon I really want a bio lont a type Digimon the highlight of the entire Shore comes during the credits just like a classic Pixar movie the end credits feature a series of bloopers with the characters messing up their takes or special effects going wrong you know what my head Canon for this film is that all of the Digimon got together and made a movie I mean it's not canon so that could be plausible however despite being really Enter taining did you mon savers 3d the movie arguments revenge ultimate power activate burst mode the movie didn't really do well at the box office if you look at the box office numbers for all of the Digimon movies it's not hard to figure out why there was no Digimon cross wars or boy hunters films it's even a good measurement for how Digimon has slowly lost popularity with time each film past the adventure movies made less and less money at the box office with the highest-grossing earning 27 million into the lowest the last film earning less than 1 million however Digimon Adventure tries series did fairly well at the box office and hopefully that fares well for the upcoming Digimon Adventure film so anyways I'm going to thank for comments and likes just like I'm supposed to do do you think you would enjoy to see these movies translated in English or would you just kind of want them to be released as subtitles have you seen Digimon X evolution or even heard of it before this video because I rarely hear people talk about it I really do think English fans would enjoy to have a rerelease or just release of these movies because they're truly really enjoyable however if and when they are re-released or just released they better include the digi rap over the last year or so I've been watching all of Digimon as a kid I saw every season and although I knew I liked some more than others I enjoyed every single one revisiting the series the seasons I enjoyed more as a kid are still my favorites but for reasons I didn't really know how to articulate there are many things within this series I appreciate more than ever even the seasons I didn't like too much have redeemable qualities like Niemann I just like Digimon like Niemann I initially started talking about all the Digimon series I really only wanted to do what I had seen however I can justify not watching something like Apple Eamon because it's technically a spinoff but Digimon fusion or cross wars was the only series I hadn't watched as a kid so my mind as well check it out when did you Mon cross wars first aired I checked out the first episode and I wasn't really into it for the first time I felt disconnected to Digimon because of my age Digimon cross wars in fusion feels like a kids show and I can't really say that for the other shows Digimon has always felt like it to show about childhood a celebration of childhood which is nostalgic in its nature not really within its iconography but within its content the best Digimon seasons aren't just shows for kids they're shows about being kids Digimon fusion however is unapologetically a show for kids [Music] which is weird because I've never felt that way about the other seasons I'm fully aware this maybe because I didn't grow up watching it but I didn't really even feel this way about the seasons I didn't alike although the show isn't totally void of redeeming qualities I often found it boring repetitive and lacking substance I'm not alone on this fusion didn't do well critically in terms of ratings and many within the fan community see it as of the worst season but it's also the season which almost killed Digimon I'll be referring to this season as Digimon fusion and as the characters to their English names because it's what it's more commonly known as even so the English dub exists people watched the English dub therefore it's worth talking about just as much as the original version is however there was easy access to the original dub so I watched about 15 episodes scattered throughout the series to compare the two most of the issues I bring up aren't even dub specific except for the editing of mervamon I guess you can't go a single season of Digimon without having explicit fanservice last time the fans were void of it they got a little creative when the show begins were introduced to Mikey Kudo he and two friends hear a distress call from a hurt Digimon who somehow has slipped into our world they rescue him and then are transferred to the digital world there they meet a whole bunch of Digimon including Shoutmon who wants to be the king of the digital world unfortunately the digital world is fractured into 108 different zones with a code crowd holding the power over each one it's a race between our main group of the fusion fighters and several other armies to collect the code crowns there's blue flare run by a human named Christopher and the bagra army led by the evil bagra mod using a fusion loader a device mysteriously given to him Mikey can collect Digimon and have them fuse to make new combinations over the course of the series Mikey makes new friends catches new Digimon it comes face-to-face with increasingly stronger enemies the collection of each code crown is usually split between two episodes or Mikey and the gang spend time fighting bagra henchmen making new friends and meeting the locals sometimes the fusion fighters will only win because of the aid of a new digimon who joins up with the team the characters and digimon fusion are either passable or completely misrepresented versions of other digimon archetypes Mikey makes a good leader because he thinks goggles are a cool accessory Marcus Damon doesn't like goggles so he will be deemed a failure I like Mikey I mean I would like Mikey if he were a real person he's very agreeable a loyal friend and makes several fatal fashion decisions which means he doesn't really have anything to prove to anyone but he's not an interesting character when talking with the other kids he'd always rather go with someone else's plan because he doesn't want to start conflict but guess what makes stories interesting conflict he has no immediate apparent flaws except for his weird quirk where he feels the need to save people which is a pretty odd character trait for a preteen to have and the Japanese dub Thai keys catchphrases I won't turn my back on them which is a similar concept but much less dramatic than a need to save people which implies mikey has had on multiple occasions an opportunity to save someone's life or watch them die he's a 13 year old athletic prodigy so that's pretty neat the band contrives underneath they moved to cut him off pity totally picked you out he decides to help Shoutmon save the digital world and achieve his goal of becoming the Digimon King and then you have his friends Angie and Jeremy I sort of started to like them I thought they were charming enough but they leave the main cast halfway through the show and it was suddenly a lot better so I guess they're more deadweight and he just wants to get home and Jeremy wants to be seen as anything but dead weight but he is oops Christopher is the new Matt but a lot less like it's a good man and a lot more like the bad Matt's Christopher wants to be the best but he doesn't like teamwork so he's gotta be the best on his own unlike Mikey Christopher's Digimon are color coordinated and robotic so you know he means business Christopher's storyline is that he doesn't think teamwork is valuable then he learns the value of teamwork at least until the next time we see him then he has already forgotten the value of teamwork and he needs to learn the lesson again and again then he forgets ink it's tempted to the dark side and learns the lesson again over and over it's exhausting I like him a lot more when he finally joins up with the team about two-thirds of the way through but until then he's just boring and brings attention to some of the more repetitive aspects of the show and then there's Nene I like Nene's presence in the show but she's not very interesting on her own does that make sense she's kind of aloof and I was having trouble nailing her personality down so I looked her up on her wiki page Nene is an enigmatic beautiful girl who leads a mysterious army okay but like in terms of her mysterious personality once the mystery is solved there's not much there Nene is like a new friend who never talks you think they're all mysterious and whatnot until you find out they're just kind of boring mysterious only works if there's something to reveal Nene is looking for her brother who disappeared into the digital world when we first meet her we get to know her motivation but then we don't hear about it for like 20 episodes and it's brought back up the episode before we see her brother so even her motivation isn't regularly apparent when we do meet her brother eewan he's just kind of whining he thinks the digital world is just a game so he wants to kill everyone so he can win but then he's proven wrong I'm sure glad that's not a repeated plotline in all of Digimon and then there's the Digimon there's a lot of a regularly appearing Digimon because each of the characters has this huge collection all of Christopher's Digimon are boring but Mikey's highlights are Shoutmon a feisty red Digimon who wants to be the king of the digital world at first we believe it's because he's selfish but he really wants to protect weaker Digimon ballistamon at boombox and duralumon a drill lion who used to be evil but is now not and also there's BL Zaman who's a more boxy version of this Beelzemon nene has sparrowmon a prettier version of JJ the jet plane the monitamon the super cute fun little ninja spy digimon and later mervamon this series justification for 13 year olds to believe they're old enough for Digimon mervamon is fun she's super eager to run into battle and in the English dub many shots of her are censored there are many gratuitous but in cleavage shots which were totally edited out of the show which is completely justified for a children's television show the idea of Digimon fusing isn't really taken advantage of the core line of evolutions the series sees is Shoutmon fusing with someone to make Shoutmon times 2 through 7 but because it's branded as Shoutmon it ends up feeling like a standard evolutionary line rather than a cool combination option between all the characters early on the Pikmin are fused to make a wide variety of different objects which is a fun creative idea but eventually they just become a sword over and over again there's a moment towards the end of fusion where a bunch of cool combinations are made in the moment where they're trying to make eat Digimon laugh so a bunch of funny combinations happen but I feel like the fusion thing is mostly a creative potential which is consistently slept on I think part of the reason I was turned off by fusion initially were because of the Digimon designs although Digimon has always been a glorified toy commercial the Digimon designs always felt like they existed separately from the toys however the Digimon in fusion all look like they were designed toys first ballistamon shoutmon and BL Zaman are very sharp looking it looks like they were made as an easy time old Shoutmon has screws in his elbows and I know they all have mechanical designs but I really don't think that's because the director liked robots even Daru lamon has a super wide stance which would make it easy to stand up to have the legs be separate parts and whatnot however there's no mervamon figure yet digi-fuse halfway through the show Mikey Angie and Jeremy all travel back to the human world Shoutmon is granted to the power to digivolve which admittedly is a cool moment but only because it's seen as something unique and special and it happens late into the series only Mikey goes back to the digital world and once he does over a year has passed and lord bagra has basically won Christopher nene and many of the other digimon mikey has collected are now missing and they later have to reconnect instead of collecting two code crowns the show's format is now about defeating the seven dark generals a group of villains appointed to the seven zones of a resurrected digital world I have to admit I enjoyed the second half a whole lot more than the first its pacing and structure is just a whole lot easier to follow and it's more enjoyable it's nothing profound or special it's just Digimon fighting and cool transformations and whatnot Digimon doesn't have to reinvent itself to work the kids don't have to turn into digimon be cops or travel around the world looking for objects all that they have to do is beat up bad guys and what separates a show worth watching multiple times and something worth having on as background noise are the details in that the ideas the characters the themes all of which are incredibly weak in Digimon fusion Fusion is a bit disoriented with its many different characters and plot points I feel like the easiest theme to point out is shoutmon's philosophy and believing it is the responsibility of the strong to protect the weak or friendship always wins or whatever although I didn't really like the previous two seasons too much I always felt like the creative team was taking advantage of an opportunity to have a creative voice but in many ways Fusion feels like whoever was writing it was just phoning it in and I may be wrong but it's just so vanilla like smash bros without items or missionary work digimon fusion is a series many people didn't watch in fact it was the lowest rated show of the entire franchise so much so it was almost canceled during its run in Japan which from my knowledge has never been the case with any other season what saved cross wars or the toy sales that's right Daru LeMans thigh gap saved the show when fusion was localized it was picked up by Nickelodeon who aired the first episode and then missed the subsequent time slots for the next three or four episodes there was no consistent airing and they moved it to the Nicktoons channel where the rest of the series aired digimon fusion had a pretty good line of toys in the US as well re lunched card-game toys and video games all were released but I can't imagine any of it did too well after fusion the next two shows in the series weren't localized several video games weren't translated and the most recent card game wasn't either it was only because of fan outcry that a subtitled version of the more recent games have been released but not all of them were financially successful it would be a fair conclusion to say digimon fusion nearly killed the series in the West however while fusion ended there was a follow up season in Japan Digimon Cross Wars the boy hunters who lept through time hunters takes place sometime after the first series were introduced to a new character tiger ooh and his Digimon gum German a little excitable Digimon most of the other cast is pushed aside with Ewan and Mikey staying around even though the other characters come in and out tiger ooh and gum German are the main focus tiger ooh is a little interesting but just because his motivation is to become better than Mikey a character who was written with limited flaws in an unreasonable athletic skill this totally seems like an acknowledgement of how he was a boring character instead of travelling to the digital world the characters travel to the digital courts a place in between time and space the human world in the digital world each episode has a Digimon finding a desperate child and creating trouble in the human world then the team beats it up in captures it there's a much larger focus on collecting Digimon this time around which is an interesting thing to see within the Digimon franchise this series is significantly more episodic than fusion which makes its repetition less noticeable because there's not an endpoint in sight with fusion I was just waiting for them to fight the big bad but the big bad and hunters only serves as a cool finale episode in which all the old Digimon heroes come through time in space to defeat quartz mud even though it makes no sense canonically it's a pretty hyped moment and it all ends with Tiger ooh saving the day not only surpassing Mikey but all the other heroes - I enjoyed hunters a lot more than the first seasons if you're going to make a show episodic make it truly episodic I have no hot takes on it because its issues are totally inoffensive and it's worth isn't anything profound it's just clean light-hearted fun something fusion didn't quite reach if you look at the franchise past cross wars what I see is how I being very unsure of its future the following season was a fleam on which was a complete rebranding of Digimon in the next season after that was Digimon Adventure tri which went from a series of 26 episodes to a series of 6 movies which tells me that to--a wasn't really able to sell ads based on the previous mediocre ratings of the show however I hope it continues cuz I genuinely enjoyed watching through all of Digimon the good the bad and just the passable however I'm not touching up lemond for a while Digimon remains one of my favorite shows I watched as a kid unfortunately Digimon has been dismissed by too many people because of its perception as a Pokemon clone to which I say probably a little bit the way in which Digimon was marketed makes it hard to dismiss the Pokemon influence but revisiting Digimon Adventure shows it was a truly unique and heartfelt story since I was like 5 I've wanted to follow up to Digimon Adventure and when Digimon try was announced in August of 2014 I was beyond excited but from announcement to conclusion my excitement completely died but that wasn't because of my reaction while watching it Digimon Adventure tri was originally supposed to be a 15th anniversary project released in the spring of 2015 but it was delayed until late fall of 2015 and it was changed format to a 26-episode series to a series of six movies it went from something that would have taken six months to complete to something that would take three years with the new installment being released every six months or so I didn't even keep up with it while it was on I watched the first movie which was split up into four episodes so oh yeah the series was changed from 26 episodes to six movies and they took those six movies and cut it back into 26 episodes and it feels like it I didn't watch it again until the sixth and the final movie was released my thoughts well it's interesting Digimon Adventure tri takes place three years after 0-2 in six years after the original digimon adventure most of the cast is getting close to graduating high school and all is fine until the Digimon returned to battle off a new threat portals from the digital world are opening up all over the real world releasing Digimon infected with a corruption virus causing them to become stronger and violent between it all a new digidestined Mako shows up with a mysterious little cat Digimon make uman there are many mysterious mysteries such as the identity of two government agents the disappearance of the cast introduced an 0-2 and why everyone's Mickey Mouse hands drink this review will contain spoilers where did you want adventure was about the kids growing up and taking on responsibilities Digimon Adventure tri seems to be about how the kids relationship to the Digimon changes as they're getting ready to put on their big kid pants and become adults they're trying to figure out their careers and the writers are trying to figure out how to connect the out of character careers made at the end of zero - how does Matt the rock star become an astronaut well he just thinks of it on a whim I think one of the flaws for having the relationship to the Digimon be a focus is the fact only got Amon has ever really been developed as their own character the rest of the Digimon have only ever served as character complements or contrast to the kids they don't really have their own development apart from them usually their personalities can be described with one-word quirks hungry sassy silly etc there's a point in try when the digital world has to be rebooted the Digimon lose their memories of the kids and their shared adventure yeah nothing about them changes because their entire experience during Adventure did nothing to change or evolve their character my relationship to the kids is what defines my relationship to the Digimon unless time is spent developing the Digimon as their own unique characters then we're not going to feel for their perspective only the kids when Patamon is infected I feel in worry for TK not Patamon 26 episodes it's plenty of time to further develop their characters but unlike the original digimon series the plot is complicated and a little convoluted so more time has to be spent pushing the plot forward than spending time with the characters with a cast this large usually the better option is to go with a more simplistic plot line so you can spend more time with each character there's not a lot of urgency from the characters and that's primarily because there's no motivating force to get the characters to take action as much as I like the scenes at the spa the school festival and the subplot about Izzi being more fashionable because he likes Mimi it feels out of place when there could be a Digimon attacked at any moment there's also a little concern about the fact that the zero two kids are missing which would be a great motivating factor for the kids to get up and do something which could the plot forward instead we're just waiting on a Digimon to appear into the city to drive the plot forward it's entirely out of the character's hands and instead the plot is progressed through seemingly random occurrences although I feel like the plot is kind of lame the basic foundation of the story is really solid a Digimon virus which makes Digimon active violently is a really interesting idea and the way the lore is expanded ties into a lot of the aspects of Digimon lore which I never thought would be explored within the adventure timeline yaga stroller king drasil was introduced in other digimon series the idea of the quantum see the network connecting the digital world dark ocean and that place was explored within adventure 0-2 but never given a name learning more about homeostasis a being which was only briefly in Digimon Adventure was also appreciated finally my mind was blown when I learned the identities of the two government agents were two of the original and digidestined which were only briefly talked about in the original series and the decision to make their partner the Digimon sovereign was super creative in a clever twist I've long wanted to learn about the original digidestined I have revisited the Digimon wiki over and over again hoping to find new information about it I even read pan theories however a problem I have with a lot of high fantasy series is there's not an easy way to answer questions about the lore without compromising the plot at hand that's why compendiums are published about things like Star Wars game if their owns Lord of the Rings the worlds created for these series are far more expansive than the story being told and there's not a lot of opportunity for the characters and the primary stories to interact with people or beings that have knowledge of the deeper lore and sometimes when a story is specifically created to explore the lore it can be really messy because it favors clumsy exposition over plot progression Digimon try feels messy at times the two biggest entities driving the plot or homeostasis of being which desires peace and balance in the digital world and king drazen the self-proclaimed king of the digital world who is a Digimon supremacist these divine beings have no physical form instead they have agents acting for them but they're not even the primary villain there's not really a primary villain to beat the closest thing we have to that is make cumin it's a partner to the mysterious new digidestined mako all right sit down get your comments ready it's time for billions none takes get out a glass of milk these are spicy a consistent argument I'm seeing against Makos character is she's a Mary Sue okay that doesn't really describe a problem those are just buzzwords essentially a Mary Sue is a female character who is flawless has unexplained talents or is a self inserted character basically people who use the word on ironically will just create new criteria for it so they can continue to use it as a critique let's examine these so Mako isn't actually a self inserted character the argument is just being made because she's shipped with ty who's the main character of Digimon it's common in fanfiction for writers to put themselves in a relationship with the main character Mako and Ty being shipped together is fine by me because it's not like they hook up or anything he just wants to call her at the end of the series that is the extent of their relationship and are you aware how teenagers date there's no character or relationship building involved it's just let's date sometimes not even that next is Mako flawless I mean she certainly self conscious and this is explained in the series she speaks a different dialect than the rest of the kids she's new and her Digimon hasn't evolved yet combined with the fact her Digimon is well murdering other Digimon and yeah it makes sense that she's a little self-conscious now what about being super talented with no explanation well oh my god okay she's pretty okay at sketching that that wasn't explained I definitely needed a seventh movie in the Tri timeline to explain why she's pretty okay at sketching this is totally unexplained oh my god now pal Mon is making a sketch - I've watched all of Digimon and I've never seen pallemans artistic abilities explained what a MarySue calling Mako a Mary Sue is just creating a scapegoat for more of the problems within the series it's an easy buzzword to throw around but it's not productive or constructive don't get me wrong May is not a great character but she's a symptom of the problems with try not the problem itself but she's necessary for the story they were trying to tell me cumin is infected and Makos Ark is to make the right decision about needing to defeat mikuma her art is contrasted by Hema Kawas art we see how he mikawa was driven to bring back her dead digimon and where it ultimately takes her to evil but Mako understands for the greater good that make Amon has to die with the focus of the series being the relationship to the Digimon these are the extreme examples of that relationship the fourth movie isn't called loss for nothing wait wait a minute however she comes to the conclusion about mikuma needing to die way before the action takes place meaning her arc is done way too early in the sixth and final movie it's ty who ultimately decides make uma needs to die and he convinces the rest of the kids it should take until the end for Mako to come to this conclusion and it should be up to her to convince the rest of the kids we should see more of the struggle she goes through to come to this conclusion witnessing the consequences of make Aman's of violent actions and witnessing how he Mikawa went to the dark side to save her Digimon when may Kumaon finally dies it's an emotionally effective scene I'd be lying if I said I wasn't just a little bit destroyed by the Tomich line but as for why she's needed for this particular story can you imagine if the scene were make Kumaon dies was with any of the eight original kids into their Digimon would you want to see them say goodbye to their Digimon the characters we've been watching for almost twenty years and they wouldn't be able to make a bold decision like that anyways because it's canon that the Digimon are still alive decades later listen I'm not crazy about name but I'm also not crazy about any of the try versions of these characters my biggest problem with her is her name couldn't you name her something a little different than her Digimon Mako refers to make cumin as mei-chan and mimi gives Mako the nickname name a so sometimes when I'm reading the subtitles I'm not sure who they're referring to when I first saw the image of the new art style I was all about it and I'm still liking it to an extent but when combined with the voice cast and changes and personality changes I often have trouble recognizing these characters as the ones I grew up with after watching the first four films in English I went back we watched everything in Japanese there are weird directions the voice actors were given in both situations my main problem is the weird stoicism all the characters have during stressful moments I guess their characters are supposed to be grown-up and yeah seventeen-year-old Tai is obviously going to be different than eleven-year-old tai but I feel like the heart of the characters are gone at times there's not a lot of energy in the characters and there's not a lot of energy in their performances sometimes I'm expecting a character reaction and nothing happens sometimes something dramatic happens in the audio cuts out for dramatic effect but that only works at the moments surrounding it or energetic and loud you can't go from a quiet moment to a silent moment and expect a dramatic contrast at one boy a villain takes on the appearance of ten ichigo gee one of the four missing kids from the 0-2 cast from the entire cast perspective this is Ken it's even attacking the kids with the Digimon which belongs to Ken and Davis however the kids have no hesitation when they decide to fight ken and Imperial German this should be an emotionally conflicting scene instead they hop into battle and even cheer when Imperial German is defeated yes they can be relieved a threat is gone but they think they just had to fight against a friend of theirs but nope not only do they not acknowledge they just defeated their missing friend but there is barely any acknowledgement of the kids disappearances Hari and TK go to school with three of the missing kids and they're never even like hmm I wonder why all three of them are missing eventually Matt gets a half-assed indirect explanation from one of the government agents as to why they're all missing and that's fine enough from all eight of them the characters odd behavior and odd performance to me is the foundational problem with Digimon Adventure tri I feel like these aren't the characters I grew up with the characters have always been this strong point for Digimon Adventure they're the scene in Adventure zero to wear a goo Mon compliments tie on how much he's matured and grown up it's a small short moment but it does so much more for me than tri does with the character throughout all six movies the weaker characters make the show drag on at times at the very least I was looking forward to seeing these characters animated well with decent action but decently animated shots are made less exciting by poor editing choices poor sound mixing and stoic characters let's talk about one of my biggest problems that has never been a problem for me with Digimon the digivolving you learned that 3d animation doesn't look good in the series before why are you trying it again I mean look how ugly this is it doesn't help for how long these animations take either look at all this dead space where nothing is happening part of these sequences could so easily be cut down if you watch the episodic cut the runtimes aren't even consistent they range from 21 to 25 minutes so there's no reason why the evolution sequences couldn't be cut down in the original series the sequences were often edited and sped up to keep up the pacing but the surrounding action but they just let it play out and try however I actually really like the way that the ultimate and mega animations look the 2d animation is very slick the movement has this rhythmic pacing to it and this was a bootleg I found that out of convention it was like 20 bucks the implied intensity of the action scenes are never able to be fully realized there's too much cutting back to the kids still shots and interruption even excitingly cut scenes are often plagued by unexcited music and oddly silent sound effects and characters the Battle of alpha man in reunion should be awesome but there's this kamar elevator music style cover of Braveheart playing and then there's all the silent reactions I'm so used to yelling and talking in reactions and anime fight sequences this just makes it awkward to be honest did you mounted venture tri bores me at times I would rather have a classic style English dub complete with characters talking where there was no audio before I have to admit it can be a little dull what I'm trying to say is after all this time of complaining I sincerely miss the dizzy rap [Music] there are so many flaws with try which is a shame because it's core concept is really creative and interesting but there's so many conflicting ideas and tones trying to be conveyed I almost wish it was a full 50 episode series so more ideas could be explored in depth in the quiet fun moments with the characters could find a natural place I feel like try must have been changed a lot during its production making it into six movies allowed for extra revenue sources and also would have given to--a a lot of time to determine whether or not they leave room for a sequel I feel like why certain things were hinted at in certain plot lines were left open was because they felt like a sequel was possible and lo and behold a new digimon adventure movie project is in the works with some of the original creative team behind the original adventure working on it at the end of tri I'm left feeling disappointed and ultimately with mixed feelings I like a lot of the ideas explored but I wish it felt like the characters I watched growing up and then the series ends with this they have the audacity after disappointing me to play a cast rendition of butterfly the main theme and suddenly I love it I remembering why I love this series so much I love these characters and I still want more Digimon Adventure I'm making more Digimon videos I'm collecting the cards I'm listening to butterfly over and over again and now I'm sitting in a tattoo parlor I'll look at that I got a Digimon tattoo this song the imagery and everything about this show is so powerfully nostalgic to me yes I wanted more food try but I'm just happy it exists the connection I feel to this story into these characters is the kind which can only be developed through the emotionally vulnerable eyes of a child as an adult the flaws of this series become more and more apparent but as I continue to talk about Digimon more and more especially on my channel I've grown to appreciate it a lot more and despite the fact that Digimon Adventure tri was ultimately a little bit of a disappointment I'm still extremely excited to see what's next so anyways thank you for watching me for 3 hours if you want to watch more of me there's more of it shows on the screen but I don't know why you would also reminder those shirts based on the Digimon Tamers logo are for sale you can find them down below there are links and my youtuber Merck shelf is there to thank you so much this is at the end of my Digimon content but I'm gonna take a little break I'm playing did you mind wrong with on my twitch if you want to watch that anyways thank you I'm gonna go sleep now

Channel: Billiam

Views: 1,599,674

Rating: 4.8086038 out of 5

Keywords: Digimon, Digital Monsters, Billiam, Adventure, Adventure 02, Tamers, Frontier, Data Squad, Xros Wars, Toei, BanDai, Ban Dai

Id: zsqAS1mALK8

Length: 158min 4sec (9484 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 04 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/billiamTheDork]

ooo! thanks for posting

[u/AguChamp64]

I'm only up to 02, but I have to say these reviews are a lot better than I convinced myself they were.

I think I got too fixated on the thumbnails and didn't properly move past first impressions.

[u/RobertMato]

Already got this queued up to watch tonight. Gonna be quite the marathon, but I'm so hyped.