#Gizmon XT | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

commentaryvorg · 3 years ago

Text

Digimon Data Squad Dub Comparison Episode 32 - The Sacred City’s Last Stand!

This is a companion to my commentary on the original Japanese Digimon Savers! Reading my commentary on the original version of this episode (which you can find here) is recommended before reading this dub comparison.

Original name ~ Dubbed name

Masaru Daimon ~ Marcus Damon

Yoshino Fujieda ~ Yoshino “Yoshi” Fujieda

Tohma H. Norstein ~ Thomas H. Norstein

Ikuto Noguchi ~ Keenan Crier

ElDoradimon ~ ElDradimon

Baromon ~ Baronmon

Gizmon ~ Gizumon

Yatagaramon ~ Crowmon

BioSpinomon ~ BioSupinomon

Yashamon ~ Yasyamon

[Since several characters share the same name between the original and the dub, quotes from the dub will always be in italics, while quotes from the original will not, in order to distinguish them.]

Whoops, I’m complaining about the preview for this episode at the end of last week’s one again. It focuses entirely on the plot with the space-time bombs – to the point of basically spoiling how things turn out! – with not a single shot of Yoshi. Nah, there aren’t any girls in Data Squad, this episode couldn’t possibly prominently feature her.

Granted, maybe I’m being a little too harsh, because these previews don’t really focus on character-based stuff that much in general and prefer to show the plot; for example, the preview for episode 15 only showed MetalPhantomon trapping them in nightmares with no indication it was a Thomas-focused character episode. But come on. Focusing on the plot to the point of spoiling the ending, when they could have spent at least some of these shots showing that Yoshi fights Ivan, which is also a plot thing? That’s very suspiciously deliberate.

It's another Thomas recap, but it does make sense to be him this time when he was the focus of last episode.

Recap Thomas: “…and now the lake is flooding, threatening to wash away ElDradimon along with the Sacred City!”

Okay, first of all, ElDradimon literally is the Sacred City. And again, like I said last episode, the water washing it away is not the point. That should be abundantly apparent from this very episode; did the dubbers not even watch the rest of this episode before writing this line oh my god.

(Also, the lake is on the top end of the waterfall, so actually it’s draining, not flooding.)

Marcus: “Man, those Gizumon-XT just keep coming and coming!”

Agumon: “Whadda we do?”

Marcus: “We keep fighting!”

What do we do, Agumon? Maybe don’t devolve for no reason, that’d be a start.

Falcomon’s voice isn’t hitting me quite so hard these days, perhaps because he’s not spent as much time being a participating character in recent episodes, but it is still terrible, weekly reminder.

Yushima: “Keep the Baby Digimon in the palace while the rest of you act as their defence!”

~~~~~

Yushima: “We must send all the smaller Digimon into the palace for their protection…”

“Smaller” Digimon doesn’t necessarily mean weaker! There’s plenty of dub-Ultimate (aka Perfect) levels gathered here in this Digimon army who happen to be rather small, but they shouldn’t go inside.

They’re using the Full Charge version of the evolution theme for Yushima only evolving Kamemon to Champion level, which is not how it should work. They’ve usually been quite consistent with using the right theme for the right evolution level.

Yoshi smashing a Gizumon in the face with a barrel and then falling out of the window from the momentum gets given comedic music. I disapprove. That was an incredibly badass move and it deserves to be treated as such, not as comedy.

Lalamon: “Yoshino, you’re amazing! You took down a Gizmon: XT!”

Yoshino: “Thanks…”

~~~~~

Lalamon: “Yoshi, you were great! The way you smashed that Gizumon-XT was so brave!”

Yoshi: “It *was*, huh!”

It was! I like Yoshi being more overtly proud of herself, and Lalamon telling her she was brave, because she really is, especially given her issues. (Which, you know, we’re not otherwise going to be seeing in this episode, so take it where you can get it.)

Yoshino: “I’m getting a bad feeling about this…”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Oh no, it’s that guy who has a crush on me again…”

There’s something… more Done™ about the way Yoshino doesn’t even bother specifying that it’s This Guy again (of course she knows it is, though) and just jumps straight to the massive sinking feeling she’s getting about the fact that she’s going to be stuck dealing with this Terribleness for a while.

Ivan: “Too bad the only time we’re together is when I’m trying to massacre her and all her friends…”

The word “massacre” here might actually be one of the closest instances of the dub actually acknowledging all the murdering going on. The fact that it happens now of all times only serves to highlight how utterly unrealistically not-a-character Ivan is being. You don’t feel this way about someone you’re trying to murder. Or if you do, you actually feel conflicted about it, like a human being would, not hurr durr comedy.

Yoshino: “I knew it was you. Ivan!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “[Thinking out loud]’s a habit of his. Hi, Ivan!”

Yoshi’s greeting to him is laced with exasperation, as it should be, but I don’t really like that she’s even greeting him at all. As if they’re on remotely good terms; as if a preposterous asshole like this deserves her even giving him the time of day. He does not.

Yoshi: “Do you actually think I would fall for a guy who says everything he thinks out loud?”

…That’s your biggest issue with the idea that you’d ever be into him, Yoshi? Ivan’s thinking-out-loud thing is nonsensical and wholly unrealistic, but from an in-universe perspective it’s kind of the least objectionable thing about him as a person.

Ivan: “And what’s worse, she doesn’t share my feelings!”

Ivan doesn’t bring up this part at this point in the original, so I think it makes him slightly less terrible to be acknowledging this here? Just slightly and just in this one line, mind.

Yoshino: “You’re not even trying to hide them, are you?”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “I can *still* hear you!”

We lose out on the suggestion that maybe possibly makes more sense out of Ivan’s thinking-out-loud thing than anything else.

As there’s always been with Yoshi compared to Yoshino in general, the tone of her exasperation here is very different. Yoshino is so done and completely deadpan (that’s barely a question mark there, in terms of her intonation), whereas Yoshi is a lot louder and more frustrated about it.

Ivan: “Maybe she’s just playing hard to get?”

Yeah, so, scratch that part where he was being just slightly less terrible just a few lines ago by acknowledging she wasn’t interested, he’s completely cancelled that out with this.

Ivan: “In that case, I have no choice! In order to earn the privilege of dating you… Fight me, Honey!”

Yoshino: “What do you mean, you have no choice?”

~~~~~

Ivan: “In order to prove my worthiness… we must fight!”

Yoshi: “That won’t change my mind, Ivan!”

Is this Ivan being slightly less terrible in the dub? Because he’s not implying that he’ll be entitled to her dating him if he wins, just that he’s hoping his strength will impress her? I guess so, a little bit.

Yoshi actually outright tells him that it won’t make a difference, though, which puts him right back in terrible-town with the fact that he refuses to listen to her very explicitly-expressed opinions and take no for an answer.

The fact that his challenge wasn’t attempting to obligate Yoshi to date him if she loses also makes Lalamon slightly less unhelpfully-enabling-his-bullshit for accepting the challenge and adding that if he loses he has to stay away from her. Maybe?

Ivan: “Haha, if I win, I get a date with her.”

NEVER MIND, we’re back where we were in the original, and possibly this time it’s thanks to Lalamon that he even had the idea to present it this way.

Lalamon: “Once you see my evolved form, you’re gonna pass out from a squirting nosebleed!

~~~~~

Lalamon: “I’m warning you, once I Digivolve, you won’t be calling anyone ‘honeybun’ for a long time!”

Lalamon is not aware of her fanserviceyness in the dub, which is fair, because the dub is making a genuine, good-on-them effort to remove that aspect as much as they can.

Yoshino: “Just a second, Lalamon! Why are you accepting the match?!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “What are you thinking, Lalamon, egging him on like that?!”

Yes, Yoshi! She did egg him on, didn’t she! I appreciate that being acknowledged slightly more in the dub.

Lalamon: “Well… I was hoping for more than just ‘keeping him busy’. I wanna kick his butt!”

There’s something about the fierce way this tiny squeaky flower creature threatens to kick someone’s butt while clenching her stubby fist that’s very amusing.

Rosemon: “Now that I’ve Digivolved to the Ultimate level…”

Whoops. This was not one of those lines that needed to be translated directly, because “Ultimate level” is an entirely different level depending on the language. She just effectively called herself Perfect level. The dub usually gets this correct, but it seems this one slipped through the cracks, because it sounds fine if you’re not thinking too hard about which evolution level is which in what language.

Ivan: “Bio-Hybrid DNA… Charge!”

The new call for the Bio-Hybrids’ Mega levels was supposed to be “Bio-Hybrid DNA Full Charge”. That’s what Nanami did. Apparently someone forgot already.

I am somewhat surprised, but appreciative, that they kept the shots of Ivan’s body morphing uncomfortably into his new form. Though he doesn’t groan horribly throughout it, perhaps for censorship, but also because he’s too busy saying the added “Bio-Hybrid Digivolve to…!” line. I’m surprised he can manage it with his vocal chords physically changing, but then again, the finished BioSupinomon can still speak with that mouth, so hey.

His Digimon Analyser is trying to make out his new form to be super powerful and threatening, but his voice – even in this form – is still so goofy. It’s impossible to take him seriously as anything but terrible comic relief.

Yoshino: “What is that?”

Rosemon: “His form is different from before!”

~~~~~

Rosemon: “Okay, Yoshi… What now?!”

Yoshi: “Me?! I thought *you* were the one with the plan!”

Rosemon and Yoshi sound alarmed at seeing BioSupinomon, like they buy into his (non-diagetic…?) Digimon Analyser boasts about totally being able to beat them like this, rather than simply being surprised he has a new form. I could maybe put this down to a thing with Yoshi’s anxiety issues, but it doesn’t entirely read like that, especially with Rosemon also seeming more worried.

BioSupinomon: “I have to hand it to Kurata. That guy really knows his monsters. I guess it takes one to know one.”

Nice line about Kurata there in principle, but it really doesn’t hit as well when it’s said in that goofy voice. It also doesn’t really fit that someone who’s chosen to willingly work for someone he accepts is a monster would joke about it like this.

Yoshino: “Yours is just a fake anyway. Let’s go, Rosemon!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “It doesn’t matter how big you are. You’re goin’ down!”

Well, never mind Yoshi seeming potentially worried earlier; she’s managed to get back to some pretty generic trash-talk now. I liked the note in the original that she has faith Rosemon’s power will win out because it isn’t artificial, but that’s lost.

Rosemon: “I’ll show you that size is no indication of strength!”

~~~~~

Rosemon: “I’ll teach you that size doesn’t matter, unless you’re talking about the size of someone’s heart!”

I mean I guess that’s basically the sentiment we want to get across here, but it sounds a little cheesy when you say it in so many words, Rosemon.

BioSpinomon: “I will definitely win this battle and make you my lover, Honey!”

~~~~~

BioSupinomon: “So, where shall we go on our date? Dinner and a movie, or a long picnic walk on the beach?”

Hm, okay, another point for slightly-less-terrible; Ivan’s line in the original here is leaning in the direction of sounding outright predatory, which of course is Very Bad™. Leaning more into the comedy of it is the less-bad way to go here.

Yoshino: “I absolutely refuse.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Let’s not and say we did.”

No, Yoshi! Don’t even say you did at all! Don’t indulge this preposterous asshole in his nonsense even slightly, he does not deserve it!

BioSpinomon: “I-want-to-share-a-juice-drink-with-two-straws Bomber!”

~~~~~

BioSupinomon: “I-wanna-drink-a-smoothie-at-the-mall-sharing-one-straw Bomber!”

Ew, one straw is significantly worse than two.

Rosemon: “Not bad.”

~~~~~

Rosemon: “Are you done?!”

I honestly don’t know why Rosemon even vaguely compliments him here in the original, so points to dub-Rosemon for being so furiously done with him the whole time.

Rosemon: “Don’t worry. I’ll never hand you over to him, Yoshino. Now, come on!”

~~~~~

Rosemon: “What about the mall? Sometimes those smoothies can be very refreshing! Kidding!”

Okay, so I think I approve of the removal of the part where Rosemon appears to still be on board with the not-okay “fighting over Yoshino” thing. Not sure I entirely like her indulging Ivan’s stupid suggestions on any level, though, even as a joke. The “joke” also doesn’t really hit right, because she says the whole thing in the same angry tone – not really the right mood to be joking in – and there’s barely any pause before she admits she’s kidding.

Yoshino: “What… are you two doing?”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “This is the silliest fight ever!”

Yes, Yoshi, I’m glad at least someone realises it! Given than the dubbers who wrote this line also apparently realised this, I’m not entirely sure why they felt it’d be a good idea to make it even sillier… but then again there’s not much that could be done to salvage this, I suppose.

(Yoshi is still being a lot more loudly exasperated than Yoshino’s deadpan-ness.)

BioSupinomon: “Mind your own beeswax!”

Clearly the most tonally-appropriate thing for Ivan to be saying before he strikes down the interrupting Yasyamon and prepares to ruthlessly murder it.

The wounds on the Yasyamon’s face are edited out, because I guess that looked too brutal.

Yoshino: “Ivan, don’t!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Leave him alone!”

The part where Yoshino seems to be trying to appeal to Ivan as a person by using his name is lost here.

Yoshino: “How can you still regard yourself as a human being?!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “How could you do such a thing when you’re part human?!”

Yoshi specifying that he’s part human is a really weird way to word this sentiment. Surely, if anything, him having a Digimon part should in theory make him even less willing to murder Digimon?

BioSpinomon: “In exchange for money, I offered my body to Kurata’s will. And he gave me the strongest body that is most efficient for hunting Digimon!”

~~~~~

BioSupinomon: “Kurata pays me money to let him experiment on my body. And I’m lucky, too. Because of all his hired help, he’s given me the strongest body out of everyone.”

Ivan making a bigger point of how his body is supposedly stronger than any of Kurata’s other hires makes this sound kinda like he’s talking about his human body being way buffer than the others, as if Kurata modified that about him, too. After all, BioSupinomon isn’t any significantly stronger than Nanami or Kouki’s new forms, so it feels a little odd that he’d believe so strongly that it is.

BioSpinomon: “It is my duty to obey Kurata’s orders.”

~~~~~

BioSupinomon: “Where else do you think I’m getting’ the money to take you on our date?”

Oh my god, that is not even remotely supposed to be the point of why he’s doing this for money, ugh urgh bad terrible. At least by this part in the original, the writers almost completely stopped doing anything with the stupid crush thing and were focusing on making Ivan actually interesting (this line in the original shows the kind of unquestioningly-loyal mindset he’s forced himself to adopt). The dub making it still about the goddamn crush is Bad.

Yoshi: “You’re the worst person I’ve ever met!”

Yeah, Yoshi, I’d say you’re spot-on in that judgement. Though, given that this is partly in response to him still talking about the freaking date, it feels like her disgust is somewhat less about the genocide-for-money thing and still partly about the rest of his terribleness.

Soldier: “Only five minutes left until the operation is complete.”

~~~~~

Soldier: “We approximate that the Sacred City will fall within the next five minutes.”

What this line meant in the original: the space-time bombs around ElDoradimon’s feet have been set to detonate in five minutes.

What the dub somehow thought this meant: ehhh we’re guessing we’ll win the battle in about five more minutes? so let’s put a precise countdown timer for that onscreen for some reason, that makes sense! And who knows what these devices in the background are for, nahhh they’re probably unimportant.

The dub writers apparently haven’t watched ahead enough in this very episode to understand the really pretty simple picture of what’s going on here. How the heck even.

Yoshino: “Yet you fused with their power to use it for your own advantage… and you kill Digimon without even a second thought!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “And you said yourself you get your power from Digimon data, and yet you destroy them and call it your ‘business’!”

Ivan having fused with Digimon data to get his power is really not something that backs up the argument that he shouldn’t be murdering them. (Or, you know, “destroying” them, because dub.) That’s like arguing to someone who’s being cruel to animals, “you eat animals to live, why are you being so horrible to them?”. In the original line, Yoshino brought up the fusing thing as part of why he was awful, not as a counterpoint.

Yoshino: “That doesn’t upset you? Do you not feel anything from seeing the pain and suffering… of the Digimon that you’ve hurt?”

BioSpinomon: “Having a heart is unnecessary for business, Honey.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Don’t you feel anything from seeing all this pain and suffering?! Don’t you have a heart?!”

BioSupinomon: “Please don’t be angry with me. It’s only business, honeybun.”

Other than the annoying part in the original where he still called her “Honey” here, Ivan’s line was appropriately cold and detached, not seeming to care whether she was angry with him about this or not. But apparently in the dub, Ivan is still thinking about getting her to want to date him by explaining that actually it’s totally okay for him to murder Digimon if it’s just business, and, urgh. No.

BioSpinomon: “I won’t ask you to understand.”

~~~~~

BioSupinomon: “I wish you’d understand. I made a deal with Kurata because I need that money.”

Yep, that’s exactly where the dub’s going with this, because this line is the exact opposite from the original. It was pretty interesting how in the original he’d sold his soul out to the point that he didn’t even mind if everyone else saw him as a monster and didn’t understand his motives! But no, in the dub, he’s still totally fixated on trying to get Yoshi to date the murdering monster he is like an absolute tone-deaf moron.

There’s also the part where he’s talking about how he’s doing all this for money and “business” while still having that goofy voice of his. It does not remotely fit the character of a soulless soldier that Ivan’s finally been revealed to have. I suspect the dub voice casters did not watch ahead to realise that’d eventually be the point of him.

BioSupinomon: “When I signed that contract, I promised to do a good job!”

Yes, “do a good job”, the most appropriate way to talk about doing everything in your power to commit genocide.

Rosemon: “I feel for you. Ivan, when you signed that contract, you signed away your heart.”

…Why do you feel for him, for what was a voluntary choice he made? He’s being even less subtly somewhat pained and sympathetic about his wilful soullessness than he was in the original. And even in the original he wasn’t gaining any real sympathy points at all yet because we didn’t know he needed the money for his siblings.

The BGM that kicked in as the fight resumed almost made me think it was Probably Marcus’s Theme for a second there, but no, it’s a different piece. Which means that them using that piece for Thomas’s victory in the previous episode was definitely a deliberate choice to bring Marcus to mind, rather than them just using it everywhere. Nice.

BioSpinomon: “I have a reason for carrying through with this mission.”

~~~~~

BioSupinomon: “I now see that Yoshi wants nothin’ to do with me.”

He’s still making it about his goddamn crush! Original-Ivan hadn’t mentioned that at all (besides one lone “Honey”) for this entire scene! But no, clearly the stupid crush is far more important than having him stress how important his motivation for doing all this is.

Admittedly, he did mention earlier where the original didn’t that he needs this money, so that part’s not completely lost. But it’s more relevant for him to reference his motive here, in this moment where he forces himself to keep fighting after it looked very much like Rosemon should have defeated him.

BioSupinomon: “Fine! If she doesn’t want my heart, why shouldn’t Kurata have it?”

You sold your heart to Kurata way before you ever even met Yoshi, you moron! You shouldn’t have even had a heart to be trying to “give to her” or whatever! …Which, granted, is an original-episode problem, but this dub line highlights it even more.

BioSupinomon: “Yoshi! You will pay for turning me down!”

URGHRGHRHRH. So he’s going to try and kill her because she rejected his advances? Yeah, I don’t think I need to explain why this is Extremely Maximum Bad, all of the Badness Points going to the dub here, ending in a final score of the dub being Significantly More Terrible than the original from this alone, never mind anything else.

Rosemon: “Yoshino, run…”

Yoshino: “What are you saying?”

~~~~~

Rosemon: “Yoshi, run…!”

Yoshi: “Forget it. I’m not leaving you!”

Aww. Slightly more friend-adorableness here in the dub with Yoshi outright saying she won’t leave her.

Yoshino: “We can’t lose… I won’t… I won’t let you kill anyone any more!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “We have to get rid of his kind! I don’t want any more Digimon to suffer because of this guy!”

Yeah I was expecting this line to not hit quite as hard because the dub wasn’t going to let her use the word “kill”. There’s also the fact that Yoshi’s voice sounds purely angry and nothing else, whereas Yoshino had a lot more frantic desperation to her anger.

Kurata: “I put my hopes on the wrong man.”

~~~~~

Kurata: “I never should have let Ivan go by himself.”

Hm, no, I feel like Ivan should have gone by himself even though he ended up losing, considering that what he was doing was really just a diversion anyway, and that Kurata needs Kouki here at the camp to defend him from the incoming Marcus and Keenan.

Kouki punching a cartoon bird needed to be flash-cut, apparently.

Kouki: “I got sick of waiting for ya, Daimon Masaru!”

Masaru: “You again?!”

Kouki: “I started thinking you might’ve gotten scared and run off. That’s how frickin’ long you took!”

~~~~~

Kouki: “Never thought you’d show, Marcus! What took so long?”

Marcus: “You’re the one who ran away!”

Kouki: “Yeah, well no-one’s running away this time! I’m gonna enjoy shutting that mouth of yours once and for all!”

Marcus is presumably referring to Kouki and the other two retreating back in episode 29, after being defeated. On the one hand I kind of like him trying to return the trash-talk; on the other hand I don’t know if Masaru would care about something that happened so relatively long ago, especially since he only “ran away” because he lost and not because he was being a coward.

I am surprised (but glad) they kept in the shot of Marcus being grabbed and flung backwards by his face.

Yoshi: “It’s so… sad…”

…Is it, Yoshi? I don’t see how there’s anything sad to be found about this preposterous, objectifying, murdering-for-money asshole lying defeated, at least not before you see the part where he has siblings that he loves and misguidedly did all of this for.

When Yoshi realises the significance of the sibling photo, she flashes back to the line where he said he needed the money. This mention of his motive didn’t come at the same point in the conversation as it did in the original, so the shot used in the flashback doesn’t match the shot that we had for the dub line when we first heard it.

Yoshino: “He takes advantage of other people’s weaknesses… and makes them do things like this… I’ll never forgive Kurata for this.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “He doesn’t even know he did anything wrong… I hate Kurata. Only a sick man would take advantage of the weak-minded!”

Wait, really? Are we really going with the angle that Ivan didn’t know he was doing something wrong? Despite all the murdering Digimon, and Yoshi passionately telling him Digimon are people, are we really supposed to believe that when he kept insisting it was “just business”, and for money for his siblings, that meant he genuinely thought it was all okay? How the hell does anyone not realise that’s kinda messed-up? By “weak-minded”, does Yoshi just mean Ivan is somehow that childishly naïve?

The point in the original is pretty clearly supposed to be that Ivan knew what he was doing was awful and wrong and made him a terrible monster of a person, and he was just so desperate for enough money to support his siblings that he was willing to turn himself into this sort of monster. He was suppressing his feelings on purpose; the “business” line was effectively a defence mechanism to try and convince himself it was totally okay to do the murders when he knew deep down that it wasn’t.

Thomas: “Wait! Hold your fire!”

Thomas says this to MirageGaogamon as they approach the city and he sees the army retreating, implying that MirageGaogamon was about to attack. But he’s still kind of far away from any of the Gizumon to have been reasonably able to do that. Is this the dub thinking that there’s no way Thomas could possibly have evolved Gaomon just for transport, and trying to handwave that actually he totally evolved him to join in the fight?

Despite the earlier punch-cut, apparently it’s okay to show Kouki kicking a bird if the bird is larger than him.

Kurata: “Time’s up.”

You know, for that vague prediction his men made that the city would lose the battle in about five minutes, right, that’s definitely what the timer was for, that definitely ever made any amount of sense.

Kurata: “Everything is just as I’d planned.”

~~~~~

Kurata: “It’s just like I imagined it to be.”

Kurata’s saying this as he flies over the city and looks down on it. In that context, it kind of sounds less like he’s talking about his plan and more just like he’s referring to the city itself, because this is the first time he’s seen it up close. Not the point here?

Oh my god, Crowmon’s voice is so deep and growly; it also kinda hits me like a truck to hear. It doesn’t appear to be British, like Falcomon’s, but honestly in some way, despite all my griping, I kinda prefer Falcomon’s voice to Crowmon’s? At least Falcomon sounds like a character, even if it’s totally the wrong character, and not just a Stock Growly Evolved Digimon like all the others.

Yoshino: “The Digital Gate…!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Fight, ElDradimon!”

It’s actually kinda cute that Yoshi’s trying to encourage ElDradimon to fight being pulled into the Gate, even though he probably can’t even hear her and is certainly not in a position to be able to avoid sinking no matter what he does.

I’m noticing here that the completely wordless giant turtle roars are different between versions. I guess that counted as voicework and not sound effects, so the dubbers didn’t get given the originals.

Overall differences

Apparently I only have a couple of significant changes to talk about here, but they both feel quite major to the point of the episode.

The Ivan stuff felt pretty similar overall – in that some lines were less terrible and some lines were more terrible, in about equal amounts – for the first half of it that was terrible originally. But then in the second half, in which Ivan starts being an actually interesting character in the original, the dub massively screwed that up and insisted on continuing to make half of it about him wanting to date Yoshi, like that remotely matters when he’s supposed to have sold his soul for money for his siblings. Ivan’s goofy voice did not help get the real meaningful point of him across, either.

And they especially screwed up with Yoshi’s concluding take on him. How on earth could he have possibly not known he was doing anything wrong? The point is supposed to be kind of the opposite – he knew that, and he suppressed his feelings about it on purpose for the sake of his siblings. That’s way more interesting than that we’re supposed to think he was somehow hopelessly naïve.

Meanwhile, the dub’s impressive ability to spectacularly misinterpret extremely basic plot points is on fine form again this episode. What do you mean the countdown timer was for an approximate estimate of when the city will lose the battle and not the literal timed bombs that get set off near the end of the episode, which I guess were just totally unrelated and coincidentally happened to go off at around that time, right. How do you get that wrong. What are these dub writers doing.

#digimon #digimon savers #digimon data squad

11 notes · View notes

arcana-shipper · 3 years ago

Text

Sektor and Meramon

Yep, this idiot time. The champion form was Suggested and I tried my best with the other forms so...enjoy?

Also, no two parter for this one as, when he turned into Cyber Lin Kuei, he's only going to have one form for his Digimon as it will also become Cyberized.

Cocomon Level: Baby I/Fresher Type: Slime Attribute: None

Chocomon/Kokomon Level: Baby II/In-Training Type: Lesser Attribute: None

Shamamon Level: Child/Rookie Type: Oni Attribute: Virus Field: Nightmare Solider

Meramon Level: Adult/Champion Type: Flame Attribute: Data Field: Nature Spirits, Nightmare Soldiers, Dragon's Roar

DeathMeramon/SkullMeramon Level: Perfect/Ultimate Type: Flame Attribute: Data Field: Nightmare Soldiers

Boltmon Level: Ultimate/Mega Type: Cyborg Attribute: Data Field: Metal Empire, Nightmare soldiers

POST-CIBERNIZATION

Gizmon: XT/Gizumon: XT

#Mortal Kombat AU #Digimon AU #Digital Kombat #Mortal Kombat #MK #Digimon #Sektor #Meramon

5 notes · View notes

digijosify · 7 years ago

Photo

Episode Recap: The fight rages on between DATS and Gizmon: AT, who seems to be impervious to any of their attacks, even at the perfect level. The mortally wounded Mercurimon reaffirms his and Suguru’s shared dream of a world where humans and Digimon live together, and urges Ikuto to fight on in as “a human with a Digimon’s heart”. With this, Falcomon full-charge evolves to Yatagarumon, making short work of Gizmon: XT. Kurata and his platoon flee, and the DATS team has a new enemy and a new ally.

<< >>

#digimon savers #525 #digimon liveblog

11 notes · View notes

ask-alphamon · 5 years ago

Note

Pah I you guys want scary/dangerous digimon,I think Gizmon/Gizumon takes a cake. Designed by madman to destroy the Digital World. They have no heart/mind on their own, so attacks that affect enemy's mind/heart have no effect but worst of all, they can destroy any digimon's data beyond repairment or rebirth, regardless enemy's or their own level

“Yes, from your description of them they sound quite dangerous, but have you considered...”

“That they’d have to hit us with a rather slow beam attack to do such a thing~”

“Well... To be honest from what I’ve heard, so long as we destroy any before they ‘Digivolve’ to Gizmon AT or XT they can’t destroy data beyond repair since they don’t have access to that attack yet.”

0 notes

digimonlines · 9 years ago

Photo

Proto Gizmon to Quartzmon

#Proto Gizmon #Gizmon AT #Gizmon XT #Diablomon #Quartzamon #Gizmon Variations

4 notes · View notes

commentaryvorg · 3 years ago

Text

Digimon Savers Commentary Episode 33 - The Last Decisive Battle! Kouki’s Ultimate Evolution!

In this episode, with the Holy Capital dragged into the human world, Masaru gets caught up fighting Kouki amidst his home city, while Kurata executes the final stage of his plan to kill ElDoradimon and all of its Digimon citizens.

Here’s an unnecessarily long recap; I told you they started happening eventually. Rather than briefly summarising the events of the episode to remind us, it feels like we’re being made to watch several of the important scenes over again, and I’m just there twiddling my thumbs waiting to get to the new stuff. It’s nearly two minutes long. Some very detailed Ultimate-level Digimon are onscreen a lot in this episode, more so than usual up until this point; this is probably why. Animation budgets.

Anyway, recap eventually over, ElDoradimon’s appearance out in the Yokohama bay caused a huge tsunami over the waterfront. I wonder if Kurata did damage control on this – since he knew what he was about to do, he could have sent word ahead to the human world telling them the Digimon were about to “invade” the city and people should evacuate. But he also could have not bothered to do that; I wouldn’t be surprised. We’ll see later this episode that at least some people haven’t evacuated yet.

Everyone on the Digimon side is staring in horror and shock at finding themselves in the human world. The Digimon citizens especially deteriorate into panic, and I don’t blame them. From their perspective, their entire home has just been forcibly dragged into an alien world full of people who want them all dead. That’s terrifying.

As a couple of wayward Gizmon: XT descend on the city, MirageGaogamon and Rosemon dispatch them easily. (Is this the first time any of the Digimon partners have stayed evolved in between episodes? I think it might be. Except for ShineGreymon at the beginning of last episode, but that shouldn’t count when he then promptly devolved for no reason.)

Baromon, at Yushima’s behest, tries to calm the citizens so that they still stand a chance of winning the battle.

Yoshino: “Besides, that muscular idiot will be here soon.”

Ah, yes. The most appropriate way to describe Masaru. (He and Ikuto and their partners have not quite yet arrived through the Gate, which is still hanging open above them.)

Baromon: “Yes! We still have Suguru’s son with us!”

Piccolomon: “Suguru’s son will take care of this somehow!”

Yes, clearly! The power of that perfect legendary hero who turned a desert into a lake just by punching it is definitely still here and able to win you the battle, somehow, even though it hasn’t done so yet. This thought actually rallies the citizens into cheers again. They are so desperately clinging to this much harder than they should, but I suppose anything makes them think there’s a chance is good.

Tohma: (But… ElDoradimon has fallen into the human world. What the hell is Kurata thinking?)

Credit to Tohma, he’s able to not let this Masaru’s Dad Is Awesome moment pull him into his jealousy and stays focused on the important strategic concerns. Kurata is also here now, having hitched a lift through the Gate on one of his Gizmon, chuckling to himself.

Just as the Digital Gate is about to close, Yatagaramon shoots out of it with his three passengers. (Somehow Masaru and Agumon are now on his back along with Ikuto, even though they were in his claws at the end of last episode.)

For some reason, Yatagaramon then flies a good ways into the human city and deposits Masaru and Agumon on a random rooftop. They immediately rush back across the roof in the direction of the sea and ElDoradimon, but are blocked by the chain-link fence that Japanese rooftops have.

Masaru: “We can’t stay here. Let’s go!”

You also could have not come here in the first place??? If getting to ElDoradimon was you guys’ highest priority, as it should be, why did Yatagaramon stop here?

The real reason for this, of course, is that this is where the writers wanted the fight with Kouki to begin. He arrives through his own (presumably space-time bomb-induced) Digital Gate on the rooftop, having somehow pinpointed Masaru’s exact location, at which point it makes sense for Masaru and Agumon to want to stay and deal with this here while they tell Ikuto and Yatagaramon to head back to the Holy Capital.

(Really, though, while having this fight with Kouki amidst the human city was important to the episode, there’s other ways this could have worked. Kouki could have led Masaru into the city on purpose after their fight began closer to ElDoradimon, especially since, from the perspective of Kurata’s grand plan, this is really just one big distraction to keep Masaru out of the way.)

Masaru and Kouki both roar and charge at each other, meeting fist-to-fist and flaring up with their respective Digisouls.

Masaru: “That bastard Kouki… There’s something different about him this time!”

Ha, Masaru can sense just from punching him that Kouki’s stronger than before. I enjoy his ability to pick up on things like this intuitively through fighting; it’s very him.

Kouki somehow levitates into the air – geez, Masaru and co. never get to do that from the power of their Digisouls, unfair – before evolving into BioDarkdramon. Masaru evolves Agumon in turn.

…I suspect that the only real reason ShineGreymon randomly devolved at the beginning of last episode was for the purposes of having a scene here where Agumon is unevolved and so Masaru and Kouki get to punch each other, human-to-human, one more time before the real fight starts. Otherwise, ShineGreymon could have stayed as ShineGreymon throughout all of last episode, he could have been the one to fly them hurriedly back to the Digital Gate, and the fight with Kouki could have started more immediately without Masaru getting awkwardly stranded on a random rooftop he had no reason to come to.

Anyway, as the two gigantic armoured Ultimate-level dragon monsters charge at each other, opening time! The very first shot of it features ShineGreymon grabbing this fancy sword, which we will be seeing in this episode. I don’t know if said sword really deserves so much importance as to be put right at the beginning of the opening, though.

Back at the Holy Capital, Rosemon and MirageGaogamon are busy dispatching any Gizmon: XT who get close – several of them at a time, as you’d expect, because evolution levels. A couple of the city’s Pumpmon (Perfect-level) are inspired to get in on the action, so they use their Trick-or-Treat attack, which involves dropping a giant pumpkin on the enemy’s head to take control of them, apparently, and using this they get two Gizmon: XT to destroy each other. I might otherwise raise an eyebrow at regular Perfect-levels being able to so easily deal with these Gizmon: XT that were supposed to be a fair bit stronger than Perfect-levels should be, but perhaps if they’re using trickery to turn the enemy’s own strength against it, that’s one way to trump the usual power levels.

Meanwhile, on a long bridge over the sea (probably a real Yokohama landmark, knowing Digimon), a military van is acting as a portable command centre for Kurata.

What’s really rich is that the tech guys working there are wearing what looks like DATS uniforms. Either Kurata had his men wear knock-offs of that uniform out of spite towards DATS, or possibly, these are actual former DATS technicians who sided with Kurata during the whole bit between episodes 25 and 26. You know, where Kurata came in claiming that Mercurimon had attacked them and the main DATS team had traitorously sided with him and all Digimon are dangerous monsters who need to be eradicated.

Technician: “Currently, the enemy suppression rate is at 37%.”

Presumably what he means by this is that they’ve currently killed 37% of the Digimon who were in the Holy Capital to begin with. Calling it a “rate” doesn’t make much sense – but upon examination (of a Japanese online dictionary), it seems that might be a subs thing; the word used for “rate” here can apparently also mean “proportion” and should probably have been translated as that in this context.

Kurata: “Throw the XT beta army at the enemy Ultimate-levels.”

Here’s an interesting little tidbit that could help explain why these Gizmon: XT have been getting progressively less threatening as they’ve grown in number. It seems he really has been mass-producing these things to the point that some of them are just beta versions that probably really aren’t as strong as the one he showed off in episode 25. Or, at least, that’s one way we could choose to interpret his use of the word “beta” here.

Kurata: “Kouki-kun will continue to keep ShineGreymon busy.”

Yep, Kouki really is doing nothing but playing distraction. Not that Kouki minds, I’m sure, since he’s been champing at the bit to get a rematch with Masaru for several episodes now.

As the enemy suppression percentage reaches 40, Kurata takes this as his cue to begin implementing the next stages of his plan, which involve something called the DHS, and the Javelin’s Core. The latter is an absolutely massive metal javelin, which begins to be lifted into the air by four large helicopters. Along with that, some military ships move out into the water, carrying unusual-looking cannons on their decks.

Back in the human city, ShineGreymon and BioDarkdramon are wrestling each other in midair. As BioDarkdramon manages to kick his opponent away for a moment, he takes the opportunity to round on Masaru, tiny and fragile and an easy target, back on the rooftop. ShineGreymon tackles him away before he can get close, and then, for Masaru’s safety, offers him his hand to climb up on. Riding on your giant Digimon partner, not for the sake of transport, but for the sake of fighting! (Though, actually, Tohma did this first.)

Reporter: “The monsters who are threatening us have suddenly intruded into the gulf coast!”

Ah, yes, those terrible monstrous Digimon are invading us again! That’s legitimately how this development must look to the human civilians who don’t know why ElDoradimon really ended up here. This isn’t really the main point of Kurata’s move to drag the Holy Capital over here, but it’s certainly helping with his propaganda that Digimon are horrible dangerous threats to humanity’s safety.

Reporter: “Right now, a weapon designed by Professor Kurata to protect us is on its way. […]”

Miki: “They’re making it sound like Kurata is a defender of justice.”

They sure are. Kurata, humanity’s hero, here to save us all from these vicious scary Digimon with his brilliant inventions!

Megumi: “Shh. We’re still wanted criminals.”

Also, hey, it’s Miki and Megumi! We haven’t seen them since they stayed behind in the human world in episode 27, but they’re still here, having apparently been dodging arrest from Kurata’s people all this time. (Though, really, Megumi, you might not want to say you’re wanted criminals out loud like that, not when you’re here amongst a crowd of people watching the news report.)

Reporter: “The government has declared their full support to Professor Kurata in his efforts to resolve this problem.”

Just in case anyone was ever wondering how Kurata got enough money and resources to create this ridiculously many Gizmon, not to mention some of his other toys he uses this episode: looks like he’s getting a lot of government funding and help from the Japanese military. This is a lot of the reason why he dragged ElDoradimon over here – in the human world, his home turf, he has access to a lot more stuff than he could reasonably bring to the middle of nowhere in the Digital World.

Chika and Sayuri are in their living room, watching this report, wondering if this means Masaru is back in the human world, hoping he’s okay. Sayuri must have been feeling so helpless this whole time; at least now that Masaru’s here again, within her reach, it’s something.

Out in the city, a bunch of human civilians (who are hopefully busy evacuating if they have any sense) watch the two giant armoured dragon monsters chase each other through the sky overhead.

Masaru is surfing on ShineGreymon’s shoulder now. That’s definitely not a very precarious position that should really put him at huge risk of falling off; it’s fine because anime physics.

ShineGreymon, the one being pursued, circles all the way around a skyscraper in order to get himself behind BioDarkdramon instead. He begins charging a Glorious Burst (telegraphing your location by calling your attacks, guys!), but turning to him upon hearing this, BioDarkdramon casually hangs there, making no attempt to dodge.

BioDarkdramon: “Go ahead and shoot! Do it if you’ve got the guts.”

He’s hovering in front of a skyscraper full of civilians who haven’t evacuated yet. If ShineGreymon used a ranged attack here, it’d slam BioDarkdramon back through the building, killing hundreds of innocent people.

Masaru: “That’s dirty, Kouki!”

BioDarkdramon: “Dumbass! There’s nothing clean or dirty in a fight!”

Oh, but there is. Masaru’s street fights are very anything-goes, but only insofar as that involves the people who have chosen to fight. He has always had very strong principles about not harming those weaker than you, those who aren’t involved and therefore haven’t made the choice to risk getting hurt. Bringing unrelated innocents into this and putting them at risk is disgusting tactics according to Masaru’s standards. That is Not What A Man Does.

Kouki doesn’t give a damn, though. He’s perfectly happy to get a few hundred innocents – innocent humans – hurt or killed if it’ll let him win.

There’s been a lot of obvious similarities between Masaru and Kouki, in how they’re both reckless hotheads eager to fight any opponent and who refuse to take losing lying down. But here’s their big contrast, made even clearer here than it already was from all of Kouki’s assholery in previous episodes. Masaru, despite his fighty nature, is a fundamentally good person with a strong moral code – his concept of manliness! – that he adheres to no matter what. Kouki doesn’t frickin’ care about any of that and only enjoys selfishly exerting power over others.

If anyone ever imagined, upon hearing that Masaru is a notorious street fighter, that this means he’s nothing but a violent thug who only cares about beating people up, they’re wrong. That’s what Kouki is, and Masaru’s nothing like Kouki in the ways that really count.

BioDarkdramon: “Also, let me tell you something else. You aren’t able to attack me, but I can attack you as much as I want!”

At this, BioDarkdramon charges at ShineGreymon with an attack. ShineGreymon dodges at first, but then, seeing BioDarkdramon continuing on right towards another skyscraper, has no choice but to put himself back in the way and absorb his momentum, just barely saving the building from destruction.

Not only is Kouki completely chill with potentially getting a few hundred innocents killed, he’s also totally willing to use that, and the fact that Masaru has actual standards where he doesn’t, in order to get himself an advantage. Those are some really horrifically dirty tactics, risking innocents just for his own gain. Masaru must be fuming.

(It’s this that makes me think things would have worked fine if their fight had started out by the bay, instead of Yatagaramon randomly bringing them far away from where they wanted to be. Kouki would have wanted to lead Masaru and ShineGreymon into the city during the fight anyway, precisely so that he could use this dirty tactic to stand a better chance of winning.)

…Well, I say Masaru’s probably fuming, but actually, after ShineGreymon blocks the hit, BioDarkdramon flings him to the ground and Masaru implicitly passes out from the impact for a little bit while we cut to other things.

Back at ElDoradimon, where Rosemon and MirageGaogamon are still working together to take down Gizmon, and Yatagaramon approaches overhead, four military ships have surrounded the city.

At Kurata’s order to initiate the Digital Hazard System – the DHS mentioned earlier – they fire their cannon things, which turn out to be a strange kind of solidified energy that works something like ropes, lashing onto each of ElDoradimon’s feet. Not that ElDoradimon was going anywhere anyway, but Kurata really wants to make sure it stays put.

The energy-ropes apparently also hurt, because the poor city turtle roars like it’s in huge pain. Baromon, horrified at seeing his beloved living city suffering, throws aside all sense of self-preservation and desperately climbs up onto the ramparts to try and appeal to his foes.

Baromon: “STOP! Don’t put ElDoradimon through any more pain!”

The humans driving the ships probably can’t even see him from this distance. Kurata certainly can’t. Even if they did, they wouldn’t care. Digimon are just vicious monsters, right?

All Baromon actually succeeded in doing with this is to expose himself to attack and forget to watch his back. One of the Gizmon: XT still skulking around the city takes the opportunity to shoot a laser at him from behind, piercing right through him.

Baromon: “T-Tell Suguru’s son… to take care… of ElDoradimon…”

As Yushima and some of the city’s warriors watch in horror, the last thought Baromon clings to is still the notion that their heroic saviour’s son will be able to somehow miraculously turn things around.

(He doesn’t even seem to realise that Suguru’s son is currently nowhere near the Holy Capital, busy settling a personal score and dealing with a diversion that’s threatening his own city. Masaru is just one person, not some kind of perfect legendary hero.)

With that, Baromon dies. They actually remember to show his egg disintegrating, for once, I guess because he’s a reasonably important character and they want to hammer it home that he’s really gone.

Gawappamon furiously fires off an attack at the offending Gizmon. The shot direction keeps managing to make it ambiguous as to whether any of Gawappamon’s attacks actually defeat a Gizmon: XT, which is good, because I’d be complaining about evolution level violation if they did. Gawappamon is only Adult. Given how dire things are getting, I’m really surprised Yushima hasn’t pulled out a stronger evolution. I’d expect him to be capable of it; Satsuma was.

Along with the ships chaining ElDoradimon down, Tohma and Yoshino notice the helicopters overhead carrying the javelin’s core. Out on that long bridge across the bay, there’s way more than just the one military truck Kurata’s using as a base. He’s got rows and rows of them filling the whole bridge, all of which open up to reveal countless Gizmon: XT. The swarm of Gizmon begin to fly towards the javelin’s core, which is now hanging directly above ElDoradimon.

Both of these fancy weapons of Kurata look Very Bad, so Tohma orders MirageGaogamon to deal with the Gizmon and Rosemon to go for the ships.

Back in the human city, Masaru regains consciousness, clutched protectively to ShineGreymon’s chest. (Aww, look at him protecting his comparatively small and fragile aniki.)

BioDarkdramon: “What’s wrong, Daimon Masaru? You finished already?”

Masaru: “Don’t look down on me! Come down! I’ll kick your ass!”

I love the sheer Masaru-level audacity. It very much comes across like he personally will kick the giant dragon-monster’s ass, because ShineGreymon is currently lying on his back, not seeming ready to get back into the fight just yet.

Kouki responds by attacking the building ShineGreymon protected earlier, attempting to collapse the entire thing onto Masaru. (Geez, I hope the people in it evacuated during the interim while Masaru was out; it is very possible they all just got killed.) We get a very rare heroic instance of the “Did I get him?” *smoke clears* NOPE trope, as it turns out ShineGreymon got up just in time to shield Masaru from the whole-ass building falling onto him, while barely seeming hurt from the impact. Because, you know, that’s just a thing Ultimate-levels can do with their utterly ridiculous levels of power.

ShineGreymon: “Aniki, are you okay?”

Masaru: “Thanks!”

BioDarkdramon: “Hey hey, being all chumly, are we? You make me puke!”

Shush, Kouki, this is a shounen anime, being adorable friends is a requirement. Also it’s nice to see a rare moment of ShineGreymon feeling like a character in his evolved form, caring about protecting his (tiny and fragile!) aniki.

Apparently no longer even trying to hide that this whole thing is just a diversion, Kouki goes on to taunt that Masaru shouldn’t even have the time to waste around here anyway because of what’s happening to ElDoradimon.

Masaru looks over towards the sea to see the javelin hanging above the turtle’s back, as the swarm of Gizmon: XT begin to wrap around the comparatively gigantic core, coating it with a layer of thousands of Gizmon.

Masaru: “Wh-What is that?”

Kurata: “A weapon that’s made specifically against ElDoradimon. The Gizmon Javelin.”

The writers are using that narrative trick of switching between two scenes at once for the sake of some more dynamic exposition. But though it sounds like Kurata is answering Masaru’s question, in reality, he’s nowhere near him at all. He apparently just felt like gloating at an audience of two technicians who must already know full well what the Gizmon Javelin is. Continuing to be very full of himself and his genius inventions, this Kurata.

(The fact that he designed this weapon specially for ElDoradimon also lends some amount of credence to my theory I mentioned a few episodes ago, that his assassinations of SaberLeomon and Mercurimon required preparation and special honing of the Gizmon to destroy their data specifically. Killing an Ultimate-level is not as easy as just shooting it with the regular old death laser without any planning, it would seem – and especially not an Ultimate-level this huge.)

BioDarkdramon: “Once that’s completed, ElDoradimon is dead meat. Wha’cha gonna do?”

Kouki is having a great time taunting Masaru about how he can’t be in two places at once, both defending the Holy Capital from Kurata and his own home city from Kouki’s wanton destruction. The latter is even more tricky right now, given that ShineGreymon’s usual ranged attacks will also do a number on the city if he tries to use them.

BioDarkdramon fires off a shockwave at the pair just to punctuate his point. ShineGreymon is unharmed, but Masaru goes flying out of his grasp and ShineGreymon has to reach out and catch him. Again: so tiny and fragile! ShineGreymon working so hard to protect his aniki!

BioDarkdramon: “Daimon Masaru, you are powerless. Bite your nails while you watch ElDoradimon disappear! After that, I’ll savour my time beating y—”

Masaru: “No thanks! I’ve got no plans to stand by and watch this happen!”

I love how, despite Kouki’s attempt at evil gloating, just full-on being a huge asshole and trying to enjoy watching his enemy suffer and squirm, Masaru shuts him right down and is having none of it.

Masaru: “No matter how many times I’ve fallen, I’ll stand right back up again! Again and again! As long as there’s still a possibility, I’ll never give up! You are going down!”

Like hell he’s ever going to let himself just sit there and be powerless, no matter how bad things get!

(And really, despite how dire things look and the way Kouki’s trying to taunt him about this, Masaru and ShineGreymon are both still standing, able to fight. This really isn’t necessarily a situation in which he feels powerless as much as some of the other things he’s been through.)

From the strength of Masaru’s sheer stubborn determination, and as the intro to Believer starts up, his Digivice begins to glow in his pocket. This honestly isn’t any particularly interesting or unique kind of emotion from Masaru here that’s triggering a new power, but also this new power isn’t especially strong or useful either compared to a full-on evolution level, so I don’t really mind.

Glowing with the same power, ShineGreymon punches the ground and summons up a fancy double-ended sword out of a ring of flame. (It’s a cool animation, so don’t think too hard about the fact that it makes it look like he just pulled it out of the tarmac of this ordinary human street.) This is the GeoGrey Sword. Not sure why it gets named after his Adult-level and isn’t, like, the ShineGrey Sword, but hey.

Now that he has a melee weapon, it’s a lot easier for ShineGreymon to safely fight without risking levelling the city every time he attacks. In this particular instance, summoning up a giant sword is pretty useful and exactly what he needs to turn the tides!

(It… really won’t be the rest of the time, though. Get ready for me to poke fun at that.)

This time, Masaru stays on the ground instead of riding on ShineGreymon’s shoulder, which is less Friends but probably a lot more practical, considering the way ShineGreymon’s spinning and dancing around with his sword moves.

One of his swipes manages to slice into the… I hesitate to call it “skin”; leathery fabric? …the non-armoured part in BioDarkdramon’s midriff, and Kouki is furious. How dare Masaru and his partner injure him! What do you mean this fight isn’t just a one-sided beatdown in which Kouki taunts Masaru about his powerlessness and savours his suffering as revenge for the defeats in previous episodes.

BioDarkdramon: “All of you will die!”

I really want to take note of the specific Japanese phrasing here, for reasons. Kouki doesn’t directly use the word “die” – what he says literally means “disappear” – but apparently the subbers felt like it was appropriate to sub it as this anyway. Someone like Kouki is entirely the sort of person who wouldn’t beat around the bush and would get very rough and direct about death when he’s furious like this, so I’m going to assume that, despite the literal wording, this is a turn of phrase that is nonetheless frequently used to mean death in Japanese, enough that it might as well be what he’s literally saying. I want to trust that the subbers used their judgement and knowledge of Japanese connotations to sub it that way to give us the correct and most accurate effect.

This matters to me a lot; you’ll find out why in a couple of episodes.

BioDarkdramon happens to have placed himself above ShineGreymon in the air, which you’d think would instantly solve the ranged-attacks-would-wreck-the-city problem. ShineGreymon can fire a Glorious Burst at him from here and it’d dissipate harmlessly into the sky. Maybe we can pretend this is a sign of Kouki being so furious that he’s getting careless, but in practice it’s meaningless, because now that he has his new sword, ShineGreymon isn’t even thinking about the ranged attacks any more.

BioDarkdramon fires off an orb of dark energy at ShineGreymon (and the city), but ShineGreymon uses his new sword like a baseball bat to deflect it and send it into the ocean instead. Actually another pretty useful application for the sword! that we will never be seeing again.

(Also, the animators have already forgotten to keep drawing the wound on BioDarkdramon’s stomach, whoops.)

ShineGreymon: “This is the end!”

BioDarkdramon: “Cut the bullshit! This won’t end. It’ll never end! Not until I beat you!”

Kouki: the world’s sorest loser ever, as you’d expect from an asshole like him.

They charge at each other in midair with their respective blades, and ShineGreymon remains unharmed as he runs BioDarkdramon through, defeating him. He catches the unconscious Kouki and the egg and places them on the street, then he and Masaru rush off to try and help ElDoradimon. No way Masaru’s going to sit around having a conversation with his defeated Bio-Hybrid rival like the other two did; he’s got better things to do right now, besides which he wouldn’t even care about anything Kouki had to say.

Kurata hears that BioDarkdramon has lost, but he barely cares, because Kouki did his job and provided ample distraction; the Gizmon Javelin has finished forming. We never even saw any of MirageGaogamon and Rosemon’s attempts to take out these weapons, but we can assume they were largely fruitless against the sheer size and scale of them. Even Ultimate-levels have their limits when Kurata’s basically levied the entire Japanese military and spiced it up with his own anti-Digimon tech.

Just to give you a sense of how huge this thing is: it’s really freaking huge. I do not blame MirageGaogamon for not being able to take that down. Exponential increase in power from a higher evolution level only goes so far; there must be thousands of Gizmon: XT in there.

Masaru: “ShineGreymon, we’ve gotta destroy that thing!”

Oh, Masaru. He and ShineGreymon are rushing to make it there as fast as they can, determined to feel like they can do something about this. In the urgency of the moment (and perhaps the still-lingering idea that he’s the saviour’s son and the whole city’s counting on him specifically), it doesn’t seem to occur to him that obviously Tohma and Yoshino and Ikuto must have been working on destroying that thing the entire time and getting nowhere, in which case he’d be no different. He just doesn’t want it to not be possible.

(As they fly towards the bay, they happen to pass directly over the news crew. Chika, watching on TV, realises her brother really is here – I doubt she could see Masaru directly, and she’s not seen ShineGreymon before, but it’s a fair guess that he might be the next evolution for Agumon, so, sure.)

But even if ShineGreymon taking out the javelin were somehow miraculously possible, it’s too late. Before he can even get close, Kurata gives the order, and the javelin begins to drop.

MirageGaogamon and Rosemon, seeing this, immediately switch tacks from trying to take out the Gizmon to just getting their partners the hell out of there. Tohma and Yoshino are still there in the capital, and the capital is screwed. Gawappamon and Yushima also implicitly manage to abandon ship, along with a small scattering of the city’s warriors, but most of them probably weren’t so lucky.

The poor city turtle roars in agony one last time as the javelin pierces through it, turning the city to rubble in an instant, disintegrating ElDoradimon into data and a soon-to-be-lost egg just a moment later. It’s pretty stark and horrifying, all of the onlookers watching in horror as this gigantic, beautiful creature is torn apart, all while Kurata chuckles to himself like it’s the best day ever. All the Digimon who were still inside the city must have been killed too (all the baby Digimon who were sheltering inside from the battle!), hundreds if not thousands of lives wiped out in an instant.

As debris floats past, Masaru stands on ShineGreymon’s shoulder, staring at the gigantic empty space where an entire city just was, having been powerless to get there in time, to stop it, to fulfil his promise of protecting the city (and living up to his dad’s reputation)… and with no other way to express it, he just roars in desperate anguish.

The remaining Gizmon are sucking up all the life energy from this, of course. This was the big haul that Kurata wanted, to get him enough energy to fulfil his other goal. We get another glimpse of that thing in the tank, just to remind us what he was working towards.

Not long after, the DATS group – the usual four, plus Yushima – are standing at the waterfront with their (surprisingly still evolved!) partners, looking out at where ElDoradimon no longer is, trying to process their overwhelming loss.

Ikuto: “We couldn’t stop it in the end.”

Yoshino: “We were useless.”

Oh, Yoshino. I’m sure everyone’s feeling that way, but it’s very heartbreakingly her to be the one to voice it.

Masaru: “Not yet!”

Yoshino: “Masaru!”

Masaru: “The battle’s not over yet! There’s gotta be those in the Holy Capital who survived! We have to save as many as we can!”

Oh, Masaru. Everyone else was ready to lick their metaphorical wounds and feel sorry for themselves, but no. Masaru will not feel powerless; he will not accept that they just lost and there’s nothing they can do. There has to be something they can still be doing to make a difference. Even if it’s only working to save the scant handfuls of surviving Digimon who might have made it out in time, that’s something they can work on that means they aren’t just giving up. He is so stubbornly, utterly incapable of letting himself fully acknowledge the terribleness of a situation and I love him for it.

(And I mean, it’s fair that of course they should try to focus on doing that! But it is very very Masaru to refuse to even think about how much they lost and grieve for those who just died before turning to that.)

As the group head out on their partners (oh, that’s why the writers kept them evolved) to go look for survivors, a couple of men in suits are observing Tohma through binoculars and noting that he’s the one they’re looking for. Before Tohma can climb onto MirageGaogamon’s hand to head off too, the men approach him.

Man: “Master Tohma. We’ve come for you.”

Given the respectful way they’re referring to him, this doesn’t seem like a sinister kidnapping sort of thing; rather, they simply require his presence for some reason. Despite the better things Tohma has to be doing right now, this is evidently something he can’t refuse, as next we see he and Gaomon are in a helicopter heading away from the site of the battle.

Masaru notices Tohma isn’t following them, sees him in the helicopter, and calls out to him in vain. He has no idea that Tohma was called away; all he knows is that he’s leaving. Why would Tohma be abandoning the fight at a time like this?!

Overall thoughts

For a Masaru-focused episode, which are usually my favourite things, this one isn’t massively interesting or issuey, but it’s fine and solid enough. (And, hey, unlike with Yoshino, at least we have plenty of other excellent Masaru episodes to choose from, so I can hardly complain.)

On an objective scale, Kouki is arguably the least interesting of the Bio-Hybrids, because he doesn’t have any kind of issues that are the root of him doing this. Thanks to Ivan being terrible, though, Kouki comes in the middle of my personal rankings of the trio anyway. He may not have any issues, but he is a solid foil to Masaru, very similar to him in a lot of superficial ways but completely the opposite in the ways that really matter. He serves that purpose well, and this episode in particular does a great job of highlighting it.

Kurata’s approach to this battle continues to be impressive even as it’s horrifying. Again, I enjoy the way this mini-arc progresses – how the previous two episodes’ developments were all leading towards this one, in which Kurata had ElDoradimon in such a hopeless position that there was really nothing anyone could do to save it. It’s neat how, though each of these three episodes may have felt on the surface like victories in that the Bio-Hybrids were defeated, our heroes kept losing ground each time in the actual battle that mattered and ultimately utterly failed.

---

[Dub comparison]

#digimon #digimon savers #masaru daimon #agumon #kouki #akihiro kurata #baromon #the digivice old man

10 notes · View notes

commentaryvorg · 3 years ago

Text

Digimon Savers Episode 32 - The Fierce Attack of Kurata’s Army! Protect the Holy Capital!

In this episode, as the battle for the Holy Capital continues, Yoshino finds herself fighting Ivan, unfortunately. Meanwhile, in amongst the fighting, Kurata pulls off a tactic more unexpected and dangerous than merely attacking the city directly.

After another reasonably short recap (I really overestimated how soon they’d start getting long, huh), we begin the episode with some more of Masaru’s fighting against endless Gizmon: XT on the way to Kurata’s camp. This time, it’s actually well-animated, as ShineGreymon throws a Gizmon into a tree and slices it – and the tree – up with his claws.

Then literally one shot later, Masaru’s looking around, and… why is Agumon there. Why did you devolve, Agumon? There’s obviously a good chance there’ll be more to fight! Masaru can’t just evolve you at will like everyone else can, you know!

Ikuto and Falcomon hurriedly call them over to a cliffside where they can see the lake where ElDoradimon is positioned – or rather, the quickly-emptying lakebed, after Nanami destroyed the waterfall last episode.

Falcomon: “But with the water gone, ElDoradimon is left wide open to attack!”

It’s still a little weird that they’re acting like that’s such a big deal on a dry lakebed as opposed to a full lake, when the Gizmon who are attacking it could have flown over the lake anyway. Again, there is actually a meaningful disadvantage to the water being gone now which we will get to in this episode, but it’s not something obvious and certainly nothing that’d be likely to occur to Masaru’s group here.

Agumon asks if they should head back, but after a moment of looking worried, Masaru says no.

Masaru: “I left Tohma to protect ElDoradimon. It’ll be okay.”

He still trusts Tohma to have his back and hold down the fort, just like Yoshino knew he did! (And he doesn’t have any idea that the lake got drained specifically because Tohma failed to protect it despite his best attempts, heh.)

The four of them continue on their way to attack Kurata’s camp. As the sun rises, Ivan stands among a huge army of Gizmon – AT and XT versions – along the perimeter of the lake, while the Holy Capital’s army of Digimon watch them nervously from their positions on ElDoradimon’s ramparts.

Baromon: “I didn’t think they would drain the water. Now ElDoradimon is…!”

Still not actually any significantly more exposed than it already was, as far as you should be able to figure! (Though, do note the fact that Baromon had no idea the lake might be drained; here’s confirmation that Tohma very much didn’t tell anyone about the waterfall being the key potential weak spot in the strategy when he went off to defend it alone.)

Yushima approaches and tells them to calm down and not to waver, because this is still a fight that they can win.

Baromon: “That’s right! We have our saviour’s son on our side! We must keep standing until he’s gotten us our victory!”

Yushima didn’t even mention Masaru at all, but apparently even a tiny bit of renewed positivity is enough to send Baromon back into clinging to the idea that Masaru will definitely save them, and all they have to do is buy him enough time.

At Ivan’s order, the Gizmon troops swoop in and swarm around ElDoradimon. They’ve still got those suction thingies to drain life energy from the Digimon they kill; it sure says something about Kurata’s confidence here that he’s willing to have the Gizmon spend some of their time doing that in the midst of a big battle.

Yushima gets in on the action and evolves Kamemon… still only to his Adult level form, Gawappamon, for some reason. You’d think he’d already be able to evolve him at least to Perfect and that now would be a good time to show off that form of Kamemon’s. We will see Kamemon’s Perfect form once much later on, but if we had his Perfect now, that future episode could instead show off his Ultimate form, which we never see at all.

Gawappamon is able to… not necessarily destroy, but hold his own against a Perfect-level Gizmon: XT. Yeah, told you these things are gradually decreasing in power and threateningness.

Somewhere up in one of the city’s towers, Lalamon is very valiantly Nuts Shooting her heart out to hold off a Gizmon: XT that’s looming in a window (I guess it appeared so suddenly that she didn’t have time to evolve).

She holds her ground until Yoshino rushes in carrying a barrel over her head and smashes it into the Gizmon’s face, man look at her being impressive and badass and getting in on the fighting herself. Masaru would approve.

The impact knocks the Gizmon back, but Yoshino’s momentum also sends her tumbling out of the window into a long drop. Lalamon zooms down to grab her by the jacket and luckily is somehow strong enough to lift an entire human’s weight.

Lalamon: “Yoshino, you’re amazing! You took down a Gizmon: XT!”

Yoshino: “Thanks…”

She did and it was awesome and she deserves to feel proud of herself for that. (Well, the Gizmon’s not completely destroyed, but it’s out of their hair for now and probably at least a bit weakened, is the point.)

They land lower down on the city and rush towards a nearby explosion at one of the outer walls, only to find…

Ivan: “I’ve found you, my beloved honey.”

Yoshino: “Huh?”

Lalamon: “‘Honey’?!”

Yoshino: “I’m getting a bad feeling about this…”

Yeah, I don’t blame you for feeling that way, Yoshino, because that’s exactly how I’m feeling about this development, too. Brace yourselves for a whole scene of Ivan’s terribleness.

Ivan: “‘I love you’… is something I could never say out loud.”

You don’t love her, you barely know a goddamn thing about her, you absolute creep. And how in the world is it possible for him to consistently not be aware he’s saying this stuff out loud. This is a terrible caricature and not a character.

Ivan wonders how she could have possibly known it was him before she turned around (it’s because you’re the only person who hits on her and who says his thoughts out loud, you freaking moron) and concludes it’s totally because she must be in love with him too, oh my god he is terrible. Yoshino bluntly points out the reason why it was obviously him, and now he acts flustered and embarrassed that she knows his deepest feelings, urgh.

Yoshino: “You’re not even trying to hide them, are you?”

Honestly I’m tempted to believe this is what it is, because being like this on purpose would make him just slightly more of an actual person, but on the other hand it’d also make him even more of a massive creep. Not that I care enough to really come down with a strong interpretation either way, because this is barely a character here.

Ivan: “So that I can earn the privilege of dating you… Fight me, Honey!”

THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS, you creep! Even if you did beat her in a fight, she wouldn’t owe you a goddamn thing. Urgh ugh ghhh.

Yoshino is appropriately bewildered, but apparently Lalamon is feeling fiercely protective.

Lalamon: “I accept your challenge! But if I win, you’re not allowed to go near Yoshino ever again!”

Lalamon. Lalamon, I appreciate your desire to protect Yoshino from this asshole, but this is not the right way to go about it. By accepting his challenge, you are validating the idea that he ‘deserves’ to go out with her if he wins, and that is not okay. The only way to deal with such a preposterous moron is to refuse to engage with him on his bullshit terms at all.

Ivan: “Hahaha! I’ll win and go out with Honey!”

See! He thinks this means it works that way! No! Stop it!

Lalamon: “Once you see my evolved form, you’re gonna pass out from a squirting nosebleed!”

Geez, apparently Lalamon is self-aware about her Ultimate form being blatant fanservice.

The entire tone for this scene is trying to be very overtly comedic, which, A, a dude pressuring a woman into feeling obligated to date him is not funny, and B, even a scene that was funny would be a bit of a tonal whiplash in the midst of this battle to defend a city from genocide. Come on, writers.

Yoshino drags Lalamon away from her fierce battle taunts to have an aside conversation with her.

Yoshino: “Just a second, Lalamon! Why are you accepting the match?! What’ll happen if something goes wrong?!”

Yoshino doesn’t outright say as much, but she’s clearly thinking about the fact that if Lalamon does lose, she’ll just have “““obligated””” Yoshino to go on a date with Ivan by having accepted his terms at all. Which is exactly the problem! And despite how ridiculous and bad this scene is being, I do still appreciate that Yoshino realises this and is trying to point it out and wants none of this nonsense. Always the most competent and the most Done with everybody’s bullshit, I love her.

Lalamon: “Chances are, he’s the one who’s commanding the troops.”

Yoshino: “So, you’re saying, if we keep Ivan occupied, the Gizmon’s attacks will weaken?”

Lalamon shifts into whispering as she says this to Yoshino – and this is an actually legit reason to have Ivan’s fight! I sincerely hope and want to believe that Lalamon’s fierce taunting and acting like she was buying into the whole stupid dating-ultimatum was all an act so that Ivan wouldn’t realise there was another more strategic reason for her doing this.

Lalamon: “We can’t just keep him occupied. We need to knock him down so he’ll never do anything bad ever again!”

Also a fair point – they do need to defeat Ivan anyway so that he won’t keep murdering more Digimon, so who cares about the bullshit “terms” he made up for a fight that they’re determined not to lose for more important reasons anyway?

Rosemon: “Now that I have the power of the Ultimate level, Ivan is no match for me.”

It seems that part of the reason they’re so confident they’ll win this is because they’re not aware of the fact that the Bio-Hybrids can now also evolve to Ultimate. Nanami’s the only one who’s shown that power so far, and she was alone with Tohma.

Ivan’s evolution into BioSpinomon is actually animated in a cool way. Instead of a simple wave of Digisoul acting like a screen-wipe transition between the two forms like most non-fancy-animation evolutions happen, we instead see his body distort and morph, scales and spines growing out of his skin, Ivan groaning as it happens. It’s still fairly tame in how it looks because this is a kids’ show, but there’s some body horror to that; the process seems grotesque and painful. Which is neat, especially because this is an unnatural method of evolution! I wish all the Bio-Hybrids evolutions were animated like that, but alas, this is just a one-off stroke of inspiration by whoever decided on it for this episode.

Rosemon: “I’ll show you that size is no indication of strength!”

Oh, Rosemon, stuck being the human-sized one among the Ultimate-levels. (Even Lilamon was about twice a human’s height.) BioSpinomon is indeed a fair bit bigger than her, though not as giant as ShineGreymon and the like, because that’d be a bit too much of an awkward size-difference for this fight.

As BioSpinomon meets one of Rosemon’s attacks with his own, matching it in power, he boasts about how much faster and more powerful his new form is, and then turns it into a line about how his “love for Honey is infinite”, urghhh he is the worst.

And the writers decided to have that be the note on which we go to the opening, which I also do not appreciate!!!

Riding on the wind of dreams

and surpassing the glittering rainbow

I continue on towards my journey

Anyway, the new opening again, reminding me that Savers is in fact a good anime which I love despite current appearances to the contrary. It has the usual sort of main character shots showing the various evolution stages of their partners that most Digimon openings do, and I like these ones more than in the previous opening. They’re more dynamic, and feature the characters in poses that seem like they’re upset and brooding about something; I enjoy the once-an-episode abstract reminder that these characters very much have Issues.

…I’m showing Yoshino’s one now because unfortunately this is the most singly Yoshino-focused episode we’re going to be getting for the rest of the series, which is not a fact that I’m a fan of.

Anyway, back to the fight, Ivan is still insisting that if he wins this he can “make Yoshino his lover” and I hate it, thanks. At least Yoshino continues to be completely Nope about all this.

BioSpinomon: “Your cold words only prove the love you secretly feel for me.”

Oh my GOD, no means no, you absolute troglodyte.

BioSpinomon: “I-want-to-share-a-juice-drink-with-two-straws Bomber!”

Ivan then goes into a series of attacks that he gives his own stupid names – here’s just one example, I couldn’t handle quoting more than that – of things he wants to do with Yoshino. I am very thankful this is a children’s anime and therefore these are all G-rated cutesy romance things rather than what they could be from the mind of a creep like him, but still, ugh, bad, shut up.

BioSpinomon: “This is all so I can get Honey and have a loving relationship with her.”

Shut. UP. She’s not a freaking prize, you objectifying piece of trash.

What’s also so jarring about this is that Ivan wasn’t even this bad in previous episodes. When he first saw her, it was just “hm, she might be my type”, and now it’s suddenly all “I’M MADLY IN LOVE WITH YOU”. It did not need to be this way, even if we have to stick to the previously-established fact that, okay, he happens to find her attractive. You are busy carrying out a genocide, dude, do you not have better things to be focusing on.

Yoshino, still frustratedly Done with all this nonsense, fervently tells Ivan she has no desire to do any of the things he mentioned with him (though frankly I don’t know why she’s even bothering when he’s already made it clear he doesn’t care what she wants and refuses to listen to the word “no”).

Rosemon: “Don’t worry. I’ll never hand you over to him, Yoshino.”

I really really want to think that Rosemon is only saying this to continue to play along with Ivan’s nonsense so that he doesn’t realise this is a distraction tactic, but I’m not at all sure that’s what the writers want us to think.

This shot of them staring each other down like Rosemon is equally invested in fighting with Ivan over Yoshino sure doesn’t make it seem that way. Apparently Ivan’s terrible writing spilled over onto Lalamon’s character just a little, which makes me sad.

Yoshino: “What… are you two doing?”

At least Yoshino continues to be 1000% Done with all of this nonsense, not letting the fact that even Rosemon is somehow in on it sway her from displaying the correct attitude here. Good.

Anyway, we get a scene change now! Finally we can move onto something else that isn’t that bullshit, dear god.

Tohma is carrying Nanami’s ambiguously-unconscious body through the forest near where the waterfall was. Gaomon is unevolved; apparently Tohma still hasn’t considered the concept of evolving him for faster transport.

Gaomon: “Will you be heading back to the Capital now? Or will you join up with Masaru to deal with Kurata? Master? Master!”

Gaomon asks him these questions, but it seems Tohma was zoning out and didn’t properly register anything. He stares at the unconscious Nanami, remembering what she said to him when she lost, about how he only won because he used Masaru’s power.

Gaomon: “Master!”

Tohma: “No. Masaru said he’ll be fine on his own. Let’s hurry back to Yushima and the others.”

It takes another prompt from Gaomon to finally get him to respond. Given what he was just thinking about, I suspect Tohma’s choice to leave Masaru to his own devices isn’t entirely a strategic one and is also because he can’t bear to put himself in a position where it’ll look like he’s relying on Masaru again, having Masaru take all the credit for victory.

We go back to the fight with Yoshino, which I’m not as grumpy about this time, because the writers are about to finally remember how to do their job properly. Rosemon makes a shield out of thorny vines to block more attacks coming their way, which is a neat ability of hers that I don’t think we ever see again.

Out of nowhere, a Yashamon (Armour-level, essentially Adult, doesn’t stand a chance) leaps in and valiantly attempts to attack BioSpinomon from behind. He notices and slams it to the ground before it can reach him.

As the injured and shaking Yashamon begs him in terror to spare its life, BioSpinomon slowly and deliberately removes one of the huge bladed spines from his back.

Yoshino: “Ivan, don’t!”

Yoshino calls out to him as she realises what he’s about to do, and there’s something I really like about this. Despite the utter preposterous nonsense she’s just had to deal with from this asshole, she still can’t help but try and stop him murdering someone, even using his name in an attempt to appeal to the human person that surely must be in there somewhere beneath all the bullshit.

(And she’s not entirely wrong there; we are finally, actually about to get into the part of Ivan that’s something of an interesting character, thank god.)

Ivan doesn’t listen or even acknowledge her appeal, and he stabs the Yashamon to death.

Rosemon: “How could you…?”

Yoshino: “You’re despicable… How can you still regard yourself as a human being?!”

BioSpinomon: “Despicable?! This is merely business!”

Note how Ivan’s not precisely denying the accusation he’s despicable and practically inhuman; he’s dodging and deflecting the point. He explains that he was hired by Kurata for money, and in exchange for that, he let Kurata modify his body and use him for hunting Digimon.

BioSpinomon: “It is my duty to obey Kurata’s orders. Hunting for Digimon is my business!”

Yoshino: “This is the worst.”

That’s Yoshino’s usual catchphrase, but in this instance I might have been tempted to translate it as “You’re the worst”, for once, especially with the grim stare at Ivan that it comes with.

In a quick cutaway to Kurata’s camp (Masaru’s group still hasn’t shown up there yet) he gets a video call from some of his troops out in the battle near ElDoradimon.

(Kurata was also yawning before the call came. So tedious, this genocide business.)

Specifically, the troops are on the dry lakebed near ElDoradimon’s feet, setting up some kind of device there. This is why the waterfall being destroyed mattered; the human troops wouldn’t be able to do this with the water still there. It’s also notable that directly underneath ElDoradimon, near its feet like this, is effectively a blind spot for everyone up in the city, blocked from their view by the turtle’s giant body. Nobody on the Digimon side has any idea this is happening right now; they’re all too caught up in fighting the hordes of Gizmon up top.

The soldier informs Kurata that the operation will be complete in five minutes, and a timer starts counting down.

Kurata: “Now, it won’t be long before the greatest chapter in the history of mankind begins!”

Still very much with that gloating. Obviously his deeds are going to be the greatest thing humanity has ever seen; his genius inventions and power to destroy an entire species make him the most important human ever, right?

As we cut back to Yoshino and Ivan, Yoshino is giving Ivan an impassioned speech about how Digimon are people and can be our friends, so what does he mean killing them is just “business”?

Yoshino: “That doesn’t upset you? Do you not feel anything from seeing the pain and suffering… of the Digimon that you’ve hurt?”

BioSpinomon: “Having a heart is unnecessary for business, Honey.”

(Urgh, there’s an actual meaningful point in Ivan’s line but I hate that it comes in the same breath as calling her “Honey” yet again, do you not see the contradiction in this statement, Ivan. Or rather, writers.)

What Ivan’s really saying here (yet deflecting from in the way he talks about it) is that having basic human feelings about the Digimon he’s murdering for money is getting in the way of his job, so he’s chosen to forcibly suppress those feelings and not let that stop him. That’s actually somewhat interesting! A lot more so than him being an asshole who never cared in the first place, like he’s appeared to be up until now.

Yoshino: “Don’t call me your honey!”

Really Yoshino should have been objecting to that point in the first place, simply on the grounds that she doesn’t want to be called that. But her saying this here in particular is at least showing that she’s just gained an especially strong disgust for Ivan as a person after hearing that he’s willingly suppressed his feelings to let himself murder Digimon for money.

And the interesting thing is… this isn’t entirely unlike Yoshino herself, in certain ways? Obviously she’s not doing something as horrible as murdering Digimon for money, but I’ve talked here and there about how she must have never really wanted to join DATS in the first place. She must have been forced to, because it was the only way for her to keep Lalamon with her. And then somewhere along the way she apparently suppressed those feelings of hers about hating being forced into this, to the point of coming across like DATS’s policy about that is totally acceptable and okay to her.

This is a way in which Ivan could have been an actual interesting foil and parallel to Yoshino! If the writers hadn’t spent so much of their time making Ivan The Worst, they could have gone into this and spent this episode using him to parallel and explore that part of Yoshino that’s always been low-key there but never highlighted! Sigh. I am disappoint.

BioSpinomon: “I won’t ask you to understand. But I will carry out the orders that Kurata gives me without complaint.”

Based on this, Ivan also appears to have suppressed the part of himself that cares about having other people understand his actions. He is willing to have everyone else think he’s a heartless monster, if that’s what has to happen for him to carry out his orders.

(This sentiment sure seems contradicted by the earlier parts where he was trying to get Yoshino to date him now, doesn’t it, sigh. But at least he is being an actual character and treating Yoshino like an actual person now; better late than never.)

BioSpinomon: “This is the contract that I voluntarily sought after!”

Rosemon: “It’s not just your body… You even sold your heart to Kurata.”

Rosemon sums it up pretty well; Ivan was willing to give up his integrity and decency as a person in order to get this money from Kurata, and he even seems somewhat aware of that. It doesn’t seem like he’s doing this just out of greed, because greedy people who only want to be rich don’t tend to care about their integrity in the first place.

All this makes Yoshino even more determined to defeat Ivan, so Rosemon fires off a furious series of attacks at him, including one called Ivy Hug in which she summons thorny vines from the ground around the enemy to grab hold of them. That’s another neat ability of hers that we never see again. Clearly Forbidden Temptation and its G-rated nudity is far more important for us to be seeing all the time, right.

Rosemon: “Someone who’s given up his heart has no right to speak of love.”

EXACTLY, Rosemon! Thank you for summing up precisely why Ivan’s terrible caricature “comic relief” nonsense traits actively harm the part of him which is an interesting character that we’re seeing here. The whole point of Ivan’s issues is that he’s willingly suppressing all his emotions to be able to do this, so why the hell is he not also suppressing his attraction to someone fighting against him? And why does he have that ridiculous habit of saying his thoughts out loud if he’s trying to suppress them all?

(Note how literally none of the thoughts he’s ever “accidentally” said out loud have had anything to do with his feelings about murdering Digimon. I’d actually be somewhat more on board with that whole thing if they had been! It’d still have been a little bit silly, but Ivan saying stuff like “I feel so awful about killing all these Digimon… but I’d never say that out loud,” while Kurata and Nanami and Kouki just kinda raise their eyebrows in response would at least feel somewhat relevant to the point of him.)

Rosemon’s comment was seemingly intended by her to be a battle-ending one-liner, but we’re doing the whole “smoke clears, nope he’s still standing” thing again here. Ivan is really determined to earn that money that he’s murdering Digimon for.

BioSpinomon: “I have a reason for carrying through with this mission. For that, I will give him my body, my heart… Everything I possess!”

It sure doesn’t sound like this “reason” that he’s willing to both physically and morally destroy himself for is just money in and of itself. He needs that money desperately for something, and that something can’t really be himself if he’s sacrificing everything for it like this.

With that determination, he fires a huge blast of blue flames at the pair, and Rosemon has to use her body to shield Yoshino, getting badly hurt herself in the process. BioSpinomon winds up for another attack, intending to finish them off.

(Oh hey look at him coldly getting ready to murder the person he was trying to freaking date earlier, it’s almost like that earlier part made no sense for his actual meaningful character)

Rosemon: “Yoshino, run…”

Yoshino: “What are you saying? Stand up, Rosemon!”

Aww, look at them being friends! Rosemon wants Yoshino to stay out of danger, but Yoshino wants to stay and help, and she can, helping Rosemon to her feet. There’s something neat about having Rosemon be the same size as a human here, because it allows Yoshino to physically support her and makes this feel like more of a human moment between regular friends than it really can with the giant Ultimate forms.

With Yoshino holding onto her friend for companionship and support, Rosemon gathers her strength and fires her attack to get into a big dramatic beam-war with BioSpinomon’s blue flames.

Yoshino: “We can’t lose… I won’t… I won’t let you kill anyone any more!”

Just when it looks like Rosemon’s about to be overpowered, Yoshino refuses to accept it and explodes with her fiercely rekindled determination to never let anyone get murdered ever again. I like to think that it’s that emotion powering her Digisoul within her partner that gives Rosemon the strength to turn the tides and overwhelm BioSpinomon.

Over at Kurata’s camp, just as Kurata gets the news that BioSpinomon’s signal has been lost, Masaru and Ikuto and their partners finally make it there. (You know, if Agumon had stayed evolved at the beginning of the episode, you could have got here a lot quicker and flattened Kurata a lot easier, just saying…!)

Falcomon swoops forward, intending to drop a smokescreen on Kurata, but before he can, Kouki leaps in and punches him out of the air. It shouldn’t be a surprise at all that he is also willing to straight-up punch Digimon even in his human form.

As Kouki taunts them about how long they took to get here, Masaru charges in �� only for Kouki to dash forwards and grab Masaru by the face to fling him back, yikes, that’s kinda brutal. I mean, Masaru is bound to be used to this kind of thing from his anything-goes street fights, but still, ouch.

Yoshino and Rosemon approach Ivan lying defeated on the ground, back in his human body with his Digimon form reverted to an egg next to him. Yoshino notices a photo poking out of his pocket and takes a look at it.

Ivan: “Give it back…”

Yoshino: “Ivan!”

Ivan: “My photo of my siblings… Give it back!”

The photo shows nine siblings, all of them little kids, while Ivan is the eldest by far. The family must have come from an impoverished background, likely with no parents in the picture any more, so many mouths to feed – Ivan as their big brother would do anything to get his siblings the money they need to live a decent life. Even turn himself into a monster, physically and morally.

Yoshino stares at the photo, realising what Ivan meant earlier when he said he had a reason for going through with this, something he was willing to suppress his emotions and destroy himself for.

She gives the photo back to him, and he clutches it to his chest fondly. I kinda like that, as well as his desperation to get the photo back in general. It’s probably been ages since he’s seen his siblings after joining Kurata’s mission, and he must miss them a lot.

Yoshino: “Ivan, you idiot! You gave up both your body and heart for money! Do you really think your family will be happy about that?!”

She’s got a good point there. He got them the money to live comfortably, sure, but they’re going to be devastated and horrified if they ever find out what their beloved big brother did for their sake!

Ivan doesn’t say anything else, but he does start to cry before passing out. Seems maybe he realised on some level that Yoshino was right.

Yoshino: “He takes advantage of other people’s weaknesses… and makes them do things like this… I’ll never forgive Kurata for this.”

Granted, surely there must have been plenty of other potential ways for Ivan to make the money he needed to support his siblings without having to become complicit in genocide. But I like Yoshino’s line here and the angle it suggests: Ivan was desperate, and Kurata preyed on that desperation by offering him this opportunity, perhaps in such a way that Ivan never realised there was any better way out. Seems like Kurata knows that younger siblings whom somebody would do anything to help and protect can make for a conveniently exploitable weak point.

God, look at Ivan being an actually interesting character with issues and arguably-sympathetic motivations, what a wild concept. I legitimately like this aspect of him; it’s just such a shame that it was never visible until nearly halfway through this one episode.

Elsewhere on ElDoradimon, the Gizmon are retreating away from the battle, and Yushima wonders why. Meanwhile, Tohma – oh my god he’s evolved Gaomon for transport, it’s a miracle. That’s a grand total of two times that’s happened so far this series, let’s keep a count of this, I don’t think it gets much higher.

Flying towards the city on MirageGaogamon, Tohma also sees the Gizmon retreat, but from his vantage point he can spot something else as well that those stationed on the city itself can’t: the devices that the human troops have set up around ElDoradimon’s feet. He lands near one to investigate it – it’s a cluster of space-time oscillation bombs, set to go off, with less than thirty seconds left on the timer. Far too late for Tohma to do anything to disarm them.

(If only you’d evolved Gaomon sooner, huh? Alas, it happened this way for the writing convenience of having Gaomon be Gaomon for the earlier scene where Tohma was brooding about Nanami, and now having MirageGaogamon out so that Tohma could actually get back to the city in time to be there for any of this at all.)

Back at Kurata’s camp, Ikuto helps Falcomon to his feet and evolves hi – oh dear, you guys don’t realise you’re on a time limit here, you don’t have time for lengthy evolution animations. (Maybe we can pretend this scene actually began a little bit before the scene with Tohma such that they happened concurrently, because we see the timer at 25 seconds and yet it takes something closer to a minute in episode runtime for the bombs to go off after that. That or Yatagaramon’s evolution doesn’t actually take up any in-story time at all despite how long the animation is.)

Yatagaramon looms over Kurata, and again Kouki simply leaps into the air and kicks him this time, still 100% willing to attack a Digimon in his own human body. Kurata watches all this calmly and chuckles, knowing that the timer’s about to hit zero and they’re going to have bigger problems to deal with than him once it does.

Kurata: “It’s showtime!”

He still likes to drop this line when he’s about to do something genius and murdery. Everyone come and marvel at The Kurata Show.

The space-time bombs positioned all around ElDoradimon’s feet detonate, creating one huge Digital Gate on the ground beneath it, bigger than the city turtle itself, and ElDoradimon begins to sink into it. Not only was Kurata’s camp a distraction for Masaru’s little group, the entire battle with the Gizmon was a distraction for everyone, so that they would be too caught up in that to notice his real plan. Kurata’s going to drag the Holy Capital itself and every Digimon in it into the human world.

(Despite how Yoshino and Lalamon decided to fight Ivan in order to distract him from leading the troops, it’s actually entirely possible that Ivan engaged with the pair in order to distract them, knowing that his role was to buy time until the bombs went off. I would certainly like to think that all of the dating nonsense was Ivan merely pretending to have a shallow foolish reason for getting caught up in this “distraction”, so that Yoshino doesn’t realise really he’s the one distracting her. I don’t know if I have enough faith in the writing of Ivan to believe that’s really what they were going for, though.)

As Masaru’s group watch this unfold in horror from the hill the camp is on, Kurata catches a ride on a Gizmon and flies off. He could have done that the entire time, but it seems he was content to sit and act as “bait” to draw Masaru here and distract him for long enough, knowing Kouki would protect him from actually getting killed by any huge angry Digimon. Plus, if he hadn’t stayed here until the key moment, he wouldn’t have got to gloat to his enemies, and that’s clearly very important.

Masaru is still faced with a Kouki intent on punching his lights out, and it’s possible he’d have been down for that fight, but thankfully Yatagaramon has his priorities straight and grabs Masaru, Agumon and Ikuto to fly them towards the city as fast as he can. If they don’t get there before ElDoradimon sinks all the way through and the Gate closes, they’ll be stuck here on the Digital World side, completely unable to help.

Kouki: “Are you running away, you bastard?!”

Kouki, do you not think he has slightly better things to be doing right now than fighting you. Not everything revolves around you. You’ll get your chance soon, chill.

As Yoshino and Rosemon stand in the sinking city, at a loss for how to stop this, MirageGaogamon flies past, and Yoshino and Tohma exchange a glance. Tohma doesn’t say anything, partly because it’d be difficult to hold a conversation at this distance, but also perhaps because, what is there to say? The last time he saw Yoshino would have been just before he headed off on his own to guard the waterfall without telling anyone – and he failed, and now ElDoradimon is sinking because he couldn’t protect it.

(He can’t even really blame it on Masaru recklessly running into a trap, because even if he and Ikuto had been here in the battle, what could they have done to stop this either?)

Kurata’s Gizmon swoops over the scene just so that Kurata can survey his handiwork and gloat to nobody at all about how this is all just as he planned. Look, I’ll give him this: it was a legitimately good plan. Nobody suspected this until it was far too late, not even Tohma, who knew that keeping the lake filled with water would be important but didn’t quite manage to pick up on the reason why.

Yatagaramon and his three passengers get caught up in a frantic aerial chase back to the city while Gizmon try to shoot him down. (No, this does not count as evolving for transport, because Ikuto evolved him earlier for the sake of fighting.) Yoshino and Rosemon watch from a distance, powerless to do anything to actually help.

Also, please appreciate this shot of them waist-deep in interdimensional void. This must be a very weird experience for anyone in the city.

As the Gate slowly begins to close and more Gizmon crowd around Yatagaramon and grab hold of him, the big crow does a rapid spinning attack to shake them all off. It works, but it also makes Masaru extremely dizzy. The troubles of riding a giant evolved Digimon who is also trying to fight things.

Ikuto is fine though, somehow, and eggs Yatagaramon on into one last desperate swoop to make it into the Gate in time.

In the human world, out over the Yokohama bay, the huge Digital Gate that’s opened in midair slowly deposits the entire giant city turtle down into the water, sending a huge tsunami out from where it landed. From the perspective of human civilians who’ve only known Digimon as this mysterious dangerous invading force, this probably looks like more of that.

Overall thoughts

Well. This is another episode that I often consider a candidate for my least-favourite episode in Savers, for obvious reasons. The first Ivan scene here is terrible and the only point in Savers at which I actively dislike what I’m watching. But the rest of the episode’s still pretty decent, so it’s hard to hate it that much as a whole?

Once they get into the second half of the episode and Ivan starts being an actually interesting character, I can appreciate what they’re going for there! If the idea of him as someone who’s willingly suppressed his empathy for the sake of making money for his starving younger siblings was something they’d leaned into more for his entire screentime and not just literally this one part, I’d appreciate Ivan a lot! But geez, it sure is incredibly undermined by absolutely everything else about his portrayal up until that point.

Still, better late than never. At least it’s something. Thanks to this, my opinion on how to fix The Ivan Problem in this story is not “ditch him entirely”, but rather, “expand upon this actually good aspect of his character while ditching all the terrible parts entirely”.

Thanks to Ivan being mostly terrible, we also miss the opportunity to focus on Yoshino and get into her issues in this episode. There totally is potential for Ivan to be an interesting foil to her, in that she’s also been going along with DATS simply because she’s had to for the sake of Lalamon (who’s like family to her!) and has suppressed all the parts of her that never really liked this arrangement in order to get by. That could have been great! But no, clearly the more important thing to do with Yoshino’s Bio-Hybrid rival is have him hit on her because she woman. Urgh. Come on, Savers writers, you are usually so much better than this, why did this happen.

Still, on the bright side, we are now done with Ivan and never have to hear him say words ever again.

Yoshino and Ivan aside, the other thing I do appreciate about this episode is the overarching plot of it with the space-time bombs. Kurata’s plan with that really is quite impressively clever and unexpected. Each of these episodes spent fighting for ElDoradimon has a distinct progression from one stage of the battle to the next, so that all of the background action outside of the individual Bio-Hybrid fights doesn’t feel samey, and I enjoy that.

---

[Dub comparison]

#digimon #digimon savers #yoshino fujieda #lalamon #ivan #tohma h norstein #kouki #akihiro kurata #baromon #the digivice old man

14 notes · View notes

commentaryvorg · 3 years ago

Text

Digimon Savers Commentary Episode 28 - Evolution is Impossible! Digivice Breakdown

In this episode, while hunting for Kurata in the Digital World, the group encounters a mysterious ally, BanchouLeomon. Later, while protecting a sanctuary of injured Digimon from the Bio-Hybrids, they unleash an uncontrolled new power.

(This episode’s commentary comes with a spoiler warning! In order to be able to talk about everything that’s going on in this episode like I want to, I will need to spoil a secret that’s kept hidden from the viewers until the end of episode 45. If you’ve been watching along for the first time with this commentary and you care about not having plot twists spoiled for you, now is the time you’re going to have to stop reading the commentary and not come back – or at least skip reading all particular commentary posts on which I put this spoiler warning – until you’ve got to episode 45 by yourself, I’m afraid. This isn’t the hugest most experience-ruining plot twist for you to be spoiled for ahead of time, I don’t feel (on my first viewing, I guessed it fairly early on), but, still. Fair warning.)

Oh dear, the recap is beginning to creep longer. It’s still not quite as egregiously long as some of them are going to be later, but it feels like we’re headed in that direction now.

We open on the group wandering through some rocky valley in the Digital World. They’re headed towards Jureimon – the big tree guy they met in episode 14 – because Ikuto and Falcomon figure he’s old and wise, so he might know something about where Kurata is. They… really didn’t come here with much of a plan, did they? But then again, that’s fair enough, because they were in such a hurry to get here at all before their one remaining way in got cut off.

I should note, not that it really matters for our purposes in this episode, that they must have already been headed towards Jureimon for quite a while. There are certain events we will learn about in a later episode that have to have happened between the end of episode 27 and the beginning of this one, so there’s actually been more of a timeskip here than it might seem. Doesn’t appear like we missed much other than our heroes wandering uneventfully through the Digital World, though. I’d rather have this than have to sit through irrelevant filler adventures.

They come across a village of Mushmon houses, flattened and destroyed. One lone surviving Mushmon flees desperately through the wreckage, only for a Gizmon: XT to murder it.

The Gizmon is carrying a kind of suction device we haven’t seen them with before. As the Mushmon’s egg disintegrates, the device sucks up some yellow sparkly energy that remains, and stores it in a tank. Tohma picks up on this detail and quietly wonders what it’s for.

Ikuto: “I won’t forgive them… I won’t forgive them!”

Ikuto, meanwhile, is deeply furious at watching the first Digimon-murder happen in front of him since Mercurimon was killed. He flashes back to both Yukidarumon and Mercurimon’s moments of death and then flares up with Digisoul.

Falcomon, who’s been wearing a bandage since their run-in with the Bio-Hybrids in episode 26, dramatically throws it off as he prepares to evolve. I feel like “dramatically throwing off bandages” must be some kind of anime trope, because Masaru did it in episode 13 as well.

As Yatagaramon attacks the Gizmon, it seems its suction-thingy also doubles as a gun, somehow? Doesn’t feel like that’d be feasible, but sure. It can’t be using the yellow sparkly energy as ammo, at least; that’s not what it’s for.

Masaru: “It’s gotten faster than before!”

Or alternatively, Masaru, Yatagaramon’s just lost his New Evolution Buff. Or the Gizmon: XT they beat in episode 25 was only slower because it’d been punched in the face by Mercurimon.

Some more Gizmon: XT show up. Tohma and Yoshino evolve their partners, who charge at the enemy (there’s Digisoul Charge animations, but the actual evolution animations are… skipped entirely? Amazing). Masaru runs in for a punch, which misses, and he gets smacked to the ground, while MachGaogamon and Lilamon get hit and quickly devolved moments later, perhaps explaining why the writers felt like sparing us from watching them evolve for like a full minute.

Tohma: “Gaomon!”

Yoshino: “Lalamon!”

Agumon: “Aniki!”

As the trio rush to their fallen partners, one of these things is not like the others. Oh, Masaru. Savers in a nutshell.

Tohma silently muses that it’s strange that these Gizmon are acting on their own without partners, but that’s going to be a pretty common thing from hereon out. They’re basically robots; they probably have some kind of AI setting that lets them act remotely without direct orders.

Yatagaramon: “So they’ve also raised their defence.”

Yatagaramon says this after firing another attack at them and having it bounce off. I am still skeptical about this claim the narrative is making that these Gizmon: XT are notably stronger than the one from episode 25. Our heroes had a lot of trouble taking that one down, even in its Adult-level form, even while outnumbering it, until the Ultimate-level Mercurimon stepped in to help.

One of the Gizmon retaliates by shooting Yatagaramon with… the striped laser. The weapon that’s permanently killed every Digimon we’ve seen it hit. Except that Yatagaramon’s fine; he just devolved into Falcomon, is all.

And, yes, I know what you’re thinking. I know. But hear me out, because this doesn’t necessarily have to be a huge glaring inconsistency. It’s possible that, under normal circumstances, that striped laser can’t instantly kill any Digimon higher than Adult-level.

The exceptions we’ve seen to this are SaberLeomon and Mercurimon, and both of those were Digimon that Kurata had personally encountered before: chasing him down on the original expedition, or almost murdering him in a rage during his first massacre. Kurata would have had these specific Digimon in mind as Dangerous Enemies that he needs to get rid of in order for his goals to succeed. So it’s possible he prepared some method that deliberately calibrated the Gizmon’s lasers to corrupt and destroy the data of these two Digimon in particular. For most other stronger Digimon, he wouldn’t have had that chance to prepare yet, so it could well take more than a single laser to kill them.

It's also possible instead that Yatagaramon surviving this is down to a perk of the evolving-through-Digisoul thing, in that that comes with a defence mechanism of always having the Digimon revert to Child-level first when hit with a devastating attack, rather than going straight to an egg (which would have then disintegrated, because Gizmon). I know I’m reaching here, but it’s possible, shush.

Still, even if it can be made to make sense, this is kind of a shame. In my first time watching episode 25, things felt especially tense as our heroes fought the Gizmon, knowing that one hit from that striped laser could kill them permanently, even though I knew that of course that wouldn’t actually happen. But now that illusion is broken, because we’ve seen that it’s functionally just another attack, at least to the Digimon we care about the most.

And it’s also very much the case that Ikuto should have utterly panicked, fearing that he’s about to lose Falcomon on top of everyone else. But he only reacts with the usual amount of worry, as if Falcomon had been devolved by a regular attack. The writers really ought to have thought about this some more.

Tohma: “They’re stronger than before. They must have been modified even further!”

Yeah, still really not convinced by this claim at all, especially when you just saw that laser being explicitly “weaker” than you’ve ever seen it be.

Masaru, of course, is still being insistently defiant, though I don’t fancy their chances when he’s unable to get a punch in and the other three Digimon partners have already been devolved. But then they’re interrupted by the sound of… a reed pipe? It’s BanchouLeomon, atop a nearby cliff, announcing his presence in a far more extra way than necessary because that’s how he rolls.

The animators also announce his presence showing different parts of his outfit dramatically from multiple angles, just to get the point across. They want you to know that this guy is a badass. (Or a drama queen. You decide.)

Masaru: “Who are you?!”

BanchouLeomon: “Just a banchou who’s passing through. BanchouLeomon!”

As the subbers notes inform us, a banchou is what they describe as a “boss fighter”. Basically, the kind of person Masaru is trying to be. The big tough badass whom nobody wants to mess with. As an example, the Japanese term that is subbed as “street fighter” in Masaru’s lines is kenka banchou, with kenka being the word for a street brawl. Masaru is a banchou of street fights, that’s how notoriously good he is at them. And this Digimon is a banchou of… the entire Digital World, I guess? Or at least his own “turf” within it.

Point is, this is Masaru’s kinda guy.

Just to underline the drama even more, we cut to the opening as soon as BanchouLeomon introduces himself. Here’s a shot from near the end, of our trio’s evolved partners flying into the sky, but, huh, those silhouettes don’t look familiar. The opening has always contained this tiny blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glimpse of their Ultimate forms there, right from the beginning.

Back in the episode, the group’s commenting on how they’ve never seen or heard of BanchouLeomon before.

Yoshino: “Could he be a member of Kurata’s troops?”

Masaru: “No, that can’t be.”

[beat; everyone stares at Masaru]

Masaru: “There’s no evil in a guy that’s a banchou!”

Yes, Masaru. Such logic. It is pretty great how Masaru instantly decides to trust this guy, because he must follow a similar fighting philosophy to Masaru himself if he’s calling himself a banchou.

BanchouLeomon dodges gunfire from the Gizmon: XT, leaps down from the clifftop and defeats one of them with a single punching attack. He’s Ultimate-level, so this isn’t particularly surprising. (Mercurimon only managed to weaken a Gizmon: XT with one punch, but he was also dying at the time and therefore not at his full strength.) Despite the narrative desperately trying to insist to us that these Gizmon: XT are totally stronger than before, they’re still no match for an Ultimate-level.

BanchouLeomon: “Holy am I, alone, throughout heaven and earth!”

According to the subbers, this is him quoting Buddha, as a sign of his self-importance. He’s just really, really extra, okay. He says this while rushing through and destroying two more Gizmon, just to drive the point home.

BanchouLeomon: “With my fists… nothing is impossible!”

This at least feels like a sentiment Masaru probably agrees with.

As he takes out the last Gizmon, its suction thingy drops to the ground and the tank on it breaks, releasing that sparkly energy into the air. Again, Tohma notices this. The others don’t really seem to have picked up on it at all, but it’s in Tohma’s character to spot details like that. The deal with this sparkly energy will also be the most relevant to him in particular going forward.

Masaru: “Not bad, BanchouLeomon!”

Oh, Masaru. You just watched this guy perform a feat that your entire team couldn’t hope to manage, and all you have to say is “not bad”. Someone wants to present himself as still potentially the best banchou around here, huh.

BanchouLeomon is standing with his back to the group, but at this, he glances back at them, chuckling.

…And, okay, somewhere around here ought to be where I bring up the spoilery thing. Last warning for anyone who really cares about that, assuming you’re someone who can avoid having your eyes skip ahead to read the next line involuntarily.

Here’s the thing: this is Masaru’s dad. Sort of, but also not, at the same time.

I won’t mention the details of how exactly this happened until the episode where it’s all laid out in the open, but here’s what’s relevant to know for the sake of me talking about it here. Suguru’s consciousness is hanging out in BanchouLeomon’s head alongside the actual BanchouLeomon’s consciousness. They can communicate mentally and switch up who’s in control at any time, as far as I understand it.

So one fun thing to do in any of BanchouLeomon’s appearances is to try and figure out who’s speaking: BanchouLeomon himself, or Suguru.

The future Episode About BanchouLeomon will illustrate that BanchouLeomon and Suguru use different first-person pronouns in Japanese, as a way to distinguish them. BanchouLeomon uses the arrogant male ore, while Suguru uses the polite male watashi. This would be a very handy indicator, except that in most of BanchouLeomon’s appearances, he… doesn’t ever happen to use any first-person pronouns in his Japanese speech at all, I don’t think? This may well be deliberate on the writers’ part, because any Japanese viewer who noticed him switching pronouns would be clued in to him actually being two different people. It may have clued in the characters, too.

(Actually, update from a future me who’s paid attention to this in a bunch more episodes now: BanchouLeomon sometimes uses ore, but never watashi, until the reveal. Seems like, whenever Suguru is in control, he makes a point of not using any “I” pronouns at all so as not to give himself away.)

Regardless of the lack of pronouns to tip us off, the answer to the question in this episode at least is pretty clear: it’s got to be BanchouLeomon. He has been and will continue to be incredibly extra throughout this whole scene, which I’m pretty sure is one of the giveaways of BanchouLeomon’s personality. From what we saw of Suguru in the flashbacks in episode 24, he was a lot more polite and reserved in general, despite his tendency to make things very Manly when the situation called for it. This doesn’t feel like his style.

It makes sense that it’d be BanchouLeomon and not Suguru in control in this scene, the first time he meets the DATS group and especially Masaru, given that he doesn’t want to reveal his identity to them for reasons. If Suguru had control, there’s every chance he might not be able to keep a poker face upon seeing Masaru again for the first time in so long. He probably asked his buddy to take the wheel on purpose to avoid letting anything slip.

The real point of all this is that I want you to please imagine Suguru insubstantially facepalming in the back of BanchouLeomon’s head as he does this whole over-the-top banchou ridiculousness at the group. “I finally see my son again for the first time in ten years, and this is how we act in front of him?”

(Then again, knowing Suguru and what a manly dork we’ve seen he can be, he might just think this is cool, too. I mean, he certainly seems to be impressing Masaru, if nothing else, and maybe that’s all he really wants.)

So anyway, hearing Masaru compliment him in a way that implies Masaru’s still the biggest banchou here, knowing this is his friend’s son – his friend whose consciousness is there in the back of his head, probably feeling immensely proud and happy to see his son so grown-up, not to mention relieved that he’s okay – BanchouLeomon turns around to face him, and…

BanchouLeomon: “Want to try taking on these fists?”

Oh my god that is so 1000% the most ridiculously Masaru way to approach meeting him, can you see why this guy and Masaru’s dad got along.

Masaru: “Interesting.”

Masaru cracks his knuckles, grinning, naturally extremely ready to take on this challenge. There’s a long, dramatic pause as they face each other down, the wind whistling… and oh my god you two manly dorks have you forgotten you have better things to be doing right now, such as literally stopping a genocide

There’s this fun shot where Masaru imagines BanchouLeomon towering over him (he is not actually that tall), sensing just from looking at him how overwhelmingly much stronger he is. This feels very appropriate, given that, though Masaru has no idea of it, his dad is there in that body.

Eventually, BanchouLeomon lowers his fist and chuckles.

BanchouLeomon: “You’re one million and 35 years too early to clash with me.”

I need to keep commenting on how ridiculously extra he is. There’s something especially exquisite about the way he feels the need to add the thirty-five on top of the one million, just to be really specific about it. I cannot help but imagine Suguru must be shaking his immaterial head at this in the back of their mind.

Masaru takes offence to this, despite having sensed for himself the huge difference in power between them. Of course he wasn’t going to let that stop him trying, and he’s frustrated that this guy doesn’t seem to think he’d put up any kind of fight.

BanchouLeomon: “There’s a critical difference between you and me. I have something right now that you guys don’t.”

Oh! I said earlier that I didn’t think BanchouLeomon ever used first-person pronouns at all, but turns out I was wrong, because in this line, he used ore-sama. So, even more arrogant than just ore, because there’s a self-sama in there, too, like Masaru likes to do sometimes. Yep, absolutely definitely BanchouLeomon here and not Suguru, as if that wasn’t already obvious enough.

BanchouLeomon: “What you guys are lacking… is power!”

What he really ultimately means by this here is that he’s Ultimate level while their partners are still only Perfect. That’s it. He doesn’t need to dress it up by being this bombastic and yet vague about it, but, you know, that’s how he rolls.

Masaru: “If it’s power you want, I’ve got it right here. In my burning fists!”

Oh, Masaru. Honestly I might be tempted to raise an eyebrow at this on a writing front, because Masaru’s development in episode 13 involved admitting to himself that his fists couldn’t do everything and that he wanted some kind of strength that was more than just physical. Buuuut, maybe this isn’t quite the same thing, because this is the word power, not strength. “Power” is a bit more leaning towards meaning just physical strength alone and not applying to emotional strength too. Even if Masaru desires some greater kind of emotional strength, he may still be perfectly confident that his fists have all the physical strength – ie, power – that they’ll ever need.

Or maybe this is a sign that Masaru’s kind of begun to forget what he learned from episode 13 in all the confusion of being caught up in this genocide and becoming really extra determined to be “powerful” enough to stop Kurata. Growth isn’t always one-directional. People can slip-up and need to re-learn the same lessons.

BanchouLeomon: “Simple fool. Your fists aren’t the only thing that make up strength.”

Masaru: “What?”

I need to mention that the subs took some licence here, perhaps for the sake of avoiding repetition, because the actual word BanchouLeomon used here was still the word for “power” and not “strength”. In that context, it’s reasonable for Masaru to question it without him having to have completely forgotten what he learned in episode 13.

And it’s also reasonable for BanchouLeomon to be saying this! This is a shounen universe where physical power comes from more than just the physical strength of your body, and BanchouLeomon – or perhaps more accurately, the other person in his head right now – understands that better than anyone.

BanchouLeomon: “The answer lies within yourselves.”

Masaru: “Within us?”

It sure does, though BanchouLeomon is continuing to be unhelpfully vague about this. This is all pretty much setup for the fact that we’re reaching the point where our protagonists will be achieving their next evolution level soon.

BanchouLeomon: “Look for power! Then convince me to acknowledge your strength! When that time comes, I will allow you to fight me!”

With that, BanchouLeomon leaps back up onto the cliffs and strides dramatically away, cackling to himself. Still being super extra, and also very unhelpfully vague. I guess the idea is that the “lesson” he’s trying to teach them will work best if they figure it out for themselves?

At least he has the right idea to use the prospect of getting to fight him as incentive for Masaru to figure this out.

Masaru: “Damn, he just says what he wants and leaves…”

Like that’s not the kind of straightforward thing you’d do too, Masaru, when you put it like that.

Tohma: “It’s true that our strength is greatly inadequate right now. We can’t even begin to find a trace of Kurata anywhere if the Gizmon: XT keep delaying us.”

Yoshino: “But power isn’t something easy to attain…”

Look at Tohma being analytical and thinking about the strategy of things, while Yoshino is subtly worrying and feeling inadequate.

Meanwhile, Ikuto has an idea, and he begins to leave with Falcomon.

Ikuto: “There’s a place where you can go to get power.”

Masaru: “Where?”

Ikuto: “I make sure to catch up with you later. You guys go to Jureimon.”

Also a bit weirdly vague – you’d think, if Ikuto knew of such a place, it’d be somewhere they’d all benefit from going. I guess Ikuto’s still really fixated on the idea that them meeting Jureimon will be helpful.

And, well, as it’ll turn out, this place Ikuto’s going isn’t somewhere anyone else would benefit from tagging along to. Still a little odd why the others don’t press this more, but what this really is on a narrative level is a way to get Ikuto out of the group for this and the next episode so that certain things can happen without him around.

Masaru: “Hey, don’t just run off! You’re messing up our teamwork!”

Yoshino: “You’re one to talk.”

You said exactly what I was thinking, Yoshino. Though I’m surprised Tohma wasn’t the one to comment on that.

Tohma: “Ikuto grew up in the Digital World. He must have an idea.”

It’s fair enough that if anyone was going to separate from the group here, it’d be Ikuto, who knows his way around. Not sure entirely how the other three are planning to reach Jureimon now without Ikuto showing them the way, but I guess they’re close enough and he’s pointed out the forest in the distance to them such that they can easily keep heading that way?

Yoshino: “There’s no doubt he’s working hard to make up for Mercurimon’s death.”

Aww, it’s sweet that Yoshino thought of that. Ikuto really is going through a lot and doing remarkably well to not just fall apart.

Elsewhere, Kurata is in the ruins of another Digimon village, patting himself on the back for wiping it out while peering into a huge container full of that sparkly yellow stuff.

Kurata: “The Digimon’s life energy… I’ve collected quite a lot of it. But it’s still not enough.”

Note that, in the flashback we saw to Kurata’s first massacre, and even at Mercurimon’s death, we didn’t see any of the Gizmon collecting this life energy that the murdered Digimon left behind. It is not because the life energy is harvested that the eggs disappear and the Digimon permanently die.

Still, though his primary goal is to kill all the Digimon, it looks like Kurata now has another plan cooking on the side by collecting this stuff while he murders.

As one of his troops informs him that some of the Gizmon deployed to a certain area have stopped responding, Kurata frowns and adjusts his glasses.

Kurata: “That’s odd news.”

Yes, the idea that your brilliant creations could possibly be destroyed, and that other people out there could possibly both want and be capable of stopping you doing a genocide… definitely just an odd thing that obviously shouldn’t be happening. Kurata is the most right and the most in control.

Our trio and their partners are now making their way through a foggy forest towards Jureimon’s place.

Lalamon: “We need to catch Kurata quickly, before there are more victims.”

Yoshino: “Yeah. But this is the man who exploded DATS HQ to get what he wanted. We don’t know what kind of foul traps he’ll have set up for us. Besides, if we don’t win…”

Yoshino and Lalamon’s thoughts are on the theme of worrying – worried about potential victims, worried about Kurata’s level of power and the things he might do to them to get his way, worried they might not be able to stop this.

Gaomon: “Kurata must have a considerable number of Gizmon: XT with him. It will be difficult to battle, considering their numbers.”

Tohma: “I guess this matter can’t be settled through normal planning…”

Tohma and Gaomon’s thoughts are along similar lines, but less overtly worried and more leaning towards trying to strategise, like you’d expect.

And then Masaru and Agumon…

Agumon: “Who was that BanchouLeomon?”

Masaru: “I don’t know. But his strength was the real thing. He’s terribly strong.”

Masaru & Agumon: “Power, huh…?”

…aren’t even thinking about the genocide at all, they’re still too fascinated by oh man that BanchouLeomon guy sure was strong, I wonder how we can become as strong as him!!! Oh my god, these dorks, I love them.

They’re interrupted as Agumon trips over his feet in the increasingly dense fog, causing a domino pile-up of everyone except Tohma and Lalamon. Most of the tripping happens with just sound effects and yelps over a shot of the background, and we only see the resulting pile, which is a fun comedic touch.

It's getting so foggy because they’re getting closer to Jureimon – close enough for his voice to call out to the “intruding humans” and demand that they leave. When Masaru calls back and tells Jureimon who it is, he makes a tunnel in the fog through which they can approach. Jureimon must have sensed humans coming and, not knowing it was allies (our trio helped him out before in episode 14, remember), been terrified that it was Kurata and his men here to kill him.

…Him and many others, it turns out, as the group emerge through the fog into a clearing to find a whole host of injured Digimon taking refuge near Jureimon. These must be the lucky ones who managed to flee from their homes being massacred before they got hit with anything fatal.

Jureimon’s little Nyokimon pals seem unhurt – they live here, and nobody’s attacked this place yet – so they’re helping out in taking care of the injured Digimon as best they can, still with their cute, sad little “Nyo!” sounds, I love them. It’s also very cute to see Agumon and Gaomon (and Lalamon, not pictured here) immediately pitching in to do what they can to help.

Jureimon: “Mercurimon has done an unfortunate thing.”

…I’m gonna go out on a limb and say this is a subbers’ mistranslation, because this really feels like it should be more like: “It is unfortunate what happened to Mercurimon.” No need to go phrasing it like it was his fault he went and died.

Jureimon: “The wind told me about the death of that heroic warrior.”

Aww. Even though Jureimon brought up in his previous episode that he doesn’t answer to Mercurimon, he still respected him enough to call him a “heroic warrior” after his death.

Tohma: “It looked like they were sucking the Digimon’s life energy from them. Why would they do that?”

Tohma has indeed picked up on exactly what that sparkly energy is, but not what Kurata might need it for. Jureimon’s answer is, paraphrased, “I don’t know, but it sounds bad.”

Yoshino (always the one to get to the logistical point, I love her) asks him where Kurata is. He doesn’t know that, either. For all that Ikuto insisted Jureimon was old and wise and must be able to help, he really doesn’t have anything to offer. He’s just an old man, terribly sad at the horrors happening to his species, doing his best to protect those he can, but helpless to save anywhere close to everyone.

Jureimon: “Even now, from places far away, I can hear the screams the wind brings to me.”

Apparently when he said he heard about Mercurimon’s death on the wind, he meant it literally. Seems like it’s one of his powers to be able to hear things from far away on the wind (makes sense, when he’s a big tree and can’t exactly move very far). That has got to be rough, constantly hearing all his fellow Digimon screaming and dying and not being able to do anything to help them or even just block it out. Ouch.

Masaru: “Damn Kurata… Just wait until I punch him to the ground!”

Masaru does not like that this conversation has done nothing but remind them all how helpless they are to stop these atrocities, so he’s channelling that into some furious and definitely-not-impotent anger at somebody who’s not even here.

They’re interrupted as Jureimon senses “uninvited guests”, who promptly announce their presence with a completely unnecessary explosion, just so that they can emerge dramatically as the smoke clears. It’s the trio of Bio-Hybrids, having been sent by Kurata to investigate the defeat of those Gizmon from earlier. Though that happened in a rocky valley, it seems it wasn’t too far from this forest, allowing them to find their way here to Jureimon’s clearing.

Masaru: “Where’s Captain Satsuma?”

I enjoy how Masaru wastes absolutely no time in bringing up the biggest reason he’s furious with these guys, like it’s right at the front of his mind – he and his friends had to leave Satsuma behind fighting to protect them because they weren’t strong enough to face these guys on their own. Masaru is not a fan of leaving other people behind to risk themselves in his place, we already know that.

Kouki: “Huh? Captain? Oh, you mean that old guy. He’s dead.”

Who wants to take bets on how truthful this is? This is not the sort of anime where a badass authority figure like Satsuma would be unceremoniously killed offscreen like this. Didn’t fool me on my first time for a second.

(I guess I’m technically spoiling this, but hey, I already put a spoiler warning on this episode anyway.)

But it says a lot about Kouki that he’s willing to casually lie that they did kill Satsuma, just to watch his enemies squirm and make them feel smaller and weaker. Acting like Satsuma’s nobody important or memorable and was just some random old dude also adds to that. In reality, I bet Satsuma gave them a run for their money in their fight and left them – especially Kouki – feeling frustrated at his tenacity, but no way Kouki’s gonna admit that, especially not in front of these guys who seem to look up to Satsuma.

Anyway, back to the part where our protagonists don’t know they’re in a kids’ anime and so have no idea their Captain has plot armour and therefore have every reason to believe Kouki’s claim – they’re pretty horror-struck at the thought that Satsuma’s gone.

Or, at least, Yoshino and Tohma are. Masaru would be, but no, he is not the sort of person who lets himself get upset and falter at things like this, so he’s going to push that pain down inside him and turn it into anger on the surface and not think about this

Nanami: “I thought the orders we received would be quite boring to fulfil… but I’m glad we ended up finding a playmate.”

This is very Nanami. She’s probably been pretty bored with most of her chores for Kurata so far, but getting to mess with some actual strong opponents who’ll fight back is just what she signed up for.

(She and Ivan are not contradicting Kouki’s lie; they probably figure it’s best if their enemies continue to assume Satsuma is dead. Or, well, Nanami probably does; I think Ivan’s too busy being terrible to even think about it.)

Ivan: “I like how vivacious she appears. Maybe next time, I’ll ask her out to a dinner at a restaurant with a great view…”

“Vivacious”? What, that look of horror on her face as she was told that someone she cares about is dead? Oh my god learn to treat women like people you objectifying piece of human trash. Ivan is the worst.

And then we do the whole oh-no-he-was-thinking-out-loud thing again like this is at all a thing that any actual human being would allow to happen more than once. Ivan is the most one-dimensional terrible excuse for a character in this series.

Kouki: “Anyway… If we kill these Digimon here, I’m sure Kurata-chan will be satisfied.”

The fact that he uses -chan – a feminine, diminutive honorific – for Kurata really says a lot about how Kouki sees him. Kurata may have given him these powers and hired him to do this, but Kouki still seems to feel like Kurata’s beneath him if he’s talking about him this way.

noooo the poor Nyokimon are so scared, don’t hurt the Nyokimon

Kouki just chuckles as he sees the helpless injured or baby Digimon cower in fear upon hearing they’re about to be killed. Masaru can’t stand it, hearing this asshole be so cruel and callous about snuffing out the lives of sapient people – people who don’t want to fight and can’t defend themselves. With that, and also with the pain of hearing about Satsuma still raw, he grimaces and roars in some delightfully furious rage before charging at Kouki.

It is good. I enjoy the sense the animation and voice acting give that Masaru is just painfully angry here.

Kouki: “That’s the spirit!”

Kouki saying this, as he too rushes forward to meet Masaru’s charge, sounds superficially Masaru-like. But given the context of him being glad that he’s made his opponent so desperately angry, he really is just being a huge asshole. This probably didn’t help Masaru’s rage at all.

They cross-counter and punch each other in the face. Masaru’s Digisoul lighting up while his fist is in Kouki’s face has to be kind of blinding for Kouki, really.

Not that it matters for long, because they leap back from each other, and then it’s evolution time… for all six of the people here, oh boy. At least the Bio-Hybrids don’t have super long fancy animations for it, and we’re using the shortest possible cuts of the protagonists’ animations, but geez.

Masaru: “Time to take revenge for the Captain!”

It does sound like Masaru is somewhat buying Satsuma’s death – but even so, he’s talking about it in an indirect way so that he doesn’t have to think about the part where Satsuma’s dead. He only needs to focus on being angry and strong and avenging him.

(A bit like Ikuto, heh. For once I’m comparing those two in the opposite direction.)

The three DATS Perfect-levels charge at the Bio-Hybrids, but their attacks continue to basically bounce off or just get dodged altogether. This episode features the last ever instalment in the saga of Winning Knuckle Not Winning; alas, it’s been fun. BioThunderBirmon can even deflect RiseGreymon’s shots with a flap of his wings, sending them back down towards Jureimon and his friends, which is not good.

BioCoatlmon: “I’ve already figured out your attack pattern.”

She says this as she effortlessly sways her snake body from side to side to dodge MachGaogamon’s punches. The problem with Tohma’s thing of having very distinct “optimal” strategies and attack patterns that he sticks to is that it makes him very predictable if there ever happens to be an opponent who thinks in a similar way to him and can also figure out what optimal moves he’d come up with.

(This isn’t shown very well in the animation, in which MachGaogamon is kinda just doing left-right jabs, but, you know. Let’s believe this is what’s happening, because it’s interesting and relevant to Tohma’s character and the upcoming further Tohma-Nanami conflict.)

BioStegomon: “Accept this man’s pure-hearted attack!”

oh my god Ivan, shut up, there is nothing pure about your heart, you objectifying moron

The worried look in Yoshino’s eyes has an extra kind of franticness to it as she watches Lilamon get hit. They’ve already lost to these opponents before – these opponents who apparently then killed Satsuma – and they’ve just had BanchouLeomon lecture them about how they’re not strong enough. She must be so afraid that this battle is only going to turn out even worse than the last one.

The three Digimon partners crash to the ground in pain. RiseGreymon stubbornly forces himself back up, just like his aniki would, determined to stop these would-be murderers getting any closer to Jureimon and his friends, and the others follow suit. BioThunderBirmon promptly proceeds to electrocute RiseGreymon; BioCoatlmon coils around MachGaogamon’s body and squeezes; BioStegomon starts beating Lilamon repeatedly with his huge tail. Some Nyokimon cower underneath one of Jureimon’s big roots in fear. The Digimon partners are standing their ground valiantly, but they’re in so much pain, and all the humans can do is watch.

Yoshino: “Stop it! Stop it now!”

Yoshino buries her face in her hands, unable to stand watching Lilamon or any of the others get hurt like this. She’s always hated fighting and had to constantly battle against that anxiety of hers, and right now, with things looking so bad and their enemies being so brutal, she can’t hide it from the surface for once. Aaaa, Yoshino.

Masaru’s response to what they’re seeing, naturally, is to charge forward to try and do something so that he’s not just powerlessly watching his friends get hurt. As RiseGreymon falls to his knees from the pain, Masaru leaps past him at BioThunderBirmon, and… gets blasted to the ground by a gust of wind, unable to even get close. A moment later, RiseGreymon cries out in agony, unable to take it any more, and collapses.

BioCoatlmon: “You’re not even worthy enough to play with.”

Still with Nanami talking about “playing” with her enemies, like she’s hoping this’ll be something fun for her.

again, Ivan shut up there’s nothing pure about your heart you’re the worst

BioThunderBirmon: “Little shits. You think you can defy us, when we’re fused with both the powers of humans and Digimon?”

Kouki continues to be just an absolute asshole, as shown by his choice of words to insult them and the tone of laughter in his voice, like he thinks it’s pathetically hilarious that they could ever possibly think they’re as strong as him.

BioThunderBirmon is a very cool-looking Digimon design from literally every angle except this one, geez. Bird pecs.

He makes to stomp on RiseGreymon’s head, intending to kill him – and if it did, this’d almost certainly be permanent egg-destroying death just like any of Kurata’s weapons are capable of – only for a crowd of tiny but incredibly brave Nyokimon to swarm around RiseGreymon, trying to protect their protector. Oh my god you precious little things, your courage is admirable but you stand absolutely no chance of helping and will only get murdered even harder than RiseGreymon, please just try to hide somewhere safe.

BioThunderBirmon: “Outta the way!”

Kouki seems furious, as if they’re even in his way at all (they literally aren’t). I think he can’t stand the idea that something this weak and pathetic could possibly be trying to stand up to him.

He goes to crush the Nyokimon along with RiseGreymon, but Jureimon’s huge roots get in the way, wrapping around all of his allies to create a protective wall, with what seems to be immense effort. The Nyokimon bounce and cheer excitedly at being saved by their leader.

Kouki just scoffs.

BioThunderBirmon: “Are you an idiot? Trying to save these pieces of scum… Ha! If you wanna die that badly, then I’ll give you what you wish for!”

Yes, trying to save defenceless babies, obviously that’s idiotic and asking to get killed because they’re nothing but scum anyway. God, Kouki is just the world’s most gigantic asshole and it’s exactly right for this scene’s atmosphere.

At this, he leads his trio in beginning to viciously attack Jureimon, who’s too busy defending everyone else to defend himself. BioStegomon’s spinning tackle gets deflected by RiseGreymon, who just barely manages to stand and make himself a living shield against another electric attack.

Masaru: “RiseGreymon!”

[RiseGreymon collapses again]

RiseGreymon: “Aniki…!”

Masaru’s trying to be fierce and determined but you can tell he’s so worried as he calls out to his friend. I love the way RiseGreymon calls back, like he’s apologising for not being strong enough, or like he’s desperately hoping that his aniki will give him more strength somehow, as a madly cackling BioThunderBirmon electrocutes him. He’s trying so hard, but it’s just not enough.

Yoshino’s face still looks especially stressed and frantic as she calls out to Jureimon, I love her, she’s clearly terrified out of her mind but being so brave.

BioThunderBirmon: “I’ve decided! Your names in my autobiography will be Small Fries A, B and C!”

Kouki laughs at this, like he’s just told the world’s most hilarious joke, before savagely attacking Jureimon further. He continues to be the absolute biggest most infuriatingly punchable asshole.

Helpless at the onslaught, Jureimon, the giant tree, collapses heavily onto his back, his front roots having been ripped out of the ground. BioCoatlmon and BioStegomon advance on his prone form while BioThunderBirmon hovers above.

BioThunderBirmon: “C’mon! Any last words?”

He cackles some more, as if callously murdering this wise old man and the young children who live with him is the most fun thing he’s done in ages, and oh my god he is the worst cruellest evilest asshole, these bastards need to Stop—

—and Masaru, Yoshino and Tohma can’t take it any more.

Masaru, Yoshino & Tohma: “STOP IT!”

At this outburst of desperate emotion as the trio can no longer stand to helplessly watch these murderers, their bodies flare up in Digisoul. A moment later, they’re staring at their Digivices, confused, like they don’t know where this came from and didn’t trigger it consciously. The Digisoul flies out from each of their Digivices to cloak their partners, and the three Perfect-levels stand up, almost like they’re being puppeteered by some outside force.

Masaru looks up at RiseGreymon, still unsure what’s happening. The overwhelming emotion the three of them felt a moment ago is gone, given way to their confusion, but that doesn’t matter.

Three larger silhouettes appear behind RiseGreymon, MachGaogamon and Lilamon and fire off attacks at the Bio-Hybrids. These are their Ultimate-level forms, using the signature attacks they’ll be using all the time once they reach that level properly.

Each of the Digivices cracks as the respective attack is fired off. The trio managed to temporarily activate their partners’ Ultimate forms… sort of, but in such a raw, uncontrolled way that their Digivices couldn’t handle the strain, and now they’re sparking, broken and useless.

As the smoke clears from the massive attacks, the injured Bio-Hybrids emerge, having been defeated and reverted to their human forms. Evolution levels! Even one Ultimate-level attack is strong enough to beat these Perfect-levels, who were modified to be stronger than regular Perfects and all.

Kouki: “Huh?! I didn’t hear of this!”

Kouki is, as you’d expect, furious. What do you mean there exists some power greater than his, Kurata was supposed to have made him into the strongest.

(Clearly Kurata didn’t tell these guys about evolution levels.)

Kouki: “You’re dead for sure next time!”

As they retreat for now through a space-time bomb Digital Gate, Kouki makes sure to get one last word in, stubbornly refusing to accept defeat. He’s still just a little bit like Masaru, even as his monumental assholeishness means he is also really, really not.

The Bio-Hybrids got away, still with no word on where to find Kurata, but at least Jureimon and his injured and baby Digimon friends are safe. None of the Digimon sheltering in this clearing were killed after all, despite how things were looking for a bit there. All Jureimon can do now is create another wall with his roots and summon more fog, hoping to hide and protect the Digimon here until they (and himself) can heal.

Jureimon: “The future of the Digital World… I will entrust to you humans. For that is Mercurimon’s will…”

The Savers Main Theme plays over this, giving a sense of grandness to Jureimon’s words. Our heroes really are the main line of defence in protecting an entire world here. No pressure.

Masaru: “Agumon… If you had that power to begin with, you should have used it! Don’t be stingy!”

Agumon: “No, that was your power, Aniki! Your Digisoul made me stronger!”

Agumon saying this isn’t just because he looks up to his aniki so much; he’s right that that’s where the extra power came from. I am amused by Masaru’s straightforwardness of assuming it’s totally just something Agumon could have used all along, right.

Masaru realises that this is what BanchouLeomon was getting at when he said the power lies within them. BanchouLeomon’s appearance in the first half of this episode might feel kinda unrelated to the whole big fight to protect Jureimon, but it had some thematic relevance, at least.

Yoshino asks what they’re going to do with their broken Digivices. Gaomon and Tohma respond by suggesting that they broke because they couldn’t handle the power of the Ultimate level that everyone just tapped into.

Yoshino: “They couldn’t handle it… is not what I’m asking! Now that we can’t use our Digivices, we can’t make our Digimon evolve! How are we going to fight from now on?”

Yoshino continues to be the best most competent member of this team, always focusing on the most important concerns! Tohma speculated on why they broke, because he’s analytical and interested in the theory like that, but Yoshino does not give a damn about why next to the far more immediate and pressing problem of how do we fight when we can’t evolve. None of the others thought to ask this. She is the best. They would be lost without her.

Masaru: “That’s right! If we had Dad…!”

Yoshino: “Professor Daimon?”

Masaru: “Dad made these Digivices! I’m sure he can fix them!”

I love how, for once, Masaru is the first one to think of the solution, because it involves his dad. There’s no way it’d have ever crossed his mind that they know of a guy who might be able to fix these if it was anyone else in the world.

Tohma: “But Professor Daimon has been missing in the Digital World for ten years!”

Masaru: “So we’ll find him! Dad’s definitely alive somewhere! Just you wait, Dad!”

Oh, Masaru. He is so very insistent that his dad is totally alive and they can definitely find him easily if they just start looking, right. He must be stoked that they’ve happened upon circumstances that give him an excuse to actively go searching for his dad instead of just quietly hoping they’ll come across him at some point while saving the Digital World.

(Little does he know, that’s already happened.)

Overall thoughts

There are parts of this episode that I really like, which I’ll get to in a sec, but my feelings on it as a whole are… kind of lukewarm? I can’t even say what I usually say when I feel this way by calling it a transitional episode, because it’s not, really. It’s just that, when you hear that this arc is going to be the DATS crew in the Digital World stopping Kurata’s genocide, this episode’s plot is pretty much the most generic thing you could imagine that will fulfil that: watching some villages of Digimon get murdered, fighting some waves of Gizmon. (At least this is the only episode in which pretty much exactly that happens, while the rest of this arc’s episodes go in different directions. This won’t get repetitive.)

Of course, there is other stuff that does happen to spice it up. BanchouLeomon’s introduction is very memorably over-the-top and extra, but then… he doesn’t really do much other than talk vaguely about their power and leave, as some not particularly interesting setup for their upcoming evolutions to Ultimate level. It’s fun to imagine Suguru being there in his head for that scene, but that’s not a surface part of the episode. It’s also nice to see Jureimon again, I guess: someone we’ve met before, to give more stakes to the episode’s main fight than just some random nameless Digimon village.

The part I really do enjoy about this episode is that whole fight scene. The key moment of this episode is the trio snapping in desperate emotion and triggering that uncontrolled burst of Ultimate-level power, so the build-up had to sell them having reached that mental state, and it does. I did my best to get that across in my summary narration, though it’s the sort of thing hits a lot better when watching it in the actual episode. Everyone’s fighting so hard but getting so hurt, I love Yoshino being so terrified, and Kouki in particular being The World’s Biggest Asshole is exactly what’s needed to make our trio just not be able to take it any more.

---

[Dub comparison]

#digimon #digimon savers #masaru daimon #agumon #yoshino fujieda #banchouleomon #jureimon #kouki #nanami #ivan #suguru daimon

13 notes · View notes

commentaryvorg · 3 years ago

Text

Digimon Savers Commentary Episode 27 - After Kurata! Begin the Digimon Annihilation Strategy!

In this episode, with the DATS HQ destroyed, our heroes call on Ikuto’s human parents for help to chase Kurata to the Digital World. In the Digital Gate, they encounter the Bio-Hybrids, three humans whom Kurata modified with the ability to evolve into Digimon.

After a very quick recap, we get back to the ending of last episode, in which DATS HQ blew the heck up.

Kurata strides out of the flames, somehow completely fine despite having apparently been inside the building when it blew up, because I guess he wanted bonus drama points for this. If he had any sense, he’d have been nowhere near the building when it blew and would already be far away, but no, he just has to come here and gloat at the remnants of DATS.

Kurata: “Game is over!”

He says this entirely in gratuitous English. That’s not how English works, Kurata.

Kurata: “Now everything about DATS, both in name and reality, is destroyed!”

He wishes. He may have dissolved the official group and destroyed their physical headquarters, but the people of DATS are quite clearly right here in front of him, still very much alive. It’s like he wants to tell himself that this means DATS definitely can’t oppose him any more, even though they are obviously not going to let this stop them.

It's also quite a thing that Kurata went as far as to blow up the DATS HQ when, as we saw last episode, he was using it as a base of operations. It’d have continued to be useful to him if he kept it around! But apparently that’s a secondary concern to him. The moment it became clear the DATS members had their memories back and were coming to try and reclaim their headquarters, Kurata didn’t even want to fight them for it. He must have been afraid he might lose a battle over who gets to keep the HQ, and he couldn’t let that happen to him.

So, in true cowardly Kurata style, if he can’t have it, nobody can. He’s basically just throwing a tantrum because things didn’t go his way last episode, rather than let himself acknowledge even a tiny bit that his plans weren’t perfect.

Kurata: “Did you enjoy it? This flashy spectacle show is quite a rare sight!”

Ever the showman, as always. This was definitely him putting on an impressive spectacle of how powerful he is, and not at all him hastily resorting to a cutting-his-losses Plan B.

Masaru darts forward to try and punch him – the correct response – but a Gizmon: XT emerges from the smoke to carry Kurata into the sky, where he opens a Digital Gate with a space-time bomb to escape.

Kurata: “Now you can no longer ruin my plans!”

Of course, the actual functional reason that he blew up DATS is so that they’d have no access to the Dive equipment in there. This in theory means they won’t be able to follow him to the Digital World, since he’s the only one with the space-time bombs. But make no mistake, there’s definitely that element of him being a sore loser in there too.

Later, the ex-DATS crew (who are still DATS in spirit and I’ll probably still be calling them that out of convenience) regroup at the Daimons’ house. That’s the best place they have right now to use as a base to discuss their next move, given that HQ is gone. We cut straight in with Masaru punching his palm and vowing to make Kurata pay, making it feel like he didn’t lose that fierce determination for a second the whole trip there.

Tohma: “We’re really sorry. We may be putting you two in danger for sheltering us.”

Sayuri: “We’ll be okay. Don’t worry about us.”

Sayuri is the best. If her son and his friends are in danger, she’s more than happy to take on a little risk herself to be able to help in some small way. She’s busy serving everyone some onigiri, continuing her trend of dealing with her worry by making food for people.

Everyone shares the same determination to protect the Digimon by fighting back against Kurata somehow.

Sayuri: “You’re… going back to the Digital World again?”

I enjoy the shadow on Sayuri’s face as she realises this. Her son is going to head back into terrible danger and she’s so, so afraid for him, but she doesn’t want to let it show.

Masaru stands up and fervently tells her they can’t just let Kurata destroy the Digimon. Sayuri winces for a long moment… and then she pushes her fear aside and manages to smile at him.

Sayuri: “Be careful.”

I love Sayuri. She is so goddamn brave. She’s terrified of losing her son in the Digital World just like she lost her husband; all her instincts must be screaming at her to cling to him and never let him go back there at all. But she knows that saving the Digimon is important, and she knows how much Masaru cares about that and would never forgive her if she tried to stop him from doing it. That’s even more important to her than her fear.

Chika: “Don’t strain yourself.”

Chika, to a lesser extent, must also be really worried for her brother, but she’s also managing to put on a brave face and simply say something concerned-but-encouraging.

(Asking Masaru to be careful and not push himself does not sound like advice he’s likely to follow. Then again, I guess someone’s got to tell him that, and that’s what his family’s there for.)

Yoshino: “But… Kurata destroyed the transportation equipment along with DATS’s headquarters. How are we going to make a Digital Dive?”

Yoshino, as always, is the one to point out the obvious logistical concerns that Masaru is overlooking in his determination to just do something.

Suddenly, Satsuma – the only DATS member who wasn’t there at the explosion – shows up and joins in the conversation. We don’t even see how Kudamon found where he’d been arrested last episode and broke him out, but we can take a guess of approximately how they achieved that based on the further exploits of those two we’ll be seeing in this episode.

Satsuma: “That man is our last hope.”

Masaru: “That man?”

Being unnecessarily vague for the sake of drama because we’re about to cut to the opening!

This opening is really clearly designed for the first half of the series, back when DATS was an actual proper thing that they were all officially members of. Here’s Satsuma giving some orders like usual from a building that is now, in the series’ present, in flaming ruins. We will be switching to the second opening soon, but not quite yet, for reasons.

We cut back in to the episode with an establishing shot of a big fancy building that’s probably a real building in Yokohama. It’s apparently a hotel, which Masaru, Yoshino and Tohma are currently infiltrating, disguised as staff.

(I am amused that they made Masaru be a cleaner. Wise move; I don’t think he’d fool anyone pretending to be wait staff for even a second. We all saw him at the beginning of episode 7.)

They approach a room with two dark-suited guards at the entrance – probably Ministry of Confidentiality goons – and Yoshino’s “room service” contains a Lalamon with a full helping of Sing A Song. That attack is still by far the most useful ability any Digimon of theirs has.

Inside the room is Ikuto’s parents (and their baby daughter). Remember how they were the scientists who discovered Digital Gate technology and have a prototype machine for it in their house’s basement? Remember how Hashiba got them arrested at the end of that episode for very flimsy reasons? They’ve been kept in hotel arrest here since then, apparently – and it’s now pretty clear that this is because someone didn’t want anybody else having access to a Digital Gate and wanted free access to the experts in the technology himself.

Masaru: “By ‘that man’, he meant… […] Ikuto’s dad?!”

Yoshino: “You came without even knowing that?”

Masaru: “Of course I knew! I was just making sure!”

Lalamon: “He didn’t know.”

Yoshino: “Yeah.”

This dork. He did not know. Masaru is so not one for plot-related details and apparently totally forgot the part where these two were the Digital Gate experts (which is, of course, much less important info next to the part where they’re Ikuto’s long-lost parents). And apparently nobody bothered to tell Masaru this the whole time they were doing this infiltration. I guess everyone else immediately knew what Satsuma meant by his cryptic “that man” statement, and Masaru just awkwardly pretended he totally knew too and went along with the plan because he didn’t want to seem stupid.

(Look, it doesn’t entirely make sense that Masaru wouldn’t have asked this for the entire time – or surely Ikuto must have reacted in some way that’d have let him figure it out – but shush, I enjoy the comedic moment, Masaru is a dork.)

Misuzu: “Will we… Will we really get to see Ikuto again?”

Masaru: “Of course! Don’t worry about it!”

They couldn’t exactly bring Ikuto here to infiltrate the hotel, since he’s very not skilled at blending in with regular humans and also too young to pass as hotel staff. But of course his parents are desperate to see him again – Misuzu in particular, who was so traumatised by losing him ten years ago. She’s spent the past week or two sitting in a hotel knowing Ikuto’s alive and out there somewhere but with no idea what’s happening to him. That must have been pretty rough.

I like that Masaru’s the one to reassure them of this. Parents.

Kenji: “Thank you. I’ve been worried since I caused him so much sorrow.”

That’s… not strictly true. Almost all of Ikuto’s sorrow has been caused by factors from within the Digital World – Kurata, Gotsumon – who have nothing to do with his human parents or their actions. Kenji really has very little to do with his son’s issues right now. But it seems, as Ikuto’s father, that he feels he should consider himself responsible for his son’s problems anyway. The Noguchi couple must have also had a tough time lately simply coming to terms with the fact that Ikuto’s been alive all this time but grew up as a Digimon in the Digital World. Not having seen much of him, they may have been painting his Digimon upbringing in a more negative light than necessary in their minds.

The group escapes the hotel down some kind of fire escape. As they come upon a locked door while security alarms begin to blare, Agumon and Gaomon punch the door open from the other side, having seemingly been stationed there to help in this specific way. It’s kinda neat to see this brief bit of the Digimon being put to use in more strategic ways than simply fighting.

They try to flee in a minivan – Yoshino is still the most badass driver for someone who can only have got her license within the last few years or so – only to find two Ministry cars driving just ahead of them, trying to cut off their escape. Out of nowhere, the two cars suddenly get sliced in two by an unseen force and careen away to explode.

The Digimon responsible leaps away from the scene, devolves into Kudamon and settles around Satsuma’s neck as the man hides in a nearby alleyway. He’s not even named in the episode, but that was Reppamon, Kudamon’s Adult form. This weasel is not messing around. The poor Ministry schmucks who were driving the cars (probably just doing their jobs without necessarily agreeing with Kurata’s horribleness) must be super dead from that; this was honestly pretty ruthless of Kudamon. But I guess that’s just the lengths he’s willing to go to to not lose the chance to protect his world. He is a Digimon.

(And, yeah, based on this, it’s not at all hard to imagine how Kudamon broke Satsuma out of wherever he was being held. It’s about time these two got to show off a bit of how badass they can be.)

Ikuto and Falcomon are waiting in a park in the middle of the city (it’s night-time, so it’s abandoned) for the others to get here with Ikuto’s parents. Honestly, Falcomon’s ninja skills would have been helpful with the hotel break-in – but I bet you anything he insisted on being here with Ikuto, because Ikuto’s feeling super weird about seeing his parents again for only the second time, and Falcomon didn’t want him to be alone with those thoughts. He is a good friend.

The van arrives, and Misuzu rushes to embrace Ikuto. Like last time, he just kinda stands there awkwardly, not hugging her back, still not used to this at all.

Misuzu: “You’re hurt. What happened?”

Ikuto gives her a look that might be some kind of guilt or surprise. There’s someone in this world who worries when he gets hurt, even if it’s only some minor battle wounds that he can handle no problem. The last time he had that was probably with Yukidarumon. He doesn’t answer her – how can he explain to this new mother of his that he got hurt fighting these unknown Digimon that he now wants to head off to fight more?

Misuzu: “Please, stop involving yourself in these dangerous things and live with us as a family.”

Surely the others must have explained to the Noguchis on the way here why they need them to open a Digital Gate. Surely Ikuto’s parents, knowing that he grew up as a Digimon, would be able to figure that he’d care about saving them more than anyone. But it doesn’t seem like they do see it that way. They still just see him as their son who tragically went missing and is now back.

Ikuto: “I have request.”

Misuzu: “What is it?”

Ikuto: “I… want to go to Digital World. I want to protect the Digimon.”

Misuzu has this kind smile as she asks him what his request is, like she’s happy to finally get to do something for her son – except for this. This was not on her list of things she was hoping to do for him. She refuses and clings to him again.

Misuzu: “I don’t want you leaving me again, Ikuto! I never want you out of my sight!”

Given what she’s been through and how traumatised she was upon losing Ikuto the first time, I can totally understand why she’s doing this. She’s too focused on her own pain and just wants it all to finally end by having Ikuto stay with her forever.

Yoshino gets a call on her earpiece from Miki. Miki and Megumi weren’t part of the hotel infiltration and instead went on ahead to the Noguchi’s house in the mountains to check if the Digital Gate equipment is even still functional, which it is. Their entire house got turned into a giant robot and then destroyed in episode 20, but the lab with the machine was underground and wound up relatively unscathed, luckily for everyone now.

The others in the group use this moment to reassert to the Noguchis their request to have them open a Digital Gate. Kenji hesitates, glancing at his wife still clinging to Ikuto.

Kenji: “My apologies, but I cannot help you.”

Agumon: “Why?!”

Masaru: “Your equipment works!”

Kenji: “Well… My research was incomplete. I don’t believe I can open the Digital Gate safely.”

He is very obviously lying, making an excuse so that he won’t have to send Ikuto away again. We didn’t see the conversation in the hotel in which the DATS crew explained why they’d come for them; apparently the Noguchis didn’t quite explicitly agree to help back then, perhaps out of a fear of having to send Ikuto away.

Masaru: “No way! You won’t know if it’ll fail or not unless you try first!”

I like how Masaru, straightforward as always, didn’t pick up that this was obviously a lie and just approaches it as if it were genuine, with a familiar Masaru-like sentiment – you can’t go giving up before you’ve even tried!

Ikuto: “We’re all asking for your help… Why won’t you listen?!”

Ikuto, though, who’s usually about as slow on the uptake as Masaru, does immediately get that this was a lie. He’s responding as if his father won’t help rather than can’t. He must already instinctively know on some level that they’re refusing out of worry and a desire to protect him. (Perhaps Yukidarumon would’ve been the same way.)

Kenji: “I’m doing this for you! Being separated from us, your family, and all the emotional pain you had to endure, all of it is my responsibility! I didn’t do anything for you all of these years, but from now on, I will protect you!”

Kenji really has a big thing about taking all of the responsibility upon himself, even when he shouldn’t, even when it’s kind of not actually his business. This is a lot like in episode 20, where he wanted to protect Misuzu’s feelings all by himself by preventing her from learning about Ikuto’s return, without actually talking to her and considering how she’d feel. He saw his wife as more fragile than she really is back then, and now he’s seeing Ikuto that way, too.

The Noguchis really have painted themselves this idea of Ikuto’s life in the Digital World as horrible and bad. So he should just be kept away from it all now, so that he can finally live a normal human life and be happy, right?

Based on the way Kenji feels like this is him doing his Duty As A Dad now, it also reads a little like Masaru’s words in episode 20 where he was getting mad at Kenji for not even wanting to see Ikuto again might have actually lodged somewhere. (Even though that was mostly Masaru projecting his own issues about missing dads and rather missing the actual point of Ikuto’s problems.)

Masaru: “You just… don’t want to let go of Ikuto…”

Misuzu: “What’s wrong with that? No parent wants to put their own child in danger!”

At Misuzu’s words, Masaru remembers his own mother grimacing in fear at the thought of him going into danger. He was so single-mindedly fixated on their mission at the time, and Sayuri was so relatively good at hiding it, that he didn’t even realise how much he was scaring and hurting her until now, as he sees the same thing more openly from Ikuto’s parents.

Masaru: “Maybe that’s true, but…”

Masaru winces himself at the knowledge of how much pain this is putting his own mom through, because of course he cares. The last thing he wants to do is hurt his family. And yet.

Misuzu: “Who cares what happens to the Digimon? Or the Digital World? As long as Ikuto’s with us, it’s okay!”

This has to have been a thought that was going through Sayuri’s mind, too. There’s no way there wasn’t a part of her that just wanted to scream who cares about the Digimon? – they’ve done nothing but take her husband away from her, after all – and cling to Masaru and never let him go. But Sayuri’s brave enough to not be that selfish, and knows her son well enough to understand that he cares about the Digimon and could never turn his back on what’s happening to them.

Misuzu isn’t that brave just yet, partly because she doesn’t actually know Ikuto as a person at all, and partly because of her severe trauma from losing him that she hasn’t dealt with healthily. Back in episode 20, Masaru also fervently told Kenji that a family lives together sharing the pain when things are bad. That’s exactly what the Daimons did to give them strength through this and give Sayuri the courage to let Masaru go back into danger now that he needs to. It’s exactly what the Noguchis didn’t do, so Misuzu isn’t quite equipped to deal with this.

Ikuto: “You’re wrong! I’m human. But I was raised as a Digimon. And I found out both lives are important to me. That’s why… I’ll protect the Digimon. I’ll protect the Digital World!”

And of course she’s wrong; Ikuto cares what happens to the Digimon, more than any other human alive! It’s lovely that Ikuto now has the confidence in himself and his beliefs to be able to firmly assert this to his parents when they’re trying to brush it off like it doesn’t matter. I don’t think he’d have been capable of that only a few episodes ago.

Misuzu: “Why? Why won’t you understand?”

Misuzu quite clearly doesn’t understand Ikuto’s stance on this. But then again, I suppose Ikuto also doesn’t really understand what she’s going through, either. He wasn’t there when Kenji talked about how losing him caused Misuzu’s trauma and depression (in not so many words) in that episode. Ikuto knows these people love him and care about him, but he isn’t quite aware yet of how much they’re hurting about all this. He hasn’t had that realisation moment that Masaru just had about his own mom’s fear. Maybe he’s a bit too young to really get that about parents at all. Yukidarumon and Mercurimon certainly never seemed scared or worried or vulnerable to him, except for when they were dying.

Yuka, the baby daughter who’s here in Kenji’s arms, starts crying, as if she’s sensing and responding to these loud bad emotions coming from her parents. Misuzu rushes away from the group, in tears, and Kenji follows to talk with her privately.

Kenji: “We may be the ones who don’t understand.”

Misuzu: “Dear…”

Kenji: “Ikuto grew up burdened with many things that we don’t know about. He’s found the path that he must follow. All we can do now is support his wishes with all our might.”

Kenji finally gets it. It’s a little surprising that he managed to get it so quickly and thoroughly to the point of being able to calmly explain it to his wife, when he was missing the point just as badly as her only a few moments ago. I suppose it was listening to Ikuto talk about growing up as a Digimon and wanting to protect them that made him realise he’d been ignoring Ikuto’s personhood, which Misuzu was still too wrapped up in her greater emotional pain to be able to see.

To be fair, for all these years, the Noguchis must have still been thinking of Ikuto as the helpless baby that he was when they lost him. It’s going to take a bit for them to adjust their mental image of him into a full-fledged person with his own interests and goals like they’re now seeing him be. For them, it’s almost like he just suddenly grew up from baby to a ten/eleven-year old in a flash.

Kenji: “There are times when a boy must go to do what has to be done.”

I don’t think this reads as similar to Masaru’s manliness thing here; given that Kenji’s saying “boy”, it feels like he is referring specifically to Ikuto’s gender. Like he wouldn’t be saying the same thing if Ikuto happened to be a girl instead. Not sure I approve, Kenji.

Misuzu laments that they’ll be separated from him again – that thought that hurts so much for her – but Kenji counters that this time, they’re sending him off. That reframing of it to be by choice seems to help her quite a bit. See, Kenji, this is what you always should have done: talk to her about it.

Kenji: “Our bond… is right here.”

I’ve always thought this line and the pose Kenji makes for it are rather unnecessarily melodramatic, though. Yuka certainly seems bewildered. I kinda like how she’s there in this scene, just being a baby, oblivious to the drama going on around her. The animation keeps giving her little moments like this and treating her like a character (as much as a baby can be) instead of a prop, which is good.

The couple head back to the group, and Kenji announces that he’ll help them after all. Misuzu stands there with a solemn look on her face. She’s still not smiling – she can’t be happy about this – but at least she’s finally found the courage to do it, just like Sayuri can.

(Man, Misuzu and Sayuri ought to hang out and share their feelings about losing family members to the Digital World. I bet they’d have a lot to talk about. I bet Sayuri could help Misuzu find ways to cope.)

Elsewhere, Satsuma is driving on the highway to head to the Noguchis’ place, when a pair of human figures appear in the middle of the road, blocking his path. Apparently these two people are confident that they could be hit by a car and still be fine, but Satsuma has basic human decency and swerves away. He leaps out of the car as it careens into the highway barrier… and explodes, for bonus cool points I guess. Satsuma doesn’t even look back at the explosion, because he’s that kind of badass.

And that’s RIP to the DATS car on top of everything else.

Kudamon: “Satsuma…”

Satsuma: “That was…”

I guess this is them assuming that those two people must be allied with Kurata in some way to have had the guts to come and do this. It could seem to be implying that Satsuma knows them personally, but he doesn’t.

Mostly this whole bit is just here to establish these mysterious figures who showed up – who were also briefly seen standing mysteriously on top of a building in an earlier shot in the episode – because we don’t get to see Satsuma actually confront them, which might have been interesting. Maybe they just fled immediately.

What must have been quite the long and boring drive later (I thiiink the writers may have semi-forgotten that it takes a while to drive to the Noguchis’ place in the mountains, but I also can’t fault them for just wanting to get on with the plot), everyone except Satsuma has made it to the remnants of the Noguchis’ house. Looks like Miki and Megumi got here earlier on motorbikes of theirs, as there’s a couple of those parked next to the minivan. Despite having set off sooner than the van with the others in, Satsuma is lagging behind now because he lost the car. You’d think he’d evolve Kudamon and use him for transport, but I suspect he did not, because almost nobody ever thinks of that.

Miki and Megumi are standing guard aboveground, still acting as backup and not intending to follow the group into the Digital World. Everyone else is in the basement lab, waiting for Kenji to work the machine and activate the Digital Gate.

Kenji: “Please… have faith in my work.”

It’s also your wife’s work! This episode feels like it’s also kind of forgotten that Misuzu was as much of an expert in Digital Gate technology as her husband. Everyone’s been directing their requests specifically at Kenji like he’s the only one who can help with this, which is a little annoying. Right now Misuzu’s not helping with the device, but that’s because she’s carrying Yuka, which is very understandable. After last time, someone should definitely hold onto the baby, just in case.

Up top, Miki and Megumi spot Ministry of Confidentiality vans approaching from a distance, and then a few moments later, presumably from the vans, come the same two figures who ambushed Satsuma on the highway. It’s time for the introduction of some minor villains, whom I have… mixed feelings about.

Nanami: “Hi. We meet again.”

Megumi: “Huh? Who are you?”

Note Nanami outright mentioning that they’ve met before – they have, but Miki and Megumi don’t realise that. Nanami’s confident enough in her position that she doesn’t feel the need to be coy about things like that, apparently.

Ivan: “These are the two women we met the other day. The black-haired one is more my type, but no-one will ever get me to say that out loud.”

Nanami: “It doesn’t matter, your inner thoughts are all spilling out anyway.”

Aaaaand welcome to Ivan, the Worst Character In Savers. Ugh. This is not a one-off gag; he has this whole Thing about constantly saying his thoughts out loud while apparently somehow not realising it even as he’s narrating that he’s totally not saying them out loud. That’s just a ridiculous caricature. No actual real human being would ever do this, ever, especially not when Nanami’s there to point it out to him. It makes him near-impossible to take seriously as a person, which is especially jarring among Savers’ otherwise very solid character-writing. Why.

And not only that, but this is giving us a taste of Ivan’s other terrible trait, which is spending way more of his attention than necessary talking about the attractiveness of women. The women in Savers’ cast did not deserve this. This will only get worse. I hate it.

Miki: “Who are you people?”

Nanami: “Unfortunately, I don’t feel the need to tell you.”

This sounds like generic villain gloating, but it’s actually fairly on-point for Nanami’s character. She can’t be bothered to tell them; that’s just boring. They’re just boring to her.

With that, the two of them leap into the air over Miki and Megumi, in what’s probably supposed to be taken as a superhuman feat. (Don’t think too hard about the fact that Masaru’s definitely also leapt that high a few times through the power of anime physics.)

Down in the basement, Kenji gets the Digital Gate open, this time without any suction. I suppose they did some more research that let them figure out how to prevent that side-effect in the time since they lost Ikuto.

Masaru stops briefly to thank Kenji and shake his hand. Perhaps he’s especially grateful due to the parent thing, because he knows how hard it must have been for them to send Ikuto off like this. Kenji tells them he’ll keep the Gate open until Satsuma gets here, and the main DATS trio, with their partners, leap into the Gate.

Ikuto lingers behind, knowing that this’ll be his last chance to say something to his human parents, at least for a while. Maybe he didn’t want to do this in front of all the others, too.

Ikuto: “I thank you. In the Digimon’s place.”

Misuzu: “Ikuto…”

Ikuto: “I, who can think such thoughts, exist here. That’s… what makes me Ikuto.”

Aww, look at how much he’s grown! He’s still a little clumsy with the words, but the sentiment he’s expressing here is a really wise and complex one! He’s the one person who has these feelings about both humans and Digimon, and that’s what makes him who he is! He must have been thinking about this a lot.

Ikuto: “Thank you for giving me life. Dad. Mom.”

And this means a lot for him, too. Not necessarily so much because of his parents specifically, since they never meant to give life to a kid who’d be half-Digimon like this. It’s more just Ikuto expressing that he’s glad he exists. He’s glad he was born. After his whole arc where he was heartbreakingly convinced that he belonged nowhere and his existence only caused disaster for everyone and was happy to let himself get killed, it is such a huge, huge deal for him to be able to feel this way now.

Hearing this, Misuzu tears up, out of what seems to be happiness and pride. She was probably always blaming herself for losing Ikuto, and always feeling that he’d blame her for it… but here he is, so wise and grown-up for his age already, thanking her for giving birth to him. Aww.

Ikuto: “I’ll go.”

Kenji: “You mean, ‘I’ll be back’. When you leave the house, that’s what you say to your family. That way, we can all say, ‘I’m home’, and ‘Welcome back’, when you return.”

Kenji’s teaching him some typical human family phrases that he wouldn’t have learned as a Digimon! It might read a little odd in English that Ikuto needs to be taught how to say these relatively obvious things, but I’m pretty sure that in Japanese, their meaning is a bit less self-evident, and they would need to be explained like this. The “I’m home” one, for example, literally means “Just now”, as in “I got home just now”, so one wouldn’t know what it was for without hearing it in context.

Ikuto: “I’ll… be back!”

And aww, look at Ikuto being willing to go along with this and learn some human things, rather than questioning why he has to say this phrase in particular. He does want to be able to fit in more with his human family once this whole saving-the-Digimon thing is over!

Yuka: “Come back shafely!”

Ikuto’s baby sister mumbles this and waves at her big brother as he leaps into the Gate. She obviously doesn’t really understand what’s going on and is just mimicking stock phrases – this one’s the usual response to the “I’ll be back” as someone leaves – but it’s cute all the same. I bet she’s going to think her big brother is The Coolest once she grows old enough to be a person and understand how things work.

Up top, the PawnChessmon apparently tried to stop Nanami and Ivan getting past, but got beaten up. I guess Miki and Megumi were too shocked at seeing someone other than Masaru attack a Digimon barehanded to think to evolve them. Or, potentially, Nanami and Ivan briefly showed off their real powers and had an actual proper fight against the KnightChessmon, and we just didn’t get to see it because the writers are saving the surprise for a bit later.

The pair leap into the basement and rush uninvited into the still-open Digital Gate. Kenji must have needed to calibrate it for the people he intended to send through it or something, because this causes the Gate to destabilise. (Or, maybe it’s because of the unusual nature of Nanami and Ivan in particular that their presence in the Gate makes it go wobbly.) That’s mostly just for some quick drama points and won’t actually matter, though, especially now that Satsuma finally shows up. I suppose the point here is that Satsuma is being gutsy to risk going into the destabilised Gate in order to be there for his team.

Satsuma: “Professor Noguchi. I swear to you, I will protect Ikuto-kun.”

I wonder if he feels some sense of responsibility over this. He was formerly one of the police officers investigating the “missing persons” case that Ikuto was technically part of, as well as having been in the expedition team with the Noguchis and seen their pain at being unable to find their son.

The rest of the DATS crew are busy floating through the in-between void space. Either this is taking a while because this particular Gate technology is old-fashioned, or this is something that always takes this long and we just tend to skip right over it because usually nothing interesting happens during these times. Not here, though!

Someone’s floating ahead of them. I guess this void-space is the same as the void-space you go through in any Digital Gate, and this guy went on ahead using a space-time bomb to get here first. He’s apparently been munching on a packet of chips while he was waiting, which has a similar kind of vibe to when Kurata was sucking on a lollipop while committing genocide. This is not the time or place for such casualness.

Kouki: “Now, then, I guess I’ll add a new page to my autobiography. I’ll title it… ‘The Great Digital Gate Massacre’!”

Yeah, that sure is one way for this guy to introduce himself as a self-absorbed sadistic prick.

Nanami and Ivan show up in the void-space behind the group and greet Kouki like they know him.

Ivan: “This time it’s children. Hmph, there’s only one woman. She’s younger than the ones before. She might be my type.”

UGH Ivan is the worst, does he not have better things to be doing while participating in a genocide than thinking about hitting on women. It’s especially yeesh that he makes a thing about Yoshino specifically after pointing out that there are some kids here and she’s younger than the other two women. Yoshino is an adult, so it’s not as bad as it could be, but still, ugh, no, Ivan is the creepiest worst and I wish he didn’t exist.

Then, of course, he wasn’t supposed to say that out loud apparently, and Nanami has to point out to him that he did, again, because somehow he hasn’t and will never realise this. I hate how Ivan’s presence relegates Nanami to being his straight man half the time. There’s so much more to Nanami than being stuck doing that.

Kouki gets right to business and swoops in to deliver a punch – guess who he’s here to be a foil for – and Masaru responds in kind and meets him fist-to-fist. Masaru’s fist erupts in Digisoul as they connect. That’s odd; Kouki’s a human…?

Kouki: “Human?” [he chuckles] “Don’t lump me in with you guys.”

Still with that dickish arrogance of his. He’s more than human, so that means he gets to look down on regular humans, right.

There’s a Digivice on his wrist; with a glow of purple Digisoul (more or less the same colour as the “artificial Digisoul” that Kurata used to evolve his Gizmon, which may well not be a coincidence), Kouki evolves himself into a Digimon.

Kouki: “Hyper Bio Evolution!”

That’s the evolution call for these guys, which is in English. This seems to be part of a pattern even between different Digimon series: any evolution method that involves a human becoming Digimon in some way gets the English word “evolution” instead of the Japanese shinka.

He says this while he’s doing the equivalent of a Digisoul Charge, but the call itself feels more like the equivalent of the “Agumon, evolve!” etc. that the Digimon do. Like there isn’t a proper Digisoul Charge here at all, because, perhaps, this isn’t proper Digisoul.

Nanami and Ivan also evolve themselves in the same way. Kouki becomes BioThunderBirmon, Nanami becomes BioCoatlmon, and Ivan becomes BioStegomon. Note the “Bio”, which I suppose is the indication that these are artificial versions of these Digimon made by Kurata’s experiments and fused with something biological, aka a human. All three of their designs have these capsule thingies on their heads, presumably a remnant of Kurata’s fiddling that isn’t there in the regular non-Bio versions of these Digimon. I thought when I first watched Savers that those bits would be like their weak spots and defeating them would involve aiming attacks there, but alas, that never actually comes up.

Digimon Analyser: “Fused with humans, their modified versions are levelled up in speed and power.”

That… may be true. These Digimon are Perfect-level, which should be a fairly even match for our protagonists right now, but, well, we’ll see.

BioThunderBirmon: “This is our true form.”

That’s really not true, I don’t think. They’re still fundamentally the humans they started as. It’s not like the mind of the original ThunderBirmon, if there was one at all, is there in any capacity. This isn’t like when Gotsumon claimed that Insekimon was his “true form”, which could basically have been just about true. Kouki just likes talking himself up a lot.

After some brief chatter about how these guys are working for Kurata and are therefore our new enemies…

Agumon: “Aniki, let’s take ‘em down!”

Masaru: “Yeah, that goes without saying!”

Oh, Masaru. Of course he just wanted to jump right into the fighting and didn’t even need to stop and properly think about the how and why.

Some evolution animations, me standing up to go grab a snack and then typing this entire sentence later, they’re ready to fight. Except for Ikuto and Falcomon, who are still injured from their previous encounter with these guys last episode. Conveniently the writers actually remembered the injuries and kept them a thing between episodes, specifically so that we could have a three-on-three here, huh, what a coincidence.

RiseGreymon goes right for BioThunderBirmon, as you’d expect, and gets dodged and countered. BioStegomon goes for Lilamon in particular (hm I wonder why, ugh), and MachGaogamon rushes in to attack him, but then BioCoatlmon coils around the big wolf. I kinda like that last part. Tohma and MachGaogamon were unconsciously playing along with the anime trope of “three heroes, three villains, one girl in each trio, so the girl fights the girl, right???” – but no, actually. Nanami wants to fight Tohma, thank you very much; she doesn’t give a damn about the genders involved here.

Lilamon then swoops in to try and deal with BioCoatlmon, which is probably mostly her trying to help out MachGaogamon, but could also be her sharing that passive assumption that she’s supposed to be fighting the other woman here. Alas, BioStegomon gets in the way. Ivan also wants to subvert the gender-match expectations, for much worse reasons.

The whole thing pans out with some big smoke explosions from attacks aimed at the three Bio-Hybrids, and the usual “Did we get ‘em?” NOPE. Man, Savers does that trope a lot. They’re barely scathed, because I guess they really are stronger than regular Perfect-levels.

As they continue to fight, RiseGreymon versus BioThunderBirmon continues to be a clear one-on-one, but meanwhile MachGaogamon is still attempting to fight BioStegomon (Winning Knuckle: still not winning) only to find himself getting attacked by BioCoatlmon instead. No, seriously, Tohma, let Nanami fight you, she is by far the better match for you foil-wise and gender is irrelevant.

It doesn’t last much longer before the protagonists are all devolved back to their Child forms.

BioThunderBirmon: “Now you die!”

Kouki is very ready to just frickin’ murder them. As is probably required of anyone working for Kurata, they’re not messing around.

But just in the nick of time, to a swell of heroic music, Satsuma shows up. Kudamon announces their presence with an attack that… makes his entrance look cool, but honestly only seems to be a bright flash of distracting light and nothing more.

I like how he swooshes dramatically around Satsuma’s neck before settling there. He doesn’t even need to be there right now, because there’s no gravity in this void-space, but he likes it there anyway. Such good weaselscarf.

BioThunderBirmon was ahead of the group, but somewhere in the midst of the fight, he ended up behind them along with the other two Bio-Hybrids. I guess that’s Kouki’s fault for getting cocky and thinking he’d won. Now, Satsuma can stay behind to hold them off while the rest of the DATS crew go on ahead to make it to the Digital World.

Satsuma does a Digisoul Full Charge and evolves Kudamon – with no fancy long animation because he’s not important enough – into Qilinmon, a design I’m rather fond of despite how complex it is. Pretty magical horse, whee.

Digimon Analyser: “Qilinmon. A Perfect-level who is as powerful as an Ultimate.”

Because Kudamon’s just that cool, I guess, he gets to break the rules of evolution levels for no reason. Sure.

Qilinmon: “You who desire only to destroy life… Face my blade!”

This is a little bit more of a pompous register than Kudamon normally speaks in, and in the Japanese I can hear him using a more archaic version of “I” than he usually does. There’s another side of Kudamon we’re seeing just a little glimpse of here, now that he’s showing some of his true power.

Qilinmon slices at the three Bio-Hybrids with his horn-sword and manages to injure them, gasp, how dare he. The three of them angrily switch to a tactic of “glow very brightly and charge at the enemy”, which Qilinmon is all too happy to join in with for some reason or other, and they collide in a huge explosion. The rest of DATS watch the explosion from further ahead in the void-space as it blocks Satsuma from sight; they can’t see if he got caught up in it himself or not.

Just then, they finally reach the other side of the in-between space and are deposited into the Digital World. The explosion keeps expanding towards them, but the Gate closes itself before it can reach into this reality. Masaru’s group made it out safely, but the Bio-Hybrids and Satsuma are still trapped in the void, fighting.

Yoshino: “Captain! I hope he’s okay…”

Masaru: “He must be. After all, he’s *our* Captain.”

Oh, Masaru, ever clinging to the optimistic outlook and refusing to acknowledge any possibility of a bad outcome. He’s our Captain, he’s a badass, he’ll be fine, so no need to worry about him whatsoever.

Despite that setback, they made it to the Digital World. Time to go and stop Kurata!

Overall thoughts

As much as this is kind of a transitional episode to get the crew into the Digital World and introduce some new villains, there’s still a fair bit of good stuff here.

Mostly, of course, it’s the focus on Ikuto and his parents. It’s nice to cap off Ikuto’s character arc like this by having him be able to assert to his parents, entirely on his own, just how important it is that he’s both human and Digimon and he wants to protect the Digital World. The Noguchis’ bad coping methods continue to be nuanced and interesting, and it’s encouraging to see them finally beginning to Get It and understand their son’s situation. The scene where Ikuto thanks them for giving birth to him and they effectively welcome him into the family by teaching him these typical family phrases is very sweet. He does have somewhere to belong in the human world (other than at Masaru’s place)!

Also, Sayuri, I love her, I love getting more focus on how incredibly brave she is. And I enjoy Masaru properly starting to become aware of this himself, as well as more of his usual fun low-key projecting his parent feelings onto Ikuto’s family, as always.

It’s neat finally having Satsuma and Kudamon do more things than stand around giving orders, and to get to see them show off how badass they can be. Kudamon sure is one terrifyingly ruthless little weaselscarf when he wants to be.

And then the Bio-Hybrids exist, I guess. I admit, they’re very much not my favourite arc villains in Savers, and Ivan in particular grates on me a lot, but they do have some things going for them. I’ll have plenty of time to talk about that in their upcoming episodes.

---

[Dub comparison]

#digimon #digimon savers #masaru daimon #ikuto noguchi #sayuri daimon #misuzu noguchi #kenji noguchi #rentarou satsuma #kudamon #kouki #nanami #ivan #akihiro kurata

17 notes · View notes

commentaryvorg · 3 years ago

Text

Digimon Data Squad Dub Comparison Episode 28 - Digivice Meltdown

(The spoiler warning given for the original episode’s post applies to this post too! Not that you should really be reading this without having read the original post anyways.)

Original name ~ Dubbed name

Masaru Daimon ~ Marcus Damon

Yoshino Fujieda ~ Yoshino “Yoshi” Fujieda

Tohma H. Norstein ~ Thomas H. Norstein

Ikuto Noguchi ~ Keenan Crier

Captain Rentarou Satsuma ~ Commander Richard Sampson

Professor Suguru Daimon ~ Doctor Spencer Damon

BanchouLeomon ~ BanchoLeomon

RiseGreymon ~ RizeGreymon

Yatagaramon ~ Crowmon

Gizmon ~ Gizumon

BioThunderBirmon ~ BioThunderbirdmon

BioCoatlmon ~ BioQuetzalmon

Jureimon ~ Cherrymon

[Since several characters share the same name between the original and the dub, quotes from the dub will always be in italics, while quotes from the original will not, in order to distinguish them.]

I’m a little surprised that the dub title kept close to the original one here, because that original title kiiinda spoiled the climax of the episode. Japanese titles are a lot more liable to do that sometimes, but dub titles usually avoid it.

Recap Yoshi: “This is the worst…”

Yoshi’s doing the recap for once! I think this is her first time. Makes a nice change from Thomas, at any rate. I am amused by the way she rounds things off by calling this the worst after summarising the events of the episode.

Hello, reminder, Falcomon’s voice is terrible, thank you for your time this week.

(I dunno, Falcomon, you say Cherrymon is old and wise but you also sound pretty old and wise to me from here.)

Thomas: “Permanently deleted…”

Thomas mutters this as he watches the life energy of the murdered Digimon get sucked into the Gizumon’s suction tank thingy, thus implying that it’s because the life energy gets sucked up that they’re permanently deleted. That isn’t supposed to be it. The Gizumon haven’t had these suction things until now, and yet they still killed plenty of Digimon in the past.

Ikuto: “I won’t forgive them… I won’t forgive them!”

~~~~~

Keenan: “Gizumon… Me get!”

It doesn’t quite feel right for Keenan to be directing his anger specifically at the Gizumon, who are after all mindless machines just following programming. This is about Kurata; the Gizumon are just his tools.

Yoshino: “This is the worst!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Okay, you know how I said before was the worst? Well, this is really the worst!”

I appreciate them playing with Yoshi’s catchphrase some, but this moment seems a bit of an odd time to do so. All that’s happened is that a few more Gizumon-XT have shown up, which they must have been expecting to happen sooner or later. It’s really not that much worst-er than normal.

The fact that Thomas and Yoshi evolve their partners before Marcus rushes into punch means that the evolution music gets to hype up Marcus’s punch for once! …Or it would, except this punch misses, and the music cuts out right as it does. Nice effect.

Yatagaramon: “So they’ve also raised their defence.”

~~~~~

Crowmon: “They have some sort of new defence shield!”

Look, the whole thing about them totally having greater defence than last time was rather silly, but at least it was plausible. Trying to claim they’ve outright got some kind of shield that they didn’t have before makes even less sense, because we’d be able to see such a thing, and we can’t.

The sound of BanchoLeomon’s reed pipe is completely different and sounds more like a deep flute of some sort. It doesn’t seem at all like the kind of sound that could feasibly be produced by the tiny leaf that he’s holding to his mouth.

Masaru: “Who are you?!”

BanchouLeomon: “Just a banchou who’s passing through. BanchouLeomon!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Who’re you, furball?”

BanchoLeomon: “A friend called me a furball once. But he was my friend.”

So, Spencer was the one who called him a furball, is what we’re meant to assume is going on here? Because Spencer is the only friend of BanchoLeomon’s that we are ever going to see in this series.

If the dub meant anything at all by this, they’d remember it and include a bit with Spencer calling BanchoLeomon a furball when we get to the flashback episode about how they met. They will not. They just pulled this out of absolutely nowhere, making up a completely new thing about the dub BanchoLeomon’s character that comes from nowhere and goes nowhere.

Digimon Analyser BanchoLeomon: “My friends know better than to mess with me, and my enemies know better than to mess with my friends. And if you want to be my friend one day, kid… you’re off to a bad start.”

They’re really, really weirdly leaning into this thing of BanchoLeomon being all about friends. Friends whom we will never meet, except for one person, that one person being the father of this kid here. You’d think he’d be more on board with potentially befriending his existing friend’s son.

Yoshino: “Could he be a member of Kurata’s troops?”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Do you think he could be another one of those Bio-Hybrids?”

Yoshi’s a bit more specific about her suspicions here. I guess it makes a reasonable amount of sense to think this, if she’s already wondering if he’s on Kurata’s side? Anything that’s not an obviously soulless machine like a Gizumon has to have some conscious reason for siding with Kurata like the Bio-Hybrids seemingly do. Though you’d think BanchoLeomon would need to have Bio at the front of his name for him to be a Bio-Hybrid Digimon.

(Also, Bio-Hybrids who’ve been hired and modified by Kurata to carry out Digimon genocide probably aren’t going to stand and lengthily pontificate to you about their friends, just saying.)

Masaru: “No, that can’t be.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “There’s… something pure about him…”

I guess this is the dub’s equivalent of Masaru sensing the banchou-ness in BanchouLeomon and automatically trusting him because of that, but it reads weird here. I suppose we’re meant to agree that he’s pure because he talked about his friends a lot?

Marcus also has a particular tone to his voice here that sounds… kinda like the tone he uses when he’s thinking about his dad? But I doubt that’s on purpose, because even if this line is the dub hinting at him subconsciously picking up on his dad’s presence (hey, that’d be kinda neat, actually), it’s definitely not meant to be at all consciously on Marcus’s mind.

Masaru: “There’s no evil in a guy that’s a banchou!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “BanchoLeomon! Please be our friend!”

The original line has the tone of Masaru being over-the-top fiercely insistent about this and everyone else being exasperated at his Masaru-ness. A lot of that tone is carried in the shot-direction of this moment rather than just the dialogue, so it remains there in the dub as well… except it doesn’t work as well when this is all Marcus is saying. I mean, yeah, now’s a weird time to ask, and he’s weirdly insistent about it, but they probably do want someone as strong as BanchoLeomon to be their friend.

At this point it’s really clear that the dub is pushing this whole friendship thing in a fumbling attempt to replace the banchou thing from the original with something else. Which on the one hand, I guess I can understand, because a banchou is a Japanese concept that’s not going to work on a Western audience. But on the other hand, the basic idea of what a banchou is is already pretty encapsulated by Masaru’s – and therefore largely Marcus’s – character. All they’d really need to do to localise this and have it work is to throw in a line where Marcus says something like, “Bancho? That’s like an ultimate fighter!”, and it’d perfectly communicate the relevant idea that Marcus looks up to this Digimon and thinks he’s cool because he’s a lot like Marcus himself.

BanchouLeomon: “Holy am I, alone, throughout heaven and earth!”

~~~~~

BanchoLeomon: (If my friends have enemies, then they become my enemies, too.)

Okay, fair, the Buddha quote had to be changed for localisation’s sake, but boy is the dub version of BanchoLeomon being so completely one-note about this.

(Also with obligatory inner monologue, because the viewers are really definitely going to notice and complain that his mouth doesn’t appear to be moving in these very fast blink-and-you’ll-miss-it action shots.)

Yoshi: “Wow. Marcus, making friends with that guy was probably the best move you’ve ever made.”

Uhhh, but he hasn’t, though? He just asked to be, and so far BanchoLeomon has not seemed very receptive. (Well, uh, assuming everyone else actually heard him give his Digimon Analyser speech, which is usually not in-universe canon lines, but seemed a lot more like it was this time since he directly addressed Marcus in it.)

Masaru: “Not bad, BanchouLeomon!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Not bad! You’re almost as strong as me.”

Masaru’s line only implied that he was putting himself as even stronger than BanchouLeomon, but nah, who needs subtlety.

BanchouLeomon: “You’re one million and 35 years too early to clash with me.”

~~~~~

BanchoLeomon: “You’re about one million and 35 years too young to take me on, kid.”

Okay, early is one thing and kinda makes sense in an abstract way, but young? Is BanchoLeomon insisting he’s over a million years old?

(I do like that they kept the “and 35”, though.)

BanchouLeomon: “I have something right now that you guys don’t.”

~~~~~

BanchoLeomon: “I possess something that you don’t have and perhaps never will.”

Since all he’s actually talking about here is “Mega level evolution”, it’s a bit much that he seems to think they’ll never reach that stage. Pretty sure the whole point of his cryptic speech about power in the original was to try and spur them to begin figuring out how to reach that level of power, not to scoff at it being completely impossible for them.

BanchouLeomon: “Your fists aren’t the only thing that make up strength.”

Masaru: “What?”

~~~~~

BanchoLeomon: “Your fist isn’t the thing that makes you strong.”

Marcus: “It’s not?!”

The dub actually went for the word “strong” here, even though the original Japanese word BanchouLeomon was using here was still “power”. But then again, thanks to the changes the dub made to episode 13 in which Masaru realised physical strength isn’t everything and yet Marcus kinda didn’t, it doesn’t read as off at all that Marcus hasn’t yet realised his fists aren’t everything.

BanchouLeomon: “The answer lies within yourselves.”

Masaru: “Within us? What’s that mean?”

~~~~~

BanchoLeomon: “The source of your strength can be found deep within you.”

Marcus: “Within me, huh? I’ll take an X-ray, then.”

Marcus sounds like he’s not even willing to entertain BanchoLeomon’s words and is just scoffing at how ridiculous the idea sounds to him. I mean, I know Masaru can be a knucklehead, but they’re making Marcus even more of one. You’d think he’d be willing to listen and try to understand if it’d mean getting stronger.

BanchoLeomon: “Until then, let’s put our friendship on hold.”

Just in case you forgot about it for the minute or two where he was talking about something actually relevant, THIS GUY LOVES FRIENDSHIP

And then he leaves for the rest of this episode, and we’re never going to hear BanchoLeomon talk about friendship in any other episode ever again. Seriously. This is all there is. What a weird thing to do with the dub version of a character: hammer home a completely new character trait that you know wasn’t there in the original, and then drop it when you realise that, no really, it wasn’t there in the original and there’s no way we can make this work, whoops let’s hope everyone forgets about it.

I did think, on my first time viewing the dub, that this whole friendship thing could be the dub’s way of trying to hint that it’s BanchoLeomon in control and not Spencer, in that Spencer won’t be like this when he’s the one speaking. Except, for that to be the case, they’d have to also include this whole BanchoLeomon-loves-friendship thing in the later flashback episode where we see BanchoLeomon as unambiguously 100% himself. They do not. So this whole thing really is just thrown in completely carelessly out of nowhere for no reason, because I guess they couldn’t think of a decent way to localise the concept of a “banchou”, even though Marcus’s “ultimate fighter” thing is right there to connect it to.

(They actually did good localisation with the manju in episode 11 and all, just by tossing in a quick line in which Miki and Megumi explained what it was! It’s really not that hard!)

Masaru: “Damn, he just says what he wants and leaves…”

~~~~~

Marcus: “He just spouts out a few riddles and then takes off!”

This line doesn’t work as Marcus ironically also describing himself like the original line kinda did, because he’s definitely not one for riddles.

Yoshino: “But power isn’t something easy to attain…”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Well, let’s not sit around here talking about it – let’s find a way for us to get stronger!”

Yoshi’s being a lot more positive and proactive here. Which on the one hand I like, but on the other hand, maybe it was appropriate for her character and issues that she was originally worrying that she might not be able to get stronger.

Ikuto: “There’s a place where you can go to get power.”

Masaru: “Where?”

Ikuto: “I make sure to catch up with you later. You guys go to Jureimon.”

~~~~~

Keenan: “I know a place! We find strength there!”

Marcus: “Take us!”

Keenan: “No. Me have to go alone.”

It does make more sense in the dub that Marcus actually asks Keenan to take them all, if he knows of a place where they can “find strength”. Keenan’s response isn’t quite the right one, though. This isn’t one of those “the hero must face his trials alone” type of get-strength places; it’s really a lot more mundane and straightforward than that. The real reason Ikuto goes alone is that only one person even needs to go there, so the others may as well head on to Jureimon. Who wants to bet the dub hasn’t watched ahead to know this.

Kurata: “Let’s head to the next village.”

~~~~~

Kurata: “I guess it’s on to the next village for more destruction.”

Kurata in the dub here reads a little worryingly like a cartoon villain who knows he’s the bad guy and is enjoying being one. That’s not meant to be him at all.

Agumon: “S’not my fault, you try walkin’ in this fog with feet as big as frying pans!”

Heh. Agumon has a point that his feet are pretty huge and it must be easy for him to trip over them.

Cherrymon: “The wind told me what had happened. Of [Merukimon’s] tragic demise.”

Wow, “demise”, that’s almost like they’re directly mentioning death for once! I guess this is an archaic enough word for it that it’s allowed.

Masaru: “Damn Kurata… Just wait until I punch him to the ground!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “I just want one more shot at taking Kurata down!”

Only one more shot? And if you fail at that, you’ll be good, you’ll call it quits? This doesn’t feel like the right way to word this. Marcus’s tone of voice is also his usual kind of eagerness-to-fight, rather than a deep fury and desperation to do something that stems from how powerless all this is making him feel.

Nanami: “We came to see where-oh-where did those Gizumon-XTs go, but lucky us to land in such an interesting place!”

Yeah, Nanami still has that southern belle thing going on making her sound like more of an airhead, which I do not like, because she is very distinctly the opposite of an airhead. Wouldn’t be surprised if the dub didn’t know this, though, because that’d require watching ahead.

Kouki: “Huh? Captain? Oh, you mean that old guy. He’s dead.”

~~~~~

Kouki: “Who…? Commander…? Oh yeah, the old guy! He’s gone now.”

The dub’s utter allergy to directly using the word “dead” is severely ruining this moment. Kouki is not someone who would talk around it like this if he really wanted them to think Sampson was dead. The fact that he is being so indirect means that the most natural thing to assume based on his words is actually that Sampson is perfectly alive and got away from them somehow, and Kouki’s just trying to be vague about this so he doesn’t admit to losing.

It really does not work at all that Yoshi and Thomas proceed to have an immediate horrified reaction upon hearing Kouki’s words.

Yoshino: “The Captain is…?”

Tohma: “Dead…?”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “You mean he’s…?”

Thomas: “He’s gone…?”

Yes, those are the literal words Kouki just said, this does not actually mean he is necessarily dead, come on, guys.

Marcus’s growling in response to this doesn’t really sound like he’s trying to hold back grief like Masaru’s did.

Kouki: “Let’s start by getting rid of these Digimon. They’re all injured anyway; we’d be doing them a favour!”

It doesn’t feel like a Kouki thing to even vaguely attempt to justify his murdering assholery by framing it like it’s not so bad if they’re already injured. I guess this line is meant to be assholery in itself, in that he’s making a point of attacking those who can’t fight back, but the delivery doesn’t really make it sound like he’s saying it to be cruel.

As I mentioned last episode, dub-Kouki’s voice is basically just Generic Anime Dude and doesn’t have nearly the level of cruelty and roughness to it that Kouki’s voice has in the original, which will be quite important in this scene in particular.

Masaru: “You bastard…”

~~~~~

Marcus: “You’re sick…”

Again, I like the things the dub does to replace coarse language; Marcus’s line is great at getting across the same point and very well-delivered.

Kouki: “He-hee! That’s the spirit.”

There’s a particular childlike gleefulness to Kouki’s chuckle that isn’t there in the original that presents his character in a bit of a different way but is also very twisted and horrible of him. Who the hell giggles like that when they’re about to murder sapient beings.

BioStegomon: “Accept this man’s pure-hearted attack!”

~~~~~

BioStegomon: “Take this! Shell Needle Rain!”

At least the dub removed some of Ivan’s terribleness, I appreciate that!

BioStegomon: “A man’s pure-hearted power is invincible.”

~~~~~

BioStegomon: “When are we gonna fight someone who can *really* challenge us?”

On the one hand, again, removing Ivan’s terribleness, I approve. On the other hand, Ivan, unlike Kouki and Nanami, isn’t really in this for the sake of an entertaining challenge and would be the one person out of the trio who shouldn’t really take this angle while taunting them.

BioThunderBirmon: “Little shits. You think you can defy us, when we’re fused with both the powers of humans and Digimon?”

~~~~~

BioThunderbirdmon: “Did you really think you could beat us Bio-Hybrids? We have the combined powers of humans and Digimon!”

The loss of the “little shits” and the derisive chuckle in Kouki’s voice as he says this really takes out of all of the assholeish Kouki flavour to it and just turns it into Generic Anime Villain.

The Nyokimon’s dub noises, like last time they appeared, are kinda screechy and considerably less cute.

BioThunderBirmon: “Are you an idiot? Trying to save these pieces of scum… Ha! If you wanna die that badly, then I’ll give you what you wish for!”

~~~~~

BioThunderbirdmon: “What’re ya tryin’ to save these measly little pieces of data for? Just so you could be destroyed yourself? Well, if that’s what you want, here comes your reward!”

This is mostly the same, but there’s just little bits of it – not asking if he’s an idiot, not calling the Nyokimon “scum”, avoiding the word “die” – that make it come across as just a bit less assholeish.

RizeGreymon: “Boss…!”

RizeGreymon’s Obligatory Growly Evolved Digimon Voice makes the moment where he calls out to his boss while enduring horrible pain not hit quite as much, because he doesn’t sound as close to Agumon the character.

Yoshi: “Cherrymon!”

Yoshino’s voice in this line sounded strained and anguished, like she’s panicking like hell. Yoshi’s delivery… doesn’t capture that at all.

BioThunderBirmon: “I’ve decided! Your names in my autobiography will be Small Fries A, B and C!”

~~~~~

BioThunderbirdmon: “Congratulations, I’ve decided to add you to my memoirs! I’ll call the chapter, ‘If a Tree Falls in a Forest, it Definitely Makes a Sound!’”

This doesn’t hit as well. I dunno if it’s Kouki no longer making a point of how tiny and insignificant the DATS trio are, the change in Kouki’s “joke” making it sound like the dub is just genuinely trying to pull a goofy joke with a goofy villain, or just Kouki’s delivery being relatively flat and not at all cruelly enjoying this. He doesn’t laugh uproariously like he’s just made the most hilarious joke about murder ever, and he should.

BioThunderBirmon: “C’mon! Any last words?”

~~~~~

BioThunderbirdmon: “So, another chapter comes to an end. Any last words?”

Again, here Kouki in the original laughs uproariously, whereas in the dub he just gives a brief cruel chuckle and sounds like a generic villain-ish dude rather than a twisted sicko who’s massively enjoying every second of this. The narrative needs to make you desperate to just stop this murdering asshole somehow in order for the upcoming moment to land right, and the dub’s not really achieving it.

Masaru, Yoshino & Tohma: “STOP IT!”

~~~~~

Marcus, Yoshi & Thomas: “Leave him alone!”

The new wording’s not my issue, but the delivery of this by the dub voice-actors isn’t nearly as fitting for an outburst of desperate, uncontrolled emotion that’s enough to unlock their partners’ next level of power.

Marcus: “Shocking! Where’d they get that power?”

The “shocking!” is a really weird wording for Marcus of all people.

Jureimon: “Please do not let Merukimon, and the other brave Digimon who gave their lives, perish in vain…”

I still can’t help but point out every instance of the dub talking around death in a way that actually sounds natural, because this shows that it’s perfectly possible and they have no excuse the rest of the time.

Masaru: “[BanchouLeomon] was talking about the power that was sleeping inside of me…”

~~~~~

Marcus: “I guess BanchoLeomon was right. Power isn’t always found in your fists, but in your heart.”

I don’t like the wording of the dub here. Feels far too much like stiltedly expositing the Lesson Marcus Has Learned™ rather than him simply naturally reacting to the realisation of what BanchoLeomon was on about.

Yoshino: “They couldn’t handle it… is not what I’m asking!”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Couldn’t handle it, huh? So now what?”

I am sad at Yoshi not making the exasperated point that she was never asking Tohma and Gaomon for an explanation of why this happened in the first place.

Masaru: “So we’ll find him! Dad’s definitely alive somewhere!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Well, I suppose we’ll just have to go find him, then, won’t we!”

Marcus’s wording has this amused “hah, what a huge shame that now we have no choice but to go and look for my dad!” tone to it and I rather like it. (Though I did also enjoy Masaru’s straightforward eagerness and continued insistence that his dad is Obviously Alive.)

Overall differences

Most of this episode isn’t that different at all, but there’s a few somewhat major things that bring it down.

What on earth is the dub doing with BanchoLeomon in this episode, seriously. Did you know, he likes friendship, he’s going to mention this literally every line in case you forget. Except he’s suddenly going to never mention this ever again after this one episode, because surprise surprise, he wasn’t like this in the original and it doesn’t work for his character. Why the hell would you change a character to give them a trait that you know they didn’t have in the original; obviously that’s not going to work out! It wouldn’t have been hard to add in like one line explaining that a “bancho” is like an ultimate fighter in order to suitably localise that concept instead of changing it to random irrelevant nonsense like this, come on, guys.

The dub’s dancing around using the word “dead” is always annoying, but it particularly ruins the moment in this episode in which Kouki tells them that Sampson is… gone. Just gone, as if Kouki doesn’t want to admit the fact that he didn’t actually kill him. There’s no reason for Thomas and Yoshi to be reacting so strongly to what might not actually be news of his death at all.

I mentioned last week that Kouki’s voice in the dub is a lot more Generic Anime Dude and sounds like less of a rough, callous asshole, and this is the episode in which it matters the most. A lot of what sells the DATS trio’s outburst of desperate emotion in the key moment is how utterly horrible Kouki is acting towards their partners and these defenceless Digimon he’s about to kill, and that doesn’t hit quite so hard in the dub, with his more generic voice and slight subtle losses of that assholery in his lines. Some of the protagonists’ line deliveries in these parts also don’t sell the raw desperation of their emotion as well, either.

#digimon #digimon savers #digimon data squad

8 notes · View notes