#chikas dad lore | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

commentaryvorg · 2 years

Text

Digimon Savers Commentary Episode 41 - Confirm it With a Fist! Dad’s Feelings

In this episode, we learn Kudamon’s secret, and he and DATS fight a Royal Knight who’s working to destroy the human world on Yggdrasil’s orders, all while Masaru struggles to come to terms with the revelation that this genocidal god is his dad.

No recap this time! (Though I wouldn’t have minded seeing how the recap narrator chose to describe of the final scene of last episode, to be honest.) Instead, we open with another little Masaru flashback!

He’s holding his pendant, turning it over and over in his fingers. Then he looks up to see his dad walking away down their street with a huge backpack on his back, while his mom stands next to him carrying a baby Chika. Suguru’s leaving to go on his expedition to the Digital World – not that Masaru will know that’s where he’s going for another ten years, of course.

Little Masaru runs a few steps further down the street after his dad, but then comes to a stop, as if he realises he’ll never be able to catch up no matter how fast he is. Instead, he puts up a big smile and waves, calling out to him.

Little Masaru: “Dad! See ya! Take care!”

The specific Japanese phrase he’s using here is a “goodbye” phrase that includes the expectation that the person will be back. That is, of course, very important.

Suguru is probably somewhat less sure that he’ll definitely be back, but nonetheless he looks back at his son and gives a big smile and wave in return.

The flashback fades out as Masaru wakes up, lying on the ground in Yokohama. They’re back in the human world, though it seems the passage here was a bit turbulent, given that their rescuer, Sleipmon, got attacked by Dukemon as he was fleeing here with them. The wounded Sleipmon staggers to his feet behind them, introducing himself as one of the Royal Knights.

Satsuma: “No need to worry. He is on our side.”

Guess who’s not dead! The group don’t even seem that surprised to see Satsuma alive, despite having bought Kouki’s lie about his demise back in episode 27/28. Perhaps some stubborn Masaru-style optimism got them to push that aside and continue clinging to the hope that he’d have made it somehow, and indeed he did. Of course someone as badass as Satsuma isn’t just gonna unceremoniously die offscreen like that.

Tohma: “Then that must mean this is…”

Tohma puts the pieces together just before Sleipmon devolves from his injuries… into Kudamon. The Digimon vice-captain of DATS was always secretly a Royal Knight, this entire time.

(I suppose someone who knows enough Digimon lore to know that Kudamon’s Ultimate-level is Sleipmon and that Sleipmon is one of the Royal Knights may have suspected this from the start, but for me at least, I didn’t see this coming at all.)

Kudamon: “I’m sorry… for worrying all of you…”

This is all Kudamon says to them for now before passing out. Aww, look at him not wanting to burden his comrades.

Satsuma: “Kudamon!”

Satsuma instantly rushes over to him in concern and picks him up (he’s so tiny again!), which is a small thing but very cute from our usually stoic captain. He and his weaselscarf are good friends.

Tohma: “Let’s hurry back to the shelter!”

Agumon: “Aniki, let’s go, too! … Aniki?”

Masaru hasn’t reacted at all to any of this exchange with Sleipmon/Kudamon or Satsuma being alive. The entire time since he woke up, he’s just been staring up at the Digital World in the sky, where his father is a god who wants to destroy all of humanity. He still can’t think about anything but that; nothing else matters.

Agumon: “Aniki…”

Digimon don’t do the parents thing, so Agumon is not remotely equipped to understand why Masaru is so broken up over this, but he can at least be sad and concerned that his Aniki doesn’t seem to be himself right now.

I believed in it! It’s my soul

It’ll take me anywhere

And on that note, as we go to the opening, it’s the perfect time to talk about my single favourite line in it. “I believed in it! It’s my soul” is absolutely 1000% written to be about Masaru’s dad complex and I will not hear a word otherwise. Literally everything about the person Masaru is today is built on his immense belief in and idolisation of his father. We saw at the end of last episode how that image of his father shattered and left behind nothing but a swirling empty void, how seeing that his dad’s apparently not the person he believed in has left Masaru currently utterly broken. His belief in his father was so strong and so personality-defining for him that one really could quite appropriately say that it’s his soul.

And of course, at this particular moment in time, the fact that the “I believed in it!” is in past tense is so very, very relevant. I love it. Best lyric in this opening, hands down. Getting to talk about this now is one of the biggest reasons I made a thing of talking about the opening lyrics in this commentary at all.

As we get back from the opening, everyone’s retreated to the DATS shelter in the city. Please appreciate how tiny Kudamon is as he lies there bandaged on a towel.

Satsuma: “Kudamon, as an emissary of the Digital World, has been keeping watch over the human world this whole time. He was to determine whether or not the human beings were a beneficial existence to Digimon.”

Megumi: “So that means… Kudamon was Yggdrasil’s spy?!”

That’s pretty much the size of it! Kudamon was a spy. Yggdrasil, as we’ve somewhat already seen, seems to have put a lot of thought into the question of “are humans worth keeping around?” Apparently one of the ways it attempted to investigate that, back in the days before Kurata’s first massacre, was to send one of its Royal Knights to the human world, in Child form so nobody would suspect him, to covertly learn more about them. When Suguru asked Kudamon and Kamemon to be ambassadors to the human world to help set up DATS together with his two old comrades, he probably had no idea that one of them was secretly sent by the very god he was busy trying to find.

Kudamon wakes up as he hears this and pushes himself painfully to his tiny feet.

Kudamon: “It’s true that I am one of the Royal Knights. But, during my stay here in the human world, I have grown fond of you humans. Although he means to save the Digital World, I cannot accept Yggdrasil’s command to erase the human world from existence.”

It’s taken a long time to get to the point where I could mention this, but – I really like Kudamon as a character!

He must have come to the human world nearly ten years ago with the same kind of pompous, dismissive attitude towards humanity that the rest of the Royal Knights we see still have, sent by an Yggdrasil who was probably already looking for half an excuse to get rid of them (see my hot take in episode 39 about how that’s been its plan pretty much all along). He would have only pretended to care about founding DATS and working together with Satsuma towards harmony between the two species, to begin with.

But somewhere along the way, over all those years hanging out with Satsuma and watching the other DATS members work and generally living among humans and seeing what they’re like, he couldn’t help but grow fond of them, to the point that he’s now very firmly siding with humanity over his god. And we know how insistently, mindlessly loyal to Yggdrasil these Royal Knights tend to be. It must have taken a lot of fondness towards humanity for Kudamon to consciously change his mind about that. What a good sentimental little weaselscarf.

As Kudamon says these words about Yggdrasil’s command to destroy the human world, Masaru stares emptily into space. He flashes back to Yggdrasil – his dad – coldly telling him about that same decision at the end of last episode. That of all things really shook Masaru to his core, seeing his father being so ruthless and cold-hearted like that, and he still can’t stop thinking about it.

Masaru: “Yggdrasil is… the God of the Digital World, right?”

Yoshino: “Masaru…”

Masaru: “Why… Why is Dad calling himself Yggdrasil? Why did he become our enemy? Why?!”

This is probably the first time Masaru’s spoken at all since he broke down at the end of last episode. He manages to stand up and put some anger into his voice, but only out of a desperate desire to understand and make some sense of this. He stands there, his shoulders shaking with emotion, obviously not expecting anybody else to actually have the answers. He just does not know how to deal with this.

(It still does not remotely occur to him that maybe his dad isn’t calling himself Yggdrasil, and maybe it’s more like Yggdrasil is “calling itself” his dad. Doesn’t even cross his mind. It looks like his dad, so obviously it’s his dad, end of.)

Satsuma: “That man… Professor Daimon has changed.”

This is Satsuma’s answer to Masaru’s outburst, which is kind of the exact opposite of what Masaru wants to hear. Satsuma explains that, after escaping from the Digital Gate void they were last seen in in episode 27, he and Kudamon made their way to Yggdrasil. They found it, as Suguru, already telling them of its desire to erase the human world.

(An interesting question: when did they have this meeting with Yggdrasil? Was it after the barrier collapsed, or before? Because if it was before, then that just goes to show that Yggdrasil had already made up its mind long before the apocalypse began.)

(I also can’t help but wonder – when did Kudamon tell Satsuma of his true identity? Obviously it would only have been after his loyalties shifted, because only then would he feel safe revealing that he was a spy but he’s on humanity’s side now. But still, I wonder if it might have only been during this offscreen trip here, in which Kudamon had to tell Satsuma he was a Royal Knight, since they were about to go and ask Yggdrasil for help. Perhaps Kudamon would have otherwise kept quiet indefinitely.)

Satsuma: “Then, what about Sayuri-san and Chika-chan? What about Masaru, who is fighting for both the humans and the Digimon?!”

“Suguru”: “I have no concern for them. Begone.”

Yggdrasil cannot understand why Satsuma would bring up these three specific humans like they’re supposed to matter to it. What nonsense. It does not even bother to consider what some human might assume based on the body it happens to be wearing right now.

Satsuma: “The father you knew no longer exists.”

But it seems like Satsuma came out of that encounter believing that this really was Suguru Daimon, and yet that he’s changed and become twisted and no longer cares about his family at all. Satsuma isn’t as straightforward as Masaru, either, so there’s not the same argument I’ve been making for Masaru of “he just doesn’t question it because it looks like Suguru on the surface”. What this tells me about Satsuma is that he didn’t actually know Suguru all that well as a person rather than a work colleague, and never had that strong of a belief that he wouldn’t do something like this (admittedly after ten years alone in the Digital World, which is a long time for someone to potentially change, but still). He’s buying it because he doesn’t have any particularly strong incentive not to.

But it sure isn’t helping Masaru’s mood to just be bluntly told this from an authority figure he trusts. This was not the answer he wanted when he blurted out that desperate rhetorical question of “why?!” at thin air.

As Satsuma repeats that Suguru has changed, there’s the sound of breaking crockery. With perfectly inconvenient timing, Chika and Sayuri have just showed up to the hideout to help out with food, and they overheard what Satsuma was saying about Suguru. Chika in particular is very shocked – she’s the one who dropped something.

There’s an awkward pause as Masaru stares at them and realises they heard that. I don’t know if he’s had enough presence of mind to even think about what he’s going to tell his mom and sister about this – probably not, let’s be real – but this definitely wasn’t how he wanted them to find out.

Chika: “That’s a lie! You’re lying!”

Of course she can’t bear to hear that her father would ever do such a thing, either. More on her version of the dad complex in a bit, because we haven’t really talked much about how Chika feels about their dad until now, have we?

We cut to later in the hideout; Sayuri had brought a huge helping of fried eggs for the whole crew, and now everyone’s plates are empty. The Daimons, meanwhile, have left.

Yoshino: “Family, huh…”

Ikuto: “I hope they’re all okay…”

I like that Yoshino’s thinking about this and worrying about Masaru’s family problems! Hers are totally different, but she’s had her own fair share of family awkwardness, hasn’t she. Ikuto too, for that matter.

Tohma doesn’t say anything to agree, but he’s also there looking distant, no doubt thinking about his issues with his own father. Suddenly there’s a lot less reason for him to be jealous of Masaru for having a father who’s so perfect and legendary, now that he’s turned out to be like this.

Also please appreciate the cute sleepy dog and bird, they’re adorable.

I said “everyone’s” plates were empty, but that’s actually not quite true. There’s one plate that still contains a portion of fried eggs, next to where Agumon’s sitting. Having obviously finished her own, Lalamon hovers over it hopefully.

Lalamon: “About these fried eggs…”

Agumon: “These belong to Aniki!”

It’s so adorable that Agumon’s actually saving Masaru’s fried eggs for him, out of worry and concern for the uncharacteristic way he’s acting right now. Remember, way back in like, episode 3? When Agumon firmly insisted that he’d never give up the last of the fried eggs, not even to Aniki? He absolutely thought he meant that at the time, but it turns out that there is a situation in which he’d be willing to save Aniki the last fried eggs, actually! Awww. What a good friend.

(And this is saying especially a lot when you consider that these have to be the first fried eggs Agumon’s gotten to eat since he hatched, at which point he was already hungry! That’s some seriously impressive restraint there, Agumon.)

Lalamon: “I-I wasn’t going to ask you to give them to me or anything!”

Come on, Lalamon, yes you were.

Lalamon: “E-Er, so… oh yeah, about Masaru! You don’t have to worry about Masaru at all! He’ll turn back into his cheerful self right away!”

In a flailing attempt to save face, Lalamon pretends that she was totally approaching Agumon to reassure him about Masaru. It is cute that she tries to do so, even if it’s really just an excuse to cover her desire for the fried eggs.

Agumon: “I didn’t ask for your opinion. Aniki’s not the type to get discouraged from this.”

You say that, Agumon, and yet, would you really have saved the fried eggs for Masaru if you weren’t worried about him? I think that if one thing in the world were capable of genuinely discouraging Masaru, it would be literally exactly this, actually.

(But of course, Agumon wouldn’t understand that, because he doesn’t get parents. He knows his Aniki’s dad is supposed to be awesome and all, but he’s never been able to grasp just how deeply important he is to Masaru, and perhaps never quite could.)

As Agumon’s saying this, Lalamon glances sneakily at the fried eggs again and Agumon has to growl threateningly to get her to back off. I enjoy this little moment of Lalamon characterisation alongside the more overt Agumon adorableness. She’s just as opportunistic when it comes to free food as her partner, it seems.

Satsuma speaks up to brief the group on the current situation: the worlds are going to collide; civilians have been told to take shelter but it’s empty comfort and won’t save anyone; once BanchouLeomon’s strength runs out, they’re all doomed. Not very reassuring at all, but that’s the reality of it.

Satsuma: “That’s why… I’d like each and every one of you to consider what actions you should take from now on. That’s all I have to say.”

Yoshino: “What will you do, Captain?”

Satsuma: “I’ll look for a way to save this world. Kudamon and I will search together until the very last moment.”

It’s low-key pretty considerate of Satsuma, despite being their captain and despite his own resolve to keep trying to save the world no matter what, that he isn’t trying to force the rest of his team to help him with this. He must know that things are almost certainly hopeless and his chances of actually making a difference are slim – so, given that this probably really is the end, he doesn’t feel like he has the right to stop his comrades from doing what they want to do in their final moments, if, say, they wanted to just spend it with their loved ones. That’s basically what he’s asking them if they want to do here, in not so many words.

Tohma: “What we should do from now on…”

I wonder if that’s what Tohma’s thinking about. His feelings about his father are complicated as hell, but there must be a part of him that would want to be there for Relena if the world really is unavoidably about to end.

Before anybody can make up their minds about that, they pick up a Digimon signal nearby in the city. It’s a big one – in other words, a Royal Knight. In the offscreen gap, everyone’s going to rush off to fight. Sure is easier to go off and deal with an immediate and familiarly-solvable problem like that than it is to figure out how you want to cope with the likely-inevitable end of the entire world, huh.

Elsewhere in the city, the Daimons have found a riverbank to sit at while they sort out their thoughts about Suguru. Aaaaa, look at Masaru’s body language here, he looks so small and defeated and it’s heartbreaking to see him of all people like this. Also note how Sayuri’s there holding Chika reassuringly, but Masaru’s sitting a little ways apart from them. He probably didn’t want to admit that he also needs a hug from his mom right now (even though he totally does, just look at him).

Chika: “Dad is the God of the Digital World that’s falling down on us.”

So, Chika’s dad complex! She was still a baby when Suguru left, so she has absolutely no actual memories of her father as a person at all. Which means that everything about who her father is to her is basically all a fantasy in her head. It’d have been built up from things told to her by her mother, and by Masaru, whose own memories were faint and biased with intense idolisation, and simply by what she wanted to imagine her father would be when he came home. It must have been even easier for her to buy the fact that he’s literally a god when she heard it than it already was for Masaru. Wouldn’t be any more of a wild fantasy than anything else about him has ever been in her head.

Chika: “He wants to get rid of our world to save the Digital World… Does Dad not care about us… about his family any more?”

It’s also got to be easier for her to buy that her dad actually might have just stopped caring about them, because she doesn’t have any of her own memories of him that would prove that wrong! Everything she knows about him is just hearsay, distorted through retellings by somebody else. Sure, they said he cared about his family back then before he left, but maybe he is the kind of person who’d just… stop doing that? She doesn’t know otherwise.

Chika: “But we were always waiting for him… I always believed that… Dad would come back to us one day… No matter how lonely it felt, I was waiting for him all this time… So why…?”

But even if she’s willing to buy that her father might be someone who would do this to them, that doesn’t make it any less painful. Despite never knowing him for herself, she still felt his absence in her life just as strongly as Masaru did, through Sayuri and Masaru missing him, and through seeing the other kids around her have fathers like it’s normal. Sayuri really did manage to keep her kids firmly believing that their father would be back one day in order to help them cope, even though Chika didn’t even have any reason to be sure that he wouldn’t just up and abandon them. Sayuri is so good.

Chika’s outpouring of her feelings on this here, despite her different perspective on it, also happens to be a pretty good match to everything Masaru must be feeling and thinking about his father right now. Pretty convenient for him, then, that Chika voices all of those painful feelings for him so that he doesn’t have to.

Masaru: “It’s gotta be some kind of a mistake! There’s no way Dad would betray us! I’m sure he has a reason! If he doesn’t, then…”

That way, Masaru can focus all of his outward emotions and words into desperate fervent denial, insisting that things can’t possibly be the way they seem. Yet, despite the force in his voice, he’s still saying this with his head in one hand. And I love the way his “If he doesn’t, then…” just trails off, because if his dad really doesn’t have a good reason to be doing all this then he wouldn’t be able to cope with it at all and of course he can’t finish that thought. Masaruuuu.

Sayuri: “Masaru. I don’t know what happened between you and Suguru-san over there. But no matter how Suguru-san appeared to you when you met him… I believe in him. After all, we’re his family.”

Chika: “Family…”

Sayuri: “Keeping faith in each other, no matter how hard it gets, is what a family does.”

Sayuri is so good! And though, granted, she didn’t see what Suguru looked like in that encounter Masaru had with him, I don’t think it would have swayed her one bit if she had. She believes in Suguru in quite a different way to the way her children do, because she’s an adult who views him as an equal and a human being, not some idolised, unreachable, near-literally-godlike figure. Incomprehensibly perfect legends, like Chika and Masaru subconsciously see their father to be, perhaps could go and do something inexplicable like suddenly decide to destroy all of humanity, because who knows what really goes on in such a being’s head? But, because Sayuri knows that Suguru’s just a person, and a person she knew to be a good man at heart, she knows there’s no way he would ever actually do something like this. That just doesn’t make sense.

Masaru: “I want to believe in him, too! But…”

There’s a delightful shot of Masaru’s hand desperately clutching at the grass as he says this. Of course he wants to believe in his father, so badly. He wouldn’t know how to deal with it if he couldn’t.

(And that should be all he needs! The only thing that matters is what you want to believe! But it seems Masaru’s not somebody who’s ever really had to think about and come up with principles on the topic of believing in people before now, despite how many good and well-thought-out principles he has on other topics.)

At the “but…”, he flashes back again to that cold, impassive look in his father’s eyes. That whole encounter is clearly still haunting him so much. It seems like it might have even been legitimately traumatic for him, the way he keeps flashing back to it like this.

Masaru: “After seeing Dad like that… Just what am I supposed to do now?! Damn it!”

Despite how badly Masaru wants to believe in his father, it’s still so damn hard for him to be able to do so right now, with the memory of seeing him like that, the complete opposite of the father he believed in, so fresh in his mind. Aaaaa, Masaru.

The scene ends for now without any resolution, just Masaru screaming his anguish helplessly into the sky.

(Have I mentioned I really love Savers? I really love Savers.)

Elsewhere in the city, thankfully not anywhere near where the Daimons are at right now, Dukemon is hovering overhead and disintegrating entire buildings. He leaves this swirly void space behind, apparently, and yet, I still have to wonder – is he actually trying to destroy the entire planet like this? Is it really possible for the Royal Knights – and remember that there’s only like seven of them – to do this on such as scale as to get the entirety of Earth destroyed before BanchouLeomon runs out of strength?

I don’t think that’s actually what Dukemon’s doing. It’s possible that the void being left behind is just a side-effect of the instability of dimensions right now, and that’d happen as a result of any large-scale destruction. What it really seems like to me is that Dukemon and the other Royal Knights are just laying waste to human population centres. Almost like what they’re really going to end up doing from this is kill all the humans, and not disintegrate the entire planet before it can collide with the Digital World. Hmmmmmm.

Kudamon calls out to Dukemon and implores him to stop, as the entire DATS crew (sans Masaru, and also Agumon) show up to confront him.

Dukemon: “Yggdrasil has ordered us to eliminate the human world. We Royal Knights must fulfil the mission he has given us.”

At the very least, it seems like Dukemon thinks he’s destroying the entire world and not just killing the humans, and yet. Really speaks to how these guys blindly follow their god without even questioning it, when it seems like none of them even considered whether them destroying an entire planet within the space of probably only a few days is even possible. Just, welp, Yggdrasil says we’ve got to do it, so let’s fly over there and fire our attacks at it constantly, that’ll definitely do the job, right.

Kudamon: “I understand that it’s for the sake of the Digital World’s survival, but sacrificing multitudes of innocent people cannot be reasonable!”

But is it for the sake of the Digital World’s survival, though, Kudamon? I guess even he, with his shifted loyalties, can’t quite see through Yggdrasil’s manipulation to its true motives.

(I guess this answers the question of when Satsuma and Kudamon had their encounter with Yggdrasil – if it had been before the barrier shattered, then Kudamon ought to know that Yggdrasil isn’t really doing this to save the Digital World, but he evidently doesn’t.)

Dukemon: “That’s an odd thing to say. It was the humans who first killed innocent Digimon.”

Yep, mindlessly spouting the same arguments Yggdrasil was. What do you mean, wiping out an entire species is unreasonable, it totally becomes reasonable if humans tried to do it first, obviously. How odd of Kudamon to be arguing otherwise. (And this is suddenly shifting to a completely different argument, as if this would mean humans deserved to die even if the worlds weren’t colliding, hm how about that.)

Ikuto: “No! The only bad one here is Kurata! Not all humans are bad!”

Dukemon: “Unfortunately, Yggdrasil does not think so.”

Look at Ikuto go, arguing the thing that it took him so long to figure out himself! But of course, Yggdrasil says all humans are bad actually, so obviously that must be true, it’s not like it needs to present any proof of that, what it says goes. Come on, Dukemon. You’re such a puppet.

So anyway, Dukemon’s not about to change his mind, very evidently, so everyone evolves to fight him. Including Miki and Megumi (who are still at Perfect level), but not Satsuma and Kudamon, because Kudamon’s still injured from before.

Meanwhile, Agumon’s alone, running frantically through the city to find Masaru and get his help with this problem, too. His aniki can’t be in a funk like this when there’s fighting to be done!

Back with the Daimons, Masaru’s staring at his pendant, remembering when he was waving goodbye to his dad on that day ten years ago.

Masaru: “Dad…”

Sayuri: “Masaru?”

Masaru: “No, nothing.”

As Sayuri notices him muttering to himself and reaches out, Masaru momentarily gets all awkward and “what no I wasn’t reminiscing about anything, shut up”. But then he relents, and starts opening up to his mom about what he was thinking. It’s cute that it takes him a moment to get to that. Masaru is not one for introspecting easily.

He asks her if she remembers the day his dad left for the Digital World, and of course she does. Chika, who’d fallen asleep on Sayuri’s lap, wakes up to listen to this, too.

Masaru narrates over the flashback that he and his dad played catch one last time before he left, which is very cute. Knowing there was a chance he may not make it back, Suguru must have wanted one last father-son bonding moment for them to remember each other by.

Masaru: “That’s when I said…”

Little Masaru: “Dad! Throw it at me with all you’ve got this time! I’ll definitely show you I can catch it!”

Suguru looks at his son in surprise as he makes this request and bold declaration. I really love how this shows that, even as a four-year-old, Masaru knew that his dad was holding back while playing with him, not using his full strength out of fear of hurting him. But here, on what might be the last time they see each other for a while (definitely not forever, no way little Masaru’s letting himself believe that!), Masaru wanted to prove just how strong he could be – that he could, in some small way, measure up to his dad at his full strength. That’s so very the essence of Masaru in general, from that day onwards.

Suguru glances unsurely at Sayuri (who’s here holding baby Chika), seemingly not sure if he should risk something that might hurt his son. Sayuri just nods and smiles proudly at Masaru, who’s being so eager and so determined.

look at him he is so ready to prove to his dad just how strong he can be, I love him, he is so smol but so Masaru already

Suguru: “Masaru…”

Suguru says his name in a proud kind of surprise, like he’s seeing his son in something of a new light, realising that Masaru Gets It about how much stronger his dad is, but nonetheless wants to try and match up to that and prove himself and impress him.

Spurred by that determination, Suguru decides he’s going to respect that and heed Masaru’s wishes, so he prepares to throw the ball with everything he’s got.

Masaru’s expression shifts from adorable determination to actually looking a little bit alarmed as he hears that his dad’s going for it. Despite his eager posturing that he can totally do this, it seems he wasn’t quite completely expecting his dad to actually indulge him, or perhaps he’s a little worried he might not be able to catch the ball like he’s been insisting he can. (After all, it’s his dad!)

Suguru winds up and throws the ball as hard as he can, right at Masaru’s baseball mitt. Props to Suguru here – it takes a lot of confidence and trust in his own throwing accuracy to be sure that he’s capable of doing this without missing and accidentally hurting his son. Masaru too, for that matter, has to have a lot of faith to believe that his dad won’t hurt him with this. This is a lovely exercise in how much they trust each other!

The ball does land right in his mitt, and Masaru falls onto his backside from the force of it – but he did it. He caught it!

Little Masaru: “Check it out!”

Suguru: “That’s terrific, Masaru!”

Awww, it’s such a small thing (and really, most of the impressive work here was done by Suguru to aim it accurately while throwing it that hard), but little Masaru’s so thrilled and Suguru’s so proud of him.

Suguru kneels down in front of little Masaru and takes off his pendant – which he’d been wearing, of course, just like in the family photo.

Suguru: “You can have this.”

He puts it around Masaru’s neck, and Masaru stares at it in disbelief, turning it over to let it catch the evening light, holding it up.

Little Masaru: “You’re giving this to me? Wow!”

It’s just a simple little pendant, like a dog tag or something, but to Masaru, because it belongs to his dad, it’s the best present ever. He can hardly believe his dad’s letting him keep it. It’s so cute how excited he is about it. Suguru ruffles his hair affectionately.

Suguru: “Masaru. This pendant… is proof of a grown man.”

Little Masaru: “A grown man?”

Welp, there you have it. Masaru’s been officially a Man ever since he was four years old. His dad said so, so it must be true.

…Realistically, there’s no way Suguru believes his son is anything close to an adult yet at four years old. But it’s really less about its literal meaning and more about the way it’ll help Masaru feel about himself in his dad’s possible absence. It’s a reminder that Suguru’s proud of him and believes he can become a grown man just as great as him. This was, after all, spurred by Masaru being brave and determined enough to want to prove he can match up to his dad’s full strength, and managing to do so in that small way by catching the ball.

So now we know the full reason why this pendant’s always meant so much to Masaru. Not just because he got it from his dad, but because he got it from his dad on that day, and because it’s proof of him being a man and of how much his dad believed in him.

(Oh, also, fun fact! Way back in episode 1, when Agumon talked about how Masaru was the first person to acknowledge him as “a full-fledged individual”, I made note of the Japanese phrasing he used there. It’s subbed differently here, but that was in fact the same exact Japanese phrase that Suguru uses here to say “a grown man”. Some cute paralleling!)

I also can’t help but wonder about whether Suguru made this up on the spot to reassure and encourage Masaru in his possible absence, or whether this is a sign of what this pendant already meant to Suguru as a sentimental object. Sadly, we never learn any more about where he got it from or what it meant to him, but I’ve occasionally had some thoughts about this. Since it’s a dog tag of sorts, maybe it was a wartime thing from an older member of the Daimon family? Perhaps Suguru lost his father to a war, and that’s why the pendant’s so important to him, and that’s where he gets his manliness thing from? If it’s anything of that sort, it only makes it all the more sweet that he’s willing to pass it on to Masaru already, when he’s not necessarily going to be gone and might still have wanted to keep it for his own reasons.

Sayuri: “Suguru-san looked incredibly happy that time. He must have felt relieved that even if he didn’t return from the Digital World, you would protect the family for him, Masaru.”

Let’s assume that Sayuri is also not imagining that a four year old boy would literally have been better at protecting the family at the time than her, a full-grown adult woman. Again, she presumably means it more along the lines of Masaru’s potential to grow into that sort of person when he got older. He is still a child today, of course, but old enough and strong enough that he really has been doing a lot of protecting the family, just like Suguru believed he could. (Because, you know, shounen anime where teenagers saving the world is just how things roll.)

Sayuri: “He must have had faith you could do it.”

Masaru: (That’s right. Dad believed in me. That’s why I need to believe in him too, now.)

Masaru looks at his pendant as he thinks this and clutches it tightly to affirm his resolve. And this is really all he needed to sort his thoughts out on this, more or less! The earlier scene already showed us how badly Masaru wants to believe in his dad. Taking this moment to remember the father he knew and admired and believed in so much, instead of the cold and cruel god he encountered not so long ago, is just what he needs to become able to do that again. Surely that father he loved, and who believed in him so much too, must still be in there somewhere.

And, do note that believing in him is all that Masaru’s resolving to do here. He has not, at any point, concluded that his belief in his dad as a person must mean that the Yggdrasil he saw literally isn’t him at all. He still 100% believes that his father is Yggdrasil; he’s just now also choosing to believe that the cold-hearted god he appears to be on the surface isn’t all there is to him, and the father he knew and loved is still in there somewhere.

With convenient timing – would have been awkward if this had happened while Masaru was still reminiscing and hadn’t reached a resolution – there’s an explosion nearby. Masaru moves to shield his mom and sister from the debris with his own body – look at him protecting them, just like Suguru believed he could do!

BishopChessmon has been blasted all the way over here from the fight further into the city, and Agumon now also comes running up, yelling to Masaru about a Royal Knight attacking. Having got his mojo back after that trip down memory lane and his decision to keep believing in his dad no matter what, Masaru tells his mom and sister to get somewhere safe and rushes off with Agumon to go help.

In the midst of the fight, Dukemon is summarily beating the crap out of everyone and doing some of the usual Royal Knight pompous grandstanding about how unimpressed he is with their level of strength. Just as he’s about to finish off the downed MirageGaogamon, Masaru and Agumon run up the side of a half-collapsed building to leap and punch Dukemon in the face. Yep, Masaru is back, everyone.

As soon as ShineGreymon’s evolved, Masaru immediately goes for the GeoGrey Sword, which, I guess, props for not wasting anybody’s time there.

Dukemon: “Not only did a human divert my attention with his Digisoul… but you’ve made me wield my Gram against you. Very well. I shall take you on!”

This is Dukemon’s response (the Gram being the name of his lance) after ShineGreymon’s taken a few swings at him with the GeoGrey Sword. It really is still just a sword and shouldn’t actually be that impressive. I guess, as a Royal Knight who’s also used to weapon combat, Dukemon inherently finds somebody wielding any kind of weapon to be a respectable opponent more on his level than somebody who doesn’t.

After a few moments of duelling, Dukemon manages to disarm ShineGreymon, because of course he does. Again, the GeoGrey Sword is just a sword, and any Royal Knight with miles more weapon-combat experience is still going to have the upper hand against it. GeoGrey Sword being overhyped and not actually that useful count: 2. (GeoGrey Sword usefulness count: 1, back in the episode it first showed up. Take a guess on which of these two counters is going to get higher.)

Disarmed and swordless, ShineGreymon doesn’t let that deter him; he simply grabs onto Dukemon and goes for a point-blank Glorious Burst (usually a decidedly ranged attack) that sends himself collapsing backwards from the recoil as well.

As the smoke clears (oh hey, we’re doing that trope again), Dukemon is fine, because of course he is. ShineGreymon ended up injuring himself more than his opponent there, whoops. Dukemon takes the opportunity to do some more pontificating about how futile their efforts are compared to his strength.

Masaru: “Shut up! We are going to take you down! I won’t let you destroy the human world! And then, I’m going to confirm my dad’s real feelings! Dad just can’t be the kind of man who makes innocent people suffer!”

Whoops, somewhere along the way of Masaru’s usual fervent never-say-die speech, his thoughts accidentally got a lot more personal. He needs to win this fight here not just to protect the human world, but also, even more importantly to him, to be able to prove his dad’s not a monster.

Dukemon: “You humans are free to mutter your nonsense, but I shall not overlook anyone who insults Yggdrasil!”

Bro, he literally just said he believes that “Yggdrasil” isn’t someone who’d make innocent people suffer, that’s not an insult. That’s giving your god more credit than it actually deserves, frankly. I suppose maybe what Dukemon means by “insult” is that Masaru’s insulting Yggdrasil by implying it’s his dad. Seems like it’s not just Yggdrasil itself; its Royal Knights also have no comprehension of what Yggdrasil’s current choice of body is implying. What is this nonsense about it being a human and a father, no, obviously it’s just a god.

With that, Dukemon charges up an attack clearly intended to finish ShineGreymon and Masaru off.

Kudamon: “Satsuma, let me evolve.”

Satsuma: “But, with your injuries…”

Kudamon: “Now is not the time to be worrying about that! Hurry!”

Kudamon sees how dire the situation is and is determined to help, but it’s very cute how Satsuma hesitates because he’s worried about how hurt his partner is. Sleipmon may be the strongest Ultimate-level they currently have, but when he’s still injured, he’s nonetheless putting himself at a big risk here.

Satsuma does a Digisoul Charge Overdrive just as Dukemon fires off his attack, and he’s lucky he’s not an important enough character to have a full-blown lengthy evolution animation, because it means Kudamon can evolve to Sleipmon in time to block the attack before it hits. This would have seemed very awkward with a regular-length evolution sequence happening in the middle of Dukemon firing one single attack.

(Also, it’s worth talking about the fact that Kudamon still needs Satsuma’s Digisoul in order to evolve, given that his “true form” is evidently Sleipmon. He ought to be able to evolve at will, kind of like Gotsumon could into Insekimon. Perhaps, as part of Kudamon’s assignment as a spy to the human world, in order to make that completely convincing, Yggdrasil did something to him to forcibly revert his “true form” to Child-level, such that he now needs to rely on Satsuma to evolve where he wouldn’t have otherwise.)

Sleipmon blocks the attack, but then staggers from his injuries. Don’t think too hard about how usually evolution revitalises an injured Digimon to be fighting fit but it didn’t this time, it’s fine.

(…Actually, I think the usual rules on that are that if the Digimon was injured at Child-level, then evolution will fix them. But if they got injured while fighting in an evolved form to the point that they devolved, evidently evolution doesn’t fix that, or they could just keep re-evolving ad-infinitum and never lose a fight. So yeah, this tracks, I think? Kudamon was injured as Sleipmon as he fled the Digital World last episode.)

Dukemon: “Why? Why do you, a Royal Knight, side with the humans?!”

I don’t know, Dukemon, maybe because he’s lived with them for nearly ten years, and doing such a thing might just have, gasp, changed his mind about them? Wild concept for a Royal Knight, I know.

Sleipmon: “Just as Yggdrasil has said, humans may be foolish and arrogant beings. But… They have the ability to mend their ways. They can evolve just like us! I have faith in the human beings’ potential!”

Aww, Sleipmon! It’s a really neat parallel that he frames humanity’s ability to improve and learn from their mistakes as them being able to evolve like Digimon can. Perhaps Digimon are somewhat predicated to assume that humans can’t change their ways because they stay in the same form for their entire lives and surely that must mean they remain stagnant as people, right.

Sleipmon rushes at Dukemon and tackles him, all the way through an entire-ass building, right up to the waterfront.

Dukemon: “Stand down, Sleipmon! It will do me no honour to defeat you!”

Like he gives a damn about your honour, Dukemon, you pompous ass. Is it honourable for you to kill countless innocent humans, just because your god told you to do it? He probably thinks it is, doesn’t he.

Sleipmon raises his shield and summons a freezing whirlwind. He’s at a close enough range that Dukemon can’t possibly escape it – but at the cost of the whirlwind freezing himself, too. He must know he’s too injured to take Dukemon down in a straight fight, so he’s going for a reckless kamikaze tactic instead.

Sleipmon: “Now, Dukemon! You shall freeze to death along with me!”

Yikes, he is not messing around. Though actually, subbing nitpick, I’m not sure he’s actually saying they’ll freeze to death; he may just be saying they’ll both freeze solid, which is an important distinction.

Dukemon tries to stop it by thrusting his lance into Sleipmon’s shield, and Sleipmon just chuckles and declares this a battle of whether they’ll freeze together before his shield can break. He’s got some guts.

Satsuma: “Sleipmon!”

Poor Satsuma, though, watching his weaselscarf friend pulling a heroic sacrifice for their sake!

Sleipmon: “Satsuma! Masaru! I will entrust to you humans… the future of the two worlds!”

Look at him, a Royal Knight, trusting humans and not Yggdrasil to save both worlds from impending disaster. Kudamon is good.

As Satsuma and Masaru helplessly call out to Sleipmon again, his blizzard cyclone wins out, and he and Dukemon sink down into the sea, frozen solid together. That’s one way to get Dukemon out of the picture, albeit at some cost.

Some time a little later, Chika and Sayuri have made it here. ShineGreymon is, miraculously, still evolved, because Masaru’s about to use him for transport. They’re actually starting to get the hang of that concept, it’s amazing. (Still not evolving for transport, though.)

Masaru: “I’m going to the Digital World. I have to make sure of Dad’s true feelings.”

Masaru’s chosen to firmly believe that his dad’s still in there somewhere – but he can’t just leave it at belief and nothing else. He has to go and prove it, and to do that, he’s got to go and confront him again.

Masaru: “Don’t worry.” [he holds up a fist] “I have this. Man-to-man. If we talk through fists, we can express what’s in both of our hearts! I’ll uncover everything that Dad’s thinking about, by all means.”

I love Masaru’s philosophy of talking through fists! He’s solidified it so much by now that he’s even able to be confident (enough, on the surface) that it’ll allow him to get through to his dad, his dad who’s currently acting like a cold-hearted genocidal god. Of course Masaru would believe that if anything could break through that façade his dad’s supposedly put on and remind him of what’s really important to him, it’d be a punch, and a man-to-man fight. That really is a way to communicate, to Masaru.

Chika: “Masaru-niichan!”

Masaru: “I’ll be fine! Don’t worry about me.”

Chika is still anxious, but Masaru affectionately ruffles her hair and reassures her like this’ll be no big deal. (It is not no big deal. It is, in fact, the biggest deal Masaru has ever dealt with in his entire life. But he can’t admit that, that’d be tantamount to giving up. Masaru is fine, obviously.)

Chika: “Masaru-niichan, promise! Promise me that you’ll bring Dad back home!”

Awww, Chika. She still just desperately wants her dad to be there like he never has been all this time, to the point that she’s willing to brush off the god thing and assume Masaru will definitely be able to sort that out, because at least this development means it’s maybe possible to bring him back home.

Masaru: “Yeah, I promise!”

And again, Masaru casually promises like it’ll be no big deal, like this isn’t also something he’s been desperately wanting and wishing he could somehow do for ten whole years. And now he actually knows where his dad is, but the actual process of getting through to him in order to bring him home at all couldn’t possibly be more daunting. (But again, nah, Masaru’s fine.)

The rest of the main DATS crew show up and ask to come along too, but Masaru insists he and ShineGreymon will go alone, no matter their protests about how strong the Royal Knights are.

Masaru: “This is a matter between me and my dad. Please. Let me do this alone.”

Masaru has rather lost sight of the bigger picture here. Like, yes, this is between him and his dad (in the world he assumes he’s in where his dad literally is Yggdrasil), but it’s also about a lot more than that? It’s about saving two entire worlds from being destroyed, and that needs all the firepower it can get. I really don’t think Masaru’s properly able to conceptualise that right now. Absolutely nothing else matters to him next to proving his dad’s still the person he believes in.

Masaru: “Besides, the Royal Knights are trying to eliminate the human world. If we all went to the Digital World, who’d be left to defend this place?”

This is a fair point, though – but it’s still very telling that Masaru adds this as an afterthought. The main reason he’s going alone is still because he’s rather tunnel-visioned on this is about my dad, nothing else matters.

Ikuto is the first to agree and encourage Masaru to go on his own.

Ikuto: “Mercurimon and I understood each other after I went to talk to him. That’s why you go talk to your father, Masaru!”

Aww, Ikuto! It’s really sweet that he thinks of Masaru’s father as being the equivalent of what Mercurimon was to him. Really, he and Mercurimon didn’t even actually come to “understand” each other when they talked, because they didn’t need to – they were already on perfectly good terms, all that happened was clearing up the misunderstandings from Gotsumon’s many murder attempts and establishing that Mercurimon always knew he was human – but still, it’s a very cute sentiment to compare them here. Dads.

Yoshino: “Geez… You’re never persuaded otherwise once you’ve made up your mind.”

Interesting also that Yoshino isn’t necessarily buying Masaru’s arguments as to why they shouldn’t accompany him; she just realises that there’s nothing she can do to stop him stubbornly insisting on it.

Yoshino goes in for a bro handshake with Masaru, and then Tohma gets in on it and turns it into an everyone’s-hands-together type thing as he promises he’ll protect the human world while Masaru’s gone.

Tohma: “You’ll have a place to return home to.”

It’s neat that this is a sentiment Tohma expresses. His feelings about his own “home” are rather awkward and complicated, but we know how he feels about Masaru having a normal family life, and it’s sweet to see him low-key caring about making sure his friend will be able to keep that.

Masaru: (Just you wait, Dad! This time, I’ll make sure you tell me your true feelings!)

As the group watches ShineGreymon and Masaru fly off towards the Digital World in the sky, Masaru remains furiously determined that he’ll definitely be able to get through to his dad and prove he’s not what he seems to be on the surface if he just tries hard enough. Oh, Masaru.

Overall thoughts

Naturally, this is another of my favourite episodes, because it’s very significantly about Masaru’s dad complex, and very full of Masaru being deliciously Not Okay.

The flashback to Little Masaru’s final moments with his dad is not only adorable and heartwarming, but it also says a lot about Masaru’s understanding of how much greater his dad is than him and yet his fierce determination to try and live up to that, even when he was that small. It’s delightful to tie the pendant into that too and have it be a bit more than just something he inherited from his dad.

It’s nice to get this chance to explore Chika and Sayuri’s feelings on this, as well. I love the way Sayuri’s the one who finds it easiest to believe in Suguru, because she sees him as a human person in the way her kids kinda don’t thanks to their dad complexes and idolisation. Of course Masaru wants to believe that his dad’s not a callous genocidal god; he just needed that reminder of his father as the person he remembered him as and not the “Yggdrasil” he met in order to push himself back into very determinedly believing in him no matter what.

Also, Agumon saving his aniki the fried eggs (which he once said he’d never ever do!) is adorable. I love how he completely Doesn’t Get It about why this dad thing is bothering Masaru so much because Digimon don’t do parents, but nonetheless he clearly cares so much and is so worried about his aniki’s funk. What a good friend.

Plus, I dig the reveal about Kudamon a lot! It’s a neat twist that this Digimon who’s always been there at DATS and we’ve got used to thinking of as an ally and not questioning him was actually spying for the big bad the whole time. And of course, it’s pretty adorable of him that he’s grown fond of humans after all his time among them and decided to side with them over his god, to the point of pulling a heroic sacrifice for humanity’s sake. Best weaselscarfhorse.

---

[Dub comparison]

#digimon #digimon savers #digimon data squad #masaru daimon #sayuri daimon #chika daimon #suguru daimon #rentarou satsuma #kudamon #dukemon #yggdrasil #agumon #lalamon #masaru's dad complex

23 notes · View notes