#digimon xros wars spoilers

[alltheoutsinfreeeee]

Gosh, do you ever remember Digimon Adventure 02 and Oikawa's end? Iori supporting him so he can fulfill his dream of entering the Digital World even while Oikawa doesn't even have the strength to move anymore? How Pipimon finally got to meet him specifically when he was drowning in self-doubt, and how happy he got when he realized he also had a partner? How saddened Oikawa was at the state of the Digital World? How when he made the decision to transform his remaining life force into energy Takeru yelled at him to stop? How when Iori understood his plan the boy frantically tried to make him see differently? How Pipimon's wait was finally over just for his partner to sacrifice himself to restore the Digital World? How while it wasn't the way he had dreamed of, he still made it to the Digital World in the end and is now an integral part in keeping it going?

(how at the end of Hunters when Ken arrived to back up Daisuke, the rainbow butterflies symbolizing Oikawa were also present?)

[alphagodith]

just some of my favorite shots of wizardmon from the digimon xross wars manga. i did not like how he was drawn in the dreamers manga so i got nostalgic. note there may be spoilers and some stuff is out of order/cut to fit more wizard.

and the fun human tf sequence under the readmore cuz it's better with context but would make this an annoyingly long post

for the record i DID translate the digicode and it's actual nonsense. says something like 'my boss told me to write something cool here'

gotta love wizardmon's resting bitch face, especially in human form. man always looks bored/evil/annoyed but he's actually really cheerful xD the full manga was scanlated by xros raws, and you can download it there.

[angstandhappiness]

Interesting

Hello! Hope your week has been going okay. What's your opinion on Digimon Xros Wars Hunters, especially on the gogglehead protagonist Tagiru? What cause THAT series to be so unpopular it didn't get dubbed? What could have been executed better with its concepts, and how would you have improve it? Eats fruits and sleep early! What's your opinion and analysis on Gulusgammamon? Think he's telling the truth, or just buying time?

Wow... that's too many questions... (also i'm still not getting notifs from you, only in the activity tab... Have you tried to contact the support service? I guess you got shadowbanned or something...)

So, first things first. (on read more because of spoilers. A friend of mine didn't watch Hunters arc yet, so i'm making this whole thing on read more.)

About XW's Hunter arc:

I came to realize i liked it from day one, but due to bad influences in my circle of friends i ended up being too harsh on it. Seems like the staff was having fun with it, even if it is suspected that it was just holding the timeslot for Saint Seiya.

As for dub reasons... It was dubbed in Italy actually! I remember other countries also had it, like Korea apparently? I think it didn't get dubbed in English because of some unknown reason, but I suppose it never got dubbed in Brazilian Portuguese because Adventure-to-Tamers were dubbed in one same (late) studio from Rio, and then Frontier & Data Squad (which was just the original Savers with dub names) in another (late) studio in São Paulo.

If i'm not wrong, an old Brazilian acquaintance of mine commented on twitter that they had done a test for Tagiru's role, but they couldn't take it for schedule reasons. At this point we suspected Hunters getting dubbed in BRPT sometime soon, but... it never happened. Besides, gathering the original voice actors for this would cost a lot, i think?

If i have one complaint about Hunters it's the fact it got no actual... development? I don't mean it story-wise, i mean character-wise too...

About Gulus:

I think that whole scene was hinting at some possible revisit to Ghost Game series, or maybe they left it open for the kids (and older fans) to imagine their own sequel-story.I think i've talked about Gulus before, but i thought he was very interesting as a character and as an antagonist. I didn't see one digimon series where the main digimon protag was also the main villain as well. Yet, I keep my opinion about the finale. Gulus trying to form a strong army to rule over gave me the impression he was doing that in order to beat the entity who/which destroyed his homeworld. I'm not saying he's innocent, but i feel like he was also a victim and did a LOT OF WRONG THINGS as well. At the same time he saved the lives of everyone so maybe he wasn't that bad? Just a critter with a twisted view of the world due to trauma or something... Yet he did a ton of wrong things too.

[thezoe611]

I have a question: When the (young) PI characters become adults and start working, or attending college, what type of field would they choose? I know you will never lose connection with your partners because in the Xros Wars universe, adults also have partners. So I wanted to know

Oh, I liked this question^^! Honestly, I like to think that what they would study or what they would do as adults would be related to their digimon companions ^^ Taiki would decide something that he could help his partner (Digimon King) with, so he would have to be something related to politics (and he would always have the help of Akari and Zenjirou ^^) About Tagiru… Samanta… Yuu… Oh oh. I can't say it Taiki's thing is obvious since Shoutmon is the King, but I can't tell you anything about the other three because it would be a spoiler^^'

[star-vessel1237]

Gluttonous Scholar (Baalmon Yuu/MC AU)

Gender Neutral MC/Yuu (Pronouns used They/Them)

Warning: Swearing

([A/N]: I got inspired to make this AU after I read @emeraldtart​‘s Digimon AU. Recommend checking them out if you're interested in their ideas. Also using some elements from the Baalmons in Ghost game and Xros wars because why not. Also I will be calling them Baal!Yuu for simplicity.)

Link to Wikimon article I’m using for most of my info. [HYPER_LINK]

In Baal!Yuu’s original world they were on a quest to gain more knowledge as they had forgotten most of their past and we're desperate for answers

Baal!Yuu eventually grew obsessed with gaining more knowledge no matter how trivial

They try to control it but because of this obsession they have mostly lived as loner for most of their life, wandering and learning from both the digital and real world

How did they get to Twisted Wonderland? They were wondering around in the real world until the black carriage ran into them and knocked them out

Next thing they know they were cramped in a coffin, breaking out of it after Grim tried to set it on fire

Grim freaks out and Baal!Yuu is just staring at them thinking he's a weird variant of Gatomon

Grim: What the, why do you look so creepy!? Augh, whatever, just hand over your robes!

Baal!Yuu: The hell do you want with my… robes… *Looks down to see that they are in ceremonial robes*

Baal!Yuu: Okay, still not the weirdest thing to happen to me. Wait, where in the world am I?

Grim: Hey, quit ignoring me!

Baal!Yuu knocks Grim away and just runs out to try and find out where they are

When they get to the library Baal!Yuu was about ready to turn Grim back into a digiegg(still thinking Grim is a Digimon) but Crowley interrupts and drags them both to the mirror chamber

Baal!Yuu follows Crowley because they quickly caught on that they are in a completely different world, possibly dimension, and they're probably going to get more answers if they just follow the man

The students are a little weirded out since Baal!Yuu is freakishly tall and the robes hide most of their body but some of them can tell that there is something inhuman about them

The Dark Mirror can sense great power from Baal!Yuu however can not determine the shape of their soul (or digicore in this case)

Grim uses the students' mass confusion to escape, Riddle and Azul are chasing him before Baal!Yuu decides to help with a “peaceful” solution

By “peaceful” solution, Baal!Yuu means shooting warning shots with their gun at Grim in order to get him to stop running and capture him

Of course no one took this lightly, Riddle acts first and yells at them to drop their gun, they quickly go silent though after it is revealed that the gun is LITERALLY attached to Baal!Yuu’s right arm

After the chaos that was the Entrance Ceremony, Crowley and Baal!Yuu were dragged to library to see if they can get them home

Spoiler: They can’t since there is no recollection of their real world or the digital world and they have to stay at Ramshackle as a temporary solution

Baal!Yuu actually takes Grim in without any trouble and seems to have, for the most part, come to peace with the ghost

Definitely not because they threatened the ghost to exercise them with the countless paper amulets they somehow still have

Everything continues as normal, until they venture into the mines and have to fight the blot monster

Baal!Yuu decides to help Deuce in attacking the monster and even gives a few pointers during it, Ace and Grim also cave in and help as well

ADeuce and Grimm also realize what the mirror said when they said Baal!Yuu had great power as they are able to multiple elements with their amulets and-

Wait where did they get the sword from?

Either way they return back to the school safe and sound

Baal!Yuu is starting to suspect that they can’t properly rely on Crowley to return them home if he already has the expelled paperwork ready

They also give a mini lesson on what a digimon is to Crowley, Braincell Duo, and Grimm about what a digimon is and how they were able to summon all that stuff using the amulets they had on hand instead of the ones that were on their coat

Also this scene happens:

Ace: Oh yeah, I don’t think we’ve seen your face this entire time.

Baal!Yuu: Right. I got so caught up in everything I forgot to remove it.

Baal!Yuu *Removes hood to show them having bluish skin, wild yellow hair covering his right eye, a glaring red left eye, half of their face being covered by their mask, and blue bandages wrapping around the top their head with a slit cut open for their third eye*

Crowley: Well… you certainly are a… unique looking character.

Grimm: Eesh, you look more creepy without the hood.

Baal!Yuu: Oh please, I know digimon who look way worse than me.

Deuce: Should, should we be concerned when you say that?

Baal!Yuu: Probably.

Unrelated Note: They get their old clothes back but can’t wear them to school because of uniform restriction

They did get away with wearing their cloak though which they are happy about

I'll write more about this AU later, hope you enjoy.

[firstagent]

For the 02 movie, at the start, the director said this was a story that only works for the 02 cast. It got me thinking about how the other season's cast would handle the movie's events. How do you think it would go?

Good time to point out that anything making me compare different season casts or rank characters within seasons on any ridiculous criteria are the best asks, so keep stuff like this coming.

Whelp, first off, adding our big spoiler line...

And here we go! To set some ground rules, here's what we are considering as "movie's events" we need each team to process:

Each team was formed as a result of powers created by Lui's wish to Ukkomon. Some of these will be real absurd, but we're rolling with them.

Each team needs to hear Lui's story and judge Lui's responsibility vs. Ukkomon's in this mess.

Each team needs to consider the possibility of losing their Digimon's bonds vs. everyone becoming partnered to one.

Each team needs to decide how to whether to tackle Ukkomon head-on, stand back and accept what happens, or give Lui the chance to sort things.

Unless they embrace the chaos, each team loses their digivices.

Adventure

Weirdly, a child's wishes powering Homeostasis isn't too hard to swallow after all the other stuff they found out from it. They'll be more sympathetic to Lui than the 02 kids were, partially because they all have very personal situations they'd welcome divine assistance with, and partially because the bluntness we saw from Hikari in the movie didn't start developing until Zero Two and only reached its peak in tri. They might be too idealistic to consider the downside of everyone having a partner and definitely would prefer Lui take the lead and work things out himself. But they'd go through with it, as losing their digivices wouldn't be that different than losing their crests.

Tamers

Ukkomon slots right in next to the digignomes for plausibility, so no issues there. But if any group is both-siding Lui vs. Ukkomon, it's these kids, especially once Lui starts claiming their relationships are manufactered. Expect the Digimon to weigh in a lot here, Renamon in particular. We'd get a lot of beautiful speeches, but they'd be far more reluctant to let go of their bonds, and kinda distraught losing their D-Arks at the very end. They too might be willing to play out the idea of everyone becoming a Tamer, and might not be motivated enough to fight Ukkomon themselves. This might be the mostly likely season to give Lui his birthday present in the end.

Frontier

Very much doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. They all literally have Digimon inside them, so they're supporting Ukkomon here, especially if it enabled Ophanimon to dish out the spirits. Despite them having little love for Lui, they only come around once the implications are clear. They know full well the power being dished out here, and everybody having a spirit and the capacity to become a Digimon? Absolutely not. More likely to take out Ukkomon on their own than giving Lui any say (or closure), but take it out they will. Harsh but efficient.

Savers

Surprisingly similar to Frontier! Between Masaru completely whiffing and telling Lui the right approach is to tackle his problems on his own, Touma concurring with his backstory, and Ikuto generally savoring his experiences being bailed out by Digimon at a young age, Lui might not bother seeking their help in the first place. They might even laugh off the first partner stuff without confirmation from Yushima or BanchoLeomon. They're definitely not taking everyone getting a partner lying down, so taking out Ukkomon then becomes a pretty routine DATS mission in the end. They'll convince themselves their digivices were only holding them back, so losing them won't sting that much.

Xros Wars

Polar opposite here. Taiki is determined to help Lui at all cost, and Ukkomon's natural connection here takes it to Bagramon, so this team is painting it as a malicious entity from the start. In fact, it's their disdain for Ukkomon that could well prompt Lui to reassess his issues and want to make peace on his own, perhaps even accepting Ukkomon's wish against Xros Heart's pleas. It's then that Lui discovers Ukkomon's ability to generate weird temporal perceptions stems from its connection to a different Digimon, one that creates a new perceived world for all those newly created partnerships to play in, and that's how Hunters really happened.

Appmon

With no connection to AI development, hearing about Ukkomon powering Minerva will rattle Haru a lot. However, once they get over that, they'll use Lui's story as a perfect illustration of how beneficial AI can be while cautioning about the dangers of overuse and not instructing it properly. It's a far more logical approach, but they'll get roughly to the same place V-mon got with his handshake speech. They're far more willing to consider letting everybody partner with an Appmon since it's not that different from everybody having a smartphone. And they definitely aren't parting with their buddies willingly. Still, they let Lui try to reason with Ukkomon, which could bite them in the butt since their Appdrives absolutely are powering their Appmon bonds.

Adventure: (2020)

Ukkomon's powering everything? Sure, why not? These kids are definitely drowning Lui with kindness, with all the support and good vibes in the world. Like their 1999 counterparts, they're more likely to understand his side. Unlike them, they're more likely to question Ukkomon's intentions. It's hard to say how they'd handle the idea of everyone receiving a partner, but if Lui insists Ukkomon needs to be stopped, they'll defer to him, even at the risk of their own bonds. Without as much reflection going on, Lui's less likely to realize the need to fix this himself and agrees to let them destroy Ukkomon without a conversation. Again harsh, but Lui's more comfortable with it than in Frontier or Savers.

Ghost Game

After they roll their eyes one more time at Hiro's dad when they find out about Ukkomon's connection to everything, they're less likely to be that affected by Lui's story. Those kinds of horrors just kind of slide off them by now. Enough that they'll want to handle this delicately and get more information, including from Ukkomon itself if possible. Instead of Lui, they'll be the ones trying to engage it and gather its intentions before taking any concrete action. If Lui's story checks out, they're absolutely against everyone getting a Digimon partner but will seek out a way to deal with it without murder. They will definitely miss their digivices and all its extra features, but they'll keep their Digimon around and wonder how they got through a whole movie without a GulusGammamon appearance.

[the-laziest-dragon]

DIGIMON GHOST GAME: AKA: How to make the fanbase desperate with an unexpected ending.

Unlike Adventure:2020, I haven't commented much on this season because;

Story pacing is different (horror stories vs season 1 reboot)

Many of the references I needed to go after and the chances of talking nonsense were great. And I can't stand to hear more irrelevant drama than I already listen to offline.

But I really wanted to talk about Ghost GAME, and now that the season """"ended"""", I can talk a little with my opinions (and spoilers soon if you don't want to, don't read. Enjoy other of my posts or go to another blog you like, I'm not holding you back 🙂)

Taking everything out of the way, let's go to the beginning :

1 - The delay for tamers/chosen children/human heroes to appear and develop as characters.

I'm going to take those shots soon because it was one of the things that pissed me off the most.

Ruli joined the team in episode 3 and got the adult form of Angoramon in episode 15.

Kiyo joined the team in episode 5 and reached Jellymon's adult form in episode 10, if I'm not mistaken.

After waiting 12 episodes to reach the adult form compared to Kiyo who was only 5, she only reached the Ultimate form in episode 35. 20 more episodes. Kiyo achieved Ultimate form in episode 29...

Hiro already reached adult forms (Red, Blue and Green) in episodes 2, 7 and 12. The Ultimate form came in the episode 25...

And most of the time it was Hiro and Gammamon who solved everything, leaving the other humans and digimon in the background. Like the protagonists of the original Adventure rooting for the Megas to win because they are nothing but Ultimate form and the enemies are too strong for them.

And want to know when the mega forms arrived? Episode 56 for Hiro, 58 for Ruli and 60 for Kiyo.

And the season ended at 67... and the last two episodes Diarbbtmon and Amphimon barely served as relevant fighters... They were more like glorified punching bags.

2 - Digimon do not fight to the death.

It may sound morbid but it's a fact: The enemies fight to kill, the protagonists don't fight seriously because they don't want to hurt the other digimons.

Apart from GulusGammamon (I already got to him) the protagonists killed at least 2 digimons: SimbaeAngoramon killed Digitamamon and the three Ultimate killed RareRaremon.(No, Shadramon was already half dead before Datamon messed with him. Tetismon didn't kill him.)

It makes it seem like they don't really fight. And all they do is sit the shit out and then make up... which is kind of disappointing after the literal demon of lust just walks away.

3 - GulusGammamon

When he first appeared, NOBODY expected that the sweetest marshmallow in the world had the literal devil inside the body. But since every digimon protagonist has to have a dark evolution, it was to be expected.

Whenever GulusGammamon appeared it meant that someone was going to die. No jokes. That was basically it.

'Oh, this Digimon is too bad! What do we do?' 'Oh! Gammamon evolved into GulusGammamon!'

The worst part was what they did to him in the end. From Gammamon's suppressed original personality to the final Boss of the season. It was all so thrown in the face that there are still people numb from the shock.

And then there's the fact that he IS A FUCKING ALIEN DIGIMON FROM ANOTHER PLANET!!?That was contaminating the entire digital world to form an army to face a Galactus from the Digimon Universe!!??!?!!

4 - Espimon

For the first time, after Xros Wars of course, the protagonist won a secondary Digimon for his team. But my holy Christ... what a soap opera.

He was introduced in episode 38 but didn't reach his adult form until EPISODE 62!!!

This is all because he thought Hiro was a 'fake Hiro' because he wasn't practically identical to his father.

5 - THE END OF THE SEASON.

To say they hooked up for a second season is calling me and all fans idiots.

It was so rushed, but so rushed that it seemed like fanfic that the author got lost and decided to tie all the ends at once but left a lot up in the air.

The Digi-Galactus only coming 2000 years from now, a Country of Digimons in a space between the Digital World and the Human World*cough cough Xros Wars cough cough*, all human protagonists becoming diplomats as children. It looked like the Meme of Yamato becoming an astronaut at the end of Digimon 02...

But I'm not saying that the fight between Regulusmon and Siriusmon was bad... But three Megas almost losing to an Ultimate was a forced fall due to the plot armor.

I hope there is a second season, or movie or OVAs to end the story, because it was very... Empty at the end...

[wild-battlebond]

[uniarycode]

Classic Digimon, stealing from itself.

[fernikart57]

Escaping to another dimention don’t solve your emotional problems!

The holy trinity of emotionally broken children who wanted to avoid their harsh reality by going to another dimention to escape their troubles, but they end tricked and manipulated by a very vile villain for their nefarious goals.

[shoutmonishere]

So... Is it like Heaven's Gate?

[gwydionae]

I’m a Negative Nancy under the cut, wooooo!!

It has gotten to the point where I have to force myself to watch the new Digimon every week. My hopes of it building on the good stuff and shedding some of the bad have all kind of fizzled out. That’s not to say that nothing good ever happens or that it’s a terrible show, but these last two episodes kinda just confirmed a lot of my fears.

I am a staunch believer in there being a difference between “breather” episodes and “filler” episodes. “Breather” episodes still have an important function even if they aren’t really moving the plot along, whether it be nice character moments or even just allowing characters a chance to rest after stressful plot stuff. They are generally good for pacing and character development. “Filler” episodes are merely there to have a distinction between where Arc A ends and Arc B begins. The latest two episodes fall squarely into “filler” territory.

I am ok with this series having more action. Action is fun! But it shouldn’t come at the cost of character. These two episodes could have shown us these kids interacting outside of a high stress situation for once, and instead we got more technobabble from Koushiro and more yelling of other peoples’ names from Taichi, Yamato, and Takeru.

There were a lot of problems I had with these episodes specifically, but even if they were silly, even if they made no sense, even if they deus ex machina-ed the heck out of how to get these kids back together, I would have been fine with it if we had just gotten something from them as characters. Instead I am just left kind of bored, focusing on things like “how was Koushiro the only person on earth to figure out to send a distress signal that way” or “why didn’t they all flee further inland where the Seadramon couldn’t get them” or “how the heck did not even Leomon know that they were up in the sky, man, how did they even get there”. Because this show is not giving me a reason to focus on and thus care about the characters or why they are in this situation.

I mean, when even I, one of the biggest supporters of there being more familial love in fiction is starting to cringe every time I hear Takeru scream, “Onii-chan!!”, there’s a problem.

[bossarmadimon]

No no, I had the same though, but I wasn’t sure ‘cause I ain't actually that familiar with the Sonic Franchise.

Digimon Ghost Game EP. 29

This is supposed to be Kiyo's episode but the main highlight for everyone was Herissmon's first anime appearance lol. His voice is different from the game though. He has a really obnoxious voice. If he could lose that voice it'd be better. Also, his appearance seemed to be out of nowhere, like they just could just think of some digimon and shoehorned it in the situation and it'd not make any difference.

Speaking of out of nowhere, Kiyo's premise introduction also came out of nowhere. Kiyo and Jellymon were just shopping when the whole incident happened. The girl he met also happened to be a fangirl of an anime whose main character looked exactly like him. While the plot of the episode unraveled beautifully, I could not help but think it'd be better if we have a little more exposition at the beginning.

Thetismon's personality seemed to be a much calmer one. It's weird since we have been stuck with the sassy Jellymon for a long time. Hope she has another side that will be shown to us later.

And this might be just me, but was this shot of Herissmon a reference to Sonic?

[shihalyfie]

About the Adventure: reboot, the likely reason why it exists, the question of target demographic, and whether I would recommend it or not

I think this reboot has been kind of a strange outlier in terms of Digimon anime in general, in terms of...well, just about everything. I also feel like everything surrounding it has kind of been giving us mixed signals as to what the intent and purpose behind the anime is -- well, besides “cashing in on the Adventure brand”, but looking at it more closely, that might be a bit of an oversimplification.

I’m writing this post because, having seen the entire series to the end for myself and thinking very hard about it and what it was trying to do, I decided to put down my thoughts. This is not meant to be a review of what I think was good and bad, but rather, something that I hope will be helpful to those who might be on the fence about whether they want to watch it or not, or those who don’t want to watch/finish it but are curious about what happened, or those who are curious as to why this reboot even exists in the first place, or even maybe just those who did watch it but are interested in others’ thoughts about it. I'm personally convinced that -- especially in an ever-changing franchise like Digimon -- how much you like a given work is dependent on what your personal tastes are to the very end, and thus it’s helpful to understand what kind of expectations you should go in with if you want to watch something.

With all of this said and done, if you want to go in and best enjoy this series, I think it is best to consider this anime as a distinct Digimon series of its own. The relationship to Adventure is only surface-level, and by that I mean it’s very obvious it’s doing things its own thing deliberately without worrying too much about what prior series did. Of course, I think everyone will have varying feelings about using the Adventure branding for something that really isn't Adventure at all, but we are really talking about an in-name-only affair, and something that’s unabashedly doing whatever it wants. So in other words, if you’re going in expecting Adventure, or anything that really resembles Adventure, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. But if you’re able to approach it like yet another distinct Digimon series, and the other aspects of it fit your fancy, you’ll probably be able to enjoy it much better. And, conversely, I think it’s also important to remember that this series seems to have a writing philosophy with a fundamentally different goal from most Digimon series, and since it’s understandable for most long-time Digimon fans to have their tastes built on those prior series, it’s fine and completely understandable that this reboot may not be your cup of tea, for reasons that probably don’t actually have much to do with whether it’s an Adventure reboot or not.

There are no spoilers in the following post. (Although I use some emphatic language for the duration for it, these are mostly just my personal thoughts and how I see the series and the overall situation.)

On what exact relationship to Adventure this series has, and why it’s an “Adventure reboot”

If you ask why they did an Adventure reboot, the easiest answer to come up with is “Adventure milking, because it’s profitable”, but that’s kind of an oversimplification of what the issue is. This is especially when you take into account a key fact that official has been very well aware of since as early as 2006: most kids are too young to have seen Adventure, and therefore have no reason to care about it.

That’s the thing: Adventure milking only works so well on today’s children, and Toei and Bandai know this. This is also the reason that the franchise started going through a bit of a “split” starting in around 2012 (after Xros Wars finished airing), when the video game branch started making more active attempts to appeal to the adults’ fanbase with Re:Digitize and Adventure PSP. (Although they were technically still “kids’ games”, they were very obviously aimed at the adults’ audience as a primary “target”.) The generation that grew up with Adventure and other classic Digimon anime was getting older and older, and targeting that audience would require tailoring products more specifically to them -- ultimately culminating in 2015 and the solidification of “very obviously primarily for adults” media in the form of both games (Cyber Sleuth and Next Order) and anime (tri.). Note that Appmon ended up getting its own 3DS game, but since it was targeted at kids, it seems to have been developed by a completely different pipeline/branch from the aforementioned adults’ games, so even that had a split.

So if we want to talk about full-on nostalgia pandering, that’s already being done in the adults’ branch. In fact, Appmon development specifically said that they felt free to not really care about the adults’ audience because that was tri.’s job. Of course, the hardcore Digimon adults’ fanbase is still keeping an eye on the kids’ shows, and it’s good to not upset them -- and, besides, even if we’re all suffering under the hell of capitalism, people who work in kids’ shows still tend to be very passionate about the content and messages they’re showing the kids, so they still put an effort into making good content that adults can enjoy too. But, nevertheless, adults are still the “periphery demographic”, and a kids’ show is not a success if the kids (who have not seen and do not care about Adventure) are not watching it or buying the toys. Appmon ended up being extremely well-received by the adults’ fanbase, but that all meant nothing since the kids didn’t get into it.

Most kids are not super incredibly discerning about so-called writing quality (it’s not like they don’t at least unconsciously know when something is good, but they’re much less likely to be bothered by little things adults are often bothered by), so there’s a certain degree you have to get their attention if you want things to catch on with them. Critical reception does matter a lot more when we talk about the adults’ audience, but for the kids, the more important part is how much you’ve managed to engage them and how much fun they’re having (especially in regards to the toyline). Moreover, there’s the problem of “momentum”; Digimon’s sister shows of PreCure, Kamen Rider, and Super Sentai have sometimes had really poorly performing shows (critically or financially), but have managed to recover it in successive years to avoid getting cancelled. Digimon never managed to get to that point, with sales nearly dropping to half with Tamers and again with Frontier. So in essence, Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon were all attempts at figuring out what was needed to just get that “kickstart” again -- but things just never lined up for it to work.

So if kids don’t really care about Adventure, why would they do Adventure nostalgia pandering? The answer is one that official has actually openly stated multiple times: they want to have parents watch it together with their children. Both Seki and Kinoshita said this in regards to watching the reaction to Kizuna, and it was also stated outright as a goal for the reboot, but, believe it or not, there’s reports of this having been stated back as early as Savers (followed by an admission that maybe 2006 was a little too early for people who grew up with Adventure to be old enough to have their own kids). So the little nostalgia references in Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon aren't really meant to magically turn the series into Adventure as much as they’re supposed to be flags waved at the parents to get them to pay attention, so that they can introduce their kids to Digimon and watch it together with them, until the kids eventually take an interest on their own and they don’t need to rely on that kind of standby as much. (I say “as much” because of course PreCure, Rider, and Sentai all are still very indulgent in their anniversary references, but they’re not nearly as reliant on it to the point of life-and-death.)

This is also why Kizuna’s existence and release date two months prior to the reboot is a huge factor in this. The reason tri. wouldn’t have done it is that it never actually reached a properly “mainstream” audience. It’s a huge reason I keep emphasizing the fact that tri. and Kizuna are two separate things with completely different production and release formats, because tri. being a limited OVA screening released in six parts over three years means that, although it was a moderate financial success that did better than the franchise’s other niche products, in the end, it didn’t actually reach the “extremely casual” audience very well. We, as the “hardcore Internet fanbase”, all know people who watched all six parts, and the difference between tri. and Kizuna’s release formats doesn’t hit us as hard because of international distribution circumstances, but even on our end, if you talk to your casual friends who barely remember anything about Digimon except what they saw on TV twenty years ago, you will almost never find anyone who got past Part 1, maybe 2 at most. (That’s before we even get into the part where a good chunk of them got turned off at the character design stage for being too different.) Sticking with a full six-part series over three years is a commitment, and if you’re not someone with a certain level of loyalty to the franchise, you aren’t as likely to put aside the time for it!

Kizuna, on the other hand, was a full-on theatrical movie with full marketing campaign that was aimed at that extremely casual mainstream audience, including a lot of people who hadn’t even heard of tri. (due to it being too niche) or hadn’t bothered to commit to watching something so long, and thus managed to “hype up” a lot of adults and get them in a Digimon mood. (Critical reception issues aside, this is also presumably a huge reason Kizuna isn’t all that reliant on tri.’s plot; Adventure and 02 both averaged at around 11% of the country watching it when it first aired, but the number of people who even saw tri. much less know what happened in it is significantly lower, so while you can appeal to a lot of people if you’re just targeting the 11%, you'll lock them out if you’re overly reliant on stuff a lot of them will have never seen in the first place.) We’re talking the kind of super-casual who sees a poster for Kizuna, goes “oh I remember Digimon!”, casually buys a ticket for the movie, likes it because it has characters they remember and the story is feelsy, and then two months later an anime that looks like the Digimon they recognize is on Fuji TV, resulting in them convincing their kid to watch it together with them because they’re in a Digimon mood now, even though the actual contents of the anime are substantially different from the original.

So, looking back at the reboot:

There’s a huge, huge, huge implication that the choice to use Adventure branding was at least partially to get Fuji TV to let them have their old timeslot back. Neither Xros Wars nor Appmon were able to be on that old timeslot, presumably because Fuji TV had serious doubts about their profitability (perhaps after seeing Savers not do very well). This isn’t something that hits as hard for us outside Japan who don’t have to feel the impact of this anyway, but it’s kind of a problem if kids don’t even get the opportunity to watch the show in the first place. While there’s been a general trend of moving to video-on-demand to the point TV ratings don’t really have as much impact as they used to, I mean...it sure beats 6:30 in the morning, goodness. (Note that a big reason PreCure, Rider, and Sentai are able to enjoy the comfortable positions they’re in is that they have a very luxurious 8:30-10 AM Sunday block on TV Asahi dedicated to them.)

Since we’re talking about “the casual mainstream”, this means that this kind of ploy only works with something where a casual person passing by can see names and faces and take an interest. This is why it has to be Adventure, not 02 or Tamers or whatnot; 02 may have had roughly similar TV ratings to Adventure and fairly close sales figures back in 2000, but the actual pop culture notability disparity in this day and age is humongous (think about the difference in pop culture awareness between Butter-Fly and Target). 02, Tamers, and all can do enough to carry “adults’ fandom” products and merch sales at DigiFes, and the adults’ branch of the franchise in general, but appealing to the average adult buying toys for the kids is a huge difference, and a big reason that, even if they’re clearly starting to acknowledge more of the non-Adventure series these days, it’s still hard to believe they’re going to go as far as rebooting anything past Adventure -- or, more accurately, hard to believe they’ll be able to get the same impact using names and faces alone.

This advertising with the Adventure brand goes beyond just the anime -- we’re talking about the toyline that has the involved character faces plastered on them, plus all of the ventures surrounding them that Bandai pretty obviously carefully timed to coincide with this. One particularly big factor is the card game, which is doing really, really well right now, to the point it’s even started gaining an audience among people who weren’t originally Digimon fans. Part of it is because the game’s design is actually very good and newcomer-friendly, but also...nearly every set since the beginning came with reboot-themed Tamer Cards, which means that, yes, those cards with the Adventure names and faces were helping lure people into taking an interest in the game. Right now, the game is doing so well and has gained such a good reputation that it probably doesn’t need that crutch anymore to keep going as long as the game remains well-maintained, but I have no doubt the initial “Adventure” branding was what helped it take off, and its success is most likely a huge pillar sustaining the franchise at the current moment.

Speaking of merch and toys, if you look closely, you might notice that Bandai decided to go much, much more aggressively into the toy market with this venture than they ever did with Savers, Xros Wars, or Appmon (Appmon was probably the most aggressive attempt out of said three). They put out a lot more merch and did a lot more collaborative events to engage the parents and children, and, presumably, the reason they were able to do this was because they were able to push into those outlets with the confidence the Adventure brand would let them be accepted (much like with Fuji TV). Like with the card game, the important part was getting their “foot in the door” so that even if it stopped being Adventure after a fashion, they’d still have all of those merchandising outlets -- after all, one of the first hints we ever got of Ghost Game’s existence was a July product listing for its products replacing the reboot’s in a gachapon set, so we actually have evidence of certain product pipelines being opened by the reboot’s precedent. (The word 後番組 literally means “the TV program that comes after”, so it’s pretty obvious this was intended for Ghost Game; in other words, the reboot’s existence helped ensure there be a “reservation” for this kind of product to be made.)

I think one important thing to keep in mind is that Toei and Bandai have as much of a stake in avoiding rehashing for their kids’ franchises as we do. Even if you look at this from a purely capitalistic perspective, because of how fast the “turnover” is for the kids’ audience, sustaining a franchise for a long time off rehashing the same thing over and over is hard, and even moreso when it involves a twenty-year-old anime that said kids don’t even know or remember. Ask around about popular long-running Japanese kids’ franchises and you’ll notice they practically rely on being able to comfortably change things up every so often, like PreCure/Rider/Sentai shuffling every year, or Yu-Gi-Oh! having a rotation of different series and concepts, or the struggles that franchises that don’t do this have to deal with. And, after all, for all people are cynical about Toei continuing to milk Adventure or any of the other older series at every opportunity, as far as the kids’ branch of the franchise goes, this is only capable of lasting to a certain extent; if they tried keeping this up too long, even the adults and kids would get bored, and there is some point it’ll be easier to try and make products directly targeted at the kids’ audience instead of having to rely on the parents to ease them into it.

So it’s completely understandable that the moment they secured a proper audience with the reboot and finished up their first series with this, they decided to take the risk with Ghost Game right after. And considering all that’s happened, this is still a risk -- they’re changing up a lot (even if not as much as Appmon), and there’s a chance that the audience they’ve gathered is going to shoot down again because they’ve changed so much and they no longer have the Adventure branding as a “crutch” to use -- but they’re taking it anyway instead of going for something at least slightly more conventional.

Which means that, yes, there’s a possibility this will all explode in their face, because the Adventure branding is that huge of a card they’re about to lose. But at the very, very least, Ghost Game is coming in with the “momentum” and advantage that Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon all didn’t have: a brand currently in the stage of recovery, all of the merchandising and collaborative pipelines the reboot and Kizuna opened up, a fairly good timeslot, and a premise somewhat more conventional than Xros Wars and Appmon (I’m saying this as someone who likes both: their marketing definitely did not do them many favors). There are still a lot of risks it’s playing here, and it’s possible it won’t be the end of more Adventure or reboot brand usage to try to keep that momentum up even as we go into Ghost Game, but it’s the first time in a long while we’ve had something to stand on.

Okay, so that’s out of the way. But the end result is that we now have 67 episodes of an Adventure “reboot” that actually doesn’t even resemble Adventure that much at all, which seems to have achieved its goal of flagging down attention so it can finally going back to trying new things. This series exists, we can’t do anything about the fact it exists, the period where its own financial performance actually mattered is coming to an end anyway, and we, as a fanbase of adults hanging out on the Internet keeping up with the franchise as a whole, have to figure out how each of us feels about this. So what of it?

About the contents of the reboot itself

One thing I feel hasn’t been brought up as a potential topic very much (or, at least, not as much as I feel like it probably should be) is that the reboot seems to be actively aimed at a younger target audience than the original Adventure. It hasn’t been stated outright, but we actually have quite a bit of evidence pointing towards this.

Let’s take a moment and discuss what it even means to have a different target audience. When you’re a kid, even one or two years’ difference is a big deal, and while things vary from kid to kid, generally speaking, it helps to have an idea of what your “overall goal” is when targeting a certain age group, since at some point you have to approximate the interests of some thousands of children. Traditionally, Digimon has been aimed at preteens (10-11 year olds); of course, many will testify to having seen the series at a younger age than that, but the "main” intended target demographic was in this arena. (Also, keep in mind that this is an average; a show aimed at 10-11 year olds could be said to be more broadly aimed at 7-13 year olds, whereas one aimed at 7-8 year olds would be more broadly aimed at something like 5-10 year olds.) Let’s talk a bit about what distinguishes children’s shows (especially Japanese kids’ shows) between this “preteen demographic” and things aimed at a much younger audience (which I’ll call “young child demographic”, something like the 7-8 year old arena):

With children who are sufficiently young, it’s much, much more difficult to ensure that a child of that age will be able to consistently watch TV at the same hour every week instead of being subject to more variable schedules, often set by their parents, meaning that it becomes much more difficult to have a series that relies on you having seen almost every episode to know what’s going on. For somewhat older kids, they’re more likely to be able to pick and pursue their own preferences (the usual “got up early every week for this show”). This means that shows targeted at a young child demographic will be more likely to be episodic, or at least not have a complex dramatic narrative that requires following the full story, whereas shows targeted at a preteen audience are more willing to have a dramatic narrative with higher complexity. This does not mean by any shake of the imagination that a narrative is incapable of having any kind of depth or nuance -- the reboot’s timeslot predecessor GeGeGe no Kitaro got glowing reviews all over the board for being an episodic story with tons of depth -- nor that characters can’t slowly develop over the course of the show. But it does raise the bar significantly, especially because it prevents you from making episodes that require you to know what happened in previous ones.

The thing is, the original Adventure and the older Digimon series in general didn’t have to worry about this, and, beyond the fact that their narratives very obviously were not episodic, we actually have concrete evidence of the disparity: Digimon has often been said to be a franchise for “the kids who graduated from (outgrew) a certain other monster series”. Obviously, they’re referring to Pokémon -- which does have the much younger target demographic. That’s why its anime is significantly more episodic and less overall plot-oriented, and Digimon wasn’t entirely meant to be a direct competitor to it; rather, it was hoping to pick up the preteens who’d enjoyed Pokémon at a younger age but were now looking for something more catered to them. This is also why, when Yo-kai Watch came into the game in 2014, that was considered such a huge direct competitor to Pokémon, because it was aiming for that exact same demographic, complete with episodic anime. When Yo-kai Watch moved to its Shadowside branch in 2017, it was specifically because they had concerns about losing audience and wanted to appeal to the kids who had been watching the original series, but since they were preteens now, they adopted a more dramatic and emotionally complex narrative that would appeal to that audience instead. So you can actually see the shift in attempted target demographic in real time.

Adventure through Frontier were aimed at 10-11 year olds, and here’s the interesting part: those series had the protagonists hover around the age of said target audience. We actually have it on record that Frontier had a direct attempt to keep most of the kids as fifth-graders for the sake of appealing to the audience, and so that it would be relatable to them. You can also see this policy of “matching the target audience’s age” in other series at the time; Digimon’s sister series Ojamajo Doremi (also produced by Seki) centered around eight-year-olds. Nor was Seki the only one to do this; stepping outside Toei for a bit, Medabots/Medarot had its protagonist Ikki be ten years old, much like Digimon protagonists, and the narrative was similarly dramatic. The thing is, that’s not how it usually works, and that’s especially not really been how it’s worked for the majority of kids’ series since the mid-2000s. In general, and especially now, it’s usually common to have the protagonists of children’s media be slightly older than the target age group. This has a lot of reasons behind it -- partially because kids are looking to have slightly older characters as a model for what to follow in their immediate future, and partially because “the things you want to teach the kids” are often more realistically reflected if the kids on screen have the right level of independence and capacity for emotional contemplation. Case in point: while everyone agrees the Adventure through Frontier characters are quite relatable, it’s a common criticism that the level of emotional insight sometimes pushes the boundary of what’s actually believable for 10-11 year olds...

...which is presumably why, with the exception of this reboot, every Digimon TV series since, as of this writing, started shifting to middle school students. That doesn’t mean they’re aiming the series at middle school kids now, especially because real-life 13-15 year olds are usually at the stage where they pretend they’ve outgrown kids’ shows (after all, that’s why there’s a whole term for “middle school second year syndrome”), but more that the narrative that they want to tell is best reflected by kids of that age, especially when we’re talking characters meant to represent children from the real world and not near-immortal youkai like Kitaro. In fact, the Appmon staff outright said that Haru was placed in middle school because the story needed that level of independence and emotional sensitivity, which is interesting to consider in light of the fact that Appmon’s emotional drama is basically on par with that of Adventure through Frontier’s. So in other words, the kind of high-level drama endemic to Adventure through Frontier is would actually normally be more on par with what you’d expect for kids of Haru’s age.

But at this point, the franchise is at a point of desperation, and you can see that, as I said earlier, Appmon was blatantly trying to be one of those “have its cake and eat it too” series by having possibly one of the franchise’s most dramatic storylines while also having some of the most unsubtle catchphrases and bright colors it has to offer. Moreover, one thing you might notice if you look closely at Appmon: most of its episodes are self-contained. Only a very small handful of episodes are actively dependent on understanding what happened in prior episodes to understand the conflict going on in the current one -- it’s just very cleverly structured in a way you don’t really notice this as easily. So as you can see, the more desperate the franchise has gotten to get its kids’ audience back, the more it has to be able to grab the younger demographic and not lock them out as much as possible -- which means that it has to do things that the original series didn’t have to worry about at all.

Having seen the reboot myself, I can say that it checks off a lot of what you might expect if you tried to repurpose something based on Adventure (and only vaguely based on it, really) into a more episodic story that doesn’t require you to follow the whole thing, and that it has to break down its story into easy-to-follow bits. In fact, there were times where I actually felt like it gave me the vibes of an educational show that would usually be expected for this demographic, such as repeated use of slogans or fun catchphrases for young kids to join in on. That alone means that even if the “base premise” is similar to the original Adventure, this already necessitates a lot of things that have to be very different, because Adventure really cannot be called episodic no matter how you slice it.

Not only that, even though the target audience consideration has yet to be outright stated, we also have interviews on hand that made it very clear, from the very beginning, what their goals with the reboot were: they wanted the kids to be able to enjoy a story of otherworldly exploration during the pandemic, they wanted cool action sequences, and they wanted to get the adults curious about what might be different from the original. Note that last part: they actively wanted this series to be different from the original, because the differences would engage parents in spotting the differences, and the third episode practically even goes out of its way to lay that message down by taking the kids to a familiar summer camp, only to have it pass without incident and go “ha, you thought, but nope!” Moreover -- this is the key part -- “surprising” people who were coming from the original series was a deliberate goal they had from the very beginning. They’ve stated this outright -- they knew older fans were watching this! They were not remotely shy about stating that they wanted to surprise returning viewers with unexpected things! They even implied that they wanted it to be a fun experience for older watchers to see what was different and what wasn’t -- basically, it’s a new show for their kids who never saw the original Adventure, while the parents are entertained by a very different take on something that seems ostensibly familiar. 

On top of that, the head writer directly cited V-Tamer as an influence -- and if you know anything about V-Tamer, it’s really not that much of a character narrative compared to what we usually know of Digimon anime, and is mostly known for its battle tactics and action sequences (but in manga form). In other words, we have a Digimon anime series that, from day one, was deliberately made to have a writing philosophy and goal that was absolutely not intended to be like Adventure -- or any Digimon TV anime up to this point -- in any way. And that’s a huge shock for us as veterans, who have developed our tastes and expectations based on up to seven series of Digimon that were absolutely not like this at all. But for all it's worth, the circumstances surrounding its production and intent don't seem to quite line up with what the most common accusations against it are:

That it’s a rehash of Adventure: It really isn’t. It’s also blatantly apparent it has no intention of being so. The points that are in common: the character names and rough character designs, some very minimal profile details for said characters, Devimon having any particular foil position to Angemon, the use of Crests to represent personal growth, the premise of being in the Digital World and...that’s it! Once those points are aside, it’s really hard to say that the series resembles Adventure any more than Frontier or Xros Wars resembles Adventure (which are also “trapped in another world” narratives) -- actually, there are times the series resembles those two more than the original Adventure, which many have been quick to point out. The majority of things you can make any kind of comparison to basically drop off by the end of the first quarter or so, and trying to force a correlation is basically just that: you’d have to try forcing the comparison. The plot, writing style, and even the lineup of enemies shown just go in a completely different direction after that. So in the end, the base similarities can be said to be a marketing thing; if I want to criticize this series, I don’t think “lack of creativity” would actually be something I would criticize it for. (Of course, you’re still welcome to not be a huge fan of how they’re still guilty of using Adventure’s name value to market something that is not actually Adventure. We’re all gonna have mixed feelings on that one.)

That they don’t understand or remember Adventure’s appeal: Unlikely. All of the main staff has worked on character-based narratives before, which have been very well-praised while we’re at it. The producer, Sakurada Hiroyuki, was an assistant producer on the original series, and I would like to believe he probably remembers at least a thing or two about what they were doing with the original series...but, also, he’s the producer of Xros Wars, which definitely had its own individuality and style, and, moreover, was more of a character narrative that people generally tend to expect from Digimon anime. (Still a bit unconventional, and it has its own questions of personal taste, but a lot of people have also pointed out that this reboot has a lot in common with Xros Wars in terms of its writing tone and its emphasis on developing Digital World resident Digimon moreso than the human characters.) All signs point to the idea they could make a character narrative like Adventure if they really wanted to. It’s just, they don’t want to do that with this reboot, so they didn’t.

That they misinterpreted or misremembered the Adventure characters: There’s been accusations of said characters being written in a way that implies misinterpretation or lack of understanding of the original characters, but the thing is, while I definitely agree they have nowhere near the depth of the original ones, there are points that seem to be deliberate changes. (At some points, they’re actually opposites of the original, and certain things that operate as some very obscure references -- for instance, Sora complaining about having to sit in seiza -- seem to also be deliberate statements of going in a different direction.) The lack of human character depth or backstory doesn’t seem to be out of negligence, but rather that this story doesn’t want to be a character narrative to begin with -- after all, we’re used to seven series of Digimon that are, but there are many, many kids’ anime, or even stories in general, where the story is more about plot or action than it is completely unpacking all of its characters’ heads. In this case, this reboot does seem to have characters that are taking cues from or are “inspired by” the original, but, after all, it’s an alternate universe and has no obligation to adhere to the original characters’ backgrounds, so it stands to reason that it’d take liberties whenever it wanted. (Again, the head writer outright stated that he based the reboot’s Taichi more on V-Tamer Taichi than the original Adventure anime Taichi. He knows there’s a difference!) Even more intriguingly, the series actually avoids certain things that are common misconceptions or pigeonholes that would normally be done by the mainstream -- for instance, the Crest of Light (infamously one of the more abstract ones in the narrative) is fully consistent with Adventure’s definition of it as “the power of life”, and, if I dare say so myself, Koushirou’s characterization (emphasizing his relationship with “knowledge” and his natural shyness) arguably resembles the original far more than most common fan reductions of his character that overemphasize his computer skills over his personal aptitude. In other words, I think the staff does know what happened in the original Adventure -- they just actively don’t want to do what Adventure did, even if it’s ostensibly a reboot.

That it’s soulless or that there’s no passion in its creation: Well, this is subjective, and in the end I’m not a member of the staff to tell you anything for sure, but there are definitely a lot of things in this anime that don’t seem like they’d be the byproduct of uninspired creation or lack of passion. It’s just that those things are all not the kinds of things that we, as Digimon veterans, have come to develop a taste for and appreciate in Digimon anime. That is to say, there is an incredible amount of thought and detail put into representing Digimon null canon (i.e. representing special attacks and mechanics), the action sequences are shockingly well-animated in ways that put most prior Digimon anime to shame, and the series has practically been making an obvious attempt to show off as many Digimon (creatures) that haven’t traditionally gotten good franchise representation as they can. Or sometimes really obscure “meta fanservice” references that only make sense to the really, really, really, really hardcore longtime Digimon fan (for instance, having an episode centered around Takeru and Opossummon, because Takeru’s voice actress Han Megumi voiced Airu in Xros Wars). If you follow any of the animators on Twitter, they seem to be really actively proud of their work on it, and franchise creators Volcano Ota and Watanabe Kenji seem to be enjoying themselves every week...so basically, we definitely have creators passionate about having fun with this, it’s just that all of it is being channeled here, not the character writing.

So in the end, you can basically see that this series is basically the epitome of desperately pulling out all of the stops to make sure this series lands with the actual target demographic of children, dammit, and gets them into appreciating how cool these fighting monsters are and how cool it would be if they stuck with them even into a series that’s not Adventure. The Adventure branding and names to lure in the parents, the straightforward and easy-to-understand action-oriented narrative so that kids will think everything is awesome and that they’ll like it even when the story changes, and the merchandise and collab events booked everywhere so that they can all be reused for the next series too...because, remember, they failed with that during Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon (I mean, goodness, you kind of have to admire their persistence, because a ton of other kids’ franchises failing this many times would have given up by now), so it’s a bit unsurprising that they went all the way to get the kids’ attention at the expense of a lot of things that would attract veterans, especially since the veterans already have a well-developed adults’ pipeline to cater to them. This does also mean that this series is more likely to come off as a 67-episode toy commercial than any previous Digimon series, but it’s not even really the toys as much as they’re trying to sell the entire franchise and the actual monsters in the hopes that they’ll stick with it even when the narrative changes.

Nevertheless, here we are. The series is over. Ghost Game -- which, as of this writing, is looking to be much more of a conventional Digimon narrative, complete with older cast, obviously more dramatic atmosphere, and pretty much everything surrounding its PR -- is on its way, presumably thanks to the success of this endeavor. It’s hard to gauge it; we have it on record that they also intend it to be episodic, but remember that this doesn’t necessarily prevent it from having an overall dramatic plot or nuanced drama (especially since the abovementioned Appmon and Kitaro were perfectly capable of pulling off this balance). Nevertheless, it seems to be a lot more of the conventional kind of Digimon narrative we usually expect, so, as for us, adult long-time fans of the Digimon franchise (many of whom don’t have kids anyway), what exactly should we make of this? Well, as far as “supporting the franchise” goes, you’ll get much more progress supporting Ghost Game than the reboot; I highly doubt view counts and merch sales relative to an already-finished series will do nearly as much for the franchise’s health as much as the currently airing series, and, besides, it’d probably do us all a favor to support the endeavor that’s actually new and fresh. So when it comes to a “past” series like this, it’s all just going to come down to a question of personal preference and taste: is this a series you, personally, want to watch, and would you find it entertaining?

For some of you, it’s possible that it just won’t be your cup of tea at all -- and since, like I said, the majority of us here have based our expectations and preferences on up to seven series of Digimon that were not like this, that’s also perfectly fine, and in that case I don’t actually recommend you watch this. Of course, I’ve never thought that it was ever fair to expect a Digimon fan to have seen all of the series released to date; the more series we get, the more inhumane of a demand that’ll become, and I think this franchise becoming successful enough to have so many series that most people won’t have seen it all is a good thing. (It’s actually kind of alarming that the percentage of people who have seen it all is so high, because it means the franchise has failed to get much of an audience beyond comparatively hardcore people who committed to it all the way.) But I think, especially in this case, with a series for which adult fans like us were probably lowest on the priority list due to the sheer amount of desperation going on here, it’s fine to skip it, and if you’re someone who lives by a need for character depth or emotionally riveting narrative, the fact this series is (very unabashedly and unashamedly) mostly comprised of episodic stories and action sequences means you won’t have missed much and probably won’t feel too left out of any conversations going forward. That’s before we even get into the part where it’s still completely understandable to potentially have mixed feelings or resentment about the overuse of the Adventure brand for something like this, especially if Adventure is a particularly important series to you.

But for some of you out there, it might still be something you can enjoy on its own merits. I’ve seen people who were disappointed by the limited degree of Digimon action sequences in the past or the fact that the series has gotten overly fixated on humans, and had an absolute ball with the reboot because it finally got to represent parts of the franchise they felt hadn’t been shown off as well. “Fun” is a perfectly valid reason to enjoy something. It’s also perfectly possible to be someone who can enjoy character narratives like the prior Digimon series but also enjoy something that’s more for being outlandish and fun and has cool Digital World concepts and visuals -- and, like I said, it does not let up on that latter aspect at all, so there’s actually potential for a huge feast in that regard. I think as long as you don’t expect it to be a character narrative like Adventure -- which will only set you up for disappointment, because it’s not (and made very clear since even the earliest episodes and interviews that it had no intention of being one) -- it’s very possible to enjoy it for what it is, and for what it does uniquely.

[analyzingadventure]

I’ve wanted to write about this for ages and Psi has kind of made relevant so

I always thought it was weird if we saw a Digimon die and then come back as the exact same species of Digimon.

(This isn’t specific to any series though I do use Adventure a lot in this discussion. May also contain spoilers for Psi)

Now admitedly there aren’t too many examples of this in the franchise (Patamon and Leomon being one of the few notable ones), but that is mainly because deaths are fairly rare, and even deaths we do see, it’s even rarer to see them come back (even when we know the mechanics of the world should make it totally possible)*. But nonetheless, it always felt weird to me when it did happen (or when us fans assume the Digimon would come back as the same species)

To properly explain why it feels weird to me, I first need to ramble about Digimon as “persons” and evolution as a whole

The thing that makes people who they are, are their memories. It’s their life experiences and their feelings of those experiences. It’s not where you’re born, the community you live in or the culture you’re raised in- of course these do affect who you are, but all they do is influence your life experiences and feelings about everything. They are incredbly imporant, and they play a factor in making you “you”, but those things aren’t “you”; “you” are your memories.    And an imporant note here, is that who you are changes as you grow older, as you gain more experiences, feelings and memories. That’s why the “10yo you” is different from the “20yo you” or "40yo you” (etc), and why you will continue to change, even if it was ever so slightly, as you get older. Hell, the “you” who started reading this essay minutes ago is already a different person from the “you” who is reading this sentence right now. “You” are everchanging, ever-evolving.

So what makes a Digimon “them”? Or, more specifically, what makes each Digimon the species they are?    Yes, this is a deeply related question for me, because we humans (I swear I’m not a robot) do express “who we are” outside, through our actions, our interests and how we appear to others, though not just what clothes we wear but also stuff like how we do our hair, tattoos, bodymods etc, not to mention things people don’t have control over from eye color, race, bodytype, height, all the way to disablities.

So if we as humans express so much (and so little) of “who we are” through how we appear, how would Digimon do it? How do Digimon express who they are?

It always just made sense to me if that was through evolution. That just as a Digimon experiences things, their evolutions will reflect the person they are, their feelings, memories, who they want to be.

Honestly this is one of the main reasons why I’ve always hated strict, Pokémon-like evolution lines (not even trees, just lines!!) in Digimon, the idea that these non-physical, A.I. data monsters can only appear a certain way through their lifespans based on whatever they were born as is just depressing to me. And while one might argue “it’s just how they are”, that rule only exists if you specifically go out of your way to write it in, otherwise there’s no reason for it to exist, but I’m getting super sidetracked ranting right now

Like just as an example of the kind of freedom I like to think Digimon could and should have, I want you to picture in your mind an Agumon.

Just a regular ol’ Agumon, living in the Digital World, minding their own business. This Agumon starts travelling for fun, enjoying seeing the world and whatever. During this time they realize they’re not really built for travelling and while their stamina increases as they go on and they get better at hiking, they still kind of wish they were more “built” for this type of activity so that they could enjoy their life more- And eventually they evolve into a Centarmon! Now they can move faster (etc) and enjoy their travelling life more, and they do just that! Life is great!     Until one day they come across the ocean, a beautiful, vast “world” of its own, but one... they can’t explore, at least not any longer than they can hold their breath. They still spend their time exploring what they can, near the beaches etc, until one day their wish to explore the ocean is fulfilled and they evolve into a MegaSeadramon! And now they have great access to the oceans!

Like this example is very extreme, but you get what I mean, with the idea that the evolutions reflect the type of person the Digimon is, what they enjoy and who they want to be. It’s the ever-evolving reflection of their heart that I love

**(Sidenote at the bottom)

And this is why I think it'd make sense if Digimon came back as a different species entirely.

Because while death may have reset their evolution stages back to zero, if the Digimon retains all their memories from their previous life, all their experiences, hopes, wishes and dreams, all of their feelings... Then why would all the growth the Digimon had gone through in their previous life be reset? Shouldn’t their new life continue their previous growth and take different forms to reflect any new paths the mon might take in this life?

Just to use the Agumon from above as an example, if this mon died after spending quite some time as a MegaSeadramon, loving being a sea serpent and living in the ocean, wouldn’t it make sense they came back as a Sangomon instead of an Agumon (and yeah I think the Baby forms could be different too, depending on what they were but I’m skipping these)? Now of course, if they were happy living in the ocean and just totally content there, it’d make total sense if they then evolved to Seadramon and finally back to MegaSeadramon, I’m not saying they can’t come back to where they started at. What I do think is that it’d be weird if this mon went through the same Agumon -> Centarmon -> MegaSeadramon lifespan all over again if they wanted to be a sea-dweller from the get-go.     And of course, as I alluded earlier; what if this Digimon, while living in the ocean as a Sangomon during their second life actually felt like they had seen what the ocean had to offer? What if they started hoping they could explore the skies? What if that wish helped them evolve to Airdramon instead, and they never go back to being a MegaSeadramon?    This is what I mean when I say the second life would be a continuation of their life and their growth, it shouldn’t reset those things.

Now of course, from a simple writing point of view, it’d be confusing if a Digimon we were previously familiar with died and came back as a totally different Digimon, and even more confusing for kids. It’s easier to keep it simple and leave the Digimon the same species as they were in their previous lives

Additionally, most of these characters that we’ve seen die have always been minor characters with limited to non-existant histories; characters like Leomon, Whamon, Scumon+Chuumon, Piccolomon etc, while they’re all really well characterized with distinct personalities, they don’t have histories, backstories, they’re not deep characters. And making this many minor characters with deep backstories for a kids show would be really hard to pull off when you have deadlines to meet and no budget. So showing “the growth” these Digimon have gone through is not really do-able, not with these characters at least.

The Digimon with the most potential here would be Orgamon (the best developed minor character in Adventure) but he never died, Nanomon for sure, and possibly Wizarmon (esp. since his data could be like mildly busted, due to not being a Digimon originally and then dying in the Human World; if anything I think it’d be fun if Wizarmon could “come back” but as a Bakemon or something)

And as far as Patamon goes in Adventure, I do think with him it’s fine he came back in the same Digimon forms.    Like my previous examples with “the Agumon”, this would be like natural evolution that happens over long, looong periods of time, years upon years no doubt, as the Digimon grows as a person. But the partner Digimon, they don’t really have the time to grow naturally, their evolutions aren’t really reflections of their growth. Rather, their evolutions are just powered up versions of who they are, with some reflection from their human partners. So with these partner Digimon (especially the Adventure-type “soul fragment” Digimon, less so with other series like especially Xros Wars), the evolutions being super linear does make sense and work just fine. And as an extention of that, these Digimon dying and coming back in the same species works out, like with Patamon in Adventure

Psi however, makes things a lot more interesting, because in Psi, the partner Digimon have backstories of their own.

Now for the most part, since the partners had lost their memories of their time fighting Mille as the Warriors, their growth being totally reset and them going through the same steps all over again does kinda make sense, it’s maybe a lil dull but that’s probably just my bias from being overly familiar with these characters.

But then there’s Patamon and Tailmon, two Digimon who retain their memories from their previous lives and the growth they’ve gone through. That growth, was own their own, from their own lives without any influence from any humans. But now, they have human partners, who influence them and their growth. And Psi has seemingly kind of spoiled the endgame for us, at least to some capacity?

We know in their previous lives Patamon and Tailmon were a Seraphimon and an Ofanimon, but based on the new key visual/poster, it seems Psi wants to use Goddramon and Holydramon as their final evolutions instead! And honestly, even if these evolutions didn’t come as a result of all the stuff I’ve rambled about in this post, it’ll still work for me for those reasons.

Additionally, while we know Patamon was only temporarily taking the form of Pegasmon because he lost his power and was literally unable to evolve to Angemon, for previously mentioned reasons if they had kept the Pegasmon evolution for the rest of the series it still would’ve worked for me, as it could’ve been seen as Pegasmon being a reflection of Takeru’s childlike innocence influencing Patamon’s evolutions

But yeah. I can’t remember if I had like a bottom line when I started writing this but it sure as hell is gone from my mind now, point is, I kinda wish Digimon’s evolution was seen slightly differently and written slightly differently, and explored more, especially through the Digimon who had previously died (who I would also like to see come back when the rules of the universe allow it instead of just ignoring the fact that they should be alive and well). And generally speaking I wish Digimon were written with more depth. Thank you for reading this incoherent mess

*Sidenote; arguably I think this could’ve applied to tri. as well, the Digimon who had their memories wiped completely could’ve totally evolved into different Digimon and maybe even should’ve

**Sidenote, this wouldn’t mean there’s NO limitations to what species a Digimon could evolve into; for example, just because you want to be a super powerful heroic Digimon like Omegamon it doesn’t mean you CAN evolve into Omegamon; if being valiant and heroic at heart were requirements to evolve to Omegamon, then unless you’re truly valiant and heroic at heart then you probably wouldn’t be able to evolve to Omegamon, if anything you might end up as Omekamon instead. Similarly if a certain species have other specific requirements, be it like Jogress requirements or Digimentals etc, then unless those requirements were met the evolution wouldn’t be possible     So what I’m getting at is that limitations/requirements could totally still exist (depending on the rules of the specific setting), but being “the right species” to go from A to B wouldn’t and shouldn’t be one, at least not in my heart, but I digress

[cure-orchid]

Page eight of my sketches for my fanfic ‘We’re a Miracle’ spoilers ahead

1: Soluna Butterfly, age 14. The Starco child of this continuity. Unfortunately being the child of two heroic rulers puts a lot of unwanted pressure and expectations on her. She’s not the rebellious princess her mother was, she actually enjoys going to school and doing the work (something that Star is genuinely concerned about) Her biggest interest is in outer space, she’s always reading about it and names her spells after cosmic objects and terms. This version of Soluna draws inspiration from Lillie of Pokemon and Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony, heck if she had a voice it would absolutely be Tara Strong with the same voice for Twilight.

2: Dev, age 14. A transfer student who doesn’t seem to be interested in anything until he helps Soluna take down an unknown creature... spoiler warning he’s the son of the villain for the arc, his full name is Devon Amalgam. He didn’t plan on becoming friends with the princess, but it works for his ulterior motives as the mole. Not much more can be said at this point in writing. Kevin Levin was the biggest inspiration for his character, alongside Kiriha from Digimon Xros Wars. Voice wise I would say he sounds like Steve Staley with the same voice for Koji from Digimon Frontier.

3: Mandy Lucitor, Age 14. Jantom’s little hellspawn, she’s got her dads powers and her mother’s penchant for causing trouble. She and Soluna have been the best of friends since they met, they have each other’s back to the fullest. She’s the drummer of her band ‘Vegan Zombies’ and hopes to be the biggest demon rockstar on the planet. One fact about her that I’m not sure will be mentioned in the fic is that she is bisexual. Since Soluna has some of Lillie in her base, Mandy has a little of Marnie from Pokemon Sword and Shield, her outfit was specifically redesigned to look like Marnie’s. Voice wise she would be the voice Stephanie Beatriz uses for Gosalyn Mallard on Ducktales.

4: Gina Pony Head, age 15. She is just like her mother, she’s always posting on her blog and being an being the biggest drama queen. She and her brother have fins from their half seahorse heritage, so she can hold things and talk at the same time unlike her mom. She is named after Gina from Brooklyn 99, who she also shares a lot of her personality with.

5: P.J. Pony Head, age 13. Gina’s little brother and Pony Heads other child. His full name is Pony junior Pony Head since his mom named him after herself when she didn’t have a boy name planned. He’s more quiet and the polar opposite of his sister, preferring to just be part of the crowd instead of the center of attention.

Read the story here https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13298061/1/We-re-a-Miracle