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officialjessicajewett · 6 years ago

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There may come a time when I can look Jonathan Frakes in the eye and have a conversation without turning tomato red and losing track of basic language skills. This past week wasn’t that time.

But we’re getting closer!

We have to start way back in 1987 when the Civil War led me to the Final Frontier. I watched the second part of a huge miniseries called North and South that actually began in 1985, but I don’t remember seeing it then. I was pretty young and going through some rough things in my family. The important thing is North & South had a character called Stanley Hazard played by (drum roll, please) Jonathan Frakes, seen here in Book III in 1994. At the same time that he was making Book I and II of North & South, he was also starting to work on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Presto! I followed “the guy with the blue eyes and the chin dimple” (quickly covered by a Civil War-appropriate beard) from the 19th century to the 24th century when I wasn’t interested in sci-fi at the time.

That’s love, folks.

Most of you know me enough by now to understand that I was born with a desperate need for connection to 19th century American history, so me as a child watching a giant Civil War miniseries, despite its major historical costuming flaws, isn’t that unusual. When Jonathan Frakes narrated a documentary called Lee & Grant a few years ago, I lost my mind when I heard his voice and had to pause the TV long enough to tell everybody in my house. I’m just like that. It’s part of my charm.

Last year, I met Jonathan Frakes when my friend invited me on the Star Trek cruise. Let’s revisit that glorious moment.

He did a Q&A that week and walked right by me because I was too chicken to ask a non-Star Trek question. What I really wanted to know was whether he did any preparation to play a villainous puppet like Stanley Hazard, whether he has interest in the Civil War period in real life, etc. Stuff that matters to me, not that Commander Riker isn’t a fantastic character. Trust me – I wouldn’t kick Riker out for eating cookies in bed. But I’m so invested in American history that I went to college for it before I got too sick to continue. Rooting out other people interested in American history is my stock and trade. So after the Q&A where I remained silent last year, I silently resolved to have North & South art autographed this year just for myself.

That brings us to last week. I boarded the cruise ship armed with unfinished Stanley Hazard art and sequestered myself in a corner of the pool deck to work on it before our ship even left port. They don’t tell you when autographs are right away and I was afraid there wouldn’t be time to finish it. Portraiture is my business, you see. I was swamped with orders well beyond Christmas and I barely had time to sketch out Stanley’s bewildered, resentful face before I left for the cruise. So I had to work on the ship in between activities.

Here’s how the progress went.

At home:

On the cruise:

How did it turn out? In my opinion … meh. My problem with it was the rolling, rocking ship and the unfamiliar surroundings. I need my little artist habitat to do my best work, although I did enjoy people coming by on the pool deck to tell me they liked it.

One of the crew people on the ship in particular spent quite a while talking to me about my art. I told her all about Jonathan Frakes and showed her what he looked like in the present so she could spot him when she met him. Every time I saw her after that, she had intel for me like, “Oh hi! Mr. Frakes up in VIP lounge now,” (she was Asian, I think, so English was a little tough) or, “Ah, it’s you, Miss Frakes Girl. You see him yet? You finish your art?” She even showed me the photo she took with him one night in that VIP lounge. I never asked for the intel but she was fun. Like, really, what was I going to do? Sneak into a place I wasn’t allowed to go? That’s not cool.

Yet I did see Jonathan every day on the ship. Most of the time he saw me too, but there were a few times when he was engrossed in talking to other people or headed somewhere fast (someone with legs that long moves much faster than I do) and I just didn’t want to be a bother. I ran into him immediately on my way to breakfast on the first day at sea. A big smile came over him and he rubbed my arm and spoke familiar greetings. I hadn’t had my coffee yet but that was a better wake up than caffeine. If you’ve ever been the target of his real smile, you know what I mean. I couldn’t believe it seemed like he remembered me.

The oddest thing was that we ended up on the same tender boat headed out to Grand Cayman. A zillion boats going back and forth all day and we ended up on the same one just a few rows apart. I don’t think he ever saw me since he was with his friends and I kept to myself out of equal parts politeness and shyness. You will have seen a photo of him snorkeling that day on Twitter. He went out there to see stingrays. As soon as I got off the tender, I went the opposite direction as him. Again, I didn’t want to be a bother.

It got better from there. He always had a big smile for me when we saw each other and said things like, “There she is,” or used kind endearments like “my dear” and the like.

Apparently one night while I was trying to find Jonathan’s photo op line, Jason Isaacs very nearly bumped into me and said hello but I never noticed him. So naturally my brother, who loves Jason Isaacs, made fun of me for the rest of the night and swore he was going to tell Jonathan that I was so laser focused on him that I completely missed Jason right in front of me. He never ratted me out. I think he values his life too much. But he might have had a point. Let’s be real. I spent a lot of time looking for a dress that made me feel like a lady to wear in my photo op. I didn’t say that, of course, but I was hoping Jonathan would notice it. He has to be a mind reader or he sincerely meant it because he said, “Beautiful dress,” without being prompted. The photo here is me strolling the pool deck after seeing him. I look drunk. I swear I wasn’t. I rarely get compliments from men that aren’t followed up by unsolicited photos of nude genitalia or being propositioned to send my own nude photos, so it was a moment.

I don’t fit in this century if we’re honest about it.

The autograph session for Jonathan was close to the end of the cruise, so I had plenty of time to finish my North and South art. I never could get it the way I wanted because of poor lighting and total exhaustion on my part. If you’ve never traveled with me, then you won’t know how much pain I go through every day. I don’t like to dwell on it in the moment, which means someone like Jonathan won’t ever see me suffer. The more I smile, the more my body hurts. Traveling causes more pain and more pain causes my artistic skills to decline. You guys probably can’t see it in Stanley’s finished art, but I can see exactly where my physical struggles overrode my creative drive.

However, Jonathan sincerely seemed to like what I did. I was terrified standing in line because people say he can be indifferent or cold sometimes. They say that about Michael Dorn too. My worst fear was him mumbling hi, how are you, scribbling his name, and moving on to the next person. The reward for an artist isn’t money at all but the fulfillment we get from seeing our work touch another person, especially if they are the muse. I really wasn’t expecting back flips, mind you. I just dreaded feeling passed over.

So Jonathan’s handler took the art first and got very excited over it. She asked to take a photo and she said he was going to love it. I have no idea what she did with the photo but I hope she liked it. When my turn came, he gave me that smile and said, “There she is!” as if he’d been expecting me. He took the art from his handler and he didn’t say anything for a second while I chewed a hole in my lip in abject terror. Then looked over the paper at me and said with a grin, “Spineless Stanley Hazard!” Relief flooded my body and I burst into laughter. He spent time studying my art and saying, “This is so great.” I wanted to say that North and South brought me over to Star Trek TNG through him but I was starting to fall into the dumb, speechless, tomato red thing I do around him. Luckily he was busy trying to plan how and where he was going to sign the art to notice that I was starting to freeze.

When he asked for my name and started to write the J, his eyes slid over to mine and he said, “Don’t you have three names?” It took me a second to realize he probably meant my name on Twitter. I’m listed as Jessica Jewett Jones @JJ9828 on Twitter so people who read my books or buy my art as well as people who know me in real life can find me (Jones is my legal name, Jewett is my name for books and art). I don’t know if he saw the panic alarms going off in my head. He never replies to people, so I figured he didn’t read his tweets. I have a have a habit of live tweeting Riker-centric Star Trek episodes. I express Beardo love on @sweartrek too. Twitter has to be the only place he’d see me with “three names” unless he has a secret Instagram account.

Who knows what kinds of embarrassing tweets he’s seen when I thought he wasn’t looking? Oh well. I never truly say anything online that I wouldn’t want the rest of the world to see. You just never know who’s watching. It’s fine for him to know that the Riker Maneuver in the movie (or generally Riker in combat command) turns me into one of those Victorian women in need of smelling salts. You know what? I own it. Still, I was teased the rest of the night for being busted.

I don’t know if photos in the autograph line were exactly kosher but my brother was behind me and he knew how important that night was to me. He discreetly took a few photos while Jonathan and I were talking. Hopefully we won’t get in trouble for this since it wasn’t done obnoxiously.

All joking aside, after Jonathan signed my art and handed it back to my brother (bonus points to him for knowing I can’t hold objects in my hands without being told), he caught my eye and got serious to say something to the effect of, “It’s always a pleasure to see you. Always.” It was a crowded atrium and I was honestly overwhelmed. But he made a point to make me feel valued and wanted. That meant everything to me.

Here’s the finished art with his autograph.

The next time we bumped into each other was unexpectedly at Brent Spiner’s theater show. My brother saw him sitting in my row on the other side of the theater, which was cool, but I wasn’t going to approach him. I never approach him, in fact. I just wait to see if he notices me and he usually does. He spotted me as he was walking by and he called out, “Hey, baby!” and blew a kiss at me with his whole hand. Nope, I can’t tell you what songs Spiner sang for a big part of the show after that. And for most of the second half of the show, while Spiner sang love songs, Jonathan sat right across the aisle from me and it took all of my internal fortitude to stay focused on the show.

I had hoped to catch him one more time on the last day to thank him for being so lovely to me all week. That never happened. I slept in late and then I spent the afternoon with my brother at the bar above the pool deck, ironically not drinking any alcohol. It was just a nice place to sit and watch the world go by.

There were so many other great things that happened on my trip, like Gates McFadden accidentally shoving my chair into Wil Wheaton, but it’s all too much to write in one blog. I mainly composed this one for myself so I could remember the things that were most important to me. If you found it interesting and made it to the end, you’re the kind of person I want to know and I thank you for hanging out here. I think I might do more North and South art once I’m not so buried in commissions too. We’ll see.

Yes, I am going on the Star Trek cruise next year as long as Jonathan Frakes will be there. I’d probably go even if he wasn’t there since it’s my friend Wendy who buys my passage, but he makes it so much more fun for me. And maybe I’ll figure out how to stop blushing like a virgin and say something more intelligent than hi and thank you. That’s really irritating me. I’m a 36-year-old woman who has had almost two dozen surgeries, a dozen broken bones, I’m a domestic abuse survivor, I’m more than a decade sober, and I can’t stand women that get all shy and silent around men. I’m a goddamn warrior! I can handle a 6’4 man like a queen! Next year, I’m going to blow his socks off with my charm and intelligence. He’ll go home and tell Genie Francis how awesome I am (ha!)

Next year’s autograph art? Will Riker vs Thomas Riker. So mote it be.

Oh, PS, it’s Wendy who has the photo ops and she’s in the middle of moving house during a snow storm. I’ll update this blog when she sends me the photo ops. In the meantime, go ahead and follow my social media at the bottom of this blog for more photos and my latest art projects.

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Spineless Stanley Hazard (And Other Adventures) There may come a time when I can look Jonathan Frakes in the eye and have a conversation without turning tomato red and losing track of basic language skills.

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the-crippled-god · 3 years ago

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Ys: Memories of Celceta

This is the first SEVENS engine game I've finished. I played about 5 hours of Ys: SEVEN on the PSP, and didn't enjoy the combat system much. That carried through to this game, at least for the first half. It's too button mashy, and the AI partners are useless.

However, once you start getting skills, and enemies get tough enough you actually have to dodge/block it starts to be fun. Really wish the AI was a bit smarter, but I ended up enjoying the system none the less.

It really feels like you can break this game in half if you found a reliable way to farm gold and abused the weapon upgrade system. Only shame is that bosses are immune to all status effects.

As a general rule, I was struggling to get through this game up until I got to the Primeval Lands, then the story actually kicks off and the combat gets good.

As far as complaints, here:

- This is a PC port of a PS4 port of a Vita game, and you feel it. Everything works, but certain aspects of the controls, and all of the interfaces and menus, are designed for a touch screen. It's never really a problem, but it looks ugly. They tried to make the game look better with shaders and AA, but the models are really low poly and the textures are pretty low res, it looks fine most of the time, but sometimes cutscenes look really rough.

- The game is about creating a map. But the map you're trying to fill in is offset from the terrain, so to get those last few percentages you need to hug the walls in certain areas, and it really feels like they should've either caught this in QA, or patched the game when they ported it from the Vita

That's pretty much it. Other complaints are a lot more subjective or petty (combat starts a little too hard, but becomes too easy, gold feels too scarce up until you no longer need it, etc.).

Story wise, this is a lot beefier (or at least wordier) than previous games, so I'll skim just the important bits, and bit I found charming:

- The framing device of the series is finally made explicit: What we're experiencing are re-tellings (from several centuries later) of travelogues left behind by Adol, and that Adol was a legendary adventurer who brought about the 'Age of Discovery'

- Adol finally has a personality: He's inquisitive and curious to the point of it being a character flaw, he can't help but stick is nose into everything and constantly hound people with questions. He also really likes lame jokes. I found him actually charming, which I wasn't expecting.

- The era of the world is much more clear: It's less medieval, and more early age of conquest type stuff, large empires are sending armies and explorers to frontiers in attempts to map and rule the enitre world.

- Duran is a fun companion, if only because he gets to be the butt of every joke. The twist with his background is a good way of giving the character depth when he's also the only character without his own arc in the story.

- Karna is boring. Maybe this is just because I read the (5 chapters available in english) of the Mask of the Sun manga and she's much more fun there. Her and Remnos's story just being a redo of the Fact brother's story from Origin didn't really help. I like Remnos though, which he had more presence in the story.

- Ozma is also boring. He's just kind of a type or character I don't like. The whole one with nature / compelled by sacred duty thing always feels tedious to me. He also has the least personality, he never really has conversations with the other compansions, he's just kinda there.

- Calilica is adorable. Precocious and snarky and thinks she's way smarter than she is? Fun. Every scene with her in it is a good scene.

- Frieda is cool, but the game doesn't really give her enough time to shine. Her snarking at Duran and fooling with Adol is good, and her fairy embarassing her is also good, but there's just not quite enough of it. I'm assuming both her and Duran come back in another game, because boy do they leave a lot of open plot threads lying around in Danan.

- I get that the game is trying to portray Eldeel as benevolent, but he's so weirdly patronizing in how he treats humanity that I wanted to kill him before he turned evil.

- Griselda also needs more screen time, for such a cool design it's a shame she's relegated to only a couple inconsequential scenes.

Okay, very quick high level story summary (mostly just the bits that matter to the over all series):

At the start of the game Adol has lost his memories, he's already been through the Great Forest once, but doesn't remember it. The new Governer General of Casnan/Celceta (okay this is confusing, is Celceta just the ancient kingdom, or is it also the new one run by the Ronoms? Casnan is certainly the city, but characters are inconsistent on the name of the country), Griselda, arrives and sends Adol and Duran on a quest to map the Great Forest. They set out to map the forest, and see about recovering Adol's memory. They evenutally meet Ozma and Karna, and help them with some problems their respective villages are having. In solving these problems they encounter a beast tamer and a magician, who are up to no good. Reporting on map progress to Griselda, and trying to work out where to go next, Adol runs into her new aide, Gruda. Duran recovers a journal Adol wrote before losing his memories (spoilers: presumably recovered from his grave by Frieda), that hints at how to cross the rives and reach the Primeval Lands. Upon reaching the Primeval Lands Adol and company encounter Adol's own gravestone, and the village of Highland. Highland worhips the 'god' Eldeel, who lives in a tower nearby surrounded by storms. Adol was brought there previously by one of Eldeel's apostles Leeza. Highland is surrounded by a barrier field that causes anyone who leaves it to forget anything about it. This is how Adol lost his memories. The people of Highland found his belongings at the foot of a waterfall, and assumed he drowned. Adol had previously met with Eldeel and been given something. Eldeel is a god who imparts knowledge onto various humans in order to guide civilization, because although people forget highland upon leaving, they'll eventually be inspired by the knowledge he gave them, and believe they came up with the ideas themselves. The example he gives is granting the losing side of an ongoing naval war access to a more advanced ship design, evening the odds. The game aggressively skims over how that likely just massively increased the death toll of the conflict, but don't worry Eldeel is a good guy, promise.

Here's where the game gets a little odd. Eldeel is blatantly the same race as Reah and Feena. Adol I guess doesn't talk about this because he doesn't remember Ys? You eventually get memories back of Dogi, but never any of what happened in Esteria. Just seems weird to me that even after you recover all your memories, you can't ask Eldeel about where he came from.

Eventually we work out that Eldeel is sick, and sneak into his tower to check on him, there we find evil Eldeel, who demands that Adol return the Mask of the Sun, something Eldeel gave to him the last time they met. We now know how Adol lost his memories. Eldeel gave him the Mask, for some reason (I think to destroy it, but we'll get to that), the his sickness took over, turning him bad, where upon he chased Adol down and knocked him off a waterfall. So, the Mask should be in his grave, right? Nope, we already investigated the grave for other reasons, and found it empty.

Upon returning to Highland we find it under attack by Ronom soldiers, specifically Gruda, the soldiers are using strength enhancement masks that was being trialled on people from Karna's village. Karna's brother Remnos, also appears to be working with Gruda (along with the two shady people we'd already encountered). Gruda is also looking for the Mask, and his team quickly take control of the tower while Adol and co. are distracted saving the town. Soon after, we find that Gruda and Eldeel have both fled the tower, headed for the ancient kingdom of Celceta.

Somewhere in here we learn the purpose of the Mask of the Sun: it enables the wearer to read the Akashic Records.

Eventually our journey takes us to the hidden city of Danan (Dana? Unclear, map calls it Danan, so), Danan is populated by descendants of people who betrayed the gods 800+ years ago. Eldeel brought them here and forgave them, but the people of Danan continue to maintain records of forbidden knowledge in order to keep the world safe. Duran (and Frieda) is an agent of Danan. Duran saved Adol and brought him back to Casnan at the beginning of the game, intending to leave him, but ended up helping him out. Frieda also recovered the Mask of the Sun from Adol's grave, and it's being kept in the village.

Leeza shows up and takes the mask (believing she can use it to save Eldeel), she has a giant mech, so we can't exactly stop her. The mask is quickly stolen from her by Gruda. This is where we learn that Gruda is also from Danan. He became obsessed with forbidden knowledge a few years back, and left Danan, taking up the old (disgraceful) mantal of the Danan people, calling himself a Darkling. When he left, Frieda's fiancee also left with him, pursued by his younger brother (I'm assuming this will come up in another game).

We chase Gruda and Eldeel (now basically fully evil) to the Temple of the Sun, where the Akashic Records are stored, however we can't follow them inside because it will only open for the wearer of the Mask.

Through the Roos/Roda Tree we learn of the existence of a second (less powerful) mask, the Mask of the Moon, and seek it out. While hunting down the mask we learn some stuff about water dragons that makes Ozma happy, and learn that Remnos was just pretending to be evil (no duh) and save his life. Later we meet the ghost of the old king of Celceta, and learn that Leeza is his descendent. He explains that we can use the Mask of the Moon to surpress Eldeel's dark side, at least for a short while.

We enter the Temple, fight Eldeel, use the Mask of the Moon to make him good again (temporarily), and pursue Gruda (who now has the Mask of the Sun) into the Akashic records. We eventually kill him, but destabilize the records as a result. So, we take the Mask of the Sun and throw is into a volcano (this section is so obviously LotR that it's not even funny), destroying the Akashic Records (and thus freeing humanity from it's pre-written history) forever.

Everyone lives, and Eldeel goes off to kill himself, remarking in much the same way Feena/Reah did in Ys II, that Humanity is much better off than they were in the age of the gods.

So, a few good hooks in there for stuff to come later. The Danans obviously have a lot more going on. There's details about Eldeel and the kingdom of Celceta that hint at the same incident as Ys Origin did (a people betraying the gods, etc.). The confusing piece to me is timelines. Ys fell 700 years ago, Celceta fell 800 years ago, when Celceta was founded, Danans already no longer called themselves Darklings. So, where was Dalles and crew from? Is Eldeel actually one of the God race? Or is he like Reah and Feena, among the betrayers, but stole technology from them in order to help humanity? What's the difference between these betrayers and the Darklings? Hoping the next couple games will answer some of these questions.

Up next is the only Ys game I'd already beaten before starting this. Ys: The Oath in Felghana. I remember really enjoying this game (it's what got me in to the series), and not finding it too long or difficult. Which is weird, because looking it up, it has the repuation for being the most difficult in the series. Let's see how it is on the revisit.

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pacificpikachu · 8 years ago

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Just curious, what are some of the series that you love but still manage to have maaaajor flaws? You don't have to feel obligated to discuss what those flaws ARE (not yet anyway, lol) but I was just curious about the series you saw them in. ^^ ;;

Well, I have a large number of fandoms, and to varying degrees it could apply to a number of them. I’m the kind of person who absolutely loves and gets very emotionally involved in stories...but I also have the ability to step back and assess the quality of storytelling, separate from my own emotions about it. A few of the series I adore but feel have major flaws include:

- The Pokémon anime. I know, I know, it’s not supposed to be high art to begin with... I’m aware of the context of its flaws and totally acknowledge those. It exists primarily to advertise the games and merchandise, it’s aimed at children, and it’s been going on so long that expecting it to have strict continuity is pretty silly. Still, from a storytelling perspective, it’s a mess, and there’s so much I could complain about that it’s hard to even know where to begin. I have mostly accepted these flaws to a degree where it’s not something I dwell on much, but, well, the flaws still exist nonetheless.

- X-Files. This is my favorite live action series, and when it’s good, it’s really, really good. However, the final few seasons (particularly season 9) are a trainwreck of bad writing and dubious story decisions. The “mythology” part of the series in general is intriguing and exciting for a while, but ends up gradually derailing and feeling unfulfilling, convoluted, and bizarre. The second movie and season 10 (with the exception of Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster, which is fantastic IMHO) were awful and I mostly pretend they didn’t exist...

- Wolf’s Rain...to a lesser degree? It’s one of my top favorite anime series, and it’s an odd case because I feel like you’re either on board with it or you’re not, if that makes sense. To me, it’s an amazing series where even the flaws don’t bother me or detract from it, even though I see the flaws and know what they are. But I feel like if you’re not entirely into it on an emotional level (or don’t care for the atmosphere or something), it goes in a lot of odd directions and it can be confusing. It’s the kind of series that I’ll wholeheartedly recommend to the right person, but avoid recommending to many because I recognize that it won’t work for everyone, and I’m aware that the writing could have been better.

There’s a ton of smaller examples (i.e., I think Macross Frontier is fairly silly and the animation is inconsistent but I really enjoy it anyway, the plots of the Fire Emblem games are forgettable and sometimes ridiculous but the characters and gameplay are a lot of fun, and so on and so forth), but I feel like the first two series I listed are good examples of what I’m talking about. I think it’s perfectly acceptable to love something and also be aware of its flaws and be willing to talk about them.

#warlordess #Pika answers

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jolteonjordansh · 7 years ago

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Thoughts on Digimon Frontier

Well, I finally decided to binge watch Digimon Frontier, the often heavily criticized and scorned black sheep of the Digimon anime series. For a long time I was unsure of and was even outright against watching it. I only agreed to watch it under three conditions: 1. I was only going to binge watch it to get it over with as soon as possible. 2. I watched it with my boyfriend because I made it clear that if I had to suffer through it, he had to suffer through it with me. 3. Complete freedom to riff it to hell while watching no matter how serious the moment.

That's not to say I never looked at it with an honest critical eye rather than the bias of "It must suck if everyone else says it does", but it was... a trip to say the least. What kind of a trip it was, you can see under the break.

I should note however that if it isn't obvious, unlike other Digimon series I've watched, I'm not writing my thoughts in separate posts based on arcs for this series. There is a legitimate reason for this besides me binge watching this series and ultimately putting my main thoughts in a single post. The thing about Digimon Frontier is... there aren't really any arcs. I mean, I guess there are two: the Sephirotmon arc and the final arc. But they're maybe not even half the series in episode count at best? The rest of the show is so... spread out that there aren't really any arcs for the show. Unless you want to consider the first 37 episodes the "Cherubimon arc", but that's such a huge chunk of the show and the focus tends to move around so much that I wouldn't even call it that. So yeah, just one post. This will also include the non-canon movie I will briefly discuss.

Also to note, I am generally using Japanese names for this post, specifically for Digimon--whom I typically use English names for with a couple exceptions. I will use English names for the DigiDestined, half of which were kept the same anyway (for reference: Izumi = Zoe, Junpei = J.P., Tomoki = Tommy), but pretty much everything else will be consistent with the Japanese version because a lot of the name changes for the Digimon in the dub were... really stupid. If you just look into a few, I think you can understand why I feel this way.

On to the show!

To my genuine surprise, Digimon Frontier... wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Don't get me wrong, it's heavily flawed and generally did not go in the direction I would have wanted Digimon to go in, even for such a concept. But with as many bad things I had heard, it still had enough merit for me enjoy a single watch. Even then, there are moments where I would say it wasn't completely worth the watch, but it wasn't a complete waste of my time either.

It's a simple but very different premise. Rather than having kids discover the Digital World and each finding Digimon partners, instead hundreds of kids receive messages on their phones about accepting a mission. There are more than the main cast that take the trains to Hogwarts--I mean the Digital World, but only the main cast are "chosen" to go on a quest. On this quest, they find spirits of the Ten Legendary Warriors who once saved this series' Digital World and are able to use them to fight as the Digimon themselves.

And this... is where my first major problem lies. I can't deny that the concept of humans willingly turning into Digimon just never clicked with me. I could understand maybe it happening to them and they didn't have control of this transformation, but before I even watched this, one of the strongest parts of Digimon in general is the bond, interaction, and chemistry between the human characters and their Digimon partners. This makes this idea completely absent from the show. Now, I understand that Digimon and its showrunners are free to try out new things and doing something new isn't really an issue. The whole idea just never worked for me, even while watching the show. Honestly, most of the time I forgot I was even watching Digimon--it feels more like a sort of Power Rangers/Super Sentai show. If you look at it like that, it's not so bad, but as a Digimon TV show... it doesn't quite work for me. Honestly, if not for the Digimon inhabitants throughout the show, I probably would have forgotten this show was Digimon altogether.

The weirdest thing about this is that I should like some of this--it should totally be up my alley. The idea of working with Digimon spirits in itself isn't necessarily bad. But the problem is... said spirits have pretty much no presence or sentience. Yes, they do have sentience... but this isn't revealed until the very last episode. Throughout the series, it's implied at best and even then no one acknowledges the possibility or states it. This really killed the series for me, as not only would this had fixed the lack of a Digimon partner problem but it could have subverted it in a really neat way. There would have been so much more character interaction, chemistry, and development had these spirits actually been present or done something in this show. But they don't until the end, and it left more of a bitter taste in my mouth than anything because it's an unfortunate prime example of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot. Because of how it's treated, the spirits of the Ten Legendary Warriors are basically just like objects and MacGuffins than major heroes in the Digital World's past, which is... kind of disrespectful to them when you think about it. Honestly, it's kind of like how the Pokémon are used as tools in the weird Pokémon ReBURST manga, which is hilarious considering that's a message Pokémon goes out of its way to avoid. But I should really stop with the Pokémon comparisons here, and Digimon Frontier does predate this example by several years.

I don't really care for many of the designs for the spirits either, especially the Human forms. They generally look either really clunky or just kind of lame. For the most part, they range from "meh" to "WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING?" because Fairymon exists. I'll get to that one a little later. The Beast forms aren't quite so bad and feel more like Digimon or have a sort of Zoids-inspiration (which I like). Of all of the Digivolutions in the show, pretty much the only ones I liked were Garmmon, Vritramon, Blizzarmon and KaiserLeomon, but that's it. I do like that the Ten Legendary Warriors have both Human and Beast forms considering the mythos of Human and Beast Digimon fighting in the past, it's just a shame that the Human forms kind of suck, at least in my opinion.

On the note of the spirits of the Ten Legendary Warriors though, I should probably talk about the characters who use them. While most of them... aren't as bad as I thought they would be, especially since most of them are either bland or just really annoying in the very beginning, they are probably the weakest Digimon cast I've seen so far. This rough start for them is part of what makes getting into Digimon Frontier really hard and just frustrating for viewers. The beginning of the show is by far the worst part and it's generally pretty painful. I'm glad I can at least say that, for the most part, these characters do return home as different people, but this development is very gradual. Now, gradual development is not bad, but if it's too slow then this makes it very hard to get invested in the characters, which is why I can't blame anyone for giving up on this series easily and quickly.

Takuya is your very standard hot-head protagonist, much like Tai and Davis. Personally, this makes him a huge step down for me after Takuto. But Takuya, while still at times obnoxious, is nowhere near as obnoxious as Davis and has a few bits of development. They're all things I expected for him to learn if he developed at all, but it's better than him being stationary and as ordinary as Davis. Things like him appreciating his family more after his experience in the Digital World were nice, but again, nothing that really breaks the mold. Koji is the secondary protagonist and edgelord of the group (for a while I guess) and is literally the "lone wolf", even having Wolfmon and Garmmon as his Spirit Digivolutions. He develops much more later on after Koichi enters the group, but I'll get to that later. Admittedly, him pouting about having to deal with the rest of the group did lead to some funny moments.

Tommy is a bit of a crybaby at first, but at least understandably so--he's only a third grader that was constantly bullied and pushed into the train to the Digital World against his will. They do develop him to become stronger and even show he was pretty selfish before his time in the Digital World. He's one of the better developed characters, but again his developments are never too surprising, but work pretty alright. J.P. comes off as a sterotypical coward character, not helped by his overweight appearance, and unfortunately the show continues to make fun of this a lot and it does get irritating. He also inherits some dumb from Davis in that he's constantly trying to get Zoe's attention and approval, which leads to more "Hurr hurr, he's fat and unattractive! He doesn't have a chance with the pretty girl!" It may not be as annoying or repetitive as Davis' pursuit for Kari's love, but it's just as bad with how much they rub in that J.P. doesn't have a chance with her or just make him weirdly idolize her constantly. I will say he does have some nice development with struggling with his inner demons and he does find courage over time, but again, there are moments where I get really annoyed with the writers pushing some of the same stereotypical jokes.

But on that note... I'm going to have to talk about Zoe, the one female character of the group of six and by far my least favorite character. I kept trying and hoping she would improve and I would come to at least accept and tolerate her character throughout the show, but that never really happened. While she does have some good moments where she is a good person (personally I felt the Gomamon episode was her best moment, not simply because of my bias for the Digimon), it just doesn't redeem how bad her character is. She's very vain and bitchy, constantly whining about problems and doing very little to help. She's also downright rude to people a majority of the time, including J.P. as mentioned before. Her supposed problem with her character is she isn't able to make friends because she's Italian, and Japan has some serious xenophobic problems, leading her to usually be shunned. But at the same time, it outright shows people offering her opportunities to make friends and socialize, yet she refuses because she doesn't want to socialize. It's not like she has problems with anxiety or self-esteem either, she just doesn't want to try. She's creating her own problem, and yet she moans and cries about not having friends. It's really hard to feel sympathy for a character when they really make little to no effort to fix their problem that they're fully aware of.

They apparently do try to develop her during the "Sephirotmon arc", but I honestly saw nothing come out of it. They try to show she was wrong when she was nice to someone once, but was pushed away because of the whole xenophobia issue. But apparently her problem was that she lashed out for it, so the one time she may have been justified for being upset about something she's treated like she's the horrible person for getting upset over someone being an asshole to her. This leads her to go through this whole dilemma of "Why can't I be a nice person!?" but then people start basically kissing up to her saying, “No, no, you are a nice person!”. I honestly have no idea where the hell they were trying to go with this, but the message here is so muddled, confused and communicated so poorly that it makes it look like ultimately, she has no problems when she is probably one of the most flawed characters in the cast, both in the show and from a writing standpoint. She just gave me a headache and no matter what the show did, I could never bring myself to truly like her. I know a lot of people criticize Mimi in Digimon Adventure for being bad, but Mimi did get some great development and is still a decently likable character. Zoe is basically everything done wrong.

But wait, there’s more. Not only is she the only female character of the cast, but she's treated as such in the worst possible ways. She's the trophy and eye candy, with J.P. and Takuya (and maybe arguably Koji in rare situations) all crushing on her in one way or another, and a lot of jokes involve this. There's the whole "J.P. has no hope with this chick" gag, there's a moment where she gets mad for suspecting J.P. of trying to look up her skirt, there's a moment where fake hands are groping her behind her back and she accuses Takuya as the culprit, and there's actually a beach episode where she's depicted with several different swimsuits that all show a fair bit of skin. Granted, these are all fantasies, but they give her an unrealistic amount of cleavage when she's clearly flat as an ironing board.

But wait, there’s more! Remember when I said I would talk about Fairymon later? Well, Fairymon is her Spirit Digivolution, and she exposes a lot of skin and cleavage, and they don't hesitate to show it. Not only that, she has an actual butt attack as well as another where she spins with her legs spread open, and they don't hesitate showing ass shots there too. I get that this is technically a Digimon form, but this is still her fighting. And a quick reminder: Zoe is a 5th grader. I don't care if she's in a Digimon form, they're still sexualizing a young girl and it's creepy and disgusting. Because she's the only female character too, all of this gives a really shitty message. Not only is it telling boys "Hey, it's okay to want to look up at a girl's skirt or touch her in bad places! It's funny!", it's telling girls "Boys treating you like this and wanting to touch you inappropriately is normal and acceptable for you to deal with." I assume Digimon Frontier was still targetted for both young boys and girls, but inserting this gross loli culture is just cringy. I get it, it's a Japan thing, but that doesn't make it any less disgusting and unbearable to deal with when watching the show. It's really bad gender representation, considering she and her opposing antagonist character (Ranamon) are the only female characters that get any focus with little to no variety or respect given to them. It's just terrible. All of the past Digimon anime series, even Adventure 02, treated female characters with some respect and gave some variety, but it's like the Frontier writers literally did not know how to write female characters. It was undeniably one of the hardest things to deal with in this show.

Okay, so I had to rant about Zoe and the other characters are generally pretty standard. Are there any good characters in this show? Well, surprisingly, yes. The Sixth Ranger--Koichi Kimura. I said I would talk about him later, so now's the time. When I said "I guess" Koji is the edgelord, that's because Koichi is Edgelord 2.0, even edgier than Koji down to having the Spirit Digivolutions of Darkness. But in all fairness, he's an edgelord with good reason. He's the twin bother of Koji who had just found out he had a twin brother and was out to chase him while Koji was heading to the Digital World. Yes, Koji and Koichi even follow the twin brother cliché (arguably the evil twin brother cliché since Koichi was an antagonist for a while), but it's one of those clichés I admittedly have a soft spot for. He's manipulated by Cherubimon, the Disc One Final Boss, and this even leads to him more or less being the Dark Digivolution of the series. But his pain is genuine--the divorce of his parents made his mother's life painful, and he does just want to see his younger brother. He's among the most relatable in this cast and it's hard not to feel genuine sympathy for him.

This doesn't even cover his struggle with death, when he sees the others have their DigiCode exposed when severely injured but not his--implying he's dead in the Real World. There's a lot of great dramatic irony that plays into this, both cruel with J.P. mentioning a place looks like Heaven and wondering if they're dead, as well as Koji being enthusiastic about meeting Koichi in the Real World. You can really see some of this pain he hides away, and it hurts to watch when after all he's gone through you genuinely want him to find some happiness. This hurts even more when towards the end when in the final fights with Lucemon, he sacrifices himself earnestly for the sake of the others--especially Koji--with Koji having not known his true fate. Koichi is basically the redemption character of the series. Though he's no Ken or Impmon and he doesn't really have to do much to redeem himself and the main cast basically accept him into the group after learning he's Koji's brother, his character is still pretty strong. Koji and Koichi are kind of similar to Davis and Ken in that the best of Davis comes out by foiling with Ken, and Koji earns better development with Koichi's entrance in the show. Still, unlike Davis, Koji does actually keep this development and he does change when meeting and bonding with Koichi, while Davis remains a static character. Koichi essentially transformed Koji into my second favorite character of the show. I would be lying if I said Koichi's revival didn't kind of feel like a cop-out at the end, but I can let it go and just embrace the moment because I liked his character enough to want him to live and the reunion of him with Koji is just genuinely touching. Hell, he basically averts the Leomon trope considering his Beast Spirit Digivolution is KaiserLeomon! Though there is a Leomon recolor that dies in this show. Also, I don't know what it is about edgelords/characters who don't smile often, but Koichi's smile is a wonderful thing.

If there's any character to watch Frontier for other than the side characters, it's undeniably Koichi. Though for other than Koichi, this is kind of a problem with Frontier. I honestly sympathized and felt a lot more for many of the side characters in this show than most of the main cast--many of these side characters being in just a single episode. There was the pod of Gomamon I felt sorry for being separated from their friends because of whirlpools, there was a Tsunomon who dealt with being bullied and ignored at a Digimon elementary school because he could Digivolve to Gabumon, and a Sorcermon who sacrifices himself for the sake of the Digital World's future. There's also a Patamon egg that hatches and becomes like a Team Pet for the group in the second half of the series, and he's super adorable and innocent. He might have been one of the most adorable parts of the show, always trying his best and helping the cast whenever he could. There are even some of the Digimon villagers who lose their home who I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for. Hell, though I'm sure the writers would try to find an excuse for it if asked, Digimon Frontier ends on a subtly dark note because the whole Digital World disappears, so many Digimon escape to the moons (No, I did not make a wild typo here) but Lucemon blows these moons to pieces and we never hear of what happened to any of the Digimon on there. So yeah, if you forget about the heartwarming revival of Koichi, Digimon Frontier ends on a super shitty downer ending if you think hard enough about it. But again, so many one-off episodes got more emotions out of me than a lot of the character development episodes in this show. And I feel bad, like maybe I'm an uncaring jerk, but I must not be if I at least feel for other characters. It's kind of sad and frustrating.

On the note of the Digimon of this world, I have to say that this Digital World is really... weird. I mean, it's weird that it's one of the things I really like about this show because it's nice to see some things about Digimon in a different light. There's a greater sense of community, not every wild Digimon is an asshole out to kill the main cast, and again, there's ones I cared about like a Datamon that wasn't a vengeful asshole, but a skeptical shop owner. Hell, there were Digimon made out of burgers called Burgermon, and I even felt a bit of sympathy for them. There were even nice random Digimon cameos like Arukinemon and Mummymon as well as Gatomon and Wizardmon ow my heart. But at the same time, Frontier's Digital World feels kind of... modern? It's weird because I know it has a sort of medieval feel, but it feels more colonized and it's just kind of weird and different since I'm so used to it being such a fantastical setting in different series. It's not to say that different is bad, but it's funny because the main characters even say that this Digital World is like a fantasy world but it feels like less of a fantasy world than past Digimon series.

The trains are also not trains but... Trailmon. And they have... really weird and creepy designs. Even Locomon wasn't this creepy, and he was meant to be an antagonist in that movie. This is also coming from someone who was obsessed with trains when she was younger and watched Thomas the Tank Engine for years as a little kid. They're very prevalent in this series as a means of transportation, even having a race filler episode, but they were always something that made me feel unsettled when watching this. It is a little sad that the connection between the Real and Digital Worlds is really underdeveloped though. They never explain how the Digital World came to be unlike other series and other than its digital theme, the Digital World isn't really that "digital" and is more like its own dimension. I hope that makes sense.

I guess there's also the villains of the shows, and while most of them aren't particularly bad they're kind of hit or miss, or just sort of "eh". The other Legendary Warriors serve as antagonists--Grottomon, Arbormon, Mercuremon, Ranamon and Duskmon. Grottomon is the first we see--a pretty ugly troll guy that Digivolves into an ugly pile of rocks. He's mostly an annoyance and gets taken care of quickly, but he does keep Fairymon out of a few episodes at least. Arbormon is... extremely boring, with pretty much no personality, but his Beast form Petaldramon kind of makes me laugh from how silly it looks. Mercuremon is the most interesting of the bunch, while having the creepiest designs, but he's a narcissistic asshole you kind of love to hate. I already mentioned Ranamon as well, but she's bland even for a female villain. She's extremely vain but rather stupid and is honestly more of a joke villain who ends up getting herself defeated, so she isn't even a likable female villain and is the only female villain. Again, poor gender representation. Duskmon is Koichi when under Cherubimon's influence, and he takes the edge levels to the max. He's constantly brooding and his designs just reek of edge. He even has a theme song that's so freaking edgy that it's impossible to listen and read the lyrics and keep a straight face. Seriously, just read these lyrics. He's ridiculously strong and brooding while like this, and honestly he's kind of like BlackWarGreymon done right, so I still can't help but like him ironically.

Cherubimon, while just being under influence of the Greater-Scope Villain Lucemon, actually had reasons to fight for. Ultimately, he just cared for the good of the Beast Digimon and felt there were unfair laws when compared to Human Digimon and thus begrudged Seraphimon and Ophanimon. Unfortunately, my biggest problem is how freaking long it takes to fight and defeat him. His name is sort of casually dropped in without any real context, isn't properly explained until several episodes later, is fought three times with two fake-out deaths on top of several other failed attempts, and the fights themselves are kind of just drawn out. There's even this random IceDevimon filler fight in the middle of one of these fights to try to convince us that Cherubimon really is finished and it’s just pointless. I honestly wanted to like this fight with all of the lead-up, but it was just dragged on far too long by that point.

Unfortunately, I do wish they had done more with the other Legendary Warriors. After they return in the Village of Beginnings, they actually do fight alongside the rest of the cast to protect the many DigiEggs there. They don't really talk, but they do help. It's neat, but I wish they had done so much more with it. With as few episodes as there were left, I think they still could have made them more involved and given them all episodes of redemption and give them small redemption arcs. Unfortunately, this just doesn't happen and they only show up again in the final battle with Lucemon. Again, it's another great missed opportunity.

After Cherubimon is actually defeated though, Lucemon begins to rise and sends two of his Royal Knights--Dynasmon and Crusadermon--to act as the antagonists instead. While their designs are neat, their personalities didn't particularly stand out to me except for Crusadermon being a narcissistic asshole, but Mercuremon already did that better earlier in the show anyway. Lucemon himself is just... a good villain who gets the job done. He's not really bad--villains who are nothing but whiny children when they can't get what they want are pretty satisfying to watch get defeated. The religious symbolism around him is also pretty good (though I have no idea how that flew in the dub, with him having the move Paradise Lost Punch), even reaching a mode called Lucemon Satan Mode which is absolutely hellish. But overall, he's just a good selfish villain that gets the job right and gets his just desserts. His fights are alright, though Dynasmon and Crusadermon's fights unfortunately follow the same trap as what happens in Digimon Adventure 02's Arukenimon arc does. The Royal Knights go after the DigiCode of areas of the Digital World, the DigiDestined try to fight them, they fail, the DigiCode gets taken, rinse and repeat. I've heard some people call this part of the show the worst, and while I agree it's pretty boring at this point it simply cannot beat how terrible the beginning of Digimon Frontier is.

But you want to know what the worst part of this show probably is? Bokomon and Neemon. Dear. Fucking. God.

I dreaded talking about these two so much, and I knew they were such easy targets to hate and I tried not to hate them so harshly, but it's literally impossible. This duo meant to be the comic relief of this show not only kills so many moments with their "comic relief", said comedy is sometimes just downright cringe-worthy. Not only with bad jokes, running gags, their obnoxious voices (both original and dub), unappealing designs but just by how utterly pointless they are. I cannot count how many times I facepalmed and cringed at a joke or skit with these two, especially when they receive the Patamon egg. Bokomon literally carries it around, pretends to be a mother, down to thinking he's giving birth when the egg begins shaking. Yes, pregnancy jokes with a character who clearly identifies as male, because I would totally want this after the tragedy in cinema we know as Junior. Had I taken a shot every time I had to deal with a bad moment with any of these two, I would have died of alcohol poisoning within the first eight episodes, and that's being generous. Literally the one good moment they ever have is when the DigiDestined enter the Continent of Darkness and encourage Bokomon not to assume what others say and go out discovering and writing books himself. It was an okay moment where they didn't have a terrible joke being thrown left and right, but it doesn't make up for the hundreds of awful moments I had to suffer through in this series.

I can assume they exist for a couple of reasons:

Because of the lack of Digimon partners, Frontier needed "cute" marketing material, so these idiot balls were thrown in.

The writers apparently really felt this show needed bad comic relief akin to some of Disney's worst creations. They didn't.

They needed characters to occasionally throw in exposition for the main characters who were clueless about the Digital World.

All of this could have easily been done without these two. For the first reason, they could have easily been replaced by other actual cute Digimon to guide them--maybe some Rookie or small Champion leveled Digimon who could provide for distractions when necessary until the protagonists Spirit Digivolve to fight the enemy properly. The Patamon we got in this series could have served this role if he showed up earlier and older than a baby. For the second reason: just don't. Forced comic relief is not necessary. If your characters are good and diverse enough by themselves, they can provide comic relief amongst each other when necessary. Apparently, the writers did not have enough faith in their characters, and it shows. As for the third reason: Why couldn't they have just made the Legendary Warriors sentient like I went on before and they could have guided the DigiDestined and provided some exposition? Why was this so hard? Why were we so against a potentially good idea and instead threw these idiots in the show?

On the note bad writing, while the writing for this show could have been worse, there are many terrible and questionable moments from the writers. First off, one of Digimon Frontier's biggest problems is its pacing, because it is awful. The show is constantly throwing around its focus--part of why there's barely any consistent story arcs--and moments are either too brief or too dragged out, like the fight with Cherubimon. There's really stupid plot points, like when Seraphimon dies. You'd think who's essentially the god of law and order would be smart enough not to get killed by an enemy he saw could reflect attacks back at him, but no. That's literally how he dies. He hits Mercuremon with his attack Strike of the Seven Stars after already seeing Mercuremon could reflect attacks and dies in the process, which leads to the DigiDestined on their search for Ophanimon and also leads to Sorcermon dying. Man, you sure were useful Seraphimon.

There's also a moment where Koji is injured by Duskmon to defend Takuya, and it leads to Takuya losing all confidence and returning to the Real World. When he does, he turns into the Rookie form of Agunimon: Flamemon. It's never explained why he does. He also returns to the moment to before his past self leaves for the Digital World. Also never explained. And when Takuya tries to use this to his advantage by trying to stop his past self from leaving the Digital World so Koji never gets hurt, none of his actions change anything. He even tackles his past self, and his past self never acknowledges the weird creature that attacked him and it changes nothing about the chain of events. The show is implying that Takuya has the choice to decide whether he wants to go to the Digital World or not, but even when he tries to stop himself, he keeps failing no matter how hard he tries. It's basically like it was all fate, so... this entire episode was pointless except to encourage Takuya to fight again, but they could have just made his whole experience a hallucination or dream and it would have had the exact same effect. It's just questionable and pointless because they do nothing else with it. They don't even explain how Takuya or even Koji were somehow separated from the rest of the characters. So much in this show is just convenient for both the writers and the characters, down to how they just find all of their Human form Spirit Digivolutions conveniently along the way of their journey.

Okay, there's a lot of problems with the writing, but it isn't all bad. As I said, the characters do get some development, which is better than none, and there are some good side characters. One writing element I can compliment Frontier on is generally the fights. While not all of the fights are good, I do like how they generally work. Digimon Frontier arguably has some of the better fights in Digimon. I'll be honest when I say none of them ever competed to be among my top favorite Digimon fights, but they are good because of how much variety there is. As much as I love some of the fights in Digimon Adventure, the Digimon typically just use one attack per Digivolution and it was generally predictable. In Frontier, each Digimon has several attacks, and they can even switch between their Human and Beast forms mid-fight with "Slide Digivolution". It makes them far more diverse and less repetitive, as well as having fights that require a lot more strategy. Takuya and Koji also get some extra evolutions (because they're the duo that gets the special treatment like most Digimon shows), like the Double Spirit Digivolutions, Hyper Spirit Digivolution, and the inevitable Mega form Susanoomon. I know I didn't really talk about those Digivolutions in particular, but I feel about the same as them as most of the Human forms for the Ten Legendary Warriors.

I think one of the reasons these fights don't quite stick to me however, despite how they're technically good, is because of how poor the animation for this show is. I realize all of the Digimon anime series have all had kind of cheap animation (at least typically in the beginning) with the Adventure series being particularly cheap except for some of the Digivolution animations. But Digimon Frontier has generally cheap animation all around, from beginning to end. It's not entirely a trainwreck, but there's not only some really wonky frames and just stilted animation along with cheap digital tricks, it's riddled to the brim with animation errors. Seriously, you can look at an article for just about any episode in this series and it will have a list of animation errors. There's color errors, character placement errors, hell, there's moments where characters are duplicated. I'd link examples, but there's just that many of them and I don't feel like digging them out. Even the Digivolution animations aren't particularly impressive. Shockingly, there's pretty much no CG used except for models of these pieces that symbolize the Spirits. While the Digivolution animations don't need any CG, it just goes to show just how low the budget was for this series was.

Still, not all of the budget for the presentation is low. While some of the soundtrack borrows from Digimon Adventure, this isn't really a bad thing. It typically uses its own original soundtrack, returning to the orchestrated style of Digimon Adventure, and it genuinely sounds really nice. There were many that stuck with me throughout the series and I enjoyed it. Almost every vocal song (except character themes) are all sung by the late Koji Wada, including the Digivolution theme With the Will, while Ayumi Miyazaki does the Hyper Spirit Digivolution theme The Last Element. While The Last Element is a good song, for some reason it never stuck with me the way With the Will did. They don't quite beat out my favorite Digivolution themes either, but they're definitely catchy and good songs. What's definitely the best vocal song of this series is the opening theme, FIRE!!, which is too damn catchy and good to not love. Considering it's a Koji Wada opening theme, that's pretty hard to beat. He also sings the ending themes Innocent ~Remaining Innocent~ and An Endless Tale, the latter he does a duet with Ai Maeda, both of which are rather nice. I never expected Koji Wada to do a duet, but it sounds lovely. While I loved the change-up of Digimon Tamers’ jazz-focused soundtrack, it was really nice to return to orchestrations in Digimon Frontier again.

So you might think I didn't really like Frontier based on as much as I criticized in this post. Is there anything about the show I like as it is? Actually, yes--the movie, Revival of the Ancient Digimon!!. It's short, it's not canon, but it's actually a really nice side story where I think I legitimately enjoyed something in Digimon Frontier the whole way through. If you asked me for my favorite episode in this series other than my bias for the Gomamon episode, I would probably just answer this movie. Even though the Digimon Frontier cast is still not my favorite cast here, they're probably the most tolerable here for as early as this movie would potentially take place (about 12 episodes into the series). It's sort of like a retelling of the series' mythos of the Human Digimon VS Beast Digimon war and it's very self-contained, but the story itself kind of has the vibes of a Tales game. It's a common but mature theme of two species misunderstanding each other but with certain groups--child Digimon in this case--not caring about their differences and simply being friends. But the adults don't hear them out and they continue an ongoing war and separate them.

Takuya and Koji play the bigger roles, considering they're the special snowflakes, but they play an interesting role. Takuya sides with the Human Digimon and is Agunimon for a majority of the movie while Koji sides with the Beast Digimon and is mostly Garmmon. They do have an interesting parallel when the two switch around sides when the battle becomes severe with Takuya Digivolving to Vritramon and Koji to Wolfmon. The other three are mostly in the background, but play more of a role than a majority of the cast in the Digimon Adventure movies (not including tri here). The story, while a common trope, is still pretty clever and I didn't see the truth behind this war coming. It's surprisingly well-executed and it never felt like an asspull or something they just made up as they went. I'd honestly say the plot of this movie is better than the rest of the series. I mean, except for Koichi because he's the best thing about Frontier. While a few moments kind of catch me off-guard (for some reason the Digimon just poofing into eggs when they die made me laugh), it has a generally serious tone and there isn't too much goofing off. The climax is also pretty satisfying with the legendary AncientGreymon and AncientGarurumon appearing in the end. Apparently, the other Legendary Warriors have Ancient counterparts and I honestly wish they had appeared in the series too, but much like the Four Sovereigns in Digimon Adventure 02 it just never happens.

The animation of the movie is much better too, though like Runaway Locomon it crops the Digivolution animations. Though unlike the previous Digimon movie, the cropping doesn't look quite as bad. The whole thing is just beautifully drawn and there are some moments of nice animation shockingly enough. The presentation overall is just nice, and it has a pretty bittersweet ending with one of the children Digimon, Kotemon, sacrificing himself to protect the future of the other Digimon which leaves his friend Bearmon in despair. Of course, he comes back as a DigiEgg like a lot of Digimon in these shows do, but it's still a strong moment. I will admit that the movie was pretty much just made to advertise AncientGreymon and AncientGarurumon and unfortunately these two don't actually do much, it's still far more investing than a majority of this whole series and if there's anything to watch about Frontier other than Koichi, it might be this movie.

So in the end, is Digimon Frontier the worst thing imaginable? Is it a disaster that's completely void of any merit? No, it's really not that bad. If I had to be completely honest with myself, despite some of its poor writing, it's still technically better and more coherent than Digimon Adventure 02. At the same time however, I have a more personal attachment with Digimon Adventure 02, probably for some of its characters, the Adventure brand, and still maintaining the whole human/Digimon partner formula. This does make Digimon Frontier my least favorite of the series personally, but it still wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be and did have some moments and bits of its world that made it worth a watch. Still, I don't know if I could ever bring myself to watch it in full again or really recommend it to anyone unless you really want to watch more Digimon or maybe you really like Super Sentai-esque shows. Even then, it still has its own problems. If I ever pick it up again, I'll probably just choose a select few episodes (and the movie) to rewatch. Other than that, I'm ready to move on from it. It definitely could have been better, but it sure could have been a lot worse.

So while I'm super excited to move on to the next Digimon anime series, Digimon Savers, which I heard is really good, I'll have to put it on hold for a little bit. I heard there was this other side Digimon movie I should check out...

#Shut Up JJ #JJ DigiWatches #final thoughts

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jolteonjordansh · 7 years ago

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Thoughts on Runaway Locomon

Just when you think you’re done with a Digimon series, there’s always some sort of extra content to extend the universe. Movies, drama CDs, even stage plays and video games. Digimon Tamers got a second movie, so now it’s time to actually finish talking about this series because as much as I love it, I’m ready to just sit back and reminisce on just what made it so good.

So I really liked Battle of Adventurers, what about Runaway Locomon?

Remember how I said I felt the ending to Digimon Tamers was weaker by having a quick, sudden farewell only to have an even quicker resolution of having a portal back to the Digital World all in the last episode? Well, having watched this movie almost immediately after finishing the show, those impressions weren't exactly improved; worsened in fact, already showing the Tamers with their Digimon living life normally as if their farewells had almost never happened. This isn't one of those things where you could place the timing of the movie before the ending, as it has elements like Jeri being perfectly fine, has the Matrix Digivolutions and Gallantmon Crimson Mode and is stated to take place six months after the events of the series' ending. This isn't me saying I didn't want my happy Digimon Tamers ending, but to have such a heart-wrenching ending only to watch everything be just fine right after kind of dampers on said ending. It didn't really anger me, but it was enough to stick out and bother me a little.

However, this was before I learned this movie isn't even canon and that Chiaki Konno--the main series writer--didn't even have any involvement with this movie. Supposedly, the drama CD I had mentioned in my last post is considered to be the canon continuation of Tamers. But I have still since not listened to that, so I have no current opinion on it. But with this new information, I feel more comfortable stating my opinion on this film than I would have before, seeing it now as a sort of alternate universe than a continuation of where this show left off.

But at the same time, I can say that my opinion of this movie, for the most part, has not changed other than the last details I mentioned. The movie on its own is... okay. It's not really bad, but it's not anything great or spectacular like you would expect either. It's just okay. It's basically best to see this film not as a movie, but more like an additional special episode. But even then, it's not really that special. It's one of those things that just exists. It's kind of like the Digimon team looked back on Tamers, said "Boy, wouldn't it be great to work on more Tamers?", consulted Toei, and they shrugged and threw a couple thousand yen at them and said "Go nuts."

The movie isn't without its redeeming qualities, but it's sort of hit or miss in some areas. One of those elements would be its animation--It's pretty basic at best, but I do like small things like it's nice shading style and the pastel feel of it. But it's definitely no Our War Game! or even Battle of Adventurers. Even worse though, Runaway Locomon doesn't just reuse animation for things like the Digivolutions and even the opening of all things, but it letterboxes them too, and they look really bad. Faces, body parts or even text get cut off and it's extremely distracting when you've seen the original animations enough times. In comparison, Our War Game! didn't significantly crop the original shots, but they also even completely redid them to fit with Mamoru Hosoda's animation style and found small little workarounds. I would call this a nitpick, but it really shows just how low-budget this "film" is in comparison and how it lacks a sense of professionalism. I don't expect them to give every movie the Our War Game! treatment, but I expect a little more polish than just reusing and heavily cropping some otherwise good animation. There are some moments where the animation flows well and moves rapidly to fit the action as well as some good shots (like one of Takato and Guilmon jumping off Locomon to Matrix Digivolve to Gallantmon), but there's also some rather... gruesome moments, like with Gallantmon stabbing a Parasimon right in the eyeball. It's that kind of morbid imagery I would expect from Konno's works, yet he somehow has no involvement in it.

When I said this movie isn't special though, that probably shows the most in the plot and premise. Again, they're not bad, but it's nothing really unique enough to be a movie rather than just an episode, especially since the movie itself is only 30 minutes long. The plot is exactly what it says on the tin--a Digimon called Locomon is running wild on train tracks and threatens to crash and cause massive damage in Shinjuku. The Tamers and their Digimon find themselves having to stop it. On top of this, there's a subplot of the Tamers throwing a surprise birthday party for Rika, though Rika ends up being controlled by one of the Parisamon also controlling the Locomon. While under this control, Rika has a sort of vision/flashback of singing a song for her dad. This is interesting in that we never see Rika's father in the show at all, but he remains silhouetted and we never see what he looks like or what his personality may have been like. The best there is to speculate out of it is that she may have been a "Daddy's Girl" type and had a close relationship with her father that was severed by her parents' divorce, but again, there's no details on this. Thankfully for Rika though, the Tamers manage to snap her out of this control and she gets to join the fight.

This is honestly about as much depth as the plot has, mostly focusing on stopping the Locomon and the Parisamon that begin to invade Shinjuku. On a good note, each character gets a role or a couple of minutes of screentime. Even minor characters like Kazu, Kenta and Suzie with their Digimon (which means more MarineAngemon gibberish!) get some moments to shine including everyone's favorite character Ryo. We also do get some fun with the Matrix Digivolutions, who do make for some good action scenes. Even Beelzemon Blast Mode gets some screentime along with some Yamaki being a badass just doing what he wants. But in addition to all of these nice character inclusions, to my delight Gallantmon Crimson Mode gets a fair amount of screentime to wreck everything and we all know he's the best Mega ever. But the movie is also really weird because it doesn’t really end properly, it just... kind of stops.

I will say, something I really didn't notice until after watching the movie was that, despite being as okay as it is, has a super grooving soundtrack. It's a really nice collection of great smooth jazz that I really can't help but enjoy listening to. While the Digimon Tamers soundtrack is pretty jazz-y in general, Runaway Locomon takes it up to 11. Dub watchers unfortunately miss out on this bonus since pretty much all of the Digimon dubs liked removing the original soundtracks for some reason, which is a shame. Honestly, I might say the soundtrack is my favorite part of this movie other than the occasional bits of fanservice. Seriously, even if you don't watch this movie, I'd highly recommend sitting down, putting on your headphones on and giving the soundtrack a conscious listen.

I can't help but feel like I didn't cover this movie enough, but... there really isn't much else to say about it. Overall, Runaway Locomon is an okay film, though it's better to think of it as a bonus what-if episode more than anything. If you look at it as that, it's a good source of entertainment for 30 minutes if you love Digimon Tamers. It's by no means flawless and it is lower on the list of Digimon movies, but it's still fun to watch and still above the weird acid trip we know as Hurricane Landing!!/Transcendent Evolution!!. It's definitely not a total waste of Digimon material though, so give it a watch if you're craving some Tamers or just some Digimon.

As I find myself reflecting back on Digimon Tamers, it still is a really fun, great Digimon series with a surprising amount of depth, wonderful storytelling and awesome action. And in the end, I can really appreciate it for that, flaws and all. I'm sure there's more Digimon content with some good ideas to offer... Which is why now I'm going to be forced against my will to give Digimon Frontier a chance!

#Shut Up JJ #JJ DigiWatches #Final Thoughts #noseriouslythoughsavemefromfrontierguys

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