#once again it falls to MY teams to vanquish evil and so we shall

[lemonhemlock]

i've just realised this is the first match of sergio's i've watched since he left us and....

[fizzingwizard]

Go ahead y’all ask me how I am... do it, I DARE you... after Digimon Adventure: episode 50 - the 1999 equivalent of which, I feel compelled to mention, was “Jou’s Battle,” when Taichi strategically splits his group apart with the goal of gathering the whole team for the final confrontation - I think my emotional state can best be described like this:

meme so funny haha

but the truth is I’m very sad. I just can’t with this show anymore. I don’t know if I’ll continue to review future episodes. Actually, as I was watching this one, I thought it was the final episode, even though I knew there were supposed to be more and it hadn’t been hyped as the finale at all. I just thought, “What else can they do after this? It seems like the kind of ending this shitshow would get. At least it will be a relief to not watch it every week anymore.”

However, let’s be clear that this is NOT the finale. I’m gonna watch till the very end, but idk if I have it in me even to make these depressing little reviews. At first it was fun, then it was meh... I held out and the show got fun again, but the last month or so have been such a drag. And this week’s episode is just the final straw. So we’ll see.

Anyway real episode review below the cut. Warning: I hated everything except for Taichi’s face so it’s mostly caps of him.

Pic of the day:

“At this rate... I’m gonna request a transfer to Boruto...” /Sanpei Yuuko joke

More below

Last week big bad Millenniumon appeared to be resurrected. Here he is.

Totally lacking a clear motivation other than “destroy the world...” Even in appearance, ALL of Devimon’s evolutions mid-season were WAY scarier.

Turns out Taichi and Agumon have faceplanted on this hunk of rock, which immediately breaks off and sends them catapulting earthward.

Wind noise what? Taichi and Agumon encourage each other while freefalling.

Agumon: Hey shouldn’t we have broken every bone in our bodies by now

Taichi: I once broke my leg tripping over Hikari’s hairbrush. This is starting to seem silly.

Meanwhile the others awaken inside what Tailmon explains is a cut-off dimension created by Millenniumon, where they will eventually fall into a dreamless sleep forever and ever.

Millenniumon’s power is immense and he makes volcanos erupt. So his power is he gives the earth digital acne.

Yamato evolves MetalGarurumon and stars just attacking the walls (of... the endless void... lol). This appears to slow Millenniumon down in a total rip-off of the way cooler way Koushirou slowed Diaboromon down in Our War Game.

The Holy Digimon are inspired by Taichi’s courage to fight wheeee I didn’t realize they were having problems with that

no kidding

Taichi fights a lot and escapes certain death a lot. Even when he and WarGreymon take a head-on hit and are sent spiraling into the ocean. Still fine because THE POWER OF BELIEF

Chumbawumba: I get knocked down but I get up again you’re never gonna keep me down

WarGreymon is able to knock the black ball thingy out of Millenniumon’s mouth. This is fortunate because it’s what contains Yamato and friends and now they are able to free themselves thanks to the Holy Digimon, who randomly start acting like the Crests are important. But since we don’t know what they are *cough* they just call them “everyone’s hopes!”

Now let’s interrupt my mocking to appreciate an adorable Taichi waking up face:

Alll the d’aaaaawwwww

... Aaaand his back is broken x’DDD

The HolyDigimon have evolved to Ultimate level! More on that later. First, they divided the group in halves with them, because because. Hikari gets Taichi, Sora, and Koushirou, and Takeru gets Yamato, Jou, and Mimi.

So yes... those Ultimate evolutions... Tailmon becomes Magnadramon and Patamon becomes... GODDRAMON, GOD OF STEELY ABS

no seriously thats all I could think. Magnadramon is all soft and fluffy looking and then Goddramon is like “I HAVE SMALL HEAD HUGE BODY ABS ABS UNTIL KINGDOM COME, VERY MACHO”

He punches Millenniumon in the mouth, of course.

Millenniummon considerately starts to melt. Thank you, Millenniumon. We wouldn’t want Goddramon’s ego to get bruised.

There’s a few good attacks here - I liked Magnadramon’s Apocalypse attack - but like who even cares. The animation is so half-assed that there’s nothing really to appreciate.

Just when it seems Millenniumon’s defeated, he comes back like... this. It’s enormous. Even Koushirou’s digimon analyzer doesn’t know what it is.

Lopmon does though!

bahahaha

but wait what’s this

sparks! are they fireflies????

no they are the hopes and wishes of all the Digimon we’ve met on our journey! how lovely and inspiring! what are they saying?

hopes and wishes: I DONT WANNA DIE I DONT WANNA DIE I DONT WANNA DIE

now I shall spam Taichi looking adorable while being as cliche as an anime protagonist can get.

Good heavens, WHY. WHY WHY WHY. I looooooove Taichi (obviously) but WHY is he the one fighting here?? First it was Taichi, then it was Goddramon/Magnadramon, and now it’s... back to Taichi??? FOR WHAT REASON???

I mean the reason is, we don’t know anyone else well enough to cheer for them the way we cheer for Taichi. As cool as the Holy Digimon are meant to be, I guess the one thing the producers realized is that, uh, they’ve only spent time building up Taichi (and even that, while they’ve done a lot of it, they haven’t done it well).

Kinda cool death scene.

Our heroes wake up no worse for the wear. Millenniumon is gone. Everyone is together and happy. I’m just spamming Taichi again.

his face when Mimi gives him the corsage

Taichi: “Wtf, what is this, is this supposed to mean something??? also didn’t we see this burn to a crisp a few frames ago??”

And we end with a blue sky, which is both the most beautifully animated frame as well as the most Digimon Adventure-like scene in the entire episode -____-

So, like I said, I was all prepared for this to be the inauspicious ending, despite what I’d heard about the number of episodes. But nope, there’s more. Although I’m frustrated beyond belief, I’m somewhat relieved because this does mean there’s still potential to recover somewhat from this utter train wreck of a battle. The big problem is that Millenniumon is a TERRIBLE villain.

The other problem is that the show HASN’T been terrible the whole time. It’s been up and down a lot, but the ups were very much there, and they gave us some stuff I found pretty interesting. Like, I really wanted to know more about what the heck went down between Taichi and DoneDevimon - the fact that only Yamato has any idea about it (Takeru too but he’s a baby) hasn’t been addressed. Then there’s the connections between Devimon and Angemon, SkullKnightmon and Tailmon. Those have been addressed, technically, but they left sooo much room for more.

Then there’s things like the kids’ family situations - my guess is we’ll end up back in the human world at some point quite soon - which were hinted at back when most of the team was exiled to the human world. Really want to see that expanded on.

Mosty of all, what gave me any positive vibes about this reboot at all was the first three episodes, which were pretty good overall - did a lot of things different but still preserved what I felt was most important. We saw Koushirou coming into his own, Yamato being standoffish and slowly opening up, and Taichi being the glue that keeps things together. Those first three episodes are arguably better than the rest of the show combined. And I bet it’s no coincidence that they predate covid-19 (sort of - I mean, covid was already a thing and around, Japan just hadn’t started caring much about it yet).

Episode 4 is when we started hitting misteps, and that’s also when the show went on brief hiatus due to covid. It never got back what made those first three episodes so promising, even during the highs.

I’ll make a list of the things I liked sometime, but I suppose the main points are the ones I mentioned above, plus the arc with Ogremon, and the kids getting new evolutions not seen in 99 Adventure (well, by “kids” I mostly mean Taichi tho - but I thought it meant everyone would get them. Technically, Takeru just did.)

So yeah. I’m  so done with this show and the things is, I just love Digimon Adventure so much, it meant so much to me as a kid. I didn’t expect the same show. I think my expectations were set at a reasonable level, though I knew I had to be cautious about comparing the now and the before too much. This show just hasn’t been able to live up to 99 Adventure, but that’s not even my issue - it’s that it doesn’t live up to other current children’s cartoons either. It’s got no heart. Just think about that, Digimon has got no heart. It’s literally all about the connection between kids and their partners, kids and their friends, kids and their families, and it has no heart! That is failure. It says to me that something got confused in production - there wasn’t enough money, or there was too much staff turnover thanks to covid, etc, and people just lost sight of the story they were planning to tell.

That’s what I think happened. It can’t be fixed at this point, but I’ll still watch till the end and hope for the best. At least maybe I’ll get more Taichi pics to spam.

I probably need to rewatch 99 Adventure soon to get my soul back.

Next week, apparently the Crests will finally matter. My hope is that this whole debacle with Millenniumon is gonna turn out to have been a cover for something much bigger and less boring going on. Millenniumon didn’t even get a villain monologue. He reminded me of the way Mugendramon had been somewhat, more like a puppet than his own person. Makes me wonder if the Vademon were up to more than simply resurrecting a vanquished evil. Here’s hoping.

[puroresu-musings]

NJPW G1 CLIMAX 29 FINAL Review (Aug 12th 2019, Tokyo, Nippon Budokan)

Yota Tsuji & Ren Narita vs. Clark Connors & Karl Fredericks  ***½

Jushin Thunder Liger, Tiger Mask & Jeff Cobb vs. Lance Archer, Taichi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru  **½


Will Ospreay & Roppongi 3K vs. Yujiro Takahashi, Taiji Ishimori & Chase Owens ***1/4

Juice Robinson & Toa Henare vs. Jon Moxley & Shota Umino  **½

Tetsuya Naito, EVIL, SANADA, Shingo Takagi & BUSHI vs. Togi Makabe, Hirooki Goto, Toru Yano, Tomoaki Honma & Ryusuke Taguchi  ***1/4

Tomohiro Ishii, YOSHI-HASHI & KENTA vs. Guerrillas Of Destiny & Bad Luck Fale  ***

Kazuchika Okada & Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Minoru Suzuki & Zack Sabre Jr.  ****1/4

G1 CLIMAX 29 FINAL: Kota Ibushi (A Block Champion) vs. Jay White (B Block Champion)  *****

Photos.

The 29th annual G1 Climax climaxed with an excellent and beyond newsworthy show, which capped off the best Tournament in history. In notable happenings from a jam-packed Nippon Budokan; The L.A. Dojo Young Lions of Connors and Fredericks were victories over the New Japan Dojo Lions of Tsuji and Narita in a great little opener. This was a physically intense, and heated 9:53 encounter, in which it was made apparent that New Japan’s future is incredibly bright with these guys on the rise. Connors locked Tsuji in a Boston Crab for a mighty struggle, before Yota had to tap. Jon Moxley put Juice Robinson through a table in the post match of their brief doubles match, to undoubtedly set up an impending rematch for the US. Title. 

In probably the most talked about thing coming out of the show, KENTA turned on Ishii and YOSHI-HASHI, in their Six Man against the Bullet Club Tonga squad, and joined the nefarious B.C. The match was good, but the angle that followed more than elevated this. After jumping off the apron when refusing an Ishii tag, KENTA hit the ring, laying his supposed tag partner out with a Busaiku Knee, followed by the Go 2 Sleep to allow Tama Tonga to get the pin at 8:35. Before KENTA could cut a promo, explaining his actions, his ‘good friend’ Katsuyori Shibata hit the ring like a man possessed and destroyed him with some stiff strikes. The Bullet Club tried to intervene, but Shibata sent them packing, and landed a devastating corner dropkick to KENTA’s face. He locked on a rear naked choke, then went for the PK, but Jado nailed him in the back with his kendo stick, which allowed KENTA to lock his own choke in, then nail Shibata with his own PK. KENTA then sat, cross legged, on Shibata’s chest, as the Bullet Club celebrated their new recruit. This was an amazing angle, probably the best I’ve seen in some years, and the crowd were going crazy for all of this. Obviously, Shibata’s physical involvement (his first of any kind since April 2017) will provoke a lot of discussion as to what happens with him next. The logical conclusion to jump to is a Shibata/KENTA match for WK14, but given the severity of the injury he received (it nearly cost him his life), it could be unlikely we will see him back in the ring. But we shall see. It’s also worth noting that all involved were very careful not to hit Shibata anywhere near the head. My guess is the Bullet Club beating down a retired wrestler, one who is retired because of a serious injury, was to get them over as evil dicks who stooped to new lows. Regardless of where this goes from here, Shibata looked great out there, and it was an unbelievable, and unforgettable moment.

The previous angle was going to leave a lot to follow, but with this being New Japan, they certainly managed to. Suzuki and ZSJ were victorious over the Okada/Tanahashi dream team, in an excellent doubles clash next. This was an all-action contest, which had a great closing stretch. The story here was Zack vs. Tana and Suzuki vs. Okada, both of which are likely to be the top matches at Royal Quest in London on August 31st. The finish saw ZSJ and Tanahashi brawling on the outside, whilst in the ring Okada and Suzuki nailed each other with hard forearms. The King dodged an Okada dropkick, nailed a PK, then went for the Gotch Piledriver, but Tanahashi broke it up with a Sling Blade. Suzuki took an Okada dropkick to the back, then blocked a Rainmaker, and countered another dropkick attempt into an unbelievable la mistica (think about that), and transitioned into a choke. Once he had put Okada sufficiently to sleep, Suzuki turned it into the Gotch Piledriver, as Zack had Tana tied up in submissions, to cleanly pin the IWGP Heavyweight Champion at the 15:27 mark, and firmly stake his claim as the next challenger for the belt. Suzuki looked great here, having quietly waited in the weeds having been snubbed a G1 spot, waiting for the perfect time to strike, and found it here. Suzuki tells Okada it must be pretty embarrassing to lose to a guy not deemed good enough to be in the G1, then informs him he’s coming for his Title. Everything about this was tremendous.

But as tremendous as it all was, it paled in comparison to the absolute wrestling masterpiece that was the G1 Climax Final. Look, I know some people hate Jay White. I know people hate all the heel stuff, all the interference and shenanigans, but that is something New Japan have always done, and will always do. There’s literally never been a period of NJPW history that hasn’t had some no good son of a bitch heel at the top of the card, using nefarious tactics to win. Now yes, I agree that it all gets a bit much when you have three guys in one Block doing this, but only one of those guys is a main eventer, and that’s Jay. And at the end of the day, all of that cheating and chicanery paid off here, helping to weave a masterful story. White came out with the entire Bullet Club, but Red Shoes kicked all of them bar Gedo out of ringside. Not long after, Gedo was ejected too, meaning Switch Blade had to go it alone (nudge, nudge). Jay slowly, and meticulously, worked over Ibushi’s injured left ankle that he helped to destroy the night before, but Ibushi would always battle back. It wasn’t long before Gedo made his way out again, after Jay escaped a Lawn Dart attempt, and bumped Kota into Red Shoes. Jay chop blocked Ibushi’s knee, then Gedo held him down whilst Jay nailed his injured leg with two chair shots, then locked in the TTO, as Gedo rolled Red Shoes back in. After an epic, and totally believable struggle (Jay had beaten Juice Robinson the exact same way in Yokohama), Ibushi finally made the ropes, which popped Budokan. White tries the Sleeper Suplex, but Ibushi escapes by hitting a (one-legged) moonsault kick, finally hit the lawn dart, and scored a near fall with the dead lift German off the ropes. Ibushi tries the Last Ride, but Jay frees himself by hammering Ibushi’s ankle, and slaps Ibushi hard across the face. This brought out “psycho Ibushi”, who devastated White with a flurry of hard strikes. Ibushi goes for the wind-up lariat, but White hits a snap Dragon Screw out of nowhere, tries another, but Kota finally hits his big Lariat for the double down. A (one-legged) Last Ride gets a near fall for Ibushi, who then looks for Boma Ye, but Jay does his collapse gimmick to avoid it. White distracts the referee as Gedo comes in with the brass knucks, but Kota K.O.’s him with a head kick. The distraction allows Jay to hit the Sleeper Suplex, but Ibushi popped up and hit a Boma Ye to the back of White’s head as Budokan goes crazy. Red Shoes instructs Rocky Romero at the English Commentary booth to dispose of the unconscious Gedo, which he duly does, and we’re now down to just the two finalists. Kota finally hits the Boma Ye to the face, then tries Kamigoye, but again White hammers away at the ankle. Ibushi fights back, flooring Jay with two big head kicks, then tries Kamigoye, but White, the master strategist, reverses it into Blade Runner to the horror of the crowd. He’s too beat up to make the cover though, so lifts Ibsuhi up to hit the cross-arm Bloody Sunday, but Kota frees himself with a big headbutt and hits the straight jacket German, rolls through into a Kamigoye attempt, but Jay escapes by hitting two massive Sleeper Suplexes, dumping Kota right on top of his head both times. Jay hits the cross-armed Bloody Sunday, as you can hear everyone in Budokan lose their collective minds at the prospect of White being on the cusp of victory. This was such an amazing atmosphere. White goes for Blade Runner, but Ibushi escapes by hitting a standing Kamigoye, then dodges another Blade Runner attempt, and hits a jumping version. Kota holds on to the wrists and finally waffles White with Kamigoye for one of the greatest near falls you’ll ever see. Kota drops the knee pad and hits a second Kamigoye to end a phenomenal match at 31:01, vanquish the evil heel, and win the whole G1. Wow.

I absolutely loved this. It was just perfect, classic storytelling. Good overcoming evil. White cap vs. black cap. It was just one guy, who everybody wanted to win, against another who nobody wanted to win, it was simple and incredibly effective, and it lead to probably my favourite match of the entire year (it’s either this or the BOSJ Final, but they’re both completely different types of matches). Ibushi looked like the biggest star in the company here, as he becomes the first man to ever win the BOSJ, the New Japan Cup, and now the G1 Climax, and earns his shot at whomever will be IWGP Heavyweight Champion come Wrestle Kingdom. Honestly, it’s going to take some doing to surpass this tournament, and New Japan (and Gedo) surprise us once again by offering us a whole bunch of new directions and scenarios that we never knew we needed. It’s pretty damn great being a New Japan fan in 2019. Long may they reign.

NDT