#plus the idea of her going into some police protection program sounds cool

[jolteonjordansh]

Thoughts on Devas Arc

Okay, kind of weird to have this up shortly after talking about Battle of Adventurers (assuming I don’t take weeks to finish this one much how like it too me forever to finish talking about Pokémon Generations), but I want to get talking about this arc out of the way because I really want to watch more Tamers. And I can’t really move onto watching the next arc without writing my thoughts on the previous arc, or I’ll get episodes and opinions muddled up and it really disorients me. If my Adventure 02 thoughts ever felt like they were messy and disorganized, it was because I binge-watched the series in a matter of days unlike Adventure.

Note: I drew the line for the Devas Arc at the end of episode 24. I know some people argue that episode 23 is the end of the arc and 24 is the beginning of the next, but for reference: I am including episode 24 as part of the Devas Arc. It feels more like a transition episode much like episode 13 was for the Tamers Introduction Arc. And the way I see it, the Digital World Arc doesn’t start until they’re actually in the Digital World.

So Digimon Tamers finished up establishing itself and its world earlier. How is it now that it’s able to run free with all of these ideas it set up before?

So remember how I said there weren’t a ton of battles in the Tamers Introduction Arc and how it was definitely more story and character driven? Well man, does the Devas Arc kick the action into gear, and they manage to do it without really sacrificing some of the good storytelling elements that the Tamers Introduction Arc had started.

Right off the bat, there’s a much bigger battle with an Ultimate level Digimon in the first episode (Mihiramon) and it pushes Hypnos to utilize “Shaggai”--to send Digimon back to the Digital World, including threatening our beloved Digimon partners. When the Champion forms prove to be ineffective against stopping Mihiramon, Takato manages to get Growlmon to Matrix Digivolve to WarGrowlmon. And I gotta say, not only was this Digivolution really well-executed, it’s forcing me to go on a topic I really have done my damnedest to avoid when talking about Digimon, but I gotta address it. For the sake of organization, I’ll put it towards the end of the post. For now, let’s talk about all of the good and fun the second Tamers arc did.

The battles in this arc really take a step up, and it shows. They’re really good, full of action, and most of all: a lot of them are filled with emotion. With the exception of a couple of battles, I never felt like the fights were there just to be the obstacle of the episode. It honestly felt like each of these fights encouraged really strong character growth, had a story to tell, and built the world further. It also fixed my issue in the last arc of some insert songs being way too short-lived, since the battles are now far more fleshed out. But towards the end, there were so many new insert songs I didn’t even really get to soak them in (if anyone wants to point out names and links to me, feel free). There was even this one insert song at the end of episode 23, with this new animation that led me to believe it was a new ending. But nope! We get My Tomorrow right after it, and then episode 24 has an entirely new ending. It’s a one-time thing, and it’s really weird to say the least.

By far my favorite battle of this arc and of Tamers so far is the battle with Indramon, among the most cocky and powerful of the Devas. Not only did his fight take up two episodes and prove just how strong of an opponent the tamers were up against, it also helped give a surprising amount of development for Impmon. I was told Impmon would get a ton of character development, and my initial reaction was “Wait, this guy? He’s clearly just an annoyance for the group.” But no, they actually do a really good job making him an antithesis to partners like Guilmon, Renamon and Terriermon, yet he doesn’t come off as a true villain at this point. You do have to feel some sympathy for him during his futile battle against Indramon. Indramon being so ridiculously tough to beat just made his defeat all the more rewarding and enjoyable to watch. In the last episode with him, I kept worrying that the writers would actually run out of runtime for the episode and it would either feel rushed at some points or jarringly cut to another episode. But no, his whole fight was really well done and well-paced. Plus I’m not gonna lie, I was totally a sucker for the Blue Card that Takato’s friends made for him for another Matrix Digivolution. TEAMWORK!

The Vajramon fight that triggered Kyubimon’s Matrix Digivolution to Taomon was also really good too. I like this theme they have going with how things like a Digimon’s environment and partnering with humans influences their evolution and how the oh so “holy” Devas look down on it. I mean, I liked Kyubimon being a nine-tailed fox, but if they’re going to go with this kind of theme than I do prefer them being consistent with it. On the note of Matrix Digivolutions, I do feel like Taomon’s Matrix Digivolution animation is jarring for being traditionally animated while WarGrowlmon and Rapidmon get CG-animated evolutions. I do get why, because I do think with the way Taomon’s was done, it wouldn’t have looked as nice in CG and Taomon is sort of a more traditionally inspired Digimon while WarGrowlmon and Rapidmon have a more mechanical influence. 

I kinda couldn’t take Rapidmon’s Matrix Digivolution animation 100% seriously. I’m sorry, all of those percussions and sound effects were so ridiculous and out of place that I couldn’t stop laughing. It’s one of those instances where I feel the original sound team made some bad choices, something I think the Digimon dubs really screwed up on. I mean, Rapidmon is at least a more interesting form than Gargomon for me. The battle was at least neat, but they kind of made it misleading that Rapidmon defeated both Pajiramon and Vajramon in one blow, so that confused me a bit.

I will say, Digimon Tamers does a good job of making you question who the real antagonists are. Impmon seemed like a total douche from the start, but then they really begin to develop him in this arc, and a tiny bit towards the end of the Tamers Introduction arc. Hypnos seems like an obvious evil, but at the same time they have recruited the “Wild Bunch”--the people who created the original Digimon program and all seem like genuinely good people. Then you have the “Mystery Man” leader of Hypnos (I’m only referring to him as this because as far as I remember, they don’t state a name for him at this point), who seems like a totally evil guy, but he goes on about protecting the people and even the tamers, but has no regard for Digimon life. Even the Devas, who seem like the certain obvious evil of this arc, have to be questioned because at the end of the day--they’re fighting for survival. They even do a really neat comparison of the Deva and Asura, and how “good” and “evil” is based on perspective. Considering I’m a sucker for this kind of theme too, I really like how thought-provoking Tamers is trying to be, especially for a show aimed at a young audience.

On the other hand, one opinion that has not changed for me on Tamers is just how so, so stupid the pedestrians of this show are. If anything, it only gets worse! I get it, this is a minor thing and I shouldn’t be this bothered by it, but it just boggles my mind how far they stretch these levels! You would think that maybe, just maybe, between a giant flying Tiger rampaging over a tower, a cobra slithering through the subways, and a sheep capable of archery and a bull wielding fucking swords, that maybe, JUST MAYBE there would be an executive order of some kind to evacuate Tokyo and cancel school? But no! Nope! Only until a giant boar starts rampaging through the streets do the police think “Oh, we should probably try evacuating citizens!” After SIX different monster attacks (not counting Sinduramon and Kumbhiramon since the former caused a mysterious power outage while the latter was more of a nuisance than anything) does the Tokyo police force consider that maybe, JUST MAYBE Tokyo isn’t quite as safe as they think it is! Even then, after Vikaralamon is defeated, things go mostly back to normal with just construction workers taking care of city damage. Even on the night of this whole disaster, we see pedestrians walking around, shopping at some places without a care in the world and school continues as usual the next day. We do get some evacuation scenes and moments of Takato’s parents trying to search for their son, but even then they’re not panicking anywhere near as much as they probably should be.

I get that I’m probably making way more big of a deal of this than it really is, but it just boggles my mind how much bystander stupidity there is. Yes, it’s a TV show for kids and there are some huge levels of suspension of disbelief to be had, but again, you can only stretch that line so far before I have to question: “What the hell is wrong with these people?”

Still, as dumb as some of these bits are, there’s just too much good hanging around here. It isn’t until here that we get to really know more about Takato’s friends other than that Kazu and Kenta picked on him a little bit for seeming crazy. But I do really enjoy seeing them get to meet Guilmon and Calumon, play with them and get more involved with the events going on. I don’t think they’re bad characters--they’re fun side characters even. After my experience with Adventure 02, you would think I would be mad about Jeri’s existence and Takato having a crush on her too, but no, I’m totally cool with it. It’s downplayed and Takato’s crush is an innocent enough case of puppy love over the dumb, hamfisted comedy side plot that is the Davis-Kari-T.K. love triangle. 

Not to mention, I really have to commend how Jeri’s interest in Digimon was handled. She’s shy about liking it, but when all of her cards fall out in front of Kazu and Kenta, they don’t make fun of her or even question her. Hell, when they actually see her cards later, they admire her collection. As someone who’s been that girl, this was a healthy and natural way of handling this kind of case. The writers could have easily had Kazu and Kenta make fun of Jeri and do the “Haha, Digimon is for boys! You don’t know what you’re doing!” joke. But no, they never make fun of her for not understanding the card game. They never even make fun of her for liking Digimon. I mean, if I really had to pick on her for anything, it might be her over-admiration for Leomon, but it never got to the point of being outright obnoxious and it was funny at times.

Also, Leomon’s gonna die, right? I mean, he literally almost died the moment he became Jeri’s partner. Just thought I’d point that out.

Speaking of characters, I do really like just how much love was put into making them very human. We really see how much they care for family and friends. Henry really cares about his younger sister (though I wish we could know a little about his other siblings) and we see how close he is to his father. We see how tender Rika’s grandmother is and how Rika respects her, and even despite her distant relationship with her mother, Rika dresses up for her before going to the Digital World to make her happy. That really made me appreciate Rika’s growing sense of humanity throughout the series. Even Takato goes through a sincere and tough moment of trying to help his parents understand how he needs to go to the Digital World to save Calumon and explaining how much Guilmon means to him. He even admits to being a “bad son”, and it’s a really heartfelt scene. And how accepting and encouraging his father is was rather heartwarming to me, while it was easy to feel sympathetic for his worrying mother.

Hell, I have to appreciate how they even made side characters important in this. Some of the kids couldn’t even bring themselves to tell their parents they were leaving for the Digital World. But when Takato, Jeri, Kazu and Kenta all confess to their teacher about leaving, they actually make it a pretty touching and good scene even when their teacher hasn’t been a crucial character.

I have really enjoyed how Tamers has been sort of an inverse of what Digimon Adventure did, dumb pedestrian moments aside. It takes place in the real world first to establish the gravity of how dangerous it can be having Digimon in the real world, and the build-up to traveling to the Digital World is much more fleshed out and important than say, when the DigiDested in Adventure were sort of just rushed back into the Digital World a second time. It’s made this series really fresh, new and enjoyable. And with all of the build-up, I’m really looking forward to how Tamers will handle the Digital World Arc, especially with how great the connections between the tamers and Digimon has been so far.

This connection really stuck out to me towards the end, where the fight against  Vikaralamon felt really helpless and Shaggai was just about to completely eliminate the Digimon from the real world. Takato’s struggle of feeling his bond from Guilmon fade whenever he Digivolves further is really unique for Digimon when Digivolution has typically been treated as just the segway to victory more than anything. Here, it’s far more special. The scene where Takato begins to yell and holler at WarGrowlmon in encouragement, while seeming kind of odd, was really powerful and felt like a sort of reconnection between the two. And it worked towards winning the battle against Vikaralamon. It was honestly a really effective scene, and between that and the first Matix Digivolution Takato had with WarGrowlmon, I’ve really enjoyed how their bonds have worked. They truly feel connected, down to Takato feeling some of WarGrowlmon’s own pain. 

And between things like the tamers’ and Digimon’s bonds, Matrix Digivolution and some of the battles in this arc, this is where I have to segway towards the topic I mentioned at the beginning of this. I’m putting my Flame Shield up here. As much as I’ve avoided talking about it when discussing Digimon, now more than ever do I need to talk about this:

My God, did Digimon do it so much better than Pokémon, and 15+ years earlier no less.

To clarify, I’m talking about the Pokémon anime’s decision to include the “Ash-Greninja” plot device. Yes, it has been several months. Yes, I am still pissed about it because it’s so, so bad and actually managed to leak into the Pokémon games for no good reason other than shameless self-promotion. But enough about why I’m mad at Pokémon for this one thing. What I want to talk about is why and how Digimon did the whole concept better. I know I should be talking about strictly Digimon here, but this struck such a nerve in me that I cannot go on without talking about it. If you’re strictly a Digimon fan that knows nothing about what has been going on in Pokémon for a while, I’m sorry if this is confusing. 

First, there’s the idea of the bond. I cannot stress enough how badly the bond is executed in Pokéani. Greninja is a Pokémon that Ash merely starts his Kalos journey in. It’s not his first journey, not his second journey, but his 8th quest in his entire life (I am including Orange Islands and Battle Frontier here). By this point, he has caught and trained with over forty different companions. Sure, we can argue that all of them are special to him in some form, but why was Greninja, this one Pokémon, so different from the others? Why did he have such a “strong” bond with this one that he was magically able to synchronize with it and give it some powered-up form? No matter how you may feel about Pokémon’s mascot, Pikachu would have made the most sense for this kind of role because Pikachu has been traveling with Ash since he started his journey. The actual bond is there. They have experienced far more than what this new creature on Ash’s team ever has.

For Digimon, it makes perfect sense for Takato and Guilmon. While Digimon (at least in the anime) has humans with only one Digimon partner, it avoids the entire trap that Pokéani set itself up for--forcing this “bond” nonsense. But this idea works especially in Takato’s case because Guilmon is a Digimon that Takato created. Takato is the first person Guilmon ever meets. Guilmon learned from Takato, and Takato learned from Guilmon. They take care of each other and have learned entirely new experiences because of their meeting. There is a true, genuine, unique bond here that could not be replicated by any other individual in Takato and Guilmon’s lives respectively.

Back to Pokéni, sure, Greninja may be important to Ash, but he has been with him an extremely short time compared to so many of his other companions. It feels extremely forced and contrived in Pokéani--it’s there just to promote one of their new monsters rather than attempting any actual good storytelling. Not to mention, the “Ash-Greninja” plot device is there to simply give Ash his victories 99% of the time rather than earning them. While Takato continues to question his bond with Guilmon as he evolves further, Ash only feels a sense of failure once when he loses one gym battle with Greninja. One loss out of the many victories that have been handed to him by just having Ash-Greninja curbstomp anything that got in the way. It makes Ash’s own questioning of his own “bond” with Greninja extremely forced, and it only happens here. It’s not a continuous struggle to become stronger and trust his partner, it’s a plot device to help him win.

Takato’s struggle to trust and bond with Guilmon as he evolves is what helps him build his strength with Guilmon, not outright give it to him like with Ash and Greninja. 

This is why when I see Takato cheer Guilmon on and feel his pain throughout battle, I feel for them. I feel the bond between those two characters. I feel like they are truly connected and growing through that connection. When I see Ash “synchronized” with Greninja and somehow feeling his pain, the fights are empty to me. Ash nor Greninja aren’t getting any stronger. They’ve just been bestowed a certain level of power, and they just steamroll to victory with it. It’s why I cringe when I see the whole “synchronization” between them. I’m not cringing because I see Ash feel pain with Greninja, I cringe because all I can think is “God, this is so stupid and forced.” But when I see Growlmon Matrix Digivolve and see Takato cheering him on and, in a spiritual sense, fighting alongside him, I feel fired up and I want to see them win.

And it works the best with Takato and Guilmon because they are partners made for each other, there from the start and experience life together and develop this bond. Greninja was cherry-picked for Ash because Greninja was popular at the time, despite him having so many other partners--even others besides Pikachu--that had a stronger bond with him than this singular trend of a Pokémon. I would be so much less harsh on this if it wasn’t a faked “bond” excuse. If they had just said Ash’s Greninja was born with some super special ability just like how the “Battle Bond” ability in-game works under certain circumstances, I would still call it a plot device, but just accept it as a single dumb writing choice. But when they reason it with a bond that feels so ingenuine, so under-developed and so nonexistent, I feel so much more upset with it and it makes me love what Tamers did for Takato and Guilmon all the more. tl;dr: Matrix Digivolution > Ash-Greninja

I get that this whole part of the post could have been its own separate post in and of itself, and I really didn’t want to go into comparing Pokémon and Digimon too much. But this arc started character development that stuck out so strongly to me that I felt it was important to bring up. Maybe it comes off as a long-winded rant, but you know what? I still give Digimon so much more credit for nailing something that could have easily gone wrong and come off as so cheesy to the point of being stupid, but instead actually made the story and characters all the more investing and impactful.

But to wrap this whole thing up and in terms of the Devas Arc, I really enjoyed it. It upped the action just as I was hoping for while still maintaining great storytelling and doing such a good job of keeping me emotionally invested as well as developing characters, new and old. It’s really set my hopes high for the rest of the series and I really want to get to that Digital World Arc. I’m really excited to keep watching this show, and I hope it continues to surprise me.

[poisondivy-a]

soooo as much as i like driz is back in ef with ana repairing their relationship —- i sorta feeel ripped off she took off & left her shit behind for someone else to clean up lmao . soooo imma be making a verse where she sticks around . im gonna see how i can incorporate it though , I have another option for how she escapes as well .