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Digimon Savers Commentary Episode 35 - Disastrous Power! ShineGreymon Runs Wild

In this episode, ShineGreymon’s devastating rampage fuelled by Masaru’s fury can only be stopped at great cost. Tohma learns of Kurata’s intent to take over the human world using Belphemon, then fights Ikuto to prevent him telling the others.

The two spoiler warnings from last episode still apply here! Spoiler warning 1: the thing that first came up in episode 28 and won’t be revealed until the end of episode 45. Spoiler warning 2: the much more impactful thing that began last episode and won’t be revealed until next episode, episode 36. I still recommend for anyone who’s following along with this blind that they at least heed spoiler warning 2.

…Three minutes and twenty seconds.

That’s how far in to this episode you need to start if you want to skip through all of the recap and get back to exactly where the previous episode left off.

I know this figure off the top of my head. After the number of times I’ve watched both episodes 34 and 35 together, wanting to see the scene that spans between them all in one go, you bet I went and memorised it.

That’s a really frustratingly long recap! And, so, okay. I’ve been talking a lot about how the recaps are going to get super long, honest, really for real I swear it happens soon and it’s really annoying… but now that I’m here, I’m realising that like 90% of that is this single episode’s fault. This one particular recap is so long and I’ve watched this episode so much while wanting to skip right back into the action that my brain may have overinflated the significance of this problem otherwise. Some of the other episodes have recaps that are kind of longer than they should be, but it's not that many episodes, and none of the others go beyond two minutes at the absolute maximum.

Granted, this particular episode has a fairly good reason to have its recap be so long, precisely because we left off right in the middle of such a dramatic scene. It makes sense to want to put us back into the heat of the moment before continuing it, right? But it doesn’t even do that properly.

In amongst one bit of actual regular recap going over how Tohma joined forces with Kurata in order to have Relena cured (supposedly; the narration plays along with that story), almost all of the rerun of the fight we see in the beginning of this episode is actually just MirageGaogamon and ShineGreymon’s fight. This is far less interesting and relevant than what happened between Tohma and Masaru! We see literally every single shot of the Digimon’s fight again, while we only get to see Tohma and Masaru’s fight from the point where Masaru forces himself to his feet and goes for the final cross-counter before he snaps. There’s a lot less of that build-up for Masaru’s emotions, which is obviously the most important part to be re-introduced to here!

(Maybe the animators are just bitter at how freaking long it takes them to animate shots containing these ridiculously detailed Digimon designs, so they insisted on making the most of their hard work by forcing the audience to see it as many times as they could get away with.)

SO, ANYWAY. Putting aside how the recap people didn’t seem to think this was nearly as important as it is, Masaru’s overwhelming fury at Tohma’s betrayal has just triggered ShineGreymon to dark-evolve into Ruin Mode.

ShineGreymon materialises a flaming sword from that twisted grey energy powering him and lunges at MirageGaogamon with a snarling roar. A very alarmed Tohma calls for his partner to dodge, and he does, zipping speedily back away from ShineGreymon’s sword swipe – but then the energy sword extends like a whip to an even greater length from the sheer power of the swing, hitting MirageGaogamon anyway.

MirageGaogamon rises back up and fires off an attack, but ShineGreymon forms a shield from the energy in his other hand, blocking it effortlessly, before flinging himself back at his foe, not even bothering with the sword.

Masaru: “The Digimon who died during the battles like Baromon and ElDoradimon… and Mercurimon and the others… Apologise to them all with your *life*!”

I love that Masaru brings this up in this moment. All their fallen Digimon comrades whom he failed to protect, who are dead and gone now thanks to Kurata – while he brushed it away out of trying to stay positive most of the time, that loss and failure has been getting to him; it does hurt. But he only lets himself confront that pain now, when he can turn it into anger and has an outlet for that anger that isn’t himself – someone who deserves to suffer and pay for failing them even more than Masaru does, because Tohma’s committed a betrayal that’s so much worse than simply not being able to protect them.

As he says all this, Masaru’s staring up into the sky with a fervent, fanatical kind of fury. His words are punctuated with shots of ShineGreymon brutally kicking and punching a MirageGaogamon who can barely defend himself, making it so very clear that every bit of ShineGreymon’s onslaught right now is being powered by Masaru’s anger. ShineGreymon isn’t saying a single word to imply he’s thinking for himself; he’s roaring and snarling with rage, but it’s a rage that doesn’t come from him.

At the last of these impacts, MirageGaogamon goes crashing into the ground. Tohma rushes over to him in concern, but MirageGaogamon tells him to stay back, knowing ShineGreymon isn’t finished with him. There’s even a crack in the armour on his hand from the sheer strength of ShineGreymon’s blows.

ShineGreymon hangs in the air above them, growling with seething fury and power.

Masaru: “Finish them! Die, Tohma!!”

He meant it when he exhorted Tohma to apologise with his life. Masaru – dorky, ridiculous, heart-of-gold Masaru – is so lost in his overwhelming rage that he actually wants his former trusted friend and comrade to freaking die. Guhhh I love it so much when good-hearted characters are driven to such extremes as to genuinely want something this awful.

(Remember how back in episode 33 I made a big point about a particular Japanese phrasing Kouki used that literally meant “disappear”, but was subbed as “die”? About how, because it’s Kouki, who’s a coarse-mouthed asshole who’d never beat around the bush with euphemisms for this, I trusted that this Japanese phrasing is commonly used to mean death, even if that’s not its literal meaning, to the point that “die” is an appropriate way to translate it? Yep, that mattered to me so much because it’s the same Japanese phrasing that Masaru’s using here. It’s really important to me that Masaru is very directly telling Tohma to die, okay.)

At Masaru’s words – or rather, in response to Masaru’s rage – ShineGreymon lunges to throw himself bodily towards MirageGaogamon and Tohma on the ground—

Chika: “Don’t!”

—but then Chika, who’s been watching most of this fight, desperately rushes up to her brother and hugs him. Masaru stares at her, caught off-guard by this unexpected moment of sibling connection. He’s at a loss, his rage suddenly having nowhere to go, because he certainly can’t direct it at her.

Chika: “Why do you have to fight with Tohma-kun?! That doesn’t make any sense!”

Chika wasn’t here for all of their fight, including specifically the part where Tohma said he was working for Kurata. So she really doesn’t have any idea why they’re fighting. All she’s seeing is them attacking each other for no reason, to the point that Masaru now suddenly furiously wants to kill Tohma, who’s supposed to be his friend. What on earth’s going on with that? That’s not her big brother at all!

Masaru doesn’t try to explain his reasons to Chika. I highly doubt he’s feeling emotionally articulate enough right now to do so. But at the very least, having his sister here pointing out that this isn’t the kind of thing he’d usually be doing (and perhaps also because she’s hugging him, providing some small comfort for all the pain he’s in that fuelled this, not that he’d ever admit that) makes Masaru no longer want it as much any more.

In short, thank god for Chika being here. Yoshino and Ikuto are here watching all this as well, no doubt also feeling that Masaru’s gone too far and wanting him to stop. But Chika’s the only one who loves Masaru so unconditionally, even when he’s descended into seething murderous fury, that she’d try to appeal to him so directly like this.

Masaru’s rage has been calmed, at least enough for now – but ShineGreymon hasn’t. He continues on his path and crashes into the ground where MirageGaogamon would have been if he hadn’t managed to grab Tohma and get out of the way at the last second. Another stream of that twisted grey energy blasts outwards uncontrollably from the impact – MirageGaogamon has to scramble to dodge that too – and careens into the city, causing a huge explosion off in the distance. (Good thing everyone’s probably evacuated by now.)

ShineGreymon lunges at a now-airborne MirageGaogamon, who dodges again, and the momentum of ShineGreymon’s missed attack sends yet more of that energy billowing away from him, devastating an entire industrial area down below. So much destruction, just as an accidental side-effect. His power is overflowing, out of control, too much to be contained.

Masaru: “What is he… doing?”

Masaru no longer truly wants Tohma to die (or, at least, he’s trying not to think about that too hard any more). And he certainly never intended to get the entire city caught up in this at any point. Isn’t ShineGreymon supposed to go along with what he wants? Why isn’t he? There’s no way that ShineGreymon would want that either, right?

BanchouLeomon: “He’s rampaging.”

That’s exactly what he’s doing. Just like all of those Digimon that DATS dealt with in the series’ opening arc, ShineGreymon is rampaging under the influence of negative human emotions. Masaru’s rage-filled dark desire to punish Tohma for his betrayal and outright kill him is exactly the kind of thing that would fuel a Digimon rampage. It’s even more powerful than any of the dark emotions that fuelled the things we saw early in the series. Because ShineGreymon is connected to Masaru through their partnership and his Digivice, those emotions ended up latching onto him, making him way more overwhelmingly powerful than is ever normally possible through this phenomenon.

And just like we saw in those early episodes, even if the human whose emotions triggered the rampage stops feeling that way for one reason or another, the rampage keeps going. It doesn’t matter how much Masaru no longer wants this; ShineGreymon isn’t going to listen. He isn’t able to listen.

BanchouLeomon: “ShineGreymon is unable to control the destructive power of the Burst Mode.”

I’m not entirely sure that’s the point here. Yes, his rampage is so especially destructive because the Burst Mode is so powerful and dangerous if not carefully controlled, but I don’t believe that the fact that it’s the Burst Mode is why he lost control. BanchouLeomon’s going to bring up this topic again later in the episode, so let’s put a pin in this and I’ll discuss it more then, when we’re not in the middle of a big dramatic scene.

ShineGreymon hangs in the air, still snarling with rage, surrounded with flames and smoke from his destruction. Tohma and MirageGaogamon land a short distance away – ShineGreymon seems too out of it to even recognise them as enemies any more – and Tohma recalls MirageGaogamon into his Digivice, probably both for his dog-friend’s safety and to make him, Tohma, less of a big visible target.

With another roar, ShineGreymon sends up more blasts of energy that rain down over the city like devastating fireworks. Some of them hit several Gizmon: XT that were still floating around – perhaps ShineGreymon was vaguely sort of aiming for them now that his primary target’s disappeared. But some of his shots go right into the city, causing more destruction.

Tohma grimaces at the scene, knowing this is partly his fault and probably wishing he could do something to stop it, but then he makes the sensible choice and gets the hell out of there.

Yoshino: “Tohma!”

Yoshino calls out to him as he leaves, looking like she might be about to try and follow him (but she’s prevented from doing so by another of ShineGreymon’s blasts landing between them). It’s interesting that, despite Tohma’s apparent betrayal, Yoshino still seems to be worrying about him and trying to appeal to him in some way. Quite a different attitude to this than Masaru’s, huh.

Masaru: “Stop, ShineGreymon! Stop it!”

BanchouLeomon: “It’s useless. Once the Burst Mode runs wild, no-one can stop it. You’ll have to wait until he destroys himself.”

Masaru: “No way!”

Perhaps BanchouLeomon has seen examples of destructive Burst Mode rampages only being able to end this way. But once again I’d like to make this about Digimon rampages fuelled by negative human emotion – because we’ve also seen that there’s only one way to stop those. Appealing to the Digimon doesn’t work, not even when it was Piyomon. Sending the Digimon back to the Digital World while it’s still alive, like what accidentally happened to Drimogemon, also doesn’t cut the rampage short. The only thing that can stop it is reverting them to an egg.

On the hill overlooking all this, Kurata decides to retreat as well. He makes it sound very casual and tactical, definitely not at all because he’s worried that one of ShineGreymon’s wayward blasts might end up coming near him and his Gizmon up here – which, honestly, I wouldn’t be too surprised if that did happen, with the power he’s displaying. This incidentally comes right after BanchouLeomon saying ShineGreymon’s going to self-destruct, but it’s unclear whether or not Kurata could hear that; maybe he can, and he’s satisfied now that ShineGreymon’s going to be put out of commission, just like he wanted Tohma to do in the first place.

Masaru takes a moment to leave Chika in the care of this giant lion man he barely knows, who is obviously trustworthy anyway by virtue of being a banchou. (Heh, little does he know the bigger reason he can trust BanchouLeomon with his sister.)

He rushes further into the smoke and flames of the city to confront ShineGreymon. It’s almost a little reminiscent of back in episode 1, where Masaru ran towards the flaming destruction of a hamburger store, believing Agumon was responsible, but still trusting in his friend and intending to talk him down. Except this time, his partner really is the one who caused all this devastation, on an unbelievably much greater scale.

(And, hey, back in episode 1, Masaru did once say the line, “If he starts rampaging, then I’ll be responsible”. Well, he sure is responsible for this, now, isn’t he. Some fun coincidental phrasing that I like to think was deliberate, even though he didn’t mean it in this way back then.)

Also, shout-outs to the BGM that’s been playing for a little while now! It’s called Burst Mode, so it might seem like technically it should be an evolution theme, but if so then it’s a very unique one. It’s very grandiose and almost sort of beautiful, with a choral element in there too, which has a very distinct and memorable impact when combined with all these shots of terrible uncontainable rage and destruction.

Masaru: “ShineGreymon! Enough! ShineGreymon! Stop!”

ShineGreymon doesn’t even seen to hear him. He’s there in midair, lunging with punches at a nonexistent enemy, still furiously in need of some kind of outlet for all of his uncontrollable power. His roars are almost beginning to sound more strained and frantic beneath the snarling rage, as if he’s in pain from it all.

Masaru: “Please! Please, stop!”

Masaru hunches over, beginning to shake, his voice becoming more desperate and pained, his words punctuated by another roar of fury (or pain?) from his partner. He doesn’t know how, but he just wants this all to stop – he doesn’t want Agumon, his best friend, to be doing any of this.

With this, Masaru begins to cry – and as his tears land on the Digivice, it glows with orange light. Which, okay, is a little bit on the nose – I doubt the tears needed to physically land on the Digivice for this to work – but listen, it makes perfectly good sense that Masaru crying in and of itself set off a reaction here. His connection to Agumon is powered by his emotions, and the Digivice is there to facilitate that.

Masaru shifting from not just determinedly calling for ShineGreymon to stop but feeling genuine pain and regret about what’s happening feels very appropriate as what’s needed to fix this. This whole thing happened because Masaru couldn’t accept the pain he was in at Tohma’s betrayal and instead turned it all into vengeful destructive rage. But it’s okay to be hurting, Masaru. Better that than hurt someone else when you don’t actually need to.

(At this point, Burst Mode fades out, and instead the BGM becomes the climax of I’M JUST FIGHTER for what’s about to follow, which is another of the reasons I love that piece.)

In response, ShineGreymon’s eyes widen, and he begins to writhe and wrap his arms around himself, his desperate roars sounding by now very distinctly more like low-pitched screams. It really comes across like he’s in horrible, horrible agony. Aaaa, Agumon, you know your aniki would never, ever have meant to hurt you like this on purpose.

A glowing light forms in ShineGreymon’s chest, and the grey energy sputters out of his wings and tail. Masaru watches in horror, ShineGreymon giving one last long agonised roar as the light consumes his whole body… and he disintegrates into an egg.

That really is the only way to stop it. His fate was sealed from the moment Masaru lost control.

Masaru manages to rush forward and catch the egg as it falls, only to stare at it helplessly.

Masaru: “No way… Why… Why did you turn back into a Digiegg?!”

He certainly wasn’t thinking enough about the usual Digimon rampages to know this was inevitable. Much less would he have wanted to listen to BanchouLeomon telling him that ShineGreymon was going to self-destruct, as if that’s just it, and there’s nothing he can do. As determinedly positive as Masaru always is, he’d have been trying to tell himself that somehow, somehow things would turn out all right and Agumon would be fine.

But he’s not, and all Masaru can do is question why in helpless screaming frustration as the smoke and flames of his friend’s destruction surround him.

With that, we go to the opening, and this feels like a perfect time to show you probably my favourite shot from it! Despite the way he is, Masaru is going to be having a lot of reasons in the remaining parts of the series – this being one of them, of course – to be feeling as down about things as he looks here. I love the fact that this shot is here, right near the beginning of the opening, as a regular episode-ly reminder that Masaru is not necessarily as okay as he seems.

After the opening, they’ve regrouped in the shelter. Masaru’s sitting away from the rest of the group, holding Agumon’s egg and staring at it without a word while the others talk.

Yoshino: “Why did he turn back into a Digiegg?”

Megumi: “Maybe he used up all of his energy fighting with MirageGaogamon.”

Nobody here seems to have picked up on why it happened. This was so, so much more than ShineGreymon getting into an ordinary, lucid Digimon fight with MirageGaogamon and then happening to get tired from it. Half of his rampage wasn’t even aimed at MirageGaogamon at all.

Chika: “Hey, how long does it take for a Digiegg to hatch?”

Chika’s asking perhaps the more important questions – not the why, but the when are things going to get better? After all, Agumon’s her family, too.

Lalamon: “No-one knows.”

In the foreground, as he hears this, Masaru winces. I love that detail.

Lalamon: “It could be a week, or a year… It’s also possible that it’ll never hatch…”

Masaru: “That won’t happen! I’m sure he’ll hatch really soon! I’m sure of it!”

Masaru can’t bear to stay out of the conversation as Lalamon continues to talk all pessimistically about how Agumon might take ages to hatch, or never hatch at all. No. Things can’t possibly be that bad. Everything’s going to be fine, really soon. Definitely. It has to be. I love Masaru’s relentless optimism that is definitely never a coping mechanism for anything.

(I was going to do a subbing nitpick about how it sounds like Masaru’s actually saying Agumon will come back, rather than hatch, but it turns out that those two verbs in Japanese happen to be homophones. An appropriate coincidence! I wonder which word Masaru means when he says that. After all, it’s not like Masaru’s spent basically his entire life waiting for a certain someone else who’s missing to “come back”, constantly telling himself it’ll definitely happen someday while having no way to prove it, right.)

BanchouLeomon: “But even if he does, he won’t have his previous memories. […] When Agumon is reborn, he probably won’t even remember the days he spent with you.”

That is indeed how it works when Digimon get reverted to eggs! Someone who’s from the Digital World (or, perhaps, someone who’s studied Digimon extensively while living in the Digital World for several years) would know that.

Masaru doesn’t respond to this except to look worriedly at the egg. Even if Agumon does come back soon, it still might not be okay? He might have permanently forgotten everything about their friendship and their time together, no matter what happens from now?

…Yeah, Masaru’s gonna shove that one right to the back of his mind and refuse to think about it at all.

BanchouLeomon: “How do you plan on fighting Kurata without Agumon’s help? Daimon Masaru.”

Come on, BanchouLeomon (Suguru?); it’s not like Masaru planned on getting Agumon turned into an egg. This is a rough situation that is Masaru’s fault, but it’s not because he consciously made a bad choice.

(Also, is this Suguru right now? He’s being more subdued and practical, so I’m inclined to think it is indeed more likely to be him than BanchouLeomon at the moment. He did also call Masaru “Daimon Masaru”, which could perhaps be that sort of using-a-kid’s-full-name parental sternness he’s enacting here.)

Miki: “If only Tohma was around at a time like this…”

Masaru: “DON’T—! …Don’t talk about him.”

I love this. At the mention of Tohma, Masaru instantly snaps into fury – but then he catches himself, calms down just a little, and says what he was going to say with a more measured anger. He must have already realised on some level that it was him losing control of his emotions that led to this happening to Agumon, and he’s already trying to do better about it! Look at him learning from his mistakes.

(Also, really, Miki, why would you mention Tohma right now. I know Miki and Megumi weren’t outside to see the fight themselves, but surely they’d have been told that all this happened because Tohma’s betrayed them?)

Sayuri: “Masaru…”

Sayuri doesn’t sound admonishing here, just worried. She knows her son’s going through a really rough time right now, and there’s so little she can do to help him.

Elsewhere in the city, Tohma’s limo enters the building that Kurata’s using as a base of operations. It’s not subbed, but I can just barely make out that the sign on the gate includes the word “biomedical”. I guess that’s the public front Kurata uses for this facility that’s really for all of his very ethically dubious Digimon experiments.

As Tohma and Gaomon step out of the car, Gaomon’s holding his arm, still injured from the fight with ShineGreymon. It’s neat that the injury persists between forms like this. (Not that the animators have or will remember to draw the crack on MirageGaogamon’s hand armour except for when it’s very directly relevant. But.)

Behind them, Ikuto and Falcomon quietly emerge from the trunk of the limo, unnoticed. While everyone else was heading back to the shelter, they stowed away with Tohma, completely on their own initiative, to try and gather more info about what he and Kurata are up to. What good little ninjas!

Tohma and Gaomon enter Kurata’s office, where he greets them, and then sneezes, apparently because of Gaomon’s presence. At this point we’ve seen Kurata around plenty of other Digimon, including more than his own artificial ones, and he’s never sneezed around them. So this clearly isn’t actually allergies at all. It's a passive-aggression thing he does when around Digimon who are nominally on his side (so he can’t overtly show hatred for them), and yet who have free will and could turn on him any moment for all he knows. Eurgh. Kurata hates that. Digimon should either be completely under his control or soon-to-be-dead. If he can’t have either of those, at least he can act like they’re inconvenient and gross.

Kurata: “Excuse me. Your puppy was with you.”

Gaomon: “I am not a dog!”

Gaomon is still stubbornly denying being a dog to everyone who isn’t Relena. But in this case, with Kurata having derisively called him a puppy to diminish his personhood, I think I can let him off.

While Ikuto and Falcomon listen in secretly from a vent above the room, Kurata comments on the unexpected power ShineGreymon just displayed. Tohma counters that it wasn’t ShineGreymon’s power, but rather Masaru’s power being amplified by the Digivice, and we get a flashback to the dark evolution that’s just a little bit longer than it needs to be to remind us that it happened (which was literally earlier this episode, thanks to all the recaps).

Tohma: “This Digivice increased Daimon Masaru’s Digisoul to an explosive degree.”

It is interesting that Tohma calls it Masaru’s Digisoul, just like he did when he watched it happening. You’d think, as the one who figured out the negative-human-emotions thing, that he’d be able to distinguish between that and Digisoul, and this was very much the former.

Though I insist that the power that came from Masaru definitely wasn’t Digisoul in the usual sense, I do wonder if maybe Tohma’s comment is indicating that the Digivice really did have something to do with this other than simply transferring Masaru’s emotions into ShineGreymon. This is the Digivice Burst, presumably so named because it’s capable of facilitating the Burst Mode if done right. So maybe part of the reason this happened is because Masaru had those powerful negative emotions while carrying a Digivice Burst, which exists to amplify any kind of strong enough human emotions to Burst Mode levels, and doesn’t make a distinction between positive ones (Digisoul) or negative uncontrolled ones (bad, dangerous, rampage-inducing). Whoops. Suguru, you really oughta look into refining that tech some more and getting it to only work for actual safe Digisoul.

Tohma: “If I analyse this Digivice, I should be able to draw out power for MirageGaogamon that surpasses ShineGreymon’s.”

Tohma, are you sure doing that would be a good idea, considering how uncontrollably destructive ShineGreymon became when he grew that strong? I’m not entirely convinced Tohma can want to do this and put Gaomon (and the city) at risk like that. But, he’s got to say whatever will make Kurata happy and convinced he’s committed to the cause. He was told to go out there and defeat Masaru and ShineGreymon, and he didn’t, so here he is reassuring Kurata that he'll definitely be able to do it next time if he just does a bit of science.

Kurata: “There may be no need for you to do that.”

Mostly I imagine Kurata’s brushing this off because it doesn’t matter any more, and he’s got other plans to move onto now. But still, I wonder if part of this is because Tohma just argued that all this power came from the Digivice – in other words, the thing that Suguru created – and Kurata can’t stand the idea of using something rooted in Suguru’s expertise to further his agenda.

Kurata: “After all, ShineGreymon is now a Digiegg.”

Tohma: “What do you mean?”

Oh, man. Tohma really did leave the scene too early to see ShineGreymon revert to an egg. That’s got to be why he kept talking like he still needs to defeat ShineGreymon, not realising he effectively already has.

He had no idea until now just how badly his actions ended up screwing things up for Masaru, even if the majority of the blame for that is ultimately on Masaru himself. And upon hearing this, Tohma has to keep a poker-face and not show any amount of sympathy or regret for his friend at the news, because he’s not supposed to care about what happens to Masaru and Agumon any more.

Regardless, Kurata doesn’t care about why this happened (that’s Suguru’s area of research, and screw him), just so long as ShineGreymon is out of his hair one way or another. With that – with Tohma having done the favour he asked for and got Masaru out of the way (even if it didn’t quite happen as planned) – it seems Kurata trusts Tohma’s loyalty to the cause enough now to let him in on what he’s planning.

(To fool your enemy, you must first fool your friends. Kurata would never risk showing him this if Tohma had openly acted like he was only co-operating because of the bomb around his sister’s neck. Tohma knows exactly what he’s doing by putting on this act, even though he had to seriously hurt Masaru to do so, and it’s so good.)

So Kurata takes Tohma to his secret basement lab to see that huge tank that the narrative’s been teasing us about for a while now. We finally get to learn what’s in it: a dormant Belphemon Sleep Mode, an Ultimate-level Digimon.

The Digimon Analyser mentions that this is one of the Seven Demon Lords, which are a group of Digimon in wider Digimon lore where each one represents one of the seven deadly sins. Belphemon apparently represents Sloth, hence the sleeping, I guess. However, this fact is never relevant, and the other six Demon Lords will never appear in this series. Deadly sins, what deadly sins, the less said about those the better. All that matters for our purposes here is simply that Belphemon is very powerful and very evil.

Kurata narrates how he found Belphemon’s egg in some ancient ruins in the Digital World. He has some Gizmon: AT (the Adult-level form) behind him in the flashback, which puts this sometime after his first massacre in the Digital World, in which his Gizmon were only Child-level.

Kurata: “I thought it was strange… Why did these Digimon, who held no concept of death, create a grave and seal a Digiegg within it? Perhaps it was something they had consigned to the dark depths of oblivion so that it could never be reawakened.”

Kurata, finding what is clearly some very dangerous Sealed Evil In A Can, decides to take it home and work on opening that can. Very sensible, top marks.

By all accounts, Belphemon is every bit one of those Big Evil Digimon who is Evil because He Just Is. These are the least interesting kind of Digimon villain, and I’m very glad that his reign of attempting to take over the world or whatever got dealt with and thwarted in Savers’s long-distant backstory. We don’t have to deal with any of that now beyond what Kurata’s got planned in using Belphemon as one of his weapons.

No, really, though. When I got to this point on my first time watching, I became really worried that Belphemon was going to usurp Kurata as the main villain, and we’d have to spend the entire final arc painstakingly slowly working on taking down a boringly evil Digimon as the final big bad, instead of all the interesting nuanced conflict we’d had up until now. Luckily, I needn’t have worried, because Savers is better than that, and that’s not even remotely what the final arc is about.

Kurata: “I brought the Digiegg to the human world, and as I nurtured it, my doubts changed more and more into conviction… That Belphemon is perhaps the greatest ultimate weapon in the world.”

My earlier joking aside, Kurata isn’t that stupid as to immediately decide it’d be a great idea to pal up with the Digital World’s biggest evilest Digimon, especially given how he feels about any Digimon who have free will. But it seems he was fascinated in some way by this particular Digimon who appeared to be the enemy of every other Digimon out there. Perhaps he had an inkling of the thought that the enemy of his enemy could be his friend? Not so literally, but more along the lines of: if he could manage to control Belphemon, this Digimon that the rest of the Digital World’s inhabitants fought so hard to seal away, then maybe it could be his greatest asset in killing them all.

Note how Kurata says his doubts gradually changed into conviction. He was uncertain about this idea at first (which is to say, knowing Kurata, he was outright terrified of what Belphemon might do if things went wrong, not that he’d ever admit that). He must have only felt relatively safe because Belphemon was dormant and contained inside its egg and by his equipment. But then somewhere along the way, he stopped being worried. He doesn’t explain why.

I strongly suspect that this has nothing to do with what he was learning about Belphemon’s power – that would make any sane person more worried – and everything to do with how Kurata’s own sense of power and control over everything has been getting increasingly amplified and warped as his genocide plan advanced. He can kill any and every Digimon he wants to, while controlling all of the ones that make for a useful weapon, from his Gizmon to the Bio-Hybrids and now even Tohma and his partner. Surely some little demon thing that’s sitting here as an egg, or just asleep, will be no problem. Kurata is definitely the most powerful and the most in control of everything. There is no possibility that he could ever make any bad decisions, nope, not him.

(The hilarious thing is that, as things stand right now, Kurata doesn’t actually have any way of controlling Belphemon (at least not without a very big caveat) once it wakes up. Not currently. But he’s working on that.)

Tohma: “So the reason why you collected all of the Digimon’s life energy was to revive this Belphemon.”

Tohma had always been noticing the Gizmon sucking up the life energy and wondering what it was for, and now he finally sees why. As was being hinted at in the little Belphemon stingers, this is indeed the purpose of that. Killing ElDoradimon and all its citizens has given him all the energy he needs to wake it up at last.

Tohma: “And then you will annihilate the Digimon.”

Tohma manages to say this with an appreciative look on his face, keeping his disgust hidden. I cannot overstate my mad respect for him being able to put on this act.

Kurata: “That’s what I had in mind at first. But now that I have the power of Belphemon in my hands, that goal is much too insignificant!”

It makes sense that this would have been Kurata’s plan at first. Slowly kill his way through Digimon using the Gizmon and the Bio-Hybrids until he’s harvested enough life energy to awaken Belphemon (stumbling upon the Holy Capital with its high Digimon-density helped accelerate that), and then use Belphemon to much more quickly murder his way through the rest of the Digimon until they’re all dead.

But now, Kurata’s got it into his head that wiping out an entire world’s worth of sapient creatures is too insignificant a goal. Digimon are just vermin anyway; it was really just inevitable that they’d all get wiped out sooner or later by someone as powerful and important as Kurata. He can do so much more than just that.

Kurata: “Considering my position, I can use this power to control the human world! Yes! I will become the king who will rule over both this world and the Digital World!”

So now, Kurata wants to straight-up rule the world. Both of them, in fact. Even the Digital World – he’s gotten so secure in his sense of power over Digimon and their insignificance compared to him that he no longer feels such an urgent need to annihilate them all like he used to up until this point.

Ruling the world is usually just your obligatory clichéd villain goal. It rarely gets any real justification beyond, “eh, they’re evil, that’s just what evil characters do, right”. But with Kurata? It actually makes sense that he’s twisted himself into wanting this. Kurata is possibly the only take-over-the-world villain in anything whose motivation for doing so I’ve found myself able to actually understand and appreciate (as interesting character-writing).

I’ve been making a point of highlighting pretty much every single time Kurata’s taken the time to gloat, or be a big showman about his murdering, or indulge in the power he has over his enemies even when it’s not really necessary. I did that not just for the sake of it but because it’s a very important part of Kurata’s character in terms of driving him to these extremes.

He started out as a terrified coward refusing to admit he was wrong and prejudiced about Digimon, to the point of insisting that the correct response is to kill them all to protect all of humanity (but mostly himself). But on the surface, to insulate himself from his fear of being attacked by Digimon and from any notion that he might be in the wrong, he focused on the power he’s gained from his genius inventions and on making a huge gloating show of the whole massacre, in which these Digimon are nothing but insignificant vermin and he is the greatest most brilliant human alive.

It’s no surprise that somewhere along the way that developed into an absolutely massive god complex, to the point that this is no longer just about Digimon to him. Kurata’s defence mechanisms from his own fear and terribleness have become so ingrained and true to him that he now genuinely believes he deserves to lord his power over everybody, even the Digimon that he used to fear so badly that he just wanted them gone, and the humans that he claimed to be doing this to protect in the first place.

He may be an absolutely despicable excuse for a human being who deserves not an ounce of sympathy, but man Kurata’s a really well-written psychologically interesting villain. I don’t usually care for villains that much, but Kurata’s one I can appreciate a lot (in a very decidedly only out-universe kind of way).

Tohma: “I see.”

Tohma still manages to make himself look and sound appreciative about this whole idea, despite that he must be reeling from learning the full extent of what an absolute bonkers god-complex megalomaniac he’s been forced to pretend to work for while a bomb hangs around his sister’s neck. I continue to be incredibly impressed.

Ikuto: “I won’t let you get away with that!”

But meanwhile, Ikuto, who’s been hiding in the shadows of the lab eavesdropping with Falcomon, can’t keep his fury contained any more. It would really have been safer and better for him to quietly sneak away with this information without ever letting Kurata know he heard it. But, come on, did you really expect Ikuto to not impulsively try and fight his enemy? He showed restraint not doing this sooner, honestly.

Ikuto leaps at Kurata, and please appreciate Kurata’s body language (and frantic screaming noises) as he is attacked not even by a big scary vicious Digimon but simply a child with a boomerang. No matter what kind of all-powerful front he projects all the time, Kurata is still deeply terrified of anything and everything that might be able to break through that shield he’s put up and hurt him. That’s still why he's doing all of this and the core reason he’s driven himself to such ridiculous extremes.

Gaomon, at Tohma’s order, rushes at Ikuto with an attack. Ikuto looks ready to fight back, but Falcomon, the more sensible of the pair, jumps in to grab Ikuto and fly away, covering their escape with some shurikens and smoke bombs to slow Gaomon down. It’s kinda neat seeing this little fight between Child-levels here, in amongst all of the far more massive Ultimate-level battles that’ve been going on.

While Kurata frantically sounds the alarm and sends an order to his Gizmon to chase down the intruders, Tohma and Gaomon nod to each other and head out there to do so too, despite not having been specifically told to by Kurata.

Outside, Ikuto’s escaping on Peckmon. Realistically he should have evolved Falcomon all the way, but I don’t care, because I like Peckmon and am happy to see him again, and the Falcomon to Peckmon evolution happened offscreen so it doesn’t feel like padding. (Peckmon is smaller than Yatagaramon; maybe that’s why, if he evolved while they were still in the building.) Some Gizmon: XT appear in the sky to chase him down, while Tohma’s limo drives along below.

Tohma: “Professor Kurata. Please call off the Gizmon: XT.”

Kurata: “Can I really count on you?”

Tohma: “We can’t let them get away after what they saw in the basement. Am I wrong?”

That’s not actually an argument as to why he should call off the Gizmon: XT. Surely, if it’s that important that they don’t let Ikuto get away, it’d be better to have the Gizmon and MirageGaogamon both working to chase him down?

Of course, Tohma really wants the Gizmon called off so that they don’t kill Ikuto and Falcomon, which he himself intends to very specifically not do while making it look like he is. But by carefully choosing his answer to Kurata’s question to make a big point of how he definitely cares about not letting Ikuto get away, he makes it sound like calling off the Gizmon will somehow help with this and that Kurata can definitely trust him to carry out the job himself, on his own.

This is another thing that Tohma can only do because Kurata completely believes he’s co-operating of his own free will. Fooling his enemy by having fooled his friends continues to be so important and powerful.

Some evolutions later – and as the Gizmon leave, because Kurata really did buy that Tohma would be better doing this alone and trust him to get it done – MirageGaogamon and Yatagaramon face each other down.

Yatagaramon: “Are you seriously betraying us?”

MirageGaogamon: “I simply obey my master’s orders.”

Just like ShineGreymon did, Yatagaramon seems to want to know if MirageGaogamon himself is really okay with doing this, never mind what Tohma thinks. And again, MirageGaogamon says the same line, to deflect from the real question and give an answer that isn’t actually a lie.

Meanwhile in the DATS hideout, Masaru’s been getting Miki and Megumi to check their makeshift databases for info on how to hatch a Digiegg. Look at him trying to do something about this, refusing to just sit and accept the fact that he’s helpless to bring Agumon back any sooner. Except, the database doesn’t have a single thing on it. Masaru’s still powerless.

Yoshino comments that Yushima’s disappeared off somewhere too, which indeed he has; he hasn’t been seen since episode 33 and never even came to the secret base with them. Apparently he found something more interesting to go and help with. Though I confess I would have enjoyed seeing his observations on Masaru’s situation right now.

Lalamon pipes up that she can sense Yatagaramon and MirageGaogamon’s signals, meaning Tohma and Ikuto must be fighting. Everyone wants to head out there to do something about it, including Masaru, of course – but BanchouLeomon tells him he can’t go.

BanchouLeomon: “Now that you’ve lost Agumon, what can you do on your own?”

Masaru: “Even if I don’t have him, I can still punch Tohma’s lights out!”

Oh, Masaru. He doesn’t need his Digimon partner with him to be able to punch something himself. And for him this isn’t even necessarily so much about stopping the Digimon fight – he seems to be aware enough that he’s not beating MirageGaogamon with just his own fists – it’s about settling his vendetta against Tohma.

BanchouLeomon: “Were you not able to hear them? Hear Agumon’s screams?!”

Masaru: “Agumon’s… screams?”

BanchouLeomon: “Yes! The pained cries of his soul as he was flattened underneath your emotions! […] Enveloped by your Digisoul of hatred, he was suffering incredible pain… And yet… not once did you even bother to listen to his cries.”

Agumon really was in horrible pain! I made note of how ShineGreymon’s roars towards the end were beginning to sound like he was in incredible agony, because that was absolutely the point that his voice actor and the animators were getting across there. Poor Agumon. The Digimon are always victims in these human-emotion-fuelled rampages, and perhaps never any more so than here, the most overwhelmingly powerful example of them all.

This is accompanied by some flashback shots of ShineGreymon’s rampage that are perhaps a little too unnecessarily long, especially considering it literally happened earlier this very episode. (To be fair, that whole sequence was really well-animated by Savers’ standards and did great at getting across how dangerously uncontainable ShineGreymon’s power was, so I don’t entirely blame the animators for wanting to make the most out of those bits by showing them multiple times.) Though I suppose it is relevant to show them again here with the new context that ShineGreymon was horribly suffering, because most people probably didn’t see it that way the first time.

Masaru certainly didn’t. He was too caught up in his fury at first, and then even once he snapped out of that, he was more just confused and wanting his friend to stop destroying things, not properly realising that Agumon’s actual conscious self would have wanted to stop even more desperately than he did. Everyone was surprised that he turned into an egg at the end of his rampage, but knowing how much the whole thing was hurting him, it makes a lot more sense.

Masaru: “You’re saying Agumon turned back into a Digiegg… because I didn’t use the Burst Mode properly?”

BanchouLeomon: “I thought I warned you. Burst Mode is a double-edged sword. If you make a mistake in using it, you will only end up hurting yourself.”

So, back to this topic that I shelved earlier in the episode: I really don’t agree that the problem was the Burst Mode itself.

It’s fair for Masaru to bring it up, from his perspective. He’s becoming aware that he messed up and this is his fault, and he’s scrambling for an explanation as to where he went wrong. It makes sense that he’d ask if it’s about the Burst Mode, upon remembering BanchouLeomon’s warning about misusing it.

But for BanchouLeomon to confirm that yeah, that’s exactly what you did wrong, I totally warned you… eh? His warning to Masaru was simply to not use the Burst Mode at all, with no telling him specifically how to avoid doing so, and nothing telling him how it can go badly. At no point did he tell Masaru, for example, “hey, don’t go losing control of your emotions”.

So the thing is, Masaru technically heeded BanchouLeomon’s warning! I don’t believe that at any point he was ever trying to activate Burst Mode. He’d snapped and wanted Tohma dead, but there was never any sense that he wanted more power in order to be able to achieve that and was consciously urging ShineGreymon to go Burst Mode for all the wrong reasons. The Burst Mode – or rather, Ruin Mode – just happened unintentionally in response to Masaru’s rage. Saying that Masaru made a mistake in using the Burst Mode is really misleading, because he wasn’t even consciously using Burst Mode at all.

Masaru’s mistake was losing control of his negative emotions while being connected to a Digimon partner. Since his partner is powered by his emotions, Masaru therefore has a responsibility to keep his emotions under control in order to not hurt him and cause accidents like this. This is something that could have happened at any evolution level. It was just particularly destructive this time because the evolution level it happened to occur at was the most powerful possible one.

So maybe this is another example of BanchouLeomon/Suguru being a bad teacher. Maybe it’s just kind of awkward writing because he mostly exists to be this Mentor Figure giving foreshadowing and exposition about these Digisoul concepts.

But maybe it could actually make in-story sense that he goes in the complete wrong direction with this. Remember, Tohma was the one who figured out the deal with Digimon rampaging due to negative human emotions. And all of those rampages happen in the human world, aka the place where Suguru hasn’t been in ten years. Suguru probably knows relatively little about this phenomenon, because he should never have been in a position to observe and study it. He indicated in episode 29 an awareness that Digisoul is like a mirror version of the negative emotions humans can often have (shush what deadly sins), but he didn’t actually bring up how those negative emotions can have a bad influence on Digimon. He probably didn’t know that.

So instead, what Suguru does here is assume that this is all about the phenomenon he does have experience and knowledge of, namely the Burst Mode. The fact that he brought up Burst Mode being dangerous means he must have seen or heard of examples of Digimon in the Digital World trying to go Burst Mode and having it go horribly wrong because they can’t control it, even with no human emotions in the picture at all. (Maybe his advice was so vague because he’s not actually entirely sure how not to mess it up!) So he assumes that that’s where Masaru went wrong, without fully recognising that there’s another layer to this that doesn’t actually have that much to do with the Burst Mode itself.

(At the very least, it can’t be the case that Suguru knows about Burst Mode going wrong from having accidentally done that himself with BanchouLeomon. If that’d happened, BanchouLeomon would have ended up an egg, and, uh… to avoid unnecessary spoilers, let’s just say there’s reasons I know that can’t be a thing that ever happened.)

Still, I do appreciate that BanchouLeomon’s previous lines about how much pain Agumon was in made a point of it happening due to Masaru’s Digisoul of hatred (which I still argue is not technically a Digisoul, but whatever), because yes, that is the important part here. His hatred and his emotions caused this.

Masaru: “I… hurt Agumon…”

Aww. At least this is the real take-home message Masaru gets from all this – that he hurt Agumon. That part is accurate, and heart-breaking. Of course Masaru would never, ever do that to his best friend on purpose and hates to learn that he did it anyway.

(Nuanced subbing nitpick: Japanese is vague and can often omit words entirely, including verbs. A closer translation might be more like, “I did this… to Agumon…”; in the original line, Masaru can’t even bring himself to voice the word hurt even as he manages to articulate that he’s the one responsible for this.)

Tohma: “MirageGaogamon! Capture Ikuto!”

Out in the city, the fight between the big dog and the big bird is still going on. But look at what Tohma’s ordering his partner to do to Ikuto. Not kill him, huh, even though that’d be the easiest way to stop him getting away with what he overheard.

Yatagaramon: “You’re really serious!”

MirageGaogamon: “Stop making me repeat myself. I simply obey my master’s orders!”

Haha, yes, MirageGaogamon really doesn’t like being made to repeat this one line, because he doesn’t want anybody to figure out that it’s the only thing he can say that’s both truthful and not revealing more than he wants to.

Yatagaramon: “Even when you know he’s wrong?”

MirageGaogamon: “Silence!” [he swipes at Yatagaramon’s face and barely misses] “I… believe in the path that Master chooses! I will continue to do so, even if it ends up sending him to Hell!”

Aww, MirageGaogamon, what a good loyal dog. Though I do have to wonder whether he actually would willingly follow Tohma on a path that was genuinely sending him to Hell. I’d hope that he’d be better than that and would have the initiative to ignore what Tohma wants in favour of what Tohma needs, if things really got that dire. By “sending him to hell”, it sounds less like MirageGaogamon’s talking about Tohma becoming evil and irredeemable (because he’s not and he wouldn’t) and more like Tohma spiralling into bad things that’ll make him suffer. You’d think that his good dog would want to save him from that!

(But then again, Gaomon has always been very stoically obedient even to the point of never trying to get Tohma to talk about his issues when doing so might help him feel better, so.)

That little pause in MirageGaogamon’s line here is interesting. Granted, the way it’s typed out here with the ellipsis makes it sound more hesitant than it really is in delivery – in practice it sounds more like a pause for drama. But I do wonder if the pause is nonetheless there because it takes him a moment to think of a new line that’s still technically not lying while not also giving the game away. Damn it, Yatagaramon, stop making him put on this act, he’s not actually very good at improvising.

As Yatagaramon calls him a blockhead, presumably giving up on trying to talk him out of this, MirageGaogamon swipes at his face again… and again, just barely misses, in a way that’s made really clear to us in this shot here. Hmmmm. You’d think an Ultimate-level would have wiped the floor with a Perfect-level by now, wouldn’t you.

Masaru: “I’m really going to go. I have to!”

BanchouLeomon: “Don’t you get it yet?!”

Masaru: “I do. My hatred turned Agumon into a Digiegg, right?” [he glances at the egg on Sayuri’s lap] “But even so, this feeling won’t go away until I’ve settled things with Tohma!”

I love Masaru’s outlook here. This is emphatically not him missing the point and continuing to try and make the same mistake that got Agumon hurt. He’s realised and more or less accepted that Agumon’s current condition is his fault, but that hasn’t magically erased how he feels about the Tohma situation. If he stays in here and stews in that just because it might be bad for him to express any of it at all, he’s only going to continue to boil with bottled-up anger about the whole thing, and that won’t actually help. That could just make those emotions build even more and possibly explode in an even worse way somewhere down the line.

(Part of the reason he exploded so badly in the first place does seem to be all of the pain from Mercurimon and ElDoradimon and everyone else’s deaths, which Masaru had been bottling up, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge and process and grieve for at any point.)

Masaru needs an outlet for all these feelings in order to be able to properly deal with them, and the only suitable outlet is to go and confront Tohma to try and do something about it all. He’s not planning on losing control again; he knows now that that was his problem, and he’s already been shown trying to curb his anger and keep it in line. But he can’t just sit here and do nothing with it.

Masaru: “If you keep getting in my way, I’ll just have to beat you first!”

Masaru is so determined to get out there to sort out his emotions (and honestly I really think this is the right approach for him to have!) that he is going to punch his way past this eight-foot lion man if he has to. Chika and Sayuri both seem pretty alarmed as he throws a punch at BanchouLeomon – I guess less because he’s a big imposing Digimon and more because he’s their ally – but BanchouLeomon effortlessly blocks it.

BanchouLeomon: “Suguru’s fists… shone a thousand times brighter than yours!”

Masaru: “Dad’s… fists?”

Heh. This sure was the last thing Masaru expected to hear out of BanchouLeomon. Tohma may have figured out that Suguru has some kind of a connection to him, but it never crossed Masaru’s mind. BanchouLeomon’s just a cool trustworthy banchou Digimon who’s all mysterious and vague for some reason; he was never supposed to have anything to do with Masaru’s dad.

It makes sense for everything up to this point in this episode to have been Suguru speaking, because he was talking about technical Digisoul and Burst Mode stuff. Even when he was being a bit forceful about Masaru’s hatred, that could have been parental sternness coming through. But this? Even aside from how it’d be odd for Suguru to refer to himself in third-person like this, the “thousand times brighter” smacks of that very over-the-top BanchouLeomon bombasticness.

Which makes it interesting that they apparently switched who’s in the driving seat in the middle of a conversation, something I’m not sure they ever otherwise do. Suguru was happy to explain the Burst Mode stuff and how Masaru made a mistake, but apparently not this. I’m imagining Suguru seeing the volatile, essentially vulnerable state his son’s in and suddenly being all, “I can’t do this, I want to dad him too much, they might figure out who I am. You take over,” to BanchouLeomon in his head. Aww.

BanchouLeomon: “A pure Digisoul will not be born from a fist of hatred. Furthermore, mastering the Burst Mode will be a dream within a dream!”

Finally, some vaguely decent advice on how not to misuse the Burst Mode, not that Masaru hasn’t already figured out from the rest of their conversation that getting overwhelmed with hatred was his problem. It’s still somewhat missing the point of why Masaru wants to leave and go confront Tohma, though. He’s not trying to do better at the Burst Mode right now – he literally can’t without Agumon anyway – he’s just trying to deal with his painful emotions in some way.

BanchouLeomon: “I’d thought… that you would be the man who could surpass Suguru.”

Masaru: “My… Dad…?”

Aww! BanchouLeomon really believes in his friend’s son! No doubt fuelled by Suguru also believing that about his son.

Masaru is still mentally short-circuiting too much at having things suddenly be about his dad to give any kind of coherent response. What does BanchouLeomon mean, it might be possible for him to surpass his dad. Does he… actually believe that? That’s a lot for Masaru to process, far more than he’s able or willing to let himself show, especially in the midst of everything else he's going through right now.

BanchouLeomon: “It’s a pity.”

Well, at least, he did believe that, but apparently not so much now. Geez, BanchouLeomon, he made one mistake, a mistake he was never even properly taught how not to make. Surely you don’t want to lose faith in your friend’s son that quickly from just one thing?

And I refuse to believe that Suguru has lost his faith in Masaru this quickly. I hope he’s planning on arguing right back against that and making a case for his son’s potential. Suguru might be a little disappointed to have seen Masaru slip up this badly, but there’s no way he’d ever give up on him like BanchouLeomon apparently has here.

With that, BanchouLeomon turns around and leaves. Apparently he… doesn’t actually care that much about stopping Masaru from heading out there? Maybe he just wanted to say his bit to Masaru first at least to try and make sure Masaru got the point (he really already had, actually). Or maybe this is a result of them switching drivers mid-conversation, and BanchouLeomon doesn’t care nearly as much as Suguru about what Masaru does or doesn’t do from here.

Sayuri: “That man…”

Sayuri is also pretty taken aback to hear this big lion man talking like he’s so familiar with her husband. I wonder if there’s also something even more familiar about BanchouLeomon himself that she’s subtly picking up on. She knows Suguru better than anyone else in the Daimon family, since her kids were so young when he left, so if anyone could pick up on an implacable Vibe that just feels like Suguru somehow, it'd be her.

Back out in the fight, Yatagaramon fires a beam attack at MirageGaogamon, who repels it with a single hand. That’s the hand that’s supposed to be injured, though the animators have evidently forgotten about this for now, because they haven’t been drawing the crack in his armour, and because repelling this attack doesn’t visibly cause him any pain like it ought to.

(The repelled attack casually levels a building. They’ve been causing quite a bit of city-destruction here, but presumably most people have evacuated by now, plus it’s night-time and these look like office buildings, so it’s fine, right.)

Somehow, literally straight after MirageGaogamon uses his injured hand without appearing to be in any pain while doing so, we see him clutching his arm, the animators having finally remembered to draw the crack in it as Ikuto points out the weakness. I do like this as a general idea – keeping consequences from a previous fight that allow the weaker Ikuto and Yatagaramon to have a chance here - but it’s bizarre that this moment comes so directly after a moment in which the injury might as well have not existed.

Regardless, Ikuto and Yatagaramon swoop at MirageGaogamon, dodging a beam attack with Ikuto leaping over it while Yatagaramon flies under it for maximum coolness points. It’s not even Yatagaramon but Ikuto who attacks the weak point, digging into the crack with his boomerang. Maybe it’s easier for him to aim for it since he’s smaller. It works, in that it obviously hurts MirageGaogamon a lot… but not nearly enough to get close to defeating him.

Tohma: “Since you’ve cornered MirageGaogamon this far, I’ve gotten a higher opinion of you. But playtime is over!”

Yes, because clearly Tohma always had such a low opinion of Ikuto until now. Obviously, he’s just some idiotic ordinary person who’s not a genius, so Tohma would look down on him, right? Tohma’s putting on this unnecessarily pompous villain speech to pretend that it’s about that, just in case Kurata’s listening. He is absolutely committed to this act.

Masaru, Yoshino, Miki and Megumi make it out into the city in time to see Yatagaramon and Ikuto flying towards them. Ikuto’s calling Masaru’s name, probably desperate to tell him what he’s learned about the plan with Belphemon. But before he can get there, MirageGaogamon tackles Yatagaramon with glowing speed and sends him and Ikuto crashing into the sea.

With that, Tohma and MirageGaogamon leave. They’ve definitely defeated Ikuto so that he won’t be telling anyone anything, right? It plausibly looks enough like that on the surface, provided Kurata trusts Tohma enough to not question it. Ikuto and Falcomon have probably drowned or whatever; no need to worry about them any more.

Masaru and his group rush to the water’s edge and call out to Ikuto. And hey, props to Masaru! He came out here nominally to try and settle things with Tohma, but he ended up too late to do anything about the fight. From this position, he could still try and hunt down Tohma just to get even with him… or he could focus on helping Ikuto. Saving your friends is better than punishing your enemies. Masaru’s making the right choice.

Tohma returns to the basement lab, where Kurata doesn’t even feel the need to check for a body and/or an egg and completely buys that he dealt with the witnesses. (Again, I cannot stress enough: this is only possible because Tohma made Kurata trust him. I love how Tohma’s playing this. It’s so good.)

Kurata: “It’s not just ShineGreymon, but it may be safe to say that there is absolutely no-one who will mess with me now.”

Geez, who’s Rosemon, then? Does she just not exist? Not count, because she’s female? Come on, she’s just as much of a threat as ShineGreymon.

(I hope this is meant to be Kurata being sexist and/or making an oversight, rather than the writers, because, uh.)

Tohma: “Now you will be able to achieve your goals.”

Look at Tohma being a good little megalomaniac’s henchman, supporting Kurata in his world domination goals. He definitely thinks that all of this is a good thing.

Kurata: “Now, let’s take our first step into the new world!”

…Yeah, when Kurata said that “new world” stuff to Tohma to try and get him on board, he wasn’t just making it up for the sake of persuasion to try and sound like he meant peace, or anything like that. This is actually how he’s thinking of this world he’s going to rule over using Belphemon, just like with Nanami’s twisted ambitions for godhood.

Elsewhere, as one last stinger, Relena’s sitting in a hospital bed awaiting the operation that’ll cure her, when Yushima and Kamemon enter the room, dressed as hospital staff. That’s where Yushima’s gone off to all this time: he’s trying to do something about this situation from the Norstein angle.

(Kamemon’s nurse pigtails are very good.)

Overall thoughts

My favourite arc continues to be delightful!

I like to think of the fight between Masaru and Tohma and what it leads to as one continuous scene even though it happens to be split up between episodes, so – what I said last week about how much I love that Masaru is driven to snap by these events? Append onto that: I love that Masaru is driven so far that he actually genuinely wants Tohma to DIE. I adore it when usually-good characters are driven to horrible extremes like this, and you can follow their psychology and completely believe it happening.

And then there’s serious consequences for Masaru having triggered this dark evolution and become so consumed by anger. The narrative does not just let him brush it off like it never happened. He has to struggle to come to terms with the fact that the loss of Agumon is his fault, and learn from his mistakes, which we do see him beginning to do as he works to control his anger better! This is the first of several episodes between now and the end of the series that have a big focus on Masaru being Not Okay, and naturally, since Masaru is my favourite, I am very thrilled by this.

I also just love how ShineGreymon’s rampage is tied intrinsically into our main worldbuilding concept of Digimon being influenced by human emotions. That idea that we spent the first arc establishing keeps being relevant in really big ways! It sure is a very bad thing when the emotions in question are this strongly negative, and it really is entirely on the human and not the Digimon when this happens.

This isn’t specifically a thing about this episode as such because it’d happened at some point prior to this, but I really appreciate how Kurata’s god complex progressing to the point of him wanting to take over both worlds is something that actually makes coherent psychological sense. So few times can I actually truly buy the motives of villains who want to take over the world, but Savers’ writing of Kurata completely sells me on it.

Then Tohma’s ploy continues to be impressive, even if making Masaru believe the fake betrayal so that Kurata would also believe it came at such a great cost. We see the payoff of him earning Kurata’s trust, in that he gets to both learn Kurata’s big plan and also chase off Ikuto safely without getting him killed, all while making it look on the surface like he’s totally on board with this.

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[Dub comparison]

#digimon #digimon savers #masaru daimon #agumon #tohma h norstein #gaomon #ikuto noguchi #akihiro kurata #banchouleomon #suguru daimon #belphemon

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