I am not part of the Digimon fandom, so I wonder how they take this sudden change in the approach of Digimon in the past couple years to basically become "Adventures" pandering. Are they welcoming it or reacting like the Pokémon fandom with the Kando pandering?
Digimon Adventure Oops All Fights
-
-
@.access:
I am not part of the Digimon fandom, so I wonder how they take this sudden change in the approach of Digimon in the past couple years to basically become "Adventures" pandering. Are they welcoming it or reacting like the Pokémon fandom with the Kando pandering?
Well, Tri was pretty universally reviled, and it's left a pretty bad taste in people's mouths ever since.
I'm ultimately more upset that this reboot is taking Kitaro's spot and delaying Dragon Ball's return even further.
-
I didn't watch Tri (or Xros Wars). Why was it bad?
-
I didn't watch Tri (or Xros Wars). Why was it bad?
simply put, it tries much much too hard to be a "darker and more mature" series with the Adventure cast and ultimately comes out of it as just a bunch of poorly written, poorly paced movies with so little actual substance that it becomes a wonder how they kept making them after the increasingly vitriolic reactions to each new one.
-
How long was the original season compared to the 4th one, the one with the fusions?
Like I was thinking about how the original cast of eight plus their eighth digimons were well developed, and these 6 losers with just two or three digimons that were just more characters, so total 9, were painfully underdeveloped. Even if that particular iteration of the digital world was my favorite, they did almost nothing with it, and with less characters they developed even less than usual.
-
Hey! You know what everyone loves? Reboots!
So they are going to reboot the original season? Nice, would love to see them adding more characteristics, more villains and better story.
-
I didn't watch Tri (or Xros Wars). Why was it bad?
Tri was sad and depressing and joyless and focused entirely on a Mary Sue, with the entire cast hating their lives and each other. Badly paced and poorly thought out.
If the first movie had been "life after they grew up wasn't what they expected" and a little down, then perked back up when the Digimon came back, that'd be one thing. But it was just bitter bad dark-fanfic the whole time that made everyone miserable for the sake of it
How long was the original season compared to the 4th one, the one with the fusions?
Like I was thinking about how the original cast of eight plus their eighth digimons were well developed, and these 6 losers with just two or three digimons that were just more characters, so total 9, were painfully underdeveloped. Even if that particular iteration of the digital world was my favorite, they did almost nothing with it, and with less characters they developed even less than usual.
All the series were 48-54 episodes, except the Xros one which was 80.
Notably though Adventure and 02 combined got 104 episodes, so even if people didn't care for their second season, that was still a lot more time with the characters.
My favorite is still easily Tamers though.
-
I find season 1 to have more charm then season 2. Season 2 has a troubled production with two main writers clashing on each other. One writer was into making the stories upbeat and lighthearted while the other one prefers dark and depressing character driven stories hence why season 2 suffers a mood swing combine with inconsistencies and plot holes.
Head writer of season 1 Satoru Nishizono never wanted a sequel to Adventure and left the project. Eventually season 2 just shoved the original cast save for Takeru and Hikiri and introduce more stereotypical cast and bunch of whiney villains with a tragic background and how they handled Oikawa very badly. The season as the result ends up being a commerical rather then a story with a good heart to it and a very stupid ending.
I tried to watch Tri but it looks like it suffers what season 2 suffers and has no joy from season 1. Tried to watch but no new episodes came on yet.By the last episodes of season 2, they drawings was so bad, it's like Toei doesn't care and just want to hurry up and move on to another lackluster series known as Tamersn
-
Tri was dreary AF. And I actually missed how unique each of the kids looked even though they were wonky. I don't think there was a point at all I actually enjoyed. I know I finished Tri but I don't recall what the solution actually was.
-
@joekido:
I find season 1 to have more charm then season 2. Season 2 has a troubled production with two main writers clashing on each other. One writer was into making the stories upbeat and lighthearted while the other one prefers dark and depressing character driven stories hence why season 2 suffers a mood swing combine with inconsistencies and plot holes.
Head writer of season 1 Satoru Nishizono never wanted a sequel to Adventure and left the project. Eventually season 2 just shoved the original cast save for Takeru and Hikiri and introduce more stereotypical cast and bunch of whiney villains with a tragic background and how they handled Oikawa very badly. The season as the result ends up being a commerical rather then a story with a good heart to it and a very stupid ending.
I tried to watch Tri but it looks like it suffers what season 2 suffers and has no joy from season 1. Tried to watch but no new episodes came on yet.By the last episodes of season 2, they drawings was so bad, it's like Toei doesn't care and just want to hurry up and move on to another lackluster series known as Tamersn
I take this to mean you dont like Tamers? Why is that? I'm not condemning you. I really want to know.
-
I take this to mean you dont like Tamers? Why is that? I'm not condemning you. I really want to know.
Well I tried to watch it but it just did not grab my attention so far, at first it looks like it's going to be promising but it would drag on, gets a little boring and then it just did not have the same charm season 1 has.
The concept looks interesting but as a whole it was meh. -
@joekido:
By the last episodes of season 2, they drawings was so bad, it's like Toei doesn't care and just want to hurry up and move on to another lackluster series known as Tamersn
Tamers is the best one though.
-
I actually really liked the 4th season. I liked the idea of them doing a fusion with the digimon.
-
@joekido:
Well I tried to watch it but it just did not grab my attention so far, at first it looks like it's going to be promising but it would drag on, gets a little boring and then it just did not have the same charm season 1 has.
The concept looks interesting but as a whole it was meh.Tamers does suffer from a very slow start… It kinda ramps up a bit when the Devas get introduced (like, episode 12 or 13 I think?) and by the time they go to the Digital World like ten episodes later it's genuinely compelling stuff and the final arc is Darker and Edgier done right… But I can't deny that all of that good stuff requires one to go through a whole bunch of pretty meh stuff to get to.
-
I usually like slow pacing, so this is actually making Tamers sound pretty fun to try out funnily enough.
-
I remember loving Tamers back in the day, but I doubt I would enjoy it now. In my mind when I recall it I instantly get this feeling of "trying too hard to be dark and edgy", something that didn't bothered me so much at the time but would probably annoy me to no end now… so I just leave it there, on the nostalgia zone where I can still enjoy it from afar.
That said, I doubt I would enjoy any season if I was to rewatch it now. Tried it with 01 and was too bored to finish the first episode.
-
Applimon and Xros Wars were both way better than Tri.
I'm very concerned that Digimon will become a purely nostalgia-based franchise and fall into decline like Sonic and Pokemon have.
-
Applimon and Xros Wars were both way better than Tri.
I'm very concerned that Digimon will become a purely nostalgia-based franchise and fall into decline like Sonic and Pokemon have.
I believe it already gotten to that point by now.
-
Adventure has all the charm and fun, 02 has plenty of fun but struggles with a bit of a mess, Tamers is a slow start to greatness (they really tried to force that card gimmick early on…), Frontier is a great start that trips up in the 3rd act, and Data squad is a weaker tamers with too small a cast. That's all I've watched though.
A reboot of Adventure fills me with a lot of conflicted feelings. My nostalgia for adventure still hasn't dimmed after all these years and give it a rewatch usually once a year. I'd love to see them again with an altered story. Of course, I'm also incredibly skeptical that they'll be able to recapture the charm the original had after all these years... especially in the dub world. I've never given subbed digimon a try, and I still haven't watched any of Xros Wars or Tri for their dub qualities. I can assume this would probably get picked up by disney for their anime block and the quality of those these days has sure been.....mixed. You could lose a lot of the charm if it's phoned in with a basic translation script and a lot of their new stiff and crappy voice direction.
The hope and the worry over it make me kinda want to just not think about it anymore until it's out.
-
Adventure has all the charm and fun, 02 has plenty of fun but struggles with a bit of a mess, Tamers is a slow start to greatness (they really tried to force that card gimmick early on…), Frontier is a great start that trips up in the 3rd act, and Data squad is a weaker tamers with too small a cast. That's all I've watched though.
A reboot of Adventure fills me with a lot of conflicted feelings. My nostalgia for adventure still hasn't dimmed after all these years and give it a rewatch usually once a year. I'd love to see them again with an altered story. Of course, I'm also incredibly skeptical that they'll be able to recapture the charm the original had after all these years... especially in the dub world. I've never given subbed digimon a try, and I still haven't watched any of Xros Wars or Tri for their dub qualities. I can assume this would probably get picked up by disney for their anime block and the quality of those these days has sure been.....mixed. You could lose a lot of the charm if it's phoned in with a basic translation script and a lot of their new stiff and crappy voice direction.
The hope and the worry over it make me kinda want to just not think about it anymore until it's out.
I don't really believe it's possible to improve on Adventure any more. Sure, you could make a lot of minor improvements on paper, but nostalgia will always elevate the original over almost any remake.
It's still seen as the best isekai by a lot of people. -
I think we all know the best Isekai is Wizard of Oz.
-
That's not how you spell "Alice in Wonderland."
-
Both y'all need to go back to English class and learn how to spell The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
-
What about Urashimako? Urashima Tarō is the best hero!
Okay, seriously though, the actual best Isekai for my money is Johji Manabe's Capricorn. Which basically no one knows about because Manabe never got anywhere near the level of recognition he deserved before he switched to just doing all porn. Outlanders is probably his best known work, but Capricorn is the only one that would count as an Isekai.
I really wish his masterwork Rai would have gotten a legit translation from someone, anyone, at some point, chinese bootleg and raw manga don't cut it.
The Twelve Kingdoms is pretty solid too.
-
Best digimon NPCs: 1 definitely.
Best main characters: tamers, best partners as well.
Best digiworld: frontier, there is something about the legendary warriors, and the fact that the world existed in those data principles of modular pieces that I like very much, but the story of the knights just always wining, instead of a infinity stone like race to the pieces, with victories and defeats, and then in the end Lucemon doing a Thanos like speed run of getting them all would have been better.
Best villain progression: tamers again, how impmon grew paralelly with them, the devas were menacing, maybe too much for their actual final role of actually having a good reason to fight, and the D reaper was just nightmare.
Xoss wars had good stuff, letting the digimon be the majority of the cast could have been entertaining, but too many of them were one note, the world again was video-gamey in a good way with the Crown Jewels, but they start with an absurd number and then cut back to 8 after a timeskip that doesn’t show progress besides the change on villain leadership. The villains were a power based aliance so some of them weren’t just evil minions, funnily enough the pirate digimon. M
But besides his name I can’t remember anything about Baguramon, neither powers or motivations, Lilithmon finally got in to be a Jessie/Doronjo character of bumbling sexy ineffective villain, and most of the digimon combos felt more race to the biggest number than interesting combos for weird power ups, and most of the time focused on just shoutmon. -
One benefit of an Adventure remake is that we could get a faithful dub. I hope they get as many of the original voice actors then.
-
Best digiworld: frontier, there is something about the legendary warriors, and the fact that the world existed in those data principles of modular pieces that I like very much, but the story of the knights just always wining, instead of a infinity stone like race to the pieces, with victories and defeats, and then in the end Lucemon doing a Thanos like speed run of getting them all would have been better.
For me, the problem with Froniter's world building is that the whole backstory to everything involves conflict between human-type and beast-type Digimon and yet in the present… nothing. There's not a hint or a sign that of digital-discrimination or distrust still going on. If you took out all the flashbacks, you'd be left thinking that beast-types were just an the equivalent to Ultimate (which... ugh).
-
One benefit of an Adventure remake is that we could get a faithful dub. I hope they get as many of the original voice actors then.
Well, the got the entire cast back to dub Tri, awful as it was, so I don't see why they wouldn't get them back… if they wanted them.
-
What are your guys favorite Digimon that are in the main cast? I've only watched the first two seasons so I only know augmon, gabumon, biyomon, Tentomon, palmon, gomamon, patamon and Gatomon and there digievolutions
But it's been so long since I've watched it I don't think I could possibly rank them in terms of personality and such
-
I rewatched Tamers a few years ago, and I felt it really held up. I actually liked the slower paced stuff at the start, since it gave the characters a more grounded framework to start from. The kids had real world issues to deal with, and had to juggle them with keeping their Digimon from being exposed. There were reasons why their partners shouldn't just evolve to win every battle, like hard Gargomon's ammo was hard to control, or how Growlmon was giant and took a long time to turn back to the smaller Guilmon. And when the neighborhood kids who started as support characters actually started getting involved and recieving their own partners, that was actually pretty engaging. I liked 01 and 02 well enough, but Tamers was the first time I actually considered Digimon a top tier show.
-
This post is deleted!
-
3 episodes in and I feel like the Digimon reboot is just a good kids show and strangely enough, I miss its type of stories.
A series that just lets moments breathe and takes its time establishing the characters and also looks pretty? 100% my thing. It's probably not going to keep up looking this pretty all the way through, but I dig literally almost everything else about it so far.
I've wanted to go back to Tri to finish watching it as I did enjoy the first three movies solidly enough, but its also not something that particularly hooked me enough to just keep watching like this new series has done.
-
I just looked up how many Digimon are there…. it says 1400
WHAT!!! That's way more than even Pokemon, that's crazy
-
My experience with Digimon is watching a small handful of episodes of the original series and 02 back in the day on Fox and I was actually drawn to Digimon Adventure: by the how stacked its staff list was (Ryo Onishi, Naoki Tate, Naotoshi Shida, Yu Yoshiyama, and Takeru Shinozuka all in one place?!) and putting those merits aside…it's pretty good. Like there's still the innate silliness of a children's show in there, like Koshiro learning the location of American nuclear submarines over twitter and suddenly jumping from subway accidents to nuclear annihilation in only the second episode, but the direction is strong and oddly compelling and it's managed to update the setting in a relevant way that avoids "what's up fellow kids?" territory. Plus that scratchy line filter that Toei's using for everything now. So I think it's safe to say that I'm on board...whenever the show comes back.
-
I just looked up how many Digimon are there…. it says 1400
WHAT!!! That's way more than even Pokemon, that's crazy
Well, digimon have like 6 stages, with the earliest being blobs with a face and some decoration. Also some some digimons are palette swaps.
The new series looked good, shame about the hiatus.
-
I just looked up how many Digimon are there…. it says 1400
WHAT!!! That's way more than even Pokemon, that's crazy
that makes sense, there's over 1200 of them listed on the digimon wiki
-
I watched the Tri movies (dubbed) finally while the site was down. I thought it was better than what I've typically seen complained about online. I enjoyed it pretty highly overall, despite being able to pick out a complaint or 2 for most of them. My favorite was definitely Part 4 Loss, as the entire movie just fills the void for just the kids having an adventure with their digimon in the digital world, plus having probably the best battle sequences of the whole set. Part 3 Confession almost edges it out, but I value the fun of 4 more than the great drama in 3. The only one I'd say was a real stinker was Part 5 Coexistence, with way too much "The kids sit around and wait and get everything that's happening explained to them" with the only payoff being a pretty subpar battle at the end.
I'll have to get around to actually watching the new series eventually, but certainly haven't heard anything that's put me off about it yet.
-
Might be the nostalgia talking but I'm loving the Reboot.
The first episodes went in a different direction than the original series but I think it's for the best. I don't need and 1:1 Reboot. Sure, seeing that digimon so early through me off a bit but they weren't in the Digital World and Matt and Tai (I can't get the English names out my head) had help (?) from their siblings. I'm really liking the overall focus on siblings these first few episodes, especially Tai and Izzy's more brotherly relationship.
With how much technology's changed and knowing they have time to do a complete series, I'm really excited where they go with this.
3 episodes in and I feel like the Digimon reboot is just a good kids show and strangely enough, I miss its type of stories.
A series that just lets moments breathe and takes its time establishing the characters and also looks pretty? 100% my thing. It's probably not going to keep up looking this pretty all the way through, but I dig literally almost everything else about it so far.
Agreed. They pretty much know it's gonna be popular so they can take their time introducing the main characters instead of dumping them all in the first episode.
-
So because I got blueballed by Covid from watching the excellent 2020 season, i decided to bite the bullet and start watching the tri movies. I plan to watch one every two weeks because that's all I can take. Full disclosure, I was not going in with high expectations because of those awful character designs but boy did I not expect it to be this bad.
Like I get that this series of films is relying heavily on nostalgia in lieu of actual character writing but is that an excuse to give our main characters the personality of cardboard? of the main cast, the only characters who I'd say have a semblance of personality are Mimi and Izzy. Joe and Sora kinda have something there, the rest are fucking nothing with T.K. getting it the worst. And the less said about Fujoshi OC stereotype, the better.
The first impression of the film didn't go well given that they just "kill" off the 02 cast without any fanfare (and no one ever fucking asks what happened to them) just so they can go full nostalgia bait on the 01 cast without any distractions. I mean I always hated the 02 cast (with the exception of Ken who is a treasure) but how desperate can you be, Toei?
What follows is the worst kind of buildup before the big battle, the obligatory build up where you don't actually progress characters or story but just waste time for 20 minutes on meaningless character scenes that add absolutely nothing except to pad time and give the idea that the characters are living adult lives. Except none of the characters act remotely like their old selves or even as people, the anime is counting on old nostalgic feelings to fill in the blanks so it can avoid the hassle of actually writing interesting character interactions or show character growth. Compare this to the first 4 minutes of the 2020 anime which did a far better job in setting up the characters and giving them actual character progression. Tai having a phone call with his mom showing his concern for his family especially his little sister after which he lazily floops onto the bed showing his carefree personality. This is followed by Izzy ringing the bell and having your first character interaction between the main cast, Tai warm and accepting albeit clueless as he invites Izzy into his home without a second thought, Izzy clearly scared and nervous, showing antisocial traits as he is extremely hesitant to enter someone else's home, all this immediately forgotten when he hears about the news crisis on Tai's phone pushing him into work mode. This is how you write engrossing character interactions, not having pointless trivia like what stupid edgey nonsense Matt named his band or how Joe is depressed that he's flunking his tests.
Then Kuwagamon shows up and Tai chases it without accomplishing anything or saving anyone (not even distracting it from a civilian). Agumon conveniently shows up and we get a lame reunion with barely any emotional resonance (though to be fair, is this a reunion, I thought we could visit the digimon whenever we wanted?). Agumon digivolves and yet gets his ass kicked by Kuwagamon, a champion level digimon for some reason. Maybe this Agumon is malnutritioned, he looks so scrawny. Then the rest of the cast show up with their digimon sans Mimi and Joe. No explanation how they're there or how they reunited with their digimon, they're just there, killing the whole fucking point of this movie which was to see the digimon and humans be overjoyed to see each other again. I felt more in the reunion with the digimon in the 02 season in that one flashback where they explained how the original cast lost thier crests, and that was two still shots!
Anyway, they beat the bad digimon and next day, Joe the No Show Mr Reliable shows up and we finally get the whole cast reunited just so we can force Matt and Tai to fight for the sake of forced drama. Because oh no Tai is an adult now and he's worried about the COLLATERAL damage and somehow with his adult brain thinks running away and letting Kuwagamon run around and destroy the city causing more damage and casualties would have been a better option. This is juxtaposed with an awkward comedic scene of Izzy talking to himself which everyone no sells that might have been funny if the character animators in this show were capable of conveying the slightest bit of emotion in their characters faces. We did have the one good scene with actual life to it which was the Joe has a girlfriend scene where the characters' faces actually changed from their usual blank slate.
We get more time wasting, we establish the digimon being able to jump out of TVs, Fujoshi OC shows up and we tour around Odaiba before Alphamon shows up the fuck out of nowhere. people complained how Omegamon in 2020 was rushed and out of nowhere? Christ, at least that had setup and build up. An escalating battle against an enemy that kept evolving with a situation that kept deteriorating to the point of a nuke being fired at Japan. It at least had the clever idea of having agumon and gabumon fuse in their champion forms which saves the big moment of them evolving into their digital and mega forms AND gives some wiggle room where you can say the Omegamon in episode 2 wasn't at its peak. They didn't have Gabumon and Agumon digivolve offscreen through their Champion, Ultimate and Mega forms nor did we have the plothole of if they could digivolve into their ultimate and mega forms before WHY DIDN'T THEY DO THAT BEFORE WHEN THE REST OF THE CAST WAS GETTING THEIR ASS KICKED BY ALPHAMON OR WHEN GREYMON ALMOST DIED TO A KUWAGAMON.
So they chase off Alphamon, movie over, oh I guess we did have an epilogue promising that Tai is still going to be a limp dick loser for the sake of drama. This character dilemma is really hard to take seriously given Tai fought off a literal Kaiju in season 1 but I guess we adults now so we have to overthink meaningless drivel for the sake of emotional angst.
In terms of pacing, this movie was atrocious, we wasted 20 minutes of time, had a fight, and then literally nothing for almost the entire movie until the last 10 minutes when Alphamon shows up out of nowhere. I guess Alphamon and Omegamon's fight was nice and I can never get tired of the Royal Knight type digimon.
This is tiptoeing the elephant in the room regarding this movie that undercuts any possible enjoyable thing I found in this movie. More than the bad writing or the bad pacing, fuck the character animation and fuck the lighting in this movie. Generic ass interchangable anime faces combined with ugly, dreary grey lighting that sucks out any possible joy or charm or personality to anything that's going on.
When you go from this
to this
all I can say is that someone should have been fired. This isn't modernization of a classic look to fit a more realistic tone. This is just ugly and lazy, an excuse for a no talent team to put in less effort. This is the difference between an A team like the Digimon 2020 anime team who clearly gives a fuck about Digimon and go out of their way to give the source material the proper love and care it deserves to a D team that clearly gives NO fuck about Digimon and half ass everything from the designs to the writing to the character animation for the sake of a paycheck. And then they sprinkle in a little bit of nostalgia-service and expect that to do the heavy lifting. What a joke.
…..
I still have five more of these to watch.....
-
@TLC:
So because I got blueballed by Covid from watching the excellent 2020 season, i decided to bite the bullet and start watching the tri movies. I plan to watch one every two weeks because that's all I can take. Full disclosure, I was not going in with high expectations because of those awful character designs but boy did I not expect it to be this bad.
Like I get that this series of films is relying heavily on nostalgia in lieu of actual character writing but is that an excuse to give our main characters the personality of cardboard? of the main cast, the only characters who I'd say have a semblance of personality are Mimi and Izzy. Joe and Sora kinda have something there, the rest are fucking nothing with T.K. getting it the worst. And the less said about Fujoshi OC stereotype, the better.
The first impression of the film didn't go well given that they just "kill" off the 02 cast without any fanfare (and no one ever fucking asks what happened to them) just so they can go full nostalgia bait on the 01 cast without any distractions. I mean I always hated the 02 cast (with the exception of Ken who is a treasure) but how desperate can you be, Toei?
What follows is the worst kind of buildup before the big battle, the obligatory build up where you don't actually progress characters or story but just waste time for 20 minutes on meaningless character scenes that add absolutely nothing except to pad time and give the idea that the characters are living adult lives. Except none of the characters act remotely like their old selves or even as people, the anime is counting on old nostalgic feelings to fill in the blanks so it can avoid the hassle of actually writing interesting character interactions or show character growth. Compare this to the first 4 minutes of the 2020 anime which did a far better job in setting up the characters and giving them actual character progression. Tai having a phone call with his mom showing his concern for his family especially his little sister after which he lazily floops onto the bed showing his carefree personality. This is followed by Izzy ringing the bell and having your first character interaction between the main cast, Tai warm and accepting albeit clueless as he invites Izzy into his home without a second thought, Izzy clearly scared and nervous, showing antisocial traits as he is extremely hesitant to enter someone else's home, all this immediately forgotten when he hears about the news crisis on Tai's phone pushing him into work mode. This is how you write engrossing character interactions, not having pointless trivia like what stupid edgey nonsense Matt named his band or how Joe is depressed that he's flunking his tests.
Then Kuwagamon shows up and Tai chases it without accomplishing anything or saving anyone (not even distracting it from a civilian). Agumon conveniently shows up and we get a lame reunion with barely any emotional resonance (though to be fair, is this a reunion, I thought we could visit the digimon whenever we wanted?). Agumon digivolves and yet gets his ass kicked by Kuwagamon, a champion level digimon for some reason. Maybe this Agumon is malnutritioned, he looks so scrawny. Then the rest of the cast show up with their digimon sans Mimi and Joe. No explanation how they're there or how they reunited with their digimon, they're just there, killing the whole fucking point of this movie which was to see the digimon and humans be overjoyed to see each other again. I felt more in the reunion with the digimon in the 02 season in that one flashback where they explained how the original cast lost thier crests, and that was two still shots!
Anyway, they beat the bad digimon and next day, Joe the No Show Mr Reliable shows up and we finally get the whole cast reunited just so we can force Matt and Tai to fight for the sake of forced drama. Because oh no Tai is an adult now and he's worried about the COLLATERAL damage and somehow with his adult brain thinks running away and letting Kuwagamon run around and destroy the city causing more damage and casualties would have been a better option. This is juxtaposed with an awkward comedic scene of Izzy talking to himself which everyone no sells that might have been funny if the character animators in this show were capable of conveying the slightest bit of emotion in their characters faces. We did have the one good scene with actual life to it which was the Joe has a girlfriend scene where the characters' faces actually changed from their usual blank slate.
We get more time wasting, we establish the digimon being able to jump out of TVs, Fujoshi OC shows up and we tour around Odaiba before Alphamon shows up the fuck out of nowhere. people complained how Omegamon in 2020 was rushed and out of nowhere? Christ, at least that had setup and build up. An escalating battle against an enemy that kept evolving with a situation that kept deteriorating to the point of a nuke being fired at Japan. It at least had the clever idea of having agumon and gabumon fuse in their champion forms which saves the big moment of them evolving into their digital and mega forms AND gives some wiggle room where you can say the Omegamon in episode 2 wasn't at its peak. They didn't have Gabumon and Agumon digivolve offscreen through their Champion, Ultimate and Mega forms nor did we have the plothole of if they could digivolve into their ultimate and mega forms before WHY DIDN'T THEY DO THAT BEFORE WHEN THE REST OF THE CAST WAS GETTING THEIR ASS KICKED BY ALPHAMON OR WHEN GREYMON ALMOST DIED TO A KUWAGAMON.
So they chase off Alphamon, movie over, oh I guess we did have an epilogue promising that Tai is still going to be a limp dick loser for the sake of drama. This character dilemma is really hard to take seriously given Tai fought off a literal Kaiju in season 1 but I guess we adults now so we have to overthink meaningless drivel for the sake of emotional angst.
In terms of pacing, this movie was atrocious, we wasted 20 minutes of time, had a fight, and then literally nothing for almost the entire movie until the last 10 minutes when Alphamon shows up out of nowhere. I guess Alphamon and Omegamon's fight was nice and I can never get tired of the Royal Knight type digimon.
This is tiptoeing the elephant in the room regarding this movie that undercuts any possible enjoyable thing I found in this movie. More than the bad writing or the bad pacing, fuck the character animation and fuck the lighting in this movie. Generic ass interchangable anime faces combined with ugly, dreary grey lighting that sucks out any possible joy or charm or personality to anything that's going on.
When you go from this
[qimg]https://thecajunsamurai.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/digimonadventure-3.jpg[/qimg]
to this
[qimg]https://i.imgur.com/DGpb9XK.jpg[/qimg]
all I can say is that someone should have been fired. This isn't modernization of a classic look to fit a more realistic tone. This is just ugly and lazy, an excuse for a no talent team to put in less effort. This is the difference between an A team like the Digimon 2020 anime team who clearly gives a fuck about Digimon and go out of their way to give the source material the proper love and care it deserves to a D team that clearly gives NO fuck about Digimon and half ass everything from the designs to the writing to the character animation for the sake of a paycheck. And then they sprinkle in a little bit of nostalgia-service and expect that to do the heavy lifting. What a joke.
…..
I still have five more of these to watch.....
There's one two minute clip about five movies in that's really good.
Otherwise the whole series is crap and honestly ruined the "Leomon dies" trope for me. -
Seems like you're pretty adamant against it, but I'll throw my defense up anyway, as I also took the time recently to finally watch Tri. I'll preface it with the fact I rewatched all of Adventure, 02, and their movies before jumping into tri. Also you gave no clarification if you watched the dub or sub, and I don't know if there were any strong differences in scripts, but I'll mention I watch dub only.
The situation with the 02 kids was definitely an abhorrent mess of a decision, no argument there. It should have been very easy to, after the battle with the Kuwagamons, have some of the kids trying to call the 02 kids and then have Agent Lady just explain right from the start "We sent them on a secret mission and they've gone missing in the Digiworld." Have them drop a concerned comment here and there from then on and boom, would've been way more reasonable. It's definitely one of the most annoying decisions of the series.
Everything up to the end of the Kuwagamon fights should be considered Prologue. idk what other people consider it, but Tri is a single movie being told in 6 parts, not 6 separate movies. That entire section of Reunion is for reintroducing the cast, showing where they are in life 3 years later, and then creating a conflict to then reintroduce the digimon partners. Yes, 3 years later, so they've matured a little since before, they're highschoolers now (middle school TK and Kari), but they still came across as the same characters to me. Kari's matured to the point of having a more normal teasing sibling relationship with Tai, Matt's still playing music but has been going through band drama over the years, Izzy's making bank with his genius and uses it for his adoptive parents, Mimi's still in America but will gladly come visit at any notice, TK's still teasing with Matt but gives off more confidence now, and Joe's school troubles are reaching their peak with his senior college worries.
Tai's the biggest change, as he's going through his "What do I want to do with my life?" phase compounded with worries that everyone's starting to drift apart/not have time to hang anymore that normally wouldn't kick in until college, but it's anime and these kids are a bit ahead of things. It works for Tai to be that character though, as he's the only one that never really got anything going for his future goals in 02. He's the one feeling left behind. Only one left out is Sora, as Tai is trying to be content with giving her up to Matt and avoid awkwardness, but he eventually caves and Sora reaffirms she'll always make time for everyone. Is all this and follow up scenes with just the kids doing stuff wasted time? I guess it is if you don't like the characters in the first place, but I do and I enjoyed all the "waste of time" scenes. Digimon 2020 gets to hit the reset button and start everyone over from zero, but Tri had to continue with them from where 02 left off. Very different scenarios.
It was explained that the Kuwagamons were infected and the virus makes digimon berserk and stronger than normal later in this same part. Basically an excuse for any infected digimon to be as strong as they want, but it's not like digimon hasn't just plain ignored their power hierarchy before. It was also explained that the government people brought everyone to the scene, but yeah it would've been nice to get a still image of everyone else's reactions.
Tai's crisis (everyone gets one and that's what I'm gonna call them) could definitely have been done better, that I can agree with. It's understandable that the reckless courage kid would be shellshocked by how much danger their battles really do to bystandars and the city once they've finally matured to an age where they actually notice it, but there's absolutely no way to side with Tai in the arguement. As Matt says, there's nobody else to do the job. I think they actually did mean for Tai to be the wrong one in the arguement though. Joe's crisis does it better, but that's for part 2.
Digimon has always had a problem with "Why didn't you just evolve to your highest form from the start?!?" It's a trope I've long accepted in anime in general, but Tri doesn't deserve extra hate just cause it does what every anime does.
If you hate the art/animation style so much that you're not gonna give anything else about it any consideration or chance, there's really no reason to bother trying to watch the rest anyway. It'll just compound your disinterest and you'll spend the whole time nitpicking every little thing everytime. But maybe I just have terrible taste, idk.
-
Just saw this and it made my day
-
Episode 2, let's go.
Writing this after waiting a few days was a big mistake because I already feel myself losing what happened from my memory like water going through a sieve but I'll try my best.
So everyone is getting ready for a trip to try and force Matt and Tai to be friends again. So their idea to make them patch things up is….a hot springs. Oh joy, if there's anything I ever wished to see in Digimon is my classic childhood characters growing up to be used for fanservice (no that one episode in the Devimon arc in season one doesn't count). A constant source of irritation throughout this whole slog is how they keep pushing OC digidestined and her digimon in our faces, commenting them as being so kawaii and adorbs and treating her like a long time friend and comrade and including her in everything even though they've only just met.
So yeah time for fanservice except it's not even good fanservice, it's limp dick execution like everything else in these movies, there are no gags or punchlines, it's just the girls taking a bath submerged from the neck down for like 30 seconds, what was even the point? Oh wait, but now it's time for the boys to take a bath! Look at Digimon subverting our expectations and we get wacky hijinks as the girls have to storm into the mens' bath to try and find their digimon and get all embarrassed and close their eyes while running as the guys just stand around looking awkward and confused. It feels like the writers have no diea on how to write actual interesting dilemmas or conflicts so they just rely on the lazy shorthand of having the digimon getting in some sort of trouble and having to be bailed out. They did it twice in this movie alone. Why do the digimon even have to pretend they're toys? I thought everyone knew about Digimon at this point? They literally fought in the sky! There was a giant Kaiju in Tokyo just last week! Anyway this whole hot springs arc was a waste of time that padded out like 20 minutes. No character stories progressed and nothing was learned. I'm sure some people would insist it was an important respite for our characters to enjoy their normal lives before the storm of conflict takes it away. If that were the case, it'd be nice if the directing tried to set up some sort of foreboding atmosphere or moment of calm or something. The whole event just felt like something that happened and we're not going to talk about it again afterwards.
Anyway I guess the big draws for this episode are Mimi and Joe. Mimi is trying to be her big, cheery optimistic self and keeps eating shit because of it causing her to become disillusioned while Joe is being a whiny bitch about how much he wants to study but being a digidestined won't let him. It's all monotonous, repetitive and very, very contrived.
Mimi has Togemon fight against Ogremon in order to improve their Digimon PR and ends up causing collateral damage with her big AOE attack. Izzy, in a very out of character moment, berates her for not waiting for the rest of them. I guess he expected her to just sit there as Ogremon clubs them to death. This all ties into the idea that Mimi is a self absorbed, selfish person which, well no shit, that's how Mimi has always been. Why is it suddenly a bad trait now!?
The Ogremon fight was also the event that led to Leomon's introduction to the story, the movie never establishes whether this is the same Leomon from the originals series and none of the characters seem to care enough to ask. This Leomon, at any rate, is a very boring Leomon who seems to be nothing more than a walking story exposition dump than an actual character. The only hint of a personality to his character was the bit when he had kawaii hearts over how cute OC digimon was, a dumb gag they repeat twice.
There's a big school festival coming up and Mimi wants to set up a Hooters for their class event. No one had any better ideas so her idea passed unopposed. Later however the girls were upset at how slutty the clothes they had to wear looked and told Mimi they're not wearing them (for the record they didn't look any worse than a maid's uniform for a maid cafe and anyway if you didn't like the idea of a Hooters, why didn't you say a goddamn thing in the first place. WHY DO WE NEED A HOOTERS IN DIGIMON IN THE FIRST PLACE!?!). Mimi becomes upset over this and sulks and lashes out at OC character and Sora who had been busting their ass over making their Hooters uniforms, telling them the clothes sucked without explaining why and that they're not going to wear them. OC character wears one anyway however and it makes Mimi happy enough to get over all her problems. This is the entirety of Mimi's character arc in this movie except it wasn't even much of an arc since Mimi really didn't learn anything except fuck what other people think, I do what I want. I guess that Crest of Sincerity is about her being sincere in her selfishness.
There's a sort of connecting thread with Joe, whose frustrated over his responsibilities as a digidestined, calling out Mimi for being self-serving yet having no problem flaking out when people need him the most. The point being him coming to realize he's being hypocritical and selfish and that his friends and digimon need him to be there for them. A point they hammer into the ground over and over to the point of obnoxiousness. I count no less than 4 separate scenes with Joe whining about how he wants to live his life and study for his doctor's exams and how depressed he is and how it sucks being a digidestined, culminating in Gomamon feeling unwanted enough to leave him because he thought he was getting in Joe's way. This despite other characters giving him the very reasonable, unassailable point on how the world would be fucked without him and that there's not much of a point studying to be a doctor if everyone is dead. This whole storyline is tediously dragged out the whole movie requiring Gomamon to be close to being blown apart by Imperialdramon for Joe to finally nut up and do his damn job, Mr Reliability indeed.
So the climax is basically Ken in his Emperor form (at least the writers are smart enough to recognize the best thing about 02 Digimon) shows up and steals OC Digimon and Palmon and Gomamon are the only ones who can rescue him and to do this they have to defeat Corrupted imeprialdramon. No one really questions where the rest of the 02 cast is after seeing Ken but I guess we're not done pretending they don't exist. The biggest sin of this movie is that this was supposed to be the big reveals of Palmon and Gomamon's megaforms, a monumental event given none of the original cast aside from Matt and Tai got to show off their megaforms, something that I have been dying to see since I was a wee lad....and they couldn't even get that right. The original Digimon always made sure to make each digimon's new evolution to be a big event having episodes dedicated to individual digivolutions, happening at important climactic moments tied heavily to a character's development. While they were clearly going for that in the movie, the execution is just so slapdash and rushed. There was no real sense of growing danger or tension, the digimon just cycled through all their forms and got to their megaforms like they could always do it. It just feels so thrown in there. No desperation followed by bursts of courage or emotion or conviction to face their fears, despite this being the big capstone to Joe and Mimi's character arcs, it doesn't feel like there's any sense of payoff, a good writer would have had Zudomon evolve immediately after Joe gave his heartfelt apology to his digimon for abandoning him and promising to always be there for him no matter what. Instead we get a few words of sorry, a lame yell and Gomamon flipping through evolutions at the drop of a hat. And then Mimi immediately follows suit yelling that she's going all out because we gotta shove in Palmon's mega form too and are too bad at writing to explain why she didn't just do this before. They amange to kill Imperialdramon (gee I sure hope it isn't the same Imperialdramon that they know, no one even brings this up) and save the OC Digimon only for the OC Digimon to go nuts and murder Leomon. Like Jesus Christ, Leomon couldn't even survive the movie he was introduced in, they just randomly kill him out of nowhere at the very end and the OC digimon runs away. The characters don't even seem that broken up over Leomon dying, they seem more interested in the OC Digimon getting away.
This is the second time in a row where the movie has done nothing but waste time until the very end where it shoves everything in the last ten minutes. I have no idea why the writers are fining it so hard to balance good action and character progression over the course of 90 minutes when Digimon 2020 easily accomplished it in 20. These movies are turning out to be 90% melodramatic filler masking to be adult characterization. To cap it all off, they undersold one of the biggest wishes of my childhood and left a cliffhanger that was just bziarre and confusing.
Sigh, four more to go.
-
Well, not gonna go as far with this one as the previous post.
Part 2 Determination has a lot of slice of life fun in it, but a bit of a problem with it's humor. Tropes aren't always bad, but even I found most of the comedic moments with the digimon being "cute and dumb" to be pretty annoying in this part. I have a mental theory that rationalizes why they're so dumb in this part, but I go back and forth on if I agree with it or not, so meh.
Tai's crisis is ongoing, definitely felt like a drag at times. Big fan of Joe's crisis, think it was really well done. Mimi's is pretty ok, since it shares double duty with having to let Meiko get screentime and establish her character, but could've been improved on.
Can't really understand why they used an infected Imperialdramon as the monster for them to fight though. You'd have thought they'd have used infected Ogremon from earlier in the part, but buffed way up or even have him digivolve to a new form. Maybe that would've helped Mimi's crisis resolution feel better wrapped up instead of just jumping in on Joe's. Fight itself was pretty good, just a shame about the choice of villain. And then it finally kicks off the real plot with Meiko's infected digimon.
Still enjoyed it overall.
-
Episode 3, I guess this was the best movie so far. Best in the sense that it actually made me emotionally register an event that transpired in the show. A pretty low bar to meet but here we are.
The movie is continuing from the "nail-biting" cliffhanger from last week when OC Digimon turned rabid and killed Leomon. From the start, I'm baffled at how no one seems to really care that Leomon died. No one cries or talks about him, the closest we got to mourning him was from the OC character and even she seems more depressed that her digimon got corrupted and ran away than that her digimon murdered someone.
So the big hook of this episode is how apparently any digimon can get infected and become corrupted so izzy puts all the Digimon under quarantine while he tries to find a cure. It's going badly and his combination of sleep deprivation and frustration makes him take it out on OC character. There's some arc with her where she's depressed and Sora tries to cheer her up which i don't care about.
Despite the direness of the situation, the Digimon keep breaking quarantine and not practicing social distancing. Patamon clearly gets infected for a minute and bites T.K. And T.K., like the idiot he is doesn't tell anyone that Patamon's infected because "he's scared". And because he's scared, he pretends nothing is wrong and lets the digimon frolic together potentially infecting all of them. This is just conjecture since they never really explain how this virus works, how it spreads, how the virus develops in the body, what was the origin of the infection, it's just a plot device for cheap drama whereas if it had more focus and development, it could make for an interesting story. But nah, we need to use that time to have an "emotional" scene where Patamon tells TK to shoot him in between the eyes like Old Yeller when the time comes, a scene I could have lived my whole life never watching and being the happier for it. it just feels so calculated and cynical like it's trying to force me to cry however I'm completely taken out by the fact that they're forcing this scene to exist by having T.K. make the dumbass decision to keep the fact that his Digimon is infected to himself.
Speaking of plot contrivances twisting the plot into funny shapes to reach dramatic scenes with little thought put into how they reach those scenes, so Kari gets possessed by God. Well he says he's not God, he's Homeostasis, being possessed by God would be too hacky I guess. This is a short hand lazy method by the writers using Kari as a convenient plot device (no real reason for Kari to be used for this except I guess for the fact she was used like this way back when in season 1 and it's good nostalgia bait I guess) to exposition dump the dilemma for the digimon where they mighty have to choose to reboot themselves, erasing all their memories. For some reason, the Digimon swear to keep this to themselves because characters just can't talk to each other in these movies though Agumon cracks under pressure and tells everything to Tai anyway who proceeds to do nothing with this information until the climax.
OC digimon shows up and evolves into her ultimate form and starts wrecking shit. The Digimon try and hold OC Digimon down but patamon decides to get into the fray, evolving into Angemon and immediately making the situation worse by doing so. Not only does he immediately get corrupted and fight against the other digimon, his infection ends up spreading to the rest of the digimon making them evil too. All this when Agumon and Gabumon could have just evolved into their mega forms and taken care of the situation in no time. We get to the one scene where I actually felt something where Tentamon tells Izzy how much he belives in him, how it's okay to be ignorant because that just makes the quest for knowledge more fulfilling. It just felt like the one scene based on something real from the characters and not more forced fanfiction drama. This leads to Izzy developing a backup shield to throw all the other Digimon in to hide in during the reboot. This doesn't really pay off though because everyone is too far gone because of Patamon and the best they could manage was Tentomon in his megaform forcing everyone to get back to their senses for a few seconds long enough to get themselves rebooted. I'll give credit that i did like that scene and unlike Gomamon and Palmon's mega forms, Tentomon's digivolution had betetr build up and payoff though i don't get why the movies insist on switching from rookie to mega at the drop of a hat.
So we get to the, what's becoming a trend with these movies, where after abysmal pacing through out, everything happens in the alst ten minutes. The one time when I felt the characters would be justified in being depressed for a while and dealing with their emotions, we just blitz through it at the drop of a hat and everyone jsut decides to go to the digital world and get their digimon back. If only the characters showed this level of conviction and quick thinking before. They ask OC character to join them who mercifully doesn't. Everyone bamfs into the digital world and they immediately find their digimon albeit with their memory erased. Also Ken is Gennai for some reason.
So two things grab my attention at the end of this film. First of all, the idea of a deadly virus forcing a reboot of the digimon neccessitating a renewal of the bonds between the digidestined and their partners isn't a bad idea. It could be a clever device of retelling a classic story through the lens of adulthood. The fact that it took so long to get here was a hindrance to this idea, a concept that would have been better served had it been focused more on instead of wasting time with meaningless drama tropes that led nowhere and didn't develop the characetrs in a meaningful way. The cynic in me though however sees this as nothing more than a cash grab by this movie to nostalgia bait the fuck out of the audience where this whole adventure is going to be nothing more than a retread, recycling classic scenes, making us go ooh and ahhh at fondly remembered moments without really adding anything to the narrative. What doesn't help this attitude I have is how, because of the reboot, it looks like we're just dumping the whole virus plotline making it nothing more than a cheap excuse to go back down memory lane.
The second thing is I am once again bamboozled at how awful the art design in these mvoies are. FFS, why is everyone still in their schoool uniform. We're going back to the digital world, this was an excuse to change their clothes and inject some colour back into the characters' designs but instead we're sticking with the awful drab green school uniforms. Even if you could come up with a reason, the persona games have proven you can have distinct, colourful designs with school uniforms, this is just talentless art design.
Halfway there….
-
Digimon Adventure is back, again, with episode 4.
Another good episode. I love how well the kids interact with each other. Stories these days tend to write kids as overly snarky and/or always in conflict with each other. Although, Sora took landing in another world pretty well. Guess it's mostly confusion to what's actually happening but still.
Looks like they're really playing up the Chosen Children angle. Good. There's a lot of potential for lore that was barely touched on or just thrown out there with no explanation in the original.
-
I like that the new show is actually introducing the characters slowly this time, unlike the original which dumped all 7 kids, and their 7 digimon, and their 7 first form evos all within the first episode. Especially considering the slime forms basically never got used for anything, just sort of skipping that entirely is a good call.
-
It's my boy Kabuterimon time!!! Some really heroic shots of Tentomon there, looking very Kamen Rider-ish, and the evolution sequence was sick (although I am a bit put off by the lack of pattern for those animations).
Anyways, this time it's not just the kids who are chosen ones, but their partners were also promoted to the always present class of "legendary heroes who battled the darkness forces in a distant past". I like that. And also this time they will give an actual reason for Patamon and Tailmon getting a special treatment.
Overall I am really enjoying this remake. It is not pretentious, clearly targeted at a younger audience and it is 100% honest about that, but since it manages to bring back the same charm of the original series it also has the appeal with the older audience always hooked by some Adventures' pandering.
Using the original series as basis for the plot while freely changing whatever they felt like also has been a very good decision, they can keep everything that worked while improving on the weak points. -
Yeah, I like that the children and their Digimon are being introduced one by one. A little bit less chaos.
The series does some typical kids show things where the characters just sort of accept they just arrived in a new world just like that and at this point Izzy is basically hypercompetent and seems to know no wrong, but perhaps this will be adressed at a later point in the story.
It's also nice that ep. 5 seems to basically have already set up the finale. It will probably involve all the Digimon sacrificing themselves.
The background work and environments have really stood out to me these past couple episodes. Even if the episodes don't move as well as the first 3, they are still fine to look at. Pretty consistent at least outside of the evolution sequences. Which is wierd. Agumon gets an extended, really well-animated one and at first the story didn't even seem to want to do evolution sequences, but Biyomon or Tentomon get pretty basic ones. It's really inconsistent. But I guess that's just how the animation scheduling works and how different episodes are planned.
-
Its entirely possible they had planned to have more elaborate transformations and covid got in the way of budgeting and scheduling major showey things.