#(AND THE 'EVERYONE GETTING A DIGIMON' PLOTLINE)

[beginningobserver]

Ni attempts to insert Rui-Ukko in 02 TV Series: the post.

⚠This is a ROUGH draft and may change later. ALSO, IT MIGHT HAVE CANON REFERENCES TO THE MOVIE ELEMENTS, SO I DON'T RECOMMEND READING IT WITHOUT WATCHING 02TB FIRST!

Ok, so the idea here is... to put Rui-kun and Ukkomon in 02. I've tried to pick a route here, and it might change later.

Will be under [read more/keep reading] so you can avoid spoilers even if i tag it with the spoilers tag.

[CW: murder mention + body horror]

So far, I've drawn not one but TWO routes for this AU - one where nothing bad happens to Rui (or, if it does, it's the usual Adv/02 level of child trauma, not something that goes "over the kids' timeslot filters" like this movie does) and he gets to explore the Digital World with Ukkomon alongside the 02 group...

... And one where maybe the "eye thing" happens during the 02 events. Now if it is the same as in the canon and the movie or not, I have no idea yet. But I am still amusing myself with this one comic where the Kaiser is testing his evil rings on Rui because he has a digi-eye and... Yeah, check out the doodle for yourselves. 

Since I like both ideas I might mix them in one interquel plotline.

So Rui is the first Chosen Child, but this term hadn't been coined by the time of his encounter with Ukkomon. And Ukkomon helped Rui to get a better life, despite not having miraculous powers to grant wishes like he told Rui. Ukkomon’s tactic was just using Liar Dream on Rui’s mom and dad, to make them at least nicer to Rui.The part of the dad being in a deathbed status is also… uh, not here, but he’s still sick.

Ukkomon protected Rui from bullies as well, by using his mind-hijacking powers to drive them away. Despite both being bad at communicating with others, they do manage to get along. Rui still hates the same things as the canon, but more likely that he does not find them interesting (plus, the part of hating cake/sweets is about OVERLY sweet things and he prefers not-too-sweet stuff, or not-too-sweet fruits) yet he doesn’t seem to get courage to say them because he never had been listened by his own family. At this point, Ukkomon is not well aware of the difference between being legitimately happy and being just a bubbly kid. So… Ukkomon starts getting desperate trying to protect Rui’s smile from everything and going nuts (aka, “i can’t let him get sad or miserable!!” sort of thing, yes it’s basically what happened in canon too) and just… manipulating people with his mind-hijacking eye-stare technique.

Rui lives in Hikarigaoka, but going to the Digital World like everyone else, somehow his digivice – being the first model in the world – manages to get the access to the Digital Gate and he goes there to cool off and have fun with the digimon. It’s when he heard about this new menace called Digimon Kaiser. His digi-friends started to beg him and Ukkomon to help, but Rui says he can’t do much because Ukkomon cannot evolve and he’s afraid of fighting. Ukkomon also is clueless about how to evolve, he only knows more kids with digimon were appearing. Then, Ukkomon suggests trying to find those kids and ask them to help their digimon friends. Funny enough, the 02 kids + older six were already doing that.

In one of the offscreen attacks of the Kaiser’s army, Rui’s right eye gets hurt and Ukkomon starts panicking because this means Rui will be sad and upset so he just sacrifices his own right eye and slaps it in the boy’s face. Of course Rui hates that and snaps at him. Ukkomon feels it was all his fault and just disappears (actually, he kept around but invisible and without letting Rui know his presence). In the human world, Rui’s parents have absolutely no idea WHERE he is, so they start suddenly “caring” about him, tho they don’t go ask for help on TV or anything, they just stick with the police. The 02 kids are aware of a kid named Ohwada Rui going missing, but they think it’s nothing related to the Digital World or Ichijouji Ken/Digimon Kaiser.

Rui was having a hard time stuck in the Digital World though. He was alone, but he had the help of the local digimon refugees and survivors. This time he covered his digi-eye with an eye-patch so as not to attract the attention of the others. Somehow, the Kaiser hears about a human with a digimon eye and thinks it’s some skilled hacker “in-game” and sends his servants to search for Rui.

It was when, a few days before the Evil Spiral being made that he gets to spot the 02 kids looking for a digimon named “Agumon”. He never saw those kids– Wait a minute, he does remember seeing a boy with a Goku-like hair and a tiny girl with light brown short hair when he was a kid… Maybe they know him? (The answer is: not in person, Taichi and Hikari had passed by Rui while they lived in Hikarigaoka and until they moved to Odaiba, but none of them know each other)

Rui goes after those kids a few weeks later (around the episode Chimeramon project is almost finished), but he’s caught by the Digimon Kaiser, who was suspiciously aware of his “Digimon Eye”?! Ken just starts asking him real tough questions, thinking that kid is smart and a prodigy like him, but… Rui is just a simpleton. No offense, he’s not a genius or anything, he’s just an ordinary boy with a digimon eye and a digivice. Wormmon is scared about what that could mean, and Rui is not sure how to explain that the eye was slapped in his face against his will and that suddenly he got into a fight with his digimon and then Ukkomon just vanished and left him.

Since Rui had disappeared way before Ken decided to ditch the human world and live in the DW, he heard of a kid missing but he didn’t expect that the boy with a digimon eye from the rumors was Rui. He doesn’t feel like doing anything with Rui though, so he just throws Rui in the dungeon and focuses on the other kids. Rui has no idea if he could do something, and he feels like Ukkomon had just abandoned him and blames him for being hunted like an animal thanks to that eye.

Ken does hear Rui thru the speakers mentioning “something something if I had followed my mom’s orders I wouldn’t have been in trouble now” and he feels… empathetic for that kid? Is that possible? Ken doesn’t let Rui leave, but mysteriously his time inside his cell gets a little more… comfortable? He got a new pair of clean clothes and he’s receiving some decent meals now…? How??

One day Wormmon was feeling jealous of Ken getting some emotional attachment to that prisoner that he does the same thing he had done with Agumon: He opens the cell discreetly while Ken is not around looking at the cameras and lets Rui escape.

The 02 team and the Kaiser showdown happens normally, and Rui just appears in front of the 02 kids between the ep 22 and 24 events. The group catches him by accident because he was wearing a cape and hoodie to not call for peeps' attention and then Takeru immediately remembers seeing a kid who had disappeared mysteriously in the newspapers, way before Ken went insane.

Rui is not aware about that, but he feels like he cannot leave now because of that. The kids wonder what he means by that and he shows them the Digi-eye in his face. It makes them confused and question if he’s indeed human, but he tries to explain (this time) what happened, and that he got captured by the Digimon Kaiser for days and maybe months. The group is in doubt, but Daisuke tells them he trusts Rui. Hikari asks where’s Rui’s partner now and Rui pouts upset: We had a fight and he just vanished. The 02 group decide they should just help Rui to find Ukkomon, but Rui thinks Ukkomon might not want to talk to him anymore and then says Ukkomon was doing things he didn’t want to and didn’t like at all. Iori asks why he didn’t tell Ukkomon that, and Rui shuts in.

The 02 group’s digimon find that strange, because a digimon partner wouldn’t run away like that, right? Daisuke even mentions that Wormmon did not leave Ken’s side and even helped them to beat Chimeramon in order to rescue Ken from himself. The group agree, Ukkomon might still be around. Rui wonders how.

They had to stick along with the kid for a while, at least after school activities. The group ask Agumon and Gabumon to take a look at Rui for them (Rui is not happy with that idea but he has no options left) and then the digimon duo try to keep the boy comfortable. He’s NOT happy though.

Agumon asks what’s wrong and he just sulks, refuses to talk with Agumon or even Gabumon. Piyomon, Palmon, Gomamon and Tentomon come in and try to help the other two digimon to deal with that kid. Rui just keeps hating more and more being there and he wants to go home, but he knows that eye would make people claim he’s a FREAK and maybe things would be even worse now. Sadly, the older six’s digipartners are clueless and don’t feel like they can solve it. And Rui started to just blame the digimon in gen for his misfortune, making the six critters sad. He then just realizes he messed this up with them, and quickly tries to apologize. He tells them that Ukkomon really didn’t know him that well, and didn’t even know what he liked or wanted. Gabumon then says “Are you sure about that?” out of the blue.

Once Rui fell asleep, the six digimon noticed something hiding behind the trees and found Ukkomon, who was invisible this whole time (somehow) and kept protecting Rui in the shadows, though he was still upset with the boy’s statements and behavior. Piyomon asks why did he “leave” Rui behind and Ukkomon vents that he was getting frustrated about what to keep Rui happy and smiling. The other mons look at each other and then back to Ukkomon, who continues “He really needs me but he snapped when I tried to help him before'', making Gomamon comment that “giving your own eye to a human is not going to help him at all” and everyone agree. Ukkomon is unable to understand WHY this is wrong, and they had to say “If Rui slapped his own eye on Ukkomon out of the blue, to help him out, would he like that?” and Ukkomon took a while to give an answer. And the digimon didn’t want to think about a scenario where Rui is literally destroying himself either. But now Rui is mad and he’s having a tough time with that big eye in his face. Ukkomon feels ashamed for going off the rails. Palmon suggests that he go talk with Rui, but… Ukkomon also is bad at communicating so he just shuts in just like Rui.

The digimon reported it to Daisuke and co., and they just think those two need to be in the same room in order to deal with it themselves… But Daisuke refuses to turn his back on Rui and Ukkomon, so he just goes to talk with the boy.

Daisuke asks Rui why he didn’t tell Ukkomon that he didn’t like some things Ukkomon was doing and Rui just feels like he’s getting scolded by his mom. Daisuke continues, “You have to tell what’s bothering you or else nobody will get your feelings right,” and Rui just argues back “If I told Ukkomon he wasn’t helping me at all he would lose his reason to exist.”

The digimon and the kids are confused: Does Rui think the digimon are just servant familiars? Something similar to Ken believing the DW and the digimon were a game?

Rui explains that Ukkomon came to him to make his wishes come true, but his partner had no idea what he likes or needs, so he kept quiet accepting everything like he was used to – His mother was the one to decide his favorite things, and if he said something otherwise she would claim he’s an ungrateful kid. So not even he knows what he needs or what he likes.

Daisuke sighs and then tells Rui that Ukkomon did all of those things because Ukkomon likes him, and doesn’t know how to help him. V-mon sneaks into the convo and asks Rui “Do you know what Ukkomon likes and what he hates anyway?” and it makes Rui just realize something he and Ukkomon were not communicating. Yes he had been watching things by distance and those kids and their digimon had a better understanding of each others’ personalities, likes and dislikes, traits and flaws…Something he and Ukkomon's partnership had been lacking all along.

Ukkomon was hearing that convo, still invisible for them all. A little pouty because he was still hurt by Rui’s actions.  However, the eye made Rui notice Ukkomon was nearby and he called for his digimon. Ukkomon felt no reason to keep hiding and just popped in front of them, still missing his eye. Rui then speaks with his heart for the first time and asks Ukkomon to let them start from zero, and to learn more about each other. Ukkomon agrees, and asks what Rui wishes for and the boy answers he doesn’t need anything else. And Ukkomon in return said he didn’t know how to help Rui and assumed that the boy’s smile meant Rui was happy so he tried to prevent anything bad from happening in order to keep Rui happy and smiling even if it meant to do some… wrong things. The group ask “Which ‘wrong things’??” and Ukkomon reveals he can control people’s minds and had been using it on people. He feared that Rui would hate him, but… Rui was only disappointed that this meant nobody liked him for real.

Ukkomon doesn’t agree with that statement, and thinks there’s people who care and like Rui for real. And then mentioned the digimon they met and the older six’s digimon, also Daisuke and the others right there. Rui takes a moment to agree with that, and then he asks Ukkomon if he could get his eye back. Daisuke asks why Ukkomon gave his eye to Rui before, and Ukkomon says Rui got hurt in the middle of a digimon attack. Miyako suggests them to take Rui to the hospital after Ukkomon “returned” Rui’s injured eye (= he just removed the digi-eye just like magic and the real eye, hidden by the other one, just reappeared in Rui’s face)

The kids and their digimon go back to the human world and then Rui asks to be taken to his relatives instead. Everyone asks why and he says that they are the only ones able to talk with his parents at the moment. Ukkomon offers to use his power on Rui’s parents again, but Rui himself tells Ukkomon to not. He can handle this, he will ask his cousin and her parents to help him out. No one, not even Mr. Ishida argued with him, since they thought it could be a delicate subject that maybe having one or two peeps who care about Rui enough could help there.

Rui gets to talk with his relatives and explain everything to them (with the help of the 02 kids, Taichi, Koushiro and Mr. Ishida, of course, after Rui and Ukkomon explained to them hours ago) and they didn’t know how to break the news that… Rui’s parents had died while he went missing. Rui was in shock, just like all the others who came to give him support, and now they all plus Rui’s relatives were there to help him to deal with the loss. Ukkomon wonders if it was his fault, but he does not tell anyone, and he continues to bottle it up. He wasn’t around to make sure they would be fine… Right? His power wouldn’t be that strong to KILL humans, R I G H T ? !

Rui and Ukkomon get to meet Ken and Wormmon again on ep 39 events. But before that, he and Ukkomon spend their own time trying to get to know each other and find a way to use Ukkomon’s powers for good and not for selfish purposes. Since Ukkomon cannot evolve, they thought it would be better to not get involved with the digimon battles happening around (and again) – Though this made him emotionally exhausted: Why are the digimon trying to attack this world…? Why are they fighting those kids and their partners? Ukkomon himself doesn’t know either, but he believes they could get the answers from his higher-ups.

Rui wonders what kind of higher-ups would Ukkomon have, he just remembers Ukkomon briefly mentioning them before. Ukkomon then suggests going to the DW and looking for Homeostasis’ agents and talking to them. Rui doesn’t know what those agents look like, or why someone would be named ‘Homeostasis’ to begin with. Ukkomon doesn’t know how to answer those questions so he reinforces the idea of going to look for them.

Once they’re on their mission, Rui asks Ukkomon: “Wait, if you’re connected to something greater, couldn’t you simply contact them and call for help?” Ukkomon blinks those big green eyes and admits he didn’t think about that before. Rui glances at him, unamused by that answer.

The truth is, Ukkomon doesn’t know how to call for his higher-ups. But Rui just got a dumb idea of… pressing a few buttons on his digivice. Ukkomon feels this would be hilarious if they could summon someone like that…

And then they casually pass by Gennai, who was heading back from his encounter with Qinglongmon. Yup. Ukkomon and Rui look at each other for a moment, and ask if they did that or not. Ukkomon points out that that ‘human-like’ lifeform is one of Homeostasis’ agents. Rui notices he’s carrying an orb. They follow Gennai but SUDDENLY that ‘person’ disappeared?!

Ukkomon wonders where that agent has gone and Rui thinks maybe they should go home and try another time… Until they spot a long silver haired woman in a dress and purple shades with a tall man in a blue uniform. Ukkomon can definitely sense that woman and man are not… humans at all, and then he and Rui decide to follow them, returning to the human world. 

Huh?! Why were those digimon– Hey, they’re in Tamachi now?? And there’s a digimon running amok. He notices a boy with a familiar digimon before trying to get people out of there and protect themselves, but the Dark Tower prevents Wormmon from evolving and Ken is not very happy with that at all. The wild Triceramon running around and causing havoc hits a traffic pole and it comes into Ken’s direction, BUT! Ukkomon and Rui appear, and Ukkomon uses his tentacles coming from his fingers to catch the pole before it hits Ken. Wormmon immediately recognizes Rui, and Ken’s a little awkward around that kid. Wormmon sees Ukkomon and also recognizes those eyes, but Ukkomon and Rui had no time to explain, nor Ken and Wormmon have time to hear a long story right now. Ken asks Rui to simply escort the people around the area for them, and the other just agrees but says he’s worried about Ken and Wormmon, who just tell him they will be fine.

Rui and Ukkomon then leave the area, searching for anyone else in the middle of Triceramon’s rampage. A few hours later, he and Ukkomon witness a strong and powerful aura coming from the beam hitting something in the area he and Ukkomon were with Ken before, and then they witness Imperialdramon dragon mode for the first time in their lives. 

A few days passed and then Rui did not hear about Daisuke or Ken or the digimon for a while. But he and Ukkomon try contacting the alleged “higher-ups’ Ukkomon talked about. This time they manage to get in touch with Gennai personally and start asking some questions. As usual, not even Gennai or the Holy Beasts know why digimon partnerships are happening, or why the evil digimon are attacking the human world. Rui comments this was pointless, and then he believes it was all his fault because of that wish he made in 1996 on his birthday, Feb 29. Gennai says it’s unlikely to be because of him and that he was just the first of them.

Ukkomon comments about hearing someone saying “something something you’re the first attempt with this experiment” and Rui snaps “So am I a guinea pig for the digi-gods?!” Gennai stares at Ukkomon, and sighs. He explains that it might not mean something in a heartless sense, that the human and digimon partnerships started because of a peculiar encounter of a Koromon and a pair of human siblings prior to 1996. Then, Gennai asks him if he had witnessed a digimon before meeting Ukkomon and Rui takes a moment to think. He then mentions seeing a giant orange dinosaur and a big parrot fighting when he was 3 years old, but he thought it was just a crazy dream he had after watching something before falling asleep. Gennai then reveals that it wasn’t a dream, and that Rui had been chosen as the first to form a bond with a digimon because of it. And that Rui has been observed to be in the need of someone to love and protect him.

He realizes that… Ukkomon did save him from the bad parenting life he was living. He was just a BABY and couldn't even accidentally wet his pants or bed sheets like other kids his age, or reject stuff his mom wanted him to like and claimed to be “his favorite”. Ukkomon agrees, but still feels that using that technique on Rui’s parents might be the reason they had died. Rui tries to tell him it wasn’t his fault, it couldn’t be true, RIGHT?? Ukkomon begs for Rui’s pardon, but the boy still does not get it at all. Gennai then tells Ukkomon to leave it as it is, for better or for worse. Rui also did not get that either.

After talking with Gennai, Rui returns home with Ukkomon and then the news on TV is about a few children disappearing out of nowhere, just like him. He then learns that Ken also went missing before, and mused if it was around the time Ken was the Kaiser. Again, he couldn’t do anything so he only hoped for the best.

It was only when the truck headed to Hikarigaoka that he decided to do something. But he and Ukkomon just witnessed the Jogress digimon sealing Daemon in the Dark Ocean. The police were nearby taking care of the kidnapped kids and the now abandoned truck, so he couldn’t approach that area at all. The only 02 group member Rui and Ukkomon meet is Takeru, who was looking for a safe spot to evolve Patamon into Pegasusmon and head home. Rui asks Takeru what happened and if the kidnapped kids were related to something about the digimon attacks recently and he explains a brief version of the current events. Ukkomon wonders why someone would kidnap children like that.

They later learn, from Daisuke, that the kidnapped children now have digimon data inside their bodies. And then Rui is assigned to keep an eye on one of them who might be from the area where he and his relatives live. With Ukkomon’s unique abilities like sneaking into places or being invisible, Rui could help them to keep watching the dark seed kids, even if he doesn’t understand what’s happening that much.

But he couldn't do much, and in the end his efforts were in vain because of what happened on New Year's Eve. Rui wanted to do more, and he in fact did go to the Digital World for that final battle, and helped them out like the rest of the Chosen Children around the world. But that whole action might have caused a MASS PANIC in the human world because children are disappearing en masse for a few hours?!

BelialVamdemon is beaten, everyone returns home. Fin.

So far this is all I got for it, and idk how to do the post-series stuff (movies and drama CDs) or the Epilogue part so I’ll just stop here for now. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed my dummy Hacker’s Memory-esque idea (or Lion King 1 ½ lol) and I might draw more stuff with this whole setting. (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞

[noegrets]

What do you dislike about Yoshio? I stopped keeping up a long time ago (around Bell Tree Express) and for the anime, much earlier, I just now later anime originals were usually not great, with a few nice exceptions...

In super short: we don't like his episodes because he ignores established characterization to be able to make jokes, and his jokes are extremely juvenile. He seems to think old people are inherently funny, he seems to think scatological humor is the height of comedy, and that having characters wildly gesticulate or dance is a sure recipe for hilarity. It's a type of humor that, beyond being extremely juvenile, also reads to us as mocking and mean-spirited, as the targets of his humor are portrayed as laughable, vapid, stupid, gay, and/or old. Which is gross and we don't want to pollute ourselves with this stuff. So, since all of his episodes are anyway out-of-character excursions mostly just to make fun of old people, we decided to skip them entirely.

Our first incident with this guy's writing does not even come from Detective Conan, but from Digimon 02. I don't know how familiar you are with it, but the first arc's plotline is about Ken, a child genius in the real world becoming an evil dictator in the digital world. He doesn't understand that he's not simply playing a videogame, and when he finally realizes the truth, there are serious repercussions for Ken that he now has to face. And then there is an absolutely heartbreaking episode about Ken's trauma about the death of his older brother and how he has been in the role of replacing his dead older brother, which has been unaddressed and festering and at the core of all of his problems.

And sandwiched right between the episode where Ken found out after fucking around for the whole first half of the series, and the trauma backstory episode, there is an episode that was written by this guy (although we didn't learn that tidbit until much later). We pre-emptively apologize for making you read this. The episode is about the main heroes accidentally walking in on an old tortoise digimon who was enjoying a piss. The tortoise is so mad about being interrupted in its joyful piss that it chases the kids for the whole episode. Antics ensue. And whenever the tortoise thinks it's safe to piss, the kids witness it again, restarting the cycle. Eventually the tortoise gets to piss again alone.

We were rewatching Digimon 02 after many years, and when we got to this episode, we stopped. The next day, we just said, …why don't we watch something else.

The first episode he contributed to Detective Conan is the "Tokyo Barls Collection" (episode 943). The entire episode exists solely because of an extended pun between garuzu (transliteration of the English word "girls") and "ba" (Japanese for "old") - what if there was an idol group, consisting of all old ladies, and they were the baruzu? That's the joke. That extremely stretched out pun that barely even counts as a pun. During the episode, we meet the four old ladies, who are all just recolored copies of like, Wendy Oldbag from the Ace Attorney series, and they do dancing antics and are so so so funny because they are so so so old. Kogoro and Conan are also in the episode, but they both act extremely out of character, and they just get to be the vehicle by which we meet these old ladies so we can laugh about how they dance even though they are old.

In the next episode written by this guy (episode 955), the Detective Boys stumble into a village where everyone is dressed in bug mascot costumes, and they participate in a human bug-catching contest, and… weren't we watching a mystery murder series? When we came around again to this episode on our rewatch, we knew we didn't want to see it again, and this time, we went to the wiki to learn some context for this off-the-wall incongruous zaniness, and that's when we realized this bug episode was written by this guy, who is the same guy who wrote the Tokyo Barls… and the pissing tortoise in Digimon 02. And certain episodes of Lupin III red jacket, and we would have to do a whole rewatch of the series to be sure (we do plan to), but in our hazy memories, we have a feeling that our least favorite episodes were written by him. In our opinion, the Lupin III red jacket series has a quality that wildly fluctuates between supremely excellent and absolute shit, and it would only make sense if the absolute shit was contributed by this guy.

So yeah, this information freed us: this man's writing has been our nemesis for our whole lives, and now that we can simply check who was the writer of a certain Detective Conan episode and see it was him, we can decide we don't want to see it. We are in charge of our own destiny. Never again will we be tormented by this man's weird obsessions.

Continuing in our rewatch of Detective Conan, we made it into kind of a game to not check beforehand, but, if we're watching an episode and either of us has the inkling that it's by that guy, we stop and check. And so far we've been right almost every single time, and often within the first 3 minutes. We almost admire the stylistic consistency, except we hate it. For example, we start watching an episode (976), and Kogoro has been hired to find a lost pet armadillo. Ding! Armadillo mentioned. To puerile sensibilities, armadillo is a funny word and a non-standard pet. So we raise our eyebrows. In the next minute, Kogoro searches for the armadillo in the fish market of Tokyo, and insinuates that the armadillo was butchered and sold as tuna, and the fishmongers blast him out of the market with a hose. Ding! Racist joke about foreign meat, and Kogoro is out-of-character, because for all of his vices, Kogoro's greatest skill is being polite and copacetic. Kogoro proceeds to make this same faux pas a few more times, getting blasted out of the market again and again, learning nothing from the experience. Ding! Slapstick comedy and mindless repetition. Defeated, Kogoro decides to leave the fish market and calls a taxi. The taxi driver learns that he's the great Sleeping Kogoro, and turns around in the seat to ask Kogoro if he will marry him, as the car swerves wildly through the highway - but he meant to be present as his wedding, not as the groom. Ding! Homophobic joke, plus more slapstick comedy. By this point we have more than enough evidence, and we stopped watching. This is how episodes with this guy go.

Nobody make this into a drinking game or you'll need to go through the entire Black Organization before the commercial break.

Only in one case did we watch the whole episode and then only at the very end, when people started dancing, we realized it was his work (episode 1119). Though, even the wiki mentions that this episode is unusually sedate and serious for this guy's writing. Maybe he's improving. Maybe people are stepping him to save the show before he kills it. Who knows. Though, it's not like it's a good episode or anything we would particularly want to praise or even rewatch, just one that didn't cross a line for us.

We do want to say that we actually really enjoy a lot of the anime original episodes in Detective Conan, and a big part of why we started doing our ongoing series of anime episode reviews was to talk about the anime original episodes and how some of them are among our top favorite episodes. Some surpass the canon material, in our opinion. After all, the anime is largely responsible for Takagi, Shiratori, Chiba, Azusa, about half of Kogoro, most of Eri as a likeable character and not a nasty appendage of Kogoro, Eri's prosecutor rival Reiko who remains anime-original but is really cool, Fumimaro (or as we call him, "squirrel cop"), and Yuya "Eyebrows" Kazami. So don't let this one guy, who only came in around 2019, cast a shadow over all the good anime-original episodes. There is still plenty of good about the anime series. We still just skip anything that we realize is by this guy.

[shihalyfie]

Bagramon is a very different character in the anime and the manga. I'd like to know your opinion about it, and especially what do you think about his character and arc in the Xros Wars manga :)

To be honest, I don't really treat them as the same character to begin with just because their characterizations and plotlines are so different that it feels like comparing apples and oranges -- detailed comparisons are easy when there's at least some level of parallelism, but the Xros Wars manga really has a very loose relationship with the anime, so I think my mental categorization segments them off completely, with only the occasional factor transferred over of things like "it'd be nice if we could have all three Amano siblings somehow" or something.

As far as manga!Bagramon goes, I think he's interesting! I do think it's unfortunate that Nakashima clearly had a lot of things he wanted to do and so little time and allowance to do it (he himself complained about this in the author's notes), so I definitely get the feeling he wanted to stretch out the story and give it more breathing room, but I really do like having villains who have a "misguided sense of justice" instead of the usual. While it's true that Digimon has had ones that kind of tread that line like Yggdrasil, they're still ones that are such cold-hearted, selfish jerks that you still can't really have much sympathy for them anyway, but I think the manga did do a good job driving home that its version of Bagramon did legitimately think that he was saving everyone from despair.

[tobiasdrake]

Before moving on to Revenge of Diablomon, I need to get this out.

I did not remember Oikawa at all from when I was a kid. I remembered Arachnemon and Arachnemon's Sidekick (but not Mummymon in particular). and I remembered Vamdemon as the ultimate villain, but Oikawa totally slipped my mind.

When Oikawa first came on the scene, I kinda just thought he was Vamdemon in a human guise. Like, evil Digimon in a trenchcoat, not unlike how Arachnemon and Mummymon present when not in their combat forms. Or a human directly possessed by Vamdemon, such that his persona is more Vamdemon than Oikawa. In my defense, he has the face of an undead monster.

This is not the case. Oikawa is his own character, and he's the one who ultimately drives the plot for the whole series. The Man Behind the Man Behind the Digimon Kaiser. Vamdemon is involved, but his influence is vague and poorly defined. He basically just comes in at the end to hijack the plot and give everyone a final boss to fight.

Villain-wise, this is Oikawa's show much moreso than Vamdemon's. And honestly, Oikawa is a pretty good villain! I wish I'd given him the credit he was due back in the day, but I must have been so Mind Blown by Vamdemon's return.

Oikawa wants to be a Chosen Child. That's his whole thing. He wants for himself and his best bro Hiroki to have had Digimon partners and gone on adventures in the Digital World when they were young. But he didn't get to have that so he stormed off and made his own Digimon with blackjack and hookers.

And that's really interesting. BlackWarGreymon gives Arachnemon and Mummymon a brief existential crisis when he points out that they're neither Digimon nor human. I kinda wish that had been explored more?

Because. Like. There's an answer to it that the show never explores, and it's honestly kinda fascinating. They were created from Oikawa's genome, right? Well, Digimon Partners are created from data scanned from the children they're partnered to during those times when those kids encountered Digimon.

Agumon was created from Taichi's data when he and Hikari first witnessed a Greymon fighting a Parrotmon all those years ago. That's how you become a Chosen Child. The Digital World scans you and then it makes a Digivice and a Digimon Partner for you. This was a plot point in the first series.

So if Partner Digimon are already created from data scanned from their partners, then is Arachnemon and Mummymon's situation really so unique? The pair of them are just Partner Digimon created by Oikawa instead of by the Digital World's natural process.

This is really cool, and echoes Ken's attempt to fabricate his own "better" Partner Digimon in Chimeramon. Except with Ken, it was an act of dismissive cruelty towards Wormmon. With Oikawa, it's colored by a tinge of sadness.

Oikawa made two Partner Digimon. Of course he made two. One of them's for Hiroki.

This is such a good character. Adventure 02 really is defined by its human antagonists, Ken and Oikawa. To the point that it makes the brief times that the kids fight evil Digimon feel kinda tacked on by extension.

Except you, BlackWarGreymon. You get a gold star. Though the Holy Stones plotline does reek of "We need some excuse for the kids to fight BWG so I guess this will work."

But Oikawa is fantastic, and my only complaint is honestly the same one I had for Ken: This was a great idea, and I wish there was more of it.

Oikawa deserves to be remembered as the true antagonist of Adventure 02, much moreso than Vamdemon.

[digitalgate02]

DigiTimeLines: Document format [pt2]

[part 1] | [AO3 version] | @digimonadventuretimelines (blog; outdated)

Part 2 is not totally focused on the next villain arc, but a few arcs involving a few kids and foreshadowing for the next segment (yes, part 3 confirmed, but not sure if it will be the closure to this big plotline) -- also there's some canon divergence in it, but this is a multiverse story project, so different sources of canon can still exist in their own timelines.

[pixel Crest art by Lurils & me]

The Prelude To A New Enemy

No one knew how to explain what happened to Motomiya Daisuke. He was alive, of course, but in front of them all was… A small dog-like baby digimon with fur resembling Daisuke’s hair in color and style. In other words, he looked like a Pomeranian dog. Koushiro labeled that digimon form as “Pomeranimon” but Daisuke hated the idea of being called like that!!

Oddly, his voice sounded babyish and childish (like in Hurricane Touchdown movie) instead of the voice of an adult man. Taichi wanted more to know what happened after he got captured, but Daisuke being alive and safe now was enough for him. Ken is the one who deserved to know that info (but Taichi still wanted to know, so were the others in the room) -- but Daisuke says he’s too tired to talk. Miyako grabs her tiny and furry husband and starts demanding him to explain things NOW, and he just agrees to.

At first, Daisuke and Wingdramon managed to beat the enemies but couldn’t go home. They knew if they opened the gate, the enemies would go after Ken… So they stayed on the run and tried to survive. It was when a strange thing happened -- they met a strange Digimental in the jungle, being secured by the foe’s army. So this was the thing they were looking for, right? Something something Digimental of… Darkness? He didn’t remember very well of that part. But Ken was needed because of the Digivice of Darkness. They were trying to bring the Kaiser back and then use it to show how the humans were evil beings only interested in turning every digimon their slaves.

Daisuke and V-mon thought about taking that Digimental with them before they could use it, but Papillonmon appeared and threw those shadow butterflies against them. Then, that vile digimon forced Daisuke to use that Digimental on V-mon, armor evolving him into a black-armored Magnamon. Papillonmon then used his special attack to transform Daisuke into a digimon and labeled it Lupinmon. Since then, Daisuke and V-mon were fighting hard to regain control of their bodies but couldn’t for much longer.

It was when Magnamon ordered Natsu to go back and ask for the group’s help, but she ended up being chased by the evil enemies for five years and had no chance to get back to the human world until that day she met Daichi.

As Daisuke finishes his report, he yawns and falls asleep in Miyako’s hands. She’s about to shake him to keep him awake when Daichi intervenes saying to let him rest for a while. The adults are quite upset with their children, but they are at least relieved everyone was back and safe. Taichi tries to talk with them, but Taisuke just says he only wants to shield them, and he leaves stomping his feet on the floor. Hikari looks at Taichi, as if she knew something was wrong with them all, but she couldn’t blame those kids for trying something risky: They did the same around their ages too.

Ken mutters that they were chosen in the past, but then they made the choice to stand up and fight. Have Taichi forgotten that?

Kiyoko and Eiji follow Taisuke, trying to talk with the boy that maybe the adults were afraid of their old friend killing their children. Daichi and Hoshi come later, but Daichi seems… off. They ask what’s wrong and the kid says something is not right. Why would Papillonmon let Daisuke and Magnamon set free all of a sudden? Kiyoko gasps, ‘Are you saying dad is still in his hands!?’ but Daichi denies it, and adds that it was another thing.

What thing? The thing is… He didn’t see that Digimental his father mentioned there. So, obviously… Papillonmon retrieved it from Magnamon before leaving the Manticoremon soldiers try to get rid of them all. This made Eiji muse about that detail: Maybe Daisuke is still under Papillonmon’s spell, but not under his control. Hence why he’s still a digimon, but devolved this time. Hoshi asks if this means her dad is in danger again, and the group only assumed this could mean ‘yes’, yet they had nothing in hand to confirm their suspicions.

Would the adults believe them? Not without Daisuke and V-mon’s help.

Space-Time Traveling, Again

Once Daisuke and Chibimon had their energies recovered they were kidnapped by Kiyoko and Taisuke. The iconic 2-TOP duo were facing the children’s eyes and watching them mutter something to each other. Daisuke loses his patience, as if he was a teacher finding his classroom was merged into chaos while he was out. Mirai finds this whole situation enjoyable! A human turned into a digimon!? This must be studied! Mitsuki jokes about Mirai wanting to dissect the poor Daisuke-mon and Kiyoko snaps at them! NO ONE IS GOING TO LEND A HAND ON HIS FLOPPY FUR! (Daisuke, annoyed: Stop reminding me that I have fur!!)

Reika asks them all to behave and respect Daisuke, because he’s still an adult. Though he felt that form humiliating, only to have Elise scratch the back of his dog ear. Somehow this helped him to relax… Well, he’s stuck in that form until Koushiro can fix it. Chibimon complains, he wants to be pampered too! Elise uses her free hand to scratch Chibimon’s belly, who feels so pleased and relaxed… Until Natsu switches to Digimon form in order to get some belly rubs too. Elise complains, she can’t give love to all of them at the same time!! Her partner Zebra also complains because he wanted Elise’s attention too. She calls for the others’ help, and then Jin tells all of the digimon to stop bugging Elise.

Daichi calls everyone’s attention to their main topic, and Daisuke raises an eyebrow: What is it? His son then asks him if he or Chibimon had seen the Digimental he mentioned again, when they regained consciousness -- Daisuke and Chibimon looked at each other for a moment: OH NO, they forgot about the Digimental!! Daichi and the other kids grimace when they hear that.

Daisuke laughs nervously, and dramatically cries about him being stupid. Taisuke says, in his most tsun way, that it wasn’t his fault if he was brainwashed. The rest look at the boy, who snaps at them for that: I WAS JUST STATING THE FACTS, Y’KNOW!? Daichi wonders if he should go back in time and secure the Digimental, but Natsu says that could be wrong!

Daisuke muses that they could go back a bit further in time, but he thinks it’s risky and he should leave it to Ken and the others. Eiji counter-arguments the enemies might be after his dad now. With no other options, Daisuke sighs. He knows if he allows those children to risk their lives, their parents might unleash their wrath on him. Ulforce suggests they send just Daichi and him there, but Daisuke says they don’t know what they’re looking for! Mike suggests he describe the Digimental and that they would draw it, like the police do with suspects. Chibimon shrugs, can Daisuke be able to describe something? Daisuke squints his eyes at his own partner, and decides to go with that suggestion.

As Daisuke described the Digimental, the kids’ best artist -- Reika -- tried to capture the image in the paper. When she finished, they all looked at it. Taisuke says it looks like “a World’s Cup trophy-thing, but in cold colors” and everyone glanced at him. He does “What? I think it’s what I see here! Evil Soccer Cup’s Trophy.” -- Hoshi growls, this wasn’t the right hour to think about soccer!! Daisuke, with a deadpan face, looks at the kids and just agrees with Taisuke.

They have a plan, and then Daichi now tells them to keep everyone, mr. Ichijouji Ken included, safe while he’s out. The kids agree. Daisuke says he wants to go, but Natsu says she and Ulforce can protect Daichi for him. With everyone’s agreement, Daichi, Ulforce and Natsu go to the Dimensional Space dungeon again.

Daisuke still thinks everything is his fault, so he asks Taisuke, Hoshi and Eiji to take him to Taichi and Ken. Chibimon cannot evolve if Daisuke can’t use his digivice, so they have to be protected by those kids.

Hard Task: Talking to Taichi & Ken

The Ichijouji siblings could manage to call Ken for a small talk with Daisuke, but can Taisuke contact his dad for this too? The answer is… There’s a lot happening between Taichi and his son, Taisuke definitely hates the fact his dad is a busy man and since this whole crisis started, Taichi didn’t get time to rest and be with him and his mother. So, Taisuke is definitely out of his reach right now. But Daisuke needs to talk with Taichi immediately -- Maybe the best scenario would’ve been with both at the same time.

Hoshi knows Taisuke has a beef with her uncle Taichi. Eiji knows Hoshi and Taisuke do not get along either. And he’s a shy person, a bookworm. He cannot raise his voice and stop any clash between his sister and his cousin-and-best-friend.

Daisuke frowns: This is too much for him. If he were still human he could act as the responsible adult he is, but as a… digimon? He’s small and cannot do much! So, he had to count on Eiji for this. The moment Hoshi and Taisuke started arguing about how to call Taichi, things began overwhelming Eiji. The digimon with them were trying to help to reach a conclusion, but those two human children are hard to deal with.

Daisuke tries to call them out, but yup. His small dog-like shape cannot stop those two. Kitty, Sting and Draki as well, they were almost arguing between themselves too. It is when Eiji snaps and shouts. His hair went all over his face, resembling Ken in his child days. He tells them to stop, that this wouldn’t help anyone and that mr. Motomiya wanted their help for something important! Everyone glances at the boy in shock. Daisuke blinks, and comments this reminded him of when Ken used to snap at the others when he got angry. Eiji starts apologizing for that, that he didn’t want to… But Daisuke smiles at him and says he didn’t do anything wrong. Everyone agrees, they were wasting their time with that nonsense.

Eiji comments that if they get to talk to their dad first, they can manage to get him to call uncle Taichi with his help. Chibimon wonders if this is possible. Daisuke muses that as well, it’s not like Taichi and Ken hate each other, but they’re always kinda… awkward together… The kids agree with this too. But if this could help fight the enemy, they will cooperate with each other.

Taichi and Ken managed to meet with their kids and Daisuke. Their digimon were also present, because this is about their enemy. Daisuke took a deep breath before he could reveal something he knew. Then, when he starts… Everyone’s eyes were widened:

The enemy was trying to bring the Kaiser back, yes, but they also wanted to use him to invoke a greater threat to the world: Imperialdramon. They wanted to use Imperialdramon’s power to cause havoc in the human world, and force the humans to banish every digimon from their world, and then closing the gates around the human world.

Ken stroked his chin: This means the problem was bigger than he thought. At least it wasn’t related to some-other-digimon-he-knew (aka Millenniummon) so he was a little relieved. Chibimon could sense Wormmon was in shock, and then he added that they learned that while he and Daisuke were trying to steal the Digimental of Darkness before they could snatch it.

But that didn’t work, of course. Taichi asks why they didn't tell him before, and Daisuke looks at the floor and stays quiet. Taisuke mutters something like ‘You’re always busy, ol’ man’ which is heard by the digimon and Daisuke (because, since he’s in a digimon form his senses are pretty superhuman now) and they look at the boy. Daisuke babbles immediately that he couldn’t do that before but now he did it. Chibimon adds that Daisuke and him were ashamed of getting captured and brainwashed.

Ken muses if he is still a target, after all… Daisuke has been rescued and is back to his senses now. Daisuke frowns, he’s concerned about this form though -- If he’s really free from Papillonmon’s control. Taichi understands what that meant, and tells the kids to leave Daisuke and Chibimon with the police. Hoshi says in a serious tone that she thinks this is too harsh on them. Daisuke smiles and says Taichi’s right, he and Chibimon might still be under the enemies control and he is asking for surveillance too. Eiji frowns, but he leaves Daisuke and Chibimon in Taichi and Agumon’s hands. Kiyoko is going to kill us -- Taisuke whispers to the Ichijouji siblings. Daisuke sighs, and then makes it clear to the kids are aware that he heard them -- It’s for their children’s safety. And then entrusts Daichi and Kiyoko to those three.

Taisuke blushes, somehow. He didn’t expect to get an important task like that. Taichi and Ken ask Daisuke if this was okay and then Daisuke nods -- Those were the children who rescued him after all, and they all should trust them like their families trusted them all to beat Apocalymon and Vamdemon ages ago. Taichi nods and smiles -- Yup, they’re our children after all.

Searching for the Digimental of Darkness

Daichi, Ulforce and Natsu were looking at the infinite number of doors in that space. Ulforce wonders if they can find the right door since all of them are the same! Daichi smirks and says he had been labeling all the doors they opened with a label printer he had borrowed from Mitsuki. Natsu and Ulforce are impressed, but did he label the first door too? He reveals he had brought it with him since the first time they did space-time travel. Ulforce says HOW, but then Natsu reminds him they had been there briefly before Daichi’s decision to use that gimmick to save Daisuke.

Still, there’s a ton of doors unlabeled yet. So how could they find the one leading them to the time Daisuke and V-mon found the Digimental? Natsu suggests asking ClavisAngemon and that mysterious hooded person.

And, since she was “basically ominous” just by that mention, the woman in the hood appears in front of them. She also summons ClavisAngemon in order to lend the trio a hand. The woman notices the label printer in Daichi’s hands and asks why he had that in hands. The boy says since all of those doors have the same design and no labels, they couldn’t know where they were going, so he decided to label them by himself. She laughs kindly and reveals they could’ve used the digivice for that, since the D-TimeRune can scan the doors and point out where they could go through them. The trio stares at her, and screams in a very angry tone: WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL US FIRST!? 

Daichi takes a deep breath to calm down. He just then breathes out, and shows the drawing to them -- They needed to find the door leading them to this Digimental, a door from their timeline. ClavisAngemon and the woman gasp, and her eyes are widened too. They ask why they are looking for that forbidden power, and Natsu informs them that the enemy in their timeline-bar-world had acquired and used it to put a DigiChosen against them. The woman was aware of that as well, since she can see through the doors about the past, present and the future. She is actually an overseer entity.

The trio uses the digivice this time, finding the correct door and opening it. But to their surprise, the door leads them to the human world instead. There they find a girl named Nishikawa Yume, whose appearance was pretty… familiar. She’s partnered with a YukiAgumon called Blitz. Yume knew those three were suspicious, and believed they came from the future. She’s basically the same age as him (14yo). Daichi ignored that girl and focused on finding the Digimental of Darkness quickly, BUT it felt like an impossible quest: The place Daisuke said to be where he and V-mon found it… Has no Digimental when they got there. Finding it too suspicious, Natsu uses her pendant to move through time and reach the moment the Digimental appeared. EXCEPT Yume and Blitz managed to sneak into their magical bubble-shield and witness their secret. Ulforce gets annoyed by those two, but Daichi interrupts him and asks how they got there. Yume smiles and says she knows what they’re looking for, and offers to help them, in return for a favor. What is her deal? To use Daichi’s power in order to protect someone important to her. Natsu finds it fishy, but the boy accepts the offer and makes a deal with that girl. Yume then mentions the existence of a dark passage in that area, leading them to another parallel realm where the Digimental is locked to not be caught by no one. Ulforce asks how she knows that, and she says better they do not know.

Small Yet Helpful

Koushiro, Jou and Miyako were studying Daisuke’s Pomeranimon form. They had Gennai’s help as well, but it seemed that none of them could find an answer to why Daisuke is still a digimon. Daisuke was afraid of him still being under Papillonmon’s control, hence why he asked to be kept locked and under surveillance. What if he hurts someone!? He would never forgive himself if something like that happens. Miyako ran a few more tests on Daisuke, ones that could detect digimon’s coding and digital waves on him, but thankfully nothing was found. So, something else was preventing Daisuke from returning back to his original human form. But what?

Mirai drops by and asks the adults if she could help in something, but they are still not sure if they could let her do anything. They just ask her to keep protecting the digimon and humans while they work on it. Mirai fakes a smile and then leaves. But at night she just comes back and kidnaps Pomeranimon. 

When Daisuke asks her why she says she’s just upset that no one wants her giving them a hand because she’s seen as too young for that. Except she’s too smart compared to the children from her age, and this makes her frustrated because she does not know what to do then -- adults say she’s too young to help them, and children around her age say she’s too different from them to play with her. The exceptions were Taisuke and Elise (who are the same age as her), because they also feel different and weird. Daisuke frowns, and she says she wants to be a “normal” person. Daisuke replies saying it’s okay to be different, and that people should accept her for who she is. He knows Koushiro’s reasons to refuse Mirai’s help was due to the fear of him still being under the enemy’s power… So he reveals that to her. He also says maybe she could help him out, but that they kept that a secret from the others. Mirai asks what it is, and then he says “Be yourself, do what you do the best. Leave the adults to me.” With this, Mirai nods and says she will then use her expertise to find out how to bring him back to normal, but Daisuke asks her another favor -- to help Daichi as much as she can for him.

All of those requests given to the children… They sounded like either Daichi was in trouble, or Daisuke was about to die. But rest assured, it’s just Daisuke being a dramatic dad and wanting Daichi’s friends to help his son as much as they can.

Mirai and Daisuke’s convo are interrupted by a Phantomon. The small pup form for Daisuke wasn’t able to beat a Perfect level digimon, and yet…!! Mirai calls for Koh (the KoKabuterimon) help, who evolves into Kabuterimon and faces the enemy. Koh is not used to fighting, so all he does is prevent Phantomon from capturing Mirai and Daisuke. He grabs them and retreats, but Phantomon chases them. Daisuke knows he has to do something, but… Heh, he just jumps from Mirai’s arms and throws himself at Phantomon’s face. Mirai and Koh scream, and then… Mirai’s digivice shoots a light on Daisuke’s Pomeranimon form.

He evolves… Back to Lupinmon -- Except it’s Fairytail Mode Lupinmon. That new digimon form is stronger and he destroys Phantomon, but before destroying it, he snatches something from the digimon’s robes and is caught by Koh. Mirai wonders if she just formed a link with Daisuke and he’s also confused -- So, this digimon form can be linked to digivices!? Can he link himself to his old D-3 and then evolve V-mon again!? Maybe… Sure, why not try it!?

The Digimental of Darkness’ Hidden Dimension

How did Yume know about that? They were told that they were better not to know the answer, but they would go investigate that later. They managed to go there without her and Blitz, so they could have a talk about what they think of her at least. Daichi’s opinion is maybe she has a reason to not tell them where she got that info, Natsu and Ulforce’s are she’s fishy, better not trust her at all. 

Said Digimental was there, Ulforce and Natsu could feel it, though they couldn’t see it. But before that, what would they do? Grab the Digimental and leave? According to Daisuke’s report, the enemy had secured the Digimental and was hunting Ken down for his digivice. But what were Daisuke & V-mon thinking to do next? Just flee? Hide the Digimental? Take it to Koushiro or Gennai? Destroy it? They had no idea what they should DO with that thing!!

Of course Daichi was aware of how Digimentals work -- you say “Digimental Up!” and then it activated the Armor Evolution. But Daichi also knew Ulforce is a V-mon, and V-mon species had an affinity to Digimentals. He wouldn’t risk turning Ulforce or Natsu into a feral monster and let them run amok. They needed a strategy.

Searching the area for the Digimental they found its guardian -- Aegiochusmon: Dark. Prepared for battle, Daichi puts Ulforce and Natsu on hold and tries to explain to Aegiochusmon why they were there. Aegiochusmon understood them, but it’s when they learn that the changes in the past wouldn’t erase/destroy the future or present, and yes that Daichi was creating new alternative timelines for them all. But how did Aegiochusmon know that? Daichi was in denial now. Natsu stays silent, and Ulforce tries to attack with his V-Bracelets. Aegiochusmon then repels the plasma shots and threatens to send them to the null area if they don’t leave.

Daichi keeps refusing that information, Ulforce orders Aegiochusmon to give them the Digimental, but the other refuses to. Natsu grabs both Ulforce and Daichi, thanks Aegiochusmon and leaves immediately. The boys complain hard and criticize her behavior, but she ignores them. Daichi was feeling she was hiding something from them. Then, she suggests they find the Digimental of Miracles to counter-attack the Digimental of Darkness. Ulforce wonders why Miracles and not Light -- The Digimental of Light is the opposite of the Digimental of Darkness after all. The logic lied more in the sacred power and high defensive stats the Digimental of Miracles could give them.

With this… They returned to their present again.

Another Kind of Trouble (?)

Remember when I said there’s two main enemies before? The other issue making Taichi lose brain cells to put an end to the conflict was the anti-digimon people. Despite having the entire world’s populace partnered with digimon, some of those people hated them and had awful relationships with the digimon -- might become a bit heavy here, but -- such as abusing them, harming them and even trying to end their lives… Or using them for crimes.

Criminals are “easy” to deal with, at least. You arrest the human and send their partner to some sort of a victim protection program to keep the digimon safer from the toxic human tamer… And then “undo” their partnership -- not that they end the connection between human and digimon, but they send it back to the Digital World to be taken care of by a special group of caregivers formed by digimon and humans habiting the DW.

As for abuse, harm or murder attempt cases… Those are harder and it’s just like what happens to human beings, but they couldn’t let the digimon return to those people’s hands. So they’re completely sent to the same group of caregivers and under the victim protection program. Things might be harder than dealing with a human being though, and no one wants those digimon victims to be devolved into digiegg stage.

The rest of the Neo Chosen group is focused on saving the digimon from bad partners, while Daichi is out. They’re forced to protect the digimon before the human partner triggers a dark evolution and go amok, so many times those kids had no other choice but revert the wild feral dark evolution into an egg or baby form. With the help of the police, the adults would arrest the toxic tamer and never let their digimon see them again -- unless they redeem themselves and repent for their actions. Because yeah, those kids and their parents/relatives would hope for the best and happy ending.

But digimon taking control over their partners also exist. Criminal digimon abusing their human partners, forcing them to commit crimes, to evolve them so they could hurt and destroy stuff also exist and are on the top of the list for things the Neo Chosen and their families have to combat. In this case the human is protected from the digimon, and the digimon is forced back to digiegg state. 

Some of those cases ended up with the rest of the kids unlocked Adult and Perfect evolution for their partners:

Elise: BlackGabumon → B.Garurumon and B.WereGarurumon

Mike: Floramon → Sunflowmon and Lilamon

Jin: Kamemon → Gawappamon and Shawujinmon

Reika: Armadimon → Ankylomon and Triceramon

Mitsuki: Tsukaimon → Pidmon and HolyAngemon

Mirai’s partner, Koh, would super evolve later, but at this point she was just busy working behind the curtains and working as some sort of navigator-esque character.

Another problem they have to face is people very Menoa-like trying to build mindless human-made digimon for military and war purposes. Taichi & co. hated this case so badly that the authorities and agents like Yamada Kyotaro (also known by “Imura Kyotaro”) would put a stop on any program or project involving this kind of research and manufacture.

But a part of their worries was definitely Papillonmon’s plans -- where did he go and what will he do now?

Clash Between Daichi and Soleil

The “Space trio” -- Soleil, Lune and Étoile -- kept working on their own way: In the shadows and doing the sneaky job. They met with Daichi in the meantime, when the boy was seeking for the Holy Beasts. Soleil uses a prophetic voice tone saying Daichi is too soft for the world-saving job and that he was selected as the savior of the worlds by Homeostasis. Natsu and Ulforce definitely argue with Soleil that Homeostasis don’t go and threaten people like him. Soleil is so sure Daichi, Ulforce and Natsu are disobeying the “divine” orders and unleashes his fury on them -- claiming himself to be the embodiment of Justice.

A fight happens between Flaremon and AeroV-dramon. Lune realizes Ulforce is an interesting digimon specimen and tells Lekismon to stop the fight by putting Flaremon and AeroV-dramon in sleep. Soleil growls at the interruption, but he calms down when Lune justifies just letting Daichi and co. roll with it, because things would’ve been more “interesting” -- no one besides Lune herself knew what that meant (it means she wanted to study Daichi’s methods and philosophy, that’s it.)

Étoile suspiciously drops a card on Natsu, asking to meet her later… Without Daichi and Ulforce. The card also meant it wasn’t a trap, just a human-to-digimon talk. Natsu accepts the terms, and waits for Étoile later, on a… Digimon bar. This bar had everything -- Alcohol and non-alcohol, also oil and other non-human drinks. Why would a human kid want to meet her there?!

Turns out that… Étoile is not human.

Natsu noticed it by the fact Étoile did not appear as Étoile, and yes as an enigmatic and elusive digimon named Arsenemon. He was like her and Arukenimon & Mummymon, or Bakemon species -- a digimon able to shapeshift into a human being. He had chosen that form in order to hide from Lupinmon and protect his archnemesis Herlockmon -- now devolved into a purple Pokomon/Viximon subspecies. Natsu realized something was familiar to her… Daisuke was Lupinmon, but he did not turn back to normal and just reverted into a small baby II level digimon after he was rescued. Could this mean…??

Arsenemon says that he’s aware that Daisuke did not do anything purposely and was a victim, but he was so done with Papillonmon and his lackeys for that. But he also suspected that someone was pretending to be Homeostasis and just manipulating Soleil and Lune under the curtains. Natsu nods in agreement -- Homeostasis does not talk like that at all, they’re not a god-like figure, it’s just a security system for the Digital World.

But who?

The Holy Beast, Yume and Daichi

Before continuing, Daichi and co returned and reported to Daisuke and the others about their discoveries -- Daisuke got a little sad they couldn’t prevent it from happening, but Eiji says that might be for a good cause… They talked to the adults about this too, and then Ken mused about Natsu’s idea to use the Digimental of Miracles to counter the Digimental of Darkness. Yet they had no idea what would happen next, like what Papillonmon would do, or if there’s a way to bring Daisuke back to normal. Then, he asked the kids to search for an old acquaintance of the group, one of the Holy Beasts he and the others had met before in their childhood. Daisuke suggested going with them, but Hikari quietly asked if it was safe to let Daisuke go with them in this state. Koushiro interrupted them saying there’s still something off with Daisuke and they couldn’t take their eyes off him. When the kids asked why, Daisuke changed his mind and said he must stay under surveillance. Mirai frowned, this didn’t sound correct…

Actually Daisuke, for being able to “evolve” into Lupinmon again because of Mirai… Had made Daisuke himself concerned of not being free from Papillonmon’s power, not from his mind control (this one was already undone by Daichi) -- so he feared running amok soon or later.

Now, after facing Soleil and Natsu had talked with Étoile… the trio plus Taisuke, Kiyoko, Eiji and Hoshi wander through the Digital World, as a group. They ran through a few issues, but nothing big. To meet the Holy Beasts, they have to contact one of the Digital World’s agents (aka Gennai’s kind, or Gennai himself) -- But this is where they… had no idea how to meet an agent.

Yume appears with her partner YukiAgumon (named Blitz) and she asks Daichi if he got what he wanted. The others minus Natsu and Ulforce glance at Daichi and “do you know this girl?” but Daichi completely ignores their question and replies to Yume with a nod and adds that he couldn’t get the Digimental but they came up with another plan to countermeasure it. Then, Yume asks what it is and Hoshi whispers to Daichi to not tell that girl anything… Except he ignores his friends again and tells Yume that they’re looking for the Holy Beasts.

Yume smiles and says she knows those digimon, making everyone exclaim in shock. Natsu raises an eyebrow because how could that human girl know the Holy Beasts? That’s fishy…!!

But Yume takes them to the area where the one she knows the most reigns and it’s…

Baihumon. 

Kiyoko blinks, “Shouldn’t we be meeting a blue dragon instead?” and the group confirms it. Yume says Baihumon is an old acquaintance of her father, and that they barely meet nowadays. Taisuke wonders if the Holy Beasts are all partnered with humans and then Eiji -- in his very smart aleck mode -- remembers them about the fact some books and digimon folklore mentions that four of the five Chosen Children digimon have ascended into the final form as the Holy Beasts. Ulforce, Natsu and the rest of the digimon confirm it. Taisuke then asks what happened to the fifth digimon from that group and then none of the digimon or Eiji knew. Yume then slips something like “they died in combat” and Daichi frowns, he goes straight to the point: “Are you related to the fifth Chosen and their digimon?”

Baihumon interrupts them, asking why Yume brought those people and digimon to him. She gently says they’re looking for the Digimental of Miracles, to counter the power of the Digimental of Darkness. Baihumon seems surprised by the mention of that wicked Digimental, and then asks the kids what happened to its guardian. Again, none of them know what happened to Aegiochusmon: Dark, but Taisuke jumps into the conclusion that that guardian had betrayed everyone! Eiji thinks the most realistic conclusion is either that or that the enemies beat the guardian.

Daichi wasn’t that interested in the theories revolving around what happened to Aegiochusmon, but he definitely got some interest on Yume’s behavior when Taisuke asked about what happened to the fifth kid and their partner digimon. But this is everything Yume wanted, actually -- to lure Daichi into her own selfish plan.

Baihumon then decides he will talk to the other Holy Beasts and pass their reports to them, he’s a courteous but not so friendly digimon though, but he kept contact with human beings because of Qinglongmon and his human partner. Seems like he was hiding something too, considering he didn’t say anything regarding his fifth old comrade… Hoshi notices that Daichi is too quiet to the point it’s suspicious, so once they’re back to the human world she asks him what’s going on. Daichi mentions he’s not very sure why, but both Baihumon and Yume were acting strangely when Taisuke asked that question, and Taisuke himself starts wondering if they should investigate that. Kiyoko and Eiji remind them that there’s a digi-crisis happening right now and they shouldn’t get distracted by this. Hoshi suspiciously agrees with Taisuke -- that they should go with it. The kids look at Natsu for a while, and she shrugs. It’s futile to discuss with them, but she also thinks it won’t hurt to research about some fellow Chosen Child while they wait for the Holy Beasts’ decision.

Meeting Baihumon’s Human Partner

With the power of Mirai and Mitsuki’s investigative skills, the group reach a man running a coffee shop in Tokyo called Nishijima Daigo. He was possibly in his late forties and was different from the kind of partner the group had thought of -- He was a completely charismatic, caring and lovely person… Also a walking mess.

Meeting mr. Nishijima made Daichi even more curious about Yume’s true personality -- there was something off in her, yet something… familiar. The kids ask the man about the Digital World he had met in the past, and his reaction is… He completely changed his mood to someone more serious. He asks those young Chosen how did they know about him and his connection to Baihumon, and then Hoshi says his daughter told them. He almost burns his coffee brew by the mention of Yume. He sighs, so she’s doing that again huh… But how they knew about his child was a mystery. Daichi then explains to the man that they met before, a few years ago in 2024 during a mission (he’s not sure IF he can give the details of holding the power to space-time travel though… So not many people are aware of Daichi having said power… yet) and it makes Nishijima wonder which kind of mission would this kid have been involved in to cross with Yume’s path.

It doesn’t matter, Nishijima then tells them to not let her convince them from doing something risky. This makes Eiji raise an eyebrow -- What does Nishijima mean? It’s when the man writes down a few things on a paper napkin and hands it to Natsu (assuming she’s an adult human and responsible for them) with the vague phrase of “Do not let her know about this, but search it by yourselves.” 

They left after a brief break to eat a few pastries and non-alcohol drinks from the café, praising Nishijima’s cuisine and cooking skills -- which made the man go back to his good mood and bubbly personality.

Once they left, they had to think about where to go to search for… a person named Himekawa Maki. Eiji suggests them searching in the Digital World’s library -- the Tree of Knowledge. That sounded like a good plan!! But Taisuke just thinks they should ask for Mirai’s help. They look at the boy for a moment and Daichi says, with a deadpan face, “Both? Both. Both is good” -- The mention of that meme makes them realize Daichi is in better shape than he was years ago. So they go to the Tree of Knowledge with Mirai and Koh.

Himekawa Maki’s Secret Life

Nishijima didn’t clarify things enough. The kids and their mons were wondering what kind of role this Himekawa Maki person would have in Yume’s life, but then they would just find a picture of this person in the database and realize that… Himekawa Maki is Yume’s mother.

Or to be more accurate, was.They learned through those archives that she died in a digimon incident after she had given birth to Yume, months later.

The causes of her death weren’t totally depicted to the public archives, which lead the kids to think something more and more serious had happened and their parents had to hide from the public. If they ask their families, there is a high chance of leading them to more misleadings than someone being pretty honest about this. Something… Maybe Nishijima wanted to hide that from Yume and asked them all to keep it a secret? So Ulforce asks them what they should do now, and then Taisuke dramatically gestures to the Know-It-All Genius Junior Izumi Mirai. Oh, that was Taisuke’s backup plan!! There’s nothing that Mirai cannot discover!!

So Mirai starts inspecting the files, the database and even running into some archives protected by password. Seeing a key requirement made them believe that yeah, there’s something behind this all and they had to pass by a permission key wall. It’s when Mirai chuckles and starts bragging about her new ‘gimmick’ -- a virtual replica of the Digimental of Knowledge, containing the Digimental data stored into her D-TimeRune Digivice. Everyone was so impressed by that that they wondered how she managed to get a Digimental for that, and then she said she copied the data from mr. Hida’s digivice.

But why should they use a Digimental data to bypass the permission wall? And then, she reveals about Koh’s armor evolution -- Searchmon. Everyone isn’t sure what that meant, but then she proceeds to demonstrate that trick. She armor evolves Koh with that data to Searchmon, and then Koh uses his Jamming Hertz special move on the wall. Thanks to it, the wall malfunctioned and then it opened the files, as if the key was input. Taisuke asks how she did that, and then Eiji theorizes that Searchmon’s attack might have worked as some sort of key-gen and generated a permission key to access those archives. Hoshi asks why wouldn’t they just protect those archives with a strong password and then Taisuke smirks and gushes that Mirai would’ve found her own way to bypass that too. Kiyoko reminds them that her and Daichi’s mother is an excellent hacker too, so it wouldn’t be that hard. (Was Kiyoko jealous? Who knows~)

Once they get access to those files, they start reading them all and looking for anything that could lead to answers… Until Kiyoko finds out something. 

The group gathers to the screen she was reading and they learn that Himekawa and Nishijima were part of a prior group, one before ambassador Yagami’s group. And that those five kids faced the Dark Masters trio, but they were beaten. Himekawa’s anger led Megadramon (Bakumon’s perfect level form) to evolve further and then become Mugendramon -- who would later be corrupted and then become the forth Dark Master. The other four kids and their digimon had unlocked the form of the Holy Beasts for their partners and they had no other choice but destroy Mugendramon, reverting it into a corrupted Digiegg. Gennai and the others had to hide this secret from Himekawa for ages, that Bakumon’s egg had hatched later and then that Mugendramon turned into the same tyrant ruler of the Metal Empire area ambassador Yagami and the others had faced in 1999. This secret was kept from everyone else, so none of the Tokyo Twelve (Taichi and Daisuke groups, actually) were aware of it. But Himekawa ended up doing everything she could to bring Bakumon back from the Dark Area, leading to a brand new digimon crisis… And in the end, she was killed by her own partner once she managed to get Mugendramon’s data. This was months after she and Nishijima had a child on October 19 2013, named Yume. Nishijima begged everyone to hide this info from his daughter, so of course he and Baihumon wouldn’t say anything about it.

But… Does it mean Yume learned the truth? She was kinda bugged by Taisuke’s question and Daichi mentions he heard her saying “they died in combat” -- so maybe Yume's not aware of the truth, but maybe some sort of fakery story where her mother died as some heroine?

Yes. Yume’s story about her mother was totally covering the bad parts of it: She was trying to help the Chosen Children, but sacrificed herself in order to save everyone.

No one noticed until now, but Mirai had brought Daisuke inside her purse (because… She was convinced that he wasn’t a baddie anymore, and they were bonding quite well as mentor-mentee) and he did witness the entire story. He gets out from the purse and exclaims that they never had imagined that! The kids get surprised by this sneaky Pomeranimon and Mirai babbles that she couldn’t leave him inside a cage like a lab rat! Hoshi says she shouldn’t have done that, because they don’t know if mr. Motomiya is trustworthy in this form. Kiyoko growls “Huh? Are you saying MY dad is sketchy and cannot be trusted!?” but Daisuke interrupts the possible fight to remind them they don’t know if he’s totally free from Papillonmon’s power. But Eiji’s curious about why Mirai would bring him with her, it didn’t feel like she was just taking him for a walk (Daisuke: Hey! Stop treating me like I’m a pet!! 💦) and she confesses she just thought he could help them out too, also having access to the data there could help her to find a way to turn him back into a human being.

Could this be possible? Well, if you’re in a place with tons of information and it’s called “Tree of Knowledge”, it might have the answer to that main issue. At least it’s what Mirai thought.

But going back to the main subject, Daichi realizes that “Nishikawa” might not be her real name, and yes some portmanteau of her parents names, an ALIAS. They checked the database and there was no Nishikawa person affiliated to Nishijima, he never got married again. But why would she hide her true identity…?

Yume’s Real Plan

If anything, Yume had an ambitious plan which her father had already discovered: She wanted to go back in the past and prevent her mother from sacrificing her life to save the world. In the same napkin he handed to the kids had also a plea: Please do not let Yume discover the truth, and do not let her get in touch with Mastemon.

Kiyoko frowns, “Who’s Mastemon?” and then they start scrutinizing the Tree of Knowledge’s database in order to discover about this Mastemon. Then they learn about this jogress digimon, able to travel through space-time and create portals. Natsu blinks, and then she looks at her pendant. Daichi and Ulforce look at her, and she mentions that… she possibly had inherited those powers from Mastemon -- but she’s not Mastemon herself!

So this means when Yume caught them in the past it probably drove her into the idea of using that power to go back in time and save her mother, and this sounded too familiar for Daichi… To the point he’s ashamed. Well, now he knows that no matter what he does in the past, it only creates a new setting of events for a brand new divergent timeline. He explains it to the kids, now that he’s less obsessed with that power. Kiyoko frowns again, so this means no matter what Yume does, she might never bring her mother back in this timeline… Natsu nods with a sad expression on her face.

But how to convince Yume she shouldn’t do that, that it won’t change their reality and will only cause her more grief? They started to think, and think… Daisuke sighs and says the only option is to tell her that, and hope for the best. Hoshi politely asks what would they do if she does not listen to them, and then Daisuke says they should just break Natsu’s pendant then. Natsu babbles desperately that she cannot destroy it, what if they need it later!? Mirai suggests leaving the pendant with mr. Gennai then, he’s trustworthy!! But Taisuke thinks they could leave it with the Holy Beasts, they could be able to secure that power from anyone else. But Daichi’s opinion is that they should keep it with that hooded woman from the Dimensional Space, or with ClavisAngemon. There were so many options… Daisuke keeps insisting they shouldn’t play with things involving space-time powers, that this is too much responsibility and no one responsible enough should be trusted with it. Then Natsu just thinks this is a burden because she was hated by people for having it, and Daisuke says you’re not a burden and I admire you for being this strong to carry this responsibility. Daichi jokes that “yeah, I can't be trusted with a power like this” and Ulforce and Natsu just agree with him, seriously. 

Daichi blames himself for making Yume get interested in time-travel, possibly because this means something happened back in 2024 and gave her those ideas, so maybe he accidentally made a “time loop” -- and now he, Natsu and Ulforce are stuck in it. Kiyoko raises an eyebrow: If you said that anything you altered in the past created new events for new timelines, how can you be so sure it was you who met Yume in the past and gave her that idea?

Mirai also agrees that Daichi’s idea is in conflict with what was told by Aegiochusmon: Dark, so it would make no sense unless…

Oh no.

That Yume came from the past. Not from the future. 

But what happened to the Yume from their actual time? Did she vanish or something?? The actual Yume would’ve been a little older than Daichi, right? If she was born in 2013… Taisuke and Daisuke gasp and think that both cannot exist in the same place!! Mirai agrees, the digimon also nod sagely, while Hoshi gives up on that talk -- It’s too much for her brain. Eiji deduces that Yume actually caused some kind of time paradox. Hoshi now is not even paying attention to the whole geek-like conversation and just started playing some game on her phone. Kitty asks if the two Yumes gathered into one? The others question if that’s possible though…

Daichi interrupts them to say maybe they should just send Yume from the past back to 2024 and tell her to not mess with space-time. But then… Draki (BlackAgumon) asks how Yume came to the future in the first place…

… They look at Daichi, who takes a moment to notice that maybe she had followed him there.

Oh well… Ulforce says they have to talk with her soon or later, and then Captain just “Well, like now?” and then they all look behind and here she and Blitz are. Taisuke gasps, shouting “DID SHE HEAR US!?” and hides behind Kiyoko and Hoshi. Seems like Taisuke was afraid of that girl since she met them and he innocently asked that question. Daichi asks if she heard them all, and how long she was there, to only have her stare at them seriously.

So everyone lied about his mother, about everything. She wasn’t a heroine but some villain. Yume didn’t want to believe it, and she wouldn’t. She keeps demanding them to help her save Himekawa because her mother wouldn’t have done something cruel like that and that everyone was lying about her. Daisuke tries to calm her down, saying something like “she wasn’t a villain but more like someone who got a terrible traumatic experience in the past” Daichi realizes his father is talking about something he doesn’t know, something Daisuke himself was hiding from him. Yume refuses to hear them out, and she keeps thinking none of them care about saving a victim. She knew the Digital World’s entities were cruel, and it made Blitz kinda sad. Blitz is the only friend Yume had her whole life, but not much talkative. But then Blitz tries to reason with Yume, saying that’s not true, after all they became friends and then partners!! Was Yume forgetting their bonds now? To condemn the Digital World to be the one to take her mother’s life?!

It’s when Daisuke just jumps from Mirai’s purse and stands in front of Yume. He wants to just talk to her, but she keeps refusing them. It’s when he just reveals what Natsu was trying to hide from Daichi -- That he was also a victim of the digimon, BUT that didn’t make him hate them at all. Daichi’s eyes widen, and the kids just exclaim “What!?” -- Yume included. Natsu was silent, but she thinks Daisuke didn’t need to go this far to talk about his past.

Then, Daisuke tells them that a digimon named Vamdemon had invaded Odaiba when he was a kid, on August 3rd 1999. He was just seven years old and he and his family were captured by Vamdemon’s minions and taken to the Tokyo Big Sight. There, he was separated from his family and put in a room with all of the kids residing in Odaiba, or the visitors from that day. He heard some of those bad guys talking about finding the Eighth Chosen Child, and he remembered seeing Tailmon for the first time in his life, way before he learned Tailmon was Yagami Hikari’s digimon partner. But he also adds that that encounter didn’t make him hate the digimon because he saw Taichi and his friends with their partners too, and how they saved Odaiba made him wish to be as strong as them. He admits he didn’t trust the digimon before, but once he met V-mon three years later, he had the chance to learn more and change his mind.

Daichi then asks Mirai if Chibimon was inside the purse and she chuckles nervously. (Yes he was inside too, but sleeping like a rock)

Yume blinks, how can a digimon be so sure about her feelings… Daisuke says he’s human trapped in a curse for now, but being a digimon for a while is making him realize how hard it might be to those digimon, and he thinks now the digi-rebels might not be entirely evil and yes digimon afraid of the unknown. She gives him a timid smile, maybe Daisuke really had a way to change people’s hearts.

Blitz says Yume and her should go back to 2024 and abandon that idea of saving Yume’s mother. Yume understands, but she wants to stay in the future now… Natsu says she can’t and that this was creating a time paradox with the Yume from 2029, in which they can’t exist in the same place at all because she’s not from a parallel world. Kiyoko gets some interest on why can’t there exist two Yumes from the same timeline, and why Natsu is implying that if one of them came from a different world this would be okay. Eiji explains that it’s because this Yume came from the past, which means the future Yume cannot exist anymore if had time-travel to the future. Hoshi thinks this is too much for her head all over again and decides before they send Yume back, they should just have fun together, at least.

Now that they solved that part… Maybe they could focus on Papillonmon’s next moves, right?

[variouscolors]

[AU info] Kamen Chef

Before you continue reading this post, please be aware that you're not obligated to follow this plotline/AU as it is. However, there is a small request/favor I ask in return, which is 'you're not supposed to know who Lightnimon is, unless it's a canon muse who knows Daisuke PRETTY WELL to get the little quirks he accidentally slips in here' -- Ok?.

This AU is something I've been writing for… 4 years (or more?) so far. It's my favorite AU verse and story. It's the reason why I chose this particular Digitamamon (+ his Bakumon companion) as my muse(s). Like, not many people would care deeply about him (or her, Bakumon included), but I somehow got this… emotional attachment to them. Yep.

Tag: advverse • kamen chef au

The plotline in question is:

One day, Daisuke (16-17yo) comes to ask Digi-Chinatown's Digitamamon to teach him how to improve his cooking skills so he can become a chef and open his own ramen shop. Digitamamon accepts the deal, but since this is too risky, Daisuke comes up with a stupid plan to work under disguise and ALIAS -- thus Lightnimon (or Lightni) is born. During the day, Daisuke is a normal and regular high school student from the same class as Hikari and Takeru. And at night he would just become Lightni and work under the orders and discipleship of Digitamamon. But the problem is… Some of the ENEMIES of the Chosen Children also eat at the restaurant, and things get a little hairy.

Now does this disguise work?

Since digimon can spot who’s a digimon and who’s not pretty well, the food scent messes with said senses and it also hides Daisuke’s scent.

Daisuke also tries his best to not talk much and only when needed. Anyone who knows him pretty well is able to identify him. There’s no in between.

To prevent being caught, Daisuke and V-mon have their own “safety route” to go back to human world and to come to the Digital World.

They also avoid using public spaces for that. So, basically he does it from his own room once everyone at home is asleep.

Thanks to 02 ep 33 we learn the 02 group’s digivices can give them the appearance and outfit they deeply want, so this is how Daisuke got this “Lighdramon-esque armor” and how he can switch quickly back to his original appearance. This is referred by “change” when mentioned.

Muses from this verse below:

Chef Digitamamon (he/him): The owner of this restaurant, quite strict but with a soft heart. He will fight anyone who tries to hurt his employees and customers, but he will also punch you in the head if you vandalize his building. He's like a father figure to his employees and can speak the ancient digimon language. (Not to be confused with the Family Restaurant/Diner Digimon from Adv99 Ep 23 & 02 Ep 14).

Bakumon (they/them): One of the restaurant's oldest employees. They can talk, but it's easier for them to pretend not to and just repeat the menu when someone asks them about something. They do everything, but mostly to greet and serve customers.

Daisuke AKA Lightnimon (16-17yo, he/him): Just an ordinary Chosen from Odaiba... who once saved the world from BelialVamdemon. So yeah, Daisuke's pretty famous, and of course there are bad and mean digimon who want to beat him and become famous for it. He works disguised as a digimon named "Lightnimon" (or Lightni, as almost everyone calls him) as a student of Digitamamon. Somehow, his ideas and suggestions begin to improve the restaurant to the point that it becomes quite busy later on. (Icons may be from Taki from Your Name tho, since there's no teenager Dai in canon)

V-mon (he/him): Daisuke's partner, best digi-buddy and partner-in-crime when it comes to Daisuke's food experiments. He supports Daisuke so much, but sometimes worries about Daisuke and Daisuke's clumsiness… Although V-Mon can also be a walking mess and stupid. Can evolve into several forms by using Digimentals, but his main adult evolution is XV-mon. Works as a waiter and kitchen assistant.

Gekomon(s) (they/them): A small number of the employees lately are Gekomon from the area. Some of them have probably met Mimi, Palmon, Taichi, Agumon, Jou, and Gomamon before. They have small jobs like helping to serve customers or keeping the place clean.

[runimanio]

2024 Game Clear #4 Mega Man X: Command Mission

This is an interesting one, a tradition turn based Mega Man X RPG that has much to love, but also leaves me wanting in a lot of way. Perhaps because this is the final X series game I needed to play it also left me thinking about the storytelling & characterization of the X series so this will probably be a long one

The story here is that a maverick named Epsilon has formed a army aptly named the Rebellion Army to occupy Giga City and form a reploid supremist state and now the Maverick Hunters must intervene! If your familiar with the X series this will sound extremely in line with the general plotline the action games tended to have & it's clear that the developers really wanted to translate as much stuff and mechanics from those games into a RPG format (there's even a boss rush teleport room at the end!)

That thinking creates a pretty neat battle system but being so loyal to the plot structure of the main series X really does the story of a RPG & the new charters a disservice, you could very easily cut this 20 hour game into a standard X platformer & lose very little of the actual meat.

X and Zero are fully in their deadly serious mode that they've been in in for the late series X games, gone are Zero's days of confidently giving a thumbs up we're full broody edge lord & X is in cop mode at all time which is a shame since this could've been a great way to really explore these two in more depths then normally allowed.

I liked the new characters but they don't really get anything to do here, after their recruitment there character arc is pretty much done & i'm pretty sure Spider aside, the other 3 maybe talked to Zero & Axel maybe once throughout the entire game. I wish I could tell you anything about Marino or Cinnamon other then what written on the tin. Massimo is a brute struggling to live up to his mentor name, Marino is a thief who unexpectedly finds herself embroiled into the conflicted, Cinnamon is a living blacksmith forge i guess? And Spider is a bounty hunter who's later actions makes me question his early actions. They all have a lot of potential they're just unserved.

Let's move on to a lighter note for a bit, This battle system is pretty cool, it uses a turn system similar to the Digimon Story games (it's probably comes from something older but I'm blanking lol) where you can see the upcoming order of who moves first & even have your unit act multiple times before your enemy can under the right circumstances, two buttons can be equipped with special weapons that use Weapon Energy to fire and can be used before taking your action for the turn. Instead of healing items you have sub tanks you can collect and fill that you can pull from for healing.

Action Trigger are essentially limit breaks where you use all your weapon energy & play a little mini game for a big attack, its a little repetitive and i don't love doing a Mario Party style stick rotation for Cinnamon's heal trigger but it's fine & everyone has a hyper mode which is a temporary transformation that massively buffs the character or even in some cases change out their weapons and Action Triggers, X and Zero have secret unlockable Hyper modes that are super OP and fun to use.

It's a really fun and unique system & I do appreciate that I never really felt I need to grind but it can get pretty old when your binging through the game since enemy can feel pretty spongy and the encounter rate sometimes can a little aggressive where I'll get out of a battle and slightly adjust myself to get my barring again only to be thrown back into a battle immediately but sometimes i would go several rooms without any encounters so it probably varies.

And when you get lost the constant battles can be grating & getting lost can be easy as the entire game looks like this

All the stages feel like I'm exploring a bunker with almost entire game being made up of narrow hallways, even Giga City the city in the sky kinda just feels like another a bunker also slight tangent about the game's world it's funny that even in this RPG the X world is devoid onscreen humans, I don't know what Sigma and all the other Mavricks are complaining about, seems like the humans are doing a great job leaving reploids alone!

It probably sounds like I really didn't like the game but I did ultimately enjoy the game but I just see so much untapped potential in this game, these characters & this world, I can imagine a version of this game were Massimo has a longer character arc struggling with feeling like he's failing to honor the mantle, Maybe Marino learning to believe in the cause, More of Cinnamon learning what she wants to do beside just being a actual tool for people to use. My mind races with possibilities with this world & I only got a fraction of what I would've liked.

I truly wish it got a sequel because this is a very solid base to build on & really Mega Man has always been an iterative franchise but in hindsight of all the baggage the next generation would bring, the mega man recession of the late aughts, & Inafune gaining more power within Capcom & apparently hating the idea of a X RPG to begin with Command Mission was probably made at the last possible moment it could've been made.

Anyway here's some random thought to end off on

recontextualizing Axl's A Trans ability into summons is very cool

Everyone in the city getting new dialogue as the story progresses is neat

Cinnamon's design uses the red cross logo so this game is a violation of the Geneva Convention

I'm not really sure why they needed this to take place in 22XX causing it to have no place in the timeline due to the Zero games also taking place then other than maybe wanting to remove themselves from the earth is damaged after X5 continuity idk

This version of Ultimate Armor is crazy, X ain't playing around anymore no way Dr. Light signed off on this lol

After her chapter Marino never vocally speaks again for the rest of the game, she didn't deserve to be done like that.

Absolute Zero is very cool

Shout out to my friend Talion for gifting this to me for Christmas, thanks buddy!

[commentaryvorg]

Digimon Savers Commentary Episode 34 - The Day of Parting! The Strongest Enemy - Tohma!

In this episode, as the group goes into hiding in the city, BanchouLeomon shows up and warns Masaru about the Burst Mode. Meanwhile, Tohma is summoned to meet with his father and little sister, only to find Kurata there with a sinister offer.

This episode comes with not one, but two spoiler warnings! First, the spoiler warning I initially brought up for episode 28 applies again here: I will be mentioning secrets related to that plotline that aren’t revealed to the audience until episode 45. Secondly, in order to properly talk about what’s going on in an entirely different plotline, I will also need to mention facts which won’t be revealed until episode 36.

Even if someone watching along for the first time has decided to accept seeing the spoilers from my first warning, I suggest you consider heeding this second one at least. You’d only need to watch two episodes ahead to be no longer spoiled, and this storyline is, I think, a more impactful thing to go unspoiled for on your first viewing.

Before we begin, I just need to let you know about the delight I am feeling to finally be sitting down to do this episode’s commentary. All of the rest of Savers up until this point has still been great and fun to talk about, don’t get me wrong, but this episode marks the beginning of my favourite arc, which is immediately followed by my other favourite arc. I love all of Savers, but everything from here on until the end is the best parts of all of it. I’ve been stoked to reach this point this whole time, and now I’m finally here!!!!!

Anyway. After a short enough recap, the episode opens on some shots of destruction and evacuation in Yokohama, after the chaos of the battle last episode. Or, well, really all ElDoradimon itself did to damage the city was cause a tsunami. Anything more inland must have been caused by ShineGreymon’s fight with BioDarkdramon, whoops. Still, the public would chalk that down to Bad Scary Digimon either way.

News announcer: “The government has assembled an emergency committee to discuss countermeasures to be taken against the Digimon.”

Yes, this terrible Digimon threat to all of humanity! Exactly the story Kurata wants to spin, which only looks even more backed-up by recent events.

News announcer: “Meanwhile, the police have reason to believe that those responsible for using Digimon to cause this destruction have gone into hiding within the city…”

Clearly, these former DATS members who have sided with Digimon and used Digimon to cause destruction are the real enemies here. Traitors against their own species, terrorists, fugitives, how dare they, it’s all their fault and not Kurata’s at all. (And if Kurata can have the police on the lookout to arrest them, all the better for him.)

We catch up with our team of fugitives – that is, Masaru, Yoshino, and Ikuto, with no Tohma, who got called away on his own at the end of last episode. They’ve met up with Miki and Megumi, who, having also been fugitives in the city this whole time, show them to a secret underground shelter in an abandoned building. Apparently Satsuma set this up a long time ago in case of emergencies like this. That is some impressive contingency planning.

At the end of last episode, everyone (except Tohma) was heading out over the sea to try and find survivors from the Holy Capital, but based on them having regrouped back here, it… doesn’t seem like they had much luck, huh. If they’d managed to find and save any Digimon, you’d think they’d be sheltering them here, and, well, there’s no Digimon here except their partners.

With that a bust, the general mood seems to be one of hunkering down here, keeping up with the news, and waiting for hints of Kurata’s next move so that they can at least attempt to stop him. I can’t imagine Masaru’s happy with this approach, but there’s not much else they can do right now.

Masaru:  “Damn it, what’s Tohma doing at a time like this?”

At least he’s found himself something else to think about. Why did Tohma just up and disappear, now of all times? They’re kind of in the middle of something extremely important here; now is not the time to ditch the stopping-the-genocide effort for personal matters. (And he knows it’s something like that; Lalamon mentions seeing the Norstein family crest on the helicopter.)

Ikuto:  “Will Tohma come back?”

Masaru:  “Of course. He’s not the kind of guy who abandons his comrades.”

Masaru says this so completely casually like it’s nothing but a given. Despite him complaining about Tohma’s absence, he has nothing but unquestioning faith in his friend.

(Heehee. The writers absolutely put this here on purpose and I love them for it.)

Yoshino:  “Yeah. I’m sure he has his reasons.”

Yoshino also gets it. They all know Tohma cares about this cause far too much to abandon them unless he got waylaid by something beyond his control.

They’re interrupted by the sound of Agumon’s stomach rumbling. He is a hungry, hungry boy… but unfortunately, there’s no food here in the shelter.

The Norstein family crest on the helicopter happens to be a blue wolf, which is a fun little appropriate detail. As it lands by a mansion near the coast and Tohma and Gaomon step out, they’re greeted by a little blonde girl wheeling herself towards them in a wheelchair, excitedly calling out to her big brother. It’s Relena, Tohma’s sister.

That’s right: Tohma’s always had a little sister, just like Masaru does! Relena’s quite a bit younger than Chika, something more around six or so at my guess, but she’s just as important to Tohma as Chika is to Masaru. That time back in episode 7 where Tohma was having all those Family Feelings from being with the Daimons – it wasn’t just Sayuri reminding him of his mom, it was also Chika reminding him of Relena. And in episode 12 where Masaru was conflicted on what to do about the Chika-Piyomon situation and consulted Tohma about it, Tohma must have been thinking about just how determined he’d be to protect his own sister from harm.

(Of course, Tohma never mentioned having a sister to Masaru despite these multiple opportunities to bring it up, because Tohma never opens up about anything personal to him.)

As she reaches him, Relena stands up, and Tohma lifts her up into a big hug. It’s very cute; you can tell how much they care about each other and how Relena looks up to her big brother and is delighted to see him again. From her perspective, Tohma must so often be off doing Big Important Things she doesn’t understand that mean he can’t spend time with her, so she’s got to make the most of the times he does visit.

(She certainly doesn’t have any awareness of just how big and important the thing that Tohma’s supposed to be doing right now is. Let alone who’s responsible for that whole situation.)

Tohma:  “Relena, why are you in Japan? How’s your health?”

Relena:  “Father brought me here. He said I could be cured.”

It’s very telling how Relena’s health is the first thing on Tohma’s mind as he learns she’s been brought all the way to Japan for some reason – she’s very sick, that’s why she needs the wheelchair. On hearing that his father’s apparently found a cure, Tohma’s expression shifts to a kind of… accusatory surprise? He doesn’t entirely seem like he’s happy to learn this, even though this should absolutely be nothing but a good thing.

(I wonder if Relena can speak Japanese, or whether translation convention is going on here and they’re actually speaking German to each other right now. I imagine it’s probably the latter.)

Relena:  “You must be Gaomon.”

Gaomon:  [bowing] “Pleased to meet you, Miss Relena.”

Based on this interaction, Relena and Gaomon had both heard about each other from Tohma, but have never actually met before. At least Tohma talks to Gaomon about some of his personal family matters, such as his little sister! And it seems that the Norsteins are aware of Tohma doing this Digimon thing with DATS to the point of knowing Gaomon exists, yet Gaomon is not usually allowed out while he’s visiting them.

Relena:  “You’re so soft. Don’t you feel hot?”

Gaomon:  “O-Only a little during the summertime.”

Relena pets the fluffy fur on Gaomon’s chest. Gaomon is very flustered and not sure how to deal. Since he’s not met Relena before, he is not used to a little sister being cute at him, just like episode 7 also showed us with Chika.

She then touches his nose, to his even greater flusteredness, and it is very cute.

(Hey, that’s a pretty choker necklace she’s wearing there.)

Relena:  “It’s wet. You’re just like a real dog.”

Fluffy fur, wet nose? Confirmed: he is a dog.

For the one and only time, Gaomon does not try to deny this. How could he disappoint his master’s precious little sister like that?

Relena:  “Can we be friends?”

[Gaomon glances awkwardly at Tohma; Tohma nods]

Gaomon:  “O-Of course, Miss Relena!”

Oh my god Gaomon why did you have to ask Tohma before answering that, of course he’d be happy for you to befriend his sister, come on. Such an unnecessarily obedient dog. He’s so awkward and flustered and cute and I love it. This scene is precious.

They’re interrupted and called inside by the voice of the siblings’ father, Franz Norstein. Tohma’s face hardens as soon as he hears it. Seems like he’s a lot less happy to see his father than his sister, which shouldn’t be a surprise if you remember how he felt about Masaru’s father.

Somehow this Norstein mansion isn’t wheelchair-accessible despite Relena’s disability, because Tohma has to carry her up the steps to the porch while a staff member carries her wheelchair. I guess that’s because Relena doesn’t usually come here? I hope Franz at least had the decency to shell out for some ramps or lifts in her usual home.

Tohma:  “It’s been a while, Father.”

Franz:  “After hearing that you returned to Japan without a word, I find this.”

Tohma gives his father a very formal greeting, nothing like the joy he met Relena with. His father doesn’t even return the greeting before criticising him. Apparently when Tohma came to Japan at the beginning of the series, he’d left Europe without even telling his family he was going. He probably didn’t want to tell them; maybe he felt his father would try to stop him. Perhaps part of the reason he was even in Europe at all was at his father’s behest, and part of the reason he came back was to get away from that.

As they head inside to talk more, Franz tells Relena to head to her room and let them talk alone. Relena wants to spend more time with her brother – she sees him so rarely! – but Franz insists, for the sake of her health.

Relena:  “But…”

Franz:  “Tohma won’t be going anywhere. Set yourself at ease.”

Relena:  “Really?”

Tohma hesitates for a moment before he smiles at his sister and confirms this. Happy that she’s going to get to spend more time with her brother soon after all, she lets herself be wheeled away to her room.

But that wasn’t Tohma’s decision, was it. As soon as Relena’s out of earshot, he rounds on his father angrily.

Tohma:  “I don’t like this approach of yours.”

Franz:  “What do you mean?”

Tohma:  “Please don’t exploit her for your own needs.”

Tohma knows exactly what his father was doing here. He wouldn’t want to stay here for his father’s own sake, but by having Relena here and steering the conversation so that he’ll disappoint Relena by leaving right away, Franz has emotionally blackmailed Tohma into staying, whether he actually wants to or not.

Franz:  “Exploit her? I’m her father. What’s wrong about me thinking for my own children?”

Franz doesn’t even really deny that he just used Relena for that purpose. He just doesn’t think it counts as exploitation when these are both his kids; he manages to view it as doing it for their sake.

Tohma’s scowl deepens, hearing his father talk like he’d do anything for his family’s sake.

Tohma:  “You didn’t do anything when both Mom and I were suffering, so why now…?”

Now here’s an interesting little tidbit! When we had the flashback to Tohma’s young childhood with his mother in episode 15, we really didn’t see any suffering. Well, apart from his mother’s death, of course, but that was so sudden that it’s not like Franz could have helped. Except, remember how I told you to make note of that one little shot where his mother looked at her watch before agreeing to go to the festival? As if she needed to check if she had time before one of her shifts started, because she probably works a bunch of jobs to get by as a single mother in Japan?

Based on that, and this line here, it seems like Tohma’s mother’s financial situation was pretty desperate. She must have worked herself exhaustingly hard in order to support him, to the point that Tohma, despite his young age, noticed she was suffering and felt bad for her. And yet apparently, not once did his extremely rich father, who could probably have bought their tiny house for them ten times over and then some, do anything to help them. Tohma’s always resented his father for this.

As he says this, Tohma’s following his father into a sitting room – but then he and Gaomon freeze in shock as they see who’s already there, sitting casually in an armchair, waiting for him.

Kurata:  “Welcome home, Tohma-kun.”

This is the absolute last person Tohma expected to be here, in his family’s house, around his sister. Kurata is likely the one who was really behind calling Tohma here at all. Alarm bells must be going off in his head like crazy.

And on that bombshell, it’s the opening! Look at this fun shot of Masaru and Tohma together with their respective evolved Digimon in the background. I love how symmetrical and balanced it is. They’re equals. They’re partners. They’re a team!

(Yes, I very much chose to highlight this shot for this particular episode on purpose.)

We cut back in with a repeat of Kurata’s line from before the opening, and I do also want to take a moment to note him using -kun for Tohma here. In a couple of moments in previous episodes, Kurata called him “Doctor Tohma” to his face, suggesting he saw his intellect as something worthwhile, which was absolutely foreshadowing of the stuff that’s about to go down here. But now, while it’s actually happening, Kurata doesn’t bother to afford Tohma such respect. Perhaps it’s because he knows he’s got all the power in this situation (which he didn’t in those previous instances, back in episodes 22 and 23), so he feels freer to be vaguely condescending instead.

Tohma is staring in horror, not even trying to hide his shock at Kurata’s presence.

Tohma:  “Why?”

Franz:  “Doctor Kurata is watching over Relena’s health now.”

Tohma:  “Relena?”

Kurata:  “I’ve already given treatment to a number of medical cases. I’m confident that I can also cure Relena-chan’s illness.”

Uh. Kurata isn’t supposed to be that kind of doctor? His field is Digimon research and technology, not human medical science. Perhaps this is the writers awkwardly thinking everything that’s Science is the same thing. But it’s also pretty likely it isn’t, and Kurata isn’t being entirely truthful here, given how he actually intends to cure Relena. More on that in a couple of episodes.

Tohma:  “What are you thinking?”

Kurata:  “I will help your little sister, Relena-chan. In exchange, your intellect will help me. I want us to make a fair deal.”

It’s kind of telling how Kurata phrases it as “your intellect will help me”. He doesn’t want Tohma on his side as a person and an equal partner. He just wants to use Tohma’s intellect like a tool.

Gaomon:  “A deal?!”

Tohma:  “Don’t, Gaomon.”

Gaomon, the good dog, gets angry and hostile at the idea that his master could ever want to make a deal where the price would be participating in Digimon genocide. But Tohma puts a hand out to stop Gaomon’s hostility, and Gaomon obediently dials it down despite not being sure why.

That’s not how Tohma wants to play this. He needs to play it differently from that, as much as he might hate it.

There’s a long moment where he stares at Kurata, his expression tense. The writers don’t tell us what’s going through his head in this moment – they can’t – but knowing where this is going, there’s only one thing it could be. Last warning for the second spoilery thing I mentioned at the beginning!

That necklace of Relena’s I drew attention to? There’s a bomb in it. Kurata gave it to her without her knowing this. One way or another, somehow, Tohma has to have become aware of this by this point.

(I admit it would have been nice if the writing had drawn just a tiny bit more attention to the necklace prior to this point. I did so myself for the sake of this commentary, but absolutely nothing in the episode does so. Obviously it shouldn’t be something huge and obvious that’d give it away – just some subtle shot to give some kind of indication that Tohma has noticed the necklace, since that’s the important part.)

Kurata isn’t only saying “if you help me, I’ll cure your sister”. He’s also saying, in the subtext behind his words, “if you don’t help me, I’ll kill your sister”. They both know that.

But Kurata doesn’t know that Tohma knows that just yet.

Tohma:  “You can cure Relena, right?”

Kurata:  “Of course.”

Tohma:  “Let’s hear what you have to say.”

So Tohma’s making it sound like he’s genuinely interested in the surface offer. He’ll have a lot more freedom to work with this if he can make Kurata believe that he’s doing this by choice, rather than because there’s a gun being held to his sister’s head.

But also, note that first-time viewers wouldn’t realise that’s what’s going on! To them, it’d look every bit like Tohma appears to be entertaining the idea of co-operating with genocide in order to cure his sister.

On that note, we move back to the group in the underground shelter, whose mouths are currently watering over some delicious-looking bento boxes brought here courtesy of Sayuri.

Chika, who is also here, pitched in by making the onigiri. It looks… not so appetising. Though I do like the fact that one of them seems to have been an attempt at a Lalamon onigiri; that’s a really cute touch. I hope Lalamon gets to eat that one (and that they taste okay despite being misshapen).

Everybody is extremely ready to dig in – except Masaru, of all people, who holds up his hands to stop them all.

Yoshino:  “What is it? In this world, it’s survival of the fittest. The fastest wins!”

Oh, Yoshino. She knows what’s up when it comes to free food.

Masaru’s problem isn’t the food (you know he’d usually be the first in line – or, well, second, after Agumon). It’s why the hell are his mom and sister here with them in the hideout.

Yoshino:  “Because I called them.”

Chika:  “Because we said we’d come.”

Of course! Agumon was hungry, there was no food anywhere, so this is the easiest solution to that problem! We know how terribly worried Sayuri and Chika get when Masaru is off fighting to protect Digimon and being in danger while there’s nothing they can do to help. And we know how Sayuri’s go-to method of dealing with her worry is to cook copious amounts of food for people. The least she can do is be here and feel like she’s helping in the only way she really can. There’s no way she wasn’t more than happy to answer this request.

Masaru:  “Er…”

Their completely casual answer like this is no big deal wrong-foots Masaru for a second, before he gets back to fervently expressing why this is such a big deal to him.

Masaru:  “Do you understand the position we’re in?! Right now, the Digimon are made out to be evil guys that’ll hurt the humans. All of us… are being regarded as fugitives here!”

He’s okay with himself and his DATS comrades being fugitives, sure. But his mom and Chika? There’s no way they should go putting themselves in such danger by aiding them right now!

(As he talks, the Digimon partners, having been delayed from digging into the food by Masaru’s protests, hover helplessly over the bento boxes with their mouths watering. I love these shots of the PawnChessmon with their forks. It’s the only time we ever see them with their visors up, and they’re really kinda cute!)

Sayuri:  “It’s all right. No matter what happens, you’ll always be my son, Masaru.”

Sayuri isn’t fazed at all by Masaru’s furious protests. She must have already known about the fugitive situation when she agreed to come and help, and of course that doesn’t matter to her. Masaru’s her son, and she’ll do whatever she can to help him, regardless of the danger. She says all this with a serene smile on her face like it’s all happy and normal and okay – which has to be forced, I love her and the brave face she puts on things – as she lifts a fork containing a fried egg to his face to encourage him to just stop worrying and enjoy her food.

While Sayuri was having this moment with Masaru, everyone else took advantage and began to dig in anyway. Agumon has already stuffed his mouth full of fried eggs and is in heaven. It’s been a while (episode 26!) since you last had those, hasn’t it, Agu-chan?

Masaru, indignant at everyone’s treachery, immediately reaches for the food himself to make up for lost ground. He goes straight for the fried eggs, I note, despite them being in one of the boxes furthest from him.

Later, with full stomachs, the Daimons (including Agumon) are standing around outside, I guess just to get some fresh air. This seems like a pretty remote part of town, not to mention everyone should have evacuated by now, so they don’t really need to worry about getting spotted.

Chika:  “Masaru-niichan, don’t push yourself too hard.”

Masaru:  “What are you talking about? As long as Tohma’s gone, I’ve gotta work harder to pick up the slack!”

Chika:  “I’m worried because he’s not around to stop you.”

Oh, Chika, I love her. She knows full well how ridiculously reckless her brother can get, especially without someone more sensible around to rein him in. (Though really, that’s kinda just as much Yoshino’s area as Tohma’s.)

A familiar piece of badass-sounding BGM starts up, and the Daimons all turn to look at something. We don’t see what they’re looking at for another short moment, so it amusingly seems for a second like they’re reacting to the background music. Yes, BanchouLeomon, striding towards them with the sunset behind him, exudes an aura of manly banchou-ness so strong that it even comes with built-in music announcing his presence from afar, clearly.

I wonder how he got here to the human world. Perhaps he was nearby when the Holy Capital got dragged over here and snuck through that Gate, then went to hide in the human city with nobody noticing? Or he just found another convenient Digital Gate of let’s-just-let-the-plot-happen, I guess.

Chika:  “Banchou…?”

Chika and Sayuri are rather bewildered by the huge lion man they’ve never met before greeting Masaru and Agumon like he knows them. BanchouLeomon looks at them both for a lingering moment and smiles to himself. Evidently, Suguru’s the one in the driving seat right now; it’s been such a long time since he’s seen them both! Look at how much Chika’s grown from the little baby she was when he left!

Franz:  “Now do you understand, Tohma? You must co-operate with Doctor Kurata for Relena’s sake.”

We’re back with the Norsteins. Franz’s line here sheds light onto the reason he agreed to have Tohma brought here and used Relena to emotionally manipulate him into staying. He just wants Relena to be cured, but it seems that Kurata will only agree to do so if Tohma co-operates. (I highly doubt Franz knows anything about the bomb in her necklace.) So obviously Tohma needs to co-operate, for the sake of his daughter’s survival. Nothing done in the service of that could possibly count as exploitation, not when he’s doing the best he can for his family, right?

Tohma:  “I will be the one to decide what to do with my own life.”

The way Tohma pointedly says this makes it sound like he’s sick and tired of his father constantly trying to make his life decisions for him. Remember his Magnificent Birthday Plan, where he unconsciously thought the best way to show Chika a good time was to decide everything for her? Still, at least it’s a good thing that he’s able to advocate for his own agency here.

Franz:  “Not that again! Think about your situation! I will not forgive you if you return to DATS!”

It doesn’t sound like Franz was ever particularly happy about Tohma working for DATS, does it. But even still, the situation now – you know, stopping a genocide – is kind of something very important that Tohma needs to get back to. It seems likely that Franz has been listening to all of Kurata’s propaganda about Digimon being vicious threats and DATS being traitors to humanity, in order for him to think it’s so completely unacceptable for Tohma to return.

(If ever anyone felt like the government’s assistance wasn’t enough to explain where Kurata’s getting all the money to create his ridiculously huge array of anti-Digimon weapons: perhaps he’s also been getting some of the funding from the Norsteins, having allied with them in his promise to help Relena.)

Tohma:  “Why don’t you say what you’re really thinking? That you just don’t want me doing anything that’ll disgrace the family name!”

Tohma is not pulling his punches, and really, I think he’s hit the nail on the head there. We’ll learn more about Franz and his issues in a later episode, but this pretty much tracks.

Tohma:  “You were always like this! Even when Mom needed your help, you…!”

That thing with his mom’s still a really sore spot with him! And that too would track with the idea that Franz prioritises protecting the family name above all else in his actions. Tohma’s mother was a common Japanese woman, not nobility; it wouldn’t do to have a Norstein give money to help someone like that.

Tohma and Franz have both been getting rather heated, and now Kurata, who’s still here, butts in to break up the family quarrel. You’d think now of all times would be the least appropriate time for Tohma to be getting into an argument with his father, but maybe that’s precisely why this did happen now. He’s currently caught up in the horrific ultimatum of “co-operate with genocide or your sister dies” and doesn’t want to have to face that at all. Having his father here, an easy target whom he’s always had all these issues and resentment towards, is an outlet for him to lash out at and temporarily deflect all the emotions he’s feeling at this awful situation. It’s not really about his father right now; Tohma just wishes that was the worst he had to deal with.

Kurata:  “Tohma-kun. In the end, all that DATS’s methods succeeded in doing was increasing damage that could have been avoided. That small bit of justice you’ve waved around all this time only brought pain and sadness with it.”

Yes, Kurata. It’s all DATS’s fault, for making it harder for you to murder all the Digimon, for forcing you to do so in an even crueller way than you’d otherwise have needed to. It’s definitely not that literally every single bit of this damage and pain could have been avoided if Kurata had just decided not to do a genocide.

This argument does make some twisted level of sense from the perspective of where we are right now, in which DATS have done nothing but lose and fail to protect the Digimon, only causing more strife from the fact that they tried and yet it was all in vain. If you view this whole thing as a foregone conclusion where obviously the Digimon are totally inevitably going to be wiped out – which of course Kurata does – then DATS’s efforts can technically be made out to have only increased the amount of suffering that happened. If the Digimon want to suffer less, they should totally just lie down and accept their fate, right.

(But of course, it’s all bullshit, because genocide is bad, and trying to stop genocide is good, actually.)

Kurata:  “Am I wrong?”

Tohma doesn’t respond. He isn’t being convinced by a word of it, of course, but he can’t tell Kurata how wrong he knows it all is.

(A first-time audience doesn’t know this, though, and it might look like he is considering Kurata’s words.)

Kurata:  “Above all, there is Daimon Masaru. Thanks to him, the situation grows even worse.”

This actually makes Tohma react. He thinks back to the speech at the beginning of episode 31 about defending the Holy Capital, where he tried to argue that Masaru was running into a trap. Masaru insisted he didn’t care, and all of the citizens agreed and supported him instead of Tohma – because reckless headstrong approaches are easier to understand and get behind than careful optimised strategies, because Masaru has an awesome, respected father, the absolute opposite of the kind of father Tohma has…

And Masaru’s approach failed; it was a trap, and the Holy Capital was lost.

…But then again, was that really only Masaru’s fault for running into the trap? Or was it also equally Tohma’s fault for going to protect the waterfall alone out of not wanting to rely on anyone else, and therefore failing to do so? Or Yoshino’s, for getting caught up in Ivan’s distraction and not noticing the space-time bombs in time? Really, everyone messed up one way or another. Their loss was no single person’s fault. But Kurata putting the focus on Masaru here, coupled with all of Tohma’s recent resentment towards Masaru in particular, is likely to make Tohma irrationally feel that most of the blame ought to be on him.

I really appreciate all of the little hints at Tohma’s jealousy of Masaru and frustration at his tactics that the writing’s been building up over the past few episodes, because they make it seem at least somewhat plausible that this could form the root of Tohma actually turning against his friends here. On my first viewing of this, I wasn’t completely convinced, but I was willing to buy into the notion that Tohma might be genuinely doing this, because if so it was clearly out of some absolutely massive issues that’d be really delightful to bring out into the open. I knew it would need more than just the little hints we’d had so far in order to fully explain it all and make me still sympathetic to Tohma in the end, but I trusted Savers’s writing enough that I was willing to hear it out.

That’s not where this story is actually going, but. Those indications of Tohma’s issues are vital for making a first-time viewer believe it could be possible.

Kurata:  “I foresee great things from you.”

This is the same thing he said to Tohma back in episode 23, in one of those moments that was absolutely foreshadowing this. Tohma’s a genius, just like Kurata. He has such talent; why is he wasting it on these reckless simpletons such as Masaru and pathetic vermin like Digimon? Surely he can do so much better.

Kurata:  “If you and I join forces, we can end this war…”

Yes, sure, end this war like that’s a good thing, like it’s not the war that Kurata started, because of course Digimon are the problem and the enemy and fully wiping them out is the best outcome. Any smart person could see that prolonging it with more stubborn buffoonery is a waste of time, right?

Kurata:  “…and we can create a new world.”

Tohma:  (A new world…)

That’s exactly what Nanami wanted to create with him. Another genius who’d got so out of touch with the rest of the world that she’d begun to see regular people as nothing but boring playthings for her to lord it over.

The difference between her and Kurata here is that Kurata doesn’t really care that much about having Tohma’s company. He’s making this argument only because he feels it’s an argument that Tohma genuinely might respond to.

The fact that Tohma’s inner monologue does nothing but echo him could make it seem like he’s considering it. In reality, he’s probably remembering Nanami and being horrified all over again at the expectation that being a genius means he’s supposed to want this.

But this time, he can’t just tell Kurata that he’s not that self-conceited, like he told Nanami. Not if he wants to stay in control of the situation.

As Kurata asks again for Tohma’s help, there’s a long pause. Relena happens to choose that moment to innocently enter the room, bored of waiting for them to finish talking and eager to spend more time with her brother.

She hesitates as she sees him standing in the middle of the room, his face in shadow, looking so alone. (Or, if you don’t know what’s up, looking sinister?) Tohma doesn’t even acknowledge her presence. He probably can’t bear to look at her right now, knowing full well what he’s about to do for her sake, because there’s no way he could ever, ever let her die.

But then, there’s also no way Tohma’s ever going to help Kurata massacre Digimon. He’s not a murderer, and he could never betray Gaomon and the rest of Digimon-kind like that.

(At one point in episode 25, Tohma said to Kurata, “I’ll never support you of my own free will!” He meant that wholeheartedly, and he is not about to break those very specific words even right now. Never of his own free will. I like to think that phrasing was chosen quite deliberately in that episode to foreshadow this.)

See, as much as Tohma might want to outright refuse to do this, he knows that if he does, Kurata will simply bring up the bomb around Relena’s neck and give him no choice but to co-operate. If that happens, Kurata will know that Tohma is only on board out of coercion and will keep a very close eye on him.

But if Tohma is able to make Kurata think that he’s doing this all of his own free will, and not even remotely because there’s a bomb around his sister’s neck, then Kurata will trust him and give him more freedom. That’s what Tohma needs.

He’s got to make Kurata buy it. He’s got to act like he wants this and that Kurata’s arguments made sense to him, no matter how much he might be internally cringing from revulsion at the thought of it.

Tohma:  “What I wish for… is a peaceful world. That must be made into reality as quickly as possible.”

Not actually a lie, while also sounding plausibly like he could be buying into Kurata’s words about “ending this war” and “creating a new world”. Nice.

Tohma walks slowly towards Kurata, his face still in shadow, before finally looking up and offering his hand.

Tohma:  “Let’s create a new world together.”

This part’s a lot less technically-the-truth. But at least it’s an easier act to put on than pretending he wants all the Digimon dead. He’s learned that this is apparently precisely what megalomaniacal geniuses like Kurata (and Nanami) expect him to think. It’s not that hard to act the part.

Tohma reaches out a hand for Kurata to shake, and Kurata reaches a hand back, but not quite all the way. He forces Tohma to be the one to go the last distance and seal the handshake, just to make absolutely sure that this is 100% Tohma’s decision and Kurata isn’t dragging him into something he might still be having doubts about. Which is both delightfully cruel to force Tohma to act like he actively wants this, and also exactly how Tohma needs Kurata to be seeing things. It’s a great little detail.

Their agreement sealed, Kurata immediately asks Tohma for a certain favour.

We get a fun little fade-out from Tohma’s face in profile on one side of the screen to Masaru’s face in profile on the other. Clearly deliberate and I love the effect it gives, presenting them as equals and opposites – seemingly even more opposite than ever before. It also subtly foreshadows the nature of the favour Tohma just got asked for.

Masaru’s retreated back into the shelter with BanchouLeomon to fill him in on their progress since they last met. I guess BanchouLeomon didn’t get here through the ElDoradimon Digital Gate after all, because he doesn’t seem to have been aware until now that they failed to save the city.

Masaru:  “But this isn’t over yet. We’ll definitely get much, much stronger and bring Kurata down!”

As soon as BanchouLeomon comments on their loss, though, naturally Masaru immediately shifts the mood back to optimism, refusing to dwell on his failure. He’s still able to acknowledge that he’s not as strong as he needs to be just yet, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be able to get stronger when it matters most, right?

He and Agumon excitedly bring up that they activated the GeoGrey Sword recently, as an example of them still being able to gain greater strength. But I do think they’re kinda overselling the awesomeness of the sword itself. It’s just a sword, guys.

BanchouLeomon takes the opportunity to mention that their new Digivices (which are called the Digivice Burst) have the ability to bring out an even greater power, called the Burst Mode.

Though Ultimate-level is the highest proper evolution level for Digimon, sometimes Digimon can go beyond that into something somewhat more powerful than regular Ultimate, though not exponentially so to the point of being an entirely new evolution level. I believe the general fan name for this idea is “super-Ultimate”. There’s various ways this can happen; in Savers, the main relevant one is this Burst Mode.

(I mean, come on. Most of the main protagonists reached the supposed highest level in episode 29 out of 48; did you really think they were going to stop there?)

BanchouLeomon: “But Burst Mode is a double-edged sword. If you make a mistake in using it, you will be swallowed up by its dreadful energy and destroyed.”

Masaru:  “Be destroyed…”

BanchouLeomon: “Listen. You must never use the power of the Burst Mode. For your own sakes.”

That’s, uh, all very well and good as a warning. But, BanchouLeomon, are you not going to tell them how to avoid using the Burst Mode, if you think it’s so dangerous?

It’s also a bit much that Masaru and Agumon were just talking eagerly about getting stronger so that they could defeat Kurata, which is kind of important, only for BanchouLeomon to go “so, hey, turns out you can get stronger, but it’s dangerous and you should never ever actually do it”. That’s not helpful advice in this situation where they need more strength? Surely teaching them how to use the Burst Mode safely is a better approach?

BanchouLeomon continues to be a frustratingly vague and ineffective teacher. Or Suguru, I guess. Given that he’s talking about the Digivice and Digimon evolution level stuff, this feels more like Suguru’s area. That and he’s being relatively subdued here, and if nothing else it was definitely him in the earlier scene where he saw Sayuri and Chika again.

So I guess I’m again going to have to go with the narrative that Suguru’s been relatively alone for so long that he’s kind of forgotten how to talk to people and communicate ideas well. That’s definitely why he’s being bad at this, and not at all because this scene really exists as some unfortunately rather clunky foreshadowing/exposition to introduce the existence of Burst Mode while establishing that it can sometimes be Bad, right.

They’re interrupted by an alarm from the rudimentary Digimon signal-detecting equipment in the hideout (this place really is like a makeshift DATS HQ), picking up on a surviving Piccolomon from the Holy Capital, close by in the city. Maybe we can put this particular instance of them not detecting the signal sooner down to this equipment being old and clunky and having a short range, so it only picked it up when the Piccolomon happened to pass nearby.

Masaru, Yoshino, Ikuto and their partners rush out to try and help, but unfortunately they get there just in time to see the poor terrified fleeing Piccolomon get murdered by a Gizmon: XT. (Because really, this was much less about the Piccolomon so much as it was a narrative excuse to get Masaru out in the city with Agumon evolved, for what’s about to go down.)

So Masaru punches the Gizmon and all three of them evolve in order to get to fighting with a much larger group of Gizmon: XT that must have come running when they were detected nearby. ShineGreymon can still dispatch them easily, but there’s enough numbers that at one point he gets shot by multiple striped lasers (they’re actually striped again!) at once. This doesn’t kill him, or even devolve him. But shush, okay, I went into why it potentially made sense for the lasers to not usually be deadly to higher evolution levels back in episode 28, and that still hasn’t been contradicted for Ultimate-levels, because we’ve never seen them kill any Ultimates who weren’t SaberLeomon or Mercurimon.

As he’s getting overwhelmed, ShineGreymon calls out for Masaru to give him the GeoGrey Sword, and Masaru fiddles awkwardly with his Digivice, unsure how to activate it again. (Not that it’d matter that much. They’re at the waterfront; ShineGreymon’s flying over the sea and is therefore perfectly free to use his ranged attacks. There’s no real need for the sword over his usual approach, actually! The narrative totally oversells the GeoGrey Sword’s importance.)

Regardless, Rosemon and Yatagaramon pitch in to help, and the three of them continue cleaning up the rest of the Gizmon with no real problem.

And then Tohma shows up. He just appears there, Gaomon at his side, in the street behind Masaru. (Looks like Tohma must’ve taken the helicopter back here and it still didn’t occur to him to fly on MirageGaogamon, geez.)

Masaru:  “Tohma! You’re late, jerk! What were you doing?”

Masaru has no idea of anything that’s been going on on Tohma’s end and is nothing but casual annoyance at his absence. Come on, what took him so long, why did he even leave in the first place, they’ve got stuff to do! It doesn’t cross his mind for a second that there could be anything sinister about this.

Tohma doesn’t answer; he simply pulls out his Digivice and evolves Gaomon. (Which, I guess, is why the writers didn’t have him come here on MirageGaogamon; they wanted this moment of him dramatically evolving Gaomon in front of Masaru.)

ShineGreymon: “MirageGaogamon! Come on, let’s defeat the Gizmon!”

ShineGreymon (and probably Masaru too) casually assumes that if Gaomon’s evolving, it’s to help them fight the Gizmon, right? There’s still a few of them left that they’re fighting up there in the sky. But Tohma wasn’t looking up there when he activated the evolution like the Gizmon were his target. He was looking straight at Masaru.

Tohma raises his arm to point at Masaru and ShineGreymon behind him. He hasn’t said a single word since appearing except for the obligatory Digisoul Charge call. There’s nothing else to say except to get right to the point.

Tohma:  “Go, MirageGaogamon.”

MirageGaogamon: “Yes, Master.”

Without any hesitation, MirageGaogamon rushes to attack ShineGreymon, who blocks in bewildered shock and begins dodging away across the bay as MirageGaogamon pursues him.

Tohma must have taken the opportunity on the way here to privately tell Gaomon about what’s going on with Relena and why he needs to pretend to co-operate with Kurata, so that Gaomon could be in on it with him. While I imagine Gaomon is a loyal enough dog that he might obey Tohma’s order to attack Masaru and ShineGreymon anyway even if he didn’t understand why, I think he’d at least be hesitant and would question it at first, upon getting such an unexpected order. But there’s none of that here. He knows exactly what’s going on, and he’s just as dedicated to doing what he has to do as his master is.

ShineGreymon: “What are you doing? This isn’t the time to be playing around!”

MirageGaogamon:  “I am not playing around.”

He effectively kind of is, but there’s no way he can let ShineGreymon and Masaru know that. (And yet in some ways, depending on how you look at it, no, he really is not playing around at all; he is deadly serious about doing whatever needs to be done to protect his master’s precious sister.)

Masaru:  “Tohma! What are you doing? Make MirageGaogamon stop right now!”

Masaru’s tone is still mostly one of confused frustration at this. He doesn’t get why Tohma’s doing this, but like ShineGreymon, he’s also assuming it must be some kind of weird playing around, or something. There’s no way Tohma could be serious about wanting to attack him, not at a time like this, not Tohma.

Tohma walks slowly but purposefully towards Masaru, staring straight at him.

Tohma:  “As long as you’re around, this fight won’t end. I… will defeat you.”

That’s basically the same kind of argument that Kurata was making to him regarding Masaru. Despite all of Tohma’s current hang-ups surrounding Masaru, I don’t believe for a second that he’d ever truly think Masaru is the only reason the war is happening. But Kurata happily supplied him with what could perhaps maybe plausibly be a reason to justify him fighting Masaru, so he’s spouting the same line here, as his best chance of selling this.

Masaru:  “What?!”

Masaru is utterly bewildered, as he should be. Where the hell did this come from?!

It’s relevant to note that Masaru and Tohma have barely seen each other since near the beginning of episode 31, after they had that clash at the speech over their differing approaches to defending ElDoradimon. They regrouped together briefly at the end of 33 but didn’t really get a chance to properly talk to each other and catch up before Tohma got called away. Plus, Masaru had no idea at the time they split up of any of the resentment Tohma was harbouring towards him; he left with nothing but goodwill and faith that Tohma would hold down the fort while he was gone. For a first-time viewer who doesn’t realise Tohma’s faking it, this isn’t completely out of nowhere, because of everything we’ve seen from Tohma lately. But for Masaru, it really kind of is!

Yoshino and Ikuto try to step in as it looks like Masaru and Tohma might be about to start fighting, but a convenient Gizmon rises up to shoot a laser at them and drive them further back, keeping them out of the conflict.

Masaru:  “Just when I’d thought you’d finally come back… What do you mean, Tohma?!”

Masaru’s fists and shoulders are beginning to tense up and shake; he’s getting legitimately angry now. Tohma coming back should have meant he’d explain where he’d gone, and it’d all make sense, and they’d get back to working together like normal. He was not supposed to suddenly start being even more inexplicable.

Tohma continues to stare at him, not saying a word, his face impassive, being so infuriatingly inscrutable. Why won’t this guy ever just say what he’s thinking?!

Masaru:  “Quit fooling around!”

So Masaru throws a punch at him, to try and get him to explain himself, or snap out of whatever the hell this is, or just do something that makes sense.

Tohma catches Masaru’s fist, blocking it before it can hit his face. He continues to say nothing for a moment as Masaru glares at him in frustration, until he pulls Masaru’s fist down and forces himself to say the worst words, the words that he needs to say.

Tohma:  “I… will make a peaceful world together with Professor Kurata!”

But it’s very notable that all Tohma manages to make himself say is that he’s working with Kurata, and not that he wants to kill all the Digimon. I don’t think he trusts himself to say that and make it convincing. I doubt he wants to even try and say that at all.

Still, simply saying he’s on Kurata’s side is more than enough.

Masaru:  “With… Kurata…?”

I love the shot of Masaru, the off colours and the twisted swirling background, to get across just how much it shakes him to his core to hear Tohma say that. This is all wrong, backwards, upside-down: a trusted comrade and friend like Tohma, openly working with Kurata. What. How. Why?!

Masaru:  “Have you gone insane, Tohma?”

Tohma:  “I’m always perfectly level-headed… Daimon Masaru!”

In some ways, yes, Tohma is completely level-headed right now. He knows exactly what he’s doing and is making the conscious, rationalised decision to do it, despite that a part of him doesn’t want to and wishes he didn’t have to.

What really matters here, though, is that this sounds true to Masaru. In Masaru’s worldview, people always say exactly what they mean – unless, like, they’ve just gone nuts or something? He’s so straightforward that he can’t interpret interactions with people any other way. Tohma’s saying this, and it certainly sounds like he means it. Which means…? He has to mean it, right?

Tohma punctuates his point by decking Masaru across the face. Masaru’s too shocked by everything Tohma’s just said to even think to dodge or block and goes crashing to the ground.

Tohma stands over Masaru, panting, his posture tense. This really isn’t out of exertion, when all he’s done is block one punch and then return it; this is out of emotion at what he’s doing. Though in some ways he’s being level-headed here, executing the calculated approach he’s chosen to take, at the same time, beneath the surface, he’s bound to be a mess of emotions and guilt that he isn’t letting himself show right now – much less perfectly level-headed than he ever usually is.

Out over the bay, MirageGaogamon is busy chasing down a ShineGreymon who’s still trying not to actually fight him.

ShineGreymon: “Are you okay with that?”

MirageGaogamon:  “I simply obey my master!”

ShineGreymon must have somehow heard the “working with Kurata” part from Tohma (or maybe from MirageGaogamon himself). But never mind Tohma’s bewildering choice – it’s an entirely different question as to why a Digimon might be okay with that, loyalty to their partner aside. ShineGreymon at least expects MirageGaogamon to be able to think for himself to that extent.

But of course, MirageGaogamon does simply obey his master. That’s exactly what he’s doing right now. By stating that and nothing else, he can technically tell the truth while dodging the real question about working for Kurata, so that he can avoid either pretending he’s okay with that or revealing that that’s not really what they’re doing.

ShineGreymon: “I’ve lost respect for you!”

With this declaration, ShineGreymon finally stops fleeing and begins to fight back. If this is someone who’s apparently blindly following his human to the point of Digimon genocide, that’s no comrade of his.

Tohma:  “The way you only use brute strength and spirit for everything isn’t going to protect anybody, and it certainly won’t save them.”

Most of the things Tohma’s said here so far have been words he’s forced himself to spout in order to sell the charade. But this part is from the heart. If he’s got to be fighting Masaru, at least he can draw off all of his actual genuine frustrations at Masaru’s approaches that have been bubbling and building thanks to recent events, using them as a reason to lash out. It was definitely all Masaru’s recklessness that caused them to fail to protect ElDoradimon, right? Definitely.

Masaru staggers to his feet during this, only for Tohma to grab him roughly by the collar and glare at him from close range.

Tohma:  “Listen to me very carefully. You can’t do anything. Anything at all!”

This is also drawing off Tohma’s genuine feelings and frustrations, but this time it’s less about Masaru himself and more about Tohma projecting how he feels. He couldn’t do anything to protect ElDoradimon either despite his best efforts; he feels utterly horribly trapped in this situation where he has no choice but to do this awful thing or let his sister die, to say nothing of the pressures from his father while Masaru’s dad is still legendary and perfect and conveniently not around to ever prove that image of him wrong. But no. It’s Masaru who’s the powerless one here, not Tohma. It has to be.

(So much for “always perfectly level-headed”, hm, Tohma?)

Masaru doesn’t say anything in response to any of this. He just kind of stares dumbfoundedly at Tohma, mentally short-circuiting over the “working with Kurata” bombshell and reeling from the punch. Masaru knows he failed to protect ElDoradimon (and live up to his dad’s legacy!) and is bound to have been hurting from that despite his constant attempts to stay positive. Hearing Tohma tell him he’s powerless and his approaches can’t protect anyone, with his mind whirling in confusion from all this, he can’t think of anything to say to counter it.

Tohma follows this up with another fierce punch to Masaru’s stomach, even though Masaru wasn’t in any position or mindset to fight back and defend himself. Masaru gasps in pain, still staring like he can’t quite wrap his head around what’s happening, and crumples to the ground.

Tohma:  “I am here… to prove that.”

Some part of Tohma sure would like that. Prove that Masaru’s the weak and powerless one who’s approaches are wrong, prove that Tohma’s the one in control who can sort everything and protect everyone he cares about.

Of course, usually Tohma would be better than to actually let his resentment and jealousy towards Masaru get the better of him and turn him against his friend like this. But when he’s forced to turn against Masaru anyway for other reasons beyond his control? Oops, there’s a free outlet for all that jealousy, and at least it makes for a convincing front, because it really is rooted in something true. Way more convincing than “making a peaceful world with Kurata”, at least. He mentioned that part once, because he had to, and then never again.

On Masaru’s end, having received a brutal beatdown while being in too much of a mental daze to fight back, all while hearing Tohma call him powerless to save people… it probably feels a bit like Tohma is proving that, as much as he’d hate to acknowledge it.

Chika shows up in a nearby side street, having apparently got antsy just waiting in the shelter, and watches on with horror at seeing her brother and Tohma fighting.

Elsewhere, on a hill overlooking the waterfront where the fight’s going down, Kurata is watching the whole thing with binoculars.

Kurata:  “What fun, seeing two people fight amongst ignorant adolescence. It’s truly magnificent!”

He sure seems to be enjoying how he’s managed to turn two of his greatest obstacles against each other. Really, Tohma was so easy to manipulate and control. Despite all his intellect, he’s just an idiot teenager with idiot teenage concerns driving him to attack his so-called friend, right?

This is why Tohma has no choice but to make it convincing. He knows Kurata is bound to be watching any and all of this fight; he cannot risk dropping the act for even a second. And he certainly can’t try and signal to Masaru what’s really going on, because Masaru constantly wears his heart on his sleeve and would give the game away in an instant if he realised. Kurata has to buy it, and therefore, Masaru has to buy it, too.

“If you want to deceive your enemies, you must first deceive your friends, as they say.” Tohma incidentally quoted this line during episode 8 while pulling a tactic like this with Yoshino in a much less elaborate or serious way. I refuse to believe that was anything but 1000% deliberate foreshadowing of what was going to happen here. Tohma is very, very good at doing this when need be, even if it means he has to convince his friend that he’s on board with genocide.

ShineGreymon and MirageGaogamon are still fighting over the bay. As their attacks collide in a blindingly bright explosion, MirageGaogamon closes in and uses the brightness as an opening to attack ShineGreymon while he can’t see well enough to dodge. The huge lizard-mon crashes down into the sea near Masaru, sending a spray of water splashing over him as he struggles to stand.

(I guess this kinda sorta vaguely serves a similar purpose to the Anime Sads Rain we frequently see.)

Masaru:  “Cut the crap… Enough of this bullshit! Then… What was it that we’ve been doing all this time?”

As Masaru gradually forces himself to his feet, bit by bit, hanging his head, his voice is rough with fury and pain both physical and emotional. They’ve been fighting so hard all this time to protect the Digimon; how the hell can Tohma just turn his back on all that like it was nothing?!

Tohma:  “Do you need an answer? We have nothing else to talk about!”

He very much does, and they very much do. But of course Tohma can’t make it about that. There’s no way he could bear to directly talk like he doesn’t and never cared about the Digimon’s plight; he probably isn’t even sure he could make it convincing. So he has to brush it off like it’s irrelevant, and hope it’s believable enough that the non-existent evil Tohma he’s pretending to be would think it’s so irrelevant as well.

Masaru finally raises his head to roar in fury and lunge at Tohma with a punch, and Tohma meets it with an (unfortunately not very dynamically-animated) cross-counter as Chika screams at them to stop.

They stay there, their fists in each other’s faces for a moment. This is the first punch that Masaru’s managed to connect with for this whole fight. He went for it not just out of anger but also in a desperate last-ditch attempt to communicate with Tohma, to get through to him, snap him out of this bullshit and make him realise just how obviously wrong he’s being. Surely, surely, if there’s any chance of making him stop this and see sense, it’d be this, right? Masaru’s punches have always got through to people in the past, when it’s mattered most.

But Tohma doesn’t falter. They’re here in this cross-counter as if they’re equals, like Masaru and Agumon when they first met, but Masaru’s not managing to connect with Tohma even a little. The Tohma that Masaru thought he knew and believed in isn’t listening to him, not even from this – which surely can only mean that he’s not in there at all.

And in this moment, Masaru snaps. Still in the cross-counter, he raises his fist and punches Tohma in the face again, not out of any attempt to communicate this time but just to furiously beat him down. As Tohma hits the ground, Masaru stands there, hunched over, panting, his shoulders shaking, growling in incoherent rage. A dark purple energy – not Digisoul, something rather different entirely – blossoms around his fist.

Masaru:  “Unforgivable… Tohma… You are completely unforgivable!”

Though it’s subbed differently, this is word-for-word in Japanese the same phrase Masaru said at the end of episode 24 when he was furious at all of Kurata’s terribleness that he’d just learned of. It’s kind of a stock anime phrase, so it’s not necessarily a deliberate parallel, but it’s fun to notice nonetheless.

(And yet, this is so much more than Masaru’s fury at Kurata that time, because this isn’t only about the genocide but is also about the excruciating betrayal from someone whom he’d trusted and thought was his friend. Not to mention everything Tohma was just saying to make Masaru feel powerless, which hurts, and that pain’s got to be fuelling his anger, too.)

Masaru’s voice in this line crescendos from low growl to furious roar, and the dark energy cloaks his whole body and erupts into the air from the sheer power of it all.

Tohma:  “That Digisoul…”

Well, I suppose in a certain sense this could be considered a Digisoul, even though it’s also very much not. Tohma sounds pretty shocked; though he came here to pretend to betray Masaru and make Masaru buy it, he was not expecting things to go this far.

As Masaru roars, lost in his incoherent rage, his Digivice (somehow) in his hand glows in response to the dark energy streaming from him. Unconscious under the water where he fell, ShineGreymon suddenly opens his eyes and rises up out of the sea. But he doesn’t say anything – like he’s not doing this consciously, like he’s not lucid, like he’s being influenced by the power coming from Masaru.

A ball of twisted grey energy engulfs ShineGreymon for a moment, and then he emerges in an altered form, his eyes dark and empty, roaring with a fury that isn’t his.

Yoshino:  “Is that Burst Mode?”

BanchouLeomon: “No… It can’t be…”

It’s not quite Burst Mode. Granted, appearance-wise, this is actually just a colour-swap of what the real Burst Mode will look like, but in terms of the intent behind it, it’s something very different. It never gets named in-series, which is kind of a shame because it’s a cool name – this is ShineGreymon Ruin Mode.

Yep, Masaru’s all-consuming uncontrollable rage at Tohma’s betrayal has triggered a dark evolution. This is a thing which happens occasionally in Digimon and which is always a neat concept that I enjoy in principle, but it’s never pulled off as well as it is here in Savers.

That’s the cliffhanger for the episode! It’s the only time Savers ever uses anything even remotely resembling “look, a new evolution!” as a cliffhanger, but given the very unique and sinister circumstances of this particular evolution, this barely counts as an example of that and has much more meaningful cliffhanger value. But before I end off and move onto the summary, I also want to talk just a little bit more in detail about why Masaru did this.

Remember something I talked about during episode 26, when Masaru was struggling to remember Agumon through his memory-loss headaches and eventually just snapped and told Agumon to get lost, because it was making his head hurt? Masaru’s extremely straightforward nature causes him to always take things at their immediate face value, never questioning them or looking for another possible explanation beyond what’s there on the surface. And sometimes, this can be a very, very bad thing.

You’d think, given how much he believes in Tohma – remember his completely casual assurance earlier in the episode that of course Tohma’s not the type of guy to abandon his comrades – that upon seeing Tohma apparently betraying them, Masaru wouldn’t want to believe he could do that and would try to come up with some other explanation that means he’s still on their side. Anyone else would, right? But no, not Masaru. Tohma is right there saying he’s betrayed them, and punching him hasn’t snapped him out of it, so that must be the truth of the situation, to Masaru. That’s the only way he could ever see it. He buys into it completely in a way nobody else quite would.

And then, because Masaru nonetheless trusted Tohma so unquestioningly until now, he’s so utterly, deeply hurt by this betrayal that he has no other way of expressing or dealing with the pain except to turn it into overwhelming fury. Masaru snapped and caused this dark evolution in this situation precisely because he is Masaru. No other character would have reacted like he did to this. I love Masaru so much.

I also want to give a shout-out to the BGM piece that played through that final sequence of Masaru losing it with rage, from around when Masaru’s first punch connected with Tohma up until the end of the episode. It’s called I’M JUST FIGHTER – yes, worded exactly like that, in English (we know Masaru’s bad at that language) – and it’s used at a few very choice moments in this series that I really love it for, one of which is this one. It has this delightful slow build-up and climax towards the end, and it’s kind of ominous-sounding, but also with a sort of… momentous? tone to it that gives it a very distinct impact. Like, yes, of course it would always have happened this way: because Masaru really is just fighter and doesn’t know how to be anything else.

Overall thoughts

Yes!!! As I said at the beginning, I am very excited to be here! This episode and the ongoing series of events it kicks off are So Good. Okay, so there’s that one bit of clunky expository foreshadowing with BanchouLeomon, and the narrative excuse to get Masaru outside for the fight with Tohma is a bit transparent, but all the important parts of the episode are so delightful that I don’t care.

We finally get into Tohma’s dad issues! And his sister, for that matter. Though of course he never told us about his family for all this time because Tohma never talks about himself, he continues to be a very deliberate foil to Masaru in all of these different ways. The recent build-up with Tohma’s jealousy at Masaru for his reckless approaches and his seemingly-perfect father seems to come to a head here – as I said, that’s actually not quite what’s happening, but I love that the focus on this stuff makes it seem possible.

Dad issues aside, the scene between Tohma and Kurata manages a great double-duty in that it both seems sinisterly believable that Tohma might be buying into it if you don’t know what’s up, but if you do know what’s up, you can fill in the gaps and imagine what Tohma’s really thinking about, like I had a lot of fun going into here. This is such an awful situation Tohma’s been forced into and it is so impressive that he’s willing to put himself through this act for his sister’s sake.

Then the Masaru and Tohma fight has so much delightful nuance with how each of them are dealing with this. I love the way Tohma is visibly stressed by having to put on this act at his friend and can’t help but vent some of his actual jealousy issues at Masaru. And I love how Masaru’s response to all this is so Masaru, stunned and bewildered by Tohma making so little sense, trying to snap him out of it, and when that doesn’t work, he buys into it so completely and feels so horribly betrayed that it drives him to this. Guh. It’s so good. Best trigger for a dark evolution in Digimon.

---

[Dub comparison]

[arkadiaasks]

What Digimon series have you watched? and what is your ranking?

Basically everyone of them, bar most of the movies. (I've held off on Kizuna due to its premise sounding exhaustion inducing and being absolutely soured on Tri).

I'd say the top entries are "Adventure" as the progenitor and "Tamers" due to codifying and hammering out most of the franchise's "Big Ideas".

"Savers" I'd say comes in behind them, due to some rough writing choice, but it ends up being a highly exciting, hot-blooded entry with a fun story, though its first cour isn't particularly strong. Not awful, just incredibly mid from what I recall, but the rest of the show makes up for this in spades.

More average entries...

"Xros Wars", I recognize its writing flaws, but the cast is likable, the goal is pretty straightforward, and most of its plot points that are brought up get resolved. Now the execution might not always hit, but it's pretty good.

"Appmon", pretty likable cast though Eri is the only one really to get a consistent plotline due to too many members having their plot points pegged to the last arc, and Astra being a static character. But it's pretty good.

Weaker But Not Awful... ...

"Zero Two", this show is just fundamentally "The pieces are greater than the sum". There's a lot of high notes, but there's a lot of low notes, and the show never congeals in a satisfying way.

"The Young Hunters Leaping Through Time". Listen to me, it was OKAY. It was a post-script season they tried to do a more relaxed episodic story with, was probably written, produced and directed at the seat of its pants, but it was a mostly charming entry for what it was, considering its likely production problems.

"Adventure 2019", I'm not hostile to it, but it repeated certain plot threads like 3 times in the first half in a frustrating way, and it clearly got a retool, so it's not. Particularly a cohesive series, but the week-to-week episodic stories were funny and enjoyable in the second half.

The worst I'd wager would be...

"Tri", just due to being a writing disaster that satisfied no one, and stands with "Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V" as prime examples of what to not do with anniversary works, in my mind.

And "Frontier", mostly because the Royal Knights arc rams a wooden stake through its heart and completely implodes its story, and the cast mostly gets side lined for that arc, alongside with them not particularly being well written.

(Tri I consider the worst of the IP)

[uniarycode]

Time For Digimon’s New Favourite Quiz Show:  Omega, Some Megas, Or Angels?

Yes I’m crossing terminology here, but it’s crunchy consistent, so whatever.

The extended preview for episode 18 is out and not only does it show a new threat for the chosen to fight, but also we see shots of Takeru and Hikari with their holy feathers, as well as a particular action shot of Taichi and Yamato.

So what’s going to happen next?

Omegamon:

The countdown, the feather, Taichi and Yamato’s digivice glow, all of this harkens back to Omegamon’s first appearance in episode 2.  Even the not-showing-him-in-the preview thing.  We even see Garurumon in this shot, even more referencing that first appearance.

That said, in my personal opinion, putting Omegamon here would be kinda lame, if he’s another miracle then it doesn’t establish anything new, and reduces his “miracle” feel.

Also in the above shot Taichi and Yamato’s crests are glowing their respective colours, but they glow both in the original Omegamon appearance:

New Megas?

The battle over Tokyo, family being in danger, sub focus on little siblings, this is also reminiscent of WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon’s debut back in adventure.  To top it off, this series has yet to go more than 2 episodes between evolutions, which would make episode 18 due for a new one.

But, I don’t feel like this threat has been adequately hyped to burn not one but two near-final evolutions on.  Plus it’s pretty well given that everyone is reaching their Ultimate/Mega stage this time around, so there’s no reason to give these two special privilege's allowing them to reach it.

Holy Digimon 

Hey they have to resolve this plotline sometime

If you can remember, the groups separated to find the location the holy digimon were supposedly being held, a base of the evil digimon where information went through.  And here they rejoined in the layer of an evil digimon based around data and causing the blackout.  It wouldn’t be that odd if the Holy Digimon were nearby.  And the ending is anything to go by we are getting Patamon soon.  Seraphimon could jump in save the day, then revert down to Patamon.

Of course, this doesn’t really look like the base, or where Holy Digimon are being stored, or have anything to do with Yamato/Taichi. But hey, it could happen.

So which is the correct answer?  Find out next week.

[wild-battlebond]

Digimon Xros Wars Ep44 Liveblog

Now that Kiriha has received some character development and embraced his ability to love, him, Taiki, and Nene have gained the ability to use Great Xros and increase Shoutmon to X7! Unfortunately, this is not enough to one-shot Gravimon.

and straight into the fray!

i forgot about all of this Great Xros stuff. it’s pretty cool & i like how it fully establishes the three of them as a close-knit trio

this is nice. I’m glad Kiriha gets a little bit to feel emotions about Deckerdramon’s death

oh no oh god i forgot about this until now. this episode has some weird parasite-growth shit in it... anyways Taiki has like. a bit of Gravimon wedged in his arm and it’ll grow into him or something and it’s mildly upsetting. like the thing with plotlines like this is that they’re pretty fascinating in their own right (there’s a guy inside you and it could kills you wyd) but also (like i said) mildly unpleasant to watch

so Gravimon can regrow from anything (in this case, a wire), not his core, but his core needs to be intact to be able to regenerate. which is why he stuck it in Taiki, since it would either mean that his core would never get destroyed or the others would be forced to kill Taiki to destroy him (iirc that’s this episode’s main conflict)

is Taiki misquoting a saying just a mistake on his part, or is it supposed to indicate that the core in his arm is affecting him?

from here on out, Kiriha starts acting a lot more relaxed, & it is really gratifying to see him change so much. it’s like a weight was literally taken off his shoulders after he realized his mistakes and was able to embrace his love, from the way he stands to how he interacts with the group (like Shoutmon said, he’s even smiling and laughing now)

ohhh I see, it’s a decoy X7 made up of seven completely different Digimon! that’s clever!

Nene’s disguise this time is hilarious because she wore it literally just to talk to the guard and then have Mervamon kick the guard in the face.

so since they found out he could regenerate, Gravimon’s not even being slick about it this time... but he’s not showing his whole hand, either, since he still hasn’t told Taiki about the core

aaaaa that's cute how she holds Hi-VisionMonitamon's hands

Kiriha still acts like his normal self while in combat, though. so, he's probably started to understand that there's a time and place for everything -- sometimes you can relax with your friends, and sometimes you can be a brutal fighter.

this is a really good way to represent how X7 was made up of everyone's bonds (and everyone's Digimon) -- before, Taiki was riding on X7's shoulder before hopping off, and now that Kiriha is giving X7 orders he's the one riding on X7's shoulders. they did something similar a while back when X5 (i think? it's the one with Sparrowmon) first formed and both Taiki and Nene stood on X5's shoulders since X5's formation was also indicative of their budding friendship. like, swapping around who's the one giving orders (who X7 has to trust with their life) is very significant in a battle.

man Gravimon really wants to force Taiki's friends into killing him. i think he has a problem.

hmm yeah that's just as disturbing as i remember. i don't like how it does a heartbeat thing.

so now Gravimon is putting Kiriha's character development to the test by trying to goad him into killing Taiki again

"rip it out" dude it's inside his arm do you know how much that would hurt???

well Kiriha contemplated it for a bit but then remember that Taiki has continued to trust and been nice to him him despite his betrayal, so he is not going to kill him. that's good.

so Kiriha is going to surrender by giving up his Xros Loader… leaving himself completely defenseless

or not? i guess Gravimon thinks that's too easy?

and then he was going to kill Kiriha but then Taiki jumped in the way?? he's going to try and take out Gravimon with him???

so then Gravimon had his core leave Taiki and Mervamon grabbed him and Kiriha so they're fine now

and X7 shot down the core so everything is fine now and they’re moving on to the next (and final) kingdom

[firstagent]

Fanfic Authors Tag Game

I was tagged by @ahiddenpath and I’m actually going to do this! If nothing else to take inventory.

AO3 name(s): I’m arpulver there and FFN. Fandoms: Been Digimon for the longest time, although I did have an original webnovel for a time, a couple crossover fics, and in a previous century had a website archiving and reviewing Simpsons fanfic. Number of fics:  9, not counting song parodies or script-format stuff I did back in the day.

1. Fic I spent the most time on:

Taken as an entire trilogy, The Connection took roughly five years. As individual stories, it’s a tossup between Level 3: Experiments and Neverworld at about 2.5 years. Nexusworld will surely pass those, but it’s going to be the longest.

2. Fic I spent the least time on:

Imaginary Girlfriend, written for the Dandan zine, took a couple weeks, not counting editing.

3. Longest fic: 

Currently Neverworld at about 256,000 words!

4. Shortest fic:

The Dandan zine had a 2,500 word limit. The posted version of Imaginary Girlfriend is only a teeny bit longer.

5. Most hits:

According to the FFN legacy stats, Neverworld edges out Level 1: Worlds and Odaiba Memorial Day, although it’s possible those two predate FFN’s hit tracking. Not saying I’m old, but my FFN account number is only four digits!

6. Most kudos:

Resumption, the uncomfortably prescient tale of the 02 kids post-tri. (written before its halfway point, is currently beating Neverworld 125-104!

7. Most comment threads:

Including FFN, Odaiba Memorial Day, my first proper Digimon fic, has 252 reviews.

8. Favorite fic I wrote:

For as much fame and attention I’ve gotten for my older stuff, it’s really a tossup between Neverworld and Nexusworld.

Neverworld was planned out before tri. was announced and while it gave me pause about writing the Adventure kids six years older at the same time canon was about to unveil something showing them in the same time frame, the idea of aging the characters of all (then) six seasons and throwing them into their very own Digital World playground to have interpersonal drama with each other was too enticing to pass up. And for as many curveballs as tri. threw at me, everything lined up neatly to incorporate its ideas and character interpretations into my story along with the way I had been portraying them. We ended up with the same Taichi and Mimi even! And for as easy as it is for long fics to go off the rails and become unmanageable, I’m proudest of the fact that it wrapped up every significant plotline and ended in a sensible place with a powerful climax.

Nexusworld, its sequel, came about because as much as I adored tri. and Appmon, they and Hunters left a lot of unfinished baggage that I wanted to address. The world gave me a chance to take Maki and Daigo, well before any of their misdeeds in tri., and put them next to two characters going through very similar problems: Haru and his desperate quest to bring back a lost loved one, and Tagiru, trying to recapture some of the glory from a victory that carried a big asterisk next to it. They also have to deal directly with Meiko, still reeling from her loss, the international kids and their organization post-tri., and a host of other new arrivals and old favorites. The emphasis on less popular seasons has made it harder to find an audience, but I’m finding the writing more direct and more meaningful than what I’ve put out before.

9. Fic you want to re-write:

Many years ago I actually did rewrite Level 1! The plan was to edit the trilogy, clean up some of the wonkier bits, fix some timeline issues, and put out an edition I’m prouder of, but I never got around to working on Level 2 or Level 3. While tri. thematically lines up nicely with The Connection trilogy, both it and Kizuna have poked enough holes in my timeline that such an edit doesn’t feel necessary anymore.

Despite its popularity, I’m not at all happy with the writing or character work in Odaiba Memorial Day, but I loved the format and I wonder if it might be neat to try it again using the canon time period between Kizuna and the epilogue (OMD gives everyone a different future because, shockingly, it was planned out before the Zero Two epilogue existed!).

10. Share bit of a WIP or a story idea you’re planning on:

All of my Digimon ideas are worming their way into Nexusworld right now and I’m not sure if I’m doing another Digimon project once it’s done. So you’re getting a future Nexusworld scene with Meiko and Mimi!

[Meiko] dropped her bag next to the extended and unmade futon. After some hesitation, she removed her shoes and stretched out on the bed. At some point she’d have to go back out there and figure out what to say to Eri. With Mimi still taking care of her job, she could afford a few minutes to ponder, and even dozing off didn’t sound terrible. Only a minute of staring at the ceiling passed before the bed rustled. Mimi sprawled out next to her, narrow eyes probing back. “What’s wrong? Come on, no bottling it.” With a huff, she added, “What did Tai do? Do I need to make Yolei beat him up?” Meiko let a chuckle escape. As well as she thought she had been doing before, having Mimi back as a regular part of her life was pure delight. “It isn’t Tai. He was great. Actually it’s, um… Eri.” “Eri?!” Mimi’s eyes flared. “What did Eri do?! I don’t think Yolei could beat her up.”

[maimishou]

Epilogue Celebration: “Coexistence”

Coexistence is an interesting theme given that it’s also the name of the fifth Tri movie. You know, the one where we get info on Homeostasis and the whole plotline about how Digimon and humans can’t coexist. Let’s talk about that. Minor spoilers for Kizuna.

Okay so aside from the epilogue establishing that everyone has a partner now (Though the math doesn’t quite check out in that way.), Tri establishes that in 2005 that the existence of Digimon isn’t well known yet by the time of Kizuna five years later they’re well known enough that Menoa can be a Digimon Researcher without this being seen as odd by the general public. By 2028, Tai is an ambassador. Hm...

Now I’m by no means an expert but general knowledge and a quick Google search tells me that an ambassador’s job is to help keep peace between countries. Now this may be a stretch, but this tells me that the relationship between the Earth and the Digital World isn’t completely peaceful. With that in mind, what is the relationship between the two worlds then?

Well we know that everyone has partners. While people 25 (Possibly youngwr given Tri) and under probably met their partners the day they were born or shortly after and are more accepting of Digimon, those who didn’t grow up with their partner are more varied in their relationships with Digimon.

for example: it’s possible that those who were adults when they met their partner may not get along. After all, Digimon and their partners usually live together and it isn’t as easy for an adult to relocate as it is for a child. An adult may not want to relocate to the Digital World or a Digimon with an adult partner may not want to relocate to Earth. Even aside from those who distrust Digimon out of fear, there’s still tension between humans and Digimon.

However, both worlds have managed to coexist in a mostly peaceful manner. We know from the epilogue that there are ambassadors like Tai and doctors like Joe who specialize in helping Digimon. I’m going to go against the grain here and say that travel between worlds isn’t strictly regulated. Certainly using the Digital World to travel between countries is itself regulated, to an extent, but travel to and from the Digital World itself isn’t. 

Ultimately by the time of the epilogue, while things aren’t perfect both worlds are working towards a peaceful existence.

[shihalyfie]

Adventure and 02′s production philosophy and its impact on the storywriting (or: “a series made with love is best understood with love”)

It’s hard to really judge a series too much by its production details, but Adventure and 02′s staff has been very open about discussing background and production to the point we’re able to involve it in discussions. In fact, to a certain degree, we’ve gotten rather reliant on said production notes to explain too many things that weren’t clearly depicted or stated in the series -- I’ve spent a fair share of time complaining about how frustratingly subtle this series is -- and you see a lot of strange conspiracy theories or myths about production that circulate in all sorts of different directions. Undeniably, it’s a series that spoke to a ton of people, but there are still so many things that have perplexed people over the last two decades, and when you ask someone “what’s good about this series?”, people struggle to say it in clear words, often only able to resort to a rather oversimplified explanation like “the character development is good” (but what is character development, anyway?). A lot of times, some small things that initially don’t seem to track have led to some pretty wild, far-reaching fanbase-endorsed theories, when in fact the actual reality of the situation is much more mundane.

I think, in general, the best way to “understand” Adventure and 02 is simply to have an open mind about everything in regards to it. This is something I can only say because we currently have more than enough evidence, given production testimony, that this is the kind of series that was made with that kind of philosophy -- I will not shy away from the fact that there are things in this world that are made maliciously, meant to “one-up” the audience or using half-baked explanations as a way to cover up the fact that it wasn’t well thought-through. But in the case of Adventure and 02 specifically, almost everything we have heard about it is to the contrary, and, in practice, I find one can get much more out of the series by adjusting one’s mindset to think about what they’re looking out for and not, because once you have, the beauty of the series opens itself up even in places you’re not looking for it.

Let’s talk a little about the production philosophy behind Adventure and 02 and how it shaped a series that left such an impact on so many kids, and what we can learn from it!

“Something important that we wanted to tell the kids who were watching”

The two most important figures to know when it comes to Adventure and 02 production are its producer, Seki Hiromi (who would eventually go on to produce Tamers and Frontier as well, along with being supervising consultant on Kizuna), and its director, Kakudou Hiroyuki. I would say that both of these figures are probably the most influential people in shaping the series as we know it, but in different ways -- Kakudou was the one most responsible for building the world of Adventure and 02 and setting up the standard for having all sorts of background worldbuilding details that weren’t shown in the series, whereas Seki was the one who pushed for them to include family backgrounds and things that ought to be relatable to the average kid, so that they could empathize with the problems shown on screen.

Both of them had different ways of going at it, which is all for the better because it allowed the story to be enriched from both sides, but the common thread between the two was that they wanted to use this opportunity to “show the kids important things”:

Kakudou is the kind of person I would say is very “media literate” -- he was very well-read in books and well-versed in cinema, not just Japanese but also internationally, and also very in-tune with the Internet by the standards of a director in 1999. (Part of the reason we know so much about Digimon production now is that he still keeps up with everything on social media and throws in a few comments here and there.) His comments on the final episode of Adventure include a list of all of the things he credited for inspiring him during this series, and he later stated that he had a goal of conveying all of those “interesting things” to the kids watching, so that they could also find it interesting. So in other words, Adventure and 02 were basically his love letter to everything in media that he’d come to appreciate.

Seki was the one who pushed for humans to be involved in the series so that the audience could empathize with them, and for all of the “real world worldbuilding” like the kids’ family backgrounds. She’s also functionally responsible for the base premise of 02 at all, having been thoroughly alarmed by the story of a young boy skipping grades into university (to the point this plotline resurfaced a whole 20 years later in Kizuna). It can be said that the heavy “human drama” elements and family background emphasis continuing into Tamers and Frontier are probably her doing, and in terms of Kizuna, she also was responsible for personally vetting the dialogue to keep the kids in character, and it was said that it came off like she loved the characters as if they were her own children.

The result is that, firstly, Adventure and 02 is a series that is very well-thought through. Ridiculously well thought-through, in both background lore and character backgrounds and mentality. So many surface-level criticisms of Adventure and 02 come with an accusation that the writers were “lazy” or “did a writing cop-out”, but we actually have more evidence that the Adventure and 02 staff thought out so many details in the background that they kept forgetting that they hadn’t actually told the audience about it yet. (No, seriously, there’s a thread of official staff repeatedly forgetting that they may not have actually outright mentioned one of the background details they’d planned out in advance.) Even despite all of the extra information we’ve gotten since in the drama CDs and Animation Chronicle and such, it seems there’s still way more information that was planned out that we still haven’t learned about, and it’s presumably why there are so many little things that are too consistent to be coincidental and yet were still never actually stated. It may have been awful at communicating those details well, but those details were most definitely there, and both series have a shocking amount of consistency in adhering to them.

The second is that not only did the producer and director want to convey those important things, they also encouraged the rest of the staff to do it too:

One of the concepts behind the prior series was for us to pack in as many interesting things that we’d seen, heard about, or read about as we could into it, so for 02, we thought, what else could we put in beyond even that?, and so we looked over what we needed to have, and put in all the things we could so that they wouldn’t be left out, and the story became a multi-layered one, overlapping and accelerating. It was to the point that, after we’d gone through 02‘s story, the scriptwriters told me that they’d worn everything they had out to the ground.

So in other words, Adventure and 02 were basically a sort of potluck where they encouraged everyone on staff to come up with interesting things that they wanted to show the kids, and throw it all in -- and it’s presumably why the second half of 02 is so “crowded” (more on this later), because you had everything from all of the writers on staff adding another thing into the potluck, until everyone could get it out of their system. Yoshimura Genki, one of 02′s head writers, said outright that she used the famous 02 episode 23 to convey her concerns about some very real and horrible things happening to kids at the time, and it’s easy to imagine that all of the other writers and staff members were given similar encouragement to do so. Even the (in)famous 02 episode 13 was something originally created from Kakudou seeing Dagomon, thinking he was really cool and wanting to make an episode about him, and remembering that Konaka was good at Lovecraft and basically going “he’s gonna love this, we should get him to do an episode.” In fact, it’s said many times that a huge attitude behind production was to “not be ashamed of anything” and try whatever they wanted.

Which means that the result is a series that isn’t actually all that well-organized in plot or structure -- 02′s plot writing is of course an infamous pile of knots, but even those who are willing to be a bit more critical of Adventure often point out that its plot is simply more linear, being basically a video game-esque boss rush of “evil enemy, followed by even more evil enemy”. Most people do not watch Adventure or 02 for the actual plot writing. What they do watch it for is all of this stuff mentioned above -- that all of these different people on staff were given the question “what do you want to say to this audience of kids?” and took the opportunity to say something fun or meaningful. And, hence, why it’s best to understand Adventure and 02 not necessarily by the minutiae of its plot, but rather, “what was this series trying to say?”

Writing the series as it went along, under massive constraints

In general, Japanese anime is produced as it goes along -- even the character writing is subject to change depending on the voice actors’ performance (this was cited for Adventure specifically, but it’s well-known common practice for non-adaptation anime in general). That said, Adventure didn’t even have a guarantee of how long it was going to be at first -- it was generally expected that it’d be a one-year series (like most Toei series), but they weren’t even sure about it. This resulted in a very “loose mindset”, in which they decided to basically wing it, and the only thing determined for sure was that the epilogue (that we now know as the 02 epilogue) was going to be at the end of it.

As I mentioned above, scrutinizing the plot of Adventure too closely reveals that it’s not actually that coherent of a narrative, just more linear -- and, even by official admission, Hikari wasn’t planned to be the eighth child at first nor was the Tokyo arc of episodes planned to be that long, and yet this entire section is one of the most famous parts of Adventure. A lot of the best parts of Adventure and 02 seem to be the result of sheer accident...

...Or was it accident? Can you say that “going in with a positive mindset and a desire to do something meaningful” is accident? Even if you didn’t plan things out from the beginning, if you go into everything with an attitude of wanting to make the best out of something and make the best out of opportunities you see and hear about, is that really an accident? Couldn’t you perhaps say that this kind of thing is why Adventure and 02 hit so well with people to begin with?

By the time we get to 02, 02 started off as a very different series from the get-go, and it’s always struck me as very odd that people act like 02 was tacked on and didn’t have nearly the exact same staff. It was Kakudou himself who petitioned for 02 to start off with a light atmosphere, and the series itself was fundamentally meant to be addressing the new concepts of “relationships” instead of Adventure’s “self-assertion”, and explore concepts that hadn’t been covered in Adventure. The reason 02 is so different from Adventure is exactly because the staff didn’t want to rehash things for another year, and instead wanted to take the opportunity to cover stuff Adventure didn’t. And the fact that 02 is lighter than Adventure at first, but quickly gets darker, is also by design:

The story had gotten rather heavy by the time of Digimon Adventure, so we decided to make it come off as brighter. And then, it actually ended up getting even heavier somewhere down the line, but there was no way we could just avoid depicting important life problems.

Which is also a similar sentiment reflected by Seki herself, when thinking about how her suggested plotline ended up making the story darker:

An overly intelligent child, prone to falling into loneliness, cut off from his friends and family, and with a Digimon slowly coming and staying close to him…I remember that kind of image forming. We were supposed to have been aiming to have them going to the Digital World with the mood of a picnic, but the fact it didn’t end up so easy for them may have been my fault…or so I remember thinking as I reflected on it.

02 didn’t get dark for the sheer sake of getting dark, and in fact it’s not like the staff necessarily wanted it to get that way, but there were so many meaningful things that they wanted to tell the audience of kids that they allowed it to. It’s also kind of odd how the fanbase has this idea of there somehow being staff conflicts or people bickering in order to produce 02, but there’s no indication of this at all -- at most, 02 unusually had two head writers instead of one, Yoshimura Genki and Maekawa Atsushi, but it was even said that they had a clear division of roles, with Yoshimura on the “villains” side and Maekawa on the “protagonists” side, and there’s no sign of conflict.

(A lot of people also tend to give more credit to Yoshimura since the villains are some of the most masterfully crafted part of both Adventure or 02, but this is still somewhat reductive; Maekawa is very open about the fact that he was rather inexperienced during 02′s production, and considering the fact that the 02 protagonists aren’t nearly as underdeveloped as the fanbase claims they are, and Maekawa would later go on to write a PreCure entry that basically saved the franchise and a very well-acclaimed Super Sentai entry, both with many parallels to 02, his role should not be discounted, especially since 02 is often liked by its fanbase for the duality between both its lighter and darker sides.)

So we had the staff basically on a roll of throwing in everything important they wanted to say to the kids, both “fun” and “meaningful”, and then, two things impacted the way it ended: firstly, they weren’t allowed to go with their initial proposal for the final enemy because it was too gory, and secondly, the decision was made midway through that they would not be making a third Adventure series, and would have to end more quickly than expected.

I think, whenever you hear stories of “we were originally going to do this but couldn’t,” people generally tend to assume that they should have done the original plan (especially if the original plan was particularly gory or brutal, because everyone loves to think that edgy is better), but, perhaps fittingly for a series that’s about not drowning in past regrets of “what should have been” and learning to move on, the staff has never really shown any indications of really, thoroughly regretting any of the decisions they made for 02, even if the second half came out messy. If you look at that original proposal they had for 02′s final enemy, in which it would be an enemy “reduced to an idea”, it certainly explains a lot about why BelialVamdemon was defeated by the power of sheer positivity in the final ending -- obviously that would make a lot more sense with a conceptual embodiment of malice, instead of a returning enemy from the prior series -- but at the same time, that loss of that concept led to the creation of Oikawa, Archnemon, and Mummymon, which have consistently been praised as one of the most compelling parts of 02 and its finale, and Yoshimura herself even gushed about the concepts they got. So it’s not “we couldn’t do what we wanted,” it’s more “we couldn’t do what we initially wanted and made something out of it, arguably an even better something in certain ways.”

And as for the lack of the third Adventure series, all indications point to the fact that this was something by personal choice of the staff, not by higher-up mandate -- not that I enjoy speculating about other people I don’t know, but if you actually follow what Kakudou has said about his work on Adventure and 02, and the fact that he considers his later work on X-Evolution to functionally be getting everything else out of his system (even saying that he liked Bandai doing a lot of the work for him), Kakudou doesn’t seem to want to be the main leader of his projects for the most part, mostly seeing Adventure and 02 as the one time he got to dump all of his one-time ideas that he personally wanted to accomplish, and otherwise being satisfied doing episode direction work for others -- testimony as to the handoff between 02 and Tamers consistently depicts him as expressing sentiments similar to “please let me have a break.” (As of this writing, he still does work for Toei, but has never been lead director on a full series since.) Kakudou didn’t like having to deal with a bunch of increasingly canon-contradictory works because, as an infamously detail-oriented and consistent person, dealing with that kind of thing didn’t really seem to agree with him, and moreover it’s understandable that he (and the other staff) would feel that it was better to end it there instead of overstaying its welcome and stretching things out.

Certainly, when you look at the second half of 02, its plot is “crowded” in nearly every direction (not as incomprehensible as people like to claim it is, but definitely going in a lot of places at once). The infamous 02 epilogue is probably the biggest example of the disparity between staff thought and how it came off; remember that it was one of the first things decided about the series at all, meaning that the staff was deliberating over it and under the impression they were building up to it for a whole two years, but when it finally dropped everyone was blindsided and even often made accusations of the staff coming up with it at the last minute while drunk or something (not helped by the staff clearly being so fixated on their own production that they even included details that were completely incomprehensible to anyone not aware of the potential third series plotline). Yet, ever since then, many people who have sat down with it have figured out that it’s not that incomprehensible and that many of the aspects of it make sense on a theoretical level or are foreshadowed in the series -- it’s just that they tacked it onto the end of an excessively crowded finale with no warning and didn’t sufficiently communicate their reasoning for it, requiring people to spend the next 20 years puzzling it out and Kizuna to come around to drop even more clues, and also failed to realize that one of humanity’s most die-on-a-hill issues about media (shipping) would make people a lot more offended than they likely intended. (PreCure has successfully pulled off “adult timeskip” epilogues in recent years, and they’ve all been received well, but the difference is that they actually pad out the episode with a proper lead-up instead of just chucking it in your face right after Oikawa dies.)

And, ultimately, the staff has never shown any signs of having regret over this. Kakudou takes the stance that they were able to close out 02 in a good way, despite all of the circumstances. The rest of the staff, including Seki herself, and overall Toei as a whole, has doubled down further on the latter half of 02′s plot events and the epilogue’s place in canon despite the infamous controversy around it, and I have to say that I do at least understand why they’re like this when you consider the circumstances and their likely feelings on it -- regardless of everything, they’re proud of the work they did on it, and even if not everything went according to original plan, they loved taking the opportunity to use the sandbox to express things they may not have been able to in their other projects, and the epilogue was their baby that they’d been raising for two years. It’s the ultimate question of “satisfying the creators vs. satisfying the audience” -- not to say that I completely agree with the call to be this unaware of how people were going to read this, because it’s not good to blindside your audience or hurt their feelings, but at the same time, it’s said that you will never be able to satisfy an audience at all if you’re not satisfying yourself first. And in the end, despite everything, that something in Adventure and 02, built out of that earnest desire to say something, came across in some ways and touched the hearts of kids all over the world.

So the result was that the Adventure and 02 staff did everything they wanted, got it out of their system, and handed an imperfect but carefully-crafted baton to Seki, who decided that it was a good opportunity to do something completely new, and deliberately picked Tamers’s director Kaizawa on the grounds that he’d had no experience with the series before. Remembering that Seki was on Adventure and 02 and was clearly happy with it, her decision to do something new with Tamers was just that -- to do something new -- and it’s honestly kind of saddening that the series’ respective fanbases treat each other with significantly less respect than their actual creators do, since both series still shared a lot of staff, Kakudou went on to be an episode director for Tamers (and even calls it a “masterpiece”), and Konaka clearly has a lot of respect for his predecessor series as well, with Tamers being its own product made with conscientiousness and a desire to make things meaningful for kids (Kaizawa himself has expressed a lot of strong opinions on this topic). A lot of anti-02 folks have often spread a conspiracy theory that Tamers came out of a “writer revolt” because they hated being “restricted” by 02 and wanted “more freedom” -- but that is completely contrary to the above evidence where 02′s production process arguably gave the writers too much freedom, and Tamers head staff was picked deliberately due to their lack of connection to the prior series so that they could do something conversely new and fresh...

One thing that’s interesting about Kizuna is that its director, Taguchi Tomohisa, has spoken very often about his love for the original series, right down to respecting its ability to cover very serious topics. His recruitment philosophy for the movie also seemed to have “being a fan of the series” as a big plus factor, and he moreover shows a lot of respect for the staff members involved in production, both the people he recruited and the long-timers like Seki. “Being a fan of the series” doesn’t necessarily constitute skill by itself, but there’s a lot of similar sentiments in “let’s make something that shows respect and does something interesting and important” and “let’s make sure the staff gets to do something without regrets” also seem to be pretty huge factors in consideration here, rather similar to the original series...

What this means in terms of understanding the series

I do not think that, just because a creator clearly had good reasoning for putting in what they did, the audience necessarily has to accept that. It may have had good intentions, but "intentions” don’t justify things coming off the way they do, or at least, the 20/20 hindsight can make us all get together and think “if that was your intention, there were probably a million better ways to execute that.” And, as someone writing this blog, there are times I really think “if you could have please just thought a little harder about making those ideas clearer so we wouldn’t have to have these arguments...”

However, I do think there is something illuminating about the idea of “adjusting one’s mindset” in response to the above revelations, and going in with an open mind when trying to get something out of the series for one’s own sake. I mean this truly in the sense of encouraging others to find something interesting and new -- this is not a blog I write expecting people to see things the same way I do, as much as I like encouraging people to look out for things they might have not noticed beforehand.

I started writing for this blog regularly last year (I hadn’t even planned to start regularly doing it) after a rewatch of Adventure and 02 with some friends and some honest discussion about the series after it, and one thing we all agreed to do when we did that rewatch was “we are not going to go in with the intent to criticize it.” That is to say, we decided to throw out all of those sentiments that you have to “admit” everything wrong with any series when even bringing up its name -- which is not to say that we’re glossing over potential criticisms or their validity, just “we’re doing this rewatch to have fun and to enjoy and appreciate things, and that will be our priority going in.” After making that agreement, something really magical happened, and it was that we started catching things without even looking for it, things that had clearly been planned but hidden in the background, or things that were caught by one person in the group watch chat and pointed out to the others, and it turned out that a huge chunk of the “criticisms” we might have originally gone in with actually did have answers, we just hadn’t realized it because we were too brainwashed into the mindset of dismissing things as “well, that part’s just bad writing.”

Of course, we’ve seen bad writing -- it’s not like we were going out of our way to absolve everyone for every mistake -- but that base mindset allowed us to better appreciate things we might have missed earlier that weren’t immediately apparent. I’ve said many times that I don’t think the things I write on here are that huge speculation -- in fact, in writing meta, I often throw out a lot of stuff because I think “yeah that’s too absurd, let’s just stick with the simplest explanation” -- as much as I just thread things that are in the series but are frustratingly subtle, because I’m taking things that seem like throwaway details and going “hm, well, instead of just dropping it the first time like ‘probably bad writing’, let’s maybe look at this one more time and see if there was a reason?” And those reasons present themselves surprisingly easily without even that much effort, and after a while you come to realize: this is a really consistent series!

It’s actually very rare that things outright contradict themselves, because it really does not take long to piece together a rational explanation (because those things are in the series, just buried)! This was a detail-oriented series that had a ridiculous amount of attention paid to it, even if it didn’t communicate that! Whenever I post meta, I often get comments from people who say outright that they’d had the same impressions, they just didn’t know how to put it in words! There’s been multiple cases of people independently coming up with readings of the series that the fanbase historically dismissed as a reach, only for official to come out and confirm they were absolutely correct, and a common thread between all of these is that they were referenced in the series, it’s just that people kept wanting to dismiss them because “there’s no way they’d be that detailed”! A truly contradictory series falls apart when you subject it to higher scrutiny (even when you’re being optimistic about it), but there’s a strange thing about Adventure and 02 in that they actually fit together even more when you look closely -- and, again, things start coming in when you don’t even expect it, just because of your mindset.

I suppose the take-home here with all of this is that a series like this is best understood when you have an open mind and a desire to listen to what it has to say. As I said before: Adventure and 02 (and especially 02) are not series that most people watch for the plot, and, to be honest, it’s clear that plot wasn’t even a priority for all of the staff in the first place as much as it was about conveying important ideas and sentiments. And I’m not going to say whether not prioritizing plot or not is a “good” or “bad” thing -- for some people, that kind of thing is understandably very important, and a series like 02 can be very frustrating to deal with as a result! -- as much as, for those who have a genuine interest in sitting down and understanding these series, I cannot recommend scrutinizing the plot too much simply because it will not get you very far, and, to be honest, whenever I see a lot of analyses of Adventure and 02, I really do often wonder if they actually understand the core of the series and the sentiment and emotion behind it, or whether they’re just doing it on a technical surface level so they can say they did (which is usually partially as a bid to passive-aggressively dunk on later series to prove Adventure is superior). The entire concept of objectivity is a lie in itself, but this is not a series that you can get much out of if you try to evaluate it with that kind of detachment; it’s a series that spoke to you through theme and passion first and foremost, and to receive that message and “enjoy” the series is most effectively done when you detach all of those doubts and approach the series without malice.

(By the way, this is not me claiming I’m inherently a “better” analyst just because I also prefer to use this mentality when approaching it; it’s just that I’m a bit frustrated that this kind of approach is so hard to find, despite Adventure’s popularity, because losing out on the heart causes so much rich potential to get lost. This is also the reason I recommend @analyzingadventure‘s work so much -- I’m so sorry about tagging you for the third time here! -- because they’re as positive about Adventure as I am about 02, and their insight and thought into the series coming from the angle of “appreciating” it with genuine positivity is something I believe is truly valuable in a climate where this is very hard to find.)

And this is what I mean, “to approach it without malice”. I don’t mean that you should go in prepared to never have criticisms of it ever again, nor that you should just absolve everything and assume that everything is fine, but rather that going in with a mindset of “we’re going to look for things to love” instead of “we’re going to ‘look past’ the bad” alone has the magical effect of shifting your entire view of the series, way more than I would say with any other. And, again, that’s only something that can happen when the base product was made with this much sentiment and honesty to begin with, and moreover fighting against the mindset to criticize is tough when we’re dealing with a fanbase that’s acted like being “fair” requires “acknowledging” the faults of everything in the same breath you praise it until the horse is beaten for two decades and everyone’s exhausted. (And then yells at you if you dare criticize anything that’s put on the fanbase’s pedestal.) It’s kind of the question of: should this really be about media criticism and whether it’s “objectively” good or bad, especially since this has been brought up so often for two decades now, or might it be better to think about how to have a more positive experience with something that you may not have had before?

Once you get rid of that mindset of “critical by default”, you start to realize things that the series did knock out of the park, or were exceptional, that got too obscured by the distractions of fixating on its plot -- 02 is a plot mess for sure, but I have never seen any series that is so sincere and earnest about its actual themes and things it wanted to say, and it’s something I love it even more for. And buried under that criticism of everyone not getting “equal attention” from an evolutionary forms perspective is the fact that, from a story perspective, they deliberately went out of their way to make sure everyone gets mostly equal focus, which is something that sticks out especially when you start watching other long-running series that aren’t as good about this, and although it’s not completely perfect by any means, they do a damn good job keeping everyone in the 8- and 6-person groups relevant to the very end, which is pretty impressive! And, in the end, you end up having a much healthier relationship with the series -- again, it’s not glossing over everything to pretend nothing is wrong per se, but rather, you’re able to appreciate it and love it for what it is, instead of constantly feeling like you’re making up for its “mistakes”.

[broken-endings]

silly me

it’d been a year since I caught up on Digimon Tri

I assumed “it’s probably complete by now”

wowwwww

nope

the 6th installment isn’t out (and someone said it’d be SEVEN parts?)

i was watching the end of 5 being like “twenty minutes is not enough time for a satisfying ending to this series

well good thing that sure wasn’t the end

spoilers for everything released under the cut

i probably should’ve rewatched it for the beginning cuz there’s a lot I forgot.

but it’s interesting the elements they’ve dropped into it from both the previous series

I never expected Nishijima and Himekawa to be revealed to have been digidestined THEMSELVES!!

Seeing that flashback where they were fighting the dark masters and four of the five digimon became the 4 guardians, azulongmon and them.

In the original series, before the kids faced Apocalymon, Gennai spoke of the darkness on the other side of the wall of fire: “the digimon knew they didn’t have the power to defeat it,” so they worked together with children from another world.

We only ever see their silhouettes but there were 5 of them. 

And here in this flashback there are 5 of them. 4 became the digital world’s guardians who were sealed away by the dark masters. The fifth, Himekawa’s digimon was destroyed? To the point that it would never be reborn?

So does this mean that Azulongmon started out as a partner digimon???

I never would’ve expected that one brief summary of the original digidestined in season 1 to come into play but i’m SO GLAD it did. the world building!! AND combining it with the creation of the four guardians that were introduced in zero two?? YES

So does that mean Nishijima’s partner could be Azulongmon?? YES yes it could.

So the Gennai looking guy is creepy beyond fuck. He said he looks like Gennai. On two occasions, in the season 1 flashback courtesy of homeostasis, and the world tour arc in season 2, we’ve known that there were other humanoids that look like Gennai. He is just one of many. I don’t think that’s him. I think he’s one of the others.

Before it was actually revealed to kind of be the truth at the end of the fifth installment, I voiced to myself the idea that “what if the real big bad of this series is the one who chose the digidestined to begin with??” which is the homeostasis entity right?

If their enemy is the one who originally chose them, then it’d make COMPLETE sense why everything began showing us the assumed destruction of the zero two kids. It would be getting rid of the kids it chose in reverse order.

I’m not saying this homeostasis was always bad. But it’s the enemy right now. Kind of like the digimon emperor was, or blackwargreymon.

I think this all began because of Himekawa’s obsession with finding a way to bring Tapirmon back to life. To see her partner one more time. Everyone and everything told her it was impossible. So she spent her whole life trying to make it happen.

Whatever she did to try to make that happen, corrupted one of the Gennai people OR, the darkness that exists to balance the digital world took advantage of her obsession, using her to achieve its own ends.`

It sounds like Himekawa might’ve been part of Meicoomon’s creation in order to achieve the reboot. Ylsdir? or whatever it’s called? wanted it for a different reason.

She was obviously created after season 1 if there’s a shard of apocalymon contained in her.

Maybe Himekawa’s vendetta allowed Ylsdir?eruehj to corrupt Homeostasis. In the flashback, it looked like Himekawa was the vessel Homeostasis used to communicate with the original digidestined, just like it uses Kari. So for a chosen vessel to be corrupted, perhaps allowed the corruption of the entity who uses them as a vessel?

Either way. I have a feeling wherever Tai and Nishijima went. WE MIGHT SEE DAVIS AND THE OTHERS!!!!

yeah. no way he’s dead. When he disappeared i was like “of course he’s the one to disappear. He’s ALWAYS the one to disappear”

The battle at the end of installment 5 gave me vibes that something similar might have happened with the other 4 digidestined right before the beginning of installment 1. That however Tai disappeared and wherever he disappeared to, that’s where they are.

I was ALSO shocked to see the dark ocean. Himekawa is in the dark ocean. Another thing that her and Kari have in common. Both were the voice for Homeostasis, both were snatched by this other world.

It always felt like the dark ocean episode was a dropped plotline in zero two, so i’m not sure where this is going is going to make it make more sense, or less sense. I fear the latter but we’ll see.

The vibes I’m getting from Himekawa feels a lot like Jeri’s arc in Digimon Tamers. She was forced to watch her partner destroyed, for no reason. She folded away from the world and became the target of possession from an entity that almost consumed both worlds due to her despair over her loss.

Jeri had Takato and her friends to help her snap out of it and move on. Himekawa doesn’t seem to have had the same experience. It’s slowly consumed her. In fact, she hasn’t even gotten to the loss and despair part because she’s convinced if she does the right thing she can bring her partner back. Sure tapirmon is back after the reboot, but...is it still your partner if it doesn’t remember you? The other digimon have proved otherwise, but that’s cuz the kids are close enough to who they were when they first met. Himekawa can’t be. She’s a jaded adult driven by obsession.

She was chosen as a digidestined and given a partner digimon. But she was the only one of the five who wasn’t chosen for their digimon to become an all powerful guardian. Instead her digimon was sacrificed. She was chosen, and then she wasn’t chosen. She was chosen twice, both to be digidestined and have a partner, and to be the vessel for homeostasis. Then she wasn’t chosen and lost her best friend.

[witchelny]

Piecing Together Adventure tri.’s Plot, Pt. 1

So, the past few days I’ve been marinating on the release of Kyousei/Coexistence. A lot of very cool people with more coherent thoughts than myself have already posted their wonderful analyses of Coexistence by itself, so I decided not to go that route. Instead, I’m rewatching Digimon Adventure tri. from the beginning and analyzing the OVA episodes based on the context we’ve been given in the most recent OVA.

To do this, I’ve decided to analyze Adventure tri. from a very character-focused perspective, as I believe that is how the series was most likely developed. There are at least four different “sides” involved in the central conflict, as well as individual character motivations for everyone involved. This style of writing is likely what has caused Adventure tri.’s incredibly complicated (and, as some have criticized, overwrought) plotline.

Here’s an outline of the main four “sides” I’ll be focusing on:

The Chosen Children, including Meiko & their ally Daigo Homeostasis, with both Gennai & Huckmon serving its purpose Yggdrasil, represented by Alphamon Maki, who gets her own category because her sole motivation (so far) seems to be getting Tapirmon back & her actions have influenced much of the plot

I’m starting off with a rewatch of Part 1: Reunion.

Reunion starts off with the vague and conceptual introduction of Demiurge. Other people in the fandom have discussed the concept of Demiurge in more depth, because it’s a very complex idea with ties to Platonism, Neoplatonism, and Gnoticism, and is interpreted differently by various schools of thought. In short, however, the Demiurge is consistently thought of as a “second God” or the “mind of God,” a being that fashioned the universe out of chaos but is unaware of the higher being (”the One”) that created it. Adventure tri. also proposes that Demiurge is unaware of Idea, in which the capitalized term “Idea” refers to Plato’s Theory of Forms - the concept that non-physical forms, or the Idea of something, are the most accurate reality.

I’m still not entirely sure how to apply this theory to Adventure tri. A few thoughts: perhaps the “Idea, the true form of the world,” as mentioned by the narrator, refers to the fact that humanity’s dreams & wishes that created the Digital World, are the “true form” of the Digital World. Additionally, one could see either Homeostasis or Yggdrasil as the Demiurge or “second god” that fashioned the Digital World out of chaos. I don’t feel confident suggesting any of the above thoughts are supported by the narrative, but I am hoping we get some more insight in Our Future.

In Reunion, one of the first scenes with which we are presented is the scene in which Alphamon defeats the 02 kids. In the context of Coexistence, we now know that Alphamon is fighting for Yggdrasil and opposes Homeostasis, which - in my opinion - suggests to me that the 02 kids had already had some contact with Gennai or Homeostasis that skewed their mission in Homeostasis’ favor. After all, the Chosen had no reason to distrust Gennai up until that point; they perceived him as an ally. Consequently, I have reason to believe the 02 kids were being manipulated by Gennai and/or Homeostasis to fight on their side up until their defeat and possible capture at the hands of Alphamon.

Following this scene, the main plot continues in the background of seemingly mundane, slice-of-life antics. Reunion’s focus on Taichi & Yamato, however, serves as a sort of vehicle to present each Chosen child’s individual motivations and conflicts. Taichi & Yamato, as usual, are pitted against one another because their soccer game & band concert are scheduled on the same day around the same time, and it forces the other kids to show where their loyalties lie. Sora can’t choose between the two; Koushiro is busy with his fancy job at an American firm, even going so far as to lie to Sora on the phone about what he’s doing; Mimi is in America, but is willing to drop everything to go to Japan and see her friends; Jou is focusing on school and his girlfriend; Takeru acts loyal to Yamato but is using his brother’s concert for a date; and Hikari is the first and only person in the crew to notice Kuwagamon and the distortions, true to her typical sixth-sense perceptiveness.

As a result, I think the central conflict, and then the resolution of said conflict, between Taichi and Yamato in Reunion is absolutely necessary in order to establish the power dynamics among the Chosen Children and also to 1) showcase how each of them have changed individually and 2) depict what motivates them throughout the rest of the OVA.

Likewise, Taichi’s hesitance about reclaiming his leadership role is foreshadowed by his inability to hand in a career planning form at school. Daigo repeatedly chides Taichi on not having his form turned in, but Taichi has no idea what to do, or which path he even wants to take in the future. That indecisiveness follows him later in Reunion when he begins to have second thoughts about leading the Chosen Children and battling Alphamon.

Now, onto the main plot. There are a few things I noticed throughout Reunion, including:

Huckmon is watching as Kuwagamon emerges from the first distortion. I honestly can’t remember where the Virus originated or if it was explaining in canon because it’s been awhile since I watched Adventure tri., but for now I’m posing the theory that Homeostasis created the Virus in order to target Meicoomon. If that is true, then Huckmon is likely watching to ensure the plan is executed smoothly.

I have noticed this before and other people have pointed it out, but when Maki is sitting in her office, she has a program open on her computer that is tracking the locations of all 12 Chosen, including the 02 kids. The 02 kids, however, have “unknown” written next to their statuses and locations.

There seems to have been some kind of mass amnesia. A common complaint about the absence of the 02 kids is that the original 8 never even think to mention that they are missing, but I’m wondering if this was purposeful. Additionally, no one in the world seems to remember Digimon existing, with the news even referring to them as “unidentified creatures.”

All of the other Chosen children around the world still exist. At one point when Takeru is on the phone with Yamato, the camera shows his laptop screen, which shows him interacting with other global Chosen through some kind of custom social network.

A common behavior in Infected Digimon, a behavior that’s reflected by Meicoomon, is that they only directly engage in battle if threatened. The Kuwagamon, for example, does not directly attack Taichi; instead, it lays waste to Odaiba until it realizes that Taichi is following it and intends on stopping it, then turns to attack him. Similarly, Meicoomon has demonstrated multiple times that she won’t display aggressive behavior unless threatened; this actually happens later in Reunion when Alphamon appears, and Meicoomon glows for a second, having an impulsive reaction to the looming threat.

Before confronting Kuwagamon, Taichi calls Hikari and tells her nothing is wrong, making the executive decision to face Kuwagamon by himself. Taichi also seems to have accepted the fact that without Agumon present, he is powerless to stop Kuwagamon. Foreshadowing for his sacrificial behavior in Coexistence, perhaps?

Kuwagamon almost wins the fight against Garurumon at the Haneda Airport, but Alphamon’s hand reaches through a distortion and pulls him away. Could it be that Homeostasis sent the Virus, and Alphamon, on behalf of Yggdrasil, is doing everything he can to get in Homeostasis’ path? At this point, Alphamon seems to have no interest in fighting the Chosen, but it is also before the Chosen Children ally themselves with Meiko and Meicoomon.

One of the most interesting tidbits in Reunion, to me, is this:

Maki and Daigo have been getting their information from Gennai. This means that, unbeknownst to them, the National Data Processing Bureau and likely the Chosen Children have, up to this point, had the information given to them skewed in order to further Homeostasis’s agenda. This is all really interesting to me, because it suggests that something insidious has been going on from the very beginning. The Agents (with a capital “A,” referring to Gennai’s race of human-like beings living in the Digital World) created the Chosen Digimon partners in order to protect their world from the Dark Masters and Apocalymon; however, did they create the original five’s Digimon partners, too? Has every team of Chosen been manufactured by Homeostasis and the Agents in order to serve their purposes and keep the Digital World “balanced”? Gennai’s influence in the Bureau is definitely something I’m going to keep an eye on throughout this rewatch.

As a side note to this, I am reminded of Maki’s appearance at the end of Pt. 3, when she confronts Gennai on the cliffside. I think it is most likely that Gennai contacted Maki first and is manipulating her to do underhanded things under the guise of promising her that she’ll get Tapirmon back.

Besides that, Koushiro also gives us a pretty nifty outline of what has been going on in Odaiba for the past year during the team meeting under the bridge. He says,

About a year ago, normal portals to the Digital World closed

Their Digivices began malfunctioning

There has been significant radio disturbance in Odaiba, followed by mystery blackouts

Wireless networks went down, causing poor cell phone reception

New spatial distortions have been occurring, allowing Digimon to pass through the distortions in space to the human world

All Digimon emerging from the distortions up until this point have all had some kind of “new mutation,” the Virus

Koushiro concludes that everything he listed above has been the result of these spatial distortions, which are negatively impacting electronics and allowing random portals to and from the Digital World to appear. He also goes on the modify Taichi’s goggles, allowing him to detect distortions by observing data flow and spotting areas in which mass data has gathered densely together, causing a distortion.

Something else that is interesting to me is that everything is occurring in Odaiba, specifically. Did the distortions start happening in Odaiba first before Meiko & Meicoomon moved in, or did Meicoomon lure the distortions away from Tottori and to Odaiba? In any case, Meiko & Meicoomon seem aware of the fact they’re being followed, because Meicoomon doesn’t even flinch when Alphamon appears in front of her; in fact, she readies herself for a fight. Alphamon also does not seem to care that Meiko is in the line of fire as he is blasting at Meicoomon. This suggests to me that Yggdrasil does not care if the children get in the way. Yggdrasil & Alphamon had no hand in assembling the teams of Chosen, and they also have no qualms about eradicating the children as long as the end goal is achieved.

Huckmon is also at the scene, observing, when Alphamon appears. However, upon recognizing Alphamon, Huckmon’s eyes widen and he promptly teleports away. I find this interesting when looking back at it now that I have seen Coexistence; Huckmon clearly noticed Yggdrasil making a move and left to avoid getting involved in the battle.

The last thing I’m going to mention before not-so-gracefully concluding this first analysis is that Meiko’s Digivice changes throughout the series. I have noticed some people pointing out how Meiko’s Digivice is definitely black and sparking purple lightning in Coexistence. However, this was not the case right off the bat.

As you can see, Meiko started off with a perfectly normal Digivice. The transformation occurs later in the OVA. Could this be a result of the reboot? Or perhaps, Meicoomon slipping further into despair and terror?

I have to admit I’m not excited about rewatching Pt. 2 because it was probably my least favorite of Adventure tri. so far. But I’ll try to get that done + finish my analysis of it soon. Stay tuned!