#it really makes you think about the implications of having a digimon partner | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shihalyfie · 3 years

Note

You talk a lot about how the Digimon are born from the kids own souls, would you be interested into describing how the digimon partners reflect their humans' personalities?

Oh man, I love this topic! (You’ll have to forgive me in that my desire to do justice for it is why it ended up taking me this long to answer it.)

The part about the Digimon literally being part of the kids’ souls comes directly from official (it’s been mentioned several times, not only in what I just linked). This was never stated outright in the original Adventure or 02, and it took until Kizuna to really shove the link between the partner and the human’s inner self in your face and make it a huge part of the actual story, but fans had been catching onto it long before that, and even without reading what the staff had said. Kizuna throws a bit of a nail in this because it’s said to be a bit lore-noncompliant, but considering how much of the background lore it still goes out of its way to adhere to, and the fact it still does match the fundamental concept of “human heart = Digimon partner” regardless of detailed minutiae, we can still apply and analyze this concept with no problem, especially since Adventure and 02 always walked the line between sci-fi and fantasy, and there is undoubtedly a spiritual element to them no matter how you look at it.

(My personal comfort zone in analyzing Adventure and 02 comes moreso from a human behavior and mentality perspective, which is also why my meta on this blog tends to focus more on the human drama aspects of Adventure and 02 and especially the latter’s story being so heavily about human relationships, but if you’re interested in said spiritual elements, I heavily recommend @analyzingadventure‘s very comprehensive meta on Adventure background lore and themes, which also covers similar territory in detail. We’re different people, so our takes on it probably differ in some respects, but that’s the beauty of having different perspectives, after all.)

In any case, back to your question. I think it would be best to break this down piece-by-piece with the Adventure and 02 kids in detail, so more is under the cut!

...Well, okay, before we continue, I do want to touch on something briefly, and it’s regarding the fact that “evolution” in this series is generally a metaphor for human growth. That counts for when everyone gets their evolutions, but it also counts as a metaphor overall -- after all, Adventure is about self-assertion and pushing oneself as far as possible (the major evolution gimmick being tied to Crests), whereas 02 is about cultivating differing aspects of yourself and applying it to how you form relationships with others (the major evolution gimmick being tied to Digimentals and ultimately Jogress). The human self is quite a flexible thing, and the Digimon themselves quite often change personalities as they evolve. (I touched on this briefly in my discussion of honorfiics and first-person pronouns earlier, but in Japanese, the Digimon will often even change personalities and speech patterns as they evolve.) This also leads to a few other potential observations (not really corroborated by official, just my personal view of it):

Speaking from a meta perspective, the fact that only the “front protagonists” end up getting the highest level forms is pretty obviously so they don’t have to spend toy budget on allocating it to everyone, but from an in-story perspective, Adventure episode 50 adds an implication that not reaching as high of a form may also have to do with how inherently attuned one is to combat (Jou says that he believes that Gomamon will never reach Ultimate because he doesn’t have the sort of strength Taichi and Yamato do, and it contributes to his conclusion that his skills are more meaningfully applied as a healer instead of as a fighter). Of course, none of the Adventure or 02 cast is necessarily the belligerent type that inherently likes fighting in itself, but of course certain ones are less emotionally drained or more attuned to it, so you might be able to see a rough pattern there. (Again, I’m not going to sugarcoat how this still has a lot of dismaying issues on the meta level, but the difference between “how much this sucks on a meta level” and “whether this at least tracks in-story” is a common theme on this blog.) In a franchise sense, Digimon were of course conceptualized as fighting monsters, but within the narrative of Adventure, it probably stands to reason that having a manifested part of your soul or inner self shouldn’t necessarily mean they have to be fighting things all of the time unless it’s necessary.

It’s very often been pointed out that the 02 cast is at a sort of “combat disadvantage” compared to their seniors (well, and Takeru and Hikari, anyway) because their highest forms require two people/Digimon to be in play, so their overall combat power is rather low. My impression is that this is by design (and it’s a subversion of the usual expectation of shounen anime sequels where the sequel will often power creep everything to make the new guard outdo the first). That the 02 team is inherently dependent on each other for support, and to a degree far more than their seniors, is rather baked into its narrative, and moreover, from an in-story perspective, the 02 group doesn’t seem like the type to really care about being outflanked by their seniors (on the contrary, they’d probably take that as more proof that their seniors are amazing). Moreover, the forms you see their Digimon in most of the time tend towards the smaller Baby-level forms instead of the Child-level ones, and while this is partially due to plot logistics about being in the real world (and, admittedly, kind of inconsistently applied), it gives you a much stronger impression of the 02 kids and their partners in general being people who aren’t that individually imposing or strong and get more mileage out of flexibility and variety (see: the Digimentals and the huge number of lower-level forms the kids have access to).

With this kind of metaphor, I caution against taking it too literally as a 1:1 thing (especially since official has been generally quiet about it and there isn’t much in the series text itself to corroborate this), but I do think there is certainly some kind of relevance that’s worth thinking about.

Many people, including the official notes I just linked, refer to there being some Digimon partners that are "like-minded” with their partner, and some that are “opposite” in personality. This is roughly true, but I find this to be a very simplified description of the concept; it’s more like all Digimon partners are a reflection of the less easily exposed part of their human partner (and, most pertinently, the part that would allow them to express themselves in ways they wouldn’t normally), it’s just that the kids with more straightforward or less extreme personalities don’t have as much to hide or cover up in the first place, and so their partners come off as more “like-minded”. Even Urawa Megumi, voice of Iori and Armadimon (arguably one of the pairs of partners that seem “opposing” in personality), stated that she didn’t personally feel like the two characters are all that different, since humans have different sides to them, and Armadimon is functionally an expression of the side of Iori that isn’t apparent.

Because the Adventure narrative has the Digimon partners be linked to human mentality, this leads to the side effect that you won’t have a Digimon partner who ever truly denies the human partner (barring external factors like Evil Ring-induced brainwashing), which is something producer Seki Hiromi was quite insistent about. That said, this is a very Adventure and 02-specific thing, since other series go more into different angles about how one would approach partnership when this factor is not in play; half of Tamers’s drama regarding partners comes from the fact they are not necessarily mentally linked all of the time, and need to find a way to build a relationship by bridging that gap, and so non-Adventure universe entries are more freely able to explore the concepts of a Digimon partner more consciously entering conflict with their human partner. Well, that’s the beauty of having a multi-entry franchise, after all.

Taichi and Agumon

Taichi and Agumon immediately jump to mind as the first among the “like-minded” pairs, especially since the series shows them so often in sync and chilling together. Taichi himself is a straightforward person, so it stands to reason that his straightforward personality would also lend to Agumon coming off as being rather much like him.

However, there is one slight difference between the two, and it’s that Agumon has a somewhat stronger sense of “easygoing chill” than Taichi does, right down to using the more polite boku first-person pronoun in contrast to Taichi’s more assertive ore. He also lacks Taichi’s penchant for mild insensitivity -- in fact, very unlike Taichi, he has an incredible amount of emotional insight (02 spends quite a bit of time in 02 episodes 32 and 46 to showing off Agumon as someone who makes up for all of his lack of intellectual understanding with emotional and borderline poetic insight). And, really, while Taichi is a bit surface-insensitive, and while he seems to be impulsive, he actually is a conscientious person and is trying his best in his own way, and he isn’t the kind of person who cares about societal things like seniority, and he demonstrates multiple times that he’s easygoing and chill, and so you can say that’s a part of Taichi as well. Remembering that a Digimon partner’s presence helps their own human partner grow, Agumon being so openly friendly helps Taichi maintain good relations with others without running afoul of them.

One of Agumon’s most famous traits is that he likes food, which is not actually something that was in the original Adventure or 02 all that much but has been somewhat exaggerated since. That said, back in Adventure, while it was established that all Digimon regularly need food in order to maintain their evolutions, Agumon would usually be the first to complain “I’m hungry,” and whenever they did get food, Agumon would be one of the most prominently enjoying it. Food is, after all, one of the simplest and most universal of pleasures, and there’s a lot of visual framing of Taichi chowing down just as ravenously as Agumon is -- so, honestly, he probably got it from him.

Taichi also speaks a bit about his pain of being separated from Agumon in the space between Adventure and 02, and he directly refers to Agumon as “the other me”. The word “partner” was not actually used very much in the original Adventure or 02, and Taichi is not able to fully elucidate the sentiment of Agumon’s connection to his own self, but he still understands this much and why the loss cuts him so deeply, and by the time we get to Kizuna, it’s presumably why he uses similar language in his thesis proposal to refer to him. (I already covered the circumstances of Agumon’s relationship to Taichi’s existential crisis in Kizuna and how it led to their separation earlier, so I will omit it here for the sake of avoiding redundancy.)

Yamato and Gabumon

This might surprise some people to hear, but I would also pin this as one of the more ostensibly “like-minded” pairs. Gabumon is shy on the surface, but turns out to be quite passionate -- he uses the same assertive ore as Yamato, in contrast to Agumon’s boku, and he demonstrates his capacity for passion and action in that he’s arguably one of the most assertive in the cast. Note his taking initiative against Yamato’s frostbite in Adventure episode 9, or declaring his intent to stay with Yamato even if it means going against the others in Adventure episode 44, or singlehandedly dragging Yamato out of the hole of darkness in Adventure episode 51.

And, of course, Yamato himself is someone who initially seems a little awkward or detached around everyone, but is actually very passionate, so that’s all the same. And because Gabumon himself is so open about communicating with the otherwise closed-in Yamato, Yamato is able to express himself better over the course of Adventure.

Funny thing about that “shyness”, too -- the idea of Gabumon being particularly shy isn’t present in 02 much at all (we don’t get to see him very much, so it’s hard to say whether it’s completely gone, but it’s at least gone enough for the duration of his appearances). Which is funny, considering: guess who else stopped being shy and became naturally outgoing in 02? Yeah, so, as much as you might hear people (even official!) claim that the Digimon are static while their partners change, that’s not completely true -- the Digimon themselves develop in personality in the same way their human partners do. It’s just more subtle and less drastic, since they’re representing an abstract single part of their personality rather than being an exact match.

Sora and Piyomon

Sora and Piyomon have an interesting relationship in that they’re the only one where their relationship started off on a note of conflict -- mainly in that Sora was very put off by Piyomon at first and even looked down condescendingly on her (well, only for the duration of a single episode). In fact, Sora’s own surface behavior is very different from the kind and caring Sora we know -- Sora dislikes associating with the clingy and affectionate Piyomon for being “mushy”, and even declares that she doesn’t want to “take responsibility” for lugging her around.

Of course, Sora’s character arc later revolves around the fact that she has abysmally bad self-awareness and doesn’t even realize that she has a compulsive sense of responsibility to others. So Sora is affectionate and loving -- she just puts up a front of trying to act a little above that (well, at least, during this part of the series) and doesn’t even see herself as someone capable of being like that (again, purely during this part of the series).

Piyomon is also interesting in that she has one of the most dramatic personality shifts even as early as Child to Adult, where she suddenly switches from the casual atashi to watashi (sometimes even kono watashi, which is super regal), and becomes incredibly dignified and regal even as Birdramon, and you can certainly see why Sora immediately started taking her seriously thereafter. It also begs a lot to think about, considering Sora’s very convoluted character and the many layers of herself that even she isn’t consciously aware of.

The way Piyomon helped Sora shift her own mentality is pretty directly handed to you on a plate in Adventure episode 26 -- because Piyomon played the role of Sora in the metaphor of Sora’s behavior towards Piyomon correlated to Toshiko’s behavior towards Sora, Sora was able to re-adjust her position relative to her family and consider her both someone capable of love, and someone who is loved.

Koushirou and Tentomon

Koushirou and Tentomon are another pair that initially seem like they’re opposing types, with Koushirou being constantly curious and Tentomon being comparatively simple-minded, but the first key to figuring out where the similarity is ends up being a bit deceptive -- Tentomon says in Adventure episode 5 that he’s not particularly interested in himself. And, certainly, Koushirou is interested in Tentomon, but he, too, is not interested in himself -- in fact, he considers himself to be a topic he’d rather avoid instead of looking into everything else.

As far as language goes, while Tentomon does also use the stereotypically easygoing Kansai dialect, he also specifically uses the polite form, mirroring Koushirou’s own perpetual use of polite language. But unlike Koushirou, who uses it to keep distance from others, Tentomon is in fact very sociable, and is even portrayed as a Digimon who’s conscientious of others and “takes care” of them. And because Tentomon is so openly friendly, he manages to coax Koushirou out of his shell and allow him to think about more complicated things related to his own position in the world that he’d been avoiding.

As Koushirou’s character arc proceeds, we learn that he’s polite not only out of distance but also because he really is a very kind person, and moreover that he does eventually want to open up to others. And the payoff for this eventually comes in 02...

...when he ends up becoming one of the most visible members of the older Adventure cast to appear in the series, checking in on the younger kids and developing into someone capable of organizing and managing people. Hmm, seems familiar.

Mimi and Palmon

This one’s an easy one. Mimi is possibly the most straightforward person in the original Adventure cast -- well, that’s the point of her Crest after all -- and so Palmon is almost exactly like her, being a cheerful type who loves being cute. Any contrast between them is only really apparent in the very early episodes of the series, and that’s not even a contrast in theory as much as it’s just something that might intrigue audiences at first when Mimi spent a lot of those episodes complaining, but that’s also mostly because she was heavily under stress, and otherwise Mimi has always been kind and cheerful and indulgent in being cute.

Perhaps the only real difference is that Palmon, being a plant, is more willing to get involved with dirt and other things that Mimi ostensibly would rather not, but as the series progresses, Mimi manages to gain a higher sense of tolerance and get past her initial sense of materialism (which is something she’d had the capacity for the whole time).

Jou and Gomamon

Of the Adventure pairs, this one is probably the one that seems like the biggest contrast on its face, with the overly high-strung and constantly stressed Jou, and the more playful and relaxed Gomamon.

In the end, Jou is someone who’s defined by his desire to support others, and even admits at the end of the series that he’s better suited for a support role than for fighting, and that there’s nothing wrong with that as long as he continues to channel his desire to help people in a way he’s most comfortable with. So, in the end, he’s not actually an inherently aggressive type. And, meanwhile, Gomamon is the kind who’s constantly looking out for Jou, to the point of knowing (such as in Adventure episode 7) when he’s about to do something phenomenally stupid and minding him so that nothing bad happens to him, and so, this is probably why they’re ultimately able to settle down and end the series eye-to-eye (or perhaps hand-to-hand).

And, again, recall that Digimon partners generally reflect a part that’s vital to their own human partner’s growth; considering that Jou is most certainly one of the more extreme personalities in this cast, you get the feeling that he probably needs someone this chill to keep his massive stress tendencies in check.

Takeru and Patamon

Takeru and Patamon are an interesting case largely due to the two of them being so present for a whole two series. In Adventure, both of them seem to be largely like-minded, being playful, innocent, and childish -- although Patamon is more open about expressing the childishness that Takeru keeps trying to cover up. Patamon being roughly on the same playing field (no pun intended) as Takeru means that Takeru has someone he’s willing to be open with and let himself loose a little (such as in Adventure episode 12), because for the first half of the series, he’s almost entirely in the presence of elders and stifling himself for the sake of being “well-behaved”, and it starts his long journey of being able to understand his position and his actual sense of emotions over the course of Adventure and 02.

Patamon also has a striking personality change upon evolving, becoming the regal and dignified Angemon, and, interestingly, his appearances have a very “knight templar” vibe where he takes a no-compromise stance against dark forces and states that he’ll condemn all of them to oblivion. This is a stance that’s unnervingly similar to Takeru’s own no-compromise stance against the darkness in 02, and it’s interesting in that Takeru himself had been advocating for pacifism in Adventure episode 12, but this incident traumatized him enough to start taking a position that more resembled Angemon’s.

As we go into 02, Takeru’s contrast with Patamon initially seems like an increased mismatch, since Patamon is still ostensibly childish and playful while Takeru is ostensibly more mature. But for one, Takeru’s character arc is about the fact that he’s still pretending he’s more in control of his emotions than he actually is, and in some way you can also glean that there’s a sort of naivete present in his character that he keeps covering up with confident smiles. Patamon, for his part, does actually seem to have adopted a bit of a mentor role to the other Digimon, and we also learn that he’s capable of deliberately trolling people instead of just being generically playful -- much like Takeru himself, who’s a bit evasive and not entirely honest.

We do actually see Patamon reach HolyAngemon in 02 episode 34, but it doesn’t work out well, and while this is partially for plot mechanic reasons, it also says a lot that the “knight templar” stance that both Takeru and HolyAngemon have, with the full depth of no-compromise, isn’t going anywhere, and in the end, something more effective is only possible when Shakkoumon appears in 02 episodes 36-37 -- that is, Takeru is only able to better move on with Iori’s support.

Hikari and Tailmon

Hikari is the only of the Tokyo Chosen Children to have a Digimon who “defaults” to Adult instead of Child or lower, and it means that Tailmon herself comes with a certain amount of maturity -- on top of having been become a bit hardened due to her experiences being isolated. This is an ostensible contrast to the more pure-hearted and innocent Hikari, but note that Hikari’s own will can be pretty assertive when it comes down to it. On top of that, as much as Tailmon is a bit standoffish, Hikari is also “emotionally isolated” -- she has trouble vocalizing her negative feelings, and it’s difficult for anyone in Adventure or the first half of 02 to truly connect with her internal thoughts. Recalling that the Digimon partner reflects a side of the human partner that’s less easily exposed and allows the human partner to grow in ways they wouldn’t before, Tailmon’s sheer presence gives Hikari a route to action in ways she probably wouldn’t have beforehand.

In 02, Hikari becomes a little more mischievous and playful, and Tailmon also becomes a bit more willing to indulge (she even switches first-person pronouns in sync with Hikari, going from the more polite watashi to the more casual atashi). Both of them are now more able to enjoy themselves more openly. That said, Tailmon still has a certain degree of stuffy personal pride (she snarks at everyone quite easily for fussing over snacks in 02 episode 3), and Hikari herself remains emotionally elusive and repressive at the start of this series.

Tailmon evolves temporarily to Angewomon in 02 episode 13, which is the first time anyone (in this case, Takeru) makes some degree of headway to reaching out to her and allowing her to open up a bit more, but it’s not until 02 episode 31 when Hikari is fully reached out to via Miyako, which marks the first appearance of Silphymon.

Daisuke and V-mon

Now here’s a very like-minded pair, even more so than Taichi and Agumon -- and, after all, Daisuke is simple-minded, so painfully simple-minded that he’s practically incapable of hiding anything, and so V-mon is almost exactly like him, down to using the same ore pronoun and being feisty and mischievous (a point is also made that he plays soccer with Daisuke, something that Agumon didn’t necessarily do with Taichi), and, heck, in a rare show of Digimon-Digimon crushes, has a crush on Tailmon in the exact same way Daisuke has on Hikari. (By the time we get to Kizuna and its higher animation budget, a lot of attention is paid to having even their body language mirror each other.)

There is only one real functional difference between the two in disposition, and it’s that V-mon is very straightforward, friendly, and kind, without being prone to getting angry or spiteful at anyone, and in the end, it’s indicative of the fact that Daisuke’s tendency to lash out defensively at everyone is just a front -- at his core, he’s friendly, supportive, and kind. Daisuke’s experiences and banter with V-mon contribute to him getting the sort of validation he needed without having to worry about being on edge or lash out defensively, and because of that, he was able to form a healthier and more supportive relationship with the rest of the group.

Miyako and Hawkmon

This one seems to be a contrast right off the bat -- Miyako is bubbly, over-the-top, and rather messy and lacking in restraint, whereas Hawkmon is formal, graceful, and polite. But Hawkmon’s most prominent trait is his absolute loyalty and devotion to Miyako -- he’s very often referred to by both official staff and fans as her “knight” -- and is constantly minding her to protect her and make sure she doesn’t go over her head (most prominently, 02 episode 18). And as far as Miyako’s relationship to others goes -- she’s also devotedly loyal to everyone she loves and is constantly going out of her way to help others, and her character arc in itself is about the fact she wants to do her best to reach out to people and help emotionally support them in the best way she can, and Hawkmon managing to channel that to its utmost extent to Miyako in turn (in a very “who watches the watchman?” sense) allows her to regain her bearings and have better control over herself in the aftermath of 02 episode 18.

On top of that, as the series proceeds, it turns out that Hawkmon also shares Miyako’s penchant for dramatic theatrics and being a bit over his head -- even if he seemingly has himself more together than Miyako does, he’s not completely above it all...

Miyako is also the franchise’s first example of a female character with a masculine Digimon partner, and while Miyako herself openly identifies with and indulges in all things hyper-feminine, she also has zero issue engaging in more masculine-associated things as they suit her -- most prominently her Digital World outfit, and the fact she often displays a rather aggressive go-getter and hot-blooded/in-your-face personality that would not be out of place on a male shounen hero in a more conventional show. (Although, as much as these have generally been on the thread of “less visible aspects”, it’s not like this was that less visible of an aspect of her to begin with...)

Iori and Armadimon

Iori and Armadimon hold the honor of being the only pair in the Tokyo Chosen Children to be voiced by the same voice actress (Urawa Megumi), driving the parallel down even further. And while their surface temperaments seem different, with Iori being rather uptight and strict on himself while Armadimon is laid-back, carefree, and even somewhat assertive, they’re not that different -- Armadimon is basically the curious, impressionable, somewhat childish spirit that Iori would be if he weren’t constantly holding himself back. (There’s a lot to be said about Submarimon going out of his way to take Iori for a ride in 02 episode 16 so that Iori can finally properly enjoy himself for once.)

Iori takes a lot of very stubborn, no-compromise positions over the course of 02, but Armadimon asking just the right kinds of questions allows him to “snap out of it” and be a little more receptive to considering alternatives, or at least taking into account more emotionally-oriented issues he’s dealing with. You can say that Armadimon (especially as Upamon) softening Iori up a bit -- since Iori will never be cold or unforgiving towards his partner, no matter what -- serves as a precursor to Iori starting to question the limitations of his black-and-white view of morality, which allows him to successfully break through to Takeru and fill out the rest of his character arc.

Ken and Wormmon

Considering how much of the plot revolved around this one, this one almost goes entirely without saying! During Ken’s stint as the Kaiser, Wormmon represents the heart that Ken’s not entirely willing to leave behind -- and, also, the affection that he’s still craving from his family. The Kaiser going practically out of his way to deny Wormmon yet paradoxically keeping him around is basically his attitude towards his own “weak” and naturally kindhearted self. Notably, recall that the principle of “a Digimon will never deny their partner” applies here -- Wormmon’s “betrayal” of the Kaiser isn’t really any kind of denial, since he was doing it mainly for Ken’s own sake, and, more symbolically, it’s Ken reaching his own limit and coming to realize that this path isn’t what he really wants.

Wormmon is unusually clingy to his own partner over the course of 02, and it’s vital to Ken needing to learn to love himself and also getting important validation that he needs, especially during the critical point in time during 02 episodes 23-30 when he’s still not sure how to approach the rest of the group -- Wormmon gives him someone to talk to honestly and openly, giving him a proper springboard to sort out his complicated feelings about the others and himself. You can say also that as Ken becomes more open and straightforward over the course of the latter half of 02, he, in turn, becomes much more shameless about showing affection and opening his own heart.

Wallace, Gumimon, and Chocomon

Bonus round!

While it’s hard to fully apply Hurricane Touchdown to this theory (by official admission, it wasn’t properly cross-referenced with the original Adventure/02 series lore, and trying to correlate all of the evolutions in this movie to something metaphorical will give you a headache), Wallace’s two partners still fit very neatly into this overall theory of Digimon partners as a part of the self. Wallace is a character with very sharp duality, trying to be a flirt who asserts himself as a vagrant who’s about to “become an adult”, yet still feels an obligation to keep calling his mom and is engaging in increasingly self-destructive behavior.

Most pertinently, Gumimon and Chocomon represent the two stances Wallace is torn between: wanting to “return to the past” (Chocomon) because he’s still hung up on having lost Chocomon and is convinced that he can make everything just like it was before, and “being able to productively move on” (Gumimon). For most of the early parts of the movie, Wallace is stuck on Chocomon’s mentality of fixating on the past, and Gumimon isn’t even remotely subtle when he draws an explicit parallel between the two (saying that Chocomon didn’t like the heat, followed by offering to give Wallace shade as a hat). But once the conflict escalates and Wallace realizes just how deep in denial Chocomon is, to the point of being destructive to himself and others, Wallace comes to embrace Gumimon’s stance of practicality and moving on. In the end, the ultimate conclusion is reached, and Wallace is forced to fully accept that latter stance when Chocomon dies, but the movie’s ending (and Kizuna) provide an extra option: allowing the past to come back, but in a new form and treading new territory instead of trying to make it “the way it was before”.

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #kizuna spoilers #qwertyshuman #shihameta #shiha's ask box

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noctilucentstorm · 3 years

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Digimon Ghost Game Episode 2 Review

I was expecting to be a little disappointed by this episode, but instead had some cute bonding moments, more world-building, and a new evolution sequence!

Spoilers below

This episode was so good! I figured we’d get an evolution but was annoyed at the idea a newly evolved adult would be able to beat a perfect level. Luckily, it seems the writers knew what they were doing with the power imbalance. Plus, we all got a lesson in not judging a book by its cover.

Hopefully we see Mummymon again after he’s found a way to help people by learning from a more reputable source than a history museum! I also like the possible implication Mummymon may be a doctor already in the Digital World.

Characters

As expected, this episode focussed mostly on the bond between Hiro and Gammamon. Like every digimon, Gammamon is hungry from the previous night so Hiro decides to get some food.

Two things I love in this frame: Gammamon has bat wings he can unfurl from…somewhere, and Hiro is pretty switched on for a kid his age, successfully avoiding the age-old digimon trope of accidentally leaving his partner alone long enough to cause trouble.

We also get a really cute scene where Gammamon tries a load of different foods and unsurprisingly like chocolate the best. It could’ve been a fairly boring scene except for Hiro’s patient efforts to understand Gammamon.

Gammamon certainly acts like a younger brother, not quite a baby like Guilmon from Tamers, but it seems his vocabulary is still limited. Like any child that doesn’t have the correct word, he uses the closest one to how he is feeling. I particularly liked the use of “scary” for spicy food since it can feel like your mouth is being attacked, plus I know a young child that calls anything he doesn’t like scary so I’ll admit this scene resonated with me quite a bit.

Can we talk about how Hiro can pick any analogue lock and Gammamon can pick any digital one? Because I think that’s cute!

I really like the way this series has shown their partnership so far. I’m not sure what mechanisms will unlock each evolution, but I’m looking forward to finding out!

Worldbuilding

Not pictured, but Hiro’s permission form says October 10th, so I guess we can assume the first episode took place a couple days before.

So this scene when Mummymon touched the glass before going through was interesting. Gammamon is clearly fully in the human world as he can be seen by anyone and interact with his surroundings. In contrast, Clockmon last episode and now Mummymon seem to sometimes interact with solid objects and other times phase right though. This scene suggests it isn’t something they can necessarily control at all times unless they concentrate.

I wondered if the hologram-looking digimon were somehow straddling the human and digital worlds, but Mummymon implies he doesn’t know how to get home. Makes me wonder if he is trapped in the human world completely but cannot fully materialise without… something? I’d say it was the Vital Bracelet that made Gammamon corporeal in the human world, but that raises the question how BlackTailmon is also corporeal. Are they that way because of Hokuto?

So to my surprise Ruri is already being followed by the helicopter bunny… I mean, Angoramon! The question then becomes can she see Angoramon, or they following her and causing lots of spooky things in her vicinity which is why she has been investigating the ghost holograms?

That may also mean that Kiyoshiro is already being ‘haunted’ by Jellymon! I wonder what happened to his hand for him to think he’s cursed… still, it’s another piece of the puzzle. How is Jellymon becoming my favourite without any screentime?!

Have you got any fan theories to share? I’m curious how others are finding this series a couple of episodes in.

#digimon #digimon ghost game #hiro amanokawa #gammamon #mummymon #digimon ghost game spoilers #ghost game spoilers #episode 2 #review

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firstagent · 3 years

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Review! Adventure: (2020) Episode 67: The End of the Adventure

In this episode, among all of Negamon’s terrifying forms, it decides a shadow rivaling Omegamon is the scariest.

The common template for Digimon finales of half climactic action and half emotional epilogue offers some intriguing possibilities for this series. The climactic action part goes without saying: whatever stops are left will be pulled out and it’s going to be the kind of wild action sequence the show’s excelled at. But it’s hard to go without some sort of resolution as the kids say farewell to the Digital World. How do you say goodbye to a cast we never really met in the first place? It could be the same hollow statements we’re used to, or they could cram a bunch of real world details we should have discovered ages ago. Instead it’s split halfway, with sights a little more telling than we’re used to, but without pretending this show was anything different than what it was.

After tussling with multiple forms of Negamon, all abominations of tentacles and eyes, Omegamon dives into its main core for the final showdown. And Negamon, master of horrors… solidifies into a form the same size as Omegamon, only shadowy. It’s possibly the least intimidating thing it could muster. It’s also a weird show of deference, like Negamon would rather fight as equals rather than as something larger and awe-inspiring. It makes for a hell of a final one-on-one clash that delivers the kind of fight we hoped for, but the psychology is poorly considered and the form in many ways betrays Negamon’s concept.

Once Omegamon and Negamon run through the string of “evenly matched overpowered robot duel” tropes, eventually ending up in space because why not, the usual spur of energy from the angels and the usual refusal to quit from Taichi and Yamato leads to Omegamon Alter-S… the usual mode change everybody expected. It makes quick work of Negamon, but makes an observation that other Digimon seasons have only danced around: in worlds where Digimon are reborn: doesn’t that apply to the villains?

It varies by world, but you probably should wonder about the fate of the Dark Masters, Lucemon, Bagramon, and the like. This time it’s attacked head on. Omegamon recognizes that the power of rebirth Negamon grew such a disdain for allows it another chance to recreate itself, perhaps this time without the corruption that led it down this path. If there has been a recurring theme this series, it could be the exploration of renewal and history repeating itself.

The falling action starts out on an auspicious note, with the kids left in a weird binary space where everyone can chill with their partners for a second. They’re sweet, quiet moments, but nothing remarkable. And suddenly it’s over, leaving you wondering if that was it for the kids in the Digital World, perhaps even with their Digimon. Meanwhile, the following scene of Wisemon passing on the story to the baby Digimon is a wonderful additional to the formula. Like the holy war before it, it shows how this adventure is destined to become part of the world’s lore, to inform and guide the heroes of the next crisis that will inevitably come along.

As for the heroes of this one… they just go back to their lives. Not knowing much about them lives hampers a few of the shots, particularly Sora and Joe’s. But for everyone else they take what little we were given and roll with it. Takeru and Yamato get a rare real world visit. Mimi puts her entrepreneurial spirit into action. Koshiro’s on her payroll, devising a way to open his own gate to the Digital World. And Taichi gets a moment in the shade, a chance to enjoy some peace and quiet, maybe even out of the limelight for a change. That he’s still in the Digital World is only brushed on, appropriate as he’s not the first Digimon protagonist to make that call, that he didn’t have any specific grievance that made him want to avoid the real world (at least that we knew of), and he wasn’t that convincing as a human child anyway. It’s a good spot for him.

It’s almost a footnote that the Digimon stayed with them, remarkable since that only happened once in the first six seasons. But instead of wondering about the implications of Digimon in the real world, they leave the kids alone with their sassy pets. Other kids saw it all; they’re fine with it. They keep it simple, while still offering up a clean resolution to everything, combined with a final battle that lives up to the hype. With all the disappointments of the series baked in, the least it could do was manage an ending within its means. To that, at least, we can be happy it was successful.

My Grade: A-

Loose Data:

Hope you weren’t playing a drinking game taking a shot for every Our War Game homage. The episode leads off with Omegamon flying through a network-like tunnel and it never really lets up at any point in the battle.

They make a big show of the other six occupying Negamon’s outer body to weaken the core, but there isn’t much correlation shown to suggest that affecting much. But it’s nice that the other six got to feel useful in the final battle. And while it’s certainly appropriate that Seraphimon and Ophanimon are leading the way, it is unusual to think about Takeru and Hikari heading up the troops.

Considering it’s the first time we’ve had a good Digimon introduced stronger than the one that showed up in episode two, Alter-S didn’t get a whole ton of screentime. He showed up, more or less one-shotted Negamon, then was back to regular Omegamon before the end of his monologue. As far as midnight hour emergency power-ups (Crimson Mode, X7 Superior, that sort of thing), this is one of the weakest.

Omegamon talking about “endless potential” sure hits differently after Kizuna, doesn’t it? He’s talking more about Digimon in general while Kizuna was about the limitations of the Chosen-Digimon partnership, but still…

Given the season’s dedication to showing the Digital World outside of battle, the montage of locations carrying on with life is great, and lined with little sights like BanchoMamemon graduating finishing school, the Mimi statue at the gem mine, and Petaldramon, Andromon, and Guardromon all still petrified under flowers.

One cute little touch/nod to the original series… Yamato and Takeru are meeting in Shibuya.

The digital gate Koshiro is trying to create resembles the weird pop-up he received in episode one that we all thought was going to be interesting and relevant and we never saw again.

And finally, congrats to Leomon for surviving a series! His reward is spending the rest of eternity helping Wisemon babysit.

See reviews of every Digimon episode at Digimon: System Restore! Support the site by joining our Patreon!

#digimon #digimon adventure:#digimon adventure (2020)

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commentaryvorg · 3 years

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Digimon Data Squad Dub Comparison Episode 2 - Marcus’ Inner Strength!

This is a companion to my commentary on the original Japanese Digimon Savers! Reading my commentary on the original version of this episode (which you can find here) is recommended before reading this dub comparison.

Original name ~ Dubbed name

Masaru Daimon ~ Marcus Damon

Yoshino Fujieda ~ Yoshino “Yoshi” Fujieda

Tohma H. Norstein ~ Thomas H. Norstein

Sayuri Daimon ~ Sarah Damon

Chika Daimon ~ Kristy Damon

Captain Rentarou Satsuma ~ Commander Richard Sampson

[Since several characters share the same name between the original and the dub, quotes from the dub will always be in italics, while quotes from the original will not, in order to distinguish them.]

Kudamon: “Satsuma, what must be done with Raptor-1?”

~~~~~

Kudamon: “Tell them what will happen to Raptor-1, Commander Sampson.”

Originally, Kudamon was asking, making it somewhat more sensible to think that Satsuma is not actually planning on sending Agumon back, despite the way he awkwardly implies as such by going on to demonstrate it with the Cockatrimon egg. In the dub, it sounds a lot more like Sampson and Kudamon have already firmly decided that Agumon is going to be sent back, which should not actually be the case.

(Granted, I found this whole aspect rather awkward in the original, but the dub is not helping.)

Satsuma: “Digimon who cause problems in the human world…”

~~~~~

Sampson: “Any Digimon who break the real-world law…”

While I didn’t appreciate the original calling it a “crime” for a Digimon to be in the human world, at least this line got to the actual point – that a Digimon being in the human world is simply a problem that they need to clean up. The dub leans even more into this “crime” idea by claiming that there’s some sort of explicit law about this, even though Digimon from the Digital World should have no way of knowing about such a law.

Also, do you notice another key difference here? The original calls it the “human world”. The dub calls it the “real world”. The latter is a term that Savers never uses to refer to the human world, which I appreciate a lot. Calling the human world the “real” world implies that the Digital World is somehow less real and less important than the human world, and by extension so are Digimon. That is extremely the wrong attitude to have about it, especially for this series in particular, and I appreciate that the people in DATS, and the writers of Savers, understand this. To be fair, the dub almost always gets this right, too! But apparently someone was sleeping on the job this time.

Satsuma: “We simply sent it back to the Digital World, where Digimon live.”

~~~~~

Sampson: “What you’ve just seen was the Digimon you defeated being sent back to the Digital World.”

The dub’s version of this line sounds a lot more unnecessarily expositiony, as if they think viewers couldn’t have picked up which Digimon this was from the flashback to the egg appearing after the fight.

Agumon: “Boss, please do something, I don’t wanna go back!”

What does he mean, go “back”? Agumon doesn’t remember ever being in the Digital World in the first place.

Sampson: “It’s a Digivice.”

Kudamon: “Marcus dropped it when he fled.”

The dub fills a silence to establish another obvious fact that definitely nobody could ever have picked up through implication.

Satsuma: “I see. That man must’ve…”

~~~~~

Sampson: “That kid. Full of surprises.”

Since the actual word Satsuma used in Japanese was “person” and not “man”, apparently it completely went over the dubbers’ heads that Satsuma was meant to be referring to the old man who gave Masaru his Digivice, not Masaru himself. Way to miss the point there and lose out on the implication that he knows the guy.

Agumon: “Good idea, Boss. No-one will think there’s aaanything suspicious about a walking cardboard box!”

Pfft. The thing is, I don’t think Agumon’s being sarcastic. That’s kind of a trait that dub-Agumon has that’s a not quite there in the original – a tendency to unironically say dumb things that most people would only mean as snark. I kinda like it; it’s cute and amusing and fitting for his character.

Agumon: “If this is junk food, then I’m happy to be a garbage dump!”

And here’s that other dub-added trait of Agumon’s that I don’t appreciate as much: somehow knowing about human concepts he really should not know about yet. Though calling this one a “trait” is debatable when it’s more like the dubbers not thinking things through.

Sayuri: “Really, where were you last night? I thought you got in trouble with the police again! I was so worried!”

~~~~~

Sarah: “Well… you’re busted, that’s what’s going on. Fess up! While you were out getting into trouble, I was up all night worried sick! Now where were you?”

Sarah’s line here has a bit of a difference from Sayuri’s, which you can also hear in her voice – she was still worried, but she’s focusing this a lot more on being stern and angry at her son for misbehaving. I liked that Sayuri wasn’t really that angry at Masaru despite having plenty of reason to be, and I’m a little sad to lose that.

Sarah also doesn’t imply any prior trouble with the police, but the dub of episode 1 did add in a few little things that already implied that, so I don’t mind.

Marcus: “Hahaha! What trouble? I don’t even know the meaning of the word! You really oughta buy me a dictionary!”

I enjoy this line. It is appropriately dorky and ridiculous and obviously-trying-to-distract-from-the-truth.

[Agumon tumbles out of the closet he was hiding in]

Agumon: “Why d’ya keep shoving me into small places?”

Aww, of course Agumon wouldn’t like being kept in small places after his time being held at DATS! The original implied something like this with the animal cage, but it didn’t bring it up for the closet (and implicitly also the box), too.

Sayuri: “Masaru, remember our promise?”

~~~~~

Sarah: “I hope you’re not forgetting the promise we made.”

Sarah, again, sounds sterner than Sayuri here. It’s like she thinks Marcus would potentially just forget all about the promise because he never really cared about it that much. Like she had to nag him into even agreeing to keep it in the first place. That’s absolutely not the point of their promise to tell each other everything until his dad comes back, not in the original; it’s a way to help keep the family together in his absence that Masaru would have been 1000% on board with wanting to keep, in principle.

Kristy: “You don’t mistake a thing like seeing a giant lizard, *Mom*!”

Kristy has a lot more attitude here than Chika did.

The Japanese kushikatsu that Yoshino compliments Sayuri on gets called a corn dog in the dub, which is fair enough localisation; they do look similar.

Yoshino: “So that’s why I’ll be freeloading off you here for a while.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “So I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other, since I now have to keep an eye on you two guys.”

Sadly, Yoshi does not make a point of the free food she’ll be getting out of this.

Marcus: “No way! You’re not taggin’ along with me, toots!”

Can we not? I thought this stopped after the first episode; I guess I was wrong. Sigh. It does still stop soon, I’m pretty sure.

Marcus: “Just great. He even eats in his sleep.”

This makes it seem a lot more like Marcus is only disgruntled because of Agumon’s loud sleep-eating, and not because Yoshi is sleeping in his bed and he gets the floor.

Agumon: “And what is school again?”

Marcus: “…A place where there are tons of people to fight.”

It’s basically the same line as the original, but Marcus’s tone sounds a lot more bitter, less like he’s actually trying to make Agumon think this, and more like he’s just grumpily thinking “I wish it were but actually it sucks”.

Yoshi: “And safety rule number one says: Keep your Digimon stored!”

I doubt this is an actual written rule anywhere at DATS. And if it is, surely it should be a secrecy rule, not safety? It’s not like a well-behaved Digimon, like all partners of DATS members should be, is inherently unsafe just by being out and about.

Marcus’s squawks as he rushes out the door because he’s going to be late, again, sound a lot more bitter and grumpy, like he just hates going to school. There was none of this impression given with Masaru! Sure, I don’t think school is particularly Masaru’s favourite thing either, but it doesn’t come across like he’s upset about having to go there. Apparently the dubbers have just decided that, because Marcus is A Jock™, he’s obviously meant to be the kind of teenager who hates school, right.

Marcus: “If you’re gonna follow me, you could at least give me a lift in your car!”

You know, he has a point here. Masaru didn’t think to ask that.

This car conversation is the first point at which Yoshino starts calling him Agumon, but meanwhile Yoshi is still calling him Raptor-1. I guess sharing a meal with him as if he’s actually a person or something didn’t do anything for her.

Yoshino: “I won’t have to look after you guys either… but I guess that’ll never happen.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “And, the best part of all is that I wouldn’t have to babysit you guys any more.”

Despite having the same snarky look on her face for this line, Yoshi is not actually snarking at them here. I am disappoint.

Kristy: “When he came in to feed the chickens and rabbits this morning, they were all gone. Nobody knows where they went.”

So the dub is going for the insistence that the animals definitely just disappeared mysteriously. No Animals Were Harmed, guys. I guess the Kunemon just… kidnapped them?

Which… is fairly understandable. It does mean we lose out on that cute line where Masaru commented that it was terrible.

Agumon: “I couldn’t get used to being inside that cramped Digivice!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Please, Boss! All these cramped places are making me claustrophobic.”

The dub makes more of a point of connecting together all of Agumon’s experiences in being put in cramped spaces, which is some extra nuance that I appreciate!

Yoshi: “You know, Agumon, there should be a rule about leaving your Digivice without permission.”

…I thought there literally was? Safety rule number one, wasn’t it? This should count as part of that. Yeah, I figured that dub “addition” wasn’t going to be an actual thing that mattered.

Lalamon: “Frankly I don’t know how you slept with all his snoring, but…”

Lalamon has some added sass here, wow.

Marcus & Agumon: “The ultimate team! It’s fightin’ time again!”

“The ultimate team” is a cute thing for these two to start calling themselves, but I find it a little bit of a stretch that they’re doing so this soon.

Marcus: “Kristy! Don’t! Worry! We’ll! Get! Whoever! Did! This!”

Marcus somehow manages to be even more embarrassingly dorky than Masaru was here. Maybe it’s the lip-flap’s fault that he’s yelling it so awkwardly like this?

Agumon: “What is it with you and these cramped spaces, Boss?”

This is as Agumon is locked inside the animal cage. I still appreciate how they’re connecting all these together.

…Though at this point, since Agumon has expressed his dislike for these so many times, it becomes more of a dick move deliberately ignoring Agumon’s wishes for Marcus to still be doing this anyway.

Agumon: “I hate being cooped up. Locked up like a criminal.”

Connecting it even more to Agumon’s experiences at DATS! Without actually explicitly saying that this is why!

You know how I brought up in my commentary of the original episode that Agumon not liking this is probably to do with that? It’s actually only because the dub made more of a point of this that I picked up on it. Though I still believe that was probably meant to be the point in the original, it was perhaps a little bit too subtle about it. The dub being actually good at subtlety in ways that weren’t there in the original is very decidedly not going to be a common theme here, so let’s appreciate it while we have it.

Masaru: “What are you doing out here so late? Did you come to check on the cages?” [The kid doesn’t respond.] “Hey, say something!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “You come to check on the cages or somethin’? Well, thanks, but you shouldn’t be here. Now go home.” [The kid doesn’t respond.] “Hey, did you hear me? Get outta here!”

Marcus is a little harsher to this kid than Masaru was; it’s there in his tone of voice, too. It does make sense to tell him to go home, because Digimon secrecy etc, but I do like how Masaru didn’t actually care about that and was just curious as to what was up with this kid. Masaru is good with kids. It comes across like Marcus is significantly less so.

Takashi: “I wished they would just disappear! And then, this guy…”

~~~~~

Takashi: “I wished they’d all just disappear, and then they did! Thanks to him…”

(Takashi’s name is not actually mentioned in the dub, so whatever, let’s assume he’s still called Takashi.)

Something about the way dub-Takashi expresses this reads a little differently to me. It feels slightly less like he’s conscious of the fact that the Kunemon came and got rid of the animals because of his wishes, and more like it was just a happy coincidence. The fact that he actually admits that the animals disappeared and says it’s “thanks” to the Kunemon also suggests more like he’s actually happy about that happening.

…Though, him admitting “and then they did [disappear]” might be part of the dub scrambling to reassure viewers that No Animals Were Harmed. And since that is apparently literally what happened and they really weren’t killed, I guess Takashi would be less traumatised and more just satisfied that he got his wish.

If he is less traumatised, there’s less explanation for why he passes out, but, eh.

Yoshi: “Stay back.”

Marcus: “Do *what*?!”

I love the incredulity in Marcus’s response. What do you mean, don’t fight a thing?!

Masaru: “Don’t be stupid! There’s no way I’ll turn my back on the enemy and run like a coward! No matter how difficult it gets, I’ll stand firm without taking a step back! That’s… how a man should live!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “No, I’ll never run away! An ultimate fighter never shows cowardice! No matter how difficult the fight might be, I stand my ground. That’s what a winner does! Fightin’ time agaaain!”

I’m going to be doing a lot of complaining about the dub messing up most of Masaru’s manly speeches that I adore. This one, though, is okay – it’s pretty simply don’t-give-up stuff that there isn’t much to mess up about.

However, what is very different, you might notice, is the lack of this being about what a man does. I pointed out a couple of bits in episode 1 where the dub basically kept the mentions of manliness or even added one in where it wasn’t there before, but I also mentioned that this is very rare for them. Because this here is usually what they do – remove the references to manliness altogether.

They probably mean well with this? They probably think Masaru’s manliness thing is some kind of toxic masculinity that they don’t want their kids’ show protagonist to be espousing. But here’s the thing: it isn’t toxic masculinity. If the dubbers assume that’s what it is just because they heard the word “man” being used a lot, without even bothering to, you know, listen to what Masaru is actually saying when he talks about this, I am very disappointed in them.

Masaru’s concept of manliness is one of the most interesting and distinctive things about his character, and I’m sad to see the dub water it down. Even while removing the references to manliness, some of the general principle of it can still be kept (though the dub will often be losing even that, as we’ll see), but without one central word that he always connects these ideas to, the whole thing seems a lot less pointed and cohesive, and it’s a lot harder to realise that it’s A Thing about him in the first place.

(And we also lose the delightful connection that it has to the thing with his dad, which I could already pick up on the implication of at this point on my very first watch. Without the specific mention of manliness here, I wouldn’t have figured out what makes Masaru tick nearly so soon, and I wouldn’t have enjoyed my first viewing of this series quite as much.)

Marcus: “Ready to fight, Agumon?”

Agumon: “Yeah!”

Marcus: “All right, then!”

Marcus’s tone of voice with the “all right, then!” sounds weirdly sinister and not at all like an excited dork ready to go win a fight alongside his new best friend. What on earth were the voice directors doing here.

(I’m tentatively not going to blame this on Marcus’s voice actor, because he’s generally really good at his job.)

Old man: “This human world must be too small for you to swing around these fiery fists of yours. How about it? In the Digimon’s world, you’ll find plenty of formidable opponents to fight to your heart’s content.”

~~~~~

Old man: “If you want to become the ultimate fighter who fights the ultimate battles, then you’re not going to find it in this world. But in the Digital World, there’s an unlimited number of opponents who will test your fighting skills, and make you the best fighter on *two* worlds!”

Um. He was not originally supposed to be literally talking about the Digital World here. This is supposed to be, at least on an in-universe level, just the old guy saying something that’ll help Masaru realise he wants to join DATS. The Digital World has nothing to do with that, because DATS isn’t supposed to involve him necessarily ever going there.

Marcus: “Then I’ll be… the ultimate…!”

Credit to the dub, they are actually remembering that change they made in episode 1 where Marcus just wants to be an ultimate fighter and doesn’t feel like he is one yet. This is still consistent… for now.

Masaru: “Please! Let us join DATS!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Well… Guess what. We’re gonna do you a favour and join DATS.”

I liked how sincere Masaru was about really wanting to join, knowing that they have every reason to refuse him. But Marcus? Is just being an arrogant prick about it. Apparently he doesn’t know how to swallow his pride. And this is despite him having the same humble, pleading body language as in the original, which this attitude does not remotely match with.

Satsuma: “Daimon Masaru, I figured you would come to us one day.”

~~~~~

Sampson: “I knew it would happen. Frankly, I’m surprised that it took you this long to ask, Marcus.”

With Sampson’s phrasing about Marcus asking, this is specifically just about him expecting Marcus to want to join since he met Agumon. The implication the original had that he’d already been expecting to Masaru to end up here before Agumon even showed up is completely missing. Another implication that apparently went right over the dubbers’ heads.

Masaru: “Now we can fight against as many strong guys as we want!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “And just think of all the bad guys we’re gonna get to beat up!”

Marcus specifies that their opponents will be bad guys, which is not the point in the original. Masaru isn’t particularly doing this to feel like a hero; he’s just doing this because he wants to challenge himself.

I imagine the dub made this change because they want to emphasise that, hey, our kids’ show protagonist who fights people a lot is definitely not a bad person, really, see, because it’s only bad guys he fights!!! But that isn’t necessary. Masaru’s fighting thing is already perfectly honourable, because he only fights people who want to fight him.

Tohma: “It’s been a while since I’ve last seen it… Mom’s homeland, Japan.”

~~~~~

Thomas: “After so long… I’m coming home… at last.”

Tohma’s words implied that he didn’t quite think of Japan as his own home, but apparently Thomas is completely fine in seeing it that way.

We also lose the mention of his mom being from Japan, which is a little nugget of information that I think we otherwise wouldn’t have for quite a few more episodes. Though I suppose simply the fact that he thinks of Japan as home implies that part of his family must be local despite his more prominent Austrian heritage that we’re going to learn about soon enough.

Overall differences

This episode isn’t that significantly different overall; most of the differences are just the usual lost nuance or less sense-making or Marcus being less interesting, and also people generally being a bit sassier.

I genuinely like the added focus on Agumon not liking cramped spaces, implicitly because they remind him of his time imprisoned at DATS. An actually good addition, and decent subtlety!

Marcus is vaguely more of a jerk in some bits, and also I guess he hates school because he’s A Jock™ or whatever.

The mention of being a man is removed from his speech. I’m specifically noting it here because this is the first time we’re seeing it happen, but this is also going to be a regular thing that I’ll probably stop mentioning in these summaries before long.

I suppose technically the biggest change in what actually happens is that No Animals Were Harmed. Which is something I understand them doing, but it also does mean Takashi loses a bit of interesting nuance because he’s not accidentally a murderer.

#digimon #digimon savers #digimon data squad

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analyzingadventure · 4 years

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I’M 5 EPISODES BEHIND ON PSI, I CAN ONLY WATCH 4 BECAUSE THE NEWEST ONE ISN’T AVAILABLE YET AND IT’S KILLING ME BECAUSE I SAW AN OUT-OF-CONTEXT MEME ABOUT IT AND IT HAD SOME IMPLICATIONS ABOUT IT

ANYWAYS, LET’S CATCH UP ON PSI, EPISODES 20-23, LET’S GO

Okay let’s save that widdle baby from that test tube

HOLY SHIT PSI’S VELGRMON IS HUGE

THAT IS A BIG FUCKING BIRB

That is a weird way for Devimon to ask Velgrmon to fetch Takeru considdering he was technically already captured by Devimon but okay I guess

MEGADRAMON!!! YEAH

Leomon please don’t die

Ah, they are acknowledging that the kids were missing for three days during a horrifying black-out, I was worried they wouldn’t like, acknowledge that at all

Koushirou’s hesistant to talk about his parents... Oh baby... ;_;

TENTOMON!! How’re you messaging to the kids?? IS GENNAI THERE TO HELP?? Or are you just in the Network messing with stuff?? Probably?

Oh, great, Algomon still isn’t fucking dead. HOW MANY TIMES DO WE NEED TO KILL THIS FUCKER

Is that squid thing Calmaramon? It looks like Calmaramon??

oH MY GOD it took me a moment to realize what was happening but WEREGARURUMON HITCHING A RIDE ON THE GIGA DESTROYER MISSILE WAS HILARIOUS OMG HE’S USING IT LIKE A SKATEBOARD LMFAO

YEAH YAMATO, SAVE YOUR BABY BRO!!!

TAKERUUU!! SASUKEEEE wait

ANGEMON!!!! BABY!!! WHERE ARE YOU ANGEMON?!?!

Megumin Han.... I’m so happy to hear your voice ;___;

A beautiful reunion

Takeru seems to be taking... [/points at the DW and the Digimon] everything really well

Jesus Velgrmon is stronk

NOOO THEY JUST SAVED TAKERU, FUCK

ANGEMON WAKE UP!!! WAKE UP!!!! WE NEED YOU!!!

OHHHHH TAKERU IS ANGERY no talk to him he angy

YEAH ANGEMON, FLY LIKE THE FUCKING WIND

God I love WereGarurumon’s nail polish, it looks fantastic yo

ANGEMON!!!!! Feather symbolism yeee

Is Angemon gonna spend all his powers to kill Velgrmon and die instantly? That’d be hilarious

Awe, no Giga Destroyer? Just Giga Storm? D’aww

HE IS GONNA DIE, ISN’T HE

ENJOY YOUR TRAUMA TAKERU LMFAO

oh mY GOD SKULL KNIGHTMON CAME IN AND STOLE IT TOO, YOU FUCKER LMAO

EPISODE 21, LET’S GO

Yamato I’m sure you could explain a few things to Takeru while you’re just chasing Skull Knightmon

Ah Devimon, your arms are as long as always, how wonderful

Ah, more Xros Wars rep! Splashmon! :D

TAKERU WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING

YOU JUST GOT HERE LITTLE CHILD, DON’T JUST JUMP INTO THE HOLE HEAD FIRST, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE DOING

Oh wow Devimon had prepared an Evil Incubator for Angemon’s Digiegg, how fast and nice

Poor baby is gonna get super corrupted, eh?

IT’S SO NICE... TO SEE THESE FAMILY MEMBERS OF THE KIDS, LOOKING SAME AS ALWAYS AND STUFF

Oh wow did Koushirou just hack the Digivices, WOW

IT IS CALAMARAMON! I KNEW IT, FUCK, I am so enjoying the Frontier/Xros Wars rep rn, thanks Toei, I wub you

Is that another nuke? Are they launching another nuke? No? Just a massive crash at a dock?

I was just gonna complain about Psi having a serious case of Takuya & Kouji Show-syndrome but if Sora and co get to deal with the threat in the Network while Taichi and Yamato are rescuing Angemon’s egg, I’ll be okay with it

Takeru, your Powers of Adorable will not save the world, I’m sorry, you’re just gonna get yourself killed and/or kill Yamato a third heart attack, PLEASE GO BACK

Holy shit METALGREYON NOOOOOOO DON’T HURT HIM LIKE NOOOOOOOO MY BABY ;A;

THAT IS A BIG EYE WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT

A Digimon that was sealed away by Devimon or something? IDK it’s kinda scawy

METALGREYMON NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

TAICHI PLEASE SAVE HIM ;_; YAMATO GO HELP HIM YOU WIMP

OWO WHAT'S THIS

A NEW METALGREYMON VARIANT? (Or a different Mode?)

Tbh the new cannon kida clashes with MetalGrey’s oldschool design a lil BUT IT’S FINE, IT’S COOL

Agumon deserves a nap

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT

ELDORADIMON???? IS IT OH IT TOTALLY IS, RIGHT? YEAH

I love the textures on his face, the pencil strokes look really cool

EPISODE 22 WOOO

I think I’ve complained about this before but it has kinda bothered me before how the Digimon don’t have to rest or eat before entering into battle again, and like, while it’s been mostly fine up until now... Like ever since the kids entered the Fake Tokyo they have pretty much been fighting non-stop without resting or eating and like, it’s starting to get to me, their stamina to keep on fighting is a bit much and it’s just gonna keep on going until Devimon’s dead, isn’t it

How are you climbing this wall that’s this god damn steep, you are a little child HOW DO YOU HAVE THE MUSCLES FOR THIS, I’M A GROWN ASS ADULT I DON’T HAVE THE MUSCLES FOR IT

Gabumon is a sweetheart and I would die for him

Koushirou, why didn’t you have your partners evolve faster, jesus christ (like I’ll give Gomamon and Palmon a break but the other two? Jesus)

Oh that DigiEgg is getting so super corrupted, isn’t it? Oh yeah, Devimon is trying to turn Angemon into a fallen angel like him, amazing

I wish Skull Knightmon had like a personality... In fact I wish all of the enemies had personalities beyond Devimon being ominous and Orgemon dumb with lots of honor

Jyou is gonna get in such great shape from running up those stairs- he ain’t skipping Leg Day, not today

Skull Knightmon is so cool I wish he had more of a personality ;_; I wanna root for him but beyond doing cool shit he has nothing going for him

Ah, the upgrade to MetalGrey wasn’t permanent, just a temporary buff from the power of Courage

DARK KNIGHTMON! YEAAAH

I hope Eldoradimon is okay with all this chaos happening inside him; like I hope he doesn’t get an upset stomach from this

THE BABY TOLD YOU TO MOVE, SO MOVE, KNIGHTMON!

Poor Calamaramon died without ever getting a personality ;_;

How the fuck is this infact making these gigantic leaps over great distances

God Takeru you are so cute, you widdle baby you

Oh man the hightech wings really don’t fit with the punk look of WereGarurumon at all

Welp the DigiEgg got dipped in the miasma like an egg in soy sauce, Press F for Patamon, say “hi” to Tsukaimon

Oooo the egg is exploding! :D

Oh, the egg... I mean it didn’t explode but it destroy the fortress

POYOMON! :D

Devimon, are ya gonna finally show up in person

YEAHHHHHHH DEVIMON!!!! YOU LOOK SO PRETTY I MISSED YOU YOU EDGY GOTH BASTARD

OOOO DEVIMON AND ANGEMON GO BACK? THEY HAVE A HISTORY? Well this is a ship I’m into, let’s go

EPISODE 23!

DEVIMON AND ANGEMON USED TO BE FRIIIIIENDS ohhhhhhhhh I wanna know more about their history THIS IS A JUICY SHIP RIGHT HERE

Ohhh he is so OP, I love that, thanks

How’d MetalGrey and WereGaruru get the message to use the rubble as cover? Not that it worked really

Devimon can use finger beams, lovely

Sora and co should really evolve to Perfect, like they should’ve evolved earlier to begin with

OH SHIT, WE GOT EVOLUTION ALREADY! I mean it’s only Tokomon, which ain’t that useful rn, but okay

Oh Devimon just gave Tokomon this angry-ex look oh my god

I wonder if Devimon’s plan was to like, bypass the need to use humans directly to evolve, instead using the data from humans to forcibly bring forth evolution

NeoDevimon isn’t as cool and sexy as vanilla Devimon, F

Honestly I’m kinda sad he evolve to begin with because Devimon was already super OP, like he didn’t evolve because he was losing, he evolve because his ex made him angry (although I mean I guess that is funny)

Oh WereGarurumon can just do the wing thing at will? Seems OP but okay

Ah, but I know Devimon isn’t dead yet... Saw the new Digimon Bandai shared on Twitter, the new Devimon form that is VERY SEXY (IDK if this needs to be stated but I do say “sexy” here ironically)

OH, Dark Knightmon, you’re still alive? You gonna take lead from now on?

Ohohohohohoh let’s go, gimme that new Devimon

OH MAN, IT WASN’T THIS EPISODE? HE’S SHOWING UP IN THE NEXT EPISODE? Boo, now I gotta wait :(

So I saw some memes on Twitter (along with the art of the new Digi), them including Taichi dying, dark evolution, a clip from the Adventure dub finale where Agumon’s like “next time I’ll evolve into one of the Dark Masters” so like

NEXT EPISODE IS GONNA FUN, also I’m kinda unsure if I wanna watch the preview or not... Like I already know so much out-of-context so I’m afraid if the preview is gonna tell me even more to a point it gets too much, or if it should be fine...

No, I have no chill, Psi has been teasing Mugendramon to me this whole god damn time, I NEED TO KNOW IF WE GET MUGENDRAMON LIKE THE MEMES PROPHESIZED, I NEED TO KNOW

PREVIEW!

LMAO IT REALLY DOES JUST START WITH “TAICHI DIES” JKSDFHKJSDFGJSFDGHJ

OH MAN WE ARE GONNA GET MUGENDRAMON AREN’T WE

I’M SO EXCITED

ALSO DOWNDEVIMON OHOHOHHOHOHO

NEXT EPISODE IS GONNA BE GOOOD I can’t wait

#Psi #Psi reaction

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otakween · 1 year

Text

Digimon Tamers - Episode 15

Okay, so it seems we have a new formula to follow. The kids will have to fight 12 "Devas" (which is apparently a God-like being in Hinduism and Buddhism, but seem like apostles here) who are all devoted to one "God" and are anti-human. I'm getting kind of annoyed at this point because it seems the implication is that they're going to drag the mystery of who this "God" is out for many, many more episodes. Does Tamers even have arcs or is it kinda just one, continuous thing? I guess you could say the first arc was the kids learning to fight as a team and now we're in the 2nd arc, but I feel like I won't be clear on the divisions until I get deeper in...

Also, is HYPNOS still in the picture at this point? Or are the considered "defeated" since their big plan was a bust...? (Rhetorical questions lol, no need to answer).

Notes:

The enemy digimon in this one was pretty creepy conceptually: a giant snake the size of a subway tunnel that attacks trains. As a frequent subway rider, I could see that making a good horror movie (I guess it was kinda already done in one of the Men in Black films).

I thought Takato being the annoyingly over-eager friend in the group was pretty funny. I'm glad that the 3 kids are cooperating now, but I'm not sure they really have great friendship chemistry yet lol. It's more Jian and Ruki are tolerating Takato. I feel like their personality types are somewhat reflected in their digimon partners too, with Guilmon ready to be friends with everyone whether they reciprocate or not.

Takato's classmates seeing Guilmon as an exciting new toy felt a little weird, but I felt reassured when they took Takato's demands that they don't follow him into battle seriously. (Or maybe that's just Japanese kids being good at following orders lol. I kinda expected to be like "hey no fair! Why can't we watch!?")

It was good seeing Ruki and Jian doing non digimon related things on their days off. Ruki goes to a Noh play with her grandma and Jian intends on going to his martial arts class (before he's interrupted by a battle). These little insights are important so we're not left thinking "don't these kids have lives?" Notably, the Adventure kids were stuck in the digital world (and essentially frozen in time), so that show didn't really have that problem to solve.

Everyone looked pretty off model this episode, but honestly once you get several off model episodes in a row you start to forget what they're supposed to look like lol

Long flashbacks and repeated "card slash" sequences padded out a lot of this episode. It was especially bad when we got two "card slash" sequences for Takato back-to-back.

Impmon and Terriermon have consistently been making me laugh with their blunt reactions to things. Impmon calling out Renamon's condescension towards him was especially funny.

Ruki looked super cool riding Kyubimon through the subway tunnels. I couldn't help but think about the scene needing a "don't do this at home, kids!" warning though, according to the "don't show repeatable actions" standards (the walking on train tracks part, not riding a giant monster lol).

So...Impmon shows possible signs of softening to the kids and their digimon? I thought he was going to get more evil, but perhaps he'll actually go from ineffectual bully to good guy.

Really nice seeing the champion-level digimon side-by-side at the end there. Good to know the size comparison and just to see them as a team.

I guess Ruki and Jian are just okay with suddenly showing off their digimon to a bunch of kids from Takato's class? Seems a little out of character to me, but maybe there was some off-screen conversation that went down...

#digimon tamers #digimon #anime

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noctisfishing · 4 years

Text

The Last One Wins | 04

01 | 02 | 03 | 04

Notes: The final chapter!

I have to share fanart on Twitter by @pen_lem that made me melt especially as I wrote this chapter. It’s so cute!

Anyway, here we go.. Thank you for reading another one for my Sorato shelf. <3

Chapter 4: The Game Changer

For the most part, Matt believed that he was living a good, happy life. He now had two beautiful ladies in it: he had Sora, and then his first daughter Ayame who had inherited his blonde hair and blue eyes but also Sora's temperament. Ayame had her peaceful days. Sometimes she cried so much that even Sora couldn't get her to stop; but Gabumon and Biyomon usually came to the rescue in those moments.

Over the next year, the other Digidestined were busy settling with their own first-born children, other than Ken and Yolei, who were already pregnant with their second. Tai and his wife were occupied with their son, who happened to be born a few short weeks after Matt and Sora's daughter.

To think, if Matt's first mission in the International Space Station had been pushed a month or two later…

"Baah!" his daughter exclaimed in front of him, smacking her hands against his chest and taking him out of his thoughts.

"What is it, Ayame?" Matt asked. "Got somethin' to tell me?"

Ayame babbled and gurgled in response, her arms flailing.

Matt gasped. "Who taught you that? That's not very nice."

He held his fingers up and wriggled them in front of Ayame, then moved to tickle her, making her giggle with delight. Listening to her laugh was the most joyful sound that he had the pleasure of hearing.

Sora called him from behind the couch where he sat with Ayame, and when he looked up he was met with a kiss. She didn't make it a quick peck as she did just to greet whenever she passed by. Her soft lips lingered against his for a few moments, catching him off guard.

"I love you," she said with an affectionate smile that reached her eyes.

"I love you, too," he said without any hesitation.

It was one of those moments that made him float on air, feeling happy after everything that he and Sora had been through over the years. Along with a great career as an astronaut, he had Sora in his life, and Ayame, and even Gabumon.

He was more than satisfied to care about a silly competition that he had lost against Tai, and he couldn't imagine how his life could get any better.

Until he thought about having a second child.

Luckily, Matt and Sora had Uncle Takeru who offered to take care of Ayame and their Digimon partners whenever they had their date nights. It was during one of their date nights when they both found it hard to keep their hands off of each other while cooking dinner together. They sat side-by-side as they ate, sometimes feeding each other and occasionally stealing kisses. After dumping the dishes into the sink, Matt could no longer resist, wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing her neck from behind; and he persuaded Sora to drop the sponge and clean up later.

Pretty soon, they burst into their bedroom crashing onto their bed, Sora holding onto Matt's shoulders as she fell on her back, their kisses fierce and urgent. Sora's dress had already slipped off in the hallway, along with Matt's shirt and then his jeans kicked off at the foot of the bed.

He slid his hands on her chest, and he kissed her neck and trailed down, hearing her laugh softly and exhale his name. Her hands had been running circles on his back, then on the front of his chest where her fingers lowered for a tease. Matt knew that they had both been yearning for more, and he moved back up to kiss her sweet lips that called for him.

When Matt knew the timing was right, he reached over to the nightstand to open the drawer. But just as he did, Sora grabbed onto his arm with her hand to stop him.

"Sora?" he asked, both of them in the midst of racing hearts and heat rising between them.

"We don't need it," she breathed.

"Are you sure?"

"Yama…" she let go of his arm and cupped her hand on the side of his face. "If you're not going to admit it, then I will. I want another baby, and I know you do, too."

Matt looked into her eyes as she waited for him to speak. She smiled her knowing smile.

"Tell me I'm right," she whispered.

Matt took her free hand and laced his fingers with hers. "You're right. I want another baby with you. More than anything."

Sora's eyes twinkled as she stared back at him.

"Well, then, what are you waiting for?"

He met her lips once again, kissing her passionately and holding her close. She kissed him back, her affectionate, persuasive response that she was ready to make that baby.

But suddenly, she stopped Matt with her hand against his chest.

"Hang on," she said. "I have to ask. This isn't about the Takari Bet, is it? About which one of you idiots was going to have a kid last?"

Matt froze on top of her. His eyes might have enlarged before hers as though he was a deer in headlights.

"H...How did you know?" Matt asked.

"Did you really think I wouldn't find out? I've known since the gathering while you were on your first trip in space. Found out right before I called you. Tai has never been good at keeping things to himself."

"Ah…Ahah…"

Matt was at a loss of what to say next.

"Y… You must be upset…" he added. "I'm sorry for not telling you sooner."

He couldn't read her face and it made him more hesitant.

"I could yell at you all night about this. Maybe longer than that. But… We have a more important matter at hand."

"We do…?"

Sora looked at him with fire in her eyes. "We're going to have a kid last. That was the bet, wasn't it? No way in hell will Tai ever want more than one kid."

Matt paused as he looked at her in disbelief, but quickly realized exactly what she meant.

"I love you more than you know," Matt said, gazing deep into her eyes in utmost admiration.

Sora laughed. "I know."

Sora never ceased to amaze Matt. He had known that they were both in sync with the desire for a second child, but he should have expected that their common interest in winning against Tai was going to shine through, even when it came to this. They made a great team, after all.

~*~*~*~*~*~

About a year later, Ryota Ishida was born.

Tai arrived home late at night after visiting Sora and Matt at the hospital. He was the first of their friends to hold Ryota, who had hair as fiery as his mother's, and a glare that couldn't compare to hers, either.

He was over the moon for his best friends, and could only congratulate them on their second child.

He stopped by his own child's room, who had let out a gasp the moment Tai opened the door. The mini version of him was sitting up in his crib when Tai turned the light on. Agumon had been keeping watch, but was in a deep sleep next to the crib.

"What are you doing, big guy?" Tai asked him.

"I go sleep now…" he mumbled, sliding underneath his blanket.

"You sure?"

"Yeah, I sleepy…"

"Okay. Night, buddy."

When Tai closed the door, he sighed in exasperation, knowing that his son would have stayed up longer than his parents had told him to had he not been caught. Heaven knows how Tai's mom was able to deal with him.

Tai was definitely okay with having one kid. One kid was just fine.

Yet...

He remembered the day Matt and Sora announced that they were pregnant. Again. How happy he was for them. Everyone was. But he couldn't help but notice, the way Matt gave him a look, an unspoken announcement of triumph. Even the smile of victory on Sora's face. It was a game changer that Taichi hadn't realized could have happened toward their bet.

Kari had given Tai a hug of empathy, having lost 20,000 yen, while TK joined him at his other side with a smug smile that he had worn right after Matt and Sora's announcement.

That day was still on his mind as Tai joined his wife in bed after washing up and dressing into his pajamas. He felt her shifting at his side, and he turned his body to face her, his eyes falling on her face, with her own eyes closed as she lay still.

Knowing that one small move could make her stir, he glided his hand up and down her arm at her side, and then-

"Don't," she said, her eyes suddenly wide open, causing him to retract his hand.

"I didn't say anything!" he said.

"You were thinking it. Pretty hard, too. I already deal with two children. I don't need a third."

She shifted again, her back now facing him.

Tai knew that she was going to shoot down any implication of a second child. She had put up with Tai boasting about the Takari Bet since they first got married, and then with his silent but obvious sulking after Matt and Sora started talking about Ryota.

With a heavy sigh, he turned to her and kissed the back of her neck before pulling her close.

Then, he stopped and realized what she said. "Wait - 'two children'?"

"That includes you, too."

"...But you love us, right?"

"You know I do."

Tai held his wife tightly. He knew that their son was enough for them, a son that was a handful but whom they loved with their whole being.

That, and he knew that losing against Matt was just something he had to accept.

#digimon fanfiction #sorato #ishida yamato #matt ishida #takenouchi sora #sora takenouchi #yagami taichi #tai kamiya #noctiswriting #rated m #sorato fanfiction #last one wins

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ahiddenpath · 4 years

Text

Epilogue Celebration: Couples

Eyyyy, sorry to hit you up twice in one day, but... I’m behind, so here we are!

I will chat a bit about 2028 couples below the cut!

Keep in mind that the crew are all adults in this discussion.

Taichi

Look, I’m sorry, I really am, but... Ya boi is a mess, romantically. I really can’t wait to get into this in a fic, but Taichi chose a difficult life as an ambassador in the time when Digimon and humans are first coming together. And while I think Taichi is good at surface-level flirting (and also has a strong mind-body connection and physical stamina for... adult activities), I... Really... Don’t think... He Relationships well. Er. Sorry.

So, um... I think his dating life is both varied and... stormy. Lots of casual dating of all kinds of people, but it’s rare for him to introduce anyone to friends and family. Plus, in the wake of... Kizuna events, he starts off adulthood... With a lot on his heart and his mind.

It takes him a long time to find the mother of his child, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t marry/if they separated/if he somehow ended up with someone else.

The good news is that Taichi learns and grows from everything. I know that someday, he’ll find the right person, and he’ll always do his best for his son.

Yamato and Sora

I’m influenced by @adventure-hearts on this one, but I think Yamato and Sora dated on-and-off again during different stages in their lives. They both have enormous dreams that came before their love life, until one day... I can’t tell you if it was emotional, or if their paths suddenly merged somehow, but someday, they fell into step and stayed there.

I think they’re very happy together, but have an unconventional life. They spend a lot of time apart because of their jobs, and they rely on their wide net of family and friends to help with the kids.

I think they are extremely well suited to each other and have a great marriage, but... They both have a tendency to internalize, pull back, and brood. They’re constantly working on their communication.

Koushiro

I think that Koushiro struggles romantically in his late teens/early twenties. He seems to very much want a girlfriend, but he never can spare the time to look for one... And when his friends set him up, it tends to... Go... Poorly. Poor dude puts his foot in his mouth, freezes, or just... doesn’t know how to relate to people outside of digimon and computers/math/science. He also tends to try too hard, to the point where it’s a Bad Look.

My opinion is that Koushiro needs someone... very specific to handle his, um... Koushiro-ness. I pair him with Anami Eimi, a digimon biology researcher whose heart sometimes supersedes her mind. The idea is that they’re both introverted and research-oriented, and they can gab about their ideas forever. But Eimi is warm, with strong social skills and social intelligence. She can’t touch Koushiro’s level of genius, but she’s smart, hardworking, and injects creativity and thoughtfulness into her work. She also foresees the social and political implications of the latest developments in Digital World and digimon research/technologies, where Koushiro tends to focus on the immediate problem (you can’t blame him; he’s constantly asked to put out sizable fires. There is always more fire. So much fire).

They probably work together off and on for a long time before one of them realizes, oh. The part after that is probably a mess, knowing Koushiro, but they get there!

Koushiro’s polite nature and Eimi’s private one make it so that strangers wouldn’t know they’re married. Still, Koushiro’s close friends, like the Chosen, see the way his eyes follow her, especially when he’s uncertain and wanting social cues. They have a quiet, stable partnership, which Daisuke describes as, “Married and boring,” but they’re very happy.

And Koushiro is very curious, the type who wants to try everything at least once, eyyyyy.

The only thing causing tension is Koushiro working too much and failing to care for himself properly. Luckily, Kae and Masami live in the same apartment mansion, and Kae has eased their marriage when needed by cooking, cleaning, calling Koushiro to remind him of Important Husband Things, and making general suggestions about how an erring husband might smooth things over with his ruffled wife. That last one usually consists of, “Bring home dinner/get your ass home/get your ass to sleep/why yes you DO need to apologize for that.”

It also helps that Eimi loves Tentomon, an accomplished Koushiro-wrangler and general peace keeper.

Mimi

Mimi’s all about fun, novelty, and freedom. She dates around and has casual partners of all varieties. Eventually, she decides to co-parent a child with her long-standing romantic interest. They share custody of their son, who also spends a lot of time with grandparents and friends, including the Chosen. Mimi and her son’s father have an understanding that they see other people while they’re apart, but don’t bring them around their son without discussing it first. It’s all amicable, chill, and provides their son with an enormous support network.

I don’t know if Mimi would ever settle down. I think she loves her life with a lot of variety and spontaneity.

Jyou

Marries his high school sweetheart, Bike Girl. They’re both doctors, so they struggle to get enough time together. But Bike Girl is sweet, loving, and most importantly, calm and grounded. Jyou is a huge romantic softy who spoils his wife and takes care of her. Although they both wish for more time together, they get on amazingly. Jyou always feels this... wonder and gratitude that he’s married to her.

I won’t lie: Jyou is the best husband. The other Chosen men wish they could husband as well as Jyou.

Takeru

I really don’t know what to make of this troll. Sometimes, I think he’s a charmer who dates around a ton, and eventually had an “oops” baby that he amicably co-parents with an ex. Sometimes, I think he settled down early and started a family, because he wanted that stability and love and constant presence that he didn’t have as a kid. Sometimes, I wonder if he eventually divorced and went on to later marry a certain childhood friend...

What can I say, he’s a man of mystery.

Hikari

Ahhh, why is this is sooooo hard?

Part of me really wants to see Hikari as an independent woman, and quietly proud about it. Clearly, she has a child... Maybe she had her son and later divorced? Or maybe she’s happily married? I also admit that I do want to see her with Takeru, at least eventually...

Lots of possibilities here!

Daisuke

Oh, he definitely had an “oops” baby with an ex and is currently trying to find a husband or wife. Or maybe he did? Maybe he did!

Miyako and Ken

They’re married, and they are gross about it, lol!

Seriously though, they get on so well. Ken works a lot (Digimon Police is a tough job), and sometimes Ken needs to find peace and quiet in his home (merry wife + loud kids + MULTIPLE kids = TOO MUCH), so there is sometimes a little tension when Miyako wants more of his time. But they manage it, and they keep their family and home running smoothly and happily.

I just... picture it as this ideal family, at least for someone desiring a loud, joyful, energetic, nuclear family.

Iori

Iori married early to a down-to-earth woman who specializes in elderly care. His wife has a big heart and a kind, patient nature. While she loves and respects Iori’s zeal for helping others, she gently reminds him to take care of himself and his family first. She also provides perspective when he gets set in a stubborn mentality. Happily, she enjoys sharing a large apartment with Iori’s mother and grandfather.

Iori is sometimes too focused on the problems of others to see his loved ones properly, and that’s something he works on with his grandfather’s guidance. When he has his daughter, he instantly reassigns his priorities around her, which softens a lot of his problematic areas. Also, he married a woman who knows how to help him redirect his thoughts. He feels genuine amazement that he’s with her. They have a relationship that is... quietly intense.

AND I AM DONE FOR TODAY, WHEW!

#digimonepiloguecelebration #digimon epilogue celebration #chosen children #digidestined

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shihalyfie · 3 years

Note

Hi :) If it's not too much trouble, could you please share your take on why they'd continue the Adventure brand after tri. was such a flop? (and a tangent: what does "dark history" even mean?). We got Kizuna, the reboot, and a 02 movie. Logically, it doesn't really make sense they'd keep investing in it.

This is a thorny topic, and I'd like to reiterate that although I've ended up making more posts related to this series and the discourse surrounding it recently (probably because it's even more on the mind now that another movie is on the horizon and a lot of people are apprehensive for various reasons), I do not want this blog to be making a brand out of being critical of this series. I’m writing this here and in public because I figured that there is a certain degree I need to clarify what I mean about audience reception/climate and how it might impact current or future works, and I’m admittedly also more than a little upset that I occasionally see Western fanbase criticisms of the series getting dismissed by people claiming that the only people mad about it are dramamongering or ignorant Westerners (which could not be further from the truth). However, this is mainly to address this and to answer your question, and is not intended to try and change anyone's existing opinion or impression of the series as much as it's me trying to explain (from my own personal reading of the situation) what practically went down with critical reception in real life; no more, no less.

The short summary of the matter is:

The series was a moderate financial success (albeit with some caveats; see the long version for details) and definitely outstripped a lot of prior attempts to revive the franchise;

However, the overall Japanese fanbase-side critical backlash from tri. was extremely and viciously negative to the point where even acknowledging the series too much could easily result in controversy;

Kizuna’s production and the PR surrounding it very obviously have this in mind with a lot of apparent “damage control” elements.

The long version is below.

Note that while I try to be diligent about citing my sources so people understand that I’m not just making things up wholesale, I’m deliberately refraining from linking certain things here this time, both because some of the things mentioned have some pretty crude things written there -- it’s not something I feel comfortable directing people to regardless of what language it’s in -- and because I don’t want to recklessly link things on social media and cause anyone to go after or harass the people involved. For the links that have been provided, please still be warned that some of them don’t really link to particularly pleasant things.

I am not writing the following information to suggest that anyone should agree or disagree with the sentiments being described. I know people tend to take "a lot of people like/hate this" as a signal of implication "it is correct to like/hate this" when it's not (and I especially dislike the idea of implying that Japanese fanbase opinions are the only correct ones). There's a reason I focus on "critical reception being this way" (because it influences marketing decisions and future direction) rather than how much this should impact one's personal feelings; this is coming from myself as someone who is shamelessly proud of liking many things that had bad critical reception, were financial failures, or are disliked by many. As I point out near the end, the situation also does seem to be changing for the better in more recent years as well.

Also, to be clear, I'm a single person who's observing everything best I can from my end, I have no affiliations with staff nor do I claim to, and as much as I'm capable of reading Japanese and thus reading a lot of people's impressions, I'm ultimately still another “outsider” looking in. These are my impressions from my observation of fan communal spaces, following artists and reading comments on social media and art posting websites, and results from social media searches. In the end, I know as much as anyone else about what happened, so this is just my two cents based on all of my personal observations.

A fanbase is a fanbase regardless of what part of the world you're from. There are people who love it and are shameless about saying so. There are people who have mixed feelings or at least aren't on extreme ends of the spectrum (as always, the loudest ones are always the most visible, but it's not always easy to claim they're the predominant percentage of the fanbase). That happens everywhere, and I still find that on every end I've seen. However, if I'm talking about my impressions and everything I’ve encountered, I will say that the overall Japanese reaction to tri. comes off as significantly more violently negative on average than the Western one, which is unusual because often it's the other way around. (I personally feel less so because the opinions are that fundamentally different and more so because we're honestly kind of loud and in-your-face people; otherwise, humans are mostly the same everywhere, and more often than not people feel roughly the same about everything if they’re given the same information to work with.)

This is not something I can say lightly, and thus would not say if I didn’t really get this impression, but...we're talking "casually looking up movie reviews for Kizuna have an overwhelming amount of people casually citing any acknowledgment of tri. elements as a negative element", or the fact that even communal wikis for "general" fandoms like Pixiv and Aniwota don't tend to hold back in being vicious about it (as of this writing, Pixiv's wiki refuses to consider it in the same timeline as Adventure, accusing it of being "a series that claims to be a sequel set three years after 02 but is in fact something different"). Again, there are people who openly enjoy it and actively advocate for it (and Pixiv even warns people to not lord over others about it condescendingly because of the fact that such people do exist), and this is also more of a reflection of “the hardcore fanbase on the Internet” and not necessarily the mainstream (after all, there are quite a few other Digimon works where the critical reception varies very heavily between the two). Nevertheless, the take-home is that the reputation is overall negative among the Internet fanbase to the point that this is the kind of sentiment you run into without trying all that hard.

I think, generally speaking, if we're just talking about why a lot of people resent the series, the reasons aren't that different from those on the Western side. However, that issue of "dark history" (黒歴史): there's a certain degree of demand from the more violently negative side of the fanbase that's, in a sense, asking official to treat it as a disgrace and never acknowledge it ever again, hence why Kizuna doing so much as borrowing things from it rather than rejecting it outright is still sometimes treated like it’s committing a sin. So it's somewhat close in spirit to a retcon movement, which is unusual because no other Digimon series gets this (not even 02; that was definitely a thing on the Western end, but while I'm sure there are people who hate it that much on their end too, I've never really seen it gain enough momentum for anyone to take it seriously). If anyone ever tells you that Japanese fanbases are nice to everything, either they don't know Japanese, are being willfully ignorant, or are lying to you, because there is such thing as drama in those areas, and in my experience, I've seen things get really nasty when things are sufficiently pushed over the edge, and if a fanbase wants to have drama, it will have drama. This happens to be one of those times.

(If you think this is extreme, please know that I also think so too, so I hope you really understand that me describing this sentiment does not mean I am personally endorsing it. Also, let me reiterate that the loudest section of the fanbase is not necessarily the predominant one; after all, as someone who’s been watching reactions to 02 over the years, I myself can attest that its hatedom has historically made it sound more despised than it actually is in practice.)

My impression is that the primary core sentiment behind why the series so much as existing and being validated is considered such an offense (rather than, say, just saying "wow, that writing was bad" and moving on) is heavily tied to the release circumstances the series came out in during 2015-2018, and the idea that "this series disrespected Adventure, and also disrespected the fanbase.” (I mean, really, regardless of what part of the world you’re from, sequels and adaptations tend to be held to a higher bar of expectation than standalone works, because they’re expected to do them justice.) A list of complaints I’ve come across a lot while reading through the above:

The Japanese fanbase is pretty good at recordkeeping when it comes to Adventure universe lore, partially because they got a lot of extra materials that weren’t localized, but also partially because adherence to it seems to generally be more Serious Business to them than it is elsewhere. For instance, “according to Adventure episode 45, ‘the one who wishes for stability’ (Homeostasis) only started choosing children in 1995, and therefore there can be no Chosen Children before 1995” is taken with such gravity that this, not anything to do with evolutions or timeline issues, is the main reason Hurricane Touchdown’s canonicity was disputed in that arena (because Wallace implies that he met his partners before 1995). It’s a huge reason the question of Kizuna also potentially not complying to lore came to the forefront, because tri. so flagrantly contradicts it so much that this issue became very high on the evaluation checklist. In practice, Kizuna actually goes against Adventure/02 very little, so the reason tri. in particular comes under fire for this is that it does it so blatantly there were theories as early as Part 1 that this series must take place in a parallel universe or something, and as soon as it became clear it didn’t, the resulting sentiment was “wow, you seriously thought nobody would notice?” (thus “disrespecting the audience”).

A lot of the characterization incongruity is extremely obvious when you’re following only the Japanese version, partially because it didn’t have certain localization-induced characterization changes (you are significantly less likely to notice a disparity with Mimi if you’re working off the American English dub where they actually did make her likely to step on others’ toes and be condescending, whereas in Japanese the disparity is jarring and hard to miss) and partially due to some things lost in translation (Mimi improperly using rough language on elders is much easier to spot as incongruity if you’re familiar with the language). Because it’s so difficult to miss, and honestly feels like a lot of strange writing decisions you’d make only if you really had no concept of what on earth happened in the original series, it only contributes to the idea that they were handling Adventure carelessly and disrespectfully without paying attention to what the series was even about (that, or worse, they didn’t care).

02 is generally well-liked there! It’s controversial no matter where you go, but as I said earlier, there was no way a retcon movement would have ever been taken seriously, and the predominant sentiment is that, even if you’re not a huge fan of it, its place in canon (even the epilogue) should be respected. So not only flagrantly going against 02-introduced lore but also doing that to a certain quartet is seen as malicious, and you don’t have as much of the converse discourse celebrating murdering the 02 quartet (yeah, that’s a thing that happened here) or accusing people with complaints of “just being salty because they like 02″ as nearly as much of a factor; I did see it happen, or at least dismissals akin to “well it’s Adventure targeted anyway,” but they were much less frequent. The issue with the 02 quartet is usually the first major one brought up, and there’s a lot of complaints even among those who don’t care for 02 as much that the way they went about it was inhumane and hypocritical, especially when killing Imperialdramon is fine but killing Meicoomon is a sin. Also, again, “you seriously think nobody will see a problem with how this doesn’t make sense?”

I think even those who are fans of the series generally agree with this, but part of the reason the actual real-life time this series went on is an important factor is that the PR campaign for this series was godawful. Nine months of clicking on an egg on a website pretending like audience participation meant something when in actuality it was blatantly obvious it was just a smokescreen to reveal info whenever they were ready? This resulted in a chain effect where even more innocuous/defensible things were viewed in a suspicious or negative light (for instance, "the scam of selling the fake Kaiser's goggles knowing Ken fans would buy it only to reveal that it's not him anyway"), and a bunch of progressively out-of-touch-with-the-fanbase statements and poor choices led to more sentiment “yeah, you’re just insulting the fanbase at this point,” and a general erosion of trust in official overall.

On top of that, the choice of release format to have it spread out as six movies over three years seems to have exacerbated the backlash to get much worse than it would have been otherwise, especially since one of the major grievances with the series is that how it basically strung people along, building up more and more unanswered questions before it became apparent it was never going to answer them anyway. So when you’re getting that frustrated feeling over three whole years, it feels like three years of prolonged torture, and it becomes much harder to forgive for the fallout than if you’d just marathoned the entire thing at once.

For those who are really into the Digimon (i.e. species) lore and null canon, while I’m not particularly well-versed in that side of the fanbase, it seems tri. fell afoul of them too for having inaccurately portrayed (at one point, mislabeled) special attacks and poorly done battle choreography, along with the treatment of Digimon in general (infantilized Digimon characterization, general lack of Digimon characters in general, very flippant treatment of the Digital World in Parts 3-5). If you say you’re going to “reboot” the Digital World and not address the entire can of worms that comes with basically damaging an entire civilization of Digimon, as you can imagine, a lot of people who actually really care about that are going to be pissed, and the emerging sentiment is “you’re billing this as a Digimon work, but you don’t even care about the monsters that make up this franchise.”

The director does not have a very positive reputation among those who know his work (beyond just Digimon), and in general there was a lot of suspicion around the fact they decided to get a guy whose career has primarily been built on harem and fanservice anime to direct a sequel to a children’s series. Add to that a ton of increasingly unnerving statements about how he intended to make the series “mature” in comparison to its predecessor (basically, an implication that Adventure and 02 were happy happy joy series where nothing bad ever happened) and descriptions of Adventure that implied a very, very poor grasp of anything that happened in it: inaccurate descriptions of their characters, poor awareness of 02′s place in the narrative, outright saying in Febri that he saw the Digimon as like perpetual kindergartners even after evolving, and generally such a flippant attitude that it drove home the idea that the director of an Adventure sequel had no respect for Adventure, made this series just to maliciously dunk on it for supposedly being immature, and has such a poor grasp of what it even was that it’s possible he may not have seen it in the first place (or if he did, clearly skimmed it to the extent he understood it poorly to pretty disturbing levels). As of this writing, Aniwota Wiki directly cites him as a major reason for the backlash.

In general, consensus seems to be that the most positively received aspect of the series (story-wise) was Part 3 (mostly its ending, but some are more amenable to the Takeru and Patamon drama), and the worst vitriol goes towards Parts 2 (for the blatantly contradictory portrayal of Mimi and Jou and the hypocritical killing of Imperialdramon) and 4 (basically the “point of no return” where even more optimistic people started getting really turned off). This is also what I suspect is behind the numbers on the infamous DigiPoll (although the percentage difference is admittedly low enough to fall within margin of error). However, there was suspicion about the series even from Part 1, with one prominent fanartist openly stating that it felt more like meeting a ton of new people than it did reuniting with anyone they knew.

So with all of that on the table: how did this affect official? The thing is that when I say “violently negative”, I mean that also entailed spamming official with said violently negative social media comments. While this is speculation, I am fairly certain that official must have realized how bad this was getting as early as between Parts 4 and 5, because that’s where a lot of really suspicious things started happening behind the scenes; while I imagine the anime series itself was now too far in to really do anything about it, one of the most visible producers suddenly vanished from the producer lineup and was replaced by Kinoshita Yousuke, who ended up being the only member of tri. staff shared with Kizuna (and, in general, the fact that not a single member of staff otherwise was retained kind of says a lot). Once the series ended in 2018 and the franchise slowly moved into Kizuna-related things, you might notice that tri.-branded merch production almost entirely screeched to a halt and official has been very touchy about acknowledging it too deeply; it’s not that they don’t, but it’s kind of an awfully low amount for what you’d think would be warranted for a series that’s supposed to be a full entry in the big-name Adventure brand.

The reason is, simply, that if they do acknowledge it too much, people will get pissed at them. That’s presumably why the tri. stage play (made during that interim period between Parts 4 and 5 and even branded with the title itself) and Kizuna are really hesitant to be too aggressive about tri. references; it’s not necessarily that official wants to blot it out of history like the most extreme opinions would like them to, but even being too enthusiastic about affirming it will also get them backlash, especially if the things they affirm are contradictory to Adventure or 02. And considering even the small references they did put in still got them criticism for “affirming” tri. too much, you can easily see that the backlash would have been much harder if they’d attempted more than that; staying as close as possible to Adventure and 02 and trying to deal with tri. elements only when they’re comparatively inoffensive was pretty much the “safe” thing to do in this scenario (especially since fully denying tri. would most certainly upset the people who did like the series, and if you have to ask me, I personally think this would have been a pretty crude thing to have done right after the series had just finished). Even interviews taken after the fact often involve quickly disclaiming involvement with the series, or, if they have to bring up something about it, discussing the less controversial aspects like the art (while the character designs were still controversial, it’s at least at the point where some fanartists will still be willing to make use of them even if they dislike the series, albeit often with prominent disclaimers) or the more well-received parts of Part 3; Kizuna was very conspicuously marketed as a standalone movie, even if it shared the point of “the Adventure kids, but older” that tri. had.

(Incidentally, the tri. stage play has generally been met with a good reputation and was received well even among people who were upset with the anime, so it was well-understood that they had no relation. In fact, said stage play is probably even better received than Kizuna, although that’s not too surprising given the controversial territory Kizuna goes into, making the stage play feel very play-it-safe in comparison.)

So, if we’re going to talk about Kizuna in particular: tri. was, to some degree, a moderate financial success, in the sense that it made quite a bit of money and did a lot to raise awareness of the Digimon brand still continuing...however, if you actually look at the sales figures for tri., they go down every movie; part of it was probably because of the progressively higher “hurdle” to get into a series midway, but consider that Gundam Unicorn (a movie series which tri.’s format was often compared to) had its sales go up per movie thanks to word of mouth and hype. So while tri. does seem to have gotten enough money to help sustain the franchise at first, the trade-off was an extremely livid fanbase that had shattered faith in the brand and in official, and so while continuing the Adventure brand might still be profitable, there was no way they were going to get away with continuing to do this lest everything eventually crash and burn.

Hence, if you look at the way Kizuna was produced and advertised, you can see a lot of it is blatantly geared at addressing a lot of the woes aimed at tri.: instead of the staff that had virtually no affiliation with Toei, the main members of staff announced were either from the original series (Seki and Yamatoya) or openly childhood fans, the 02 quartet was made into a huge advertising point as a dramatic DigiFes reveal (and character profies that tie into the 02 epilogue careers prominently part of the advertising from day one), and they even seemed to acknowledge the burnout on the original Adventure group by advertising it so heavily as “the last adventure of Taichi and his friends”, so you can see that there’s a huge sentiment of “damage control” with it. How successful that was...is debatable, since opinions have been all over the board; quite a few people were naturally so livid at what happened with tri. that Kizuna was just opening more of the wound, but there were also people who liked it much better and were willing to acknowledge it (with varying levels of enthusiasm, some simply saying “it was thankfully okay,” and some outright loving it), and there was a general sentiment even among those who disliked both that they at least understood what Kizuna was going for and that it didn’t feel as inherently disrespectful. (Of course, there are people who loved tri. and hated Kizuna, and there are people who loved both, too.)

Moreover, Kizuna actually has a slightly different target audience from tri.; there’s a pretty big difference between an OVA and a theatrical movie, and, quite simply, Kizuna was made under the assumption that a lot of people watching it may not have even seen tri. in the first place. An average of 11% of the country watched Adventure and 02, but the number of people who watched tri. is much smaller, in part due to the fact that its “theater” screenings were only very limited screenings compared to Kizuna being shown in theaters in Japan and worldwide, and in part due to the fact that watching six parts over three years is a pretty huge commitment for someone who may barely remember Digimon as anything beyond a show they watched as a kid, and may be liable to just fall off partway through because they simply just forgot. (Which also probably wasn’t helped by the infamously negative reputation, something that definitely wouldn’t encourage someone already on the fence.) And that’s yet another reason Kizuna couldn’t make too many concrete tri. references; being a theatrical movie, it needs to have as wide appeal as possible, and couldn’t risk locking out an audience that had a very high likelihood of not having seen it, much less to the end -- it may have somewhat been informed by tri.’s moderate financial success and precedent, but it ultimately was made for the original Adventure and 02 audience more than anything else.

I would say that, generally, while Kizuna is “controversial” for sure, reception towards the movie seems to be more positive than negative, it won over a large chunk of people who were burned out by tri., and it clearly seems to have been received well enough that it’s still being cashed in on a year after its release. The sheer existence of the upcoming 02-based movie is also probably a sign of Kizuna’s financial and critical success; Kinoshita confirmed at DigiFes 2020 that nothing was in production at the time, and stated shortly after the movie’s announcement that work on it had just started. So the decision to make it seems to have been made after eyeing Kizuna’s reception, and, moreover, the movie was initially advertised from the get-go with Kizuna’s director and writer (Taguchi and Yamatoya), meaning those two have curried enough goodwill from the fanbase that this can be used to promote the movie. (If not, you would think that having and advertising Seki would be the bigger priority.) While this is my own sentiment, I am personally doubtful official would have even considered 02 something remotely profitable enough on its own to cash in on if it weren’t for this entire sequence of events of 02′s snubbing in tri. revealing how much of a fanbase it had (especially with the sheer degree of “suspicious overcompensation” Kizuna had with its copious use of the 02 quartet and it tagging a remix of the first 02 ED on the Hanareteitemo single, followed by the drama CD and character songs), followed by Kizuna having success in advertising with them so heavily. Given all of the events between 2015 and now, it’s a bit ironic to see that 02 has now become basically the last resort to be able to continue anything in the original Adventure universe without getting too many people upset at them about it.

The bright side coming out of all of this is that, while it’s still a bit early to tell, now that we’re three years out from tri. finishing up and with Kizuna in the game, it seems there’s a possibility for things improving around tri.’s reception as well. Since a lot of the worst heated points of backlash against it have a very “you had to have been there” element (related to the PR, release schedule, and staff comments), those coming in “late” don’t have as much reason to be as pissed at it; I’ve seen at least one case of a fanartist getting back into the franchise because of Kizuna hype, watching tri. to catch up, casually criticizing it on Twitter, and moving on with their life, presumably because marathoning the whole thing being generally aware of what’ll happen in it and knowing Kizuna is coming after anyway gives you a lot less reason to be angry to the point of holding an outright grudge. Basically, even if you don’t like it, it’s much easier to actually go “yeah, didn’t like that,” not worry too much about it, and move on. Likewise, I personally get the impression that official has been starting to get a little more confident about digging up elements related to it. Unfortunately, a fairly recent tweet promoting the series getting put on streaming services still got quite a few angry comments implying that they should be deleting the scourge from the Internet instead, so there’s still a long way to go, but hopefully the following years will see things improve further...

In regards to the reboot, I -- and I think a lot of people will agree with me -- have a bit of a hard time reading what exact audience it’s trying to appeal to; we have a few hints from official that they want parents to watch it with their children, and that it may have been a necessary ploy in order to secure their original timeslot. So basically, the Adventure branding gets parents who grew up with the original series to be interested in it and to show it to their kids, and convinces Fuji TV that it might be profitable. But as most people have figured by now, the series has a completely different philosophy and writing style -- I mean, the interview itself functionally admits it’s here to be more action-oriented and to have its own identity -- and the target audience is more the kids than anything else. As for the Internet fanbase of veterans, most people have been critical of its character writing and pacing, but other than a few stragglers who are still really pissed, it hasn’t attracted all that much vitriol, probably because in the end it’s an alternate universe, it doesn’t have any obligation to adhere to anything from the original even if it uses the branding, and it’s clearly still doing its job of being a kids’ show for kids who never saw the original series nor 02, so an attempt to call it “disrespectful” to the original doesn’t have much to stand on. A good number of people who are bored of it decided it wasn’t interesting to them and dropped it without incident, while other people are generally just enjoying it for being fun, and the huge amount of Digimon franchise fanservice with underrepresented Digimon and high fidelity to null canon lore is really pleasing the side of the fanbase that’s into that (I mean, Digimon World Golemon is really deep in), so at the very least, there’s not a lot to be super-upset about.

#tri negativity #shiha's ask box #springcrafter

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adventure-hearts · 7 years

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To make things less boring during the wait for the final installment of Tri, do you have any headcanons about the epilogue kids? Or how different the world is when everyone having a digimon partner is just taken for granted?

I think the thing most people miss when discussing the more superficial aspects of 02′s Epilogue (such as couples or careers) is that its biggest problem is the tremendous implications of “everyone having a Digimon partner” – and the fact that it does not even try to explain how the world is actually dealing with it.

Let’s not kid ourselves: a world where every human being is aware of the existence of other worlds, and where everyone is paired with a creature that is both a cute pet, a prolonging of your very soul, an ever-loyal best friend, and a weapon of a huge destructive power is just not our world anymore.

Everyone having a digimon partner would simply be the biggest transformation in human history. Everything would change. Suddenly, every individual – politicians, businesspeople, scientists, terrorists – would want to use Digimon to their own ends. Society would have to be organized differently: How do governments deal with everyone – including evil or unbalanced people or even small children – being armed or able to travel between worlds? People’s core beliefs would be affected as well: How do you reconcile Digimon and its “magical” properties within the framework of major religions and myths? Science would be turned upside-down as our basic understanding of the universe would totally change. Social conflict would arise because not everyone would accept the digimon, and not every one would agree on how humans should coexist with them. Not a single area of human life would be unaffected by this.

On an individual level, things would be very different as well. Imagine everyone living their lives with a Digimon partner who provides unconditional love and support, who challenges you towards self-improvement, and who is willing to fight for you unquestionably. Imagine how this would affect interpersonal relationships: Would people be better? Would loneliness be less of a problem, or would people isolate themselves from other humans and depend on their partners for company and emotional support? And this universe has shown plenty of times that the partner bonds can go wrong – how do you teach people to control with their partners? And what happens to people who don’t want digimon partners at all?

And consider the generational shift at hand – the Chosen Children’s kids would be among the first humans to be born in a world with Digimon. Their upbringing and their worldview would be radically different from that of their parents and everyone that came before them. Unless you’re ignoring their environment, this is really important if you’re imagining personalities and HCs for the Epilogue kids.

In other words, the idea that by 2027 everyone would be happy and singing kumbaya and that Digimon would only bring happiness and world peace is a pie in the sky, especially when you consider the digimon-related external threats that would constantly appear in the human world. To be fair, the Epilogue doesn’t say that this is the case, but it seriously undersells the gravity of the new status quo or its effects on life as we know it.

The best-case scenario (where you still have a recognisable sense of “normalcy” in our world) is the possibility that the Digimon do not live with the humans, but rather stay in the Digital World and travelling between the two worlds is a rare, heavily regulated business. Everyone would have a Digimon partner, but very few people would see them on a regular basis – except the Chosen Children and perhaps government or defence organisations. How you control this, I don’t know. But this is the only scenario where things don’t change dramatically.

Another “safe” possibility is that everyone has a partner but evolution is somehow very limited. A Baby II partner could be compared to having a pet dog – it can cause damage, but it’s usually safe. But Child-level partners would be more of a hazard, because they’re powerful enough to destroy stuff or even hurt people. And if everyone can evolve their partners to Adult level with relative ease, then it’s a disaster – because suddenly is as if everyone has a military arsenal at home, at their command. Or people could simply, you know, decide to ride their Airdramon to work. (The universe already establishes how difficult it is to get to Perfect level and beyond, thankfully – but only a handful of Perfects could still create a huge mess).

The more you think about it, the more you realise how huge the implications of “everyone having a Digimon partner” are. It’s not a happy utopia, as some people imagine.

The 02 Epilogue is basically a futuristic dystopia.

To conclude, I find it very difficult to make Epilogue-compliant headcanons because we simply don’t know to what degree the world has changed. The Chosen Children’s children would have a completely different experience from “normal” humans that goes way beyond trying to imagine the life of a baby born in 2017 or even in the next few years. Imagining future Adventure scenarios requires a lot of rethinking and world-building!

Every Digimon fan should read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, because it provides an interesting possibility of what a post-Epilogue world could look like. I don’t think there are many fanworks that have truly explored the social/political/philosophical implications of the Epilogue or tried to make sense of what it means, but there should be! And an actual series set in the future could have tremendous potential… if it really decided to explore these ideas and embrace the world-changing possibilities.

#asks #digimon #The Epilogue #shit this got long

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yamujiburo · 7 years

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Team Rocket since they're their own fandom! Shipping howsabout Yamushipping? Character, Domino needs more attention. And multiple series...oh geez let's go classic Pokémon and Digimon.

Ooooh long one!! Under the cut!

001 (TEAM ROCKET) | Send me a fandom and I will tell you my:

Favorite character: Jessie!

Least Favorite character: Oh no don’t make me choose. More on the obscure side but Shiranui I guess?

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): Are there any canon ships in Pokemon? Rocketshipping, Neoshipping, Yamushipping, Kokoshipping, JessiexWendy

Character I find most attractive: Jessie

Character I would marry: I wanna say Jessie, but realistically, I don’t think it’d work. But tbh, I love Annie so much. She’s like a much more tame version of Jessie.

Character I would be best friends with: Mondo!

a random thought: I LOVE TEAM ROCKET

An unpopular opinion: They weren’t that bad in BW and I kinda like them

my canon OTP: I’m counting Rocketshipping as basically canon. Thanks Toshihiro Ono

Non-canon OTP: Yamushipping

most badass character: Everyone but the TRio? LOL. I’m gonna saaaaay either Domino or Oakley

pairing I am not a fan of: JessiexButch? I can’t see it for some reason. I do like CassidyxJames tho

character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Shoot… I mean Jessie and James I guess? Like they’ll have their bad episodes every once in a while.

favourite friendship: James and Meowth

character I want to adopt or be adopted by: I can’t imagine adopting anyone in TR LOL. I guess Meowth would make the most sense?? Who would I be adopted byyyy? I’m gonna be real, Jessie and James would make such cool parents hahaha.

002 (YAMUSHIPPING) | send me a ship and I will tell you:

when I started shipping it: Around last year when I came across @carropokevids jessie/gaga ship AMVs again. It made me rewatch all the Cassidy episodes and then made me think “hey what happened to them? OMG THEYRE BITTER EXES”

my thoughts: Good ship. I don’t ship it as the kind of thing where I want them to get together in the end. I just like the implication and the story and I bet they would be adorable when they were first together

What makes me happy about them: Thinking about their early training days where Jessie was still a little more on the less crazy side and Cassidy was her cool gf who knew the ropes around TR. Also the idea of them being partners/team in general

What makes me sad about them: It could never work ;0;

things done in fanfic that annoys me: I haven’t seen many yamu fics out there? And if I do they’re smut. And they’re from like the 2010 or earlier where it was most likely written as a thing to fetishize them?? Plus they’re portrayed as wildly aggressive. (if there’s any good ones out there let me knooooow ;u;)

things I look for in fanfic: I’m not sure.... not smut? LOL. I guess just anything more on the sweet side. That’s just me

My kinks: What. Does. This. MEAN.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: Cassidy with Butch and Jessie with James.

My happily ever after for them: They talk about their feelings and get closure

003 (DOMINO) | Give me a character & I will tell you

How I feel about this character: I think she’s super cool! I wish she could appear in another episode/movie.

All the people I ship romantically with this character: I do like the idea of her with Mondo. Both of them seem younger than other TR characters. Plus I can see their dynamic working out well. It’s like a less extreme version of Rocketshipping.

My non-romantic OTP for this character: I can see her and Cassidy being besties. Also Attila and Hun.

My unpopular opinion about this character: I don’t really have one hahaha

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: MORE APPEARANCES

my het ship: DominoxMondo

my fem/slash ship: DominoxWendy

my OTP: DominoxMondo

my OT3: N/A

my cross over ship: N/A

a head cannon fact: She becomes the head of Team Rocket in the future

004 (POKEMON/DIGIMON) | send me 2 fandoms and I will give yo my crossover OTP

I... don’t...... know any digimon characters

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commentaryvorg · 3 years

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Digimon Data Squad Dub Comparison Episode 6 - The Ultimate Team No More?

Original name ~ Dubbed name

Masaru Daimon ~ Marcus Damon

Yoshino Fujieda ~ Yoshino “Yoshi” Fujieda

Tohma H. Norstein ~ Thomas H. Norstein

Sayuri Daimon ~ Sarah Damon

Chika Daimon ~ Kristy Damon

Captain Rentarou Satsuma ~ Commander Richard Sampson

Katsumata ~ Boomer

[Since several characters share the same name between the original and the dub, quotes from the dub will always be in italics, while quotes from the original will not, in order to distinguish them.]

Yoshi: “But does he wait? Of course not! Not Mister Reckless!”

Yoshi has some added exasperation at Marcus in the dub and I approve.

Masaru: “Aw, he’s annoyed at himself.”

Agumon: “Yeah, he’s annoyed.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “What’s wrong, ya jealous?”

Agumon: “Sorry, but no autographs!”

how does Agumon know what an autograph is

Agumon: “As if any Digimon could beat us when we’re fighting together!”

Masaru: “Yeah! Because we’re the strongest combination ever!”

Agumon: “Ever!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “We’ll just win again, of course! There’s no Digimon that can beat the ultimate team!”

Marcus: “Yeah! Agumon and I are the strongest team ever!”

Agumon: “Yeah!”

The original brought in Masaru and Agumon calling themselves the strongest combination ever kind of transparently for the purpose of this episode. However, because Marcus and Agumon have already called themselves “the ultimate team” before in the dub, this works better and doesn’t seem quite so obvious.

Dub-Agumon doesn’t have that quirk original-Agumon has of echoing the last word or so – or maybe a whole sentence as in the previous quote – of Masaru’s lines for emphasis. Not necessarily a bad thing, just that the dub Agumon has different quirks.

Lalamon: “This is the worst…”

Yoshino: “That’s my line.”

~~~~~

Lalamon: “Well, at least they don’t lack confidence.”

Yoshi: “No, they just lack common sense.”

Lalamon doesn’t get to steal Yoshi’s catchphrase, but instead she and Yoshi do some very warranted snarking.

Agumon: “Sarah, you’re a genius chef! Yum!”

Marcus: “Hey! How many times do I have to tell you not to call my mom by her first name!”

In the dub of the earlier episode where original-Agumon started doing this, dub-Agumon actually didn’t happen to use Sarah’s name, so this is the first time he’s done so onscreen. Still, I suppose Marcus’s line implies he’s done it multiple times before now, so this is the dub catching up by implying it’s been happening for a while even if we haven’t seen it.

Agumon: “But Sayuri is Sayuri. Chika is Chika. And Aniki is Aniki.”

Masaru: “That’s not what I mean!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Kristy is Kristy, Sarah is Sarah, and Boss is Boss.”

Marcus: “‘Boss’ is not my name!”

Agumon: “Oh. Well, still.”

Instead of Masaru failing to articulate why it’s weird for his friend to call his mom by her first name, Marcus shifts to an entirely different argument which almost might be implying he doesn’t really want Agumon to call him Boss? That could be considered relevant to this episode, but it’s almost certainly not deliberate.

Masaru: “It’s manners for the follower to hold back!”

Agumon: “Look who’s talking! Giving things to the follower shows off an aniki’s generosity!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Whatever happened to me being the boss here?”

Agumon: “Consider this an employee profit-sharing program.”

????? Agumon how on earth do you know what one of those is. I don’t even know what one of those is. Also, way to make this sound 1000% like a small business even though that never made any amount of sense.

This is basically making the same point as the original that Agumon feels Marcus ought to let him have the last fried egg as part of a boss’s generosity, but man does that get kinda lost in the ridiculous small-business joke.

Sayuri: “Oh my, they really know what they’re talking about…”

Chika: “That’s because they saw it on TV yesterday.”

Sayuri: “Still, it’s amazing that they’re studying while watching TV.”

~~~~~

Sarah: “Oh boy. Well, dinner just got a lot more interesting.”

Kristy: “Why do boys always have to act like boys?”

Sarah: “Oh, believe me, Kristy, one day you’ll be glad they do.”

The original exchange between Sayuri and Chika here was very strange – I think the subbers didn’t quite get what was meant to be going on there, because their take on it doesn’t really make sense – so the dub changing it to something else is quite reasonable. But Sarah being heteronormative at her daughter was really not what they needed to change this to.

(Is this implying that Sarah was/is into guys who are this kind of ridiculous idiot? Actually, uh, knowing about the kind of person Marcus’s dad is, that’d make… a good bit of sense. Oh dear.)

There’s some similar bickering about snoring here, but then also, still in the background:

Marcus: “That’s it! You’re fired!”

Agumon: “You don’t even pay me!”

Can we not with the small business jokes! It makes this whole thing so difficult to take seriously as a meaningful bond between fighting partners, which is kind of what this whole episode is meant to be focusing on. Also, as usual, how does Agumon even know that an “employee” is supposed to get paid; his entire experience with the word should be limited to what he is to Marcus. And Marcus saying “you’re fired” really should be taken as him officially breaking off their partnership, but this isn’t the part where that happens yet. (Though honestly I’m glad that when we do, we won’t be doing the small business jokes there.)

Agumon: “Well, I’m not gonna bail you out any more, Aniki! If I wasn’t there for you today, you would’ve been screwed!”

Masaru: “What?! Don’t be so damn egotistical! You can’t even evolve without my Digisoul!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Fine, don’t count on me to bail you out any more! Face it, you’d be totally lost without me!”

Marcus: “What?! Gimme a break! Without me you couldn’t Digivolve! Without me, this team would be nothing!”

I’m quoting this whole thing even though it’s basically the same as in the original, because this exchange is very important to the entire episode and I’m really glad the dub kept it intact. Boy could they have ruined the whole episode if they messed up this part, but they didn’t.

(I shouldn’t have to bring this up like it’s remotely remarkable, but after the fire-punching fiasco in episode 3, apparently it is.)

Marcus’s “without me this team would be nothing” is a bit harsher and more jerkish than originally, though that’s probably partly because the dub had more lip-flap to fill. It’s making Marcus more of a jerk like usual, but at least in this instance, Masaru being something of a jerk originally was actually the point, so this doesn’t stick out as much as it does sometimes.

The noises Agumon initially makes in reaction to Marcus’s comment here are a lot angrier in the dub, whereas originally it was more like upset floundering at the realisation that that’s true, before he snapped.

Agumon: “Damn it! I can’t do this any more! I’m done being your follower!”

Masaru: “Oh yeah, well, I’m out too! We’re not Aniki and follower any more!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “That’s it! I can’t take this! I don’t want you to be my boss!”

Marcus: “That’s just fine by me! I don’t wanna be your boss, either!”

At least the dubbers had the sense to deliberately avoid using the word “employee” here and keep the small-business nonsense out of the part that really matters.

Tohma: “You’re arguing over something so trivial.”

Masaru: “It’s not my fault!”

~~~~~

Thomas: “You’re being immature, even for you.”

Marcus: “Y-Y-*You’re* immature!”

The joke of Marcus proving how immature he is means that instead he’s snapping at Thomas, somewhat shifting away from the issue with Agumon. Meanwhile, Masaru was more subtly and relevantly showing his immaturity by trying to insist that their argument is totally all Agumon’s fault and not even slightly his.

We also lose the interesting implications of Tohma thinking this whole argument is over something trivial.

Masaru: “Fine! I’m more than enough for one or two Digimon!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Hah. It’ll probably be *easier* without you, just you wait and see!”

Marcus’s extra jab about it being easier without Agumon shifts this more into an insistence that Agumon was somehow holding him back, rather than focusing on the more relevant point that he simply wants to feel like he can do this without help from anyone.

Agumon: “We’ll see about that, Aniki!”

~~~~

Agumon: “Hmph. Good luck, ‘cause you’re gonna need it!”

By wishing Marcus good luck, even if he means it as an insult, dub-Agumon is implying somewhat more of a sentiment of at least not wanting Marcus to get himself hurt doing this, which original-Agumon didn’t realise until later.

(Dub-Agumon doesn’t happen to call him Boss in this line, but he did so in an earlier line, so he is still doing that in the dub, too.)

The point I made in the original post about how these two scenes feel like one connected scene that ends on the note of Masaru going off to prove himself rather than them falling out doesn’t quite apply as much in the dub. Partly it’s because the dub doesn’t have the opening here, which isn’t its fault, but it also uses different BGM in each scene.

Elecmon: “So many toys to play with!” [evil chuckling]

I’m sure you can tell without me quoting the van driver’s line that this is not Elecmon echoing anything that any human said at all. Apparently it’s coming to the human world just because it genuinely personally likes messing with electronic devices. That is not how this is supposed to work, at all. Not even in the dub’s slightly different version of things!

Masaru: “Now there’ll be peace once again in the Daimon family.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Finally I have some peace now that Agumon’s not around.”

Marcus not mentioning his family makes this less about the petty eating and snoring concerns that the argument started off about. But this still does very much carry the tone of him trying to insist to himself that he’s totally happier this way when he very obviously isn’t.

Masaru: “I’ll do it all by myself.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Soon he’ll see! I don’t need *him* around!”

This, though, I don’t really like. The point was never specifically about Masaru proving anything to Agumon, and it wasn’t even specifically about the fact that he needs Agumon in particular. Masaru just wanted to prove, to himself, that he could do this (whatever “this” was) by himself.

Marcus’s intonation here is also quite overly-moody, making this come across a lot more like just a temporary tantrum rather than that this is connected to something that runs deep.

The dub decides to put a commercial break after this scene rather than after the Elecmon scene where the original opening went, even though this scene is short enough that they could probably have just as easily put it before it. I… think I like that choice? The Elecmon scene was always a bit unnecessary, so lingering more closely on the note of Marcus’s moodiness feels better. (Though it specifically lingers on that dub-changed line that I don’t like much, so, eh.)

That said, this next set of scenes cutting between Masaru out on his own stewing in his frustration and the DATS members trying to talk to Agumon in his Digivice does feel like it’s supposed to be one long connected thing in the original. So I dunno.

Megumi: “Look, it’s your favourite! A cheeseburger wrapped in another cheeseburger! With a cheeseburger for dessert!”

Um, that sure is a way to have a cheeseburger. Since she’s holding what looks like a perfectly normal burger, I can only assume she’s lying to try and make it sound more enticing to Agumon. (Also, haven’t you got the memo, Megumi? Agumon’s favourite is Sarah’s fried eggs, obviously.)

Yoshino: “How will they ever make up?”

Tohma: “It’s not something we should interfere with.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “You think those guys will ever be partners again?”

Thomas: “I have more important things to do than second guess those two.”

Originally the implication from Tohma was definitely that he imagined they would make up sooner or later and just felt it wasn’t any of his business to try and force it to happen. But Thomas sounds like he’s implying he wouldn’t care if they didn’t ever make up at all. That’d have been reasonable for him before he came to respect Marcus, but not now.

Satsuma: “They must learn why they’re important to each other. If they don’t find that answer, this is as far as they go.”

~~~~~

Sampson: “They need each other. But if they can’t see that, there’s no place for them here.”

Sampson is spelling things out a lot more explicitly for us. And it also sounds like he’s only thinking about this in terms of their suitability as DATS agents. The sense I got from Satsuma was that he was thinking more broadly about their growth as individuals and is concerned about that, DATS agents or not.

Masaru: (That little shithead. He was the one who first said he wanted to be my follower.)

~~~~~

Marcus: (I can’t believe him! He was the one who said he wanted me to be his boss in the first place. Then he gets upset when I act like a boss.)

That last dub-added part misses the point a bit. This is supposed to be about Masaru still having room to feel like he doesn’t need anyone, because Agumon initiated their partnership and looked up to him. This isn’t about Marcus acting in any particular way while being in that “boss” role at all.

(Maybe this could be read as Marcus deflecting from the real point here – but that’s not even necessary, since the real point is him being able to tell himself he doesn’t need Agumon. Masaru was also essentially deflecting from that.)

Masaru: “Damn it!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “This day just keeps gettin’ better and better…”

Marcus has more to say as he almost falls over from his missed baseball swing and leaves. I’m not sure I like his comment here, like he’s just thinking about this as one of those Bad Days where everything goes wrong, as if he was playing baseball as a totally unrelated way to pass the time and then this mishap just added to the Bad Things pile. Really, Masaru’s playing baseball because of the initial problem, as a way to physically let off some steam, and then he probably messes up as a result of that frustration of his, which only serves to amplify it.

Maybe it’s just the tone I don’t like as much – Marcus simply sounds fed up and exasperated, rather than actively frustrated about something that isn’t really the baseball at all.

Lalamon: “You always said you hated being in the Digivice because you were alone.”

~~~~~

Lalamon: “You said you hated being in the Digivice because it’s cramped and lonely.”

Ayy, the dub is still consistently sticking with its added emphasis that Agumon doesn’t like cramped spaces. I’m so weirdly pleased at this one bit of extra nuance that they manage to be completely consistent and also not-too-unsubtle about – probably because they’re not usually nearly this good. It’s to the point that I’m starting to have a strong theory that someone on the dub writing team had claustrophobia themselves and was projecting this onto Agumon, making consistently writing it this way personal to them, because they otherwise do not usually care enough to think about and follow through with the implications of minor changes like this.

Agumon: “You two wouldn’t understand.”

Gaomon: “That’s for sure. But that’s why I’m interested.”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Just drop it, you guys, you don’t understand!”

Gaomon: “It’s disgraceful. A member of DATS should take pride in his partnership.”

Original-Gaomon was simply curious here, perhaps showing a side of him that’s similar to his master’s very scientific approach to things. Dub-Gaomon is also showing similarity to Thomas in his strong sense of duty (plus pride in his partnership because he’s a dog)… but he is also kind of being more of a dick in the process.

Gaomon: “Fighting with your master…”

~~~~~

Gaomon: “Arguing with your superior…”

Since dub-Gaomon doesn’t call Thomas “Master”, this had to be changed, and this is a perfectly reasonable change, but it does still give Gaomon more of a sense of being an army grunt rather than a loyal dog.

Gaomon: “Interesting. And why do you argue so often, do you think?”

Gaomon’s tone at the end here is also kind of dickish, like he’s implying that it should be obvious why Lalamon and Yoshi argue a lot. Geez, dub-Gaomon, chill.

Lalamon: “Yoshino’s always really lazy! She doesn’t clean up her room, she doesn’t fold her laundry, she has bad sleeping habits and—”

~~~~~

Lalamon: “Yoshi’s great, but she’s bossy and messy! And you should see what she does with her toenail clippings—”

“Bossy” is a lot more in line with the Yoshi we already know (at least towards Marcus, who kind of deserves it), though the “messy” part is similar to the original in hinting at a side of her we don’t usually see. But overall – no thanks in large part to the toenail clippings joke – there’s much less of a sense in the dub that Yoshi’s an entirely different person at home and that she doesn’t work nearly as hard in her home life as she does at DATS.

Katsumata: “Da… Daimon!”

Masaru: “Katsumata? You’re still hanging ‘round here?” [he turns to walk away]

~~~~~

Boomer: “Huh? Oh… Marcus!”

Marcus: “Hey, Boomer. Uh, sorry I can’t really talk right now. I’ll see ya.” [he turns to walk away, muttering under his breath] “Doof.”

Masaru’s interaction with Katsumata is obviously somewhat unfriendly from the start, based on both their tones and Masaru’s implication of “I thought I drove you out of this turf”. But Marcus and Boomer are both being… polite to each other? I would have assumed they were friends based on this, until Marcus insulted him under his breath.

Which, since they’re evidently not friends – especially given what’s about to happen – just makes it come across as incredibly off that Marcus even pretended to be polite to him in the first place. Masaru would never do that; he never beats around the bush and would never hide it if he had a problem with someone. That straightforward sincerity he has is a really big part of his character and I am sad to see so much less of it there in Marcus.

Since Marcus was enough of a jerk to pretend to be nice and then insult them under his breath, it then also comes across like Boomer and his cronies surround Marcus for a beatdown mostly because of that, rather than that they’ve had a run-in with him before and want revenge.

Masaru: “What bad luck.”

Katsumata: “Cursing your fate won’t do you any good.”

Masaru: “I was talking about you. I’m extremely pissed off right now!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “You *don’t* wanna start a fight with me today.”

Boomer: “Just ‘cause it’s five against one? Hah. We’re callin’ the shots this time around.”

Marcus: “Is that what you think? Back off, Boomer, before I teach you bullies a lesson!”

Boomer: “Yeah, right. Get him, guys!”

On the other hand, Marcus’s “today” does imply that he might have had a fight with this dude sometime before. (Unless he just means “start a fight with me” in the very general sense that people often come to him looking for a fight and not necessarily this guy in particular).

That line is also the only part of this scene that gets across the important sense that Marcus is especially in the mood to give someone a beatdown right now because of everything that’s been going on.

The rest of it… really doesn’t. Bullies? I don’t know if this is trying to say that these guys are known bullies that Marcus has heard of or dealt with before (in which case, why would he bother being nice to them?), or just a comment on the fact that they’re surrounding him five-on-one (though Marcus isn’t entirely innocent in this, since he insulted them first). But either way, this is the dub trying to reassure us that, hey, really, it’s okay that our protagonist beats up these guys, because they’re bullies! They’re bad guys! Marcus is being the good guy here, see!

That is not supposed to be the point of this. Masaru wasn’t beating up unwilling bystanders – he would not do that – and only did this because these dudes were looking for a fight. But this is very much supposed to be Masaru doing something that is kind of not okay, as a result of his frustration with himself set off by his argument with Agumon. That’s the point! It’s good for this to not be a great thing for Masaru to do! Characters – even good characters – are allowed to do bad things. That’s what makes stories more interesting.

Marcus also at least tries to de-escalate the situation by warning Boomer to back off. That makes the resulting beatdown a lot more on Boomer for refusing to listen, and a lot less on Marcus, who is at this point mostly acting in self-defence. Apparently Marcus would have been perfectly happy to walk away from this if they’d had second thoughts and left him alone.

But Masaru never gave them that chance. Once they’d incited aggression first by surrounding him, Masaru took that as a free excuse to start letting loose on these dudes without giving them an opportunity to change their minds. He wanted an excuse to vent his frustration through violence and wasn’t going to back out of it once he’d been given one. Again, that’s the point.

Agumon: (Aniki hurt my pride.)

~~~~~

Agumon: (You really hurt my feelings, Boss…)

This is almost the same, but hurt feelings is a bit more of a general idea that hurt pride. Pride in particular is especially relevant here, since Agumon and Masaru both have a lot of it and that’s a big part of the reason why this is happening.

At least the musical cue as Marcus stands over the beaten dudes is appropriately sinister and painting Marcus as very much not a hero in this situation. The dub soundtrack people have the right idea, even if the dub writers don’t.

Marcus: “See? I don’t need help from anyone.”

Marcus has an added silence-filling line as he walks away, pointing out things that were already implied in the original because who needs subtlety. Also, hey, look, it’s almost like he really did just beat up those guys for his own issuey reasons and not because he was being a good guy defeating the bullies, how about that!

Though I also think this is somewhat missing the point. Yes, a lot of this episode is about Masaru trying to insist he doesn’t need anyone’s help. But this particular part is also here to show that his usual pastime of street fights against other humans isn’t enough for him any more, that he needs something more that fighting Digimon can give him. That’s what’s supposed to be the main thing on his mind as he walks away from this too-easy victory, rather than the more general don’t-need-anyone issue.

This whole part is one of my favourite delightfully-subtle bits of this episode, and the dub watered it down so much.

Old man: “Well, well, my angry young friend.”

Pfft. Not an inappropriate thing to be calling him right now.

Old man: “The things you truly need appear even when you’re not looking for them. That’s because you understand why you need them.”

~~~~~

Old man: “The things you truly need appear even when you’re not looking for them. So look for what’s new in your life and figure out why you might need it.”

Unlike last time the old man showed up to be vague and metaphorical, this time the dub actually translates his speech almost entirely word-for-word! Amazing. This is the one bit that’s slightly different – but if anything, the dub’s version makes more sense at a part where the original was a little bit “???”, so, hey, good job. This does also mean that the old man is somewhat more actively giving Marcus advice in the dub than in the original, but that doesn’t really make a difference anyway (because Marcus is still not listening).

Boomer: “What luck. I can’t believe I lost to Marcus again.”

Okay, so the dub is definitely going with the fact that Boomer is someone Marcus laid a beatdown on before today. They really shouldn’t have thrown doubt on that to begin with by having them sound like they’re being polite to each other in that earlier scene.

Katsumata: “Damn it, the stupid light’s taking too long again! Come on, change!”

Elecmon: “Lights, change!”

~~~~~

Boomer: “Why won’t these stoplights change already?! C’mon, c’mon!”

Elecmon: “More toys to play with!”

…So, yep, Elecmon coming here is totally unrelated to anything Boomer is saying or feeling. And therefore it’s nothing to do with Marcus that this is happening. (Which also makes it a hugely convenient coincidence that he happens to be nearby to this Digimon incident when he doesn’t have DATS to tell him where to find it.)

Agumon: “I decided I wouldn’t come out until Aniki apologises.”

~~~~~

Agumon: “I’m staying here until Boss apologises, so blame him if something goes wrong!”

Dub-Agumon is being more of an immature dick here. If something goes wrong that he could have helped with, it’s totally not his fault for choosing to put his personal issues above the importance of the case, sure.

Bystander: “I still can’t believe that no-one was seriously injured!”

Yeah, sure, dub, you just fill a silence with this to reassure the kids. It’s a huge flaming car crash, but it’s fine! Nobody was even really hurt, let alone killed!

Masaru: “It’s okay. You’re not hurt anywhere.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “It’s okay, kid, you aren’t hurt. Thanks to me, of course!”

Marcus, unlike Masaru, feels the need to make things about himself here, somewhat putting the damper on his selfless moment of heroism. Not completely, but he comes across as slightly less genuinely selflessly good as a result.

(It could be read like that comment is a result of the I-can-do-everything-alone issues he’s having this episode, but it feels like now of all times is when he should stop acting that way at all. That was the idea behind this bit in the original. Marcus’s tone for that part is still quite soft, so it also doesn’t sound like it’s part of his overcompensating.)

Agumon: “Aniki!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Oh no!”

Because “Aniki” is two lip-flaps, they can’t just replace a lone “Aniki!” with a lone “Boss!”, so instead Agumon says this, coincidentally sounding more worried than he did originally.

Yoshi: “Marcus, where’ve you been? Why didn’t you contact us?”

Marcus: “I’ve been busy doing my job!”

Yeah, sure, doing your job definitely includes playing baseball and beating up some random dudes. (Masaru did not try and make any such claim.)

Yoshino: “You don’t have a partner, so just wait here.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Without a partner, you’re useless, so just stay out of the way, Marcus.”

Yikes, Yoshi. Calling him outright useless like this is going to rile him up even more.

With the dub’s insistence on using its evolution music every single time someone evolves, at least these shorter evolution animations mean that the music doesn’t awkwardly loop exactly twice, and instead it plays smoothly through the two animations.

Masaru: “Even if I am [being absurd], I’ll use it to cut through a new path! That’s what a man does!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “An ultimate fighter never quits! Let’s go, you overgrown puppy!”

Even aside from removing the manliness part, they also removed the rest of what was fun about this line. Masaru has a delightful insistence about how he doesn’t care if he’s being absurd, that can be a good thing that’ll help him win! Marcus is just… never quitting, and then trash-talking his opponent. Which is fine, but… simple.

Agumon: “Aniki!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Oh, Boss!”

More ways for the dub to get around the lip-flap issue with short exclamations like this.

Yoshi: “Chasing something we may not be able to catch, to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved! Marcus must be terrified all alone.”

[cut to Marcus on Garurumon’s back]

Marcus: “Yaaaaa-hooooo!”

Look, I get the joke they’re going for here, but doing so compromises two characters. Why would Yoshi even worry about Marcus being terrified, after she literally just complained that he won’t want to be saved? She knows him, geez.

And then Marcus having great fun riding the Garurumon would normally be perfectly fine – see Drimogemon last episode – but one of the interesting points about this part in the original is that Masaru wasn’t having nearly as much fun with this as he had with Drimogemon before, as a sign that he knows deep down how outmatched he is without Agumon.

Masaru: “Hey, asshole, how far are you gonna go? Stop sometime! Damn, my arms are giving out! Are you trying to see which of us lasts longer?”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Hey, you digital dimwit, give it up! You’re never gonna be able to shake me off you! …Except my arms are starting to get tired. Well, let’s see who gives out first!”

He’s also a lot more openly cocky about being able to hold on, generally, despite that he does admit his arms are getting tired. Masaru’s lines gave more of a subtle sense that he was hoping it would stop so he wouldn’t have to keep holding on, if still not directly admitting that.

Masaru: “Hey. Don’t underestimate me!”

~~~~~

[Garurumon growls]

Marcus: “Woof.” [he lets out a wordless battle cry]

As much as I am kind of amused by Marcus aggressively making fun of his enemy being a big dog, I am sad that this comes in place of that fun original line in which Masaru had decided Garurumon was totally underestimating him, which definitely wasn’t him projecting his own self-doubt onto it.

Masaru: “Damn it, what do I do now?”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Oh, that’s right! I’m on my own here!”

Somewhat less of a sense in the dub line that Marcus is starting to wonder how the hell he’s going to win this now.

Marcus: “…Not fun.”

Marcus has this little comment about how it felt to be slammed into a wall, and I enjoy it.

Masaru: “Am I not… strong enough to beat him…? Is it really only a Digimon that can stop a Digimon…?”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Man, maybe I’m not strong enough to defeat this guy… Maybe it really *does* take a Digimon to defeat a Digimon…”

Despite his “maybe”s, Marcus generally sounds a lot more sure about this here, like he’s not actually having any real difficulty accepting this now, whereas Masaru was still struggling with it to the point of phrasing it as a question.

Marcus: “But still, there’s no way I’m gonna give up even if this turns out to be my last stand…!”

The dub has some extra lip-flap here, so this is also added in. Which I’m not super sold on. In keeping with a dub difference in episode 1 (wow, consistency), Marcus is apparently openly willing to just throw his life away for no good reason. Plus, the fact that he’s explicitly accepting the possibility he might get killed here means he really has accepted that he can’t do this with a lot more willing certainty than Masaru did.

(At least the dub managed to phrase the concept of him dying in a way that sounds natural despite not directly mentioning death.)

Masaru: (I was wrong… I need…)

~~~~~

Marcus: (What was I thinking? I couldn’t have defeated that guy [Tortamon] by myself, and I can’t beat Garurumon either! I need Agumon, and now I’ll never get to tell him I’m sorry!)

These are both lines that take up the same amount of time, believe it or not. Marcus is way more internally-talkative and generally perfectly articulating the problem he was having and the Lesson He’s Learned. Meanwhile, Masaru was coming to this realisation a lot more slowly and gradually, barely able to articulate it to himself beyond the most simple and important part. The original’s writers were happy to leave some silent gaps in between his thoughts to do the rest of the work more subtly.

The dub’s also really doubling down on the idea that Marcus is very consciously aware that he’s probably about to be killed here. Him lamenting not being able to apologise to Agumon is cute, but I still don’t know if I like him having admitted the about-to-die part to himself in the first place.

Sadly, the dub does not have the extra layer of Marcus’s screams of exertion that are what’s physically coming out of his mouth during this part. Regardless, these are definitely internal thoughts, because they have an echoey sort of effect on them to imply that. (The original doesn’t use that effect for its inner monologue lines at all.)

Masaru: (I need… I need Agumon! I want to fight together with Agumon!)

~~~~~

Marcus: (I get it now. I need you, Agumon! What makes us strong isn’t you or me… it’s both of us working as a team!)

Them working together as a team being the reason they’re strong is a cute (and correct) sentiment, don’t get me wrong, but I still like it less how Marcus is able to perfectly articulate this to himself and has just very straightforwardly Learned His Lesson.

Also, the loss of specifically “I want to fight together with Agumon” loses the possibly-unintentional call-forward in that line, which makes me a little sad.

Marcus: “Right. We’re the ultimate team!”

With the dub’s “ultimate team” being a whole Thing that’s in more than just this episode, it has a more impactful effect to bring it back here that the original can’t do. So that’s a plus for the dub, at least.

Marcus: “Never surrender, GeoGreymon!”

The evolution theme, being an instrumental remix of the dub’s opening theme, happened to have the part of its melody which matches with the dub’s opening lyric of “Never surrender!” just a few seconds before this line. Heh. I wonder if that was deliberate.

Masaru: “There’s no way you can lose to a Digimon like that!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Remember, you’ll never lose as long as we fight together!”

Marcus’s line here is more adorable than Masaru’s, putting the focus on their partnership rather than just implicitly insulting their opponent! (It could be read that Masaru was specifically referencing the fact that Garurumon doesn’t have a partner and that’s why GeoGreymon should win, but if so that’s not all that clear.) I approve.

Masaru: “You did it, Agumon!”

Agumon: “Aniki!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “You did it, Agumon!”

Agumon: “*We* did!”

The dub did indeed go for “you” with the translation of Masaru’s subject-ambiguous Japanese line – and then they had Agumon add in a “we”, for maximum adorableness!

Masaru: “We can beat any Digimon if we’re fighting together!”

Agumon: “Yeah! We’re the strongest combination ever!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “As long as the two of us work together, no Digimon can stand against us!”

Agumon: “Yeah, we’re still the ultimate team, Boss!”

The dub’s version of this is basically the same right here, but what it unfortunately doesn’t do that the original did is directly echo what the two of them said in the beginning of the episode, but with the speakers swapped. Here’s the earlier bits:

Agumon: “As if any Digimon could beat us when we’re fighting together!”

Masaru: “Yeah! Because we’re the strongest combination ever!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “There’s no Digimon that can beat the ultimate team!”

Marcus: “Yeah! Agumon and I are the strongest team ever!”

Alas, apparently the dubbers didn’t realise that was a deliberate callback and make sure the earlier lines were worded so they’d work with this.

Agumon: “Nah, it’s fine. I’m sorry, too.”

~~~~~

Agumon: “No. I should be apologising to *you*.”

The dub’s version of this contains the awkward implication that Agumon isn’t just giving his own apology but also feels like Marcus didn’t even need to apologise in the first place. Which isn’t right, since both of them were equally at fault here. I don’t know if the dub even meant to imply this, but that’s how Agumon’s phrasing reads.

Masaru: “Crap, it’s Yoshino. Run, Agumon!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Oh man, I’d rather face another Digimon than Yoshi. Run!”

The original reads like Masaru is trying to run because Yoshino is going to force him to clean up his mess. In the dub, it reads like it’s not so much about the clean-up and more like he’s mostly running because Yoshi is scary when she’s mad, which has a vaguely uncomfortably sexist vibe to it.

(Also, why is he acting like facing another Digimon would be a bad thing? Of course he’d rather fight another Digimon than face Yoshi, regardless of her anger or the clean-up, because fighting Digimon is his favourite thing!)

Overall differences

Well, at least they didn’t ruin the overall point of the episode like they could have by changing the reason Marcus and Agumon fall out. I had wondered if the bizarre misconception I’ve seen of “this episode is bad because they fall out over fried eggs!!!” came from the dub, but no, it very much didn’t. That part is perfectly intact. That said, there’s a lot of other changes going on in this episode that I’m not too fond of, especially because a lot of them mess with the fun nuanced bits.

The ridiculous small-business jokes during their argument further highlight how nonsensical it always was to call Agumon Marcus’s “employee”, and they detract from the meaningful points being made there about their respective roles in the relationship.

Elecmon is entirely lucid and simply coming here because it wants to mess around with traffic lights, which is extremely not how things work, not even in the dub’s version of why these Digimon incidents are happening. It also means this incident isn’t indirectly Marcus’s fault, which was a thing I enjoyed in the original.

The scene where Marcus beats up the dudes is probably my least favourite of the changes. The dub completely fails to grasp that Masaru doing something kinda not okay is the whole point of that scene. Instead it scrambles to insist that their kids’ show protagonist is still a 100% squeaky clean good person actually, because look, he’s only beating up bullies! And yet despite that, Marcus also acts weirdly uncharacteristically polite to this person that he has every reason to openly dislike.

Just like in episode 3, Marcus is a lot more articulate and self-aware about admitting exactly what his problem is and the lesson he’s learned in this episode (though at least in this episode he actually learns it), which continues to be less interesting and nuanced than the way Masaru struggles a lot more to fully accept and understand his issues. There’s also a recurrence of the thing from dub episode 1 in which Marcus is fully, consciously aware of the possibility that he might die, which is not something Masaru ever quite lets himself acknowledge even when he’s inches away from being eaten.

At least a few of the lines in the scene where he and Agumon make up are changed to be a little bit more adorable in the dub than they were originally, so there’s that.

#digimon #digimon savers #digimon data squad

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