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Digimon Savers Episode 32 - The Fierce Attack of Kurata’s Army! Protect the Holy Capital!

In this episode, as the battle for the Holy Capital continues, Yoshino finds herself fighting Ivan, unfortunately. Meanwhile, in amongst the fighting, Kurata pulls off a tactic more unexpected and dangerous than merely attacking the city directly.

After another reasonably short recap (I really overestimated how soon they’d start getting long, huh), we begin the episode with some more of Masaru’s fighting against endless Gizmon: XT on the way to Kurata’s camp. This time, it’s actually well-animated, as ShineGreymon throws a Gizmon into a tree and slices it – and the tree – up with his claws.

Then literally one shot later, Masaru’s looking around, and… why is Agumon there. Why did you devolve, Agumon? There’s obviously a good chance there’ll be more to fight! Masaru can’t just evolve you at will like everyone else can, you know!

Ikuto and Falcomon hurriedly call them over to a cliffside where they can see the lake where ElDoradimon is positioned – or rather, the quickly-emptying lakebed, after Nanami destroyed the waterfall last episode.

Falcomon: “But with the water gone, ElDoradimon is left wide open to attack!”

It’s still a little weird that they’re acting like that’s such a big deal on a dry lakebed as opposed to a full lake, when the Gizmon who are attacking it could have flown over the lake anyway. Again, there is actually a meaningful disadvantage to the water being gone now which we will get to in this episode, but it’s not something obvious and certainly nothing that’d be likely to occur to Masaru’s group here.

Agumon asks if they should head back, but after a moment of looking worried, Masaru says no.

Masaru: “I left Tohma to protect ElDoradimon. It’ll be okay.”

He still trusts Tohma to have his back and hold down the fort, just like Yoshino knew he did! (And he doesn’t have any idea that the lake got drained specifically because Tohma failed to protect it despite his best attempts, heh.)

The four of them continue on their way to attack Kurata’s camp. As the sun rises, Ivan stands among a huge army of Gizmon – AT and XT versions – along the perimeter of the lake, while the Holy Capital’s army of Digimon watch them nervously from their positions on ElDoradimon’s ramparts.

Baromon: “I didn’t think they would drain the water. Now ElDoradimon is…!”

Still not actually any significantly more exposed than it already was, as far as you should be able to figure! (Though, do note the fact that Baromon had no idea the lake might be drained; here’s confirmation that Tohma very much didn’t tell anyone about the waterfall being the key potential weak spot in the strategy when he went off to defend it alone.)

Yushima approaches and tells them to calm down and not to waver, because this is still a fight that they can win.

Baromon: “That’s right! We have our saviour’s son on our side! We must keep standing until he’s gotten us our victory!”

Yushima didn’t even mention Masaru at all, but apparently even a tiny bit of renewed positivity is enough to send Baromon back into clinging to the idea that Masaru will definitely save them, and all they have to do is buy him enough time.

At Ivan’s order, the Gizmon troops swoop in and swarm around ElDoradimon. They’ve still got those suction thingies to drain life energy from the Digimon they kill; it sure says something about Kurata’s confidence here that he’s willing to have the Gizmon spend some of their time doing that in the midst of a big battle.

Yushima gets in on the action and evolves Kamemon… still only to his Adult level form, Gawappamon, for some reason. You’d think he’d already be able to evolve him at least to Perfect and that now would be a good time to show off that form of Kamemon’s. We will see Kamemon’s Perfect form once much later on, but if we had his Perfect now, that future episode could instead show off his Ultimate form, which we never see at all.

Gawappamon is able to… not necessarily destroy, but hold his own against a Perfect-level Gizmon: XT. Yeah, told you these things are gradually decreasing in power and threateningness.

Somewhere up in one of the city’s towers, Lalamon is very valiantly Nuts Shooting her heart out to hold off a Gizmon: XT that’s looming in a window (I guess it appeared so suddenly that she didn’t have time to evolve).

She holds her ground until Yoshino rushes in carrying a barrel over her head and smashes it into the Gizmon’s face, man look at her being impressive and badass and getting in on the fighting herself. Masaru would approve.

The impact knocks the Gizmon back, but Yoshino’s momentum also sends her tumbling out of the window into a long drop. Lalamon zooms down to grab her by the jacket and luckily is somehow strong enough to lift an entire human’s weight.

Lalamon: “Yoshino, you’re amazing! You took down a Gizmon: XT!”

Yoshino: “Thanks…”

She did and it was awesome and she deserves to feel proud of herself for that. (Well, the Gizmon’s not completely destroyed, but it’s out of their hair for now and probably at least a bit weakened, is the point.)

They land lower down on the city and rush towards a nearby explosion at one of the outer walls, only to find…

Ivan: “I’ve found you, my beloved honey.”

Yoshino: “Huh?”

Lalamon: “‘Honey’?!”

Yoshino: “I’m getting a bad feeling about this…”

Yeah, I don’t blame you for feeling that way, Yoshino, because that’s exactly how I’m feeling about this development, too. Brace yourselves for a whole scene of Ivan’s terribleness.

Ivan: “‘I love you’… is something I could never say out loud.”

You don’t love her, you barely know a goddamn thing about her, you absolute creep. And how in the world is it possible for him to consistently not be aware he’s saying this stuff out loud. This is a terrible caricature and not a character.

Ivan wonders how she could have possibly known it was him before she turned around (it’s because you’re the only person who hits on her and who says his thoughts out loud, you freaking moron) and concludes it’s totally because she must be in love with him too, oh my god he is terrible. Yoshino bluntly points out the reason why it was obviously him, and now he acts flustered and embarrassed that she knows his deepest feelings, urgh.

Yoshino: “You’re not even trying to hide them, are you?”

Honestly I’m tempted to believe this is what it is, because being like this on purpose would make him just slightly more of an actual person, but on the other hand it’d also make him even more of a massive creep. Not that I care enough to really come down with a strong interpretation either way, because this is barely a character here.

Ivan: “So that I can earn the privilege of dating you… Fight me, Honey!”

THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS, you creep! Even if you did beat her in a fight, she wouldn’t owe you a goddamn thing. Urgh ugh ghhh.

Yoshino is appropriately bewildered, but apparently Lalamon is feeling fiercely protective.

Lalamon: “I accept your challenge! But if I win, you’re not allowed to go near Yoshino ever again!”

Lalamon. Lalamon, I appreciate your desire to protect Yoshino from this asshole, but this is not the right way to go about it. By accepting his challenge, you are validating the idea that he ‘deserves’ to go out with her if he wins, and that is not okay. The only way to deal with such a preposterous moron is to refuse to engage with him on his bullshit terms at all.

Ivan: “Hahaha! I’ll win and go out with Honey!”

See! He thinks this means it works that way! No! Stop it!

Lalamon: “Once you see my evolved form, you’re gonna pass out from a squirting nosebleed!”

Geez, apparently Lalamon is self-aware about her Ultimate form being blatant fanservice.

The entire tone for this scene is trying to be very overtly comedic, which, A, a dude pressuring a woman into feeling obligated to date him is not funny, and B, even a scene that was funny would be a bit of a tonal whiplash in the midst of this battle to defend a city from genocide. Come on, writers.

Yoshino drags Lalamon away from her fierce battle taunts to have an aside conversation with her.

Yoshino: “Just a second, Lalamon! Why are you accepting the match?! What’ll happen if something goes wrong?!”

Yoshino doesn’t outright say as much, but she’s clearly thinking about the fact that if Lalamon does lose, she’ll just have “““obligated””” Yoshino to go on a date with Ivan by having accepted his terms at all. Which is exactly the problem! And despite how ridiculous and bad this scene is being, I do still appreciate that Yoshino realises this and is trying to point it out and wants none of this nonsense. Always the most competent and the most Done with everybody’s bullshit, I love her.

Lalamon: “Chances are, he’s the one who’s commanding the troops.”

Yoshino: “So, you’re saying, if we keep Ivan occupied, the Gizmon’s attacks will weaken?”

Lalamon shifts into whispering as she says this to Yoshino – and this is an actually legit reason to have Ivan’s fight! I sincerely hope and want to believe that Lalamon’s fierce taunting and acting like she was buying into the whole stupid dating-ultimatum was all an act so that Ivan wouldn’t realise there was another more strategic reason for her doing this.

Lalamon: “We can’t just keep him occupied. We need to knock him down so he’ll never do anything bad ever again!”

Also a fair point – they do need to defeat Ivan anyway so that he won’t keep murdering more Digimon, so who cares about the bullshit “terms” he made up for a fight that they’re determined not to lose for more important reasons anyway?

Rosemon: “Now that I have the power of the Ultimate level, Ivan is no match for me.”

It seems that part of the reason they’re so confident they’ll win this is because they’re not aware of the fact that the Bio-Hybrids can now also evolve to Ultimate. Nanami’s the only one who’s shown that power so far, and she was alone with Tohma.

Ivan’s evolution into BioSpinomon is actually animated in a cool way. Instead of a simple wave of Digisoul acting like a screen-wipe transition between the two forms like most non-fancy-animation evolutions happen, we instead see his body distort and morph, scales and spines growing out of his skin, Ivan groaning as it happens. It’s still fairly tame in how it looks because this is a kids’ show, but there’s some body horror to that; the process seems grotesque and painful. Which is neat, especially because this is an unnatural method of evolution! I wish all the Bio-Hybrids evolutions were animated like that, but alas, this is just a one-off stroke of inspiration by whoever decided on it for this episode.

Rosemon: “I’ll show you that size is no indication of strength!”

Oh, Rosemon, stuck being the human-sized one among the Ultimate-levels. (Even Lilamon was about twice a human’s height.) BioSpinomon is indeed a fair bit bigger than her, though not as giant as ShineGreymon and the like, because that’d be a bit too much of an awkward size-difference for this fight.

As BioSpinomon meets one of Rosemon’s attacks with his own, matching it in power, he boasts about how much faster and more powerful his new form is, and then turns it into a line about how his “love for Honey is infinite”, urghhh he is the worst.

And the writers decided to have that be the note on which we go to the opening, which I also do not appreciate!!!

Riding on the wind of dreams

and surpassing the glittering rainbow

I continue on towards my journey

Anyway, the new opening again, reminding me that Savers is in fact a good anime which I love despite current appearances to the contrary. It has the usual sort of main character shots showing the various evolution stages of their partners that most Digimon openings do, and I like these ones more than in the previous opening. They’re more dynamic, and feature the characters in poses that seem like they’re upset and brooding about something; I enjoy the once-an-episode abstract reminder that these characters very much have Issues.

…I’m showing Yoshino’s one now because unfortunately this is the most singly Yoshino-focused episode we’re going to be getting for the rest of the series, which is not a fact that I’m a fan of.

Anyway, back to the fight, Ivan is still insisting that if he wins this he can “make Yoshino his lover” and I hate it, thanks. At least Yoshino continues to be completely Nope about all this.

BioSpinomon: “Your cold words only prove the love you secretly feel for me.”

Oh my GOD, no means no, you absolute troglodyte.

BioSpinomon: “I-want-to-share-a-juice-drink-with-two-straws Bomber!”

Ivan then goes into a series of attacks that he gives his own stupid names – here’s just one example, I couldn’t handle quoting more than that – of things he wants to do with Yoshino. I am very thankful this is a children’s anime and therefore these are all G-rated cutesy romance things rather than what they could be from the mind of a creep like him, but still, ugh, bad, shut up.

BioSpinomon: “This is all so I can get Honey and have a loving relationship with her.”

Shut. UP. She’s not a freaking prize, you objectifying piece of trash.

What’s also so jarring about this is that Ivan wasn’t even this bad in previous episodes. When he first saw her, it was just “hm, she might be my type”, and now it’s suddenly all “I’M MADLY IN LOVE WITH YOU”. It did not need to be this way, even if we have to stick to the previously-established fact that, okay, he happens to find her attractive. You are busy carrying out a genocide, dude, do you not have better things to be focusing on.

Yoshino, still frustratedly Done with all this nonsense, fervently tells Ivan she has no desire to do any of the things he mentioned with him (though frankly I don’t know why she’s even bothering when he’s already made it clear he doesn’t care what she wants and refuses to listen to the word “no”).

Rosemon: “Don’t worry. I’ll never hand you over to him, Yoshino.”

I really really want to think that Rosemon is only saying this to continue to play along with Ivan’s nonsense so that he doesn’t realise this is a distraction tactic, but I’m not at all sure that’s what the writers want us to think.

This shot of them staring each other down like Rosemon is equally invested in fighting with Ivan over Yoshino sure doesn’t make it seem that way. Apparently Ivan’s terrible writing spilled over onto Lalamon’s character just a little, which makes me sad.

Yoshino: “What… are you two doing?”

At least Yoshino continues to be 1000% Done with all of this nonsense, not letting the fact that even Rosemon is somehow in on it sway her from displaying the correct attitude here. Good.

Anyway, we get a scene change now! Finally we can move onto something else that isn’t that bullshit, dear god.

Tohma is carrying Nanami’s ambiguously-unconscious body through the forest near where the waterfall was. Gaomon is unevolved; apparently Tohma still hasn’t considered the concept of evolving him for faster transport.

Gaomon: “Will you be heading back to the Capital now? Or will you join up with Masaru to deal with Kurata? Master? Master!”

Gaomon asks him these questions, but it seems Tohma was zoning out and didn’t properly register anything. He stares at the unconscious Nanami, remembering what she said to him when she lost, about how he only won because he used Masaru’s power.

Gaomon: “Master!”

Tohma: “No. Masaru said he’ll be fine on his own. Let’s hurry back to Yushima and the others.”

It takes another prompt from Gaomon to finally get him to respond. Given what he was just thinking about, I suspect Tohma’s choice to leave Masaru to his own devices isn’t entirely a strategic one and is also because he can’t bear to put himself in a position where it’ll look like he’s relying on Masaru again, having Masaru take all the credit for victory.

We go back to the fight with Yoshino, which I’m not as grumpy about this time, because the writers are about to finally remember how to do their job properly. Rosemon makes a shield out of thorny vines to block more attacks coming their way, which is a neat ability of hers that I don’t think we ever see again.

Out of nowhere, a Yashamon (Armour-level, essentially Adult, doesn’t stand a chance) leaps in and valiantly attempts to attack BioSpinomon from behind. He notices and slams it to the ground before it can reach him.

As the injured and shaking Yashamon begs him in terror to spare its life, BioSpinomon slowly and deliberately removes one of the huge bladed spines from his back.

Yoshino: “Ivan, don’t!”

Yoshino calls out to him as she realises what he’s about to do, and there’s something I really like about this. Despite the utter preposterous nonsense she’s just had to deal with from this asshole, she still can’t help but try and stop him murdering someone, even using his name in an attempt to appeal to the human person that surely must be in there somewhere beneath all the bullshit.

(And she’s not entirely wrong there; we are finally, actually about to get into the part of Ivan that’s something of an interesting character, thank god.)

Ivan doesn’t listen or even acknowledge her appeal, and he stabs the Yashamon to death.

Rosemon: “How could you…?”

Yoshino: “You’re despicable… How can you still regard yourself as a human being?!”

BioSpinomon: “Despicable?! This is merely business!”

Note how Ivan’s not precisely denying the accusation he’s despicable and practically inhuman; he’s dodging and deflecting the point. He explains that he was hired by Kurata for money, and in exchange for that, he let Kurata modify his body and use him for hunting Digimon.

BioSpinomon: “It is my duty to obey Kurata’s orders. Hunting for Digimon is my business!”

Yoshino: “This is the worst.”

That’s Yoshino’s usual catchphrase, but in this instance I might have been tempted to translate it as “You’re the worst”, for once, especially with the grim stare at Ivan that it comes with.

In a quick cutaway to Kurata’s camp (Masaru’s group still hasn’t shown up there yet) he gets a video call from some of his troops out in the battle near ElDoradimon.

(Kurata was also yawning before the call came. So tedious, this genocide business.)

Specifically, the troops are on the dry lakebed near ElDoradimon’s feet, setting up some kind of device there. This is why the waterfall being destroyed mattered; the human troops wouldn’t be able to do this with the water still there. It’s also notable that directly underneath ElDoradimon, near its feet like this, is effectively a blind spot for everyone up in the city, blocked from their view by the turtle’s giant body. Nobody on the Digimon side has any idea this is happening right now; they’re all too caught up in fighting the hordes of Gizmon up top.

The soldier informs Kurata that the operation will be complete in five minutes, and a timer starts counting down.

Kurata: “Now, it won’t be long before the greatest chapter in the history of mankind begins!”

Still very much with that gloating. Obviously his deeds are going to be the greatest thing humanity has ever seen; his genius inventions and power to destroy an entire species make him the most important human ever, right?

As we cut back to Yoshino and Ivan, Yoshino is giving Ivan an impassioned speech about how Digimon are people and can be our friends, so what does he mean killing them is just “business”?

Yoshino: “That doesn’t upset you? Do you not feel anything from seeing the pain and suffering… of the Digimon that you’ve hurt?”

BioSpinomon: “Having a heart is unnecessary for business, Honey.”

(Urgh, there’s an actual meaningful point in Ivan’s line but I hate that it comes in the same breath as calling her “Honey” yet again, do you not see the contradiction in this statement, Ivan. Or rather, writers.)

What Ivan’s really saying here (yet deflecting from in the way he talks about it) is that having basic human feelings about the Digimon he’s murdering for money is getting in the way of his job, so he’s chosen to forcibly suppress those feelings and not let that stop him. That’s actually somewhat interesting! A lot more so than him being an asshole who never cared in the first place, like he’s appeared to be up until now.

Yoshino: “Don’t call me your honey!”

Really Yoshino should have been objecting to that point in the first place, simply on the grounds that she doesn’t want to be called that. But her saying this here in particular is at least showing that she’s just gained an especially strong disgust for Ivan as a person after hearing that he’s willingly suppressed his feelings to let himself murder Digimon for money.

And the interesting thing is… this isn’t entirely unlike Yoshino herself, in certain ways? Obviously she’s not doing something as horrible as murdering Digimon for money, but I’ve talked here and there about how she must have never really wanted to join DATS in the first place. She must have been forced to, because it was the only way for her to keep Lalamon with her. And then somewhere along the way she apparently suppressed those feelings of hers about hating being forced into this, to the point of coming across like DATS’s policy about that is totally acceptable and okay to her.

This is a way in which Ivan could have been an actual interesting foil and parallel to Yoshino! If the writers hadn’t spent so much of their time making Ivan The Worst, they could have gone into this and spent this episode using him to parallel and explore that part of Yoshino that’s always been low-key there but never highlighted! Sigh. I am disappoint.

BioSpinomon: “I won’t ask you to understand. But I will carry out the orders that Kurata gives me without complaint.”

Based on this, Ivan also appears to have suppressed the part of himself that cares about having other people understand his actions. He is willing to have everyone else think he’s a heartless monster, if that’s what has to happen for him to carry out his orders.

(This sentiment sure seems contradicted by the earlier parts where he was trying to get Yoshino to date him now, doesn’t it, sigh. But at least he is being an actual character and treating Yoshino like an actual person now; better late than never.)

BioSpinomon: “This is the contract that I voluntarily sought after!”

Rosemon: “It’s not just your body… You even sold your heart to Kurata.”

Rosemon sums it up pretty well; Ivan was willing to give up his integrity and decency as a person in order to get this money from Kurata, and he even seems somewhat aware of that. It doesn’t seem like he’s doing this just out of greed, because greedy people who only want to be rich don’t tend to care about their integrity in the first place.

All this makes Yoshino even more determined to defeat Ivan, so Rosemon fires off a furious series of attacks at him, including one called Ivy Hug in which she summons thorny vines from the ground around the enemy to grab hold of them. That’s another neat ability of hers that we never see again. Clearly Forbidden Temptation and its G-rated nudity is far more important for us to be seeing all the time, right.

Rosemon: “Someone who’s given up his heart has no right to speak of love.”

EXACTLY, Rosemon! Thank you for summing up precisely why Ivan’s terrible caricature “comic relief” nonsense traits actively harm the part of him which is an interesting character that we’re seeing here. The whole point of Ivan’s issues is that he’s willingly suppressing all his emotions to be able to do this, so why the hell is he not also suppressing his attraction to someone fighting against him? And why does he have that ridiculous habit of saying his thoughts out loud if he’s trying to suppress them all?

(Note how literally none of the thoughts he’s ever “accidentally” said out loud have had anything to do with his feelings about murdering Digimon. I’d actually be somewhat more on board with that whole thing if they had been! It’d still have been a little bit silly, but Ivan saying stuff like “I feel so awful about killing all these Digimon… but I’d never say that out loud,” while Kurata and Nanami and Kouki just kinda raise their eyebrows in response would at least feel somewhat relevant to the point of him.)

Rosemon’s comment was seemingly intended by her to be a battle-ending one-liner, but we’re doing the whole “smoke clears, nope he’s still standing” thing again here. Ivan is really determined to earn that money that he’s murdering Digimon for.

BioSpinomon: “I have a reason for carrying through with this mission. For that, I will give him my body, my heart… Everything I possess!”

It sure doesn’t sound like this “reason” that he’s willing to both physically and morally destroy himself for is just money in and of itself. He needs that money desperately for something, and that something can’t really be himself if he’s sacrificing everything for it like this.

With that determination, he fires a huge blast of blue flames at the pair, and Rosemon has to use her body to shield Yoshino, getting badly hurt herself in the process. BioSpinomon winds up for another attack, intending to finish them off.

(Oh hey look at him coldly getting ready to murder the person he was trying to freaking date earlier, it’s almost like that earlier part made no sense for his actual meaningful character)

Rosemon: “Yoshino, run…”

Yoshino: “What are you saying? Stand up, Rosemon!”

Aww, look at them being friends! Rosemon wants Yoshino to stay out of danger, but Yoshino wants to stay and help, and she can, helping Rosemon to her feet. There’s something neat about having Rosemon be the same size as a human here, because it allows Yoshino to physically support her and makes this feel like more of a human moment between regular friends than it really can with the giant Ultimate forms.

With Yoshino holding onto her friend for companionship and support, Rosemon gathers her strength and fires her attack to get into a big dramatic beam-war with BioSpinomon’s blue flames.

Yoshino: “We can’t lose… I won’t… I won’t let you kill anyone any more!”

Just when it looks like Rosemon’s about to be overpowered, Yoshino refuses to accept it and explodes with her fiercely rekindled determination to never let anyone get murdered ever again. I like to think that it’s that emotion powering her Digisoul within her partner that gives Rosemon the strength to turn the tides and overwhelm BioSpinomon.

Over at Kurata’s camp, just as Kurata gets the news that BioSpinomon’s signal has been lost, Masaru and Ikuto and their partners finally make it there. (You know, if Agumon had stayed evolved at the beginning of the episode, you could have got here a lot quicker and flattened Kurata a lot easier, just saying…!)

Falcomon swoops forward, intending to drop a smokescreen on Kurata, but before he can, Kouki leaps in and punches him out of the air. It shouldn’t be a surprise at all that he is also willing to straight-up punch Digimon even in his human form.

As Kouki taunts them about how long they took to get here, Masaru charges in – only for Kouki to dash forwards and grab Masaru by the face to fling him back, yikes, that’s kinda brutal. I mean, Masaru is bound to be used to this kind of thing from his anything-goes street fights, but still, ouch.

Yoshino and Rosemon approach Ivan lying defeated on the ground, back in his human body with his Digimon form reverted to an egg next to him. Yoshino notices a photo poking out of his pocket and takes a look at it.

Ivan: “Give it back…”

Yoshino: “Ivan!”

Ivan: “My photo of my siblings… Give it back!”

The photo shows nine siblings, all of them little kids, while Ivan is the eldest by far. The family must have come from an impoverished background, likely with no parents in the picture any more, so many mouths to feed – Ivan as their big brother would do anything to get his siblings the money they need to live a decent life. Even turn himself into a monster, physically and morally.

Yoshino stares at the photo, realising what Ivan meant earlier when he said he had a reason for going through with this, something he was willing to suppress his emotions and destroy himself for.

She gives the photo back to him, and he clutches it to his chest fondly. I kinda like that, as well as his desperation to get the photo back in general. It’s probably been ages since he’s seen his siblings after joining Kurata’s mission, and he must miss them a lot.

Yoshino: “Ivan, you idiot! You gave up both your body and heart for money! Do you really think your family will be happy about that?!”

She’s got a good point there. He got them the money to live comfortably, sure, but they’re going to be devastated and horrified if they ever find out what their beloved big brother did for their sake!

Ivan doesn’t say anything else, but he does start to cry before passing out. Seems maybe he realised on some level that Yoshino was right.

Yoshino: “He takes advantage of other people’s weaknesses… and makes them do things like this… I’ll never forgive Kurata for this.”

Granted, surely there must have been plenty of other potential ways for Ivan to make the money he needed to support his siblings without having to become complicit in genocide. But I like Yoshino’s line here and the angle it suggests: Ivan was desperate, and Kurata preyed on that desperation by offering him this opportunity, perhaps in such a way that Ivan never realised there was any better way out. Seems like Kurata knows that younger siblings whom somebody would do anything to help and protect can make for a conveniently exploitable weak point.

God, look at Ivan being an actually interesting character with issues and arguably-sympathetic motivations, what a wild concept. I legitimately like this aspect of him; it’s just such a shame that it was never visible until nearly halfway through this one episode.

Elsewhere on ElDoradimon, the Gizmon are retreating away from the battle, and Yushima wonders why. Meanwhile, Tohma – oh my god he’s evolved Gaomon for transport, it’s a miracle. That’s a grand total of two times that’s happened so far this series, let’s keep a count of this, I don’t think it gets much higher.

Flying towards the city on MirageGaogamon, Tohma also sees the Gizmon retreat, but from his vantage point he can spot something else as well that those stationed on the city itself can’t: the devices that the human troops have set up around ElDoradimon’s feet. He lands near one to investigate it – it’s a cluster of space-time oscillation bombs, set to go off, with less than thirty seconds left on the timer. Far too late for Tohma to do anything to disarm them.

(If only you’d evolved Gaomon sooner, huh? Alas, it happened this way for the writing convenience of having Gaomon be Gaomon for the earlier scene where Tohma was brooding about Nanami, and now having MirageGaogamon out so that Tohma could actually get back to the city in time to be there for any of this at all.)

Back at Kurata’s camp, Ikuto helps Falcomon to his feet and evolves hi – oh dear, you guys don’t realise you’re on a time limit here, you don’t have time for lengthy evolution animations. (Maybe we can pretend this scene actually began a little bit before the scene with Tohma such that they happened concurrently, because we see the timer at 25 seconds and yet it takes something closer to a minute in episode runtime for the bombs to go off after that. That or Yatagaramon’s evolution doesn’t actually take up any in-story time at all despite how long the animation is.)

Yatagaramon looms over Kurata, and again Kouki simply leaps into the air and kicks him this time, still 100% willing to attack a Digimon in his own human body. Kurata watches all this calmly and chuckles, knowing that the timer’s about to hit zero and they’re going to have bigger problems to deal with than him once it does.

Kurata: “It’s showtime!”

He still likes to drop this line when he’s about to do something genius and murdery. Everyone come and marvel at The Kurata Show.

The space-time bombs positioned all around ElDoradimon’s feet detonate, creating one huge Digital Gate on the ground beneath it, bigger than the city turtle itself, and ElDoradimon begins to sink into it. Not only was Kurata’s camp a distraction for Masaru’s little group, the entire battle with the Gizmon was a distraction for everyone, so that they would be too caught up in that to notice his real plan. Kurata’s going to drag the Holy Capital itself and every Digimon in it into the human world.

(Despite how Yoshino and Lalamon decided to fight Ivan in order to distract him from leading the troops, it’s actually entirely possible that Ivan engaged with the pair in order to distract them, knowing that his role was to buy time until the bombs went off. I would certainly like to think that all of the dating nonsense was Ivan merely pretending to have a shallow foolish reason for getting caught up in this “distraction”, so that Yoshino doesn’t realise really he’s the one distracting her. I don’t know if I have enough faith in the writing of Ivan to believe that’s really what they were going for, though.)

As Masaru’s group watch this unfold in horror from the hill the camp is on, Kurata catches a ride on a Gizmon and flies off. He could have done that the entire time, but it seems he was content to sit and act as “bait” to draw Masaru here and distract him for long enough, knowing Kouki would protect him from actually getting killed by any huge angry Digimon. Plus, if he hadn’t stayed here until the key moment, he wouldn’t have got to gloat to his enemies, and that’s clearly very important.

Masaru is still faced with a Kouki intent on punching his lights out, and it’s possible he’d have been down for that fight, but thankfully Yatagaramon has his priorities straight and grabs Masaru, Agumon and Ikuto to fly them towards the city as fast as he can. If they don’t get there before ElDoradimon sinks all the way through and the Gate closes, they’ll be stuck here on the Digital World side, completely unable to help.

Kouki: “Are you running away, you bastard?!”

Kouki, do you not think he has slightly better things to be doing right now than fighting you. Not everything revolves around you. You’ll get your chance soon, chill.

As Yoshino and Rosemon stand in the sinking city, at a loss for how to stop this, MirageGaogamon flies past, and Yoshino and Tohma exchange a glance. Tohma doesn’t say anything, partly because it’d be difficult to hold a conversation at this distance, but also perhaps because, what is there to say? The last time he saw Yoshino would have been just before he headed off on his own to guard the waterfall without telling anyone – and he failed, and now ElDoradimon is sinking because he couldn’t protect it.

(He can’t even really blame it on Masaru recklessly running into a trap, because even if he and Ikuto had been here in the battle, what could they have done to stop this either?)

Kurata’s Gizmon swoops over the scene just so that Kurata can survey his handiwork and gloat to nobody at all about how this is all just as he planned. Look, I’ll give him this: it was a legitimately good plan. Nobody suspected this until it was far too late, not even Tohma, who knew that keeping the lake filled with water would be important but didn’t quite manage to pick up on the reason why.

Yatagaramon and his three passengers get caught up in a frantic aerial chase back to the city while Gizmon try to shoot him down. (No, this does not count as evolving for transport, because Ikuto evolved him earlier for the sake of fighting.) Yoshino and Rosemon watch from a distance, powerless to do anything to actually help.

Also, please appreciate this shot of them waist-deep in interdimensional void. This must be a very weird experience for anyone in the city.

As the Gate slowly begins to close and more Gizmon crowd around Yatagaramon and grab hold of him, the big crow does a rapid spinning attack to shake them all off. It works, but it also makes Masaru extremely dizzy. The troubles of riding a giant evolved Digimon who is also trying to fight things.

Ikuto is fine though, somehow, and eggs Yatagaramon on into one last desperate swoop to make it into the Gate in time.

In the human world, out over the Yokohama bay, the huge Digital Gate that’s opened in midair slowly deposits the entire giant city turtle down into the water, sending a huge tsunami out from where it landed. From the perspective of human civilians who’ve only known Digimon as this mysterious dangerous invading force, this probably looks like more of that.

Overall thoughts

Well. This is another episode that I often consider a candidate for my least-favourite episode in Savers, for obvious reasons. The first Ivan scene here is terrible and the only point in Savers at which I actively dislike what I’m watching. But the rest of the episode’s still pretty decent, so it’s hard to hate it that much as a whole?

Once they get into the second half of the episode and Ivan starts being an actually interesting character, I can appreciate what they’re going for there! If the idea of him as someone who’s willingly suppressed his empathy for the sake of making money for his starving younger siblings was something they’d leaned into more for his entire screentime and not just literally this one part, I’d appreciate Ivan a lot! But geez, it sure is incredibly undermined by absolutely everything else about his portrayal up until that point.

Still, better late than never. At least it’s something. Thanks to this, my opinion on how to fix The Ivan Problem in this story is not “ditch him entirely”, but rather, “expand upon this actually good aspect of his character while ditching all the terrible parts entirely”.

Thanks to Ivan being mostly terrible, we also miss the opportunity to focus on Yoshino and get into her issues in this episode. There totally is potential for Ivan to be an interesting foil to her, in that she’s also been going along with DATS simply because she’s had to for the sake of Lalamon (who’s like family to her!) and has suppressed all the parts of her that never really liked this arrangement in order to get by. That could have been great! But no, clearly the more important thing to do with Yoshino’s Bio-Hybrid rival is have him hit on her because she woman. Urgh. Come on, Savers writers, you are usually so much better than this, why did this happen.

Still, on the bright side, we are now done with Ivan and never have to hear him say words ever again.

Yoshino and Ivan aside, the other thing I do appreciate about this episode is the overarching plot of it with the space-time bombs. Kurata’s plan with that really is quite impressively clever and unexpected. Each of these episodes spent fighting for ElDoradimon has a distinct progression from one stage of the battle to the next, so that all of the background action outside of the individual Bio-Hybrid fights doesn’t feel samey, and I enjoy that.

---

[Dub comparison]

#digimon #digimon savers #yoshino fujieda #lalamon #ivan #tohma h norstein #kouki #akihiro kurata #baromon #the digivice old man

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shihalyfie · 3 years

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How would you describe the relationship between each respective goggleboy and 'rival'? Ive seen different interpretations but im curious what you think! Not to mention that the fans are sometimes arguing over who the 'rival' actually is, like with Daisuke where some people say its Ken and others say its Takeru. (I dont think there are actual rivals in the show, except for maybe Manga!Kiriha who outright says he will be just that with Taiki.)

One thing to keep in mind is that the word "rival" has kind of integrated itself into anime lingo as a full-on English loanword, so it comes from expectations of anime tropes more than anything. While even official staff has used that word in talking about Digimon, as you say, it never really fit to begin with, because not only has Digimon TV anime never been a particularly conventional shounen series in many ways, that term was also mostly coined in light of series where that term made a lot more sense. As in, they were more likely to be actually competing over something (in sports, or something tournament-based like card games); in that sense, a "rival" would be someone who might be antagonistic by being on the other side of the field, but would have a mutually positive relationship with the other person overall because the competitiveness would keep both of them on their toes and allow both of them to improve together. Digimon is not the first time this term has started getting overapplied to contexts where it doesn't really fit at all (it's been going on in Super Sentai for years), so people generally have a greater perception of it broadly meaning "two characters who have differing opinions on how something should be done due to their differing personalities, and sometimes fight over it", but in Digimon especially, it really does seem like trying to smash a square peg into a round hole.

The short answer: Xros Wars is probably the only one you can make a real argument for.

The long answer, in detail:

Adventure: I cannot emphasize enough that Adventure, being a series that was really big on that whole trope subversion thing, is a series that casts the trope of "rivalry" as "getting in a lot of fights" as a bad thing -- it's actually pretty unsubtle about it, because the word "rival" itself is explicitly used in Adventure episode 44, by Jureimon trying to manipulate Yamato. Or, in other words, "hey, if you saw someone who's supposed to be your supportive friend as someone you had to constantly compete against for no good reason, wouldn't that be really messed up?" Adventure does not even bother with or remotely believe in the idea that fighting somehow is a sign of how good friends you are, at least, not as long as that fighting is a sign of genuine hostility and refusal to communicate (which is why Yamato punching Taichi in 02 doesn't count). Every time Taichi and Yamato got in a fight back in Adventure, it was heated and ugly, and everyone in their presence was horrified, and once they sorted out their issues in Adventure, their appearances in 02 and Kizuna involved properly talking things out and making an active attempt to understand each other's feelings. There's a bit of bickering between them due to said opposing personalities, but it's never over anything serious (see the contrast in Kizuna between them having a bit of a minor row at the beginning, but high-fiving right after and spending the rest of the movie practically counseling each other).

02: Straight-up does not exist. Daisuke may have seen Takeru in that way due to the Hikari issue at first, but he was really running in circles getting absolutely nowhere about it, Takeru was mostly like "okay, you have fun with that," their only major argument about anything was the very serious issue in 02 episode 11, and it still resulted in Daisuke trying to understand Takeru's feelings. I think all of it boils down to Daisuke himself just not having that kind of personality to begin with, because he's friendly and supportive before anything else, and the whole thing with Takeru became a non-issue after a fashion (way before we even get into Kizuna, at that). Ken has the word "rival" sometimes applied to him in official franchise media, but nobody ever believes it. Sure, Daisuke and Ken have fairly complementary personalities, but they seem to both be aware of this fact and actively using it to help each other. It's very, very, very hard to imagine them ever getting into any kind of fight the way Taichi and Yamato used to in Adventure. It's just not happening! They're "best friends" who enjoy each other's company and actively hang out, and...yeah, that's it.

Tamers: Also does not exist! I know a lot of people really try to say it's Ruki because she's the one with the lone-wolf attitude and aggravated Takato at first, but my impression of Takato's attitude with her wasn't out of any competition but more that he'd like it if she didn't try to pick fights with him. Which she does actually stop after a while, mind you, and you could even make an argument that she's more of a foil to Jian than Takato, because Jian's the one who was completely pacifist at first, with Takato caught in the middle. In the end, Ruki never actually attains a particularly close relationship with Takato compared to Jian, nor does she really keep up a particular competitive streak with Takato; she kind of pops in and out at her leisure because of her more independent streak, and Jian ends up more of Takato's right-hand man (which is why the franchise presumably picks him as the secondary character to feature whenever they do "secondary characters"), but neither Takato nor Jian are prone to conflict and the entire trope is just fundamentally absent. The Tamers trio, is, ultimately, a trio.

Frontier: Takuya and Kouji are probably the first pair to really look like a proper execution of the trope, and at the very least they align pretty perfectly to how it's known in Sentai: a more hot-headed, aggressive lead with a more cool-headed and cynical right-hand man, where they end up often prone to conflict over dispute on how to best lead the team. However, while it's much more of a conventional execution than Adventure (since Adventure had Yamato actually be more prone to being an emotional fuse bomb whereas Taichi was often too chill more than anything), there being any conflict isn’t gone into that deeply beyond just "their personalities are complementary", and in that sense it's not far off from Adventure itself.

Savers: The series kind of baits you into thinking it might go this way when Nanami taunts Tohma about how he had to resort to a Masaru-esque tactic to beat her (it's one of its early red herrings about Tohma supposedly betraying the group), and it does have traces at the start because of how blatant of a foil Tohma is to Masaru, but one thing important to consider is that while the "rivalry" of what's being competed over is barely even relevant in most Digimon series to begin with, Masaru and Tohma don't even have a "group" to lead -- they're the employees under DATS who are being given orders from above, and are dealing with situations as they come. Masaru ends up leading the charge a bit, but he's not actually a leader in any shape or form, and Savers is more of a story of Masaru's coming-of-age than anything else, so while the series mostly has to do with his personal philosophy more than Tohma's, it ultimately lets the two of them pursue their lives their own ways. Masaru's worst bout of infamous anger is at being hurt over Tohma's apparent betrayal, not against him personally.

Xros Wars: I would say this is the only series to date where the term "rivals" properly applies, and it's because they're fighting over something concrete: the Code Crowns, and eventually Digital World territory. So in this case, for the first two parts, the answer is obviously Kiriha; Nene was a rival at first, but after various events happened she allied with Xros Heart early into Death Generals, and while Taiki and Kiriha had a relationship of mutual respect, Kiriha still considered him an opponent over what they were competing for until eventually the Xros Heart United Army fully came into formation. In the manga version, Kiriha does invoke the word "rival" in the above sense of competing to polish one's skills, but ironically, its version of the Death Generals arc involves them being much more in-tune with the same goals, so it might actually apply less because Taiki kind of responds with "uh, sure...?" since he's not nearly as interested in self-improvement. In Hunters, while it initially seems like it might be Yuu, the answer is really Ryouma, and note that Ryouma never really forms a particularly close relationship with Tagiru; it's just that he's the person most at the forefront for competing with Tagiru in the Hunt, to the point he's the first person chosen to wield the Brave Snatcher and turns out to be a bit of a foil for Tagiru in terms of actually having admired Taiki this whole time.

Appmon: Also does not exist. Rei tried to do the whole schtick in terms of competing for the Seven Code Appmon at first, but Haru was having none of that and immediately reached out to him emotionally, worrying about his welfare, and although Rei had a bit of a detached relationship with the other Appli Drivers thereafter, it really was friendly more than anything, just a bit awkward. Haru and Yuujin aren't even on the table, since their relationship is "best friends" akin to Daisuke and Ken.

Adventure: reboot: Also does not exist, considering that Taichi and Yamato bickering over the best way to approach things is limited to the very beginning of the series (and one of those times was with Yamato and Sora, not Yamato and Taichi, at that). In fact, I think most of these kids have been acting separately for most of the series anyway...?

#digimon #shiha's ask box #timelessanimo #digimon multi series talk

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tojisveryown · 3 years

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Ayo sexy mamasss how you doin shawty??? Ayeeeee hahah. Anyway, you're amazing! Don't forget that!

🂱 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐲𝐩𝐞 : INTP-T (funny how i was a INFP-T for 5 years and suddenly this year, i changed to the Logician)

🂱 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 - Libra sun, aries moon, taurus rising (pls... pls idk.. my head strong libra nature contrasting with my anger and confrontational prone aries moon topped with my lazy yet nonchalant taurus rising hah

🂱 𝐀 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 - From my own friends, I've heard "mother figure" but from myself, I'd say "eccentric"

🂱 𝐀𝐧 𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐣𝐢 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 - 😩

🂱 𝐇𝐨𝐛𝐛𝐢𝐞𝐬 - Singing, dancing, watching anime, embroidery, sleeping (if that is a hobby HAHAH), cooking

🂱 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐦𝐞 - Fullmetal alchemist brotherhood, Hell Girl, Slam Dunk, Devils Line, Boku no Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen, Haikyuu, Detective Conan, One Piece, Digimon (I.. I liked it more than Pokémon and got into fights with my friends as a child when they said Digimon is a copy version of Pokémon 😭), Hori-san to Miyamura-kun and many more.

🂱 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐚 - Shin Chan, Doraemon, One Piece, Dragonball, Slam Dunk, Jujutsu Kaisen

🂱 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐉𝐮𝐣𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐮 𝐊𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐧 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫 - Isn't it obvious? Gojo the mf playboy Satoru and Nanami my baby Kento!

🂱 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐠 - Ohh a looot but I'd say Trip by Ella Mai is my most favourite song

🂱 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐟 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 - 4'11, dark brown eyes, I've naturally dark brown hair but I dyed it wine red, I have fuller hips and my thighs are slightly thicc (ahaa) and I've chubby cheeks, my hair slightly passes my shoulders and I've slightly uneven eyelids

🂱 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐫 𝐟𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐞 - Anyone except Mahito

🂱 𝐇𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐉𝐮𝐣𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐮 𝐊𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐚/𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐮𝐩 - Yessss. RELEASE MY GOJO. He's a dumbass tho. I can't keep defending that mf even though I love him to bits

ok shawty lemme just get you outta the way before I do the rest.

I match you up with...

𝐓𝐨𝐣𝐢𝐬 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐦

↳ I matched you up with Toji’s worm because I can feel this connection that you two share. yeah. that’s the tweet.

okay fr tho, I match you up with...

𝐌𝐚𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐨

↳ I matched you up with Mahito because I can see you guys as the couple who takes candies from babies as a joke but you’d end up feeling bad and buying the baby some better candy i hope. I can also see the two of you dancing in the kitchen after a long day of work, I picture it as if you two were eating your dinner and all of a sudden a song comes on and Mahito pulls you out of your chair and you two begin to slow dance in the kitchen.

↳ I head canon that you two sing to each other during car rides, I can imagine the windows being rolled down and the both of you screaming at the top of your lungs going “THEY DON’T KNOW ABOUT THE THINGS WE DO, THEY DON’T KNOW ABOUT THE I LOVE YOU’S, BUT I BET YOU IF THEY ONLY KNEW THEY WOULD JUST BE JEALOUS OF US”

Note: read Mahito as Gojo LMAOO I’M SORRY I JUST LOVE TROLLING YOU

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flowisk · 6 years

Note

1,2, multiples of 5, 27

1. What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get? In BNHA? bakudeku. i don’t think it makes sense as a popular ship in the -manner- it is portrayed. I like it in a certain way! it’s just…. it’s one of those things where it’s like ‘you guys arent responsible enough to have this’umm…. im guessing this is more focused on popular pairings. hm. Shigadabi is like that for me too, on both ends. And Endmight. Todo/Inasa. There’s a few ships in BNHA that make me feel this way tbqh. Highest quotient of feeling confused by shipsThe fact kiibo’s biggest ship is kiibo/ouma. ouma is like. Really Mean to kiibo. not in a playful way either. I don’t even like. understand the fun part of that dynamic.Claptrap/Glad0s, because even in the Poker Night where it’s portrayed it makes the characters miserable. For me, it’s not fun unless it makes those two happier because they’re already both kind of miserable in their canons. Plus it was more like an uncomfortable joke in Poker Night anyway.Honestly? Not anything against it even, but I don’t get the popularity of Zoro/Sanji. Like, why it’s so big dynamic wise. I just dont get the vibe.Frisk/Sans, aside from the (obvious) issues I have with it, I just don’t understand the popularity. I think it might come from treating Frisk as a self insert? But the vibe of the game is not very romantic in that regard.2. Are there any popular fandom OTPs you only BroTP?For me this is a bit hard, because the line between romantic and bromantic doesn’t seem to be a big one. It’s a bit hard for me to parse, realistically. I feel romantic as a label encompasses many different types of relationships… and even in relationships I -prefer- as platonic, I can often support some romantic art too.But anyway, Frisk/Sans. This one is for obvious reasons. A lot of Frisk ships are like that, tbqh. Kirishima + Mina, Todo + MomoTho I use a ship tag for them, Mob + Tsubomi tbqh.Tavros + Gamzee… lol. Team Charge tooAlso I can accept a onesided Flowey/Asriel > Pap, but if it’s returned it’s weird for me bc I see Flowey as so young.Also even tho I ship them as an ot3, for me with Ko + Hinata + Nanami, its more like Hinata is romantically involved w both and Nanami and Ko are like… QPPsKurapika and Pairo actually? I don’t object to past crushes or w.e, but I interpret them as strictly just friends.5. Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?Johnrose. Realistically, somewhat Spacetime.4chan, Todomomo.I’m trying to cling to it bc as a dynamic i dug it but the amedot fans are fuckin mean sometimes.Cliche, but zuko/katara. I don’t mind those three as an ot3 but most zutara fans are mean to aang so I just…. have a distaste for it now. Aang’s my boy10. Most disliked arc? Why?The final two chapters of DR1 were not very fun for me because everyone I cared about died.Digimon S2′s enjoyability did not necessarily come from it being very good. I like it but plot holes.I really really did not enjoy the School Trip Arc in BNHA outside of the fact that like… Kouta exists15. Unpopular opinion about the manga/show?3 on SU:1. Amethyst was more in the wrong than people are willing to admit in ‘Too Far’.2. I think that SU is a good show even if it has occasional issues.3. Pearl is a good character2 on Digimon S2:1. I hated Daisuke from Digimon S2 for a long time and only recently do I not feel pure hatred when I look at him.2. Ken’s arc, while satisfying on an emotional level bc of his redemption, is not well written1 on Haikyuu:1. They should’ve let Oikawa at least beat Ushijima instead of giving that match to Karasuno to make them more ‘awesome’1 on BNHA1. Horikoshi has to have some of the teachers learn how to properly mediate Bakugou and Deku, or stop forcing them to work together. I’m tired of Deku performing all the emotional labour in that relationship, and trying to get Bakugou to work with him only to be physically assaulted. again. and again. Also everyone in that manga acts like it’s Deku’s equal responsibility to force Bakugou to work with him when Bkg has only ever been mean to Deku… he ends up doing 90% of the work…20. What is the purest ship in the fandom?Haha that’s a hard thing to qualify - in BNHA, I think tododeku. I think it’s the most pure thing I earnestly ship. Kenhina for haikyuu I guess, it’s one of the few relationships in that series built on mutual adoration. Saikiibo.Alphyne and Connverse are like that too actually I think. Very emotionally encouraging relationships.25. How would you end XXX/Would you change the ending of XXX?I would have ended Walking Dead much much much much much much sooner.I wish Digimon Tamers hadn’t ended so abruptly, and Impmon got more time with his tamers.27. Least shippable character? Shigaraki’s really hard to ship because of the people around him and his current emotional position.Papyrus and Luffy can be in QPPs for me but I don’t actually ship them with anyone. Same with how I feel about Katniss. You could say that’s true of a lot of aro characters, but there’s some aro characters who I feel would be interested in trying relationships regardless. I feel for characters like Papyrus and Luffy we see them basically say…. they’re not interested in that kind of thing

#necromin #replies

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mijikai-tan · 7 years

Note

Besides samewada (of course) what are your favorite ships/otps?

I have a long list of shippings…lets see if i can remember all some of them

Anime/Manga ships

Sasusaku (Sasuke and sakura) from naruto (OTP/SHIP)

Naruhina (Naruto and hinata) from naruto (OTP/SHIP)

Nalu (Natsu and lucy) from fairy tail (OTP/SHIP)

Gruvia (Gray and Juvia) from fairy tail (OTP/SHIP)

Jerza (Jellal and erza) from fairy tail (OTP/ship)

Tsumiki x io from acchi kocchi (OTP/ship)

Edwin (Edward x winry) from fullmetal alchemist/full alchemist brotherhood(OTP/SHIP)

Royai (roy and riza) from fullmetal alchemist/fullmetal alchemist brotherhood(OTP/SHIP)

Syaosaku (Syaoran and sakura) from cardcaptor sakura (OTP/SHIP)

Inukag (Inuyasha and kagome) from Inuyasha (OTP/SHIP)

Tomoya x nagisa from clannad (OTP/SHIP)

Ryuuji x taiga from toradora (OTP/SHIP)

Kyo x tohru from fruits basket (OTP/SHIP)

Natsume x Mikan from Gakuen alice (OTP/SHIP)

Kirito and asuna from Sword art online (Okay look, this anime is shitty, I’ve hated this show but however, I love their romance) (OTP/Ship)

Kyousuke x kuroneko from Oreimo (Again, Another anime that was beyond shitty just like SAO but I REALLY loved their chemistry together///Was a shame that they didnt ended up together tho (OTP/SHIP)

Lelouch x CC from Code geass (OTP/SHIP)

Okikagu (okita x kagura) from gintama (OTP/SHIP)

Shota x Sawako from kimi ni todoke (OTP/SHIP)

Hak x Yona from Akatsuki no Yona (OTP/SHIP)

Haru x Shizuku from tonari no kaibutsu-kun (OTP/SHIP)

Soushi x ririchiyo from Inu x boku ss (OTP/SHIP)

Shu x Inori from Guilty crown (OTP/SHIP)

Eremika (Eren and mikasa) from Shingeki no kyojin (OTP/SHIP)

Ymir x Christa from Shingeki no kyojin (OTP/SHIP)

Rivetra (Levi x petra) From shingeki no kyojin (OTP/SHIP)

Rin x shiemi from Ao no exorcist (OTP/SHIP)

Usui x Misaki from Kaichou wa maid-sama (OTP/SHIP)

Takuto x Mitsuki from Full moon wo sagashite (OTP/SHIP)

Amuto (Ikuto x amu) From shugo chara (OTP/SHIP)

Kazume x Karin from Kamichama karin (OTP/SHIP)

Mochizou x Tamako from Tamako Market (OTP/SHIP)

Yoh x Anna from Shaman kin (OTP/SHIP)

Ren x Jeanne from Shaman king (OTP/SHIP)

Soul x Maka from soul eater (OTP/SHIP)

Yuji x Shana from shakugan no shana (OTP/SHIP)

Hayate x Nagi from hayate no gotoku (OTP/SHIP)

Gin x Rangiku from Bleach (OTP/SHIP)

Yukari x reimu from touhou (OTP/SHIP)

Tomoyo x Nanami from Kamisama hajimaeshita (OTP/SHIP)

Megaman.EXE x Roll.EXE from Megaman anime series (OTP/SHIP)

Alex x Kirie from Himouto! Umaru chan (OTP/SHIP)

Taihei x Kanau from Himouto! Umaru chan (OTP/SHIP)

Soul x Maka from soul eater (OTP/SHIP)

Gen x Beni from tenkai knights (OTP/SHIP)

Gasser x Beauty from bobobo-bo-bo-bobo (OTP/SHIP)

Koji x Izumi from Digimon Frontier (OTP/SHIP)

Hiro x Nine alpha from darling in the franxx (OTP/SHIP)

Zorome x miku from darling in the franxx (OTP/SHIP)

Hiro x zero two from darling in the franxx (OTP/SHIP)

Colonello x Lal Mirch from hitman reborn (OTP/SHIP)

Satou x Yachiyo from Working!!(OTP/SHIP)

Games

Sequelshipping (Hugh x mei) from Pokemon black/white 2 (OTP/SHIP)

Ferriswheelshipping (N x Touko) from Pokemon black/white 2 (OTP/SHIP)

Conflictshipping (Blue x leaf) From Pokemon fire red/leaf green (OTP/SHIP)

Franticshipping (Brendan x May) From Pokemon ruby/sapphire/ Omega ruby and sapphire (OTP/SHIP)

Calem x Serena from Pokemon X and Y(OTP/SHIP)

Naegiri (Makoto x Kirigiri) From Danganronpa trigger happy havoc (OTP/SHIP)

Vaughn x chelsa from Harvest moon island of happiness/ Sunshine islands(OTP/SHIP)

Gray x Claire from Harvest moon DS cute (I know there was other versions but I never played them)(OTP/SHIP)

Yoshiki x Ayumi from corpse party(OTP/SHIP)

Aya x Dio from Mad father (OTP/SHIP)

Defect mogeko x Yonaka from Mogeko castle (OTP/SHIP)

Wodagrora (Wodahs x grora) from the gray garden (OTP/SHIP)

Eticalb (Kcalb x etihw) from the gray garden (OTP/ship)

Yosafroze (Yosafire x froze) From the gray garden (OTP/SHIP)

Emalfire (Emalf x yosafire) from the gray garden (OTP/SHIP)

Fukadol (Fukami x dolphi) from wadanohara and the great blue sea (OTP/SHIP)

Oldtatsu (Old x tatsumiya) from wadanohara and the great blue sea (OTP/SHIP)

Salmiko (sal x Mikotsu) from wadanohara and the great blue sea (OTP/SHIP)

Mystic messenger- female player x all the main interests in the game

Characters that arent from a game/show/anime/manga but by a creator(mostly DSP’S characters)

Daimonji x cosmea (OTP/SHIP)

Liliya x Rosaliya (OTP/SHIP)

Chlomaki x fungas crocodile (OTP/SHIP)

Satanlil (satanick x lil) (OTP/SHIP)

Glasses x Kiku (OTP/SHIP)

Reficul x Sin (OTP/SHIP)

Scor x Mitsuki (OTP/SHIP)

Miscellaneous (Category of ships that are either from both games to series, etc ALSO crack-ships/A few cartoon ships)

Sonamy (Sonic x amy) from Sonic (OTP/SHIP)

Shadmy (Shadow x amy) from sonic (OTP/SHIP)

Silver x blaze from sonic (OTP/SHIP)

Death the kid x Maka from soul eater (OTP/SHIP)- Woop-woop, this is a crackship, I ship them for their chemistry///But dont worry, I also love soul with maka

Rito x Ren from To love ru (OTP/SHIP)- Alright, I may not be into yaoi/fujoshi but however, Harem animes are so bad, I always tend to ship the main male protag with his guy friends instead because yknow what, fuck yo harem and its shitty cliches

Saito x Julius from Zero no tsukaima (OTP/SHIP)-Another yaoi crackship for this. I may ship saito and louise together but at the same time, I really hate how she treats saito (I like this ship but I hate it at the same time because of louise hhhHHHH) so uhhhh again, FUCK YO HAREM GIRL CIRCLE AND ITS CLICHES owo (Julius and saito is the true ship in this series, sorry i dont make the rules)

Blossick (Brick x blossom) from powerpuff girls (OTP/SHIP)

Fiolee (Marshall lee x fionna) from adventure time (OTP/SHIP)

Thats all for now(?) Anyways, those are my ships and my preferences so yeah.

#QUICK NOTE #These are just my ship preferences so yeah #btw if you antis see your notp in here dont even bother being a dick about it and waste your time #Just lettin ppl know when they look #personal

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jolteonjordansh · 7 years

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Thoughts on Kurata Arc

We got a doozy, guys. I have no idea how to start this other than oh God. Lots of changes to talk about, lots of characters, and lots of opinions. But in one sentence: Digimon Savers did but also didn’t go in some of the directions I expected it to and I’m kind of blindsided by it.

Let’s deal with this below the break.

I can’t believe how many risks Digimon Savers took in a single arc that it could have screwed up so easily. I was so ready to get so irritated with this series if they screwed up so many specific and particular things, but they managed to nail it in a way that made things work miraculously.

So there's a second opening in this arc! Digimon has never done a second opening before, but it's a Koji Wada opening! And I'm so torn because both the first opening and this one, Hirari, are super catchy and great. Seriously, I don't think I can pick between the two. But regardless, go listen to Hirari. Any Koji Wada song is worth your time.

Anyway, I'm ready to tear Kurata apart, but let me try to keep some order in this post. I do like how this series goes between the Digital World and Real World, but it's not as convenient as it was in Digimon Adventure 02 and there is some danger to it. This is especially an issue when Kurata destroys the DATS headquarters and the only Digital Gate the cast had there. Thankfully, there is a Digital Gate in the leftover basement of Keenan's parents. Naturally, they're against seeing Keenan go to the Digital World with the rest of the cast after finally seeing him again, but they eventually agree to let him go. Unfortunately like Adventure 02, this show felt the need to do a set of comedy antagonists. While I do think Arukinemon and Mummymon had some merit and humor, Savers' comedy trio... doesn't quite catch my interest.

Kouki, Nanami and Ivan are examples of people Kurata takes advantage of, and I can say I like that much of their characters. Nanami is vain and wanted more in her life and knowledge, and Ivan worked with Kurata to get money for his siblings. But this is about as much depth as they get. Nanami is mostly fanservice with boob jiggle physics, and Ivan is a really annoying comic relief character who wants to bone every girl he sees. There's also Kouki, who basically serves as Marcus' rival in that they both want to punch the shit out of each other, but that's it. There's no reason for him to offer himself for Kurata's research other than he wants to fight things and feel powerful. I guess you could argue this was part of the reason Marcus joined DATS, but he also joined them to be Agumon's partner, so there is some depth for him. I can't help but admit that these three being humans fused with Digimon is actually Frontier done right to an extent. Silly nonetheless, but there's some sick cruelty behind it that characterizes it as part of Kurata's insanity and sadist nature. If not Frontier done better, it certainly feels like a Take That to Digimon Frontier. The trio of dumb does prove to be strong adversaries if anything, supposedly killing Richard as the main cast escapes to the Digital World, but I don't think Richard's dead yet. I just don't think he would die that easily and to such loser characters. Plus, they can't get rid of my adorable Kudamon that Digivolves to this badass!

The main three characters also manage to achieve Mega level almost simultaneously. They have to train with BanchoLeomon who I know is going to die too, and this somehow fixes their Digivices after breaking them from a sudden surge of power in their last fight with the trio of dumb. I do appreciate how Marcus' achievement to Digivolution to Mega with Agumon was done since he fought hard the entire time in BanchoLeomon's dojo, but Thomas and Yoshino's felt sort of sudden. Hell, Yoshino didn't even fight the wooden dolls that BanchoLeomon had. They just made it work. I'm glad they do all achieve Mega level at least, but I will agree what does bother me a little bit is that the development of characters doesn't quite feel balanced. It's not to a point that it ruins any of the characters, but I do feel the lack of balance. You can really feel this for Keenan and Falcomon a bit in this arc, who don't achieve Mega level until the very end of the arc because they leave to do their own things in the Digital World and don't get the same experience as the other three. Even then, their excuse to leave was kind of flimsy at best. But again, not enough to ruin any of these characters for me.

I am glad we get to know the mysterious old man more--Homer Yushima. The main group ends up running into him and he does provide a funny supportive role, and his partner Kamemon is a funny partner with his odd shyness. I would classify him as a badass old man, but he doesn't really do anything really kickass. He's just there to be a cool old guy and be quirky. The supporting cast, in general, is pretty good, like Miki and Megumi actually participating (even if they are mostly back-up) and Marcus' mother and sister. There's a couple of Digimon on the "holy capital", ElDoradimon, but most of them really don't mean or do anything and one of them, Baromon, has about as dumb of a death as Seraphimon's in Frontier. But other than the supporting cast, some big changes happen in the main cast within this arc, and the writers could have totally screwed this up so easily.

In the midst of the Digital World part of this arc, Thomas gets pointed out ways he may be inferior to Marcus or even similar to him but not as good. This starts to set up the potential rival mini-arc, kind of like with Tai and Matt in Digimon Adventure, and this really started to irk me. I did not want to see Digimon Savers copy this plot point of Digimon Adventure, especially since Marcus and Thomas already had their fight in the beginning of the show and generally recovered from it. It definitely comes across this way, especially when Thomas decides to "join forces" with Kurata and fights Marcus for the sake of his surprise younger sister's health. It really frustrated me, but thankfully Digimon Savers somehow managed to land right on its feet and make this whole elaborate plot that shows just how clever Thomas really is, when initially it made him look really stupid.

The whole thing comes across as Thomas letting his emotions take over his intellect, between his supposed "grudge" against Marcus and his love for his younger sister, but no. Kurata is just a really clever asshole who put Thomas in a terrible position by having a bomb on Relena and having Thomas figure it out, so he knows fighting against Kurata would only end up getting Relena hurt. But he also makes his whole non-existent grudge against Marcus all the more convincing. And it's convincing all the way to the very end, down to Thomas creating a faulty device for Kurata to control Belphemon and to agree to Relena's surgery to do a human to Digimon fusion until the very end and utilizing his actual doctor title. It's here we also see Thomas kind of has an asshole dad because he was neglectful of him and his mother, but still loves Relena. It's still a little confusing and I'm hoping we get some depth on that.

This whole "betrayal" also leads to the inevitable Dark Digivolution of the series, which I had honestly forgotten about because I was becoming so immersed into it. It's all triggered by Marcus' anger towards Thomas for seeming to betray him, and the raw anger of his DigiSoul transforms ShineGreymon to his Dark Digivolution, ShineGreymon Ruin Mode. It actually works really well with the whole theme of the soul in Digimon Savers and Marcus' negative emotions are personified really well into ShineGreymon Ruin Mode, who is overcome with so much of Marcus' negative emotions that he just continues to rampage until he will destroy himself. Marcus is thankfully able to stop this... but at the cost of ShineGreymon reducing to an egg once more. This does lead to a good character arc of Marcus having to understand how to control his raw emotions and deal with the despair of losing Agumon--especially since it's speculated that all Digimon who are reduced to DigiEggs lose their memories. Lucky for Marcus, this doesn't happen, but they do a kind of funny fake-out with it that just fits Marcus' relationship with Agumon. Their reunion is honestly pretty emotional, as silly of moments as it has, and it just really solidifies how much more I like Marcus and his Agumon. Also, the way Marcus carries around the egg towards the final fight is weirdly adorable.

And now, I can finally talk about Kurata. Ho. Ly. Fuck. I hate this guy. Everyone hates this guy. He's the actual definition of a douchebag. No, seriously, if you look it up in the dictionary, you'll see his picture there. He's despicable in every way possible. He's a spineless coward. He takes advantage of people's emotions and fears. He's a liar who claims he's out to do one thing like destroy the Digital World for the safety of the Real World (even though that was wrong to begin with), then he decides "Fuck it, let me rule both worlds!". He kills hundreds of Digimon for their life energy, all to revive one of the Seven Great Demon Lords, Belphemon, without a care in the world for Digimon or even people. Seriously, he's despicable in every way and is just an awful human being. Thankfully Thomas was smart enough to sabotage part of this plan, but ironically Kurata tries to force this to work by transforming himself into data and basically fuses with Belphemon to turn him into the destructive beast he wanted to control. This eventually bites him in the ass as Belphemon's consciousness takes over Kurata's... only for Kurata to come back and create this ugly abomination. Thankfully, he does get his just desserts when he gets exactly what I wanted--Marcus and ShineGreymon punching him straight in the fucking face.

During the fight with Belphemon, Falcomon does get to achieve his Mega level--Ravemon, who's honestly a neat looking bird samurai. On that note, I should talk about the other Mega level Digimon. ShineGreymon is a neat take on the Greymon line, and I think I prefer it over WarGreymon. He's definitely not Gallantmon, but pretty neat. MirageGaogamon is probably my favorite of the Mega levels here, having a sort of knight theme to him, maybe mixed with a ninja theme considering how fast he is. As for Rosemon, she's... well, Rosemon. She's about the same as I would say about Rosemon when watching Digimon Adventure tri. I'll give credit that generally they've avoided doing jiggle physics with her (though they did some with Lotusmon, but Evil is Sexy). There's a couple of bits of fanservice like ass shots, but nowhere near as bad as... Ugh... Fairymon. There's also an advanced form called the Burst Mode, and ShineGreymon manages to achieve ShineGreymon Burst Mode, and it looks even better. Again, it's a really awesome design for the Greymon line. I just hope that the other three Megas get Burst Modes too, but I won't be surprised if they don't necessarily.

Still, the final fight in this arc is so freaking satisfying. Again, Kurata getting his punch to the face was something I was clamoring for since the end of the Worlds Conflict arc. It feels like a truly challenging fight with high stakes, and it's probably my favorite fight in Savers so far. While Kurata's fate isn't made clear in the very end, my mind tells me he's either dead or stuck in limbo in space-time. So either way, he suffers. And that's good. Because Kurata sucks. I can say without a doubt in my mind that he's the worst Digimon villain--not from a writing standpoint, but as a human being. He's the cruelest, most manipulative, jerkish villain I've seen in these series. And if the next arc somehow changes that, I'll be shocked.

This arc overall was really good. Once again, Digimon Savers continues the trend of getting better as it goes just like Digimon Tamers. I don't know how it can get better in 10 episodes, but I'm willing to let Digimon Savers try to convince me if they can execute things as well as they did in this arc where they could have screwed up so easily. It looks like with this whole rip in space-time that's colliding the worlds, traveling between the Real World and Digital World might have more freedom? I'm curious to see how it goes.

But before I can close this out and move on to the last arc of Digimon Savers... Surprise! Digimon Savers has a movie! Ultimate Power! Activate Burst Mode!!. This movie isn't canon, and you should only watch it until after this arc because it spoils ShineGreymon Burst Mode. You may be wondering why I don't have a separate final thoughts post on this movie. Well... That's because this movie kind of sucks. In fact, it's probably the worst Digimon movie of them all. Yes, worse than Hurricane Landing!!/Transcendent Evolution!! after all of the hell I've given that movie. Not to mention, this movie is only a mere 20 minutes long. So yeah, it doesn't deserve its own post.

One of the worst parts of this movie is that the human characters are barely even in this movie. There's just Marcus. No Thomas. No Yoshino. Not even any Keenan or even Falcomon. The movie just focuses on the three main Digimon--Agumon, Gaomon and Lalamon. But even then, Gaomon seems kind of out of character as apparently the humans are trapped in these weird cocoons, but he tells Agumon to give up hope on them ever waking up. Seriously Gaomon? Aren't you the loyal one in this group? Why would you not have faith in Thomas or even try to help him? It just comes off as really out of character.

But then the movie spends five minutes--a quarter of its runtime--on a really clumsy fight scene that doesn't do anything for the "plot" as the three Digimon try to save this little girl. But she's not a little girl! She's actually a Digimon named... Rhythm, and not something like Rhythmmon? Yeah, okay, I get it Digimon. You wanted your loli bait for the movie. Fine. Do whatever Japan. You're just trying to beat around the bush with the "B-B-But she's actually a Digimon!!!!!" excuse like with Fairymon, but whatever. They don't do anything fanservice-y with her at least, but the problem with Rhythm is she’s just... really boring. With the 20 minutes this movie has, they do nothing to really give her a character or give us a reason to care for her other than she got in trouble and the Digimon want to help her. She's just being chased by the Digimon in charge of all of the destruction in this movie, Argomon, for... reasons. They don't really explain. But Argomon's motives to dominate the world is... he's mad at humans for destroying the environment. Oh come the fuck on! A freaking environmental message!? Even the Pokémon Shaymin movie wasn't this transparent about the message! The West always sucked with environmental movies like Ferngully and Once Upon a Forest! Why are you trying this in 2006!?

So yes, this is a dumb movie with a dumb premise, dumb plot, and does nothing interesting. The Digimon are basically just running away constantly being unable to Digivolve due to not having their human partners, making it really boring until Marcus comes in last minute and Digivolves Agumon to ShineGreymon Burst Mode, but that's it. Even main antagonist Argomon is boring because his designs are very reminiscent of Diablomon and he lacks any originality. It's just a bland waste of time. Honestly, this movie has just two redeeming factors.

One is the animation. It's really, really good. Nothing quite as revolutionary and timeless as Our War Game!, but it's still really nice to look at. The fight scenes look great and there's some really fluid animation with nice shading. But what sucks is that it was wasted on this movie and not something better. There aren't any Digivolution animations (though I'm glad they didn't do the shitty cropping from Runaway Locomon), but I gotta say that ShineGreymon and the effects on him just look awesome. I really loved looking at it. But again, it's just a shame this budget was wasted on this. I wish they had just done a special episode with this, but even this movie is basically just a bad episode of the show. It's just bland and a waste of time. The other redeeming factor, which is related to animation, is that this movie has bloopers in the credits oddly enough. It's silly, but it's funny and I like it. I don't see a lot of 2D animated films do bloopers so I can appreciate Digimon doing something fun and lighthearted here. I just wish I didn't find the bloopers better than this whole 20 minute movie. It's just a waste of time, and I can't recommend watching it unless you really like Digimon and want to see some pretty animation.

So yeah, the Kurata arc was great. The Digimon Savers movie sucked. But despite that, I really hope to see that the final arc of Digimon Savers is great and that it makes watching this show all the more worth it. Ten episodes left, let's see how much they can do in that time.

#Shut Up JJ #JJ DigiWatches #final thoughts

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commentaryvorg · 2 years

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Digimon Data Squad Dub Comparison Episode 31 - Showdown Between Geniuses: Thomas Vs Nanami!

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

Ikuto Noguchi ~ Keenan Crier

ElDoradimon ~ ElDradimon

Baromon ~ Baronmon

Igamon ~ Ninjamon

Gizmon ~ Gizumon

BioLotusmon ~ BioRotosmon

[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.]

Before we get into this episode itself, I again want to talk about the preview for this episode that we saw at the end of the dub’s episode 30. It only contained like one shot of Nanami, with none of her lines and no indication that this episode is especially focused around her; most of it was about the bits with Marcus and Thomas arguing strategy. Like with the preview for episode 17, this strikes me as frustratingly sexist. Can’t possibly make the viewers think the next episode might focus on a girl, nobody’d want that.

Recap Marcus: “Hopefully I can make [my dad] proud ten years later by saving them from Kurata! It’s fightin’ time!”

Marcus is doing the recap! Probably so that he can make this comment about his dad (though really Marcus doing it should be the default and there shouldn’t need to be a special reason for it like this grumble grumble).

Gaomon: “It was Master who came up with the strategy!”

Tohma: “A saviour…”

~~~~~

Gaomon: “Why’s he giving Marcus the credit when it’s your plan?”

Thomas: “He’s the legend’s son.”

Thomas is a bit more matter-of-factly answering Gaomon’s question instead of seeming more distantly wrapped up in his thoughts about this whole saviour thing. (As if the viewers needed to have the reason why explained to them because they couldn’t figure it out themselves.)

Kurata: “He’s pretty much the genius of the group.”

Calling Thomas the genius “of the group” only states that he’s noticeably tactically smarter than Marcus (not difficult) or Yoshi, which is not quite the same thing as him being a literal genius by anybody’s standards. That in itself shouldn’t be enough to pique Nanami’s interest… though of course she could still have figured out Thomas is a literal genius by herself anyway.

Ivan: “Garbage… must be properly disposed of. Those are the rules. If you liken those guys to garbage, then I just made a good pun. But you’ll never hear that coming from me.”

~~~~~

Ivan: “Trash must be disposed of properly. See, if everyone followed the rules like me, we’d be winning! But I’d never say we were losing out loud.”

But… they’re not losing? They may have lost the fight in episode 29, but their position in this current battle for ElDradimon is perfectly favourable, and the fighting hasn’t even really begun yet. It boggles me that the dub writers decided to remove a metaphor from the original when Ivan actually explained that it was a metaphor, so there’s no way it could have gone over their heads.

Igamon: “I saw humans there too. This man is their leader.”

~~~~~

Ninjamon: “I described their leader to a sketch artist. This is what he drew.”

The implication originally was that the Igamon himself did the, uh, “sketch”, but apparently in the dub, Digimon have professional sketch artists (who are absolutely terrible at it and yet still get given work)?

Igamon: “The saviour’s face is marked with sweat!”

Baromon: “Is the enemy that formidable?!”

~~~~~

Ninjamon: “Uhh, maybe his eyes were blue, not brown?”

Baronmon: “Anyone you know fit that description?”

The joke of Igamon and Baromon seeming to genuinely believe the sketch is good enough to strike fear in their saviour’s heart is changed to a different joke that doesn’t work as well. The sketch doesn’t even have colour for the eyes; surely Ninjamon can tell at least that much, even if his artistic judgement thinks it’s a decent drawing.

Baromon: “As of now, we have an announcement from our saviour.”

~~~~~

Baronmon: “Our legend’s son is going to deliver a message for us!”

Tiny thing, but in the original, Baromon had slipped into simply calling Masaru the “saviour” himself, whereas here he’s still calling him “the legend’s son”.

Yoshi: “Don’t mess up, Mr. Legend’s Son.”

Yoshi’s tone with those last words sounds a tiny bit bitter, like she’s annoyed that Marcus is getting all the glory. Yoshino didn’t sound like that in her equivalent line.

Baromon: “What? We’re making the first move?”

~~~~~

Baronmon: “Alright! We’re with you!”

The crowd’s initial response to Marcus’s announcement (identical to Masaru’s) of “we’re going to go and fight them” is the same kind of unenthused mumbling, but Baronmon is completely on board with it where Baromon in the original wasn’t at first.

Falcomon’s one line in this episode didn’t hit me like a brick for once, perhaps because it’s only one line and so it’s been longer than usual since I’ve heard much of what Falcomon’s meant to sound like. It’s still a bad voice for him though, regular reminder.

Ikuto: “We’ll end this fight quickly!”

~~~~~

Keenan: “Revenge time! Who’s with me?!”

Keenan’s making this very fervently about revenge, while Ikuto isn’t so much, surprisingly enough. Ikuto is going to gradually slip out of being so fixated on revenge in particular, and perhaps that’s already begun to happen here, but not in the dub, apparently.

Tohma: “He must be intentionally using his camp as bait, in order to force us to divide up our troops.”

~~~~~

Thomas: “He wants us to get our troops out of the perfect position that we’re in!”

This is the only part of Tohma’s argument that’s slightly different. Surely if the main point is about this perfect position, then it’s okay for some troops (namely Marcus and Keenan and their partners) to head off to attack Kurata? Thomas doesn’t seem to be worried so much about their troops being divided and therefore losing strength.

Though maybe there’s also something to be said for Thomas making a point of this perfect position, the position he thought up with his very great strategy that he wishes he was getting more credit for dammit.

Tohma: “He’s waiting for us to make our move!”

~~~~~

Thomas: “Right now he can’t get to us if we stay where we are!”

He… totally can, though? The Gizumon can fly? The point is that Kurata’s forces can’t approach without being noticed while the city’s in this position; doesn’t mean they can’t attack anyway. Makes me think the earlier line was also changed because the dub writers had this erroneous impression; it’d explain why Thomas wasn’t worried about dividing up the troops needed to defend them if he doesn’t think they need any troops to defend them like this at all.

Masaru: “Then we’ll just go ourselves! You don’t have a problem with that, right?”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Then we’ll attack by ourselves! No-one says *you* have to go!”

Ugh, as usual, Marcus is being more argumentative about this, like he’s getting one up over Thomas, rather than Masaru’s genuine acknowledgement of the fact that they can both take their own individual approaches to this without issue.

Masaru: “A good offence is the best defence! I’m going to kick Kurata’s ass and that’s that!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “A good defence is a good offence! I say we attack and that’s that!”

Marcus’s tone is again being far more loud and argumentative. Plus, the altered phrasing of his second sentence – “we” attack, not just that he’s personally going to – makes it sound like he’s still trying to get one over on Thomas. Like he wants his approach to override Thomas’s strategy entirely and doesn’t think the two can co-exist (and the previous line I quoted was him thinking Thomas can just go sit out the assault in a sulk if he doesn’t agree).

Masaru: “So take care of defending this place for me until then, Tohma!”

Tohma: “You don’t need to tell me that.”

~~~~~

Marcus: “So take care of this place for me ‘til I come back, okay?”

Thomas: “*If* you come back.”

Instead of the fun subtle line suggesting Tohma might be thinking “stop telling me what to do like you’re stealing all my credit and I can’t do it by myself”, we just get Thomas… being much less subtly kind of a dick, implying he thinks Marcus is going to get himself killed in his reckless idiocy.

Tohma: “I can’t believe that reckless guy is considered a saviour.”

~~~~~

Thomas: “I can’t believe these people would willingly follow that reckless fool.”

Thomas’s words – and intonation �� put more emphasis on the “fool” part, again being more of a dick. He’s also lingering less on the saviour/legend thing here by not bringing up that that’s the reason why all these people are blindly following him.

Yoshino: “I think the reason why Masaru continues to take such risks is because he trusts you, Tohma.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Marcus doesn’t mind taking risks, because he knows if he screws up, Thomas has his back.”

I’m a little sad about her not outright saying Marcus trusts Thomas, though “has his back” does pretty much mean the same thing. It’s also a little different that Yoshi’s saying Marcus will only need Thomas to have his back if he screws up. Masaru knows Tohma has his back and can hold down the fort here anyway, head-on reckless assault going badly or not! (After all, it’s not like Masaru is one for consciously acknowledging that his reckless charging in could ever possibly not work.)

Still, I’m glad this line is basically intact. What with the greater Marcus Is A Jerk going on in the rest of this argument, I would be worried that the writers wanted to entirely remove any sense that Marcus trusted Thomas’s approaches, but at least that bit is still here, albeit a tiny bit harder to believe, sigh.

Gaomon: “Gizumon-XT, 12 o’clock.”

Those ones approaching right now are Gizumon-AT, actually. Apparently the dub writers weren’t really paying that much attention to which one’s which.

Tohma: “Thank goodness. It appears…”

Nanami: “Nothing’s happened to it yet, hmm?”

~~~~~

Thomas: “No signs of an attack yet, but when they do, we’ll be ready.”

Nanami: “You sure about that?”

We lose Nanami finishing Tohma’s sentence as an early indication of the way she can predict everything he’s planning, in place of just some generic villain banter.

Nanami: “Like you said, if the waterfall is destroyed, the lake water will wash away ElDradimon.”

That’s… not what’s going to happen when the waterfall gets destroyed. Unsurprisingly, the dub writers have not watched ahead to the next episode in which we see why the lake draining is a bad thing. They apparently also haven’t even watched ahead to the end of this one, in which the water drains away without enough force to affect ElDradimon in any significant way.

Nanami: “And so, you will come here to protect it.”

~~~~~

Nanami: “…I knew you would come alone to the one location that needs the most protecting.”

Interesting how Nanami in the dub specifies that she knew he’d come alone. The optimal strategy is definitely not to come alone, but rather to bring a sizeable amount of troops; you’d think she’d know that. So is this her predicting Tohma’s issues about not relying on anyone? Would Nanami herself also make a point of coming alone if she were in his situation? Potentially! Though I don’t think I trust the dub to be making this implication deliberately.

Tohma: “You were able to predict everything?”

~~~~~

Thomas: “Well, I guess you have it all figured out!”

Thomas’s tone is just an exasperated, “fine, you’re smart, no need to monologue at me”, rather than being caught off-guard that his brilliant strategies have been seen through so easily.

Nanami: “Anyone could see it, if they just gave it some thought.”

~~~~~

Nanami: “Oh, any general with a little common sense could see it.”

The fact that dub-Nanami makes it “any general”, and not just anyone at all loses a little bit of the nuance here. She’s implying she wouldn’t necessarily think it was so obvious for someone who wasn’t a general and didn’t have a head for war strategy. Nanami in the original is so caught up in her genius worldview that she feels like this kind of thing should be obvious to anyone.

Nanami: “Wouldn’t you agree, Doctor Tohma Norstein?”

~~~~~

Nanami: “Don’t you think? General Thomas Norstein?”

Weird that she makes such a point of Thomas being a general here, when that’s only a role he’s taking on temporarily right now. (And she herself isn’t even the general of her own side; that’s Kurata.) Stressing the doctor thing instead is her making a point of him being a genius, thus drawing a comparison with her (even though as far as we know she’s not a doctor herself).

Nanami: “I wonder for how long… you will entertain me!”

~~~~~

Nanami: “It’ll be an interesting challenge to see if I can outwit you.”

Nanami in the dub apparently isn’t even sure if she can outwit Thomas. In the original, the fact that she didn’t even bring that notion up, coupled with the idea that she didn’t even necessarily expect him to entertain her for long implied that despite his genius status, she still felt above him and like her outsmarting him sooner or later was always a given.

Nanami: “Nothing that moves within your heart is left unseen to me. Nothing at all.”

~~~~~

Nanami: “To be honest, sometimes having all the answers gets kind of boring. It’s a curse.”

She brings this boredom part up earlier than in the original, in place of some of that insistence that she definitely knows everything Tohma’s thinking.

Sometimes is a hell of an understatement for Nanami, whose whole thing is being so bored out of her mind she’s willing to participate in a genocide for some fun. The way she says “It’s a curse” is even kind of playful, like she isn’t actually upset by this, which shouldn’t be the case, so either the dub doesn’t quite get it or she’s very good at masking it. (Guess which one my money’s on.)

Nanami’s southern belle accent in general makes her sound kind of weirdly more like an innocently oblivious child than a ruthlessly cold genius in some of these lines about “why are you even opposing a genocide”.

Nanami: “The Digimon’s existence won’t bring you any worth.”

~~~~~

Nanami: “It isn’t like Digimon *do* anything for you.”

The way she’s phrasing things also kinda sounds a bit less articulated and more childlike. Though the reason I quoted this line was primarily to point out that she didn’t bring up the concept of “worth” in the dub, which was something I suspected might have hit a Norstein-related nerve with Tohma in the original.

Tohma: “They can connect emotionally with us humans!”

~~~~~

Thomas: “They connect with us internally on an emotional level!”

That’s a weirdly clinical way for Thomas to describe bonding with Digimon. Though for all I know he may have sounded similarly stilted about this in the original Japanese and the subbers just smoothed it over a bit. It isn’t necessarily out of character for Tohma to have such a detached and clinical way to describe emotional bonding.

Tohma: “Making those friends… those comrades of ours suffer is what I can’t allow Kurata to get away with!”

~~~~~

Thomas: “And you? Why do you side with Kurata when he makes the innocent suffer so much?!”

Thomas is jumping the gun a bit by asking her why she sides with Kurata this early in the conversation; that part isn’t supposed to come until later. I mean, I guess it’s fair enough that he might want to bring that up right now, but the original writers chose to save it for later on to give that moment some particular emphasis.

Nanami: “What are you? Some sort of ‘defender of justice’?”

(For the record, Nanami completely dodges the question for now and continues along the same track as she did originally. Though since Thomas was asking her a question rather than stating his own disgust at the suffering of Digimon, he was being somewhat less justice-y than in the original.)

Her tone of voice as she’s telling Thomas that he’s totally doing all this just to feel superior (which is basically unchanged) sounds a lot more like she’s mocking him for it, rather than the kind of cold, forceful, matter-of-fact way she said it originally. I don’t think the mocking tone works as well for the fact that she’s only really saying this because she’s projecting her own nature onto him.

Nanami: “What a boring attack.”

~~~~~

Nanami: “Are you through being silly?”

This is to Gaomon, as he charges recklessly at her to defend his master’s honour. Calling him “silly” really doesn’t feel like the right put-down here.

Nanami: “Tohma… I understand your loneliness.”

~~~~~

Nanami: “Look, I understand. You’re lonely.”

Slightly less nuance here in the dub. Dub-Nanami’s only saying “I know that you’re lonely”, whereas original-Nanami was taking it as a given that he was lonely from the start and is saying she understands the way in which he’s lonely.

…But really, that’s a very minor nitpick and the rest of her projecting-loneliness speech to him is very similar and gives the same effect overall.

Thomas: “You still haven’t answered my question. Why are you siding with Kurata?”

At least the dub remembered that they changed an earlier bit to have this not be the first time Thomas asked her that. I was not 100% convinced they’d remember to allude to that.

Nanami: “Hunting for Digimon is just another way of passing the time.”

~~~~~

Nanami: “Hunting Digimon just happens to be an enjoyable hobby I like to dabble in.”

Other than her weirdly casual phrasing about this in the dub (even if she’s doing this to relieve boredom, would one really call it a hobby?), her wording also kind of implies that… this isn’t the first time she’s been hunting Digimon for fun? If it’s a “hobby”, then it implies it’s something she does regularly instead of something she’s only doing right now because the opportunity happened to arise. Pretty damn sure that’s not supposed to be the case.

Nanami: “Now, come with me.”

~~~~~

Nanami: “Why? Why do you fight your true feelings?”

The dub added some more projection than there was here in the original, with Nanami insisting that obviously Thomas’s true feelings are him wanting to partner up with her as a fellow genius. Nice.

Tohma: “I refuse. I have a duty to protect the Holy Capital.”

~~~~~

Thomas: “No thanks. I want to use my genius to help Digimon, not destroy them.”

Bah, I’m sad at the loss of the bit where Tohma insists on making this about duty when he didn’t have to.

Nanami: “Even though you’re a genius… you’re a stubborn blockhead.”

~~~~~

Nanami: “Funny – for a genius, you’re a fool.”

“Stubborn blockhead” provides a nice little parallel to Masaru, somewhat more so than “fool” does – though the dub going with the latter may be down to lip-flap constraints.

Nanami: “Evolution isn’t your special privilege.”

~~~~~

Nanami: “Last time was different. I’m much stronger than I was before.”

This is a lot plainer in the dub, just generic villain gloating about strength, rather than Nanami being subtly bitter than someone else could dare to think he’s more special than her.

Nanami: “Bio-Hybrid DNA Full Charge!”

That’s apparently their new evolution call in the dub, though since it matches with the regular DNA Full Charge, you’d think it’d herald them going to dub-Ultimate (aka Perfect), rather than Mega level.

Why in the world was BioLotusmon romanised to BioRotosmon, seriously. It is very obviously supposed to be “lotus”, come on.

Digimon Analyser BioRotosmon: “What took you and your Digimon months to achieve, Kurata did in one night!”

I mean… it didn’t take them months? It took them a day of punching training dummies in a dojo, pretty much. (Okay, the training dummies weren’t really the reason, but point is it only took a day.)

BioRotosmon’s design is edited just a little in the dub to not have bare thigh and what could be interpreted as underwear. At least the dub consistently makes an effort with this actually-good kind of anti-fanservice editing. In an ideal world, they wouldn’t have to, but, sigh.

Yep, this is one of those times where the evolution music is really just a fanfare for evolution rather than a triumphant theme of victory, because there’s like five minutes or so of episode between the evolution and MirageGaogamon actually winning.

BioLotusmon: “I can read all of your movements!”

~~~~~

BioRotosmon: “I’m so fast I make a rocket look slow!”

Not only is that a silly cheesy simile that I can’t imagine a genius like Nanami making, it’s also distracting from what should be the point here. It’s not that she’s significantly faster than MirageGaogamon, but that she can predict exactly how he’s going to move.

BioLotusmon/Nanami: “Tohma… Come with me.”

~~~~~

BioRotosmon/Nanami: “Thomas… Please, reconsider.”

Her outright asking him to reconsider shows that she’s acknowledged his initial refusal. I don’t feel like that’s something Nanami would actually do, given all of her projection onto him like this is totally what he obviously wants.

The booby snakes have also been edited to have a lot more of their bosoms covered, and again, I approve.

Nanami: “I will be able to understand you.”

~~~~~

Nanami: “Only someone like me can appreciate and unlock the real you.”

Kinda like the added nuance here, that she’s insisting there’s a real Thomas inside there somewhere that he’s suppressing because of these idiots, and she’ll be able to bring it out. (Clearly, this “real Thomas” is the one who actually wants to be with her, and that explains why he keeps refusing on the surface, because it’s totally not really him, right.)

Tohma: “I… I am not that self-conceited!”

~~~~~

Thomas: “No… I’m not an egomaniac like you are!”

I prefer the original line here, not because of any significant difference between “self-conceited” and “egomaniac”, but because of the phrasing around it. Thomas is only saying, “I’m not as egotistical as you”, whereas Tohma is saying, “I’m not as conceited as you think I am”, which is a lot more impactful, because he’s essentially shooting down his own subconscious worries that Nanami might be right about him.

Tohma: “There’s a source of power in this world that even I can’t calculate!”

Nanami: “Daimon Masaru, is it?”

~~~~~

Thomas: “I realise you have to rely on your friends if you hope to achieve real power!”

Nanami: “Friends like Marcus Damon?”

Instead of making the interesting point that Masaru’s approaches are unpredictable to somebody who uses optimal calculated strategies, we lose that entirely for some generic stuff about friendship. And this is despite the fact that Tohma’s not supposed to be openly okay with the idea that he relies on others, even if they are his friends.

Nanami: “So you rely on something like him.”

Tohma: “Rely on him? Me?”

~~~~~

Nanami: “So those are the type of fools you rely on.”

Thomas: “They’re friends. Not fools.”

Yep, because we traded the point about Masaru’s unpredictability for some generic Thomas waxing lyrical about friendship, we also lost the part where Tohma was subtly uncomfortable at the suggestion that he’s relying on them. Thomas is completely okay with that, apparently. Who knows why he felt the need to come to defend the waterfall on his own in this version of the story.

Nanami: “There’s no such thing as something beyond calculation. That’s just an excuse. If you continue to stay content living with fools, you’ll only neglect improving yourself!”

~~~~~

Nanami: “You might think they’re your friends, but you don’t need them. They need *you*. They keep holding you back, dead weight, always needing your help to save them, and preventing you from reaching your full potential.”

This continues the “friends” point, but then manages to shift it into something similar to the direction the original lines went in here. However, because Nanami’s being a lot more specific about the friends thing here in the dub, and because she’s been projecting her own issues onto him this entire time, it kind of ends up reading like she’s the one who used to have friends who constantly needed her, whom she eventually got rid of as “dead weight”. That would potentially be interesting, but I doubt the dub made this implication on purpose.

Nanami: “Throw away your worthless friends and your insignificant self-satisfaction!”

~~~~~

Nanami: “Forget about those pathetic charity cases and come with me!”

Yeah, the “charity cases” comment really reads like projection here. I still am not convinced it’s intentional, though.

She’s also not telling him to throw away his “self-satisfaction”, which had some neat nuance of her thinking that Tohma being humble and accepting he doesn’t know everything is the kind of “self-satisfaction” she can’t stand, despite insisting he should be lording it over the idiots with his genius.

As all the trippy snake-Nanami’s murmur “Thomas” over and over, the fact that there’s an S in his dub name is convenient, because she can emphasise that to make it sound a bit like the hissing of snakes. Neat.

Ikuto: “What’s more, they keep showing up the same way like all the others!”

~~~~~

Keenan: “Hey, wait! If that was last Gizumon-XT, then what that?”

Alas, the dub did not keep the line where Ikuto commented on the repeated animation.

…Why is the dub using its BanchoLeomon music as we resume the fight between MirageGaogamon and BioRotosmon? Like, this BGM has a very distinct bancho-y sort of sound to it and has until now only been used for BanchoLeomon’s scenes. It feels very weird and out of place here.

MirageGaogamon: “Master, she can predict all of my movements. Please guide me through your orders.”

~~~~~

MirageGaogamon: “Sir, she can predict my every move. Plus, she’s faster than I am.”

Except the dub never had her mention earlier that she was predicting his moves, at least not as MirageGaogamon.

Also, I find it rather cheap that the dub’s making it explicit that she is significantly faster than him. If that’s the case, then her advantage isn’t about her intellect at all, but rather because Kurata happened to make her physically better than MirageGaogamon in the first place. That’s not Nanami’s advantage.

BioRotosmon: “Is this the attack plan of a genius? I’ve never seen anything so predictable!”

At least they are finally having her make a point that his strategies are predictable here.

BioRotosmon: “Better, but still slow.”

Less fond of this; the point should not be that he’s slower than her, damn it!

MirageGaogamon: “Master, your orders!”

Tohma: “Okay!”

[BioLotusmon attacks MirageGaogamon again]

MirageGaogamon: “Your orders…!”

[and again]

MirageGaogamon: “Master, your orders!”

[and again]

~~~~~

MirageGaogamon: “Sir, we need a new plan!”

Thomas: “I’ll try!”

[BioRotosmon attacks MirageGaogamon again]

MirageGaogamon: “Hurry, sir!”

[and again]

MirageGaogamon: “I can’t hold on much longer!”

[and again]

In the original version of this scene, the impression I got was that it was a quick-cut montage of all of their failed strategies, skipping over Tohma giving and MirageGaogamon carrying out the actual orders (because they were always doomed to fail) and just showing how determined MirageGaogamon is to keep believing in his master’s plans despite getting hurt because of them over and over.

But it doesn’t seem like the dub writers read it that way, because the lines they give MirageGaogamon have him very clearly not receive any orders in between each line. So in the dub, this isn’t a montage, this is just BioRotosmon mercilessly whaling on MirageGaogamon while Thomas panics and fails to come up with any kind of new attack strategy at all, having apparently exhausted the whole two of them he’d had prepared in the moments prior to this. Even if Thomas had come up with something, I’d be surprised if MirageGaogamon was capable of pulling it off in the midst of being beaten up.

I don’t think the dub’s version of the scene is as meaningful; again, it’s turning the problem into BioRotosmon simply being stronger (and Thomas losing his nerve when it counts), rather than Nanami being able to see through every single strategy Tohma comes up with (and MirageGaogamon being such a good loyal dog despite that).

Thomas: “My strategies aren’t working! She’s so fast that she anticipates everything we try and beats us to the punch!”

Thomas, that is not the problem that just got MirageGaogamon beaten up; the problem just now is that you didn’t even come up with a strategy at all. Also, again, this doesn’t need to be about her being fast, stop making the problem something that isn’t one of Nanami’s qualities.

Tohma: (She’s predicting all of my calculations. What the hell should I…?)

~~~~~

Thomas: (She’s got me right where she wants me. I can’t believe I’m beaten!)

Thomas’s thought in the dub sounds like it could be referring to the fact that she just made an ultimatum to not destroy the waterfall if he joins her. The dub is still making this significantly less about her being able to predict him, which is still supposed to be the point and the reason why this reckless approach he’s about to use is going to work!

BioLotusmon: “What are you doing on top of his shoulder? Are you *trying* to get hurt?”

Yes, actually! I’m amused that she happens to literally describe his plan in the dub, while thinking it ridiculous. (Though really Thomas still doesn’t need to be getting hurt in this, but shush, shounen spirit.)

Also. Also. Guess what music gets used for Thomas’s victorious reckless charge? It’s Probably Marcus’s Theme, just like I hoped it would be! Man, that hits a bit harder if you’ve noticed it’s probably Marcus’s theme.

BioLotusmon: “Just what sort of calculations did you use?!”

Tohma: “None. I just thought that if we got close enough to attack at point-blank range, we’d be able to pull it off.”

~~~~~

BioRotosmon: “How did you possibly know that would work…?”

Thomas: “I didn’t. I just thought that if we got into point-blank range, we’d be able to pull it off.”

Thomas basically just said, “I didn’t know that it would work, I just figured it would work.” Kinda contradicting himself a bit there? Which is, of course, a result of the dub being really insistent about watering down the part where Masaru’s reckless strategies defy the sort of calculations and prediction that Tohma and Nanami usually rely on.

Kurata: “If this keeps up, you [Kouki] may not get your turn.”

~~~~~

Kurata: “Tell [the Gizumon-XT] to back off so that Kouki can get his shot at revenge.”

…Except, in the next episode, Marcus and Keenan will still be fighting their way through some Gizumon-XT before reaching Kouki at the camp. I guess apparently that goon of Kurata’s decided not to follow that order? It’s honestly weird that Kurata cares so much about indulging Kouki’s desire for petty vengeance that he’s willing to risk giving Marcus an advantage.

Nanami: “I… I haven’t lost to you… Because… What you used was… Daimon Masaru’s power…”

~~~~~

Nanami: “I accept defeat because I did not lose to you, Thomas H. Norstein. I lost… I lost to something else… I lost to Marcus Damon’s… power…”

Weird that she’s nonetheless willing to explicitly accept defeat of any kind. Nanami’s line in the original came across a lot like she was using this as an excuse to not accept defeat at all.

Tohma: “Masaru’s… power?”

Gaomon: “Master…”

Tohma: “Why… do I feel so irritated?”

~~~~~

Thomas: “Marcus’s… power?”

Gaomon: “But how?”

Thomas: “I don’t know… What did she mean by that?”

Oh no, what a huge freaking mystery! It’s not like you won by using the exact kind of reckless strategy Marcus would use or anything! It’s not like you, a genius who is also very familiar with Marcus, would have perfectly well known that the second you hit upon such a way to win!

I don’t think this can even be reasonably read as denial, because the fact that he won using a Marcus-like strategy is so goddamn obvious that there’s no way Thomas would be able to lie to himself about that for a second. (Gaomon is also confused by it somehow, and he wouldn’t be lying to himself about it!)

The thing Tohma ends up confused by here in the original is why it bothers him so much that he used Masaru’s power to win, because the fact that he did so is already unquestionably apparent, and the fact that this gets to him is the interesting part. But somehow the dub decided that, no, we can’t focus on Thomas’s inferiority complex brought out by Marcus and his unwillingness to rely on anyone else (we sure lost any sense of the latter in some earlier bits), so instead, let’s just boringly and nonsensically insist it’s a huge mysterious mystery as to what Nanami even meant by him winning through Marcus’s power. What the actual hell.

Overall differences

Well, this isn’t as bad as it could be, since this is mostly a Thomas-focused episode and the dub’s generally decent at him, but.

Naturally Marcus is more of a jerk in the strategy meeting, sounding like he wants to override Thomas’s strategy rather than do both at once. The dubbers also seem not to get the point of Tohma’s strategy in the first place; they appear to think the lake means that nothing can approach at all (blatantly incorrect), and that destroying the waterfall is bad because it’ll wash ElDradimon away (also incorrect, please watch ahead literally one episode).

Nanami herself is reasonably intact, thankfully; there’s some minor losses of nuance and her weird southern belle voice doesn’t entirely help, but there’s also a couple of gains of nuance and the overall point is pretty much the same.

Where we do lose the original point is when things come onto the topic of Marcus, surprise surprise. The dub entirely removes the point about how Masaru’s strength in Tohma’s eyes is his sheer unpredictability and non-adherence to logical calculations. Instead, Thomas just waxes lyrical about friendship and seems okay with the idea of relying on Marcus, which Tohma very pointedly did not even as he acknowledged Masaru’s strengths.

In the battle, the notion that Nanami can predict all of Tohma’s optimal strategies is not entirely lost, but it’s significantly watered down in favour of BioRotosmon simply being faster and stronger than MirageGaogamon, which is a much less meaningful or interesting advantage for her to have. Thanks to this, Thomas’s victory by doing a reckless Marcus-like approach has less impact – so again, there’s less highlighting that Masaru’s unpredictability can be a good thing.

These changes to the Masaru topic also mean that the episode has to end on a bizarre final note of Thomas wondering what Nanami even meant when she said he won using Marcus’s power (which should be obvious), rather than him being bothered by the fact that he won that way for reasons he doesn’t quite consciously understand.

#digimon #digimon savers #digimon data squad

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