So originally I started writing this right after I finished watching Digimon. So everything was fresh in my head and I kind of knew what I wanted to talk about. But then I just stopped doing it for whatever reason and didn't come back to it for a couple of weeks. Now I can barely remember anything.
This resulted in me being a lot more rambly than I usually am. So I'll just preface this with; It's a good series of episodes. It's interesting to see the kids go back to their own world and interact with the Digimon on a more personal level. It also got a little boring towards the end is I didn't realise they would spend so much time in the real world but then immediately became more fun when they return to the digital world and started reacting with the Dark Masters a group of new Digimon who proved to be more powerful than anything they fought before.
Ep: 29-47
It took a while but we finally got to the point where the children of return to their own world. And all they had to do was break into a secret Castle using undercover Digimon, alcohol, magic cards and Incredibly confusing logic puzzle that I never would have been able to solve.
And while doing this they got to encounter Tailmon. The adorable looking cat Digimon who will be a major antagonist to them while they're in the middle of this battle (in the digi world). A subpar antagonist once they're back in the human world and then an ally that's not even once questioned the second they discovered that she's the chosen Digimon of Hikari.
Speaking of Hikari get used to her. Because she's going to become a far more prominent member of the gang and eventually is going to overshadow a great deal of them.
To such an extent that she literally starts outshining people, but that's not till way later.
For the moment she's just a happy-go-lucky kid that Taichi is very happy to see. And absolutely mortified at the idea that she might fall into mortal danger when they discovered she's the 8th child.
Still all that said I thought he'd be a lot more freaked out than he was. He's just kind of mildly concerned. If it was my sister I'd be shaking with anticipation and fear trying to look for some god-forsaken bombshelter to put her in while a literal Reincarnation of Dracula is chasing us down. But then Tai always had a bit more nerve than most.
But unfortunately we don't have to worry about any of that beginning. Instead we have to deal with one of my most disliked story cliches ''hiding the monster.''
Where the kids have to pretend that their Digimon are stuffed animals as to not rouse suspicion from the General Public.
Now don't get me wrong it's a fun idea and a fun concept for an episode or two but over multiple episodes it just gets annoying.
I want to see these kids interacting with their friends not standing their stiff as a board while a bunch of idiots gawk at them as they walk down the street.
Although I shouldn't complain too much as this whole story element goes out the window relatively quickly once all the bad Digimon start popping up directly and just kidnapping people.
And we do get one of my favourite scenes of Gomamon taking a free sample candy from some girl dressed in what I can only call a Yu-Gi-Oh costume.
Along with all the kids who haven't eaten any of this stuff in months.
Is's all quite cute, we finally get to see some of the family Dynamics between some of the kids and Izzy of all characters get some actual development.
Always felt the poor guy got the short end of the stick in the last 20 episodes it was like he was barely touched. Even Joe gets the occasional family reference.
And during this time we get an introduction to what might have been the most popular short-lived Digimon character simply known as wizardmon. This little guy doesn't pop up for that long and he gets one dedicated episode with Tailmon to describe his backstory and more or less dies almost immediately after that. Twice! But in that short amount of time he's grabbed quite a little following.
We also have this weird family structure between Matt and TK as they live with their respective parents separately and we get a weird scene where I thought Matt and just let his father know that his Digimon is a technical living creature and they just kind of got over that over screen. But then in a later episode he's baffled when he sees the creatures.
Did you only think your son had one? Or did you just think that he had some sort of giant teddy bear that he walked around with.
There's a whole whack of other stories going on as well that I simply can't remember. Most of it revolves around both the kids and the evil Digimon looking for the a child and then once discovering her; trying to prevent the evil Digimon from destroying their world or at least their city.
Which then culminates in fighting this Mega evil Digimon who evolved out of some form of Chaos which leads to this weird prophecy thing where two of the Angel Digimon have to shoot Tai and Matt with their bows in order to create some sort of miracle. And the whole thing has this weird Roman Catholicism angle to it. we even get references to the Book of Revelation and then you have Joe chanting these Shinto / Buddhist chants to make a bunch of ghosts disappear so we just got several different religious theories roaming around.
Somewhere in the middle of these episodes is the only example of me (kind of) agreeing with the American censorship on the Japanese cartoon.
And that scene being when Sora and Mimi are trying to call for a hitchhiker to take them and their friends to their respective home and this creep in a van stops to pick them up simply because he likes the girls. Not only do you have this creepy pedo-guy but you've got this weird message about kids hitchhiking and just getting in a random car*.
I can kind of understand why they wanted to censor that. Now what they replaced it with wansn't any better. Claiming that this wacko is actually Sora's 'cousin' which doesn't make any sense as he never pops up again in the story and it's just really creepy when you realize who he actually is.
Also it reminds me of Sailor Moon when they removed two of the characters romance and just claim them to be cousins.
Once again it doesn't come off right. And you have the same problem here where you have this weirdo who has no relation to this girl claiming to be part of her family who then almost attempts to kill one of her friends (Izzy) because one of their Digimon crapped in his car.
It just raises too many questions.
Then again; later on in this show a Pinocchio inspired digimon is going to aim a 44 magnum at TK's head and try to kill him.
So the offense above involving the van almost comes off as trivial compared to that.
We talked about how stupid it is that the American Media constantly censors out realistic depictions of guns with in they're cartoons.
Like I got the idea of not wanting children and Firearms to mix but you're the United States of America.
You have guns on some of your coat of arms, your second amendment revolves around the stupid things, you guys sell them inside Walmart's for god sakes.
Having your country sensor out weapons is just hilarious when you've got your massive military industrial complex contributes and destroys a good chunk of the world's economy and the Japanese obsession with that particular model of firearms and most of their guns within their cartoons comes from older American made media like all those Old Spaghetti Westerns or the Noir detective films. So it just seems so strange to me to see if Japanese inspired American piece of media be censored in America. I think I'll get off this tangent now.
We actually get to an interesting point towards the end of these episodes. The kids have to return to the digital world to take care of a final evil that's come about.
They get back to the digital world and they're almost immediately killed by the new forces of evil. And the kids were cocky at first two they had to ultimate level Digimon and they thought they'd be able to push any threats to the side. But alas even an ultimate level can't do you any good if you're not experienced with it. So the kids are pretty much back at square one and have to go back to learning how to fight all over again.
Oh and we get to see the early stage developments of multi-episode depression for Yamato. As he gets convinced by an evil talking tree (who sounds like Marlon Brando in the English version) that is friends are actually holding him back and that is possible best friend Tai is his biggest enemy. And there's little Gabumon standing along with him not entirely convinced of all of this but still willing to follow his friend.
Simply because he's more concerned about his friends well-being than anything else in the world. Including the existence of said world.
*I'm pretty sure any kid worth his salt watching this would actually realize that getting into a random van with some wacko is probably not a good idea. Especially given how are they make the entire thing out to be in the show but you know how it is with sensory boards DACA everything to the floor and just call it a day. Or in the case of Japanese cartoons cut it regardless because it's foreign weird in Japanese and you know there's a little racism mixed in with the sensors when they're looking at this stuff. God forbid the kids should see anything outside of the Glorious USA.
Comments
Post a Comment