Film Summary DCLXXX (Digimon: The Movie "part 1")


Originally I wanted to watch this movie with an unbiased view.

That is to say; I wanted to tackle this as a fan of movies 1st and a Digimon fan second.

Well that approach went out the window, within the first minute and a half.
Between the beautifully done animation and blinding Nostalgia, I found myself completely captivated with the first segment of this movie.
All the Vivid detail of Taichi's apartment and the tone down but wonderfully washed in colour palette, intermixed with simple yet complementary music was just too much for my stupid little heart to handle.

That's to say nothing of the surprisingly fluid animation of Taichi and Hikari. Who I have to say are just freaking adorable.
Usually movies revolving around incredibly small children just come off as annoying. But this was just genuinely sweet.
Little tiny Hikari sitting there and feeding a tiny Botamon is flat-out one of the most heartwarming things I think I could ever see on screen.
But now I'm getting ahead of myself.

So the story is simple yet weird.
There's a digital egg being formed inside a computer screen with-in Taichi's apartment.
Said egg is reparable for all kinds of electronic disturbances around the city. Altering every electrical device within it's radius.
The egg eventually pops out of the PC screen much to the surprise of two children.
Then the movie cuts to morning revealing Taichi, who assumes the whole thing was a strange dream.

That is until he sees his little sister in the bed snuggled up to the egg.
He shocked by this and wants to try and tell his mother, but she's already leaving the house.
Which in turn leaves the two children with the mysterious aberration.
Taichi decides to go on about his day making breakfast for his little sister. And generally just wanting to keep a level head.
Which if you ask me is ridiculously impressive given that he has to be four years old at the most.

A short time later the ''little'' egg hatchs revealing this adorable yet concerning blob monster who scurrys about the house, scared out of its mind and this strange new environment.
It's eventually calmed down when Hikari try to communicate with him.

Afterwards she feeds it a couple of times and it eventually evolves into way Pinkish ball creature known as a Koromon.
Said creature is slightly larger than its dark counterpart and it's a lot more full of energy. This one can actually communicate is able to express its name.
Afterwards it ends up getting in a fight with the local house cat who becomes angered after its food is taken away to be fed to the new creature.
Said house cat defeats the little creature and attacks Taichi who trys to pull the cat away from Koromon at the same time.
Afterwards it drags its food away.

Later at night Koromon is petrified with in Hikari bed before inevitably growing yet again to an even bigger creature*.
This one's a kind of large dinosaur that resembles a tiny (yellow) T-Rex.
It has no animosity but also no compassion towards children.
It also seems to have lost the ability to speak.
He wanders out into the street from the apartment complex which it was currently housed in, taking Hikari with him.
Then it walks the streets of Tokyo presumably looking for another Digimon that magically pops out from the sky.
The two start attacking one another and our large yellow T-Rex is nearly defeated before finally evolving yet again to an even bigger t-rex with a helmet on its head.
This creature also gets nearly defeated but is then rewoken by Hikari's whistle as blown by Tai.

Why'll this is happening, tens of other children are looking from their own balconies at this strange anomaly and for some reason no adult seems to be present.
All of these kids will eventually get involved in their own adventure with strange internet dinosaurs and somehow none of them will have any recollection of these events until well into the TV shows running time.

Overall it's a really well-done little segment.
The animation is breathtaking, especially when you're accustomed to the cheaper cartoon show.
And the minimalistic dialogue is really nice too.
You get a few words between the two kids and maybe a sentence worth of dialogue from the creature itself. But otherwise the rest of the movie is just these three characters interacting with each other.

This is probably the only chunk of Digimon media that I could recommend to anybody.
You don't have to have prior knowledge of the show or the characters.
You're not bombarded with needless Exposition, there's no kouki anime faces or cliches.
And it's really short and simple.

As a fan of Digimon I absolutely love it and as a movie connoisseur it's satisfactory.
I don't think it's something the average person would give much mind to. But I also don't think they'd find it pedantic or irritating either.



*Said large dinosaur destroys the children's bed in the process and destroys their window too. How the parents aren't suspicious of this is beyond me.
I guess the father is drunk out of his mind. Which by the way is a hilarious moment within the film. Seeing this salaryman father staggering around blitzed. It has no bearing on the plot but it's an interesting little detail all the same.

Comments