05.05
Digimenopause puts a damper on your Digimenstrual cycle.
After two and a half years, Digimon Adventure Tri, the third installment in the Digimon Adventure subseries, has finally ended. And instead of praise or satisfaction, I can only feel malaise. A delirious, yet somehow sobering malaise. What was meant to be a milestone series celebrating 15 years of the Digimon anime finished on a halfhearted slog. One that did not highlight the fine points of the franchise or add new moments of gold, but only a reminder of banality and fatigue. It would be easy to blame Toei, yet even their most merchandised and aging series like Pretty Cure and Dragon Ball show more energy and creativity than what was put forth here. Even the weakest points of the Universal Survival Saga, where Goku was drawn in scribbles whilst fighting off-model Pride Troopers, carried more ambition than these biannual films. While expectations were high, it would have been easy to deliver a reunion trip or a bridge between 02 and the epilogue or even erase the epilogue altogether, but rather than all that, Tri produced an unending web of tired plot threads that only tangled further into knots with each movie, producing a rat king of arcs that not even divine will could cut through.
It’s easy to see as hyperbole, but the concept of a Digimon Adventure 03 was a huge deal during the heights of the Digimon fandom. While Tamers eventually became accepted and lauded as a classic season in its own right, fans were still itching for another season set in the first show’s continuity. Mountains upon mountains of fanfiction was written in the years after 02 ended, wondering what became of the Digidestined, giving them new threats to vanquish, and taking a weed-whacker to that pesky epilogue. And why not? 02 was a bad season, but one full of ideas and concepts that left viewers interested in what would happen if they were implemented in a good show. It was diesel fuel for the fanfiction writer’s mind, a fierce desire to figure out what happened after killing MaloMyotismon and how the universe would carry on. But eventually, the bubble burst for Digimon as a whole. The money and drive to make new shows every year just wasn’t there any more, and the franchise would go through multiple hiatuses. There were attempts to start the fire again, but the bandwagon just didn’t go. Even shows that succeeded in getting a sequel like Xros Wars fell on their faces. The latest season on TV, Digimon Universe Applimonsters, came and went without fanfare or even merchandising success, leading to what used to be one of the most heavily-imported anime to become a quiet entity collecting dust, while other series of its kind, including a certain show that Digimon has been hastily compared to, soldier on year after year without rest.
And after a while, even the most ardent fanatics grew to accept that. The third season that absolutely, totally was going to happen according to someone whose dad worked at Bandai and got Tamagotchis in exchange for sexual services became nothing more than an old story. So many years passed that it made no sense marketing wise. The kids who watched Wargreymon and Metalgurumon fight Myotismon on Fox Kids became teenagers, and then twentysomethings. With exceptions like the Cyber Sleuth fans, most of them aren’t going to buy Digimon toys or games. The only grade-school kids who knew what the hell a Digimon was were scarce. It would make more sense financially to make a new intellectual property and milk episodes and toys out of that. By all accounts, the ship sailed and went to the other side of the world. But against all odds, Tri was announced. Fans broke out of their caves, screaming that it was a sign of the times. A season they waited for even longer than the third season of Full Metal Panic was coming out. And all they had to do was wait. And wait. And wait. And—oh, surprise. The season’s actually a set of movies. And wait some more. Then you find out the director helmed a little series known as School Days, and none of the original staff are there. And you wait. And you get sick of waiting so you watch Blood Blockade Battlefront. But then that show’s last episode gets delayed so you wait. And you wait. And finally, you get the first movie of Tri, where you get to see what the Digidestined are up to, and you get a wonderful set of episodes where Tai spends most of his time shell-shocked over the sight of a broken cellphone.
That’s not to say the first movie didn’t have any hype to it. We were given an immediate mystery about what happened to the cast from 02, a mysterious new girl with her own Digimon, and a fight between Alphamon and Omnimon. While there were pitfalls and some odd character regressions such as Sora’s, it delivered a hook. Something to remind people why they watched Digimon, and a light to where it could go next. And if only that light kept shining. With each further part, the destination was littered with silly hot springs and school festival episodes, a Kansas City Shuffle of villains whose importance and motives fluctuated at the drop of a hat, detours into amnesia plots, animation that was poor even when compared to other Toei shows, and an almost contradictory stance as to whether to ignore Adventure’s past or grab onto it. Villains like Himekawa were prepped up as manipulative and in charge only to fall down and become crazed wrecks with unresolved fates. Characters such as Sora were so mistreated that in one movie, characters stop to mention how motherly Sora and how in touch she is with her feminine side, in such a way that the gender politics felt like something out of a 1950s public service announcement. And characters who didn’t regress became stagnant. We have Joe too busy with his exams to help out the team again. We have Kari possessed by the overseeing entities of the Digital World to give out exposition again. The direction kept zigzagging, and with each misstep, Tri went from a welcome addition to the Digimon Adventure series, to a nostalgic reminder of times past, to a mediocre show you have to be reminded came out last Friday, and then to a broken down horse who doesn’t even know where the finish line was.
And that’s bullshit, because like 02, Tri peddled some ideas that could have made for a cool show, like the first Digidestined before Tai and the gang growing up and becoming corrupt, the kids learning how to take the lead now that they have become adults, and how they can pick up the slack now that Davis, Yolei, Cody, and Ken were missing in action. But very little of that was ever utilized, and only brought forward without any elaboration or detail. Instead, the majority of the run time consisted of Meiko acting miserable while everybody else coddled her. It didn’t have what hooked me onto Digimon, and what kept me hooked for years. The first season knew what it wanted to do. Explore exotic realms of the Digital World. Develop character arcs where kids who could barely handle summer camp became champions who could overcome threats to both the Digital and the real world. Show this ugly yellow lizard evolve physically and mentally into a warrior in knight’s armor. Even 02 had good offerings like the Daemon Corps and the Dagomon episode, detailing how the Digital World is far more eldritch than previously thought and questioning if a Digimon’s life matters as much as a human life. And Tri doesn’t do that. Its few high points are merely okay, and there’s no real innovation. And as for shows like Tamers, that’s a whole other beast. Even anime aimed at the most high-brow fail to do what Tamers achieved. The show is such an exception to the norm that its even more of an anomaly in its medium than the Lovecraftian villains within its later story arcs.
But Tri doesn’t do any of that. It doesn’t take risks or even have fun. Each movie was often an hour of the main cast talking among themselves, delivering exposition at the speed of one new factoid per thousand words of dialogue. The cast doesn’t explore or go out of their way to fight. Like the mystery with the 02 kids, Tai and everybody else for the most part don’t even acknowledge their disappearance. Occasionally, TK and Kari will knock Ken’s door hoping to find an answer, but that was largely it. The gang went on trips to public bathhouses and had fun dressing up as cheerleaders before they even so much as acknowledged that four of their friends have vanished from the face of the earth. And when the series eventually reveals what happened to them, it felt more like an after note than a grand revelation years in the making. Instead of feeling like a resolution was delivered, it left me thinking the original eight kids were uncaring psychopaths. If your friend, not just a casual one but somebody you have fought wars and saved the day with, suddenly disappeared and there was no way to contact them or their family, you wouldn’t just ignore that and get on with your day. You would think something horrible happened, and that you needed to call the cops or organize a rescue team. But that didn’t happen in Tri. What would be a crisis to someone else is treated like a misplaced sock. The opening mystery of the series and what should have been the driving plot is given little to no stakes whatsoever. That’s a recurring problem with Tri. Nothing feels as important as it should be. The Digimon that the Digidestined have bonded with for years at this point getting amnesia gets resolved within four episodes and only becomes relevant again at the finale. The world on the brink of annihilation because of the reincarnation of Apocalymon feels so hollow and lifeless that the first movie’s fight against a bunch of simple Kuwagamon seems more dramatic. Even a Roland Emmerich movie could convey more emotional stakes from cities getting destroyed than what happened in the finale. Because the most integral key isn’t any of the main players, or even most of their Digimon. It’s fucking Meiko.
Meiko Mochizuki is the centerpiece of Tri. Mimi loves her. Tai’s attracted to her. Yggdrasil’s agent is fascinated with her. She becomes the best friend and main cause for concern to almost everybody in this season. She has a Digimon coincidentally named Meicoomon, and they often call each other Mei just to further confuse us. Whenever she gets sad, the cast get together to make her feel better, giving her all the care they don’t appear to give to their missing friends. She even looks a little like Yolei to boot, and her Digimon also fuses with Gatomon like Yolei’s did. Plus, Meicoomon digivolves into curvier and more endowed Digivolutions so this character can appeal to the furries too. And if you think since she’s an original character that must mean she gets an arc, well sorry! She ends the main arc no different than she was before, except without a Digimon because that’s in case Toei greenlights Digimon Adventure Quad. And just like in Tri, she’ll be timid, get sad, and apologize a lot. And in Digimon Adventure Quints, she’ll be timid, get sad, and apologize a lot. And in Digimon Adventure Hex, she’ll be timid, get sad, and apologize a lot. And in Dig—what I’m saying is Meiko’s a lame character. She’s underwritten and feels more like parts of previous characters taped together, and that would be fine and dandy if she weren’t the main character of Tri. So while she gets more screentime than characters like Izzy or Mimi, there are no layers to peel. It’s like if in Breaking Bad, instead of giving hours of time to Walter White and how he changes from caring father to cold drug kingpin, you give an inordinate amount of focus to Skinny Pete, Jesse’s addict friend. And instead of developing his character or uncovering his personality traits, you just let the camera sit on Skinny Pete. That’s what Meiko is. She’s what happens when a series puts too much focus on a one-note background character.
Tri is the equivalent of a nature documentary that spends an hour on unremarkable grass and one minute occasionally glancing at the wildlife. For a series that took more than a month per episode to air, and was years in development during its episode premieres, there are other anime with no source material to work from that can get a tighter story out on a weekly basis. Instead, we got almost delirious situations. Like Huckmon, one of the background players appearing throughout the show, mentioning that he and the powers that be have to reboot the real world in order to save it. Without any explanation as to how you can reboot the physical real world or what that actually means. It’s like in King’s Game where a biological virus became a technological one, and nobody batted an eye to how that made no sense. And then there’s the evil Gennai who pops up occasionally, and he dresses up as the Digimon Emperor even after everybody figures out he’s not Ken. He doesn’t offer anything in terms of fear factor or screen presence, he’s just there to chew the stage and quote Nietzsche while giving more questions than answers as to what his deal is. And he doesn’t even die. He goes back to his home realm while teasing the audience about Daemon and Diaboromon, because even if Digimon’s not a big franchise anymore, Toei knows they can milk it with even more and more movies where the Digidestined fight recycled versions of old villains. Like in the fourth movie where they fought the Dark Masters again. Or in the finale where Angemon fights Devimon again. But none of them talk because it’s too much effort to write dialogue for them. And if you’re sick of Adventure by this point, here’s some copied shots from Tamers where the main villains shoots purple goo that melts buildings, all while the Shinjuku Park Tower is in focus. You loved Tamers and were okay with Savers, so here’s a watered down Yggdrasil ordering a Digimon to do D-Reaper shit. But if you want an actual Tamers 2 like Konaka does, tough fucking luck. You’re getting Digimon Adventure Cuatro, Cinco, Seis, and so much more in the upcoming years. More Matt playing his harmonica. More Izzy on his computer. More Kari getting weird incestuous subtext between her and Tai. More Leomon deaths. More villains who make Jiren look like Michael Corleone. You thought other companies milking their franchises until they’re shells of their former selves was bad? You haven’t seen nothing yet.