Digimon

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I figured that this franchise deserved its own thread. So, yeah, discuss anything Digimon-related here. As for me, I have finished watching Tamers and don't plan to watch any further than that unless any of the other seasons are considered to be any good.

Anyways, as for me, I love Adventure and while it hasn't necessarily aged well in every regard I can't help but feel that this series has the most heart to it out of the 3 that I have seen. Adventure 02 is obviously a big drop in quality, but at the same time I have never agreed with some of the hate that it gets, granted that it had some horrendous episodes in the middle of its run and suffered the most from bad plot-holes, and lets not mention its terrible ending (which is a 3-minute segment of the series that I choose to completely ignore), but overall I found the beginning of the series up until the end of the Digimon Emperor arc to be quite enjoyable, and I loved the episodes with the Daemon Corps, and liked the actual final few episode of the series minus the actual ending. I think that it was weakest when it had quite a few pointless episodes in the middle that really did nothing for the series, and I really can't stand the dub for it. While I enjoyed Adventure season 1's dub for what it was, I felt that 02 had a really sloppy dub and even the original VAs from season 1 seemed to stop caring about their roles. Also, I think its major weakness was that none of the new characters were interesting, but I think the inclusion of the old cast and the fact that they got a bit more of an important role later on in the series helped make the show more interesting than it would have been without them. Overall, its definitely not as good as the first season, but I still found it to be entertaining in the end.

Tamers is the one that I most recently re-watched, and while I got bored out of my mind with it as a kid and stopped watching it a bit more than half-way through, I did enjoy it quite a bit more this time and found that its damn good and pretty dark for a kids series by its 2nd half. Overall, I'll say that it was certainly worth re-watching, and I do now have a positive perspective of it and find it to be a good series, but I also do still have my issues with it. Still, I'll give it extra points for having the best dub by far out of the first 3 seasons of the series.

Anyways, my favorite part of Digimon is Our War Game. I also find the English movie to be an extremely guilty pleasure, as its horrendous but I still shamelessly enjoy it.

So, uhhhh....yeah....discuss Digimon.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I'd like to know what the hell was going on with the production behind this show.

They come out with a surprise hit (kids like character development and adventure? who knew?) and even by the seat of their pants are able to make a fun story for kids on a limited budget that borders on being a mainstream hit. It has a great ending and everyone is in love with the series, even converting over the "it's a Pokemon clone!" people.

Then comes season 2 which is surprisingly both over and undercooked in a lot of ways, but it never feels as consistent as the first season in any respect. Plots frequently meander off (some don't even have conclusions), and most of it is just really boring. There is some good stuff, but as a whole it never feels right. The season ends and punches fans in the face further by having the single most retarded ending to a franchise ever closing off the story (for some reason we will never know). The epilogue is still mocked today.

The third season is a bit more insular, and not as focused on the mainstream as the last two seasons. For many fans, it makes up for season 2, but it isn't enough t keep the franchise going as big as it was in Adventure. It too ends and begins a pointless (really pointless) tradition of having ever season standalone from here on out. Though at least it means we won't ever have another epilogue situation ever again.

The fourth season is Power Rangers. The characters are all dull as dishwater. The plot is basically Adventure re-written. It is a grab bag attempt to reach mainstream audiences again, and it fails. Frontier kills the series for years.

Then eventually we get a new Digimon series that is more or less a shonen anime with Digimon in it. It brings the franchise back, but it is safe in every way. The art style is really different too. It gives the series a base to work from, but on its own it isn't anything new.

Now we're up to the current season that I don't really know anything about. I've heard good things about it, but I don't know if it can ever be as popular as it was in the first three seasons again.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The main problem with Adventure 02 is that Toei made a different team of writers from the first season handle the story....the problem is that they made them start writing it before Adventure season 1 was even half-way through its own run, so that alone leads to a lot of the plot holes and overall mess of a story that occurred in 02, since the new writers clearly had no idea of the major plot points that would be brought up later on in Adventure season 1. In fact, if you look at most of the plot-holes from 02, most of them are only inconsistent with the later parts of the story from season 1. The bottom line is that all of Adventure 02's real problems can be attributed to it being extremely rushed in its production. Its a shame, because I really felt like it had a lot of good ideas going for it and could have been great (even better than season 1) if it had gotten the proper amount of time and care put into it that it deserved.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I had heard that, and it's crazy. No wonder a lot of the weird stuff happens. "The Digiworld? What's that?"

I think they really shot themselves in the foot with Digimon and it could have been a lot bigger than it actually was.

[Rosalinas Spare Wand]

Now we're up to the current season that I don't really know anything about. I've heard good things about it, but I don't know if it can ever be as popular as it was in the first three seasons again.

Xros Wars is surprisingly well done. It's got that same "kids in a distant world" feel that season 1 had and season 4 tried to emulate, but it has a much smaller cast with the spotlight rotating around enough to give them all fair development, and the arcs remain really consistent and suspenseful.

I haven't really seen much aside from a few episodes, but it really sounds like quite the turn around from Data Squad and Frontier, although it still suffers from Toei's latest infatuation to give all their series soome Mini-con like gimmick meant solely to sell toys. I'd like to see it get licensed outside Japan, but some of the fanservice from certain monster designs just seems too in-your-face to make it as marketable as the first few series were.

[Spark Of Spirit]

That sounds pretty nice, actually. It would be nice to see it licensed and come over here, hopefully giving the franchise a bit of a second wind on this side of the world.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I decided to skip both Frontier and Savers after hearing that both seasons are pretty mediocre at best, and instead decided to jump right into Xros Wars which has gotten some pretty positive fan reception so far. I have to say, now that I'm 3 episodes in its already shaping up to be pretty good. It has the kids trapped in the Digital World for the time being with no knowledge of it and how it works much like in Adventure season 1, and on top of that it has a suitably epic set-up with the dark army and the main character Taiki having a vision of what seems to be the future in which he leads an entire army of Digimon against the dark forces in this series. It looks like its foreshadowing to a suitably epic plot later on, though at this point its still just foreshadowing so I have no idea what's really in store for later on.

This season of Digimon is clearly more shonen-esque, and Shoutmon (Taiki's main Digimon) even has a goal to become the "Digimon King" (Yeah, you can totally see that all of Toei's series now pretty much take some form of influence from One Piece), but its nice that he has an actual reason behind it in that he wants to protect his village, rather than just wanting to be the top dog....errrr, Digimon, just for the sake of being the best.

Taiki himself is a refreshing leader character (well, he's not really in a leader role yet, but he's wearing the series's trademark goggles, so its pretty obvious that he will become the big leader later on), in that he's actually not a total dunder-head like most of his predecessors and is pretty clever. He's actually a nice contrast to the rest of the shonen-esque vibe that this series is going for with how cool-headed and understanding he is. He is pretty good at coming up with strategies in the heat of the moment during intense battles, and he wisely avoids being hot-headed when his rival Tamer (well, they are called "Generals" in this series, but its basically the same thing) eggs him on and tries to challenge him, instead keeping focused on defending the village which is more important to him.

Overall, I'm definitely going to catch up with this series. I think its almost over, anyways, going by the fact that every other Digimon series is 50-something episodes long an this series is already in its 40's in the episode count. It has a lot of potential at this current point that I'm at, but it remains to be seen whether it reaches that potential or not.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Looks like they're getting their groove back. I'll add it to the list.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I had to take a break from the series when I was working at my cousin's pharmacy a few weeks ago. I finally got back into watching it now, though, and I have to say....I'm kind of disappointed. The first few episodes certainly showed some promise and the series still has potential from the point that I'm currently at, but after the first 3 or 4 episodes where I left off the show got more episodic (as opposed to building up an interesting continuing story), but didn't make the individual stories interesting since there were a lot of cliches strewn about and it just felt too predictable and formulaic. Recently the last episode I watched hinted that the series will break out of that "by the books" sort of approach that was plaguing the last few episodes that I watched, but I'll have to keep watching to find out. I hope it does turn out to be good in the end because I really do think the series started out with enough potential to be a great series. Hopefully things get more serious and less predictable pretty soon (currently I'm about 12 episodes into the series). I'll keep watching it until the 20-episode mark or so, and depending on if it still holds my interest or not by then, I may either finish it or drop it.

Either way, though, after this I think I'll take a break from watching Digimon series' in general, and when I finally come back to the franchise again I think I'll try and re-watch all of Adventure season 1 as well as Tamers in Japanese with subtitles, just to see how it compared to what I saw of the English dub tracks for both of those series.

[Rynnec]

Watching til' episode 21 would be a good way to gauge interest in the show. Since episode 21 is usually the game-changing episode in Digimon. Episodes 13 to 30 were the high points of the series for me. (Albeit, with a few lesser episodes in that group)

I think a large problem of the early episodes is that unless you're a big Digifreak (like myself) you probably wouldn't find anything of interest in them. The ocean zone episodes, for instance, featured the animated debuts of Neptunemon (albeit, with a heavily altered appearence) and Leviamon. Members of the Olympus 12 and Seven Great Demon Lords respectively. Two groups which a casual Digimon viewer most likely wouldn't know (or care) about.

The series is about to end pretty soon (that, or it's entering another season) either way, when episode 54 ends in a few weeks, I'll (try) to post my overall thoughts on Xros Wars.

[Dr. Insomniac]

This just happened.

[Rynnec]

Hell. Yes.

Okay, the animation leaves much to be desired, and they couldn't get some of the seiyuu back, but fuck it, I've been waiting years for this moment.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

And now all of a sudden I need to start watching Xros Wars again (I know this is technically a new series, but since its a direct sequel to Xros Wars I count it as part of the same series). Damn, if I had seen something like this back when I was a Digimon fan (and if I had actually watched all of Tamers), I think my head would literally explode from sheer awesomeness. Of course, none of what happened in that scene could possibly canon with Adventure or Tamers (I can't speak for Frontier or Savers since I haven't seen either of them), but even so....damn....

[Spark Of Spirit]

Was that Joe in silhouette randomly?

I have to hand it to them. That was cool.

[Rynnec]

Was that Joe in silhouette randomly?

I have to hand it to them. That was cool.

Yes it was.

And now all of a sudden I need to start watching Xros Wars again (I know this is technically a new series, but since its a direct sequel to Xros Wars I count it as part of the same series). Damn, if I had seen something like this back when I was a Digimon fan (and if I had actually watched all of Tamers), I think my head would literally explode from sheer awesomeness. Of course, none of what happened in that scene could possibly canon with Adventure or Tamers (I can't speak for Frontier or Savers since I haven't seen either of them), but even so....damn....

Well, for Adventure, it could have happened sometime after the Our War Game. And for Tamers, it could be in the same universe where the events of Runaway Locomon happened. Frontier and Savers are almost impossible to pin down though, due to Susanoomon and the fact that ShineGreymon is able to go Burst Mode (The former has the cast's Digivice's return to normal immediately after its last battle, and the events after the latter's debut would make its appearance here uncanon). Of course, we can all agree that the writers said "Screw Continuity" on the matter.

Out of curiousity, when did you stop on Xros Wars?