Looks like Orochimon wasn’t actually dead yet… which was infuriating. I don’t mind opponents coming back, but at this point it was feeling very repetitive. Not only because Orochimon came back bigger, better and stronger like 3 times in the past couple episodes, but the circumstances in this episode felt way to similar to the 3rd episode of this series where Omnimon- excuse me, Omegamon (didn’t know the Japanese name until now) had to clean up because Tokyo was going to get destroyed. And maybe it was because Orochimon copied the city that it wanted to copy the circumstances. Which would make sense, but as a plot point, it felt too repetitive.
Just like the vine Digimon in the beginning, Orochimon reaches its mega stage as Nidhoggmon and I will admit, this thing is TERRIFYING. You thought Orochimon was scary, nah fam, this thing is a monster straight out of your nightmares and giant monster movies. This thing just screams death with one glance. They did a good job on its design if it legit terrifies me upon just looking at it. Though I think that’s part of the reason why I’m kind of disappointed with how this battle ended up. Of course the kids would win against it, no surprise there, but the fact that it has this amazing design but all it did was spew lasers out of its mouth that was pretty disappointing. It had these vine like extensions that could have brought something interesting to the fight like it did as Orochimon.
I think the more interesting part of the episode was what was being shown in the human world. Nidhoggmon was taking energy from all electronic devices from the human world to destroy it once the timer reached zero. Just seeing the ground littered with abandoned phones with electricity sparking around them was a pretty terrifying view and rightfully causing sheer panic to the masses. Though I am starting to question Hikari as a character because it just seems like hardly anything phases her. She just looks around in confusion without much of a reaction. It’s fine to be confused and wonder what is going on, but that’s not a normal child reaction. I can forgive Takeru’s reaction since he was alone and not in the middle of chaos. Windows were breaking, people were screaming, electricity was going everywhere, how does a kid in the middle of that not freak out?
Not gonna lie, this episode felt very lazy and not just because of the reuse of plot. The animation was pretty poor and I noticed that this episode composed of A LOT of still shots that were reused several times. There weren’t very many interesting action shots, which is very unfortunate because Omegamon is such a cool Digimon and Nidhoggmon had so much potential to make an interesting fight but the animation for Omegamon was so boring. Though granted he also hardly moved in the movie (he was more animated in the tri movies ironically enough), however, I feel like they could have done so much more with Omegamon in this battle. It could have been great! Especially the part where Nidhoggmon fired his laser breath at him and Omegamon just swung his cape to the side to block it. Sure the idea is cool in hindsight, but it felt so lazily executed. Even when the moment they could have made Omegamon look awesome where he was swinging his sword against the lasers, it ended up looking very underwhelming. The usual interesting camera angles just weren’t there so it just wasn’t able to convey the hype of the moment that should have gotten me excited. It also doesn’t help that the characters hardly had a change of expression the entire episode.
As to be expected, Nidhoggmon is defeated at the last moment before the timer runs out and the duplicated Tokyo is destroyed, turning the area back to how it was. And I did get excited to see it had become a desert, reminding me of the original series where they had to trek through that desert for a really long time.
I feel it doesn’t really go well plot-wise to have a freaking Mega Digimon occur before the true “final boss” for this arc who is only an Ultimate level. Unless they do something to level him up, Omegamon can just show up and sweep like he typically does… unless they pull a fast one on me, which I hope they do. But it does seem like they’re setting up yet another danger that is in the process of being formed, and it also looks terrifying. But it also seems whatever it is, successfully split up the team, just when they were all together again too. This VAGUELY reminds me of when they were suddenly split up in the original series, but it seems like Taichi and Yamato were able to stick together.
Devimon makes himself known to Taichi and Yamato for the first time, making it so at least they know what they’re up against now. Now it is interesting that the human world is also a target rather than just the Digital world in this series and Devimon even refers to it as their feed. Which gives the kids even more incentive to stop this threat. It also seems like Takeru was transported to the Digital World this time as his body seemed to get digitized at the last moment when he was reaching up towards the Holy Digimon feather. (Though it is strange that only he was transported and Hikari was left behind) So hopefully my boy will finally be a bit more relevant in the story.
Also my other boy Leomon finally makes his appearance in the preview for next episode and I am excited to see him. Though I HOPE that his fate will be different from all of his other incarnations in this series… If you know what I mean.
