Digimon Adventure: (2020) Episode 52

What’s this? We finally get Sora character development… 52 EPISODES IN??? Putting the lousy pacing of the series aside, this was a really good Sora episode. Not only did they not reuse an earlier episode’s premise, but we got a little more out of Sora character-wise… FINALLY. She had been lacking a lot in the character-department the most out of all the kids, so I was happy to finally see more of her like this.

She and Taichi are still following their compass arrows to figure out the Great Calamity and the secret of the crests and they accidentally get shot down by an active volcano. Thankfully the local workers were able to save them from their fall because if they were to hit the rocks and be okay from that height, I would have just shouted: FALSE! Because there was no way they’d be okay hitting the rocks like that, even if this was an anime. My suspension of disbelief can only go so far. Anyways, the workers lead by Junkmon are building up walls to control the lava flow so that it doesn’t destroy all the livelihood of all the Digimon living there. So of course Taichi and Sora decide to pitch in and help but man, the quote of “safety first!” got old REALLY fast. They repeated it nine freaking times along with that dumb movement that accompanied it in the span of three minutes. ENOUGH ALREADY WE GET IT.

I do like the change of pace to them battling against literally nature instead of an enemy Digimon causing problems. I was worried that the volcano eruption had to do with an “evil” Digimon, but thankfully that wasn’t the case.

The dramatic issue that arose from the episode was Sora and Piyomon getting into a conflict of trust. After Piyomon ended up getting hurt, Sora took on all of the burden of working hard for the both of them. Sora acted near reckless while trying to help out as much as she could and with how fast she was moving, it definitely didn’t seem like she was doing “safety first.” I’m actually surprised she didn’t end up getting hurt and am a bit disappointed there wasn’t a bigger consequence for her pushing herself too hard. But I guess before it got to that point, Piyomon ended up incredibly frustrated and hurt that Sora didn’t trust her enough to help even when her wing was better and just blew up at her.

Sora’s argument with Piyomon felt very reminiscent of a mother and child arguing with each other. What Sora said to Piyomon felt like a mother telling her child that she could handle everything on her own and that she didn’t need her help in fear of having them get hurt. It almost seemed like Sora was projecting in a way. Especially since what little we know of Sora’s home life is that her mom is very strict. So it felt like Sora was projecting how her mom acts towards her onto Piyomon. And Piyomon reacts in very typical childlike manner by yelling that she hates Sora before running off.

Out of all the Digimon partners, Piyomon was probably the only one I didn’t really care too much about. Either the other partner Digimon had fun personalities that bounced off their respective kids really well or they had good development that made me care about them personally. Piyomon was the only one who didn’t have either and honestly her clingy behavior towards Sora was a little annoying at times. It doesn’t help that every other word out of Piyomon’s mouth is “Sora.” She seems to have abandonment issues, but there wasn’t really anything that contributed to that so it didn’t feel as convincing as say Patamon’s self esteem issues.

Sora’s over protection is her form of “love” in a sense. However, this doesn’t make a good partnership. I appreciate that Junkmon was able to knock some sense into Sora by saying that the walls wouldn’t have been possible if it were just him taking all the burden on himself. Instead, he shared the burden and was able to build the walls because of the others’ help. It wouldn’t be as productive if one of the other did the work while the other one didn’t. Sora thought she had to take on all of the burden to protect Piyomon instead of allowing Piyomon to take some of the burden and they could take it on together. Over protectiveness needed to be replaced with trust. And when the volcano erupted, Sora seemed to realize that there is only so much that she could do. When Junkmon gets hurt from a stray blast from the eruption, Sora instinctually calls out for Piyomon only to realize that she’s on her own. And it was obvious she and Junkmon weren’t going to make it out of there on their own.

When Piyomon appears to help, Sora was visibly touched to see her come back. It was here that Sora seemed to finally realize how important trust was in a partnership and that she could depend on Piyomon to pull through for her. That trust became a more powerful form of love, allowing Piyomon to reach her final stage as Hououmon. And with this new mega evolution, she was able to solidify the lava and render it inactive, saving everyone on the island. While it does seem like it was an easy fix, I can forgive it because this is a Mega and just how it was sorted out was absolutely beautiful.

Sadly it seems like Taichi and Sora will be going separate ways for the time being as the compass on Sora’s digivice is still onwards and Taichi still has no idea where his is telling him to go. But looks like he’ll be meeting up with Hikari, Takeru and Joe at the hot springs since Junkmon wants to go there to heal.

Viewing this episode on its own, it was a pretty solid episode and I do like that we were able to get a little more character development from Sora. I do really love it when this series does an introspective on the characters and shows us how a character is rather than telling us. However, I will say that I had hoped we’d explore more of Sora’s background since it still feels like we don’t know her very well (or any of the kids for that matter). Especially since it showed her a part of herself that could have been related to her relationship with her mom. But we weren’t given much context on WHY she acts that way so we can only assume. Which is mildly irritating because I feel like the insertion of a brief flashback could have gone a long way for Sora’s character. At this point, I shouldn’t expect any deep dive into any of the kids’ backstory at this rate since we only have 14 more episode left. I am looking forward to Joe’s episode though since his episodes typically are pretty good despite him not being one of my favorites.