Not gonna lie, I am EXHAUSTED by this series. I know I’ve said it before, but this exhaustion for it has just left me incredibly indifferent towards this series where things happen, but it’s neither entertaining or interesting anymore. I’ve been trying to grasp at straws, but now I just want it to end. Thankfully there are only 2 more episodes of this travesty.
What can I even say about this episode? Stuff just HAPPENS and the kids have to deal with it. This is hardly any different from what has been happening in the series. Not to mention despite this being the Digimon to end all Digimon, there was hardly any build up for this thing’s appearance. Yeah we saw some hints of this thing here and there, but the build up was still extremely weak narratively speaking. We were not told about this guy UNTIL NOW. Not to mention that there didn’t seem to be that much urgency to try and stop this thing from manifesting. And while Millenniumon was handled terribly, at least they TALKED about it and made it an urgent matter that the kids needed to stop this thing from coming back to life. Even though all through the Millenniumon arc, urgency didn’t seem to happen that often…
At this point, I feel as if I’m just repeating myself by saying that everything that happens lately had little to no build up, thus the episode ended up falling flat to me. BUT THAT’S HOW IT FEELS. So many of the episodes feel so repetitive with how they handle the conflicts. I give kudos to the ones that mix it up, but this episode just fell into the “I’ve seen them do this before” bin. The angels come out and defeat the big evil… only for Taichi and Agumon to defeat the REAL big evil. WATCH, it’s going to happen. Though I assume that Omegamon will be the one to finish things off considering how they talked about him last episode.
I do find it a little strange that Tailmon and Patamon turned into a different Mega this time around, even if they were pretty cool. I understand that the other Mega forms must have needed A LOT of power and energy to pull off, but… Ugh… they didn’t explain anything or really give any indication as to why they changed Megas. They didn’t even really hint at the new Megas in story (I’m not including ending because that was more or less just a spoiler if anything) until recently. So when they achieved the different Mega forms I felt more like: “ah, there it is” rather than “oh man, that’s awesome!” Things feel as if they just happen without any rhyme or reason or proper build up and I’m just so over it.
In any case, Seraphimon and Ofanimon show up and take down Deathmon without too much trouble. The fight was rather lack luster as well since it only amounted to two hits against this supposedly powerful Digimon. Though Takeru and Hikari looked freaking awesome in those shots of their Digivices lighting up like that. But like all JRPG’s, it was only the first boss before the REAL boss shows up. And while this thing was shown very early on in the series, it was never addressed or hinted at very well. Like we’re learning about it as it appears rather than building up to what this thing is capable of.
It feels like not much happened, yet a lot of things happened. My indifference is just immeasurable at this point. Also, can I just address that this episode seemed to receive as little budget as possible? So many of the stand still images looked incredibly wonky and off model. Like I can forgive some off model sins, but in this episode they just looked downright lazy. Proportions were all over the place, shots were reused several times, animation was stiff… everything felt so lazy and rushed. It was nice of Devimon to appear again, but man, I was pretty confused as to why he just dissolved away randomly. Also, speaking of which, I really wish we got to SEE Devimon performing his supposed experiments on evolution rather than them just kind of throwing that out there. Especially since this was never addressed (or at least prominently) when Devimon was a threat. It felt like they were throwing a lot of new information out there that it just wasn’t connecting very well.
Someone in a Digimon podcast I watch brought up a very good point on this series that I feel sums up this series fairly well. It demonstrates the weakness of what happened with Digimon Frontier where the plot wasn’t particularly clear and spent its time in filler purgatory until stuff kind of started happening. While I enjoyed Frontier as a kid, it would probably drive me crazy now. Also the kids both in Frontier and in this current series weren’t developed very well as characters. Though I will hand it to Frontier for actually having their BACKSTORIES intertwine with the little bit of development they get. But yeah, I can totally see that they are taking notes from how Frontier was done and applying it to this series… which ended up being a little bit of a detriment as Frontier was a bit weak in the story department. Digimon Adventure 2020, just put me out of my misery already.
Edit: Also apparently there was an extra episode strapped onto the series so I guess my pain continues for a little while longer…
As someone who does genuinely like Frontier, but considers Tamers their all time favorite, I’m willing to argue that even Frontier had much more of a plot than this. Frontier at least cared about its characters, even if it didn’t always succeed in developing them!!
Frontier also has a special place in my heart, but I do admit it had a lot of problems. And yes, as I said in my post, at least they actually tied backstory to their present actions and actually used it to help develop them. Unlike what’s been happening in Adventure 2020 where it literally feels like we don’t even know these characters. >_>
Agreed with you both. In the aspects of character development and build up to the last fight, Frontier is still much better than this reboot who wasted the majority of the series with fillers.
And unfortunately, from Digimon official website, it seems the series is extended for one more episode, which means, there’s still three episodes left, not two.
Toei Animation used the excuse of Covid 19 as to why they struggled to acquire new audiences of children. Sorry, but I don’t think the pandemic has anything to do with the quality of the story and writing. Even if the pandemic doesn’t happen, this reboot would still disappointing since the story progress just suck.