Digimon thread!

Drathnoxis

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Let's talk about Digimon! Any part of it. I'm not going to mark spoilers, it'll just be some spoilers for Digimon: The Movie.

I recently watched the original Japanese Digimon movies that compose Digimon: The Movie as well as the dub movie for comparison.

Adventure Movie
This movie really really captured my attention when I first saw it as a child, the art was significantly different from the first series and that really intrigued me. It doesn't really have much going for it in the story department, however, I recently learned that this was actually the pilot episode of the first series and debuted in Japanese theaters a day before the first episode aired. The Japanese original version compares favorably to the Digimon: The Movie version, if only because it doesn't have future Kari's constant narration and simply lets events speak for themselves. The use of classical piece Bolero as the main theme for the film is a poor fit for the most part and it feels out of place in the big monster battle scenes.

Children's War Game
This movie is great! The best of the three that were cut into Digimon: The Movie by far! The plot is a bit nonsensical, and it stretches my disbelief a bit that so many children managed to find the webpage(?) that showed the battle AND managed to get Izzy's email address AND that apparently no adults also noticed, but the rest of the film was good enough that I don't really care in the end. It's just a really fun concept, an underground battle to save the world from nuclear destruction taking place in plain sight on the public web. I like the desperate attempts and failures to get the team together on such short notice. Adds a bit of verisimilitude that you can't always get in contact with everyone, even if it's to save the world. It also helps that the B tier digidestined are the one's who don't make it to the fight, the movie really didn't need Joe or Mimi wasting screen time. Matt and T.K.'s mad dash around their grandma's village to find a computer with internet access was great too, I love the reactions of the old people in the barbershop watching the events unfold.

It also gives me a bit of a nostalgia rush seeing the old PCs running Windows 98. I also like the use of red outlines for animation of the internet, it's simple but adds a pretty distinctive style. The movie is well paced too, it's only 40 minutes and never feels like it drags or rushes. It starts off with simple intrigue and builds to a mad race against the clock. I can only imagine what all those shocked people watching the missile sink into the lake are thinking. There is essentially no difference between the dub and the original other than the dub containing a few more bad jokes and the original continuing its strange use of slow classical music tracks for its climactic battles.


Digimon Hurricane Touchdown / Transcendent Evolution! The Golden DigimentalsThis is the main victim of Digimon: The Movie's butchery. There were 40 minutes cut from the total runtime, and I'm sure most of it came from these two. Going in I was hoping that the plot would actually make some sense with all the missing footage restored, but... it really didn't. There is an additional plotline about the original digidestined being abducted by Kokomon, but it doesn't end up actually going anywhere and is basically swept under the rug by the end of the movie anyway. There's more scenes of Willis and his digimon, but there's still no explanation as to what the heck happened to Kokomon in that flower field. He just disappears. On the upside, it's absolutely hilarious that Willis is a born American that speaks Japanese far more naturally than he speaks English. He even speaks Japanese to his American mother despite claiming to have learned it from a Japanese girlfriend. More strange music choices for the soundtrack as this one chooses laid back bluegrass jazz for its battle scenes.

I'm gonna say that the Japanese originals are the clear story winners for all the movies, but if you want the best soundtrack you have to go with the dubs, unfortunately. The best upside to watching the individual Japanese movies, though, is that you can just watch Children's War Game and call it a day!
[hr]
As far as series are concerned, I can't decide whether I like Digimon Tamers better or the first Digimon Adventure. I didn't like the last two episodes from adventure, but I'm only just now watching it in the original Japanese so maybe that will make a difference. I never liked Zero Two much, I abandoned the show as a child not too far in and never had an interest in looking back.

**I just recently read that Digimon Tri is a series of movies that focused on the original 8 digidestined, and that has me intrigued. Did anybody watch them? Were they any good?

Other discussion questions are: Favorite series, arcs, characters? I've never played any of the games, were there any good ones?
 

Hawki

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I don't have much of a relationship with Digimon. I watched some of Adventure 01, Adventure 02, and...that's it.

Of the two, I preferred Adventure 01. Adventure 02 had the following issues for me in that:

-I much preferred the format of kids being stuck in the Digital World rather than just hopping in and out at will.

-Adventure 02 felt like it was falling into the trap of constantly escalating the skills of the digimon. Adventure 01 had the whole tag/crest thing, but this was better integrated into the plot.

-Very subjective, but it felt like the 02 kids were 'replacing' the 01 kids (TK and Kari aside).

Aside from that, can't really say. Although I have to ask, I like the idea of the Digital World(s), that data from computers basically piles up and whatnot, but how did that manifest in multiple creatures that all end with "mon?" Like, if I delete this right now, will I create "Digimonthreadmon?" 0_0

Think about it...
 

PsychedelicDiamond

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I remember preferring it to Pok?mon when I was a kid. Watched it up to Tamers, which was pretty great. Sort of like a child friendly version of a cyberpunk series. Good stuff. Also, LadyDevimon was, like, my first waifu. Her voice in the German dub was pure sex.
 

WhiteFangofWhoa

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I always enjoy sharing this particular story.

I originally dismissed Adventure 01 due to considering it unimaginative plagiarism of Pokemon and finding kind of silly how a lot of the names were just 'visual feature-mon'. However, the Dark Masters arc did what few other TV programs have managed and brought me back in, mainly with the promise of Matt turning against Tai.

Then I watched that episode and was pleased to find that it wasn't due to some cliched brainwashing bit, but due to actual convincing persuasion on the behalf of Cherrymon, who was given an amusing Vito Corleone voice to go with his mustache. He did what no other evil Digimon before (and possibly after?) him had ever done, only to be casually deleted by his idiotic boss for daring to suggest that they have to use divide and conquer to beat the Digidestined instead of just attacking them with pure power.

Oh, and his plan STILL worked- the kids divided up into smaller groups and didn't get back together until the finale. I guess you could say 'he knew he would never be able to destroy them. More powerful Digimon than him have tried. But if he could get them to destroy each other...'

Following that, I enjoyed everything about Machinedramon and Piedmon aka The Joker as a Digimon, and came to realize that it was generally a lot better written than the Pokemon anime. I also heard that the 3rd series, Tamers, was an enjoyable mind trip and a break away from the formula of the first 2, but never got around to trying it.
 

Gordon_4_v1legacy

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Adventure 01 was cool, 02 I sort of liked except when it became all about Ken and Davis? bromance but without a doubt Digimon Tamers was fucking awesome.

Pok?mon might have Digimon beat for games and staying power but Digimon did, and always will, eat Pok?mon's lunch in story.
 

Drathnoxis

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Hawki said:
I don't have much of a relationship with Digimon. I watched some of Adventure 01, Adventure 02, and...that's it.

Of the two, I preferred Adventure 01. Adventure 02 had the following issues for me in that:

-I much preferred the format of kids being stuck in the Digital World rather than just hopping in and out at will.

-Adventure 02 felt like it was falling into the trap of constantly escalating the skills of the digimon. Adventure 01 had the whole tag/crest thing, but this was better integrated into the plot.

-Very subjective, but it felt like the 02 kids were 'replacing' the 01 kids (TK and Kari aside).

Aside from that, can't really say. Although I have to ask, I like the idea of the Digital World(s), that data from computers basically piles up and whatnot, but how did that manifest in multiple creatures that all end with "mon?" Like, if I delete this right now, will I create "Digimonthreadmon?" 0_0

Think about it...
I agree with all your complaints about 02.

I think if you deleted the thread it might be randomly spit out by a computer in the Digiworld like those phone booths from Adventure 01 that spewed garbage information? I don't know, I don't think it's a well thought out concept.
 

immortalfrieza

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I loved both Adventure 01 and 02, it was good at balancing the comedic elements with drama, which gave the drama so much more weight. I didn't mind and kinda liked that 02 had a new batch of kids front and center, since the original Digidestined had all of 01 to develop and it would have been boring and not made sense to see the same batch pretty much go through the same development all over again.

I watched Tamers, but REALLY didn't like it. It was just dark dark dark and more dark, with little levity to speak of to balance it out. To put it in perspective for those who haven't seen it, the last bad guy that closed out the show was empowered from mindraping a little girl into as much misery as possible and then feeding off that misery. All I can say to that is Jesus F****** CHRIST.

The last Digimon show I watched was Digimon Frontier, which was good enough I suppose. It was hit pretty badly with what I call main protagonist syndrome and plot failure syndrome at the second half though. I forget their names but the Fire and the Light element guys were the only ones actually doing the fighting for the second half of the series while the others not only did nothing but stand around but couldn't do anything else because they gave up their power so the F&L guys could reach their ultimate forms. The other 3 series previous had the same thing happen but the other protagonists at least could TRY to help out, even if their attacks usually just bounced off harmlessly anyway. It didn't matter anyway, since the bad guys (Royal Knights or something I think) just ended up beating up F&L over and over again for the remainder of the series so the Big Bad could show up in order to do the same thing until the out of nowhere victory at the end of it all.
 

Elfgore

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The Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth games have done the Pokemon thing better than the past three iterations of the series, this includes Let's Go.

I only enjoyed the first two seasons of the show and honestly can't remember too much of it. I plan to maybe watch the whole series in Japanese. I refuse to watch the dub after an attempt of it a few years ago. Showing a flood and then dubbing it over with "WOAH! It's like a river of chocolate milk." 4kids' taint will never leave early 2000s anime.
 

Dreiko_v1legacy

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I loved Digimon, back in the day it was better in every area than pokemon outside of their actual videogames. Then there came the fourth season where they didn't have actual digimon partners for each kid and the kids just became digimon, not like the super cool two souls one body forms from season 3 but just the kid becoming a digimon. That just lost my interest and I've not been back since.


I always wanted to get into Tri and play the recently released PS4 Jrpgs which seem like genuinely good games, I've just been too busy with other stuff to do so.

Overall, my fav was the latter half of season 2 and everything with Impmon in season 3. Those dna evolutions man, giving me goosebumps~


Oh and Patamon is a boss. He just seems wimpy to make you let your guard down.
 

CrazyGirl17

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I started with Digimon Adventure as a kid, and it's my favorite season, mainly for nostalgia reasons.

Adventure 02 is okay, if flawed, and while I did like Tamers... I'm not a fan of how dark it got later on . And then there's that ending, which I will NEVER forgive...

I thought Frontier was underrated (though it loses steam after Cherubimon's defeat), as is Data Squad.

After that... I didn't get around to watching any others because I'm lazy. And that includes Adventure Tri, which I'm very much annoyed by due to the... direction the movies took.

Let's just say that if you thought Tamers was dark... then you're not gonna like this one.
 

Dreiko_v1legacy

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I actually loved the dark twist in Tamers which is why the change in tone with 4 felt like such a big letdown. Hearing Tri is like that again has me hyped haha.
 

EvilRoy

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Dreiko said:
I loved Digimon, back in the day it was better in every area than pokemon outside of their actual videogames. Then there came the fourth season where they didn't have actual digimon partners for each kid and the kids just became digimon, not like the super cool two souls one body forms from season 3 but just the kid becoming a digimon. That just lost my interest and I've not been back since.


I always wanted to get into Tri and play the recently released PS4 Jrpgs which seem like genuinely good games, I've just been too busy with other stuff to do so.

Overall, my fav was the latter half of season 2 and everything with Impmon in season 3. Those dna evolutions man, giving me goosebumps~


Oh and Patamon is a boss. He just seems wimpy to make you let your guard down.
I don't know about any mobile consol digimon games, and they probably got womped by pokemon even if they exist, but as far as home console I actually think digimon had a pretty solid showing. The PS1 game had some drawbacks, but was a surprisingly deep showing, particularly given the departure from a simple adventure format show. Screens were too small and load times between them were way too long, but the world was huge and had a tonne of interactions and quest, varying depending on what digimon you had.
 

Drathnoxis

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CrazyGirl17 said:
I started with Digimon Adventure as a kid, and it's my favorite season, mainly for nostalgia reasons.

Adventure 02 is okay, if flawed, and while I did like Tamers... I'm not a fan of how dark it got later on . And then there's that ending, which I will NEVER forgive...

I thought Frontier was underrated (though it loses steam after Cherubimon's defeat), as is Data Squad.

After that... I didn't get around to watching any others because I'm lazy. And that includes Adventure Tri, which I'm very much annoyed by due to the... direction the movies took.

Let's just say that if you thought Tamers was dark... then you're not gonna like this one.
Tell me what you didn't like about the ending of Tamers. I don't remember it much other than

I think they couldn't be with their Digimon anymore for some pretty weak reasons.
 

CrazyGirl17

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Drathnoxis said:
CrazyGirl17 said:
I started with Digimon Adventure as a kid, and it's my favorite season, mainly for nostalgia reasons.

Adventure 02 is okay, if flawed, and while I did like Tamers... I'm not a fan of how dark it got later on . And then there's that ending, which I will NEVER forgive...

I thought Frontier was underrated (though it loses steam after Cherubimon's defeat), as is Data Squad.

After that... I didn't get around to watching any others because I'm lazy. And that includes Adventure Tri, which I'm very much annoyed by due to the... direction the movies took.

Let's just say that if you thought Tamers was dark... then you're not gonna like this one.
Tell me what you didn't like about the ending of Tamers. I don't remember it much other than

I think they couldn't be with their Digimon anymore for some pretty weak reasons.
You pretty much hit the nail on the head. I know the seasons usually end with the humans and their partners being separated... but this just felt like a mean-spirited way to do it.

Doesn't help that the hope spot at the very end apparently lead to nothing. Is Konaka allergic to happy endings or something? Actually, that wouldn't surprise me...
 

Dreiko_v1legacy

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EvilRoy said:
Dreiko said:
I loved Digimon, back in the day it was better in every area than pokemon outside of their actual videogames. Then there came the fourth season where they didn't have actual digimon partners for each kid and the kids just became digimon, not like the super cool two souls one body forms from season 3 but just the kid becoming a digimon. That just lost my interest and I've not been back since.


I always wanted to get into Tri and play the recently released PS4 Jrpgs which seem like genuinely good games, I've just been too busy with other stuff to do so.

Overall, my fav was the latter half of season 2 and everything with Impmon in season 3. Those dna evolutions man, giving me goosebumps~


Oh and Patamon is a boss. He just seems wimpy to make you let your guard down.
I don't know about any mobile consol digimon games, and they probably got womped by pokemon even if they exist, but as far as home console I actually think digimon had a pretty solid showing. The PS1 game had some drawbacks, but was a surprisingly deep showing, particularly given the departure from a simple adventure format show. Screens were too small and load times between them were way too long, but the world was huge and had a tonne of interactions and quest, varying depending on what digimon you had.
Oh I never said they were "bad" per-se, just worse than pokemon. Digimon World 2 for the ps1 was a ton of fun and I even liked Digimon Rumble Arena which was kinda like a Digimon Smash and even had movie-exclusive Omnimon. The latter handheld stuff was a lot better too, it's my understanding that the ps4 ones are like the next evolution of those games.
 

BrawlMan

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Drathnoxis said:
CrazyGirl17 said:
I started with Digimon Adventure as a kid, and it's my favorite season, mainly for nostalgia reasons.

Adventure 02 is okay, if flawed, and while I did like Tamers... I'm not a fan of how dark it got later on . And then there's that ending, which I will NEVER forgive...

I thought Frontier was underrated (though it loses steam after Cherubimon's defeat), as is Data Squad.

After that... I didn't get around to watching any others because I'm lazy. And that includes Adventure Tri, which I'm very much annoyed by due to the... direction the movies took.

Let's just say that if you thought Tamers was dark... then you're not gonna like this one.
Tell me what you didn't like about the ending of Tamers. I don't remember it much other than

I think they couldn't be with their Digimon anymore for some pretty weak reasons.
I agree with both of you. I was excited for Tri at first, but after awhile it just felt like bad fanfiction (really bad fanfiction written by a fourteen-year-old) and I stopped watching by the third or fourth movie. it was a show lazily cashing in on nostalgia while adding or improving nothing. Honestly, I feel that Tri is worse than 02. Say what you will about the second season, but at least he was trying. Sure, 02 had a couple of plot holes and ass pulls, but that is nothing compared to Tri.

I see it like this: Adventure is the best one, even with the English dubbing in mind. Besides the dubbing is decent and it's not that bad.

02 had good ideas but horrible execution. Davis was uninteresting until the latter half of the series (and even then only barely), but came up as a cheap Tai clone.

Tamers is the second best in the series and I love it. Also, it was fun hearing Gaz's voice actress performing as Rika.

frontier got some unjustified hate just for being different, but I feel it's been 2 rated as well. Its main problem was that it dragged in the last quarter of the show. The arc with the Royal Knights being a prime example. overall I like the feeling of going back to the adventure feeling of the first series combined with super Sentai/Power Rangers.

I never really saw Savers/Data Squad as I lost interest in Digimon at that point. But so far nothing but good things about it.

I could never get into the games, but nowadays they can compete with Pokemon. back then from what I remember though, a lot of the Digimon games that came over stateside or either mediocre or bad. It wasn't until around the PS3 era that Americas and Europe started getting better Digimon games.
 

McElroy

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The Finnish dub was pretty good.

Feel the emotion.

Okay, just kidding. Save your brain cells and don't check that one out.

I liked the first series as a kid, while Pokemon was kinda cringeworthy from the start (dumb video game plot and all). The first game for the PS1 was good as well.
 

Dreiko_v1legacy

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If we're talking dubs, the Greek dub kept the original Japanese music and didn't censor it like the 4kids one so it was very satisfying, as far as dubs go anyhow.


Ultimately, anime is meant to be in Jp haha.
 

Drathnoxis

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CoCage said:
I agree with both of you. I was excited for Tri at first, but after awhile it just felt like bad fanfiction (really bad fanfiction written by a fourteen-year-old) and I stopped watching by the third or fourth movie. it was a show lazily cashing in on nostalgia while adding or improving nothing. Honestly, I feel that Tri is worse than 02. Say what you will about the second season, but at least he was trying. Sure, 02 had a couple of plot holes and ass pulls, but that is nothing compared to Tri.
Hmm, that's disappointing, I was hoping it was going to be good :/
 

bluegate

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I like Digimon.

I watched Adventure 01 and Adventure 02 back in the day and really liked them, I also tried watching Tri, but somewhere between the third or fourth episode I got tired of waiting and never bothered going back.

I also played a couple of the video games;
Digimon World on PS1, a great monster raiser cross RPG
Digimon World 2 on PS1, a grindy dungeon crawler, fun at first, frustrating during mid and late game
Digimon World 3 / Digimon World 2003, a great RPG
Digimon Rumble Arena, an ok-ish fighter
Digimon World DS, a fun enough RPG
Digimon World Dawn or maybe Dusk on DS, another fun enough RPG
Digimon World Re:Digitize on PSP, same sort of game as the first one on PS1
Digimon World: Next Order on PS4, same sort of game as the first one on PS1 with some great throwbacks
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth on PS4, an RPG where you "catch", train and evolve Digimon while going through a story
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth ? Hacker's Memory on PS4, same as above.

All in all, fun times have been had with these games, although I'm a bit puzzled by some of the character art or designs in the later games.



For example in this image with the female avatar on the right, what kind of pose is that when you're drawing a person attempting to scoop up poop? She's standing on her toes, legs straight, barely covered ass pointed to the camera, torso on near-45 degree angle and looking back with a face as if to say "whoops, anyone looking at me?".

I guess a minor case could also be made for the girl on the left, falling boobs first into the frame.



Then there's also a piece of art of Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth's female avatar bending over, getting hugged by her terriermon, propping up her breasts as if she were wearing a push up bra