Digimon Adventure Tri. Movie #5: Coexistence, Part 1
Oh man, one of the problems with the one-movie-every-six-months format is that it's so, so easy for people to just, y'know, forget about your franchise. And it's a bit harder for people less invested to honestly remember what happened in the last four movies that span multiple years, and not to mention the two decades-old anime TV shows that this is supposed to be a sequel to. And while I've made my peace with Digimon Adventure: Tri being an emotional roller-coaster far more interested with exploring the emotions of the chosen children and not cheap thrill fights... "Coexistence" is particularly bad in making its action scenes absolutely tepid and uninteresting. We'll get to it later when we get to the big all-mega-forms-versus-a-royal-guard scene, but coming off of the fourth movie which had a pretty cool fight between the zombie Mugendramon and Metalseadramon against our heroes, the fifth movie doesn't really have much in lieu of entertaining action scenes at all.
And, well, the fifth movie has the unenviable task of setting up the finale, and it... doesn't actually do that good of a job in doing so, to be honest. We get a crapton of flashbacks that just add extra details to things we already know about, and it's just kinda bland. Almost makes you think some of these really should've been covered in past movies, yeah?
The movie picks up where the fourth movie left off, with Meicoomon going berserk because of evil Gennai (who's an avatar of Homeostasis, I think?) and rampages throughout the real world. And while the montage of still scenes of seemingly-brainless Datamons, Tankmons and Anomalocarimons descending into the real world is pretty cool... they literally do nothing but stand around. We've seen far more impressive scenes of invading the real world in, hell, all the way back in Digimon Adventures' Vamdemon arc, but 02, Tamers and Data Squad all had pretty great and chilling and epic-feeling 'human world invasion' scenes. But here all we get are still scenes, and quite literally so. The only animation is the completely still image of Datamon hovering down upon the factory, whereas everything else seems to be just scans of an image.
And there's no sense of urgency, because this movie also ends up wanting to build up to a climax, which... it doesn't really do since the whole real-world invasion thing ends up being kind of pointless. We get kind-of-an-action-scene when the chosen children are attacked by a Drimogemon and a Dokugumon, but we don't even get a token short fight scene like we got with Kuwagamon in the first episode. Hell, neither Dokugumon or Drimogemon or the children Digimon are even animated, and it's, again, just cheap-looking still frames. I know that we're not going to get a full minute fight, but still, there's lazy and there's lazy. It's supposed to tell us that the Digimon World is rejecting the chosen children, but it seemed to be a token, lazy attempt at telling, not showing. And by god, it's a complaint I've been having for the past five movies, but in this one in particular the Digital World just feels so motherfucking hollow and barely a setting with characters. Whatever happened to the villages and the swarms of Numemon and the large settlements of digimon? It's just empty terrain until one or two brainless, dialogue-less enemies pop up, and as someone who rewatched huge chunks of the original anime, it's so disheartening to see what the Digital World is reduced, and we don't even need the huge REBOOT to ruin how the world feels.
Meiko gets the big emotional focus in this movie, and she's... she honestly kind of feels like a one-note broken record. It's a bit unfair because she doesn't really have that much time to develop and she has to go through the unenviable task of showing her inner conflict (boiling down to the question of "did the powers-that-be make a mistake in making me and Meicoomon partners?") and not be grating. And it kind of is. Meicoomon is feral for the entirety of the movie, and poor Meiko is just so conflicted about her insecurity. We get the revelation that... Meiko and Meicoomon hasn't had the best relationship, but the big revelation that 'Meicoomon caused a lab fire when she went feral in the past' is nowhere as impactful as last movie's Daigo-and-Maki-are-chosen-children bit.
Hackmon and Daigo have a brief scene of exposition, which... essentially recaps the past four movies, and confirms that it's working for the Homeostasis entity. We get another handwave of why the adults are helpless (they literally are, because the world at large are in 'eek, evil digital monsters' mode) and that the kids are honestly just on their own, with Daigo as their ally. Hackmon's only real revelation is that Meicoomon is comprised out of leftover data from Apocalymon, and that Meiko is like a stabilizer or some shit, but other than explaining that Meicoomon probably popped out of that creepy black egg in the intro, there's really not much that this actually adds to the story.
And their parents, I suppose, but Taichi and Hikari's mom has a very effective scene as she goes from 'oh no my kids are in trouble' before apparently remembering that they hang out routinely with a cyborg dinosaur and a cat angel, and deciding to just make some dinner to offset her mind from her worry.
Maki continues to rant about how she wants Bakumon and Bakumon and why did Bakumon leave, having a short scene where she randomly pulls out a big-ass rifle. Which disappears in her next scene in part 4. So yeah. Part one of the fifth movie is just a whole lot of 'hopefully we'll get to something better', and a whole lot of bland disappointment.
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Digimon Adventure Tri, Movie #5: Coexistence, Part 2
This part is a bit rough depending on how invested you are in Meiko's character. I was relatively intrigued by the character, with her working on me as a character I root for and feel like a new addition to the main chosen children, but I definitely am not squee-ing over her. And it's really important that you really are invested in Meiko to enjoy this movie, since she really is the only character with a proper arc throughout the movie. Hikari shares her spot in the poster but honestly? Her development only happens for around five minutes in the final part. We get some scenes where the movie tries to remind us that, hey, Hikari has a habit of being possessed by the digital world's mysterious Homeostasis entity... but we don't actually get a proper character moment or character arc the way that the rest of the chosen children do in each of their feature movies.
Oh, and what fucking happened to the 02 kids? At this point I've just given up hope on seeing them again and I guess we're just handwaving them into 'oh, they'll probably show up fine in an epilogue'.
There's definitely a lot of parallels to be drawn between Meiko and the rest of the chosen children both in Tri and in their original series, especially Meiko's own character flaws. Keeping it localized to Tri alone, both Meiko and Takeru keep information regarding their partners hidden from everyone else even though it is potentially harmful to the team. Meiko and Sora had to deal with a partner Digimon that appears to hate them (although Biyomon's prissiness is totally different from Meicoomon going feral). And being burdened with a vast insane destiny-shaping responsibility is something that all the kids have dealt with at one point or another.
The problem is that the writing seems way too intent on emphasizing Meiko's moe-ish tendencies and dialogue to have you (theoretically) go "awww, poor girl, let me give you a hug". But after repeating the same old argument and sob story for like three or four times, only for a different chosen children to pop up and offer a different version of an encouragement speech... I just kind of get it. And it really feels like any tension and goodwill built up from the first part just crumbles and self-destructs in the name of trying to follow the movie format of having a slow buildup for the first half.
The chosen children end up in the real world, end up having to hide their Digimon in Koshirou's laptop, and get into some brief "you scumbags, you befriend Digimon!" hate speech from cops and random kids, and while it's nice that Taichi's plotline from the first movie is still followed up upon... it's also one of those plotlines that feel insipid and honestly not important, especially in the face of the fact that this is still a sequel to Digimon Adventure and 02, which featured the real world being invaded by Digimon. Multiple times.
Speaking of continuity... aren't the chosen partner Digimon supposed to be post-reboot? I realize that there's only so much screentime to go around, and that they're written flatly in these movies as a generic rambunctious bunch of kids, but Tailmon continues to stay an adult (despite lacking the buildup of abuse and strength as a Vamdemon minion) and no one gets confused or whatever.
Of course, this part isn't all bad. Daigo and Hackmon's conversation continues, and it is very enlightening as to just what Homeostasis's plans are. Homeostasis wants Meicoomon gone, since she's a rogue element that Homeostasis doesn't need anymore... and it's just throwing the chosen children under the bus, and that includes Daigo. Daigo asks some really good damning questions as to why Homeostasis trusts all this world-bending stuff to human kids in the first place, to which Hackmon doesn't have a real answer. This leads to Daigo being all MVP and rescuing the chosen children from the cops, and hiding them out in their school.
It doesn't really fix a lot of the problems in the episode, of course. Add that to literally everyone else, both Digimon and children, feeling far more one-note than ever (do Mimi, Joe, Sora or Koshirou even contribute anything to the episode beyond being settling back to their 'airhead', 'geeky big bro', 'nice big sis' and 'geek' respectively for the entire movie?), perhaps best exemplified by Palmon and Agumon, both just parroting the same "I love Mimi even though I don't understand what's going on" and "I'm hungry and I'm simple" over and over. And considering how much work the past movies put in for Biyomon, Tentomon and Gomamon, it's definitely a shame.
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Digimon Adventure Tri, Movie #5: Coexistence, Part 3
I really wished this series of 'tell scary stories in an apartment' had been shuffled together with the campfire scene from the first and second parts of this movie, for the simple reason that, by god, there's a lot of scenes that are just pretty bland in this one. Yes, it's a showcase of the chosen children's bond, and everyone from the girls to the Digimon chuckling at Yamato being afraid of ghost stories is hilarious... as do the partner digimon wondering if they should 'report' to their partners when they see Taichi and Meiko sitting on a chair together... but did we need so many scenes of just waffling around and honestly doing nothing much? There's such a big lull where there aren't any tension, action, mystery or character development and things just feel repetitive. It's like they know Meiko can't just do a huge 180 and that we need to see her development, but didn't actually manage to come up with anything super-interesting... so they fall back to the simple basics of trying to ship Meiko with Taichi... and to be fair, it's not a bad shippy scene. It's just that it comes after a series of pretty bland scenes already from the scary-story scene to the crying scene and all that, and it makes me kinda feel just so underwhelmed in the way that the Tri movies never feel, even during the bathhouse trip or the school festival in the earlier movies.
There's definitely a neat sense of how fragile Meiko's mindstate is at this point in time, with the scene where Meiko's frantic apologizing to her father is contrasted against all the other chosen children's far more supportive calls to their parents... and I really wished that the showrunners had more confidence in the previous four movies' writing for Meiko and didn't try to shove her blubbering down our throats so much int his movie. The accent is also a nice little addition, and she's apparently not using her natural accent in front of the other chosen children for fear of being alienated.
The conversation with Taichi ends up falling flat because Taichi's kind of being a dick to her, but Agumon's simple-mindedness after the other chosen children bullies him into talking to Meiko is a fun little touch. Meiko's just stuck in a huge existential crisis, especially how she feels useless and pointless since she can't even be a 'partner' properly. It's a neat reversal of the general Chosen Children/partner Digimon conundrum. Where Meiko's problem in the earlier movies had been that she'll love Meicoomon no matter what, here her problem is that she wants Meicoomon to accept her despite her poor job of being a proper partner to calm Meicoomon's rampages down (although that's not her fault, really).
This is perhaps the best writing for Meiko in the entire movie, and I really wished that her scenes in the first two parts has been far more subtle. Thankfully we're in the later half of the movie, which means... action scene! Meicoomon rampages, transforms (or 'mutates', as Hackmon insists) into an armoured... Mega form? Hackmon's evolved form Jesmon finally shows up for a proper battle scene, and he's pretty cool with those sword limbs and all, and the chosen children are stuck between two very powerful, very hostile Digimon -- Meicoomon being feral and attacking everyone despite being their buddy, whereas Jesmon wants to kill said buddy.
I really appreciate the fact that we use a split-screen for the evolution stock footage instead of going one by one, by the way. We don't actually see much of the fight in this part, but it's... it's honestly pretty ineptly done, barely more entertaining than whacking toys together, where Jesmon or Meicoomon are only ever shown in the same frame with two or three partner digimon at one time, and it's always a simple one-shot with energy blasts knkocking a partner digimon from standing to falling down. Like, there's a cool sequence of Meicoomon drop-kicking Zudomon, but that's about it as far as action scenes go.
So yeah, "Coexistence" could've been one of the most powerful storylines for Meiko if it hadn't tried too hard and gone for the quantity-over-quality way. As it is, though, this particular leg of the journey is a neatly strong part, even if it comes slightly too late into the journey to really care about.
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Digimon Adventures Tri, Movie #5: Coexistence, Part 4
We start off with a continuation of the scuffle, where most of the chosen children's digimon finally get a montage digivolution to their ultimate (or mega, for English-speakers) form, but once more the fights and clashes don't actually end up feeling interesting at all. There's like this one cool scene where Meicoomon and Jesmon unleash a string of generic anime explosions, then everything is just cutaways to still scenes of the partner digimon, maybe moving slightly, or blurry clashes of the combatants slamming into each other. There's not even the cool factor of seeing, say, Rosemon or Hou'oumon or Herculeskabuterimon, because we don't actually focus on any of the digimon enough to really even craft a proper action sequence, let alone an entire fight.
The fight gets dragged to the Digital World once more, Alphamon shows up out of nowhere for no real reason other than to remind us that he and Yggdrasil exists, and then everyone else gets knocked out and the fight gets reduced to just Alphamon, Omegamon, Jesmon and Meicoomon.
Of course, we do get the pretty badass scene of Hikari being possessed by Homeostasis, who enters a generic villain speech of "you foolish children, you cannot defy a god!" But Hikari takes over her body from the possessing entity, in the midst of the other children repeating that they will not abandon a friend. And then in the midst of the battle, Taichi apparently gets killed (they play up the cliffhanger for all it's worth, but he's definitely not)... and Hikari just fucking breaks.
And Hikari's breaking causing a lot of darkness to creep around her, and causing Nyaramon to dark digivolve into the psychotic-looking Ophanimon Falldown Mode... yeah. Nevermind the fact that Ophanimon Falldown Mode is a pretty fucking creepy-looking evil angel in the first place, the sudden and very graphically unsettling merging with Meicoomon's ultimate form (Raguelmon, as google tells me) ends up in the creation of this utterly hideous abomination called Ordinemon, which... well, 'angelic abomination' is the only thing I can think of. That dark digivolution and fusion is a very cool scene, and apparently it's all under Yggdrassil's calculations all along because this Ordinemon creature is what it was banking on to finally cause the digital world to bleed into the real world. In refusing to play Homeostasis's game, the chosen kids played into furthering Yggdrassil's agenda instead.
Again, part of it really fall flat because Vamdemon, Apocalymon and Daemon all did similar things in Adventures and 02, but there's just something super disturbing from this gigantic, world-encompassing twisted angel. Again, part of it stems from the underwhelming 'Digimon army' that feels very low-key especially compared to past anime depictions of an invading force.
But this part really tries its best to make up for the spotty and messy character development throughout the movie. There's Hikari, of course, whose hard faith and defiance against Homeostasis gets challenged when her protector and beloved older brother ends up seemingly getting cut down in their bullheaded attempt to rescue Meicoomon from her madness and the two Royal Knights trying to murder her. Hikari's sole notable scene in this movie is her foreshadowing on how she's more in-tune with the digital world compared to the others, and her rejection of Homeostasis's talk about the need of the few and the need of the many is very powerful, but at the same time while she's been through a lot of shit throughout her past battles, losing her brother is something that will break anyone. It's a clever bit where the sibling bond between Taichi and Hikari is one of the best-developed emotional parts throughout the original anime, and Taichi's protectiveness and Hikari's status as being the most protected in both chosen children groups she's in finally causes her to snap.
Meiko also goes through a pretty great arc in the final battle, and one that I didn't expect that they would go on. The Taichi/Yamato complex ends up being brought up again, and here Meiko finally realizes that all their bullheadedness in defying Homeostasis and attempting to save Meicoomon, while undoubtedly noble and very nakama... is also borderline suicidal. She ends up making the call after wiffling and waffling throughout the past three parts and tells Taichi to kill Meicoomon. It's not an easy decision to make, and I really wish the buildup on Meiko's part included less crisis-of-self-worth and more about can-I-make-the-right-choice... but it's a powerful moment nonetheless.
Yamato is aghast, but Taichi is resolute... which neatly fits with his conversation with Agumon earlier in the movie: do what you gotta do. While everyone else is super-hopeful that Meicoomon can be easily saved and redeemed, all evidence points otherwise -- Meicoomon is just rabid, frothing and attacking indiscriminately, even if there's a gloriously ambiguous moment in the fight where it appears to block an attack that would've struck Meiko.
Of course, before Omegamon has the chance to kill Meicoomon and stop the conflict, Jesmon unleashes this cool-looking 'Un Pour Tous' attack that, while intercepted by Alphamon, still creates a massive fissure that seems to swallow up Taichi and kill him, leaving behind the goggles to absolutely break Hikari as detailed above. Yamato ends up picking up Taichi's goggles and taking charge because, shit, they have to stop the crisis from devolving even further.
Also surprisingly well-written in this part is Daigo, who has the role of a senior and former chosen children. After spending so much of these movies being jerked around by the bureau, by Meiko's father, by Maki and by Hackmon, Daigo still continues to give it his all. In this case, the vague flashbacks to how Daigo used to have adventures with his own partner Bearmon, as well as Maki and Bakumon, puts into perspective how someone else deals with the whole chosen children system. And honestly? Homeostasis' whole modus operandi of picking random kids, pairing them up with specific digimon and sending them off to save the world, discarding them when they're no longer necessary... it's pretty fucked up. Daigo's generation of chosen children ends up suffering a fuckton of emotional damage when their partners were either killed or ascended into detached, immortal guardians of the world. Taichi's generation of chosen children nearly got wiped out when their partners were rebooted two movies ago. The fact that neither Daigo, Maki nor their partners got any sort of happy endings is a neat bit of showcase how we have no guarantee that Meiko or Meicoomon will, either.
I just kinda wish Homeostasis and Yggdrassil were both better foreshadowed and less weirdly vague in these movies.
And while I'm still fanboying over the creepiness of Ordinemon's design, also equally creepy is Maki's scene where she's just screaming at lurching black shadows in a dark sea, her mind completely snapped the way that Hikari's is, because she can't deal with losing a partner in a mature way that Daigo or Meiko displays here. It's a very mature and adult way of thinking, how sometimes you do just have to accept death and move on, and the failure of doing so can really fuck your mind up. It's just a moral and a story that's delivered in a rather messy way. I still end up liking Coexistence for its last two parts, but I think it's one of the weakest among the Tri movies.
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