So the fourth Digimon series is a huge departure from the previous three, in that it bypassed the whole 'creature-raising' part of Digimon (i.e. arguably the whole point of the franchise) and did a reboot, in which our heroes are a group of humans who found their way into the digital world... and found themselves able to transform into Digimon. It's basically a Super Sentai series that takes place in a version of the digital world.And, credit where credit's due -- Frontier does some things right. As I've talked about separately in various different entries of this series, Frontier does a pretty great worldbuilding, setting up a series of great backstory -- like the Three Great Angels that once ruled over the world and went to war over ideological differences; the Ten Great Warriors who sealed the ancient evil that terrorized the Frontier-world and now their power are separated into ancient totems ("Spirits") that anyone worthy enough can use to channel the spirits, and finally, the incorporation of the popular metaplot of the Royal Knights -- fanatical heroes who will do anything to serve the digital world -- into the story.
Frontier is also often derided as the series where Digimon went striaght to ass, and Frontier's detractors note that it's no coincidence that Digimon ended up not having any futrhter animated series produced until Savers in 2006, nearly half a decade later, with the franchise supported almost entirely by video games and trading cards until then.
The thing is, Frontier as a series failed more than the concept -- the concept of humans turning into Digimon is weird, but we can shrug it off and have a fun action cartoon. The thing that is the biggest problem with Frontier that they hint at such a glorious, complex backstory, but explore very little of it, and the actual story they showed us is inanely mundane, with protagonists that barely step out of a two-sentence character description. Throw in some horrendous pacing, some utterly horrible filler episodes and the fact that the entire B-cast got shunted and depowered for the back end of the series, Digimon Frontier ended up missing the mark on what a rebooted series with a new premise should be.
I don't think Frontier is the worst Digimon series at all -- that honour would go to Hunters -- but while the TV show is ultimately bland, it's not helped by the very toyetic designs of the entire cast. Like, I don't mind humanoid designs in a vacuum, but when there's so many of them, with so little variation between them, that's when I start rolling my eyes and going "stop, guys". Also, I had wanted to cut this 'main characters' page with one of the main Chosen Children being the 'star' of the page... but eh, screw it, it's not like the Frontier kids have much for me to talk about.
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Agnimon (a.k.a. Agunimon)
So our first protagonist here is Kanbara Takuya, who's... I didn't want to be mean, but there literally isn't anything to describe him as beyond "generic anime protagonist". Wears red, wants to rescue people, hot-blooded, confident, reckless but it's okay because the narrative supports him... yeah, I don't really remember jack-all about this character, actually, beyond being a generic hero character.So each human kid receives two Spirits (each Spirits represents one of the Ten Ancient Warriors) -- a "Human" Spirit and a "Beast" Spirit, with the Human Spirit later retconned into being equivalent to an Adult-level Digimon, and the Beasts being Perfect-level Digimon. Because Takuya is the main character, he's also the only ones in-show to unlock the combined Human/Beast fusion, which I think is equivalent to an Ultimate. While not all of the three possible forms are seen in the show, I'll review them all together.
Anyway, Takuya's "Human" spirit form is Agnimon, named after the Hindu god of fire Agni. The dub chooses to romanize this as Agunimon as a nod to Agumon. Eh. Agnimon doesn't look that bad in the actual Bandai artwork, I think, but he's honestly just a dude in armour with long hair and a Greymon-style three-pronged helmet. It's an all-right design, I guess, for an action hero, but not one that I have a lot of particularly positive feelings towards. I guess the thing is that Frontier's design theme is geared more towards Tokusatsu heroes, which is why they are so action figure-y? Well, I've seen Kamen Rider and Power Rangers and stuff, and none of Frontier's cast really look as charming as any of those, looking... well, looking like a generic spiky-spiky action figure. Anyway, naturally, as the main character in an anime, Agnimon controls fire and stuff. It's all right, I guess, and I can't find much to actually criticize, but I don't find much to praise either. It's just not utterly my aesthetic, even as far as humanoid Digimon goes.
4/10.Vritramon (a.k.a. BurningGreymon)
Vritramon draws his name from an Asura deity that's the personification of drought, and he was renamed BurningGreymon in the English dub, again, to strengthen ties to the whole Agumon/Greymon line. Vritramon is described and noted to be pretty bestial and hard to control, being a monstrous warrior who only cares about battles and nothing else, and in his first appearance Vritramon did indeed end up being uncontrollable. This little bit of being unable to control the Beast spirits pretty much only showed up for the first couple of times that the Chosen Children transform, though, and otherwise it's just kinda there. Anyway, it's another one that I find... inoffensive, and I won't trash-talk it too much, but I can't find much positive association with this either.
5/10.Aldamon
4/10.KaiserGreymon (a.k.a. EmperorGreymon)
So near the final stages of Frontier, our heroes realize that two super-powerful warriors is more effective than six, so all members of the cast not named Takuya or Koji ends up donating all their Spirits to them, allowing them to achieve an even more powerful super-fusion-whatever mode. In Takuya's case, it's KaiserGreymon, which... wow, that official Bandai art really doesn't look coherent at all, huh? Especially if I don't zoom in. Some dude with a sword and a lightning serpent-dragon? Let's see what the anime model looks like... and... eh. It's a dude in dragon armour. Not much more impressive than Agnimon if not for the sword, if we're being honest, and definitely feels a lot more cluttered and less cohesive. I'll give it points for at least looking different than the previous three forms, though. There's really not much for me to say about KaiserGreymon that I haven't already said about Agnimon, Aldamon and Vritramon. Apparently, it's not just a dragon-knight, but a dragonslayer of sorts, using his sword to seal dragon's souls? Eh. Very much forgettable, and far less neutrally-cool like Takuya's other forms. 2/10.Flamon (a.k.a. Flamemon)
0/10.Wolfmon (a.k.a. Lobomon)
Wolfmon (renamed to the far more imposing Lobomon in the English dub) here is the Human Spirit form of Minamoto Koji, the archetypal "cool super-competent rival", and unlike past subversions like Yamato, Ken and Rika, who fit that role but has more going in for them... Koji basically embodies every single trait that the angsty antisocial rival has. Hell, Wolfmon, embodying the element of light, is far cooler than Agnimon for the sheer virtue of having two lightsabers. Sorry, "Licht Sieger". All his attacks are in German, too!Anyway, Wolfmon is... he's okay? He's a dude in armour with a wolf helmet and two lightsabers, and at least the concept is clear, but it's just so cluttered with so many redundant details. I at least remember Wolfmon a lot from the anime, though, being cool and shit because the animation staff ends up having to animate his acrobatics instead of just having Agnimon (or his alternate forms) generically punch things in a burning ball of flame. In the official profile, Wolfmon is described as being taciturn and seemingly heartless, but actually cares. All right, then, just like every OC out there. I'm sorry -- I don't actually feel that terribly about Frontier as a show. It's inferior to the previous three seasons but definitely still watchable. It's just that the designs -- both their official art and in the show -- just run so contrary to my tastes.
4/10.Garmmon (a.k.a. Garummon/KendoGarurumon/BladeGarurumon)
Koji's Beast Spirit evolution is Garmmon, named after the legendary wolf Garmr, the guardian of hell and Hel's pet from Norse mythology. The official Japanese romanization has him as "Garummon" to hammer in the Garurumon comparisons. And... and credit where credit's due, at least Garmmon looks like a beast. Vritramon, you can sit in the corner in shame. But Garmmon is a very, very awkward looking beast, due to being based on that same transforming toy, with some really bizarre proportions, random spikes out of his chest. Garmmon is noted to be extremely fast, and likes to slice people up with his wing-blade things while running past them. Garmmon ultimately is a bit too clunky-looking and awkward-looking for me to really justify more of a point than 2. If it was a bit more cohesive, either towards the sleek-wolf aesthetic or the chunky-robot-wolf aesthetic, I'd like it more, but Garmmon is just so awkwardly stuck between different aesethetics. 3/10.Beowolfmon (a.k.a. Beowulfmon)
Beowolfmon here, on the other hand... wow, it's far more weirdly kibbly than Aldamon is, huh? It's obvious where the toy parts from Wolfmon and Garmmon come from, and I'm genuinely not a big fan. So Garmmon looks bizarrely awkward just because Beowolfmon needs the wings and tail to be shaped thusly to pull out as a very ugly-looking ax-sword thing? Garmmon at least looks coherent, if clunky. Beowolfmon just looks like he's got some really bad back problems, and is just so utterly cluttered that I'm genuinely not just a big fan. His entire profile just dsecribes the many, many ways he can kill his enemies which basically amounts to 'cut them up' or 'shoot them with missiles'. Significantly less cool than either Wolfmon and Garmmon. 1/10.MagnaGarurumon
Oh god, and this guy just looks utterly painful. Poor Koji, see a chiropractor or something, jeez. Look at the utterly weird proportions on this thing! So basically afterspending time as a vaguely-robotic armoured wolf and human, Koji's final stage upon absorbing his buddies's Spirits is MagnaGarurumon, which looks like a Transformer toy mid-transformation. He's got half an airplane stapled onto his back, those weird golden crescent things, two asymmetric arms that look very, very awkward (and no, no anime models to the rescue -- while KaiserGreymon and Beowolfmon looks a bit more decent in the anime, Magna looks as ugly in the anime). A robot wolf-man could've been hard to get wrong, but MagnaGarurumon doesn't just look generic, he looks positively ugly. Throw in an immensely long and bland profile, and.... eh. I dunno. I just utterly dislike this design. I tend to like robots, but this is just such an utterly cluttered and messy design that I don't really know what to say here. 0/10.Strabimon
Slightly later, the Wolfmon line ended up getting a default Child-level Digimon, Strabimon, which acted as the "depowered" version of Wolfmon similar to Flamon up there. Strabimon, however, never showed up anywhere except for trading cards and some very minor card games, so I genuinely never realized he was meant to be Wolfmon's pre-evolution until I was doing research on the Digimon introduced in 2002. Strabimon is kind of a generic anime wolf-man, but so, so much interesting than the tragedy in character design that are Beowulfmon and MagnaGarurumon. 3/10.Blitzmon (a.k.a. Beetlemon)
So let's go into the secondary cast, and if you're a fan of any of these... though luck! They tend to be utter losers, barely managing to scrape by with victories and honestly, watching Frontier, I'm just rooting for them to get maybe a win or two. But they never really end up growing out of their one-note personalities, and aren't even exciting action heroes for us to follow. The first of these is Shibayama Junpei ("JP" for English dub viewers). He's a fat kid, and he likes to eat, and he likes to crush on the lone lady on the team. That's about all you have to know about Junpei, really, because he never really grows out of his flaws. Junpei at least manages to get a couple of wins, at least, whereas I genuinely can't think of Tomoki and Izumi doing anything significant.
Junpei ends up getting the spirits of thunder, allowing him to transform into Blitzmon (the far less cooler Beetlemon in the English dub), who is an armoured human wearing a rhinoceros beetle helmet. I'm not even mad, actually -- it's a neat little Kamen Rider/super sentai reference, isn't it? It's just that Blitzmon's design is honestly kind of boring, with generic robotic clutter outside of the cool-looking gauntlets and robot-bug helmet. It's mostly fun, though, and I don't really mind Blitzmon while not exactly liking it. Blitzmon's described in his profile to battle with wrestling style moves, and also is brash-but-kind. It's okay, I guess.
5/10.Bolgmon (a.k.a. MetalKabuterimon)
7/10.RhinoKabuterimon
RhinoKabuterimon here is just such a bizarre dinosaur-bug monster that I kidna wished that it actually showed up in Frontier just so that I can see just how this thing is supposed to move around and fight. Interestingly, despite being built like a goddamn tank, RhinoKabuterimon doesn't actually engage the enemy, instead manipulating electricity and magnetism from a distance and battles from afar. A pretty interesting beast, honestly.
6/10.Fairymon (a.k.a. Kazemon)
The next member of our secondary cast is Orimoto Izumi (Zoe in the English dub). Who is an 11-year-old girl. And she's the only girl in the cast, and basically embodies all the negative stereotypes of a female character in anime that characters like Mimi, Sora and Rika subvert or avoid completely. She's catty, kind of a bitch, and tends to be a damsel in distress 90% of the time. Oh, and her supposed 'rivalry' with the female Ranamon ends up being a protracted popularity contest with a bunch of dumbshit Toucanmon, which is just painful to sit through when watching Frontier. Throw in the fact that she evolves into a fairy stripper... yeah. Oh, and is it just so nice that even when transformed into the embodiment of the ancient warrior of wind, Fairymon is a useless shit that loses in nearly every battle she fights in?See, Fairymon (Kazemon in the dub) isn't that bad of a design, I suppose, when you take away the connotations of her supposedly being a transformed eleven-year-old girl, she's "merely" a fairy that wears lingerie? Yeaaaah, I really can't justify this as a good design even without the creepiness of the whole "this is actually a child" deal. She's not even a particularly interesting looking fairy, honestly, other than the admittedly funky-looking Cyclops-goggles. She's just a lady with butterfly wings and some oversized gloves and boots. Hell, even her profile notes that she's only proficient in "information gathering", and is a gossipy talkative troublemaker. Even taking away the very unfortunate backstory that this is a transformed little girl, the design is still pretty much 'SEXY FAIEREEEH", and even as a fanservice character it's not done as tastefully as any of the others in the franchise.
0/10.Shutumon (a.k.a. Zephyrmon)
Izumi's "Beast" form is Shutumon, named after the Sumerian wind god Shutu. It's a bit more interesting, although still kind of unfortunately stripperiffic due to still wearing Fairymon's lingerie. Shutumon is at least far less "hey, lookit dis hot body!", with the most prominent features being those giant harpy wings and the fact that her hair extends into wings as well? She's got cool cyborg claw-arm things too. Of course, they can't just let her be a capable warrior-woman that just happens to show some skin, no. While she at least gets to win some battles in Frontier, Shutumon also tends to be a damsel in distress a good chunk of the time. And this being Japan, 90% of the non-official-Bandai art has her in poses like this. Eh, Shutumon's at least somewhat interesting-looking, I guess, even if she still has that lingerie body. They really could've made a far cooler harpy Digimon that Shutumon.
2/10.JetSilphymon
1/10.Chackmon (a.k.a. Kumamon)
The final member of the original cast, Himi Tomoki, who's a crybaby kid and barely grows out of being a bit of a burden as the series goes on, just in time for him to hand over his Spirits to Takuya and be completely irrelevant to the story. Yep! Anyway, Tomoki transforms into Chackmon (Kumamon in the dub, to make these names sound more 'foreign', I guess) with the spirit of ice, who is a grinning little baby bear made out of snow, wearing some quasi-military getup and holding a big-ass missile launcher that shoots more snow. Oh, and while the artwork doesn't look it, Chackmon himself is fluid, able to transform its bear-like body to gloop around like snow, an ability that the show shows off and sometimes forgets depending on the week.I like this guy, I think. Chackmon looks like a Yukidarumon's more militant cousin, and the official profile notes that it "styles itself as a member of the polar army's polar region defense force", which is kind of charming because Chackmon insists that everything about the polar defense force or whatever is classified, so whether it exists or not is unknown. As far as the Frontier designs go, I don't mind Chackmon at all.
7/10.Blizzarmon (a.k.a. Korikakumon)
Blizzarmon here perhaps is my favourite Beast Spirit in that his rampage is probably one of the more memorable events in Frontier for me. He also manages to look pretty beastly, the only other one other than Garmmon in this page to really look like a beast. Blizzarmon (or Korikakumon in the dub) is a giant angry yeti-beast that probably got along well with Vikemon, and wields two giant axes and has dreadlocks that can whip around and hit the enemy, and are tipped with arrowheads. Oh, and it apparently will randomly kneel down and pray while fighting the enemy, something that Tomoki's version of Blizzarmon actually also does. As I mentioned while reviewing Mojyamon so long ago, yetis aren't really a type of monsters I personally really like all that much, but Blizzarmon's an alright yeti barbarian dude. Actually, preparing to review these Frontier guys and making up rankings for them is why I ended up switching from the 5-point to 10-point -- Blizzarmon would've been 2/5 by the previous ranking system, but that also makes him similarly rated to Takuya and Kouji's forms, and I definitely like barbarian yeti man more than all of those. 5/10.Daipenmon
HAHAHAHA WHATSo when Chackmon and Blizzarmon combine, they turn into Daipenmon? Man, you can totally tell that this one wasn't based on an action figure, because there's no way you can make a transforming toy go from an axe-wielding dreadlock yeti viking into a fat, grumpy purple penguin whacking people in the head with giant popsicles. Also, I really love that Daipenmon here is technically an Ultimate-level that has all the brouhaha badassery associated with the likes of Aldamon and MagnaGarurumon. Apparently it can briefly fly by flapping its two gigantic popsicles, whose Japanese names "Kakikaki-kun" and "Kochikochi-kun" roughly translates to Lil' Freezy and Lil' Stiffy. Oh, Daipenmon. Its special attack is to just whack people with its popsicles dipped in syrup. I'm not sure what that white hat is supposed to be -- is it some sort of handle to make the shaved ice or something? Daipenmon is apparently based on some kind of ice cream popsicle dispenser thing?
Appropriately enough, Daipenmon actually makes a fair bit of appearances outside of video games, showing up as a brief recurring enemy in Digimon Xros Wars as a pretty powerful minion of IceDevimon, woken up from a deep slumber Cthulhu-style, and one of the ice-themed villains attempting to lay siege into Lake Zone. I was definitely pleasantly surprised after watching Xros Wars and discovering that this big cuddly penguin is one of the 'modern' Ten Warriors or whatever. Easily the funnest and one of my favourite designs on this page.
9/10.Susanoomon
We still have a sixth kid, Koichi, who we'll cover next week due to the large amount of forms he has, and the fact that he starts off brainwashed as a villain.
But when everyone combines their powers together -- alongside with the spirits that start off on the bad guys' side -- they combine into Susanoomon, named after Susano'o-no-Mikoto, the Shinto god of sea and storms. The actual Susanoomon design is pretty genuinely bland, honestly, with a very uninteresting face and a very generic set of armoured body with a ring onhis back. I think it's trying to ape Omegamon by having a greymon head and a Garurumon head on either arm, but it just clutters the already cluttered Susanoomon. This is the final final form our heroes take when they fight the final Big Bad, Lucemon. And... I dunno, I'm sorry, I just found this to just be a pretty bland design.
I do like the little description where it's apparently designed as a deity that will erase the existing system and create a new one in the official profile, although obviously this isn't the case for the Susanoomon we saw in the Frontier cartoon. Overall, though, definitely not my thing. I don't dislike him, but I'm just woefully neutral.
3/10.Bokomon
So while the cast of Frontier doesn't have traditional Digimon partners, two Child-level dude travel with them -- Bokomon and Neamon, and these two add fuel into the fire of Frontier's quality. See, Bokomon and Neamon sort of represent a traditional Japanese manzai comedy duo, and sort of serve as an exposition tool. The thing is, neither of them are all that funny, and are extremely annoying all the time. Bokomon here is the 'smart' one of the two, this ugly goblin-duck thing with a traditional Japanese belt from where it keeps a 'tome' of prophecies and shit... but said tome proved itself more of a liability than anything. Bokomon also has this overly-long gag of keeping an egg in his belt and acting like a pregnant mom, and none of his jokes are ever that funny. There are some sub-par Digimon designs that I have given extra marks for because I like their portrayal in the anime -- I doubt I'd care so much for Chackmon or the Veemons if not for their anime portrayal. Bokomon and Neamon are the reverse, where I quite literally can't think of anything positive to say, and any goodwill I may have is expunged by their utterly annoying anime portrayals. 0/10.Neamon (a.k.a. Neemon)
But where Bokomon is at least somewhat important to the plot by being an expositionary tool, Neamon is just an utterly insipid and dumb little ugly rabbit thing with an oversized pair of pants, and Bokomon will drag that pants and snap it back anytime Neamon says something dumb, which is like all the time. And it's never funny. The showmakers could've given us any other scant-seen Digimon from the past to be the Frontier cast's mascots. Like, I dunno... practically anything like the Candlemon they meet early on to just dropping quite literally every other Child-level Digimon's name into a hat and picking one out would be preferable to these two dumbasses. Absolutely despise them. 0/10.Trailmon
Another recurring set of characters are the Adult-level Trailmon, because the world of Digimon Frontier is connected with a whole lot of railways, and these Trailmon help to get our heroes around. There are around nine or ten unique models of Trailmon, some of which I'm displaying here (some of the others just don't have good enough artwork online). They tend to just be relatively simple locomotives, and I assume that they might be related in some way to the other train Digimon, Locomon. These guys actually do a fair bit more than just being transport vehicles, with some of them getting a fair bit of personality and working hard to get the Chosen Children away from the villains any time the Chosen Children fuck up, and a filler episode had every variant of Trailmon hang around in a parody of Wacky Races. They're not my favourite Digimon out there, but the Trailmon definitely adds a lot to the unique vibe of Frontier's admittedly well-constructed world-building.
My favourite Trailmon has to be "Worm", which is the second from the top on that picture, with a gigantic maw full of teeth, four eyes and generally looking just so bizarre. The blue "Angler" and the duck-like "Kettle" are neat designs, too.
6/10.
This might be a surprise but the Ghost Game anime showed off a Bokomon that was rather interesting
ReplyDeleteI have been kind of out of the loop about Digimon since... since Appmon, I think? I got into a couple of episodes of it but decided it's not for me. I think they did a Digimon Adventure reboot? Maybe I'll have to look up some of these newer series!
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