Digimon Adventure Tri M06 Review: Mostly Recapping

Digimon Adventure Tri, Movie 6 - Bokura no Mirai, Part 1

Welcome to my coverage of the final installment of Digimon Adventure Tri, "Our Future". Tri is such a bizarre beast due to the way it's released -- a plotline that would be perhaps better suited for a season of anime episodes is instead executed in a series of movies that spanned four years. I'm not sure if this was a series of storylines initially meant for seven movies instead of six or if they truly over-estimated how much of the screentime they would be given the time to discuss in this final installment. Whatever the case, though, my view towards "Our Future" is a lot more lukewarm than the rest of Tri. A good part of it is, of course, due to the fact that I've recently rewatched Digimon Adventure and a significant chunk of 02, and the sheer tone change is... pretty huge. Add that to a huge amount of mysteries that are built up and never truly solved... yeah.

Still, the fifth movie ended up setting up for a huge climax, and for all its faults, the fifth movie did its job admirably well with the unenviable job of having to wrap up a bunch of B-plots as well as also set up for the finale. And the sixth movie... basically recaps the climax of the previous movie with a lot of reused footage. Which is sort of unavoidable, I suppose, for a movie released nearly half a year apart from its predecessor, but it's definitely somewhat annoying considering just how much of the actual sixth movie's screentime is devoted to a recap... and then spends even more time setting up the whole "oh noes, we're desperate and it's our darkest hour" deal. Hikari spends a good chunk of this movie in a daze as she's coming to terms with the possible death of her brother -- it's annoying since it takes her out of a good chunk of the movie, but realistic.

And then we have way, way too many scenes of the apparent 'leaking' of the Digital World as it swallows the real world. The visuals of Ordinemon as this ungodly-ugly angel abomination is pretty neat, but when they keep focusing on the generic animation of "the corners of buildings are disintegrating!" it's way, way less impressive than what the movie thinks it is. Particularly egregious because even in Tri we've seen far more impressive scenes of Digimon causing destruction in the real world, to say nothing of other Digimon series. We've got Hackmon and Koushiro delivering some recap about who the elusive and unseen bad guys, Yggdrassil and Homeostasis, are. We also get to see some ominous scenes of Hackmon talking to Meiko's dad in the vague military building, but with Daigo and Maki out of the picture, this part of the plot ends up getting whole-heartedly dropped away. The episode can basically be summed up with "a bunch of recaps, the kids return, Ordinemon arrives ominously at the end".

Still, as much as the pacing and power-scaling impressiveness of Tri genuinely stumbles in this movie, Tri does what it does best with character interactions, and that's just about the biggest selling point of this series. The moment when Yamato takes charge, and then both he and Sora stops while the rest of the groups walks on, for them to try and come to terms with the fact that Taichi might be gone (he isn't and the movie doesn't really do a huge job to hide it), and the sobbing half-denial of Sora going "he wouldn't die, right?" is pretty well delivered.

(Meanwhile, Taichi's partner Koromon, is in full optimistic denial mode, and he just wants to nom on food.)

And as the Chosen Children/Digidestined arrive on the real world, we get a brief bit of downtime that... honestly feels genuinely filler-y and makes me really pissed that the Digimon are essentially just one-note joke delivery systems or action scene props, something that's never quite as blatant in the previous movies that at least allowed some focus for the Digimon. This part of the movie at least gives us a great scene for Gabumon, giving Yamato a much-needed hug. Gabumon doesn't pretend to understand the huge burdens of responsibility and conflict going around in Yamato's head, but he doesn't have to -- all he wants to do is just be Yamato's partner and by god he'll do whatever needs to be done to help Yamato. That scene is pretty damn powerful, and its the scenes like these that really make me appreciate Digimon Tri for what it is -- a series of very character-driven scenes of these kids approaching adulthood. Shame that the rest of the story suffers poorly for it. 

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Digimon Adventure Tri, Movie 6 - Bokura no Mirai, Part 2

The second part of "Bokura no Mirai" is basically a somewhat extended action scene, which is... actually pretty decently done. The digivolution montage to Mega/Ultimate form is pretty neat (if, as always, a bit repetitive) and really hammers in the desperation for the Chosen Children as they fail to really do anything to Ordinemon other than to get her cry in anguish and pain. As much as Ordinemon is basically just a screeching unstoppable generic anime monster, the animation staff makes it really look like a tortured soul.

The whole destruction montage of the real world, on the other hand, isn't super impressive, although the sight of the parents in a bunker (which brings to mind the whole parents sub-arc during the Vamdemon arc) is a neat way to hammer home the whole "oh no, characters that care about the main characters are in danger". Oh, and helps to drive in the whole Taichi is maybe-dead deal. Which, of course, isn't a thing, as we find out later in this episode.

Yggdrassil basically takes on the form of the Digimon Kaiser and Evil Gennai at various parts of this movie and honestly without a real concrete answer to what Yggdrassil is it's a  bit jarring to see this program taking the form of characters that don't appear here. We get Yggdrassil-Kaiser talking to Hackmon, the agent of Homeostasis, and it's basically the same order-vs-chaos argument we've heard before, although I suppose for those who don't rewatch the previous movies it's a neat reminder. The  Kaiser does raise a good point -- what good is Hackmon's vaunted order if he's just going to blow everything straight to hell anyway?

Hackmon also meets the Chosen Children after this conversation, at which point Koushiro figures out that Hackmon is Jesmon, and there was a bit where they are about to blame Hackmon for what happens to Taichi. (Whatever happened to Alphamon, I wonder? And why does Hackmon retain his memories after the reboot? Ah, the unanswered questions). Hackmon delivers this huge talk about just how the digital world's "grammar" is taking over the real world, and Hackmon/Homeostasis has basically decided to reboot the whole thing again -- this time on the side of the real world.

Yamato, whose character arc is perhaps the most solid in this sixth movie, sort of wavers, but concedes that Taichi would've wanted the path of least casualties. Koushiro ends up going for the opposition and leaves the team, because the whole world is run by electronics and rebooting them all would cause insane amounts of chaos. There's Koushiro's brief character moment for this movie -- and this movie basically shoves the other secondary Chosen Children like Mimi and Jo into the background, so it's nice that Koushiro gets a mini-mini-character arc in this one. Koushiro throws himself straight into work, just like what he did back when he's trying to figure out the reboot for the first time, but here he's grown from his obsessive one-mindedness and allows Tentomon to come in and drink some tea with him to take a break. Good job, Koushiro! Speaking of neat character moments, we get a neat bit with Meiko being a bit more resolute and agreeing with being the bait to lure Ordinemon to the ocean, Agumon being a bit more optimistic and just eating a lot to prepare for when -- not if -- Taichi comes back. The pacing, again, isn't good, because there's just a huge swath where they're just talking while Ordinemon is just vaguely rampaging, but the character moments are neat.

The final ten or so minutes finally stops dancing around and pretending that Taichi isn't dead, and shows that he and a very bloody Daigo have appeared in some base that belongs to... Yggdrassil? It's a neat enough storyline, I suppose, albeit if we're in somewhat obviously "let's deal with these side-quests" territory. We quickly discover the 02 kids, silhouetted and shoved into stasis tubes. Also among the 02 kids is the real Gennai, a fact that I didn't even realize until it was pointed out to me -- the actual movie never mentions this. We get a quickfire plot rundown, with Daigo basically confirming to Taichi that Maki's sort of dead after her complicity in bringing about the reboot... it's a bit dark, and I'm genuinely surprised that what we got in the fifth movie is just how we deal with Maki's character.

We also talk about just why the Zero Two Kids are missing, because apparently they were removed (by Alphamon, lest we forget) after they found out Yggdrassil's plan... and that's about all we get on that front. Maki ordered Daigo to cover it up. Again, it all sort of makes sense, although there is a lot of questions that remain in the air. Chief of which is just what happened to Veemon and the other 02 partner Digimon? It's also a bit irritating just why the 02 kids are kept in shadow literally all the time.

We then quickly get Not-Gennai, ranting like the maniac that he is (because, if you haven't figured out, Not-Gennai and Not-Kaiser are the same crazy agent of Yggdrassil) gives Daigo and Taichi a sadistic choice. Apparently Not-Gennai put in a Saw-esque timer, stopping the life support systems of the 02 Kids and leaving only a single pod available for Taichi or Gennai to send them to the real world. Of course, with Daigo being older, not a main character and also dying so that the choice isn't that hard, Daigo tricks Taichi into checking the empty stasis pod before locking him in and sending the 02 Kids, Taichi and real Gennai into the real world. It's... it's well-executed for sure, and quite tense, but honestly feels more of a distraction than anything.

Taken in a vacuum, this episode's pretty great. All the storylines executed are done well, but at the same time there's a huge chunk of additional subplots that sort of lead to a not-so-satisfying conclusion -- the Maki story and the 02 kids in particular. I suppose Daigo's story is okay, but not quite the best. Add the fact that Homeostasis and Yggdrassil never really develops beyond some vague idea of order-vs-chaos that operate mainly through proxies, and it's definitely a disappointment in some parts. 

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Digimon Adventure Tri, Movie 6 - Bokura no Mirai, Part 3

The first chunk of this part is just resolving the Taichi/Daigo plot from part 2 of "Our Future", which I kind of already covered in part in the previous episode. Again, it's a well-executed storyline taken in a vacuum, and it's the problems with Tri as a whole that bring the series down from what it could've been. The sacrifice is expected, but still done well with a definite "passing the torch to the next generation" moment between Daigo and Taichi. Again, though, there's a slight bit eye-rolling because sacrificing Daigo is pretty obvious from the moment Daigo's shown bleeding and half dead. And that's not counting the contrived coincidence of how the two of them apparently ended up in the same place as the 02 kids after falling into the fissure. And that Yggdrassil is willing to give a sadistic choice that actually works. Taichi stays out of most of the rest of this part, though, other than the offscreen confirmation by Koushiro to Yamato that "someone" sent the Zero Two kids to the hospital, basically concluding their minimal cameo-involvement here.

Meanwhile, while the Chosen Children get Ordinemon into the ocean, the partner Digimon, rightfully so, are far, far more worried about Tailmon and Meicoomon more than the whole world-ending stuff, which is a bit of a neat little thing. Oh, and Hikari also wakes up in response to... Tailmon, I guess? This episode feels way, way more like a 'get from point A to point B' moment, with a bunch of screentime taken up by repetitive introdumps and action scenes. We get to see more 'digimon wreak havoc in the real world', but this series clearly don't really have much time to focus on the supposedly main digimon, let alone for dudes like Phantomon and Kokatorimon, who basically have extended cameos.

We get the military doing generic missile stuff to Ordinemon and I think the movie misses a huge opportunity by not showcasing the only character involved in the military we care about -- Meiko's dad. We do get some neat giant-wing shadow tentacle-arms bit from Ordinemon, and the evolution sequences do a pretty neat job of showcasing just how dire things are -- apparently everyone only has energy to evolve into their adult forms other than WereGarurumon. It's a bit disappointing since their Ultimate forms ended up not doing much, but we do get some neat scenes with the Adults, so...

As with the previous parts, the makers of this series clearly puts more stock in the whole characterization thing. We get a conversation with Meiko and Hari ckmon, and I really wished Hackmon hasn't spent his entire amount of screentime in Tri insisting Homeostasis is neutral and very much neutral, otherwise this conversation would probably have more weight. Meiko does show a fair bit of growth, though, not running away or shying from her responsibility.

Meanwhile, Hikari and Takeru run through the streets, with HolyAngemon fighting a bunch of Evilmon (or Vilemon for English speakers)... and in perhaps one of the bigger showcases of poor power scaling, Evilmon is the sort of fodder character that HolyAngemon quite literally wiped out an entire army of alongside their master back in his first appearance. Really, did they run out of Vamdemons and Pinnochimons for HolyAngemon to fight? The Fake Kaiser pops up in front of Takeru and Hikari and goes through this huge spiel about how the fate of the world can't be handed over to humans who keel over and pass out over something as 'trivial' as emotions, before summoning Devimon against Takeru and HolyAngemon as the exact manifestation of said emotion. It's a shame this part of the episode feels so rushed and we don't quite get as much reaction to Takeru and HolyAngemon confronting mortality or the first villain that caused a death in Adventure, because it's all just brushed off as Takeru and HolyAngemon being super-mature and resolute.

The episode ends with Hikari going into one of her visions -- which honestly feels a bit trite at this point -- and seeing Wizardmon leading her somewhere... some deus ex machina, and as much as I do appreciate the Adventure callbacks with Devimon and Wizardmon (I am still a fanboy, after all, and I can't deny that I squeed like a little kid when those two showed up), they're so minimally used at this point that I honestly think why they even bothered. I appreciate not giving them huge spotlight-stealing screentime, but I don't think I appreciate not milking out these emotional gut-punches for what they're worth. 

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Digimon Adventure Tri, Movie 6 - Bokura no Mirai, Part 4

The first chunk of this story is... kind of expected, what with the focus on Hikari and her visions. As Koushiro notes, it's just kind of Hikari's power and you just kind of have to roll with it. Hikari basically gets led by Wizardmon through the weird white space where she meets the crying spirit of the Meicoomon and gets to talk with Tailmon, confirming that, yes, their partners are still alive and conscious within the huge pool of madness within Ordinemon. It's a neat scene, although one that I wished had a bit more buildup. It does kind of end up being the catalyst for Hikari's growth, though, into a more resolute person as opposed to someone that relies a lot on others. It's a character arc that has been inconsistent throughout both 02 and Tri, but there we go.

That said, I really do like just how much Koushiro just takes Hikari's vision and shrugs it as very logical evidence. He's a smart, science-y man, yes, but he's also seen a lot of shit. Empirical evidence! I liked that bit. Of course, the reboot doomsday countdown happens, because you have to have a countdown. Yamato gets a scene where he looks like he's about to bash Hackmon's face in when he pops up just to inform the Chosen Children that, hey, the reboot is about to begin. Yamato gets a cool line saying that the Chosen Children aren't doing this for any sort of balance or saving the world, but are just going to end this on their own terms.

Meanwhile, it's around this point that the action scenes genuinely feel pretty awesome, with Togemon being the unexpected MVP, getting the most impressive action scenes out of the five partner Digimon that hold the line against Ordinemon. We get some fun acrobatics from WereGarurumon and some neat fireball animation from Birdramon, but it's Togemon and her insane jumping around and spinning around, pretty unlikely considering how all the other partners are kind of in their element. Good show, Togemon. Good show.

Ordinemon, meanwhile, continues to show off more crazy anime-final-villain powers, like having her feathers transform into shadowy Devidramons. The military apparently has a military cage that actually does something. It's not quite as impressive as the... Shoggoth or Yuggoth that they used in Digimon Tamers, and it's honestly a bit irritating to have the military sort of take so much screentime with repetitive shots of tanks firing, but eh.

We get the revelation from Koushiro that apparently all the Digimon World's data (or the partner Digimon's data? It's not quite made clear) is saved within Meicoomon during the original reboot back in Movie #4, which is... pretty damn convenient and honestly I wished we had some foreshadowing. It does take a bit of fiddling -- with the hints that the kidnapping of Meicoomon by Not-Kaiser is the reason that Meicoomon's memories got locked away, and the other Digimon and/or the data backup field apparently transferred their memories into the same mental box within Meicoomon, it's kind of a reason to get a way to restore everyone's memories. There's a neat little emotional base in Meicoomon recovering her own memories, and a bit of a cheesy-but-somewhat-heartwarming bit that it's the Kansai dialect "Dan-dan!" thank you that is the password. It's done well, again, but I really just wished that the continuity from point A to point B was done better, and that there were some better foreshadowing and a hint as to the fact that the backup field actually worked.

We also get a brief cameo of the international Chosen Children (although not specific ones that we saw in 02... or at least none I remember), and a montage of everyone's memories being restored -- although it's all in silhouette form because it's too expensive to reanimate Adventure moments. We do get a Yukidarumon cameo, though.

And as the newfound emotion and information causes Ordinemon to fight a war within herself, apparently this causes all the random faceless, personality-less Digimon that have been apparently rampaging off-screen to get sucked into the big giant portal she creates? Tailmon is straight-up fighting to get back to Hikari, and ends up being freed by Hackmon/Jesmon, who swoops in to surgically slice Tailmon out of Ordinemon, before disappearing and letting the Chosen Children handle the rest of the conflict. Again, it's a cool moment, but at the same time I really wished Hackmon had more time to grow as an actual charater as opposed to just being a plot device that gets touched by Yamato and Meiko's speech.

Of course, as Tailmon gets freed, apparently Ordinemon continues rampaging because Yggdrassil has taken over the space vacated by Tailmon, leading to the final fight and final part. 

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The final part of Digimon Adventure Tri is... serviceable. It deals with the plotlines that "Our Future" has chosen to focus on, doesn't really elaborate much on much of any of the secondary storylines that the movie has sort of gently but unsubtly pushed aside. We quickly get the honestly somewhat overdramatic return of Action Hero Taichi as he swoops in to save both Agumon and Meiko in a single move, and after a bit of a bro-nod with Yamato, they quickly bring out Omegamon as the Chosen Children's literal biggest gun faces off against Ordinemon. It's cool, of course, as much as it is predictable and something that's sort of a given.

The confrontation between Hikari and Taichi is an interesting one, though. Hikari is the optimist in this one, asking for Taichi to try his best to save Meicoomon. The way the scene is done isn't with tears or the sobbing of Hikari as the youngest member of the group or a little sister, though, but it is delivered like a conversation between equals in a team. It's a neat but subtle maturation on Hikari's part. Likewise, Taichi's reply to her, telling Hikari to 'stay that way' and that she can 'hate me all you want', but as the leader, he doesn't waffle anymore and knows that he has to make a resolute decision to save their future. (Hence, the title of the movie). It's a bit harsh, but also shows just how much Taichi has matured compared to his waffling around in the first movie. Arguably it's still a bit of a headscratcher considering how resolute Taichi's been in both Adventure and 02, but within the confines of Tri Taichi gets a pretty neat character arc resolution as the sacrifice of the partner digimon -- and more obviously Daigo -- has apparently caused him to mature a lot.

And then Hikari decides to fight alongside them -- she doesn't like the decision, but she acknowledges that it's best if the team fights as one, and Tailmon evolves into her final, true Ultimate form -- Holydramon. As someone who's been with this franchise from way back when, I've always thought of Tailmon's final evolution as Holydramon first and Ophanimon second, despite everyone wanting Ophanimon to be a humanoid angel parallel to Patamon's Seraphimon, but apparently the anime staff shares my love for this fat dog-faced pink blob dragon. (In any case, it is sort of established that both Ophanimon and Holydramon are definitely 'canon' for Adventure's Tailmon).

And the mass Ultimate battle between Ordinemon and the Chosen Children's Digimon is pretty neat, with Holydramon flying straight into Ordinemon's face to blast her. Meanwhile, the shots of the Chosen Children are those of pretty resolute adults -- not everyone is stone faced, because we've got Yamato flustering for a moment before that fist-bump, we've Takeru and Hikari clearly being more troubled, but they're resolute, and even Meiko realizes what's to be done. Her digivice turns white in response to her cry, which prompts Omegamon's new Tron-Angel form. Omegamon's Mercy Form or whatever it's called slices off Ordinemon's wing-arms before bisecting Ordinemon herself, leading to a final goodbye with Meicoomon via the white dimension. It's actually pretty well-done moment as Meicoomon says goodbye to Meiko with a cheerful but melancholic "dan-dan" as she disintegrates... and unlike most Digimon material, we don't get an epilogue showing a Digimon egg being reborn (yet, anyway) or something along those lines, driving home the more mature sensibilities of Tri.

Of course, it's not over yet. The victory is less of a triumph and more of a tired responsibility for these older Chosen Children. The public still absolutely hates the Digimon, Meiko has to return back to her own home, and the Not-Kaiser/Gennai entity is still on the loose, juggling his corrupting black box and wondering if he's going to bring out Daemon or Diaboromon next. If it's any consolation, though, Homeostasis has apparently shut down Yggdrassil and Koushiro's made a portal for the Digimon to visit, and we get a fun bit as Yamato considers becoming an astronaut and Taichi calls Meiko.

Ultimately, though, it's far from the perfect sequel to Adventure or 02. Many of the side characters end up being more or less just exposition pieces (Hackmon/Jesmon in particular), Homeostasis and Yggdrassil never really develops beyond a vague concept of ideas, the mysteries behind Not-Gennai is laid on too thick, the constant and almost-memetic hiding of the 02 Kids, the lack of exploration of the actual digital world beyond the 8 partner Digimon, the sheer over-reliance on stock footage... yet Tri still ends up being a pretty fun, if unexpectedly melancholic, entry in the Digimon franchise. I wouldn't count this among my most favourite of Digimon fiction, but it's pretty good, all things considered. 

Digimon Adventures Tri M05 Review: Buildup

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.  

Digimon Adventure Tri. M04 Review: Unexpected Origin Story

Digimon Adventure Tri. Movie #4: Loss, Part 1

Well, I certainly didn't expect that beautiful, beautiful prologue piece that was absolutely super-meta, answering a lot about the origin story of the Adventure/02 continuity and the significance of which is probably lost to more casual viewers. I'll discuss it last, though, and talk about the rest of the episode first.

'Loss' is the fourth movie in this series, and I've made it clear that the slow start to the first three movies, while having its good points, does make the whole series when viewed as a whole feel like a very slow-paced story with the occasional climax. But the fact that it's a series of movies means that the proportion that's going to be relegated to simple buildup also increases. But 'Loss' comes with the advantage that the previous movie actually ends with a big enough cliffhanger to justify having a slower buildup, in that the partner Digimon have lost their memories, and the Chosen Children need to re-bond with them. Oh, an we're in a very familiar lakeside in File Island again, which is definitely tugging at the heart strings. It's a very nice series of cute moments and a very significant mixture of melancholy and happiness. Melancholy that the movie makes it clear just how much history that the Chosen Children and their partners have lose, but also happiness that they rekindled their bonds so quickly, all but Sora and Pyokomon (Yokomon? Pyocomon?), who quickly got off on the wrong foot.

But other than those pair, the rest of the Chosen Children bond very quickly with their partners, with only Joe and Bukamon not getting any real focus beyond a brief scene of them facing each other. But the rest? Making use of last movie's focus on them, we get to see that, yes, Mochimon is still very fascinated with Koushiro's curiousity about everything that's going on, and his Oolong tea obsession, which is a recurring theme last movie (did Tentomon love Oolong tea in the original series? I cannot remember) is shown as well as a nice bit. It's very nice that Koushiro, while not completely ignoring Mochimon and still exchanges dialogue with him, is also still very much intent in uncovering the secrets of the digital world, the same qualities that drew Mochimon to Koushiro in the first place.

Nyaromon finds a very comfortable scent in Hikari (thanks to the whistle that inexplicably appears there), and there's a nice bit of immaturity on Nyaromon's part when she asks to be thrown into the air like the other babies, which surprises Hikari -- Tailmon is such an adult thanks to her default state being the adult stage, but now she's as immature and childlike as the others and Hikari notes that allowing Tailmon to return to a childlike state is a blessing in disguise. Tokomon just goes 'kay, if you say so' when Takeru tells them that they're friends, Tanemon's very high-pitched, panicked shrill of 'don't eat me!!' is absolutely hilarious, Yamato doesn't really make a push to befriend Tsunomon but the end of this part shows them attached to each other anyway... it's all fun stuff, and we do kind of need the longer screentime to establish this.

Sora, meanwhile, starts off at the wrong foot with Pyokomon -- quite literally, as she steps on Pyokomon's petals. Sora is smothering with Pyokomon, insisting that they are friends and they should be friends, ironically repeating the same character arc that she herself went through in the late Etemon/early Vamdemon stages of Adventure, which is her own struggles with her own smothering mother who wants Sora to be more like her. And as teenagers are wont to do, they rebel when they are pushed. Adventure Sora's character arc is often criticized for reducing a strong, female character into one that ends up conforming to the stereotypical woman, but I see it differently. Sora's tomboy phase during early Adventure was her acting out because she's got problems with her mother, a combination of teenage rebellion and soul-searching, when really what's true to Sora is somewhere in-between the extreme tomboy image she tries to become in Adventure, ending up in 02 and Tri as, well, Action Team Mom, basically.

But Sora ends up making the same mistakes that her mother did, and pushes too hard for a friendship with Pyokomon, who quickly goes all edgy-teen and refuses to talk to her. It's the start of a conflict that runs throughout the movie, and while it doesn't end up getting resolved as well as I hoped it would, it's still a very interesting conflict that fits in with the 'Digimon loses memories' storyline.

The episode ends with the baby-level Digimon evolving into their child-level states after lunch, a nice nod to how in the earliest stages of Adventure evolving depends on how full they are. Oh, and I guess I have to talk about Taichi a little. He's regained his group leader status and confidence, rallying them to help search for Meicoomon because she's one of them now, but he's still not completely there yet, looking to Yamato for a reassuring nod. I guess it's also a sign that his new form of leadership considers the feelings of others more, or something?

Meanwhile, we don't get to see much of the other characters, other than the fact that Meiko ends up showing up at the meeting point too late to join in the other Chosen Children to save the world, which, considering Meicoomon's absolutely livid that her partner isn't around, is also going to be a conflict point for this movie. Mei also gets a brief flashback of crackling computers, a fire and a psychotic Meicrackmon, so she is actually hiding something, some dark past. We get a brief bit of Maki's answering machine, showing that she's disappeared, but not much from the woman herself in the present day.

Oh, and there's a hilarious bit when Takeru tries to communicate with the real world with his D-Terminal, which absolutely fails. Poor D-Terminals, they're kind of useless other than to store Armor Evolution Digi-Eggs, yeah?

And then we loop back to the stylistic prequel, something that was only implied in the dialogue of 02, and something that is later extrapolated from future unconnected series like Tamers and other supplementary material. See, 02 established that there are four Digimon Holy Beasts (or Sovereigns, which IMO is the cooler English translation) that ruled over the Digital World, battled the Dark Masters but were sealed... all prior to the start of Adventure. We only ever see Qinglongmon throughout 02 (though the four as a group would play a huge role in the alternate-universe Tamers), where he gives us all the backstory, and the Dark Masters in Adventure make no real references to the Holy Beasts. The thing is, while it's a cool backstory, everything about them feels so disconnected when we eventually learn about it in 02. The Dark Masters tie-in is cool but then they've already been defeated in Adventure, and Qinglongmon's only real contribution was as the mission control, basically, and other than worldbuilding it doesn't really change the goals of the 02 protagonists.

But tying in the Dark Masters/Holy Beasts backstory to Tri? And showing that there were other groups of Chosen Children who saved the Digital World in the past before Taichi's group? We've seen international Chosen Children in 02, but why not in the past? Apparently a different group of Chosen Children battled the Dark Masters during their first rise, and during the ensuing battle, when they were near death, four of the five partner Digimon evolved into the Holy Beasts -- Qinglongmon, Zhuqiaomon, Baihumon and Xuanwumon... but the fifth is destroyed and left for dead.

And the kicker? The two Chosen Children most prominently featured are actually Daigo and Maki, and Maki's Megadramon (great choice for a partner -- Megadramon is a personal favourite in Digimon World and the GBA games) was the one that was slain in the conflict. It's unclear who transformed the other four partners (Orochimon, Triceramon, Hippogriffmon and... -googles- LoaderLiomon, for those who are wondering), whether it's Homeostasis or Yggdrassil or something else. But the flashback is told in a well-animated, shaky-old-style-video style, voiceless and only instrumental manner, with dialogue only spoken like old-style movies as subtitles on a black screen, only for the distraught Maki to reflect that things grow stronger when they're chosen, but what happens to those that aren't, those that are discarded?

It's a very excellent backstory that really sells Maki's grief and motivations in ten short minutes, and as we've seen before in the past with other characters whose partners were slain -- Ken and Takeru in Adventures, but also far more devastatingly Juri in Tamers, who, like Maki, never got her partner back and fell into a dark spiral afterwards. Suddenly the revelation of Daigo and Maki as former Chosen Children puts a lot of their previous conversations and scenes in a greater light -- especially their talk about letting go of their childhood shows a tragic underlaying meaning because he's not talking about Taichi's group, but about Maki herself. 
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Digimon Adventure Tri. Movie #4: Loss, Part 2

So you know what happens when you walk into a movie blind without seeing the posters or trailers? Well, I don't know about you guys, but I literally lost my shit when Mugendramon shows up roaring like the god damned Godzilla randomly in-between a moment of character introspection. 

MUGENDRAMON, MOTHERFUCKERS!

I love Mugendramon. Giant cyborg frankenstein Terminator dinosaur-dragon of death that he is. He's the final boss in the old Digimon World PlayStation game, made up of various parts of other cyborg Digimon, and he looks absolutely badass. And him rendered in this wonderful, wonderful new animation? Worth the price of admission alone.

Of course, Mugendramon honestly has a pretty weak showing this time around. Sure, he rampages and is absolutely unstoppable, but he absolutely fails to kill -- or even hurt -- eight children and their eight child-level Digimon that are unable to evolve. Sure, he rampages and he launches the mother of all cannon blasts onto the kids, but that somehow... teleports them all around the Digital World instead of killing them. Because plot device. 

So, yeah, the fourth movie, despite the glorious inclusion of Mugendramon and the pretty spiffy prologue, doesn't quite do enough, and it's easily weaker than the first three despite the far more epic action scenes. And this part is an easy one to diss. It starts off strong if still slow -- Taichi and Koushiro continue to figure out what's going on with the distortions as they try to track Meicoomon, the group is stable enough and generally happy (other than Sora) but have their heads screwed on tightly enough to know their goal is to find Meicoomon... who, by the way, is missing Mei and in her grief goes berserk again. Everyone's bonding well with their partners other than Sora and Biyomon, who continue their tsundere game from the previous part. Sora gets a nice moment where she sits all emo, and Taichi and Yamato try to talk to her but realize that they have no clue how to solve social situations like this because it's Sora that usually resolves the team's conflict, and as Taichi points out whenever Sora has an emotional problem she tends to solve it alone, or with Biyomon's help. It's all pretty great stuff character-wise since Sora's the sole poster Chosen Child in this movie, but before we get any significant conclusion to their conversation, Sora's still sad and Taichi and Yamato are horrible at playing Sora, but all this is interrupted by MUGENDRAMON MOTHERFUCKERS

Mind you, as much as I joke about it, it's still a pretty great moment. Taichi says all the wrong things, Yamato is at the same time concerned yet pissed off that Sora isn't saying what's wrong, and Sora's full of tears, angry at her two closest friends for not caring for her while they're trying to. It's a pretty awesome, complex dynamic that, well, gets interrupted by the Mugendramon attack.

Which inexplicably splits up the group apart (with very few stuck with their Digimon partners) across various locales in the Digital World, and apparently Meiko shows up face-down in the hot scorching desert. Biyomon continues to be a bitch, stopping only when she realizes that she's been so horrible to Sora that she's reduced to nothing but a silent, teary wreck, before quickly being distracted with the near-dead Meiko in the desert.

Yes, it's probably Meicoomon's doing, intentional or not, that warped everyone, but it's not clear on so many levels -- is she sane when she's doing it? Did Meiko come by herself? Did Meicoomon draw Meiko in? Who's Mugendramon working for, and why is he silent? Only the last question is answered as the movie goes on, but the rest remain mostly unanswered.

In fact, the real-world plotline raises even more questions as Daigo hacks into the missing Maki's laptop. He finds out correspondence with Gennai, some mysterious references to Yggdrasil (dun dunnn DUNNNN!) before being confronted by Hackmon. But we get no answers, no introdump, not even a cryptic reference to the true nature of Gennai or Meicoomon. 

So yeah. This part is awesome simply by its inclusion of Mugendramon, but simultaneously is brought down by it just showing up out of nowhere and separating the team for no real reason other than 'plot plot plot'. The Sora/Biyomon storyline is semi-decent, and Sora interacting with Taichi and Yamato are great, but after Mugendramon tries to murder-kill everyone it's the last you'll see of the plotlines before they're almost magically resolved. So... yeah. Not the most well-paced movie, even if I'm gushing over Mugendramon all the time it's pretty uneven, not being satisfactory in the teen drama, giant monster battle or sci-fi mystery sections. 

Digimon Easter Egg Corner: (because it's honestly time for one of these)

• Meicoomon shacks up in the train carriage in the Dragon's Eye Lake, which was the setting for the third episode in Adventure with Seadramon, and the train would be a recurring setting, as well as the final spot that the Chosen Children leaves the Digital World in at the end of Adventure.
• Mugendramon (Machinedramon in the English dub) is one of the four Dark Masters, briefly seen in this movie's prologue. In Adventure, he was the second-last Dark Master to fall, slain by WarGreymon. The fact that Mugendramon doesn't say anything at all (while not chatty, he definitely speaks a fair bit in the anime series) seems to mean that something's up with the dude.
• Mugendramon's blast sent our heroes to various locales visited primarily in the first season of Adventures:
• Sora, Biyomon and Mei are in the desert with electrical poles (the Gear Savannah), a location that featured, appropriately enough, near a Pyokomon village where Biyomon and Sora bonded in the original Adventure series and unlocked Birdramon.
• Joe's group are at the top of Infinity Mountain, where likewise his partner Gomamon evolved into Ikkakumon.
• Mimi and Tentomon are teleported in front of TonosamaGekomon's (a.k.a. ShogunGekomon's) palace, where Mimi ended up in when the group split up in the post-Etemon arc.
• Takeru ends up in the Village of Beginnings, where he and Patamon ended up in when the group was split up prior to battling Devimon, and we get a brief cameo by Elecmon, the custodian of the baby Digimon there. In Adventure, Takeru and Patamon fought and later befriended Elecmon during their stay there.
• In another nice nod to maturing dynamics in Adventure, in the earlier parts of the anime Mimi used to tease Palmon about her weird plant monster look, but here she gushes over how beautiful she is. Aw, Mimi, you do care.
• Yggdrasil was a concept introduced in later Digimon series (most prominently in Digimon Savers and the one-shot movie X-Evolution, but also various other manga and games), the master computer that reigns over the Digital World, and tends to play an antagonistic role when it decides that Digimon are a virus, or that humanity is a blight, et cetera. The Royal Knights (among them Alphamon, Jesmon and Omegamon, to name a few that's shown up here) are a group of powerful Ultra-level Digimon whose task is enforcing the will of Yggdrassil. 

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Digimon Adventure Tri. Movie #4: Loss, Part 3

I'm not sure why the previous movie lasted for five episodes/parts, and the fourth movie reverted to the four-episode formula. I honestly think that the previous movie hit on all the emotional and action beats simply because of the length it's given, allowing it to fully realize the scope of what that particular part was trying to do, whereas the first two movies are simply, well, not that ambitious. This part is where the fourth movie falters, which is a shame. The fourth movie easily has the most memorable action scenes down pat, it's the movie that starts answering a lot of the questions raised in previous movies, it's the one that moves the plot forwards a lot... yet at the same time it feels disjointed because plot lines aren't give enough time to breathe.

And a huge reason, I think, was separating everyone up onto different locales, establishing where they ended up in the Digital World... and then doing absolutely nothing but a glorified montage before bringing them back together. All it really does is bring Meiko, Sora and Biyomon together for a scene, and the movie didn't really need to jump through so many hoops to get there. And the conflict kind of... resolves itself. I wouldn't say abruptly, because we did have some scenes of Biyomon slowly acting less of a bitch to Sora thanks to the two of them putting aside their little spat to help out Meiko, and later Sora risking herself to save Biyomon when Mugendramon attacks again, but on the other hand we didn't really get into Biyomon's mind enough to really understand her sudden change of heart. I guess the scene on the boat was supposed to be that, with Biyomon telling Sora she's a big soft idiot, and she likes that in her... but it doesn't feel anywhere as well-done as any of the previous partner-bonding moments in the previous movies.

We also get some discussion between Daigo and Hackmon, who introduces himself as a messenger for Homeostasis, who also tells us that Gennai, who was the previous caretaker of balance, have fallen into darkness, as well as telling us that Maki has been allied-slash-manipulated by Yggdrasil, and the two of them are trying to use 'Libra', a.k.a. Meicoomon. Then Hackmon disappears, and we don't see Daigo for the rest of the movie. It does answer some questions, mostly just who's allied with who. Hackmon and Homeostasis are one team, while Yggdrasil, Gennai and Maki are on the other team. The thing is, the movie doesn't really give an establishing moment as to who the fuck Homeostasis and Yggdrasil are, and even if you watched the previous one that only answers Homeostasis's identity. I'm not a big fan of unnecessary recaps, but the fact that these movies are separated by a half-year gap means that the movie really should've kind of made some of its introdump less cryptic. 

What's not ambiguous at all, though, was Maki's motivations behind it all. Between the flashbacks in the previous part, and Daigo's flashbacking to the prologue, as well as the brief scene of Maki wandering the Digital World later in this episode, it's clear that Maki forcing the Reboot and allying herself with Yggdrassil to accomplish that was a way to bring back her old partner, Megadramon. Or, well, its child-level form, Bakumon.

The rest of the Chosen Children/partner Digimon split up would, in theory, raise a lot of interesting character interaction potentials. I dunno, maybe Biyomon feels more comfortable as Meiko's partner? Maybe one of the other Digimon partners latch on to another Chosen Child? But all we get are the different humans telling the Digimon stuck with them how nice they were with their original partner. It doesn't last too long before we go into quick-montage territory, but it did feel slow and unnecessary, especially after the tension that was caused by Meicoomon and Mugendramon showing up in the previous part just evaporating. The moment with Team Yamato was especially grating as none of it really felt like it mattered. Did we nee to spend so much time repeating what Mimi and Tentomon just said, just with different partner Digimon? Did we need the train scene? The only real moment during the first fifteen minutes of this episode that really resonated was Hikari reflecting that Plotmon is happier this way, with all the memories of her abuse prior to meeting Hikari being erased.

And, yes, the Takeru/Elecmon scene kind of establishes that the other Digimon we saw from Adventure are all around (though the jury's still out for those that died in the human world, I think) and mostly the same, just, y'know, rebooted.

Of course, it's not all filler. The Sora/Biyomon/Meiko stuff was... serviceable, even if the eventual resolution leave something to be desired. Meicoomon finally confronts Meiko, and Meicoomon attacks Meiko with a wind blade, angry that her partner didn't come looking for her like the other eight. It's a nice, raw moment of reconciliation, where Meicoomon's angry at Mei for not coming after her, and Mei's angry for all the shit Meicoomon's put her through... but then accepts her partner, faults and all. Of course, 'Ken' and Mugendramon show up again to interrupt all this mushy stuff. Well, at least that felt resolved with Meiko and Meicoomon hugging each other. The fight causes another montage of portals opening, allowing the other Chosen Children to return which really brings the question of what the point of the last fifteen minutes was if all it seemed to do was to get Sora, Biyomon and Meiko separated.

'Ken' reveals himself to be Young Gennai, but he's not the nice mentor we're familiar with, as proved with his creepy manhandling of Meicoomon and that lick of Sora's face is absolutely sending NO vibes, which at least causes Gennai, who seems to going to be the main villain (if not the second-in-command to Yggdrasil) to have this absolutely creepy vibe. There's some revelations about how Yggdrasil was the one that caused the reboot instead of Homeostasis, I think? It's not entirely clear.

Biyomon attacks Gennai, Mugendramon bats her around, Sora hugs Biyomon as Mugendramon sends a big yellow beam of death... and then somehow Taichi and Yamato manage to... do something about the beam or some such? The action in this bit is unclear, really, because it looks like they deflected the beam instead of grabbing Sora and Biyomon away, which would make more sense. Also not quite making sense: Plotmon's Puppy Howling disabling Mugendramon. Plotmon is a child-level. Mugendramon is an Ultimate-level. I can get things like Biyomon surviving being whacked aside by Mugendramon, but Mugendramon is a Digimon that took on all eight of the partner Digimon in their Perfect forms and didn't even break a sweat... so either it's just a cheap way to get the kids out in a way that didn't quite make sense (why not like, have the Digimon throw a smokescreen by attacking the ground, or something?) or Mugendramon is really an inferior copy. Or something.

Gennai and Mugendramon chase after the kids and their Digimon, who are unable to evolve, trying to sow dissent by saying that the partners are enslaved... but it's a throwaway line that didn't really manage to reach them. Now if Gennai said all that to Biyomon before you attacked and went all creepy molester on Sora, maybe you'd be successful in selling your 'for the Digimon' spiel. And honestly, beyond the short picnic at the beginning of the movie, the interactions between the various partners didn't really felt earned, so to speak.

Ultimately, the final few minutes of this part just wraps up the Sora/Biyomon plotline as they acknowledge each other, and the team sets off to make a plan, splitting up and working like a well-oiled team. Meanwhile, Gennai brings in another Dark Master, MetalSeadramon, who proceeds to continue rampaging without causing any casualties. MetalSeadramon, like Mugendramon, is also mute in this movie, and he's definitely a lot chattier than Mugendramon in the original anime, so there's definitely something up with those two. Psycho-Gennai's doing enough talking for three villains, mind you, being easily a very entertaining villain as he puts the Chosen Children's previous choices to allow the Reboot to happen in doubt as they briefly entertain the idea that they fucked up in thinking that the Reboot really is the solution when it's Yggdrasil's will. For... for some reason.

It could've been a lot better in so many regards -- the Digimon/partner relationship, the Yggdrassil/Homeostasis revelations, to some extent Sora/Biyomon, the action scenes -- and the sheer amount of wasted potential is just a huge shame. Mind you, the movie's still enjoyable in spite of all its problems. Meiko/Meicoomon was amazing, some parts of the Sora/Biyomon story was still pretty great, Gennai as a villain is entertaining, the revelations about Maki and her role in all this was well-done, and the fanboy in me is just geeking out at Mugendramon and MetalSeadramon. But at the same time there's still the nagging feeling that this could all be so much better.


Digimon Easter Egg Corner:

• Team Taichi, previously stuck in a nondescript jungle, reach the plateau with television screens, glimpsed briefly during the Yukidarumon episode in Adventure.  
• The giant cruise ship is also a setting from Adventure, piloted by Cockatorimon during the Etemon arc. Despite being anchored near a lake in this movie, it was originally made for desert cruising. Because Digimon.

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Digimon Adventure Tri. Movie #4: Loss, Part 4

Man, that series of transformation sequence really killed the momentum of the final battle, didn't it? Jeez, I love Digimon transformation sequences as much as the next nostalgic kid, but at the same time I remembered how they did the Alphamon/Omegamon battle in the first movie, how Agumon and Gabumon just go through their adult, perfect and ultimate forms in quick succession before combining, showing us their various forms without breaking the momentum of the final battle. Even in the second and third movies, the bulk of stock footage-ing happens before or early of their respective final battles, instead of stopping every five minutes to show how Tentomon evolves into Kabuterimon, then AlturKabuterimon, then HerculesKabuterimon. And the thing is, the child-to-adult-to-perfect-to-ultimate transformation scene takes up way, way more time than the simple child-to-adult transformation, which is a lot less of a momentum killer. 

And we had three of those! Biyomon, Tentomon and Patamon all go into Ultimate forms with full transformation sequences. That was definitely not necessary. That said, though, the action scenes are spectacular as they tend to be in these movies. 

There are some things being wrapped up too, of course, as MetalSeadramon and Mugendramon falls to the combined might of five Ultimate-level Digimon -- considering they both individually fell to a lone WarGreymon in one-v-one battle in the past, having WarGreymon assisted by four others as powerful (and inarguably more powerful, in Seraphimon's case) just absolutely turns the tides.

Sora goes absolutely action hero as she jumps onto Mugendramon's claws to try and break Biyomon free from his grip, and while I could argue about Mugendramon's badass decay in his complete ineffectiveness of taking down Child-level Digimon, it's still a pretty badass scene. How's Sora's ribcage not shattered, though? It's the kind of 'partners bond and life-risking unlocks evolution' thing that the very first few episodes of Digimon had, but instead of simply allowing Biyomon to evolve into Birdramon, she goes all the way to her Ultimate form and becomes Hououmon. 

We also get a nice scene of Maki's reunion with Bakumon in a very beautiful, dreamlike field of flowers, and Bakumon acts just like Biyomon did. Maki's as pushy, if not more pushy, than Sora was in the beginning of the movie, and Bakumon just absolutely rejects this stranger. It's heartbreaking, really, and yes, Maki's not all right in the head, but you can't help but feel pity for her. She makes all the wrong decisions, and it's actually not hard to see how her story runs parallel to the spotlight Chosen Child in at least the second through fourth movies. The most obvious is this movie, of course, but in the third movie, she is also withholding crucial information from her partner Daigo, similar to how Takeru's doing the same thing about Patamon's infection. In the second movie it's less apparent, but she does have some discussion with Daigo about balancing life as a Digimon partner and real-life responsibilities, the same troubles that Joe is struggling with. We don't get to see much of her after that scene (and freaked-out Maki is terrifying) but I'm definitely far more invested in her character than I thought I would.

So, yeah, the Child Digimon put up a relatively good fight even if none of them managed to actually stun Mugendramon the way Plotmon did in the previous part, they did manage to fool Mugendramon with holograms, make use of the icy terrain to evade Mugendramon's cannons, and both Patamon and Joe go straight for a more manageable target than a giant walking dinosaur-shaped arsenal -- Gennai. Joe straight up goes all action hero and wrestles Gennai to the ground, prompting Gomamon to send an army of fish to whack Gennai in the face, and for Palmon to tie him down. It doesn't last long, but it's still a far more believable and entertaining effort than their previous ways of cheesing out of escaping Mugendramon. Joe's really proving himself awesome in this movie, isn't he? Between lunging at Gennai and catching a falling Sora later on during the Ultimate clash, dude's proving himself to be quite the action hero.

Gabumon manages to surprise MetalSeadramon a little with a blast of fire, but he's not as awesome as Plotmon and it really only causes MetalSeadramon to submerge for like twenty seconds before rampaging again. Taichi and Yamato throwing their partners to safety while they are pulled under, before talking to their partners through some trippy mind-space where they acknowledge their bond and boom, straight WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon... is a bit too quick, I think, and while Yamato and Gabumon have their brief "should I call you Yamato-kun or just Yamato" thing going on to show their bond, Taichi and Agumon don't... really? I guess it's just a matter of trust between the two pairs, and the moment that the bond is re-ignited it just re-unlocks something they've unlocked before? Nice to know that Taichi and Yamato don't have to get shot in the heart by angels again to unlock Ultimate forms. That shot of WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon bursting out of the lake is just bad ass, and it's a very brutal, quick yet absolutely awesome set of action sequences as the two original Ultimates take down MetalSeadramon. It's absolutely effortless and brutal... and honestly, considering WarGreymon solo'd MetalSeadramon in the original, having two of equal power means poor MetalSeadramon just stands no real chance.

It's cheesy, it kind of comes out of nowhere, sure, but I guess I'd rather have a quick 'hey, we trust you humans' moment than to drag it out through the entire runtime. On a less spectacular but still awesome vein, Hikari and Plotmon are the final pair to unlock evolution, though it's a more modest Child-to-Adult evolution so Tailmon can protect Hikari from a falling chunk of ice. 

Meanwhile, over on Team Sora, the Child-level Digimon managed to trick Mugendramon into burying himself under an iceberg, but if Tailmon can break an iceberg so can fucking Mugendramon. We go through the Sora/Biyomon moment, and we get Hououmon versus Mugendramon, and it's pretty awesome to see Hououmon and Mugendramon duke it out. But while all this is going on, Gennai runs over to Meiko, who's hidden in the ship while the more battle-hardened original eight fought the Dark Masters. And Gennai gets really up and personal with her. It's not quite as creepy as licking Sora in the face, but shit, man. In retrospect, while Biyomon's evolution did kick-start Tentomon and Patamon's confidence to them taking down Mugendramon... probably not the smartest idea to leave Meiko and Meicoomon on the ship alone, Sora. 

Tentomon and Patamon both go Ultimate as well, and it feels a lot less earned. It's definitely a lot more symbolic on Takeru's part, though, where he's confident enough to let Patamon fight the moment his partner wants to, learning from the previous movie to trust his partner as an equal and not just a weaker buddy to protect. And besides, Takeru and Patamon missed achieving Ultimate evolution in their spotlight movie, I guess they get to do so now. The three Ultimates literally spend a few seconds tearing Mugendramon apart, blowing him up with a combined attack... and really, if we didn't spend four times the length of the fight to see three stock evolution sequences it'd be a lot less of an anticlimax. 

A little part of me is kind of sad that Mugendramon and MetalSeadramon are turned into voiceless flunkies that die quickly -- though at least they die to multiple Ultimates -- but at the same time once I got past the stock transformation sequences and see the beautifully-rendered action scenes the fanboy part wants to forgive the showmakers.

Yes, MetalSeadramon and Mugendramon are defeated, but the movie still ends in the cliffhanger with our heroes at easily their worst point. Their victory is pyrrhic because Gennai chokes Meiko and apparently snaps her neck, causing Meicoomon to go absolutely insane, evolve into Meicrackmon and the movie ends with an angry Meicrackmon, Gennai laughing like a maniac and telling Meicrackmon to destroy the world, our heroes all gathered in the ice fields with five out of eight de-powered into baby forms, and Meiko unconscious, maybe dead. Meiko and Meicoomon aren't protected by the 02 epilogue, unlike the original eight, so their deaths, while still unlikely in my opinion, isn't something that's entirely out of the question either. It's a very 'WTF' way to end the movie with another six-month gap between this than the next, the one true cliffhanger without anything really good to come out of it.

So, yeah. This movie is very, very uneven, but it manages to introduce a brand-new villain, Gennai, that's easily one of the creepiest that the Digimon franchise's ever done. Whether he is truly an avatar reflecting Yggdrasil's wishes or just a particularly hammy underling, or if it's Piemon's mysterious black ball that corrupted him, his rant about how his main goal to do the Reboot is to unite all the Digimon in a front to wipe out humanity is a nice bit. Yes, the movie could've been a bit less oblique with the revelations about Homeostasis and Yggdrasil, and it did have a lot of padding in its second half, but it still accomplishes what it set out to do. Still, the fourth movie's easily the weakest of the main four, trading off consistency in storytelling for huge action pieces and flashbacks. 

Digimon Easter Egg Corner:

• While this time it did include MetalGarurumon freezing him first, the way MetalSeadramon is killed in this movie -- destroyed by WarGreymon's Brave Tornado -- is also the same way that he died in Adventures. 
• So this never came up before, but during evolution sequences, the names of the Digimon in various languages slide across the Digivices in different languages. In a nice touch and acknowledgement to the changes made by the English localization, the English words and names for Plotmon, Tailmon and HolyAngemon all use their dub names of Salamon, Gatomon and MagnaAngemon (the Japanese kanji are still their original Japanese names, naturally). However, rather inconsistently, AtlurKabuterimon is still rendered as AtlurKabuterimon in English, instead of his localized English name of MegaKabuterimon.

Digimon Adventure Tri, M03 Review: Shady Government Stuff

Digimon Adventure Tri, Movie #3: Confession, Part 1

Woo it's been some time. I kinda got out of the Digimon loop for a while, and apparently I missed not one, but two movies! Time to catch up. See, while having half a year to make each movie gives you a crapton of resources to make the pretty animations, it does kinda make your audience kind of lose interest, somewhat? Still, it's freakin' Digimon, and it's like a friend that I'll always come back to. So here I am.

I did have to take a quick refresher cause by speed-watching the first two movies (Reunion and Determination, or if you prefer their Japanese names, Saikai and Ketsui). All caught up now in Meicoomon mystery and Taichi-Yamato angst-rivalry and dead Leomon and shady government teachers and evil-but-maybe-brainwashed Digimon Kaiser and school festivals and missing Zero Two protagonists. Okay!

Mind you, I previously did the Tri movies in a single review each, but this time around I'm going to do them individually. Because I tried fitting them all in a huge article and it's too unwieldy, so it's going to be a week-long daily review release.

One of the problems by having Tri play out over several movies, each movie released every six months, means that every movie ends up winding down near the end, and every subsequent movie has to build things up to gear up for the climax. While the first two movies make it a relative necessity to start off slow -- the first to reintroduce our old friends to us, and the second to showcase the bond that Mei has with the original Chosen Children, it's not going to be a formula that's particularly conducive to telling a really good story. And there are a couple of glaring issues -- like the brief scenes of Hackmon, or the missing 02 protagonists all the way from the prologue of the first movie (two years ago!) or Maki being suspicious kind of just... there and you're just waiting for the loaded gun to go off. Yes, I benefited from marathon-ing the first two movies before watching this one, but even a fan like myself had some trouble remembering certain details about the first two movies.

And the huge amount of cliffhangers from the second movie -- the Digimon Kaiser (or Emperor, if you prefer) is back, and Meicoomon is either infected and/or evil -- are grating questions that audiences had to wait half a year before it's answered. And so the slow burn approach doesn't really work that well in terms of crafting the world and the mystery around it. On the other hand, 'Confession' seems to recognize this problem and pretty much shoves aside all school festivals and high school fun times, quickly cleaning up the school storyline from the previous movie, but it's still the part of a movie that's building up to big revelations and setting the mood.

And this movie is a different beast. Like the original Adventures series and honestly all other DIgimon series, the first one-fourth or one-third of the entire runtime tend to be slower as the children are acclimated to the Digimon world and everything around it, as we set up who our protagonists are. It's not until near the halfway point of the series that the real threats start to get built up, and while the virus infecting the Digimon is still an enigma, this movie peels back a lot more of the mystery and gives us a lot more revelations. And a good chunk of it stems from this opening episode. There are scenes showing what Meicoomon's influence in the digital world is doing on the real world -- planes not landing properly and all that jazz. Daigo confronts Maki for withholding important information from him, though she brusquely brushes him off as 'we couldn't have done anything either way'. We also get introduced to Mei's father, who we never met before and is apparently a senior member in the organization that Daigo and Maki are working with. Not a lot get resolved in this part of the movie (or indeed this movie at all) but it's nice that we're taking more steps into peeling back the mysteries around the virus, around Meicoomon, and around the Digimon Kaiser.

The Chosen Children's scenes here are more relaxed as well, playing off the strength of their characters since they can't rely on 'Digimon action sequence every ten minutes go!' that the anime does. The two poster characters this time around are Koushiro and Takeru, and the movie actually plays out differently than how I feared it would after watching the second movie -- that the poster characters will be so thrust into the spotlight that it overshadows everyone else. Fortunately, in this movie, both Koushiro and Takeru, while prominent and go through the biggest character arcs, aren't as blatantly in our face as Jou and Mimi were in the previous movie.

All the other characters get some things going on, and Mei's distraught reaction to Meicoomon's betrayal and Leomon's death is still causing the poor girl to cry all the time. Team Mom Sora is comforting and even goes to Mei's house, the more analytical Koushiro presses her to remember anything at all that might tell him about when Meicoomon got infected, Mimi is defensive and pissed off that Koushiro is so insensitive and the conflict between those two is a pretty fun highlight. Taichi and Yamato resolve their conflict from the first movie almost peacefully and Jou's newfound cheerfulness and happiness is apparent as he tries to help Koushiro out. Oh, and Mei's father, mr. mysterious government agent, is a pretty crappy father that more or less ignores his daughter despite prodding from Daigo. Oh, and he definitely knows far more than he lets on -- he seems absolutely unfazed by any of the big revelations that Daigo is telling him.

Takeru and Hikari are the closest to the 02 cast and try to look for Ken... but he's missing. I'm not sure why they're not more proactive, though, especially since they saw the Digimon Kaiser last movie. And again, I'm not sure what Daisuke and the others told them, or even if they realize that the 02 kids are missing at all -- it's kept all so vague that I'm not sure if Takeru and Hikari are just dense, or actually being duped with a believable handwave.

The big moment that makes this not entirely boring setup is Yamato confronting Maki and Daigo about what the government knows, and they just give Yamato a pretty eh cover story about them investigating Ken and how the 02 kids are safe and the government are keeping tabs on them, not telling Yamato that the 02 kids are missing. Very odd and strange that Yamato would swallow this information wholesale, but I guess we want to move forward with the plot of this movie?

Yes, the movie does spend a fair amount of time showing Mei as this crybaby 'moe' character, but for once it really kind of makes sense. Every other member of the Chosen Children have literally fought wars against demonic adversaries as children (Hikari and Takeru were like, six, seven when Adventure happened), and while they are shocked, they quickly deal with the problems in their own way, even more emotionally fragile characters like Mimi (though mind you she did outgrow the crybaby phase in Adventure's Dark Masters arc) more or less shrug the event off. They're not moving as quickly as I like, but they're moving and investigating nonetheless. Mei? All of this is new to her, she's barely okay with letting her partner fight, and to see her partner go rabid, murder one of their friends, and then escape? Poor kid's absolutely broken, and it's important to acknowledge that, I think. Also, her moment with Sora or her looking at the photograph kind of justifies the importance of the hot springs and school festival bonding scenes from the previous episode. Yes, I still feel they ran on for way too long, but even with those scenes she's an outsider to the group as far as the audience is concerned, imagine if she hasn't had those bonding moments -- she would be as irritating as any anime movie-exclusive ally character.

Speaking of which, it's probably prophetic of what's going to happen later on this movie that the ending only features the eight Adventure Chosen Children, whereas the opening and the first ending features Mei among the Chosen Children.

Koushiro gets a couple of scenes where he just doesn't find much in lieu of answers. His 'interrogation' of Mei is unintentionally hurtful and pisses Mimi off, he doesn't take care of himself so much that it spooks Jou, the resident workaholic. It's not much, but it's going to play into Koushiro's character arc for the movie. Honestly, it's clear that while Koushiro's interrogation isn't useful when dealing with a distraught, crying teenage girl, Yamato should've brought him along to talk to Maki and Daigo, and pooling their information definitely would've worked so much better. This episode (or 'part', really) is mostly just setup, though my review does talk a fair bit regarding the structure of Tri and how this movie fits and compares to the previous two, which is why it's so long.

Another complaint is that the partner Digimon still don't get much screentime, locked in the digital room in Koushiro's office. Boo! They get better later on this movie, thankfully. 

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Digimon Adventure Tri. Movie #3: Confession, Part 2

Confession runs for five parts instead of four like the previous two movies, so there's actually a fair amount more meat and storytelling in the movie than its predecessors. And part of it is how relatively quickly the conflict is set up. Part 1 of this movie is spent mostly catching up, setting up the government stuff and highlighting Koushiro going increasingly obsessed. Here, though, the bigger conflict presents itself, as Takeru and Patamon take the spotlight.

We have Patamon showing the signs of infection as Takeru hugs Patamon only for it to suddenly have his eyes turn white, and he chomps down on Takeru's arm so hard it bleeds. Takeru hides it from everyone, and, yes, there are moments where the other characters had a chance to ask. Joe is confused why Takeru's arm is bleeding, but doesn't push too much. Koushiro is too exhausted to really note everything. Hikari notes the abnormal reaction Takeru has when they talk about infected Digimon, but doesn't say anything. Yamato asks Takeru what's wrong, and Takeru gives an obvious lie about Yamato's band but doesn't push further.

It's not like a partner Digimon becoming evil is unprecedented (SkullGreymon in Adventure, plus the black-spiral-corrupted Agumon in 02) but those have a very obvious fix -- SkullGreymon is a temporary Hulking-out form, and the black spiral is something that can be blasted and destroyed to return Agumon back. But here Takeru sees Patamon go feral in a way that's inherent in his partner's basic form, and the talk that the other Chosen Children has about how they have to be prepared to attack their own infected Digimon (while it's all still hypothetical to everyone but Takeru, of course) makes Takeru absolutely scared shitless. 

And yes, it's stupid and irresponsible for Takeru to bugger off with Patamon to his house. Maybe if he told Koushiro earlier, they could've tried looking for curative options instead of preventive ones. Maybe the big crisis at the end of the movie could've been prevented. But it's a human response, and most of all, it's something that Takeru understands. Out of all eight of our original protagonists, Takeru's the only one who has experienced the death of his partner way, way back during the Devimon arc, and he's not ready to lose his partner in a more permanent basis. Or worse, lose him figuratively as Patamon is consumed by his infection. Seeing how horrible it is for Meiko to lose Meicoomon, the pain and confusion is doubly so for Takeru as he seeps deeper into denial.

It isolates him from the group as he brings up silly excuses for bringing Patamon home, so much that the only one he can talk to is only Meiko, the outsider of the group (who herself is keeping secrets about Meicoomon). And in a nice bit of showing the Digimon partners some agency, Patamon realises what the shit's wrong with himself, and his cheery observation that, hey, he's glitching, and his very calm and still cheerful (yet tearful) way that he tells Takeru that he doesn't mind being killed if it means not hurting Takeru is a very, very effective scene. 

Perhaps a sign of Koushiro's deteriorating state of mind in this movie is how he keeps quiet during the group meeting that ends up leading with everyone bringing their Digimon home. Koushiro is literally the only one in the group that would have the intelligence and authority to really put his foot down and say what a bad idea it is (which would later lead to other leadership-types like Taichi, Joe and Yamato enforcing Koushiro's opinion) but without Koushiro's voicing of his opinions, no one even thinks that it's a bad idea. After all, as far as they know, no one's infected yet, when Patamon's already gone berserk and unseen by anyone, Agumon's also infected. 

Oh, and of course, there's the scene near the end, which shows just how freaking obsessed with his work Koushiro is. Tentomon has always been one of the more interesting Digimon from the original Adventures series due to his fun, ever-supportive attitude to Koushiro despite not understanding half the technobabble that comes out of Koushiro's mouth, and he's starting to get worried... but Koushiro's so consumed with his work that like Joe from the second movie he doesn't even realize that the partner Digimon pulled a runner literally in front of him. And when the whole virus thing is a bit of a problem that they're all dealing with, it's a bit of a fatal mistake on his part. 

Koushiro, Takeru, Patamon and Mei get the brunt of the screentime, but the other Chosen Children continue to be developed, which is fun. As ineffective as he was (your friend has a bleeding arm in front of you, future doctor) Joe tries to be the supportive senpai to Takeru and Koushiro, a nice continuation after him being jarred back from his depressive flunk last movie. Sora calls everyone and embraces her Team Mom status after coming into terms with it in the later legs of Adventure, but Biyomon tells her to take care and worry about herself sometimes, a nice lead-in to the Sora-centric fourth movie. There are blackouts and cryptic electronic warnings about Digimon being released shown to the government organizations, hinting at bigger conflicts to come. Even the non-Patamon Digimon get some fun moments this movie, with Gabumon just literally not giving a shit about anything, dropping a couple of 'well that's true' one-liners to get Yamato flustered, or Tailmon and Agumon's interaction. I don't remember Agumon being such a dense blockhead in the original cartoon, but Tailmon is just an irritated older sister that's just pissed that her little brother's a huge dumbass. We don't really get much from this series of interaction other than a few Tailmon/Agumon barb-trading in this movie, but it's nice that the Digimon are starting to show agency beyond being an interchangeable group of 'yay fun yay fun protect our partners' companions that they have been in the past two movies.

Oh, and in a nice nod to one of the biggest unexplained mysteries of Adventure, Hikari gets possessed by a mysterious entity once more, which is an excellent cliffhanger. I'll talk more about this in the next episode, but I absolutely am happy to see that Tri is addressing some of the biggest fan speculations and unanswered questions that were raised in Adventure and 02. 

It's a slow burn, but this is a very, very solid buildup part to the movie. 

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Digimon Adventure Tri. Movie #3: Confession, Part 3

Revelations! Hikari gets possessed by the same entity that possessed her at least twice in the Adventures series during the Dark Masters arc, who identifies itself as Homeostasis. More rabid Digimon fans like myself probably knows what Homeostasis is, and all the backstory only alluded to in interviews with creators or short Japan-only text stories -- and even then Homeostasis has always been vague, but anyone who only watched the original anime only knows that Hikari gets possessed randomly in something that gets shrugged off as the Digital World itself being mystical and creepy, or Hikari's innate powers. Well, now Homeostasis presents itself as the guardian of balance in the Digital World.

There's a bit of technobabble in Homeostasis's monologue and introdump that I don't fully understand, let alone the childlike Digimon (everything flies over Agumon and Palmon's head, in particular) but what Homeostasis is telling them is pretty simple. How do you deal with your computer acting up? Turn it off and on again. And Homeostasis notes that the only way to save everyone is by a great sacrifice, something that Maki surmises is a Reboot of the entire Digital World. In a conversation that's only told to the Digimon and the mysterious Maki (who still acts as a concerned teacher/government agent to them) Homeostasis notes that the only way to really deal with the Meicoomon infection is to reboot the entire digital world. Only Tailmon really understand the severity of this, though -- every single living Digimon will get rebooted by the process, returning and regressing to their base state. To put it in simple terms for Agumon: all their memories? Gone. 

But the infected Digimon are wreaking havoc in the 'quantum sea' that was created by real-world technology and in turn gave rise to the Digital World, and the continual infection will cause disastrous results to both worlds -- destruction to the latter, and inability to use electronics for the former. Possibly, the quantum sea is the weird eldritch space where the 02 protagonists were defeated at the beginning of the first movie, and the location where Vikemon and Rosemon fought Imperialdramon in the second. 

But the fact is, as Patamon himself has shown with his infection, there really isn't much of a choice. Time is running out, and it isn't just a matter of defeating Meicoomon. They want to save the real world that their partners live in, and while Tentomon trusts Koushiro to come up with something, the threat of losing their memories looms large above their heads. It's not a fun moment for the partner Digimon, who spend half of this part just talking and getting bombarded with revelation after revelation. First, that Patamon is infected (and he also makes the request to the other partners to end him if he goes berserk), and then the revelation by the Homeostasis-possessed Hikari and the enigmatic Maki. 

There's a lot of 'what ifs' and 'mights' and these partner Digimon are scared and confused. Agumon doesn't even understand half of what's happening, confusing big words with food and getting himself scolded by big sister Tailmon at least twice during the introdump sequences -- though seeing her partner possessed by an unknown entity probably got Tailmon quite jumpy. They don't even know what they should do -- stop Meicoomon before she triggers the Reboot? Allow the Reboot to happen to save their partners and to stop Patamon (and Agumon, and Tentomon...) to be consumed by it?

Whatever the case, though, the Digimon know what's most important to them now, and in a very touching scene that makes me not mind the slow pace (which was grating in the first two movies) at all -- all eight Digimon track down their partners and just... spend time with them. All of them save for Tailmon and Tentomon are still very childlike, and while they have fought and won wars they're as much children as their partners, and like Takeru hiding Patamon's infection last episode, it's a very human reaction. 

It's a very melancholic set of scenes as the Digimon bug their partners for one last day, but none of them are pushy about it. Tailmon hops onto Hikari and asks her to go shopping, sharing an ice cream with her partner and taking pictures in a photo booth. Biyomon tries to get Sora to talk about the future. Joe and Gomamon talk about Joe's girlfriend and the running gag that no one other than Joe has ever seen this 'girlfriend', and Joe wants to introduce Gomamon to her in a way that's similar to someone wanting to introduce a sibling to a girl/boyfriend. Palmon listens to Mimi and her non-stop gossiping, not understand a dang thing her hyperactive partner is saying but says that her stories are funny anyway. Agumon bugs Taichi for games and fun, but Taichi quickly calls Agumon out on his evasiveness, and Agumon ends up spilling the beans on the reboot. Takeru and Patamon are the only ones who are really faced with the reality of losing each other, and are just hugging each other in tears. 

Gabumon shows up at Yamato's solo practice session and asks him to play the harmonica, but then backtracks and asks him to continue practicing the guitar. Yamato, of course, takes out the harmonica, and it's easily the most touching moment of the eight pairs. He's just playing the harmonica, shy Gabumon just stands where he was standing before, there's no acknowledgement over Yamato humouring Gabumon's request beyond shrugs, but both know why he stopped the guitar and pulled out the harmonica. And Yamato talks about memories and how they might change once he grows up into an adult, and the normally passive Gabumon suddenly puts his foot down figuratively by raising his voice and insisting that their memories will never change. 

And it's a set of very powerful scenes that lasted, what, ten minutes? They're very powerful, showing just the extent of bonds that these partner Digimon share with their human partners, and considering the threat that they're facing, even without knowing the ending of this movie they are really effective.

Oh, more mysterious Hackmon scenes in-between.

While the rest of the partners are bonding, Koushiro is the only one that's still doing work. He discovers that part of the data is being overwritten into an unknown operating system due to the distortion. He can't understand the distorted data and how to convert it into normal, or even how it's different than normal, because he can't process it with his computer which will become unstable in the process. The visuals seem to show that it's the binary system (0/1) is being replaced with a system with 0's, 1's and 2's... and anyone who's been paying attention to the Digimon's evolution sequences will see that from the first movie the effects are already using the 0-1-2 system (terniary, it's called, I guess?), so are they already infected from the first movie and just don't know it?

Koushiro's frustrated. He's hit a dead end, and just breaks down due to the lack of information. Tentomon, watching his partner self-destruct, notes that not knowing something isn't the worst thing out there. And Koushiro's been giving it his all, and Tentomon notes how Koushiro used to really be happy and enjoy doing research -- definitely not what he's doing now. Turns out that Agumon isn't the only one that tells Taichi about the Reboot, as Tentomon tells Koushiro about it and the chance of something that can save the world gets Koushiro working again. Yes, the specifics of the infection, and Homeostasis, and the reboot is very vague to both Koushiro and the audience, but if nothing else the incomplete information given to us really is a great way to show how Koushiro himself feels. The Tri movies have been unsubtly showing just how much the Chosen Children's respective traits have been crippling them somewhat due to over-reliance to them and Koushiro's thirst for knowledge is no exception. He spends the better part of this movie obsessed with his lack of knowledge, and it's not until he talks to Tentomon that he finally gets reinvigorated and goes from 'desperate' to 'I have a plan'.

This part ends with Koushiro reinvigorated while Tentomon puts nothing but hope and confidence to his smart partner, all the while he's glitching. Speaking of which, the episode really makes the glitching effects work absolutely well, yeah? Especially the pan of the Digital World with some parts of trees and mountains pixelated as if my laptop's just lagging in rendering them. I may or may not have rewatched the Digital World pan a couple of times just to make sure it's part of the animation and not my computer being a tit. 

All in all, this part is easily the most powerful and strongest parts of the movie in general, and so far 'Confession' is my favourite out of the three movies. Between very solid work for all the Chosen Children and their 'last moments' with their Digimon and the bits of worldbuilding via Homeostasis, as well as setting up the Meicoomon and Reboot conflicts, it's a very impactful part that moves the plot forwards while giving some of the most heartwrenching scenes Digimon's ever done. It's poetic for Koushiro's plot arc, too. Yes, all the revelations about the reboot and the Homeostasis and the quantum sea and the huge plot points are all great things to know, but the part that hits home the most are the emotional ones. That's just human. 

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Digimon Adventure Tri. Movie #3: Confession, Part 4

So while I praised the buildup parts of 'Confession' for being particularly good at answering questions, presenting great character moments and picking up threads from the first two movies (something that I won't say about the earlier parts of 'Reunion' and 'Determination', if I had reviewed the movie as separate parts) nothing much has really happened. And the climax of it all comes to a huge, huge head in this fourth part. It's easily the most epic of the action sequences in Tri so far, and far more brutal as to what it means.

And what happens in the fight really makes it look like your average Digimon episode -- hey, someone unlocks a new evolution, wins the fight, and everything gets stopped before it gets too dire. Hell, you almost expect Patamon to break through the corruption and go take the Ultimate form like the previous spotlighted partners in the past two movies, but he doesn't even get to evolve past Angemon. But the angst that Patamon and Koushiro have been building up throughout the last hour isn't wasted as 'Confession' buckles the trend and actually puts a twist on the Chosen Children winning their way to victory and instead presents another huge loss. Yes, 'Determination' ends with Meicoomon being corrupted and kidnapped by the Digimon Kaiser, and Leomon dying, but at the same time none of the original eight or their partners are really hurt. Not until now. The previous three parts focuses on the possibility of the Digimon dying, or if not that being irreparably infected or memory-wiped.

And, by the way, the memory wipe as a very real and possible loss that the Digimon might go through is something that you're actually afraid will happen. Killing them off is way too dark for Digimon, and in any case, all but Mei and Meicoomon are saved by the 02 Epilogue, which establishes all Chosen Children and Digimon to be alive and well. But memory loss? They could definitely play a role there.

And the fact that this is Digimon has kind of lulled me into a sense of complacency as I'm just shrugging it off. HerculesKuwagamon and Seraphimon will show up as this movie's Ultimates (or Megas if you prefer the English translation -- the WarGreymon level, anyway) and win the day. Or Koushiro will show up with some technobabble. Or it's just a cop-out off-screen hey they actually survived deus ex machina. Or the simple tried and tested power of friendship. And make no mistake -- they all play a part in this climactic battle. All of them just failed.

This part's conflict plays out more or less predictably at first. Meicoomon appears out of the distortion, and the Chosen Children, plus Daigo and Maki, all gather. Adult forms are unleashed upon Meicoomon -- first just Greymon and Ikkakumon, and then Togemon, Birdramon and Garurumon join in the battle. But Mei's arrival and her attempt to reason with the feral Meicoomon is stopped by Yamato, because what if she gets hurt and Meicoomon goes even wilder? and then Meicoomon evolves into her Perfect form (Meicrashmon, according to supplementary material, though she's called Meicoomon throughout and so I'll call her that).

Tailmon joins in the battle and evolves into Angewomon... and so apparently Perfect evolutions are available to the kids and the lockout they experienced in 02 isn't around anymore? I mean, yeah, we did see Agumon, Gabumon, Gomamon and Palmon turn Perfect and Ultimate in the first two movies, but then why the reliance on just Adult forms in the first movie (the second one at least has the excuse of the others bar Palmon and Gomamon locked out of the fight)? Oh well. Minor quibble. It's still a pretty awesome rousing battle. Yes, Meicoomon is tough, but everyone is back to their well-oiled team status. Joe and Taichi are the first to show up, despite being reluctant to even be involved in the previous movies. Perfect evolutions are a thing to combat Meicoomon. Koushiro's working on something. There aren't any sudden interruptions by Alphamons or Imperialdramons to fuck shit up.

The battle in the distortion void is amazing, with the various large Adult forms failing to even stop Meicoomon. Takeru, however, hugs Patamon tightly and refuses to let him join the battle. No one there knows about Patamon's infection other than Takeru, and he just tells Takeru that he's off as he flies out of Takeru's hug and evolves into Angemon and for a brief moment we get an old-school Angemon/Angewomon team-up as they hold the line against Meicoomon in the distortion's gate. And ironically, Takeru's refusal and overprotectiveness of Patamon is very much reminiscent of how Takeru himself was treated throughout Adventures, where Big Brother Yamato refuses to let Takeru really be anywhere near danger out of concern for his safety, disrespecting Takeru's own wishes to help out. It's the same thing for Patamon now, where Takeru's overprotectiveness is well-meaning, but not very respectful of Patamon's wish. The presence of the Meicoomon infection is definitely a factor, but still, it's a bit of a nice, twisted parallel there.

Meanwhile, Tentomon and Koushiro are still in their office, and Koushiro makes some discoveries -- all the distortions began when Meicoomon and Mei arrived, and Koushiro theorizes that Meicoomon was infected deliberately... by Meiko? Koushiro's wording is a bit ambiguous.

Meanwhile, things go south in the battlefield as Angemon gets infected, and evil Angemon is horrifying. Since when can he beam spam the Heaven's Knuckle? While at first it seems that only Angemon is succumbing, everyone gets infected one by one. It's left ambiguous if it's triggered by Patamon entering the fray, or their proximity to Meicoomon, or whose fault is it really, but they do get infected. Togemon's soulless eyes and Ikkakumon's pupils shrinking are absolutely terrifying. Greymon's the last man standing, and while he evolves into MetalGreymon (with a brand-new stock footage sequence!) and gets a cool action sequence it's clear that he's outmatched. Especially with the doomsday clock of a Reboot happening -- something that everyone bar Taichi and Koushiro has only heard of right now.

It's literal chaos, and only the uninfected MetalGreymon and Kabuterimon have any hope of stopping their memories from being lost. Koushiro manages to whip up a backup field, and tasks the two uninfected partners to gather everyone there, but they are outnumbered and outgunned, even without Meicoomon wreaking havoc. When all seems lost Koushiro asks Tentomon to enter the field alone, so at least he'll be spared, but Tentomon refuses. He notes how MetalGreymon (who succumbs to infection right there) is fighting for everyone's sake, can he do no less? He gives a short farewell speech about how it's been a fun time, tells Koushiro to enjoy discovering new things and all that... and goes Perfect. AlturKabuterimon manages to grab Meicoomon, but the image of all the other partner Digimon infected, and then freaking WarGreymon rising from the screen with evil glowing eyes is a huge 'o shit' moment.

AlturKabuterimon turns into HerculesKabuterimon, his final Ultimate form... yet unlike Vikemon, or Rosemon, or Omegamon from the previous two movies, it's not a moment of 'oh yeah the bad guys are fucked!' HerculesKabuterimon is still outnumbered and outgunned, he gets dogpiled and pushed out of the distortion. It's not a big badass 'oh yeah new form saves the day' moment, but rather something desperate. HerculesKabuterimon manages to shake everyone awake not because of his strength, but by asking them if this is the way they want to part with their partners. Grabbing Meicoomon, HerculesKabuterimon gets the rest of the partners dogpiled onto him as he makes a lurching charge towards the distortion field as the Reboot timer goes down.

Yes, the group enters the distortion field before the Reboot timer finishes, so they don't die in the real world, but that's definitely not enough time for HerculesKabuterimon to get everyone into the backup field. And as the Reboot finishes, this part closes with our heroes in desperate tears, and Takeru's narration blaming himself for hiding the truth that Patamon was infected from everyone.

It's an amazing last stand on Tentomon's part, but spoiler alert for the next part: our heroes don't actually make it. It's a cruel, cruel way to show the hope -- Tentomon reaches his final evolution! Koushiro sets up a backup field! It would just be like an average episode of Digimon, where the emotional conflict turns out to be the catalyst for the plot device that saves the day. But no.

And really, the sad thing is? It could've been prevented. As I pointed out before, lots of the other Chosen Children have had the chance to talk to Takeru. Takeru, Mei or even the other partner Digimon could've told the others about Patamon's infection. Tentomon might've told Koushiro about the Reboot a bit earlier. Maybe Yamato letting Mei run to Meicoomon's side might've calmed her down, because this is Digimon and there's definitely precedent for that. Maybe if Patamon had not flown in the infection wouldn't have spread that quickly, and the Reboot wouldn't have been triggered. Hell, none of the kids even realize that the memories of their partners were at stake until like right during the battle. Yes, Koushiro manages to cook up the backup field thing, but as good as his efforts were, it was too late to accomplish anything -- maybe if he had more time to prepare, then the partner Digimon would've been able to enter it before literally all but one is infected.

It's a very shocking end, one that didn't end the way the first two movies ended, as not only do they fail to stop Meicoomon, but they might've lost all their partners altogether. Fortunately, this movie isn't only a four-part affair and we still have one more part to go. 

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Digimon Adventure Tri. Movie #3: Confession, Part 5

The April's Fools version of the poster

Well, that was certainly a huge cliffhanger that part four of 'Confession' ended in. It would be a real ballsy move to leave that as the cliffhanger for half a year before movie four answered the question if the Digimon partners survived or not. As it is, though, there's twenty minutes of the movie left. It takes a bit too much time in my opinion, but it works fine as an anime episode. Kind of like those episodes after huge explosive arcs where the heroes take some time to reflect before kick-starting the next one. Digimon Adventures itself has some of this, a particularly memorable one being the one after the Etemon arc with Taichi and Koromon sent to the real world for a day. 

Here, we get a depressing montage of the Chosen Children like a week after the loss of their partners, just... walking around, milling around, and their sadness and loss are definitely felt very, very well. They're trying their best to get back to life, but none are finding enjoyment when all their favourite activities feel hollow. Hikari tries shopping. Taichi kicks a ball without energy. Takeru is just full of self-loathing. Mimi tries changing her hairstyle (a nice nod to how anime women like to change hairstyles to 'move on' from something) but changes it immediately back. It's all set to a somber piece of music and minimal dialogue other than the brief conversation between Koushiro and Takeru.

But damn it, they collectively decide that they're the fucking Chosen Children, and they'll return back to the Digital World to meet their buddies if they have to. And as Joe points out, they're older and more experienced, and they survived giant devil-men, demonic vampires, giant mutant bugs, brutish ogres, creepy puppet manchildren, giant robotic cannon-faced sea dragons, evil clowns and monkey Elvis impersonators when they were like twelve, they're older, more experienced, and fuck that noise. They're going to get their partners back.

Skipping straight to the end, they find Tokomon with Hikari's whistle, while the rest of the partners are reduced to their baby stage. But while it's hopeful and beautiful and promises a fourth movie set in the Digital World (so we don't have to see 'Japanese schoolkid drama' for the fourth time) and have the fourth movie potentially start off with a bang... it still doesn't undo the bleak ending that the partner Digimon's sacrifice did. Yes, Koushiro does what he recently learnt from Tentomon to break the ice, showing a full circle character development for him, but the partners are still without their memory, and perhaps more relevantly without their fighting powers.

The road to the Digital World is a bit... bumpy, though. Takeru tries to get Mei to come, but Mei just locks herself in her room and blames herself for everything. Considering Mei's personality it's a bit ambiguous whether it's literally her fault and she did something to cause Meicoomon to get infected, or she's just being a self-blaming moe. Takeru and Mei are guilty of the same thing -- knowing their partner is infected and not telling anyone -- but the difference is that Takeru admits his mistakes and is willing to fix it by going back to the Digital World and starting anew with Tokomon. Mei? Mei cries in her room and is full of self-loathing. 

We also get a flashback to Mei's first encounter with Meicoomon, which... really shows that the two met not recently, but a fair while back. The fact that her father's apparently a part of a Digimon research team and the fact that the infections only began recently raises all sorts of questions.

Also raising questions are the big revelations we're bombarded in the finale. Yes, the Digital World isn't quite right. There are sparks and pixelated parts of trees which may just be stylistic choices or a sign that the Reboot didn't quite go well. But most importantly are the Royal Knights (which would be significant for those who's familiar with the Frontier and Savers series, as well as the Digimon games) Alphamon and Jesmon being thrown in front of us. The fact that two Digimon reached Ultimate forms so quickly after the reboot is worrying, but it's a bit weird and honestly this might be better served shown as part of next movie's opening scene. It's one thing to have the two just fight and all, but to have Koushiro straight-up boot up his laptop to look for Jesmon information just kind of makes it an odd transition between their determination to reach the Digital World, their journey back there (with shades of the original episode, too!) and meeting their partner. 

Side-note... Jesmon is such a freaking awesome-yet-weird design, isn't he? Alphamon is basically a big black-coloured Gundam, but Jesmon, in addition to being a humanoid gundam with blades for arms, legs and tail, and a red cape that keeps wrapping around himself, is also surrounded by three flying fire-orbs with claws. Of course, he's the Ultimate form of the Hackmon that lurks mysteriously in these past three movies, but at this point the dude's like Thanos in the MCU -- he gets like five or six seconds of screentime per movie that counts as buildup and we're just waiting for him to really be relevant. In any case, though, we know Alphamon and Jesmon is going to be important but it's not addressed at all in this movie or the next, so it's... irritating. 

Meicoomon's seen briefly and she still remembers Meiko, so definitely there's something absolutely wrong with Meicoomon that's not fixed by the Reboot, so tragically whatever the sacrifices the Chosen Children and Digimon made, and the manipulations that Homeostasis and Maki makes might just be for naught if Meicoomon's going to fuck everything up with her infection again. 

Oh, and Maki's in the Digital World, too. Her motivations are murky. She's definitely using the Chosen Children for her own purposes, but she doesn't really feel that evil, and she really encourages more than manipulates. She goes out of her way to help Hikari when she gets possessed by Homeostasis, she's cooperating with Koushiro to open the Digital World gate... and later shows up unseen in the Digital World to meet with the Digimon Kaiser from the second movie... who shimmers and reveals himself to be Young Gennai. Which raises all sorts of questions. Are Maki and Gennai villains? Are Maki and Gennai helping the Chosen Children... which involves wiping the partner Digimon's memories... for some reason? It's all confusing, and half the audience probably don't recognize Young Gennai either. I certainly didn't -- I remember old Gennai and had to look up who the Kaiser transformed into. 

Worth noting that yet another plot point that Adventure and 02 never really covered is the black orb that Piemon shoved into Gennai's neck during a flashback to the creation and rescue of the eight chosen Digimon, so it's likely that Young Gennai might just be evil. 

Also, Maki has a black D-3 Digivice... that the Chosen Children find curious but doesn't question? Wait, what? Come on, now. Also, this movie marks the first appearance of the D-Terminal, though that, too, belongs to Maki.

Still, seeding seeds for future movies isn't really a huge black mark and it adds substance that makes this less of a drawn-out epilogue and it's still easily a very strong ending to easily the best movie in Tri so far.