And we’re back from the break… only for this episode to be EXTREMELY filler. Though considering what we saw of the trailer, I expected it to be this way. Unfortunately, they were doing the exact same thing with Mimi’s previous character centric episode. Sora finds a group of Digimon being used as food or an energy source for a larger Digimon and it’s bee/wasp-like minions… which was basically the exact same as episode 13! DIGIMON WHY DO YOU DO THIS?! But despite that, not gonna lie, I still enjoyed the episode. Though it may because I didn’t really care for episode 13 all that much and hardly remember it…
This entire episode felt a little silly. Not only because they were reusing the exact same situations from previous episodes, but because of the fact that Taichi and Sora COULD have gone back down to ask the others for help. And it’s not like the others were busy, they were arguing over what kind of juice is better. It felt like a very frivolous reason to keep the other kids out of the battle. Like, they could have gone back down to regroup and tell the others the situation and they’d be able to defeat the Digimon easily. But then there wouldn’t be enough DRAMA and STAKES. Ugh…
Though I will admit as much as a filler it was for Yamato and Mimi to be arguing over juice that could possibly be in a fallen refrigerator, I did appreciate that Yamato was actually acting like a kid in this. Especially since this characterization of him just didn’t have that much range of emotion.
Anyways, turns out that Toropiamon has been making the Pomumon into fruit (similar to how the Waspmon were making the Funbeemon into their slaves) but I guess this was a bit worse since they would be actively eating them just for the heck of it. But man, the realization that they could have easily eaten an Digimon turned into a fruit was near traumatizing. Thankfully the fruit that fell from the sky wasn’t a Digimon, but the thought is still there. I did have a good laugh at how a small Taichi fruit sprouted next to the giant Metalgreymon fruit… even if that is a bit morbid.
Also goodness, why must they keep making certain Digimon BIGGER. Flymon was NOT that massive.
While they didn’t expand much on Sora, I will admit I appreciate how much she took charge and acted on it this episode. And I do like the moral of finding inspiration from others and transferring that inspiration into others. With Taichi inspiring Sora and Sora inspiring Garudamon. It’s like a positive cycle. I also liked how Sora used the whistle to keep the Flymon’s attention on her, allowing the Pomumon to get to its friends. Some nice tactful thinking on her part accompanied by some good athleticism since it definitely took some skill on her part to avoid that Flymon as long as she did.
It was also nice to see that the friend Digimon actually played a big part in actually taking down the enemy rather than just posing as a distraction. They literally deleted a Flymon all by themselves. I haven’t known them for that long, but I felt so proud. They even were able to help defeat the giant boss Digimon. And it was fun to see them combine their abilities with Sora’s soccer kick. A little bit of teamwork goes a long way lol.
Also can we just talk about the animation in this episode? Someone at Toei was freaking FLEXING with how well the animation was. Birdramon is notorious for having terrible animation in this series, but this episode they did her and Garudamon justice. Flying around as Birdramon felt more fluid and active compared to other episodes and it didn’t look awkward. Which was nice since I do like bird flying animations. And then the Garudmon scenes were FANTASTIC. And let’s not forget about Toropiamon. Typically, this series keeps large Digimon’s movements to a minimum, but it did look they actually tried a little more with Toropiamon. Yes, it mostly attacked with its tail while its body didn’t move, but I still appreciated it when they did have that thing moving around. It made the fight a lot more interesting seeing them both move around while using more physical attacks rather than just all laser beams. It’s just weird that more effort was put into this fight when it wasn’t really plot relevant. At least it looked nice lol.
And I know that Yamato x Sora is the endgame… BUT THEY REALLY BE HERE FUELING MY TAICHI X SORA FEELS THIS EPISODE. I always favored the Taichi x Sora pairing because I feel like they work better and I always liked the close friends to lovers trope in romance. And that little flashback of theirs just made me want to root for them even more especially with how much they care about each other and work well together. Also, it was nice to see Taichi just be in the backseat and let another character take the spotlight for a change.
Overall, it was an entertaining episode. A bit annoying that they essentially just reused the plot from a different episode AGAIN, but at least it was enjoyable. Especially since they seemed to just make up for the laziness in the writing department by upping the animation which I guess equaled out a little. With these filler episodes, I feel like I enjoy the little moments that are happening in the background rather than what’s typically happening in the foreground. Especially while Mimi and Yamato were arguing about juice, Takeru and Hikari were playing with the Digimon in the back. It was very cute lol. Also I couldn’t help but chuckle over the fact that while Takeru and Hikari are basically still babies, Takeru seems to have developed a protective spot for Hikari as he had his hand out as if to protect her as Yamato was doing for him. It was a rather funny shot seeing a cycle of characters trying to protect the person behind them lol. But I guess the biggest downside was that we never saw the resolution of juice debate…
During the break, I actually started rewatching the original series. I didn’t get too far, but the original series basically had a lot of these type of plotlines in the first several episodes before ramping up to more plot related episodes. Not to mention that we got more characterizations on the kids early on, giving hints to what they had to go through. Not to mention they all acted more like kids rather than walking tropes. Even Yamato felt more pleasant in the original. Speaking of which, WOW, they really DID my boy Joe dirty in this adaptation. He was so much more likeable in the original and wasn’t so hellbent on being looked up to as a leader. He was just a responsible dork who was trying to look after the others. Not to mention that the overall progression of the kids felt more natural than this series. So that’s a bit of a bummer.
