Digimon, Digital Monsters, Digimon Are The Champions (Survive might actually be getting a release date!?)

Pleasantly surprised to see a thread like this here. Loved this show as a kid, and then remembered loving it all over again when I watched it again during uni years ago. Will be something I check out again for sure, but I maybe want to get around to watching all of Adventure 02. Been off and on with that one and left it around halfway through I think. Not sure why as I thought it was alright. Some great moments, if not quite as good as the first series. Same with Tamers.

Adventure Tri though... Eh. Didn't really feel like a true follow-up. Think I gave up on it after the first 2 or so parts.

Anyway I like a lot of Adventure 1's episodes, but if I'd have to pick one of my favourites, it's when Izzy loses his curiosity and has to get it back.

Shame the videogames have not been so good from what I've played and heard. I know Digimon World PS1 has a bit of a following and I did get a good bit of enjoyment out of it as a kid, but it's not for me personally and I struggled going back to it. I've heard Cyber Sleuth is alright though so may check that out some time.

I've got some high hopes for Cyber Sleuth and Survival, but historically the Digimon games I've actually enjoyed have been the ones that feel less like legitimate videogames and more like cartoon spin-offs - Digimon Racing on the GBA or the Smash Clone Digimon Rumble on the Gamecube.

And of course the LCD pets and stuff.

I watched the current run of episodes (and one more because i wanted to wrap up the arc). I loved them, seemingly even more than Balla. Gatomon's backstory! Them cliffhangers! All the Ultimates coming together! TOKYO SMASHING MONSTER CARNAGE! These are the episodes that made me fully love Digimon as a kid.

Kriken wrote:

Anyway I like a lot of Adventure 1's episodes, but if I'd have to pick one of my favourites, it's when Izzy loses his curiosity and has to get it back.

Good to have you in the thread Kriken! Feel free to join us on our Adventure 1 watchthrough? As part of which I watched that episode for the first time. Vadermon still haunts my dreams... I'd like to give Cyber Sleuth a go if it's well received!

And onto the next lot!

I'm caught up to 39. I remember these episodes very clearly from my days watching on CITV as a kid. There was definitely a bit of rushing, and events happening without much build-up, but there was great character stuff and when we got to the Mega Level Digimon battling in Tokyo . . . it's still exactly as dope as I remember it being when I was a kid.

You can tell this was pre-9/11, can't you? Cities being levelled, buildings tumbling, aeroplanes crashing . . . and it isn't really treated any more seriously as protecting a village of little blob things in the Digitial World.

I'd propose a little catch-up break here. This seems like a perfect point to pause between arcs, and I'd like it if we could bring home the first season with more than just two of us watching.

Disagree I'm afraid, I found that all quite bad.  Lots happened, but at the same time it felt like there was lots of padding.  The emotional scenes were too maudlin, the fight scenes not long enough, the Digivolutions as long or short as they needed to be to stretch to runtime, and Gennai's prophecy came out of nowhere and felt both contrived and hurried.  The new Digivolutions were quite bad too, for the most part:

Spoiler:

I did however find the bits with Joe (and his brother who is an excellent character and deserves his own anime medical drama) and Izzy moving, and the hook for the next arc intriguing.  (Given their history, the whole 'stupid Americans' feels a bit awkward coming from Japanese telly.)

Anyway, I'm up for a hiatus.  It'd be good to have other people to watch the final part of the series with us!

Here, have you nerds caught up yet?

RIGHT YOU FUCKS

I have a deadline. The new movie hits Japanese theatres 21/2/2020, so I need to crack on with Adventure 01, Adventure 02 and Tri. I might go faster than is reasonable for us to continue these discussions with, but needs must.

IN OTHER NEWS:

There was a digimon pop-up store in the Shibuya Parco when I went to the Nintendo store and that. Mostly plushes and stuff, but pretty cool.

IN OTHER OTHER NEWS:

One of my colleagues, Sawada-sensei, is a lifelong Japanese Digimon fan. He never heard the American music and stuff before so at lunch the other day I introduced him. He cried with laughter and then called it "fucking disgusting". I'm planning to hit him with some choice scenes from the actual dub soon.

ARGH

I'd best watch the others at some point soon then I suppose! Just a few videogames eating my spare time at the moment... Where's everybody else got to!?

It is done. I have officially watched all of Digimon Adventure.

Digimon Adventure
This is still really good. Sometimes the villains are goofy and cartoonish, and a lot of them are defeated by pulling powers out of nowhere, but none of that matters because the character stuff is done so well! I loved all the kids and their Digimons by the end.

Digimon Adventure 02
I weirdly have more nostalgia for this one than the original, I think. I was able to catch it after school every night from the very first episode right through to the last. In fact, it was an episode of this series that I missed because of 9/11! I don't like the new kids as much as the OGs but I do think they're underrated. The villains are much more interesting in this series, given a lot of time to grow. There is some good, deep lore stuff, a freaking Cthulu episode and even a whole Kyoto episode. I like it. The very end of the final episode is dumb, and seemingly not canon.

The movies
Digimon Adventure: Fun stuff. Music is way better in the American version.
Our War Game: Extraordinary. The Japanese version has a few extra scenes and less dumb jokes, but the music is still a bit naff.
Hurricane of the Golden Whatever: Really good and kind of sad in Japanese, sliced to death and an absolute mess in English.
Revenge of Diaboromon: It's alright.

Tri
Really good stuff! Very slow paced, but when there is action it's absolutely phenomenal. More good character stuff, naturally, though it's a shame how the new kids are written out of it. The villains get a bit too bogged down in super deep lore stuff. Also, I liked them but I can understood people who get tired of hearing "Mei! Mei-Chan! Mei! Mei-Chan!" for seven hours.

Last Evolution Kizuna
I just saw this in the cinema today. Breathtaking action, cute moments, laughs . . . and the whole cinema, myself included, were in tears by the end.

It is of course utterly fair that you carried on on your tod given the film and... well, life; but I'm sad the 'watching it together' thing didn't work out. I'm not sure I'll have the staying power to blast through it on my own. I am of course playing a game about Digimon instead: see the WAYPOS thread for that, but it's ironic that an anime which focusses on children having one Digimon each spawned a game where you're much less encouraged to care about each individual monster.

So, this morning I spotted on Crunchyroll that there's a reboot of the original Digimon Adventure anime now airing... I think I'll check it out and I'll intersperse a few of the classic episodes between the reboot as it'll be airing weekly, I think.

Im also watching the new one. Im routing for it hard- if its popular with the kids, i can do lessons and stuff about it.

If the watch-along resumes Im happy to join in again, btw. Even if i miss watching the eps i can chat.

I saw this new series trailers pop up on come YouTube Channels, didn't know it was reboot for it was just a new series seeing we had Tri which continued on with the og kids.

JayMoyles wrote:

I think I'll check it out and I'll intersperse a few of the classic episodes between the reboot as it'll be airing weekly, I think.

Please do! I hope I can jump back in, although free time's a little harder to get my hands on at the moment.

Whilst I've not watched any of the classic series lately, I did check out the first two episodes of the reboot. So far, so good! It's reminded me a lot of that one episode where Tai and Agumon scrap with Ogremon in Tokyo as they've not yet dived into the Digimon World as of yet. The animation is pretty damn good as well. Worth a watch, I'd say!

That second episode of the new series was NOT popular here in this office!

Spoiler:

WHACK!

Ah really?

Second Episode Spoilers:

Episode Three was alright! Looks like we'll be getting into the meat of the story now though moving forwards. I think you definitely need to have seen at least some of the OG series to properly enjoy the reboot though. They've barely introduced the characters and there's sort of an assumption that you know who they are.

The reboot will be back on the 28th, I believe. I've had the orchestral music from those first three episodes in my head ever since.

In other news, I found a classic V3 pet in the book-off for only 30 bucks the other day so I picked that up and now I have a little baby Tokomon in my pocket as I type this.

One of the finest of baby 'Mons, that.

He's now a Patamon.

What I'm realising about a lot of Digimon is that the artists who took the original v-pet sprites and made the monster designs did a lot of work.

Buskalilly wrote:

The reboot will be back on the 28th, I believe. I've had the orchestral music from those first three episodes in my head ever since.

Ah, nice one! There's a few shows I was following that were delayed after their first three episodes, so looking forward to this coming back. They left off at a point where it seemed to be ramping up big time, too!

I now have an Ogreman in my pocket. But also, unrelated to that, I am very much happy to see you.