“Coming from Kari it’s probably some kind of prophecy.” – Because Kari’s always been the special one.

What’s the Story?

Tai is lost, Gatomon’s mega level has fused with Meicoomon and created a terrifying monster and the real world looks set to be absorbed into the Digital one. Things have never been more hopeless for the Digidestined, but as Matt struggles with the burden of leadership and Kari deals with losing her brother, their going to have to pull themselves together for one final battle. The fate of two worlds rests on their shoulders, but, hey, look! The 02 Digidestined have finally turned up, well, I say turned up, they at least get name checked, which is more than they have been.

The Review

Sigh. That’s my reaction to this last Digimon Tri film. When I started reviewing this series I was nervous, I knew it had a bad reputation, but, honestly, I enjoyed the first couple of movies. They weren’t perfect, but they were fun, it was great to see some of my favourite characters again and the films were taking the characters in some interesting directions. As the series has gone on though the rot has set it. I’ve talk before about the obvious budget issues this series is having, the cheap animation and the terrible pacing. This film is the apex of that. There’s more still shots and reused animation than ever before and the pacing is completely off kilter. This should be a tense, climatic battle, but instead its drawn out to the point of utter boredom as every snippet of action is swallowed up between scene after scene of talking, most of which is either stuff we’ve gone over before or dull exposition.

I should care, there are plenty of heart-rending moments in this film, Matt struggling with being the leader for a change (and maybe realising he shouldn’t be such an arse to Tai for his decisions), Kari grieving over Tai, the Digimon getting their memories back, the last sacrifice of Nishijima. Heck, Meicoomon’s last moments should have had me balling my eyes out, but they didn’t, because I just don’t care, which is really something special when I remember that I usually adore these characters. I keep thinking back to the series finale of Digimon Tamers and how tense and apocalyptic that felt, just like this film we had a giant monster threatening a city in the real world and our dear Digidestined struggling against impossible odds, the bad guy finding a way to overcome everything they tried. Not to mention that fight was stretched across several episodes and there were several scenes of just talking, but I was never bored.

I think the main problem this series has is that it’s not clear on what it wants to do. There are too many extraneous plots that go absolutely nowhere. We’ve got the whole Meicoomon plot with the infected Digimon and King Drasil’s plan for the Digital world to absorb the real one. Then there’s the government agency that is tasked with dealing with Digimon and the original Digidestined, one of whom has gone mad with grief and wants to reboot the Digital World to get her partner back. There’s whole real world being scared of and mistrusting Digimon plot, the main cast dealing with the growing pains of growing up as well as welcoming a new member. The high school hijinks and slice of life stuff, the two factions of the Digital World battling it out over Meicoomon and so on and so on. This story should easily have fill six films, but not way it’s structured.

They tried to give each film it’s own section of the plot, the first film deals with the setup, the second is high school stuff and Joe and Mimi’s development, third deals with infected digimon, fourth is the reboot consequences, fifth is the prelude to the end and the sixth is the final battle. All of that is fine, the problem is that they need to cram more into each film so that’s there’s not so much dead air as we wait for the plot to stop spinning its wheels and get to the point. In my opinion, and these just a couple of suggestions off the top of my head, the fourth film should have had a confrontation Himekawa, while dealing with the memory loss of their partners the Digidestined should have stumbled across her, learnt about the original Digidestined and there should have been a big confrontation between Himekawa and Meiko for all the horrible things she’s put the kids through. Film five should have been a fight with King Drasil so that, one, we actually get to see him, two, we get to learn why he thinks Digimon are so superior. Then the kids can side with Homeostasis, only to learn that she’s not exactly on their side either.

We don’t get any of that though and instead those plot threads are left to fade into obscurity when they should have been some of the meat of the series. They were right there and nothing is done with them! We never even see King Drasil and he’s dealt with off screen by Homeostasis and Himekawa wandered off a long time ago, so instead we’re left with exposition scene after exposition scene and boring platitude after boring platitude while the animators scramble to find enough budget for them to have another two minute fight scene. That’s what annoys me most about this series as a whole, it has so much potential and so many great ideas and it squanders the majority of them.

The Verdict

In the end Digimon Adventure Tri: Future is pretty much on the same level as the films before it. It suffers from the same pacing and budgetary issues that those films had, crippled by the fact that what should be a climatic battle is stretched across an hour and a half with endless talking and exposition stuffed between all the action scenes. This series had potential, a lot of it, there are some great ideas from giving us a peak at the original Digidestined, to showing conflict in the powers of the Digital World and our main characters struggling with growing up. All of that is squandered though, several conflicts and plotlines either crumbling away to nothing or simply reaching an unsatisfactory conclusion (seriously, could no one punch Dark Gennai in the face, even once?). There are moments in these films that have enjoyed, a lot, the aforementioned original Digidestined and I still love the second film for what it does with Mimi, but, overall, unless you’re a hardcore Digimon fan, avoid these films.

Next month the Digital Year reaches it’s own conclusion with my 5^th Anniversary celebration, my review of Digimon the Movie! Somebody please save me!

Chris Joynson, aka the Infallible Fish, is a writer, blogger and lover of animation living in Sheffield. The blog updates every Friday.  

It’s the end of the world as we know it and that means it’s time for one thing and one thing only… ghost stories!

What’s the Story?

The end is coming, with Meicoomon digivolving to protect Meiko, she’s given in to anger and done exactly what Dark Gennai wanted all along. Now digimon are invading the real world and causing havoc. The Digidestined are powerless to stop it as they’re trapped in a Digital World that appears to be rejecting them with every byte of its data. Even when they do make it back home there’s little they can do as the two factions fighting over the Digital World bring their struggle to the city and the kids have no idea whose side their really on, and when tragedy strikes they realise that they’ve done more harm than good.

The Review

This should have been a trilogy. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to with this film series and I know I still have one more film to go, but I have to say, for the majority of this film I was immensely bored and that should not be happening with the penultimate chapter of an epic showdown with two worlds at stake. The ideas are there, the conflict is there, but it all seems so dull. How do you make giant cyborg dinosaurs, armoured knights and a whole host of other monsters battling it out boring? This film found a way! There are layers of problems to this film, but I think it mostly comes down to pacing and focus.

Let’s start with the pacing. The film spends long, long sequences with characters just talking on and on about the same thing over and over again, you can feel the wheels of the story spinning, but we’re getting precisely nowhere. That’s without even mentioning the goofy antics in the middle where any momentum that the story had managed to gather came screeching to a halt. I liked the high school antics early in the series, but that was because, one, the majority of it was character focussed and, two, it was still early in the story, the stakes were lower and there weren’t Digimon blowing up power stations and threatening the whole world yet! We’re in the endgame now, we should be barrelling towards the conclusion, there should be epic clashes, planning out strategies and confronting villains, not telling one another ghost stories! Ugh. A part of me wonders if this a budget issue, the number of still shots has been increasing with each film and I’m convinced the final film is just going to be pencil sketches so maybe they don’t have the money to animate huge battles and can only manage one talking scene after another. Well, if that’s the case, why are the animating six films?! Make it a trilogy and converse your budget! Again, ugh.

Budget can’t be the whole problem though, because if the animators can only afford to do talking scenes, why don’t they at least get to animate interesting talking scenes. There are plenty of good ideas in this film franchise, I like the idea of different factions fighting it out over the Digital World and I like it even more that both sides can be antagonistic to our heroes, King Drasil wanting Digimon supremacy and Homeostasis wanting balance by any means necessary. Then there’re the human antagonists like Himekawa who has gone completely off the deep end to try and get her partner back. All of these are really interesting opponents for the digidestined to go up against, it’s just a shame we spend barely any time with them. Here’s the thing, the conflict is great on paper, but the Digidestined feel like they’re hardly involved with it. They’d had two conversations with Homeostasis, only one of which was arguing against her actions, the other was vague hints and exposition. We’ve never seen King Drasil and I’m not even sure if the Digidestined are even aware of Himekawa’s descent into madness. These should be big things and the main characters should be confronting the bad guys about their part in everything. In the original Digimon Adventure the gang always had multiple interactions with the main villain of the arc, but here they just stand around looking confused and asking who they should be fighting, which could be interesting. Have the Digidestined argue, fight over who they should side with, but instead they just feel like a bunch of onlookers.

Okay, positives, positives, let’s think of some positives. I am starting to like Meiko more and more. I’m not sure how I feel about the film pushing her and Tai together (I’m a Tai x Sora man until I die), but she’s showing more of a personality and being a bit more assertive. I wish she wasn’t such a complete downer so much of the time, but I’m definitely seeing her more as an actual character and not just some walking stereotype. I wish we got to see more of her childhood with Meicoomon as that looked both fun and ominous, with Meicoomon taken away for testing. I want to know what sort of tests they were doing to her and maybe it could have given us more of a peek into how the Government sees Digimon and what measures they’re willing to take against them. Also, wouldn’t it have been an interesting if the experiments were what gave Meicoomon her infection powers in the first place, rather than her just being born as this Libra thing or whatever she is. Also, wouldn’t it have been really interesting if it was made clear to Meiko that Himekawa, someone who Meiko trusted, has been manipulating her to get Meicoomon into the position she’s currently in. Wouldn’t it have been interesting, not to mention dramatic, to see Meiko confront Himekawa over that. Nah, that’s actually interesting, we can’t have that, let’s make some jokes about Matt being scared of ghosts instead.

The Verdict

I won’t say that Digimon Adventure Tri is beyond salvation at this point, but I will say that the final film has a lot to work to do if it wants to me to do anything other than scream at my scream for an hour and a half straight. There are plenty of good ideas in this film, the problem is that it does absolutely nothing with them. This isn’t helped by an endless supply of cyclical conversations and more focus on goofy antics rather than our villains or the conflict with them, we should be barrelling towards our conclusion, but instead there’s a distinct impression of going nowhere fast. Hopefully I’ll feel less ranty with the next, and final, film.

Chris Joynson, aka the Infallible Fish, is a writer, blogger and lover of animation living in Sheffield. The blog updates every Friday.  

The cracks are showing.

What’s the Story?

The infection is spreading and not even the digidestined’s partners are safe. What’s more the disturbances are causing more and more problems in the real world, everything from air traffic control to power systems and after a dire warning from a mysterious entity its clear that unless something is done soon both the real world and the digital one are in grave danger. With so little information though and time quickly running out, the digidestined may be forced to take drastic action. Maybe it’s time for a reboot.

The Review

It had to happen at some point, I guess, but I’ve finally come across one of the Tri films were the good stuff (for me at least) doesn’t outweigh the problems that this series has. I know the high school stuff isn’t for everyone and there’s not so much of the ‘Adventure’ that’s in the title, but overall I really liked the first two films. They were great little character pieces, seeing how our characters have matured and grown over the years and how they’re still struggling with that process. I should love this third film; it’s way more heartbreaking than the first two and this time the focus is back on the Digimon and their connection to their partners, which has always been a strong suit of this franchise. The problem is this film is incredibly uneven, the scenes with the Digidestined and their infected partners (before and after they find out) are beautiful and tragic, but that’s not the entirely of this film and the other stuff is dragged down by problems that have been building since the first film.

Let’s start by talking about Meiko. I don’t what the majority opinion on her is (mostly ‘cause I’ve done my best to avoid spoilers regarding this series, I haven’t always succeeded, but I’ve tried), but for me indifference sums it up pretty well. Don’t get me wrong, I have a whole heap of sympathy for her situation and she seems a nice enough person, but none of that makes her interesting. Meiko, to me, comes across as just your typical shy girl stereotype and outside of her being relevant to the plot I see no reason why she has to be included in these films. Even her design is generic and boring, which is a problem when a chunk of this film needs me to be emotionally invested in her plight as she deals with the shock ending of the last film and I just don’t care. Honestly it feels like the film had to infect Patamon, or any of the regular Digimon, just to get a reaction out of me.

Then we come to the government agents, Himekawa and Nishijima. Now I like Nishijima, he has this cool, slacker teacher vibe going on and he seems to genuinely care about the kids and their plight, I like it when not every adult is an arse of one degree or another. My problem is with Himekawa, mostly because I just can’t get a read on her. At times she’s the mysterious, hard-nosed agent who clearly has some sort of emotional problem in her past that has led her to be so closed off, and yet at others she’s genuinely warm and open, helping the kids out. She’s also up to something and not a good something (no one grins that evilly with good intentions at heart). I can’t get a read on a her, none of her personality quirks are meshing together and unless we get some proper explanation as to what’s going on with her I feel like both her and the whole government side of this plot is just going to collapse into nothing. We’re halfway through the film series and I still feel like I know next to nothing about what’s actually going on.

Speaking of plots that have very little explanation and at the going rate are going to implode in disastrous fashion, let’s talk about the 02 digidestined, again. I get that they’re in continuity and you need to say where they are otherwise people will be asking, but if you’re not going to use them, don’t keep bringing them up! Name check them and move on, don’t keep going back to them and then brush it off a second later. It just drives me up the wall, they’ve seen their friend acting all evil and all they do is go knock at his door and then leave two seconds later, apparently happy that they’ve heard nothing from them. Your friends are missing! This should be a bigger deal! It’s not like I care all that much about the 02 digidestined, but if these films aren’t going to do anything with them, then they shouldn’t have brought them up in the first place.

It’s frustrating because, as I said, the stuff with the Digimon being infected is really heartbreaking to watch, but at the same time it’s not enough this time to paper over the cracks. It doesn’t help that the film has a really good emotional climax with the whole reboot, and then goes on for another twenty minutes. I know there was a lot of behind the scenes stuff where this was originally meant to be a TV series and then it got repackaged as films, but this is the first time I’ve really felt that. I mean I can see all the spots in the other two films where I’d cut them up to make three or four episodes, but they still hung together as a cohesive whole. As I said at the beginning, this film is incredibly uneven. I’m hoping we get more explanations in the next film, because the plot feels like its finally starting and for that to be engaging we need a better idea of the stakes and the goals at play.

The Verdict

All in all Digimon Adventure Tri: Confession, for me at least, is the first stumble of the film series. It should have been an emotional gut punch, but the more effective scenes are all weighed down by problems that have plagued the previous installments turned up to eleven. We don’t know much about what’s really going on and there are several new characters who are either boring or poorly executed. Hopefully the next instalment can fix things a little and start giving us some answers.

Chris Joynson, aka the Infallible Fish, is a writer, blogger and lover of animation living in Sheffield. The blog updates every Friday.