Reaction Shot: Digimon Adventures 2020 E01 (or, BABIES!)

[spindizzy]

Okay, so, instead of finding a subtitled version of Digimon to watch and do a compare/contrast with the dub, I found out that there's a reboot! Did I know about it and forget? Did I not know? ... I feel like someone told me this and I shrieked like a banshee, then immediately forgot, in which case: brain, why. But the important thing is that it's releasing on Crunchyroll right now and I'm tentatively excited about it!

From what I can tell, they've moved it to the present day, and instead of starting off by throwing seven kids into the digital world and letting them muddle it out from there, they're introducing them a couple at a time? Weird, interesting, the personalities are probably not going to change so I'm still going to be Joe in my heart, but we'll see!

• ENOUGH TIME HAS PASSED THAT THEY'VE REDONE THE TOEI CAT. WHAT. OH THIS IS WEIRD.


• I need you all to know that I'm incredibly here for this super nineties interpretation of What The Internet Looks Like On The Inside. This was the aesthetic of scifi in my childhood, okay, this is what living on the internet is always going to look like to me. Especially because it seems to be doing a fusion of original Digimon and Digimon Tamers, in that Digimon actually live on the internet, not just in an alternative digital world. And I love that even though Time Has Passed, they're still using the tamagotchi-style sprites when they're explaining things! ...This is going to sound weird, I'm actually slightly in love with how they've done the line-weight for characters? The way it thins out to the point of disappearing makes it feel old to me! I know this is a ridiculous feeling and has little to no bearing on current styles in anime, but it's pinging the happy bit of my brain anyway.


• ... What I'm taking from the opening and closing credits is that someone on this crew thinks Tai and Matt are the main protagonists. Bless. (I know that it's an ensemble cast and Matt and Tai are the ones who got the most digivolutions so they're not wrong, but also they have a core cast of sixteen characters! Eight kids and eight digimon! They are allowed to take the focus away from Matt and Tai for a little bit!)


• (PS I AM GOING TO TRY TO USE THE CHARACTERS' ACTUAL JAPANESE NAMES BUT AS YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED I AM AN OLD WOMAN WHO SPENT A LOT OF TIME WITH THE DUB NAMES OCCUPYING MY BRAIN SPACE. PLEASE HAVE PATIENCE WITH ME WHILE I RECONDITION MY BRAIN.)


• Oh god, dial-up screen, this takes me back! I know it's to show how the internet has progressed, but I am SO OLD.


• I'm sure purple things popping up on the internet in swarms is FINE. Absolutely FINE.


• I don't know why I expected Tai's mum to look different, but I'm glad she doesn't! Maybe it's because Hikari looks SO LITTLE! I know this is because I'm an old lady and Taichi ALSO looks little, but LOOK AT THIS TINY MONOSYLLABIC HUMAN BEING CUTE. And they still have their cat!


• Izzy is so little and cute and earnest! Wah! And so very nervous about going into a (mostly?) stranger's home!


• Koshiro has a tablet with him instead of his laptop and it's no longer weird that he has it. I was going to crumble away into dust over how old I am, but he is explaining social media to Taichi like it's a strange and unfamiliar concept, so maybe I'm okay? Maybe I am not TOO old.


• Taichi has known Koshiro for five seconds and already thinks he's awesome. Koshiro has known Taichi for five seconds and is irrevocably flustered. What good babies.


• Yep, trains refusing to stop despite all of the failsafes is worrying! ... So their plan is to GET A TRAIN to go and investigate it?! Kids. Sweeties. Please.


• Good morning, today I learned that Tokyo is big enough that things twelve kilometres away still count as part of the same city. What the hell.


• THE GOOGLES ARE ON, THIS IS SERIOUS NOW!


• The effects on Taichi's crest activating and digital things going haywire are really cool!


• KOROMON NO, HAVE YOU BEEN FIGHTING ON YOUR OWN THIS WHOLE TIME?! Oh no, poor sweetie! And look at Taichi, who has no idea what's happening or what to do, just diving to help him anyway!


• LOOK, IT'S THE OTHERS! THEY SENSE THE DISTURBANCE IN THE FORCE!


• Koromon's ears twirling like DNA strands are really cute.


• OLD SCHOOL DIGIVICE!


• That's genuinely like ten seconds of them just blinking at each other. I love it, good job that team.


• Agumon's voice is deep! Or at least! Not as high as it is in the dub! And it has the low-level roughness of Guilmon! WE HAVE FOUND THE ONE THING THAT'S GOING TO WEIRD ME OUT THE MOST ABOUT THIS REBOOT, OH NO. Also his attack is now Baby Flame and that's ADORABLE, oh my heart.


• LOOK AT AGUMON GO! Man, a rookie-stage digimon that gets to be competent, THAT'S been a while.


• I am deeply endeared by the calling icons being people's crests. It's not rational, I just think it's cute.


• TAICHI POLITELY ASKED KOSHIRO TO WAIT FOR A SECOND SO HE COULD PUT HIS DIGIVICE IN HIS POCKET AND PRISE DIGITAL JELLYFISH OFF AGUMON. THAT'S PRECIOUS!


• The SUPER OMINOUS MUSIC behind Koshiro explaining "Everything is data which has a shape!" is great. Especially because he's talking about digimon as a thing that people just know about!


• "I think I can be of help now!" is really cute and sweet, I feel like there is so much behind that. And Agumon promising to help Taichi protect the people he cares about!


• I'm not even joking about how much I love these gameboy-era sprites, okay, they are perfect for what's happening.


• ... Okay, so it's not cyberterrorism, it's just digimon breaking things. By accident? On purpose? ... Also I love that Koshiro has had his digivice-enhanced computer for five minutes and is already like "Yep, I can navigate you to what should be a closed system with minimal-to-no access via the internet!"


• I'm sure there's nothing to worry about that last digimon flashing, absorbing all of the data of its dead fellows, and going ominously shadowy!


• Wait, is it not digivolving in the japanese too? Boooooo!


• DIGIMON WHAT ARE YOU DOING


• THEY CHANGED THE DIGIVOLUTION LOOK AND IT'S AMAZING? Or really ominous, but also kind of amazing? He looks like he's just stretching out of his own body! And the texture/colour combo they're using is really cool! Although the little fanfare at the end of it sounds weird to me? Although I guess it's to lead into that silence they're using for Taichi and Greymon to see how each other reacts.


• OH, it's not a jellyfish! It's a weird plant with robot hands!


• But also Taichi sheltering with Greymon and Greymon curling his tail about him like a shelter! HOW GOOD ARE THEY OMG.


• THEY'RE TOO LATE, PRETTY SURE THE CIRCLES OVERLAPPING MEANS THEY'VE CRASHED – no, I'm wrong, and I am VERY GLAD OF IT, phew!


• Greymon and Taichi: *share a moment of respect*
  Koshiro: I know it's been less than a minute, but the American military system, which should ALSO have minimal to no connection to the internet, is under attack by Digimon! Who can launch missiles!
  Me: Oh hey, I remember that movie.


• HI MATT! HI GARURUMON! I DON'T KNOW HOW YOU MANAGED TO GET HERE AND DIGIVOLVED FASTER THAN TAICHI AND AGUMON, BUT YOU'RE DOING AMAZING SWEETIES.


• So this episode's title was presumably a reference to the Lupin III thing, and the next episode is a reference to the Global Thermonuclear Warfare film, so I guess keep your Captain America gifs handy!

The tl;dr of my thoughts, based on this one episode, is that I'm kinda charmed by this retro-cyberpunk look that Digimon 2020 has! I kinda miss the inexplicable combos that the original series had (like the vending machine graveyards or the telegraph poles to nowhere), but the internet being weird pastel shapes balances it for me. I feel like it's seeding concepts and symbols a lot earlier, like the crests! ... But also it's really cute, Like. My heart is warmed by how adorable these babies are! I am happy, I've not hit any sort of "Ugh, this is DIFFERENT so it's BAD!" yet, and it's super cute!

Comments

[suncani]

oh, oh, I think you've just inspired my comfort watching for a while. I LOVED the old digimon but remember zilch about it now so time for a watch me thinks