02 Retrospective Reviews
The fact that the Crests, in the forms of the Digimentals are now nothing more than powers that the new Chosen can call upon anytime, not requiring any threat of danger or pure emotion that was required in regular evolution, makes me wonder if just anyone could have used the Digimentals. What’s stopping some random kid from wondering in the Digital World, finding a Digimental, of (whatever) and just wrecking havoc? What’s stopping the Kaiser from finding the Digimentals and using them for himself (asides from him disavowing Wormmon as his partner)? The new characters don’t have to fit into their new responsibilities. There’s little development on the part of the new gang to use these Digimentals. And when there is, it usually 180’s just as fast and it seems like nothing happened in the first place. These characters don’t have to change or grow; they just do it when necessary, and revert back to whatever behaviour they had before. It’s like a light switch, and that’s a really disappointing way of trying to grow as a person. Daisuke really doesn’t have to harness courage or friendship to achieve evolution; once he’s done it “once”, he can do it whenever. The original crests required a lot of bad stuff to go down before they worked. Remember Joe’s crest? Takeru (and Joe too) almost drowned before it worked; and similar life-threatening requirements were required for the other crests, along with a heck of a lot of emotions (Mimi crying at the unfairness of it all, etc.). The new gang can just use these powers like using a potion in an inventory. While they may not be as strong as the Crests, what they represent and how they were used just feels like a cheap trick. These just become items and tools of the trade for the new Chosen. Oh, and don’t forget Takeru and Hikari; they don’t have to change or do anything different because they already did it last season. Actually, it was shown in one of the Drama CD’s that anyone of the Chosen could use the Digimentals, and it didn’t matter who. In the middle of a battle, their D-Terminals get mixed up and members of both the old and new guards end up using each other’s Digimentals. That’s right: any one of the Chosen, doesn’t matter who, can use any of the Digimentals, whenever they want.
What makes it even worse is that unlike the Crests, the Digimentals became useless about halfway through the show. The Crests were always a powerful, and last ditch option. For the majority of the team, the Crest evolutions were as high as they could go (theoretically). Not to mention that the physical Crests themselves saved them many times over the course of the show. Halfway through, the Digimentals are cast aside for a more powerful form of evolving- regular evolution, and later, DNA/jogress evolution. The Digimentals have no higher form or combined use; that’s it.
There’s no traits or characteristics that the new guard has to learn for themselves; they just have to emulate the ones from the old group. What if the new Chosen had to find their own Crests or use them, and grow into new traits to make them better people? Not only would that make things a little more interesting and be a nice throwback to the old series/guard, it would actually allow for some reasonable character development. Which could allow us to pinpoint what these characters are actually like. God forbid.
The only character that doesn’t suffer from this problem so much, Ken, actually has a Crest. Go figure.
Cross posted to digimon_japan