Digimon Adventure 02: Diablomon Strikes Back "In Retrospect"
The transcript...more or less:
Diablomon Strikes Back is basically the Adventure 02 equivalent to Our War Game. It’s a simple movie and it stays within the confines of its own roller coaster ride. In fact, that’s an apt comparison-Diablomon Strikes Back is like a theme park attraction. You ride it, enjoy it, get off and move on. Now I could just pass it off as being a guilty pleasure, but there’s something about this film that I believe worked most effectively in respect to the simplicity in which it was executed. That something is that this film was only thirty minutes long!
So why is it having such a short length so effective, you may or may not ask. Well, some of you might be familiar with the movie Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen by director Michael Bay or the newest Star Trek film by director J. J. Abrams. There are numerous criticisms for those movies, mostly dealing with how, to quote Shakespeare, it was “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Well, that’s basically what Diablomon Strikes Back boils down to. However, time is the key difference between Diablomon Strikes Back and those other two films I mentioned. Breaking it down as far as film longevity, Diablomon Strikes Back is actually extremely effective considering the simplicity of its story in relation to how long the movie is. It doesn’t pad things out unnecessarily nor does it invent secondary plots or characters for a contrived appearance of originality. The film doesn’t last long enough for you to realize that you’re basically watching nothing! It doesn’t add anything to Adventure 02, but at the same time it doesn’t take anything away from it. All in all, Diablomon Strikes Back could very-well be considered just a glorified filler episode of Adventure 02.
The film spends just enough time with each and every Chosen Child to reiterate their base functionality in Adventure 02-obviously focusing on the Adventure 02 main cast more then characters from the original Digimon Adventure. Some of the lines exist merely to give us context for we were familiarized with from the show. I normally have a lot to say about these things, but this movie actually surprised me in being very humble about it-enough that I don’t believe much more can be said than that it was fun! I enjoyed myself!
I will say one last thing, however before I let this one go. I did find one line in particular, delivered by Ken Ichijoji, to be quite humorous-in an ironic sense. He tells Daisuke, “Don’t you always get some incredible power when things are going really badly?” And before Daisuke can respond, Jou arrives on a bicycle to help them out. I can’t help but wonder whether this was a deliberate breaking of the fourth wall, as if Ken was nodding at what Daisuke would become in the latter half of Adventure 02. Like I said about Long Title, Daisuke is once again relegated to the status of human being in this movie-and it suits him! Jou’s arrival is the unspoken answer to Ken’s question. In this movie, Daisuke has no incredible power when things go badly. In this movie, Daisuke had to rely on the aid of a friend in order to pull through. In this movie, Daisuke is just a child like everyone else! In the end, it wasn’t just Daisuke and Ken who conquered Diablomon. Rather, the entire world was saved once again thanks to the combined efforts of the Chosen Children working as a team. If anything, that is the collaboration that should have defined the Chosen Children, it would most definitely have been more appreciated than what was thrown into our faces in the finale.
END
Diablomon Strikes Back is basically the Adventure 02 equivalent to Our War Game. It’s a simple movie and it stays within the confines of its own roller coaster ride. In fact, that’s an apt comparison-Diablomon Strikes Back is like a theme park attraction. You ride it, enjoy it, get off and move on. Now I could just pass it off as being a guilty pleasure, but there’s something about this film that I believe worked most effectively in respect to the simplicity in which it was executed. That something is that this film was only thirty minutes long!
So why is it having such a short length so effective, you may or may not ask. Well, some of you might be familiar with the movie Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen by director Michael Bay or the newest Star Trek film by director J. J. Abrams. There are numerous criticisms for those movies, mostly dealing with how, to quote Shakespeare, it was “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Well, that’s basically what Diablomon Strikes Back boils down to. However, time is the key difference between Diablomon Strikes Back and those other two films I mentioned. Breaking it down as far as film longevity, Diablomon Strikes Back is actually extremely effective considering the simplicity of its story in relation to how long the movie is. It doesn’t pad things out unnecessarily nor does it invent secondary plots or characters for a contrived appearance of originality. The film doesn’t last long enough for you to realize that you’re basically watching nothing! It doesn’t add anything to Adventure 02, but at the same time it doesn’t take anything away from it. All in all, Diablomon Strikes Back could very-well be considered just a glorified filler episode of Adventure 02.
The film spends just enough time with each and every Chosen Child to reiterate their base functionality in Adventure 02-obviously focusing on the Adventure 02 main cast more then characters from the original Digimon Adventure. Some of the lines exist merely to give us context for we were familiarized with from the show. I normally have a lot to say about these things, but this movie actually surprised me in being very humble about it-enough that I don’t believe much more can be said than that it was fun! I enjoyed myself!
I will say one last thing, however before I let this one go. I did find one line in particular, delivered by Ken Ichijoji, to be quite humorous-in an ironic sense. He tells Daisuke, “Don’t you always get some incredible power when things are going really badly?” And before Daisuke can respond, Jou arrives on a bicycle to help them out. I can’t help but wonder whether this was a deliberate breaking of the fourth wall, as if Ken was nodding at what Daisuke would become in the latter half of Adventure 02. Like I said about Long Title, Daisuke is once again relegated to the status of human being in this movie-and it suits him! Jou’s arrival is the unspoken answer to Ken’s question. In this movie, Daisuke has no incredible power when things go badly. In this movie, Daisuke had to rely on the aid of a friend in order to pull through. In this movie, Daisuke is just a child like everyone else! In the end, it wasn’t just Daisuke and Ken who conquered Diablomon. Rather, the entire world was saved once again thanks to the combined efforts of the Chosen Children working as a team. If anything, that is the collaboration that should have defined the Chosen Children, it would most definitely have been more appreciated than what was thrown into our faces in the finale.
END