My Top 10 Anime: #10-Digimon Adventures
I grew up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the majority of my anime choices came from either Toonami on Cartoon Network, Kids WB on the WB Channel, and Fox Kids. During this time I was exposed to many of my childhood anime favorites such as Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z, Yu-gi-oh, Hamtaro (…what can I say, I got a soft spot for hamsters) and so on and so on. However, to this very day there was one series that I really loved, that I really continued to watch even after my interest faded in the others and that I’ll still watch again to this very day. That series was Digimon.
While I’ll admit that the Pokemon series has generally produced superior games than the Digimon series, the anime of Pokemon generally got tiresome after a while to me after getting into a rather monotonous and never-ending cycle (Ash is still 10 right?). Digimon, however, has what any good story should have; a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Digimon, of course, is the story of 7 (and then later 8) kids who went to summer camp, only to find themselves transported to the Digital World where they meet their Digimon partners and then fight to get home while saving the Digital World. The main storyline is divided into several arcs, each with their own antagonist of a variety of flavors to them. Before I get to discussing that, I just want to talk about the more production side of things.
The show itself was made after the popular V-pet toy got a short anime film. From there the series was made into a children’s television show produced by Toei Animation (dubbed in the us by Saban Entertainment). So with this in mind, the animation of the series is good for what you would expect of a kid’s television series. Since I’m more familiar with the dub, my comments after this point are going to focus mainly around that, but I am familiar with aspects of the Japanese version as well. I have to say I personally enjoy the dub’s opening theme more than the Japanese (Butter-Fly). I’m sorry, but when you’re having a series about kids being thrown into a strange computerized world, an upbeat-sounding pop song just doesn’t seem to fit at all. Sure, the dub is simpler (what, only 11 different words?), it fit better, and now I bet you all have it stuck in your head now (Digimon, Digital Monsters, Digimon are the champions…) don’t you? Voice actor wise, both versions seem fine to me, I just have a preference for the dub since that’s what I watched first.
Anyway, that aside, story time.
First arc is the kids getting introduced to the Digital World on File Island. The main villain of this arc is Devimon, is a black demonic Digimon who rules File Island and can control it and the Digimon on it through Black Gears. This part is pretty formulaic; kids go to some new location, things seem cool, Digimon gets infected with Black Gear, one of the kid's Digimon digivolves after some slight character development, day is saved. Over all, standard fair for a kids show right? Then the youngest character, TK, has his Digimon Patamon digivolve into Angemon to defeat Devimon…and ‘dies’ (he gets better, yay Digimon not staying dead in this series).
Still, the villain of the first arc was THIS GUY. Anywhere else he'd be end-boss material, but here he's just warmup.
Things just got real. And that is why this series wins out over some of the others I mentioned; cause in the Digital World, the stakes are real, and there is character development. This is emphasized even more in the next arc with Etemon, the Elvis-Impersonating Monkey (..yeah). The entire arc is spent being chased by the villain as the characters gather Crests that will be able to unlock their Digimon’s next level, crests which can only be found as the kids begin working their own inner turmoils. While Etemon is probably the silliest main villain in the franchise, he proves a very powerful and dangerous foe for the group that is defeated when Tai, realizing that the stakes are in fact real (at one point he got cocky and thought since this was a computer world he couldn’t get hurt when in fact he can) but fights back anyway. However, the greatest arc of the series has to be the one afterwards: Myotismon’s Arc.
Myotismon is probably my favorite villain of the entire Digimon franchise, and probably one of the most dangerous children show’s villains ever. He is ruthless, powerful, and a complete monster, fully willing to use not only violence but psychological manipulation to ensure the kids fail to ever activate their Crests (but luckily, character development trumps evil and so they activate). Even worse, he is genre savvy enough to stay ahead of the group pretty much the entire time as he invades the Real World to find the lost DigiDestined . Up till the last minute when the revelation that the character Tai’s sister Kari was the last DigiDestined and one of his henchmen Gatomon was her partner (and the sacrifice of her best friend Wizardmon), he was in control. Oh, and then comes back as pretty much Satan, including references to 666 and even the look of him.
Even having a crotch-monster doesn’t diminish how scary as hell this guy was
And then the final arc; the Dark Masters. The kids return to the Digital World only to find that is has been twisted and corrupted (literally, it’s a giant spiral mountain) by a group of four evil and powerful Digimon called the Dark Masters. While I personally didn’t find MetalSeadrom that compelling, the other three were; Puppetmon was a psychotic man-child, Machinedramon the cold and efficient killer, and Piedmon who was pretty much Digi-Joker. During this arc the DigiDestined watch many of their friends and allies from past arcs killed by the enemy, the team split apart under the pressure, and most traumatizing of all probably, watching their friends getting turned into keychains by Piedmon.
The very thought that Piedmon was behind the production kept me from buying Digimon merchandise for years…
Oh, and then there was the battle with Apoclymon, but that kind of came out of nowhere and other than reaffirming the lessons learned in the series and some rather interest oneliners from the villain, it was probably the weakest spot of the series (which is sad for being the ending episodes)…
Overall, the Digimon series, I feel, was not afraid to get dark and dirty. Digimon were killed, lives threatened, and the villains were evil and psychotic. Sure, in most series I would probably criticize that, kid’s show or not. But when you crank the villainy up as high as Digimon did, a motivation would probably just weaken the character. But more important though, all of this had a point; to spur on the character development. I enjoy Pokemon, but I know watching it Ash isn’t going to go anywhere; he’ll be eternally stuck as a 10 year old kid and never winning a league match. Yugioh? I watched it for the card games really; character was sort of second to me. But Digimon, Digimon I watched cause the characters were engaging, and I actually cared what happened to them and wanted to see them overcome their struggles. Oh, and giant monster fights. That helped too (hey, I was a kid…okay I still like the fights).