Digimon Tamers: The Best (And Weirdest) Season | Billiam

0:00 digimon digital monsters a line of digital pets created to be an extension of tamagotchi but marketed towards tiny little boys so muscles and guns and motorcycles and innocent cats turning into scantily clad angels like everything else at the time digimon was aiming high to be this giant multimedia franchise an anime video games card games comics toys no digimon did not start because of pokemon but pokemon affected the entire toy industry and the way digimon expanded was in direct competition pokemon also helped to popularize the pep monster genre where the first two digimon anime played into this genre creating its own unique world the third series digimon tamers is a bit of a meta-narrative taking place in the real world where

0:46 digimon is a popular media franchise so complete fantasy i'd always watch the tv show i used to play the card game i even made up my own imaginary digimon hitler's is a response to all of these well-loved popular and remembered pet monster franchises every kid who grew up watching these kinds of shows wanted their own pet monster and digimon tamers fulfills that fantasy but it also uses a foundation created by digimon to challenge the audience's expectations digimon tamers is weird it's dark it promotes diversity and its story and characters are a whole lot better than it has any business being

1:32 i've revisited the original digimon series digimon adventure over and over again over the years but i really haven't done that with tamers so i'm able to look at the series without nostalgia goggles but it's digimon so i need my goggles tamers was written by chia chiaki chiaki an anime writer who's best known for being dark and weird kanaka considers himself to be a lovecraftian writer so he's killing that late night tumblr game the storyline he contributed to digimon adventure 0-2 was tonally off-beat and creepy now make that 51 episodes that's kanaka tamers is known for its darker tone but it's never depressing

2:17 it's still a hopeful story which uses the dark tones to increase the level of tension when needed and to play off the character's emotions i like it when kids shows tastefully tackle dark and weird instead of violence and blood being used to creep audiences out it's character actions and surreal imagery yeah it can be just as effective by the end of adventure 0-2 there were a total of 24 main characters but tamers takes a different approach including the digimon the core cast is six the main goggle-wearing protagonist is takado takado is a normal kid with normal emotions he's scared when he meets guilemon a digimon based on his own drawing for the first time after all it is a fire-breathing monster hi guilemon oh

3:05 gilmon is newly created so unlike every other digimon in the series it doesn't have this deep knowledge of the digital world it's figuring out how other digimon work just as staccato is i'm takato [Applause] i'm not a digimon staccato is very anxious so dealing with the unpredictable childlike guillemon creates a great chemistry henry or lee if you're watching the japanese dub is a non-violent morally driven kid who doesn't even like to make digimon fight into the video game so he's a little dweeb in the best way possible terriermon is henry's partner it's an excitable little rabbit digimon who always wants to get into a fight henry the pacifist and terriermon who turns into gargamon wow sidenote i love

3:53 how the english dub makes all the gun sound effects laser sound effects what a simplistic solution to that problem but like uh how do you censor something like this well at least it's not gundraman it's not very smart to mouth off to someone bigger than you henry moment momentai it means no worries for the rest of your days then there's rika or rookie if you're watching the japanese dub rika is the digimon queen she's like a really good at the digimon card game because of that everyone thinks she's cool as i said complete fantasy world rika is violent and sort of serves as a first antagonist for the series she's always picking a fight hey what a

4:39 lousy fighter but a fight's a fight rhinoman rika's digimon wants to be the strongest so at first they have less of a friendship and more of a working relationship but eventually they admit to caring about one another renamon is a fan favorite for reasons which can only be explored with safe search off you all are nasty one of the benefits to having a smaller cast is the digimon are now their own characters with unique feelings perspectives and development there's also more focus on side characters we learn about takado's friends the villains the families of the characters and get some side character arcs which take the whole series to pay off other characters which later gain more importance include kalamon a silly lighthearted digimon who holds the power to help other digimon transform iman a sort of rude and

5:26 pathetic digimon who renounces his partners jerry a quirky girl takato has a crush on jerry is the only realistic character in this whole show people like jerry but it's because she keeps her love of digimon a secret just like me from age 11 to 20. put your beard on you're embarrassing yourself down here not on me oh sorry man you're heavy digimon damer's plot is a slow burn the entire focus of the first third is how digimon interact in the real world however to make this concept fresh the digimon now are less like little ugly people and more like well digital monsters they're animalistic it's in their programming to want to fight and

6:12 human-like emotions are now learned rather than something digimon are automatically equipped with when gilman sees a threat its eyes contract and its instinct kicks in the kids have to learn with the digimon and the digimon have to adapt this helps to contrast the dangerous fantasy monsters with the mundane town of shinjuku which features real world locations hiding digimon has never really been a huge problem in the series because they've always been relatively small but gilman is like a buff velociraptor takato can't just hide him inside so a lot of the early episodes are dedicated to finding guillemot a place to hide which is complicated by gilman's desire to explore and play digimon transform into stronger larger versions of themselves this is called digivolving in past shows digivolving came quick and easy happening very soon after the series

6:59 started and once it was done digimon had no problem turning back into their base form for the sake of convenience it takes a while for gilmon to finally digivolve for the first time and after it happens he can't easily go back to normal the next episode has gilmon stuck as a giant t-rex sized digimon what follows is a series of attempts to get guilleman to transform back to normal and find a place for this giant monster to hide it's cute it's funny but also takato has anxieties about losing gilmon it's a great balance and creates a problem out of something which was previously normal between the challenges the kids face just having their partners they also have to defeat evil digimon which appear in the real world takado and henry are in the mindset the

7:44 digimon are living creatures but rico wants renamon to kill them all and absorb their data to become more powerful one of the things i don't like about tamers is how they handle the enemy digimon this layer of fog automatically forms which blocks the outside world from seeing what's going on in tamers so much of the focus is digimon interacting with the real world it would be much more interesting for the characters to have to try to hide what's going on while the digimon are fighting each other it would also make the worries of the government organization hypnos much more meaningful if we see the damage digimon are causing digimon is known for its action sequences being interrupted by long transformation scenes but now there are digi modifying sequences the kids use cards from the official digimon card

8:30 game to give their digimon extra powers and for just 4.99 a pack so can you sometimes it's cool and sometimes it's funny watching little old terrier man with a giant hammer i like the concept of digimodify but they play it off as if the kids are using a strategy when it really feels like they're just throwing down modifications until something works if the rules of the game were explained it'd be more interesting to watch the kids develop the strategy with the cards it does work to make them more involved but it doesn't really invite us into their thought process with digi modifying digivolving as a means of victory is downplayed for one it's not always accessible usually kalamon has to be present and eventually a special card has to appear to activate the next stage when it does happen the sequences are

9:16 crazy cool when they're animated in 2d matrix digivolution there's this whole black and green matrix vibe to them which really helps to sell that digital aesthetic tamers tells one story with a beginning middle and an end which is why it feels like such a slow burn by episode 12 of digimon adventure the first story arc had completed but tamers is barely getting started by episode 12. first time viewing the show may feel like it's dragging but i watched the first half a second time for this video and i have to say it's a lot better on a repeat viewing the show does feel like it's sort of starting this simple story arc when 12 digimon based on the chinese zodiac start attacking shinjuku each episodes has the kids beating one of the 12

10:01 deva so you think it's going to be this clean boss battle style arc where they beat one every episode but then everything changes course when calamon is captured and brought to the digital world it sets up a simple predictable storyline just for the purpose of changing course that's great even when they finally arrive into the digital world it's nothing like the way it was in adventure instead of the narnia style fantasy world it's this desolate wasteland filled with scraps of data trying to form into something more meaningful it's specifically withholding the familiar but if you're part of the japanese audience eventually someone familiar does come along rio oh yeah yay rio was supposed to be this familiar face for digimon fans a character whose back of the head made a two-second

10:47 non-speaking cameo in adventure 0-2 and he was the main character in some japan exclusive games for everyone's favorite console the wonder swan good old rio on the good old wonder swan if you didn't have a wonder swan growing up did you even have a childhood reading through kanaka's notes which i highly recommend to any fan it seems like the role rio plays may have been considered for one of the characters from adventure but i guess from a story standpoint it makes more sense to use rio as a connection as we learn rio is from the tamers universe but it doesn't provide that feeling of familiarity it's supposed to for an american audience and if you've seen any of my videos you know the way i mispronounce words means i'm very american

11:40 hey before we continue with the video i wanted to give a quick shout out to my patrons who claimed the shout out reward tier on my patreon so special thanks to those who contributed it in the month of june including the new ones child's noodle steve malnick michael that guy in the store and finally ryan smith aka vexed fox so thank you to them and all of my returning patrons my patreon exclusive review for the month of june will be going up in a few days and at the end of july i will be posting an exclusive review for digimon tamer's battle of adventures the first digimon tamers movie so like all of my other reviews i'm watching the english dub i do that because it's what i grew up with sure it's a different product than the japanese dub but it's

12:25 the one i want to talk about because it's what i have a connection to but tamer's dub is more respectful to the source material than the other two are it's worth noting tamer's dub wasn't handled by the same team and often it's actually steve bloom of sexy voice fame riding the dub he also plays blonde spike spiegel and gilman that's right the same guy who did this i love the kind of woman that can kick my ass also does this long now i wish i could the theme song is still the same from the previous shows but it's remixed with this grittier electric guitar i really love the casting in the english dub except for susie feels so pink and pretty one of my biggest pet peeves are the way that english dubs handle little kids i can't stand it how

13:12 dare you i particularly like david wittenberg as henry and bridget hoffman as jerry there is a realism to their performance it's imperfect one of my biggest problems with the dub however is actually the music in the first half of the series they reuse a lot of the music from the english dub of the digimon adventure series it's more fantastical and does a disservice to tamer's attempts to establish this as a different world but at least digimon tamers doesn't have the digi rap the series is all about perspective and change all of the main characters have different philosophies which drive them but they grow with time every time a new villain is introduced we learn they're not really the villain one of the benefits of having a smaller cast is the focus on side character

13:59 development specifically impmon and jerry whose stories kind of coincide with one another a big change which is made as a downplay on destiny the kids in adventure were chosen to be partnered with their digimon but in tamers the digimon and the human have to agree to be partnered there's more of an effort to make the kids involved in the fight and this idea of kids and digimon choosing to work together pays off with the digimon's final evolution bio merging takato rika henry and good old rio all combined with their digimon to become super strong as a kid i hated this but as an adult i love this i understand what they're going for now focusing on the partnership as a two-way relationship makes the relationship more meaningful these characters weren't chosen for one another they picked each other

14:45 however that also makes it possible for digimon to renounce their tamer and makes it even more brutally heartbreaking when one of the digimon dies iman can't digivolve because it abandoned its tamers two little brat kids but iphone makes a deal with the leader of the deva zoo zhu zhu quiet mall trace it'll help him digivolve if he destroys the kids this isn't a threat which was suddenly introduced like many of the villains in adventure this is a character we saw develop and get desperate enough to come to this point we also see jerry want to become partners to leomond and how much the partnership means to her when it finally agrees that's why it's so effective when impmon

15:32 as beelzemon kills leomon and absorbs its data imphman's character arc continues when it later reconnects with its tamers and becomes desperate to earn jerry's forgiveness leading up to one of the most emotionally resonant moments in the entire franchise in an act of desperateness beelzemon calls upon leomon's data and uses the fist of the beast king leomond's signature attack tamer's dark tone really expresses itself within the final third of the series after jerry loses leomon her body becomes possessed by something called the d-reaper we get a nightmare from her and her emotionalist body inhabited by this emotionalist being is just unsettling the scene that got under my skin specifically was

16:18 jerry attacking her little brother something about little kids being violent just the final villain isn't a digimon the d-reaper was a program created to clean up scrap data and ai files which were too large it was created by the team who created digimon as a sort of cleaning software all the villains are good guys in their own eyes but the d-reaper has no philosophy it's just cleaning up a mess which happens to be you know life the forms it takes are just so unsettling and it uses jerry's voice to communicate which is also just it gets under your skin the ending of tamers gives no time for celebration it's sudden and it's more bitter than sweet but it leaves the audience with a small

17:03 glimmer of hope that the kids may one day see the digimon again tamers is something truly unique it creates something that is great and genuinely creative out of a franchise which is really just meant to sell toys and i think that's why people love it so much it's not a toy commercial i mean how do you sell this it's a sincere and emotionally grounded story using the desires of kids to create a well-meaning fantasy with the 15th anniversary blu-ray of digimon tamers there was a special audio drama cd which featured all of the characters in 2018 and ended on a cliffhanger kanaka has expressed interest on a proper return to the tamers world but of course i love the series and i would be open to it

17:49 however after watching digimon try i uh i really don't want to see where digimon would bring renimon you all are nasty thank you for watching this video if this is your first video of mine please be sure to follow me on social media hit that notification button and subscribe i know it's obnoxious when youtubers do this but youtube really does make it harder for subscribers to see content makers videos and they're making it harder all the time i'm so happy all these digimon videos are doing well i'm already working on my next one to be posted in a few weeks so stay tuned for that other than that thank you for watching have a good day and i'll see you next week