REVIEW: Digimon The Movie | TeknoBoy

0:07 in the wide world of entertainment and media corporations are always chasing after the next big thing that new popular trend that takes the world by storm and ricks in the cash of course when one company does happen to strike gold with that new hot property everybody else wants to get in on the action themselves there are tons of examples throughout history of one product becoming mega-successful and then suddenly a myriad of clones and copycats pop up trying desperately to emulate that success one such example came in the late 90s when the pokemon craze was at fever pitch the rapid rise the fame of the nintendo owned series that involved catching cute and powerful little creatures inside of tiny little capsules and forcing them to fight each other well that really sounds messed up now

0:52 that i think about it it was such a phenomenon that many other companies took the opportunity to try and capitalize on this burgeoning new movement and brought out various other products of a similar nature hoping to achieve the same results while many of these trend chasers had their own shares of failure and success the one that many believed came the closest to reaching the same heights as pokemon was the conspicuously similarly named franchise digimon [Music] short for digital monsters digimon originally began as a series of virtual pets a male counterpart to the female orientated tamagotchi however all too quickly the series began to shift and expand with novels tv shows and games telling stories about a bunch of young kids traveling to a digital

1:38 world filled with wild and bizarre monsters and equipped with their own digivices that allowed them to turn their own digimon into stronger creatures they must survive this harsh new land and stop a malevolent evil from bringing chaos to both of their worlds when 20th century fox licensed out the anime series for western audiences under their fox kids brand it became an instant hit and while it did have a lot in common with the pokemon franchise there were just enough differences between them to make it stand out as a viable alternative for one all the creatures names ended in mon and they could talk instead of just grunt or speak their names continuously their more outlandish designs were far cry from the more kid-friendly appearances of their counterparts and the stories that they would tell were often much darker than the tales of a 10 year old boy whose main motivation

2:24 in life is gotta catch em all upset that you can't win a tiny little badge in a gym battle try watching your best friend completely disintegrate in front of you after they sacrifice themselves to save your life digimon was like metallica compared to pokemon's s club 7. of course since pokemon had a great deal of success with their rather arrogantly named first movie naturally fox were more than eager to jump on the bandwagon and get some of that hollywood money with their franchise's own feature like picture digimon the movie there was just one problem there was no digimon movie come again see unlike pokemon which is managed to produce at least one theatrically released film every year for the last two decades which makes that first movie moniker sound less like arrogant boasting and more like a

3:11 warning digimon was more in the market for creating ovas or original video animations basically short films or mini series that were released on home video instead of being shown on tv or in theaters because they don't often exceed a run time of 20 to 40 minutes there's no real justification for any one of these ovas to be released in cinema but the heads of fox kids visibly hire money and some other substances decided to make their own digimon movie by splicing together the first three ovas to create this bizarre frankenstein-esque monster of a film this is gonna be quite a task trying to cover this movie so i think we should just grab the bomb on by the horns and get this thing started

3:56 oh geez i completely forgot about this so i guess because the pokemon movies started with these short films starving perennial favorite pikachu the digimon movie had to as well but instead of doing something like i don't know gomerman's vacation or something apparently fox kids wanted to take this opportunity to promote some of the other shows that they owned and as such we get a four minute episode of angela anaconda this tv show about a young girl named angela and the misfit adventures that she gets up to with her friends i barely remember watching the show when i was a kid and for good reason it's not really that good i mean the cutout animation style is impressive for the time and there are some creative elements to it but angela is just not a great main character

4:42 with an insufferably nasally voice and too whiny and petty to be likable the short has angela and her friends going to see the digimon movie when they get stuck behind this posh girl on the net and their teacher miss brinks so angela can't even see the big screen her big revenge has her daydream that she and her friends become digimon and fight nanette who is piloting a robot version of their teacher then it turns out that they were in the wrong screen and they all rush out the theater my favorite part is when angela just pops up on the big screen at the end because that's exactly what this short is doing getting in the way of what we actually came to see interestingly enough though a rumor started spreading about a few years ago that one kid saw the film in the cinema and was so confused about why he was seeing this angela short instead of

5:28 digimon that he started crying his parents who were already in a rocky relationship took him out of the theater and started arguing with each other this was apparently the last straw for them and they later divorced now i questioned the validity of this story because it originated as a random post on 4chan of all places plus it sounds like that relationship was so unstable that anything was bound to set them off but that is one hell of an accolade to carry angela anaconda and by association digimon the movie caused a divorce anyway i'm sure angela does have her fans somewhere but the show and the short just doesn't do it for me now we can start the film off properly and what better way to start off a 2000s anime film than with that old favorite of anime openers

6:13 a rap number [Music] i used to find this so cool when i was a kid and if i'm honest there's still a part of me that really enjoys it but yeah this is so poorly dated and awful the original digimon theme is a classic kids favorite that's still so good to listen to even to this day it would have been enough just to hear the full extended version play out over this opening sequence probably would have made you forget about the weird ping images of the digimon bouncing around the screen but they couldn't help themselves they just had to act all down with the kids and shoehorn in this incredibly forced

6:58 rap number you want to know just how insufferably bad it is they shoved the word digi into the song as many times as they could in the most awkward of places inserting it into the beginning of random words here and there and even replacing the phrase did you because it sounds vaguely like digi in this one minute opening sequence they used the word digi no less than 38 times don't believe me listen for yourselves [Music] heck i probably missed a few times it

7:44 was said in the background so there might be even more crammed in there that kid's parents should be thanking god drummond because if they hadn't left june the angela short they may have wanted to kill themselves by the end of this number so then that means that angela anaconda actually saved two lives maybe that show's not as bad as i thought so the biggest problem that fox had with creating this movie is that each of the ovas they were using were about three completely separate stories set at vastly different points within the timeline of the show because of this the film is split into different segments with a loose plot thread tying them all together the first segment is based on the first ova simply called digimon adventure airing is a prologue pilot to the series and came out exactly one day

8:29 before the show's original japanese broadcast taking place a few years before the events of the main show were introduced to younger versions of two of its main cast tai and his sister kari who wake up in the middle of the night to find their home computer producing a strange looking egg boy amazon's delivery service is really becoming intrusive by the way get used to hearing kari's voice because she acts as something of a pseudo-narrator throughout the majority of this film delivering exposition dumps left right and center my name's kari i'm part of a team called the gigi destin that's me with tk another one of the digi destin and that's willis in america did you know there are actually two worlds our world and the digital world that's my brother ty when he was a little kid even back then he was a born leader i suppose the

9:14 film was advertised as not needing to have watched the series in order to enjoy it and this is their reason why as carvi's voice will just show up quite often to explain to you what you need to know at that exact moment you know i think we owe the microsoft paperclip a huge apology ty wakes up the following morning thinking that it was just a dream but it wasn't and the egg soon hatches into a fuzzy little black creature that blows bubbles and oddly enough hums the show's theme song that's a bit odd but at least he isn't rapping spending some time with it the creature suddenly changes into a pink blob thing with ears calling itself coramon

10:01 also it can talk and poops it has a very strange way of showing affection [Music] oh right i should mention that the film decided to go a very bizarre route with its soundtrack while it did include some original songs written for the series from the likes of shooky levy jason radford paul gordon and mcpod they also threw in an eclectic collection of more mainstream tracks from the likes of fat boy slim the bear naked ladies less than jake and smash mouth there's even a cover of the kim wild hit kids in america by canadian band len complete with a very badly

10:48 dated flash animation music video don't worry this style does get better over time that night coramon changes again this time into a huge dinosaur-like creature and takes carvey for a ride around the city with tai chasing after them but as they discover the more destructive capabilities of their new friend a giant egg suddenly appears in the sky which for western audience may seem unusual but for japan it's probably just typical thursday the egg hatches unleashing a giant bird monster that starts attacking the kids so corman steps up to defend them going into an even larger dinosaur named greymon however he's soon knocked down and the only thing that can revive him is a little boy blowing on a whistle [Music] a little advice to any parents watching

11:34 never let your kids go anywhere near whistle you'll thank me later [Music] okay i'm up stop blowing that damn thing greyman unleashes a mighty blast of fire from his mouth that apparently engulfs both him and the bird monster as they disappear in a bright light it was a while before we realized that those of us who saw what happened became the digidestined well that can't be true because there was only eight of you to begin with and there's no way only eight kids saw all of that a transition brings us into our next segment based on the second ova entitled digimon adventure our war game or children's war game which was set after the events of the first season of the show it opens with izzy another main character from the show discovering a

12:21 digi egg on the internet being attacked by a virus wow the virus is causing the egg to develop abnormally fast i think it's gonna hatch concerned he rushes over the thai's house to fill him in on the situation this might be a good time to bring up the absolutely insane dubbing work seen throughout this entire film no there is a constant barrage of non-stop talking from nearly every single person and there are even times when one character starts speaking the millisecond another character stops with no pauses in between i think it's part digimon part virus i did you mine with a virus so are you kidding if it stays on the internet it could wipe out all technology as we know it if it just has how do you know about all this stuff this kid i met on the internet emailed me his name is willis and he lives in colorado i don't know

13:07 where he gets his information and all of it is just more exposition being delivered in a short amount of time as possible whilst trying to match the lip syncs with the characters on screen at times you can even hear izzy's voice actor taking sharp breaths as she tries to deliver the exorbitant amount of lines she's given as quickly as possible i better email willis and let him know that inframon is heading in his direction i do have one question though what do you think that digimon would have been like if the virus never attacked him for the love of peter mon slow down i don't even think the micro machines guy ever talked this much the micro machine man here presenting the genuine original colossally collectible most [ __ ] miniature episodes of the real things micro machines as ty and izzy watch this new digimon grow and consume vast amounts of data they're contacted by their digimon companions from the digital world saying that they'll help

13:53 them to squash this new digimon unfortunately tai has difficulty getting in touch with the other digidestined as matt and tk are visiting their grandmother joe is in summer school mimi is on vacation kari is attending the birthday party of an overly excited girl [Music] and sora refuses to speak to tai because of stupid reasons involving a hairpin i gave her this really great hair pin for her birthday and then she got all mad and said oh you don't like my hair style and i said who could tell you're always wearing a hat and then she said so now you don't like my hat huh it's very confusing this means that only their digimon argument and tantamount are available to fight they enter the internet which at the time seem to be full of nothing but ferris wheels and

14:40 horses for some reason and engage in battle with the rogue digimon which ditch evolves into infirmon they tried to follow suit but shockingly infamous attacks the two digimon while they're in mid transformation okay that is an anime foul right there every villain knows that you have to wait the full two minutes while a transformation sequence is happening it's the polite thing to do time manages to get through to matt and tk who use a barber's computer to access the internet meaning that pataman and gabamon can join the others as they chase informant further into the web with argument and gabamon digivolving into their mega forms however infamous evolves into his mega form dioboromon and takes out pataman and tantamon the intense battle rages on but then izzy is like leaving thai on his own to

15:27 accidentally cause his computer to crash ty where'd you go wargreymon has practically stopped moving wait a minute how does that work i know that ty shares a bond with wargreymon for his digivice but how does his computer crashing cause him to freeze like that isn't he his own sentient being is that why gatoman got stuck on a wall earlier when they reconnect they find that their digimon had been beaten down and dearborn one has escaped to make matas worse the obaman has gained access to military computers and has launched two nuclear missiles one of which is heading right for thai's neighborhood they eventually catch up with diobolmon only to find that he has created multiple copies of himself in their fatigued states they fail to dodge the unending barrage of attacks which leaves them absolutely devastated through some miracle logic which the

16:13 film passes off as having a strong connecting bond friendship is great tire mats somehow disappeared into the internet causing this guy's neck to break several times in confusion as they managed to revive their digimon and caused them to merge together to become omnimod omnimod then wipes out all the the abormon clones before finishing off the original in a pretty brutal fashion for a kids film stabbing him right in the face deactivating the missiles before the impact and allowing sword to get her stupid apology letter from thai wait so did you have internet access or not if you didn't then why was your computer the only one seemingly affected by what was going on and if you did why didn't you notice all this madness that was happening all around you and think

16:58 to yourself you know i'm still mad at thai but they could really use my help for saving the world this movie is so stupid and it's not even over yet another transition takes us into our final segment based on the third ova entitled oh boy digimon adventure 0-2 digimon hurricane landing transcendent evolution the golden digimentals i need to lie down after that one this was a two-part ova set during the events of season two which had barely started airing for western audiences by the time this film came out it's also the one that was butchered the most as elements of these ovas were used to try to connect the other parts of the films together to make it seem like there was one cohesive story running the whole way

17:44 through this was another reason for including a narrator to help with tying in these plot points with the rest of the story so around the same time that thai and corey met their first digimon a kid in colorado called willis got two digimon and unlike his japanese counterparts somehow he was able to keep them a secret from the world apparently he later tried to create his own digimon but it ended up getting attacked by a virus which led into the events of the second story after the obama was destroyed the virus somehow escaped into the real world and attacked willa versus digimon kokomon mutating him into a ranged monster now an older willis and his other digimon terriermon have tracked pokemon to new york in an attempt to free him from the virus and restore him to his normal self everybody got that good i'm sorry if that felt like a

18:31 clumsy way of catching you up on the story but it's about as good as the movie handles it kokomon fights with teriyamon before disappearing just as tk khari and daredevin come to help but willis runs away from them telling them to stay away with pokemon's words of go back rigging in his head willis travels back to colorado thinking that's where he's supposed to go oh by the way willis is the new main character for this film yeah that's right somebody who was barely in the background of the previous two stories is now the main focus for some reason most of the other characters like ty and izzy only get a passing mention at the beginning of the segment while tk and corey end up getting sidelines for the rest of the adventure only showing up for the final battle near the end instead we get a whole new cast of characters from the season 2 show cody

19:17 yoli and davis the latter of which is described by the narrator as having the exact same personality as tai so what was even the point bear in mind that tai has been the one we've been mostly following throughout this entire film and now that we're in the home straight he's suddenly brushed off to the side for thai light here and a bunch of newbies from a show that may i remind you only started airing for the western audiences at the time of this film's release can someone explain to me what the devi modders fox execs were thinking we've got to have money yeah okay that does kind of make sense the new group catches up with willis who agrees to travel with them despite the fact that he was actively trying to avoid hooking up with other people out of fear of their own safety and he explains his story to them

20:03 davis takes it well as the saddest story i ever heard i'm the one with the problem not you get over it okay now i did not edit that scene in any way that is exactly how it is presented in the film davis has a massive crying fit and then instantly gets over it even the emotional scenes in this film are ruined because of the absolutely awful pacing the group finally catches up with pokemon and digivole for the final battle where tk and kovi arrived to help gautama and padamon were worried so they did evolved into anja woman and anjaman also i've adopted a british exit for some reason but kokomon keeps getting stronger and uses his powers to take them back in time to a point where the

20:49 virus was in a weaker state sensing this angie woman and anjimon spring into action digivolving into their mega forms and releasing a pair of gold and digi eggs allowing veemon and teriyaman to become magnamon and rapidmon don't worry about it the film's almost over the two go inside of kokomon and blast him from the inside out destroying the virus but also killing pokemon in the process a somber moment that is immediately broken thanks to the fake cry over here one thing you have to learn about digimon they never really die [Music] what yes as it turns out digimon don't exactly die but instead go through some sort of reincarnation and are born again as a digi egg and i kid you not the film

21:35 ends on of all things a reborn pokemon singing along to all star by smash mouth yeah i get the feeling that this entire film is tone deaf man how do i even begin to describe my thoughts on this movie well actually i think the film itself sums up pretty well it's very confusing it is very confusing and not just to someone who's going in completely blind this is a film that tries to catch the both non-fans of the series and long time fans but ends up disappointing both of them the non-fans have to deal with a completely off the walls plot that continues to jump all over the place leaving them feeling utterly disorientated not helped by the fact

22:22 that the characters in this film just won't shut up anytime it feels like the film is going to be quiet for a moment it's filled in by the narrator spouting exposition or some other character who will either tell some random out of nowhere joke or say what is literally happening to them in that moment as for fans of the show it's hardly a pleasant ride either the sporadic pacing and editing is nothing like the show which while it does have a few odd moments here and there treats the source material with respect and builds the moments that are touching humorous and dramatic this movie is all over the place and doesn't give a single damn about these characters or coherent plot ignoring any sense of character progression and just throwing them into the thick of it thinking that's all they need to do even the fan surface parts are incredibly frustrating like when anjaman

23:09 and anja woman did evolve into their mega forms which they never did in the series only so they can release a couple of magical macguffins and then get struck down a few seconds later or how this film clearly advertises a massive adventure involving all of your favorite characters and then about half of them are given one line and then shunted off to the side never to be seen again okay with all that said there are a few things about this movie that i personally enjoy the animation is actually pretty good though the combination of both 2d and 3d animation is something that even the tv shows struggled with at times as stupid as the humor can be in this film a few lines did manage to get a chuckle out of me did you see that no i was sleeping but you're driving phones have gone dead worldwide if your

23:54 telephone is dead please call your phone company get that evil digimon you're our only hope here's another one be home by six o'clock oh wait that's for my mom i have to do this by myself i need to be alone great i'll go with you thank you for visiting yeah.com yes even davis suddenly getting over his depression gave me a laugh and despite the film's narrative being one of the most unbelievably discharged of things you will ever experience i will at least give credit to the writing and editing team for a valiant attempt at trying to piece these ova's together into one feature-length film i mean they shouldn't have done it in the first place but under the whims of hayam saban and fox kids they turned out the best work that they possibly could have made let me be very clear about something despite what any advertising may tell

24:39 you you need to be a fan of digimon and you need to have seen the tv series in order to get any sort of enjoyment out of this film i was and i did and i absolutely loved it at the time i still do in a nostalgic sense but nowadays i can see this film for the obvious cash grab that it is and understand how every parent older sibling and babysitter must have felt when they were dragged into the cinema to watch this maybe it would have been better if they released the original ovas on home video or specials on the fox kids channel or something but this isn't what we got what we got instead was a pile of garbagemon [Music]

25:46 so [Music] so

26:36 [Music] you