I Love Digimon!

The Vademon episode is still a special type of nightmare fuel to me, I used to actually avoid rewatching it for a while because it causes a visceral reaction in me - and the novel made it even worse. I still think it's horrible that Koushirou went through that kind of mind corruption only with Tentomon by his side; imagine being 10, struggling with your sense of self and then you're told that thing you do/like best will bring you straight to hell if you don't abandon your personality the queer subtext here is also insane, but I digress and then it was NEVER mentioned by anyone ever again. (Bias aside, I will forever mope about him connecting with Taichi despite being stripped of ALL desires whatsoever and Taichi was horrified to see him AND IT WAS NEVER BROUGHT UP AGAIN.)

As for a spontaneous shortlist of other traumatizing moments, let's add a few other near-death/actual death exposure scenes:

- Taichi causing his partner to evolve into a literal symbol of decay, almost killing himself on an electrical fence, guilt-tripping himself over taking his sister into the DW and almost watching her getting blown up. Taichi is a walking trauma dump, what else is new.

- Everytime Jyou almost died (fell, got choked, drowned) protecting someone else - especially Takeru, who had to watch the whole thing.

- Sora seeing herself in Piyomon as she is on the brink of dying after she closed herself off for weeks, desperately seeking for her best friend, who may or may have died after saving her; constantly letting herself be gaslit about her own intentions and "imperfections".

- Yamato almost freezing to death after fearing the worst may have happened to his brother, constantly dealing with the fear of succumbing to his own inferiority complex when it comes to Taichi and Takeru, letting himself eventually get corrupted so he almost ends up killing his supposed rival.

- Angemon's, Wizarmon's and Leomon's deaths in particular among every other mon-deaths. (In general, Takeru and Hikari constantly having to face death as the youngest members definitely shows their inability to process everything in 02 and onwards...)

- The entirety of the Apocalymon arc, being turned into data and about to be deleted, hearing a lecture about purpose and natural selection and how their duty was actually harmful to some degree. Heck, I still believe the whole Dark Masters Arc was one hell of a trauma fuel for everyone, the child soldier vibes are SO different from File Island Arc, it's jarring.

I haven't drawn this little guy in ages! The drawing itself was relatively simple, but I took 4 days to draw him because I was embarrassed 😭 but he's been drawn finally with all his pink, squishy adorableness

I finally get around to talk about the anouncement proper after it was made on Saturday. (I am busy right now. Uni and stuff. And I spend way too much time on tumblr. Q-Q)

And I am just kinda want to put three things out there:

This is very likely not a sequel to Beatbreak

This is very likely not a new Adventure-thing

This is also very likely not a crossover themed season

The main reason for this is that they explicitly say "完全新作" so "perfectly new/all new". Which does kinda imply that it is not a sequel to anything.

But more than that... You have to once more remember what Digimon is.

This is a series that in the end exists to sell toys. Beatbreak kinda was the one standing out here, because it was made as a timeslot filler first and foremost and any merchandise sold was a bonus. Which is why Beatbreak is not as heavily merchandised as most of the other seasons.

Now, Toei and Bandai seem to have learned that Digimon in general does a bit better with an older audience, so if they are clever (which is not a given) they might continue to lean into this by making another season that is fine to air in a kids slot, but still primarily focuses on an older audience.

But you have to see: another Beatbreak season makes financial sense in some regard. But is unlikely because... well, it is not what Toei does these days. An Adventure season... for who is that gonna be? Because while the Adventure nostalgia folks are indeed a big part of the online fandom... I will note once more that Digimon is a fairly tiny fandom all things considered, and just appealing to the elder millennial fans will not work out. Especially given that we literally just did an Adventure remake and overall it did not do very well.

And the same with crossovers. Look, Toei has done crossovers for some of their shows before. But usually those will either come in one of two versions: either two or three special episodes within a season (like we had with Hunters), or some sort of theatrical release (like they do with PreCure). Like, yes, Kamen Rider did have a season that was more heavily crossover leaning. But also... Kamen Rider is a much, much, MUCH bigger franchise than Digimon. The average Japanese kid will have more basic knowledge through cultural osmosis of older Kamen Rider seasons, than they will have of older Digimon seasons.

So... economically speaking it is more savvy for Toei to do a completely new season. Which is in general what Toei prefers to do with their long running toy-selling shows either way.

And I am honestly again and again confused why each time we get a new season people expect a sequel. This franchise is 30 years old by now. I would think people would learn.

Digimon did two sequels. 02, which... yeah, was the second season. Sure, let's try it out. Especially given that this was greenlit very late. And then Xros Hunters, which was not even treated as a full sequel internally and was mostly a timeslot filler from all we know.

So, yeah. This is very very likely going to be a fully new series. Maybe a series that might have references to other seasons in there. Sure. But likely something new so that they can at least draw in some younger audiences who will only have a passing familiarity with older Digimon seasons.

Three words but they are enough to explain another reason why I love Junpei. There are 1000 reasons for me to, personal too, ehm very personal to the point the Volcanomon episode gives me PTSD, and this is why it’s nice when the stars align to let me analyze each of them step-by-step.

These shots come from Odaiba Day’s stream. They invited some comic actors so they could perform funny skits about Adventure 01, while occasionally offering heartwarming commentary about the series.

I’ll be honest with you: when I heard “skits” and I saw a stout dude everyone was laughing at, I sat on my train of thoughts and started sweating, because, ehm, I was sure they would bring up Junpei in a way or another to joke about fat people or something similar. INSTEAD, INSTEAD, what happened is that for once I let myself be caught by utter surprise, because Takai did mention Junpei but to just nostalgically talk about how he felt connected with him as a kid.

Representation is important, fundamental, in every shape of its’. I’m not here to claim Junpei is a brilliantly-written character. Ogni scarrafone è bello a mamma sua, we say here, but the truth is that nobody in Frontier is, because the show didn’t allow the potential of these adorable kids to explode…Junpei and Izumi especially, who felt partly lacking due to the way the last half treated them. Yet, this show is from the early 2000’s and besides Doraemon, which already had plus-size characters who would occasionally show an interesting depth in the 80’s series, Japan didn’t have many fat characters who were respected and not heavily stereotyped in their shows; characters that could make stout kids feel visible.

Junpei came in, placed in a main group as a member who felt organically included in the cast, even when it comes to the stylistical choices of his design. He had growth arcs from the very beginning, had a cool Digimon to fight as, had moments in which he got to shine even as the hero he himself wished he had been, was given monologues in which he subtly or directly showed the audience how far he had got, without even acknowledging it. And whether you want to accept it or not, his chocolate and his crush on Izumi were there to try deconstructing tropes kids from those ages had been forced to swallow and internalize in those years.

If nowadays I still get to hear people like Takai and Shitanda himself- his VA-, Steven Bloom as well, who fondly remember about how they could relate to Junpei when they were children, it means this kid had something to tell. And he also did in a pretty decent way, considering the standards of those days, which, hear hear, were not AS BAD as nowadays because you should really give a look at the way anime has gone backwards in the healthy representation they were attempting to reach; at the way Digimon hasn’t been able to go and give us another stout character in the span of almost 25 years.

Sometimes I think about Digimon 02: Hurricane Touchdown. Like, the moment I watched it with my Roommate maybe a year ago. I think about it the same way one would think about something they see out of the corner of their eye that could have been a raccoon or a cat, but you're not really sure if it was one or the other or something else entirely. Just: "Yeah I have no idea what was going on there."

And besides at the time feeling like the whole movie was a fever dream I couldn't really grasp and still feeling like so now (thanks in large part to the very disorienting music), I just remember my suspension of disbelief being disintegrated, as an American, by preteen Wallace traveling from New York to Colorado, without adult supervision, with zero mentioning of him hiding from the police while he was doing this (as far as I remember).

I very much think that the people working on that movie had...not the best grasp on how the USA actually WORKS. When that movie was made.

And I can go off about exactly why, and I will. But under the cut so this doesn't take too much space in anyone's feed.