#{hori}

GIFT seems to be an organization that evokes acts of terrorism towards people or organizations that mistreat Digimon. Jokermon and his Owner’s target was Tamotsu Kashiwagi, who is the head of Tamamori Logistics, a major shipping company, and also knows about the Digimon’s existence. The ending reveals that the company and the Ministry ship Digimon to a World Union facility as they are deemed ‘hazardous material’. The fact that despite Glowing Dawn stopping Jokermon, Kashiwagi still died at the end showcases that they are ruthless when it comes to choosing their targets. I feel like it might be a different case with Tactics who had their own faction of assassins who did dirty work like Haruomi and Commandramon. GIFT seems more like a cult as the humans a part of it don’t seem to be stable.

Their motive seems to be freedom for Digimon which will lead humans on the right path. It’s like a twisted version of Kyo’s dream Digimon-Human coexistence in a way. The only difference between Glowing Dawn and GIFT is that GD don’t kill people and Digimon while GIFT only kills people. It kind of reminds me of Team Plasma from Pokemon Black and White in a way, where their motives was Pokemon liberation.

Since this is the first episode of the new arc, there are definitely a lot of theories of what’s to come. The newly introduced Miharu Kagemori is definitely the biggest mystery. She’s a thirteen-year-old genius programmer who seems to be fascinated by Digimon and believes that the world is glitching since they think Digimon are glitches. The way both Miharu and Jokermon talk about Digimon and Owner relationship is intriguing as they compare it to parent and child. This thought can get a little creepy since Digimon are considered a “child” born from the owner’s Sapotama, meaning that Owners are essentially parents. Since Kyo, Reina and Makoto had their Digimon much younger than Tomoro who got his at 15…yeah, Beatbreak groups are just single parents grouped together.

While this was a good episode overall, let me talk about small things that I liked in this episode. First, there’s Armalizamon who evolved into Monarchlizamon and not a warp evolution like in Episode 24. Then, there’s the fact that Monarchlizamon can open up rifts to the Mirror World now and that’s not solely Murasamemon’s job anymore. I liked how Tomoro rode on his partner as they entered the Mirror World—that’s his big dino son! Lastly, I liked how Jokermon and his Owner are themed around Joker and Harley Quinn.

Miharu is voiced by Ayane Sakura, who is a prolific voice actress. She has been in Digimon media as Alice Yazawa from Digimon New Century. Some of her roles outside of Digimon are Ochako Uraraka in My Hero Academia, Abiko Samejima in Oshi No Ko and Aira Shiratori in Dandadan. I think this is the first time I’ve heard her voicing a character with such an airy tone. I can’t wait to see what Miharu has in store for the story. Jokermon is voiced by Mitsuo Iwata who voiced Clockmon in Digimon Ghost Game, making him another Digimon returnee.

Toei has been really furtive about the promotion of this arc. Unlike the Tactics arc, there wasn’t a trailer to promote this arc, only a key visual. One week ago, Miharu’s profile came out but mostly everything was censored. I think it was around two days ago when the rest of her profile was unveiled except for the sentence “Her identity is that of XXXXXX and the XXXXXXX.” It makes me wonder what she could be. I think it’s also safe to say that she’s definitely not Rose’s daughter or Wong’s granddaughter given how both of them are a part of the World Union, who are GIFT’s enemies and that both are foreigners compared to Miharu who has a more Japanese name. I also wonder how this anime as a whole will end in around 48-49 episodes given that we’re already at Episode 28 and a lot of the important plot points have yet to be answered. Let me know your thoughts on this episode!