#alphadd

IOf course I don't mind <3 Thank you for stopping by!

I feel bad because my first thought was "like during the Kizuna movie but Hikari was in a coma--- *shocked Pikachu face*", so I'm starting to think I need to get my eyes checked

In any case!

Daikari Headcanons (Kizuna Era)

Kari gets dragged around on a lot of ramen-tasting missions, so she's learned to bring a go-bag of homework and such for occasions such as those

On the plus side, this means she never has to pay for dinner because you can bet this is what most of their dates consist of

Davis also takes the time to cook for Kari as an apology for always taking her with him on his trips, and she kinda likes being the taste-tester for his new recipes

This is where I make a Food Wars-related joke, but I shall refrain for the sake of everyone's sanity

Kari sometimes just whips out these bentos at lunch, and while her friends fawn over it, she's got that smug anime face (it's hard to describe, but it's similar to Pinocchio???) while saying, "Yeah, my BOYFRIEND made it hehehehe"

Let's ignore the fact that Ken gets one, too, ANYWAY---

They attend every festival together because festival food is just as important to study festival food as year-round food

Kari has albums full of all their "research" because who doesn't love food pictures? And yes, they have a joint Instagram where they post pictures of food DON'T @ THEM

Honestly, I've seen a couple so happy and eager to eat ramen every day, and I love that for them

(Yes, Kari makes Davis go out for a jog every other day to counteract the effects)

-----

I had to take the opportunity---

Look at these happy boys <3

I think that would have been a fun idea! I'm not sure if that would have been a flat improvement across the board (doing things like this would have required managing the subplots in order to not make it too complicated), but it probably would have reduced the "Frontier doesn't have partners" stigma, and even most Frontier fans tend to be curious about the original warriors that the narrative ultimately didn't tell us much about. I've also been following a certain diehard Frontier blogger who talks about the series at length, and they did have a minor complaint that the more recent stuff (drama CD and stage reading) had a very awkward way of treating the Spirits in a way that made them come off as an afterthought, so I feel like if they'd been established characters beforehand it might have given them more to work with.

I feel like any take that implies Daisuke was only given the protagonist position because of goggle boy/shounen hero privileges is most likely heavily influenced by the fact said dub cut off so much of Daisuke's important role in 02's themes. 02 is about so many things at once that it's hard to condense it to one thing, but the reason for Daisuke being at the center is driven home during the series finale: while he's not necessarily the leader from a tactical standpoint (and I'd even argue the 02 group doesn't actually have such a figure), he's the "emotional center" of the group who represents everything the series is trying to say about connecting and communicating with others, moving forward from adversity, not focusing on unnecessary things, treasuring even the smallest bits of happiness, and being willing to go to others for help when you need it. He emotionally pushes everyone forward during a time everyone is taking in a very harsh emotional and psychological toll, and so it shouldn't be difficult to figure out why he's the center of the story -- but without that aspect, it's much easier to come off with a sentiment like Ken being the real protagonist of 02 just because more of the background narrative centered around him. It's true that Ken has plot beats around him, but his relationship to Daisuke and Daisuke's influence on him is an important part of his character story.

I don't think it's completely impossible to figure this out if you're only working from the American English dub version, since the plot is still fundamentally somewhat following the Japanese version, so some people were able to catch on that this was the intent -- but I would say a not-insignificant percentage definitely didn't get this impression because of how confused the issue got, or said "even if that was the intent, they never actually did it in practice" when the original Japanese version...did, to the point where "being a positive person who lives in the moment" should be the take-home you get from Daisuke, and the series as a whole.

YES they most definitely do. Koushiro keeps all of Hikari's pictures on his own digital storage, and Mimi sends them more whenever Daisuke goes to visit New York (he loves it there). Sometimes they make memes out of the really funny shots of Daisuke and then proceed to make an entire scrapbook out of them.

l like it a lot! Well, I was a little worried they'd keep Daisuke in that jinbei from Kizuna, I thought, "that's going to make for a pretty awful key visual..." so I'm glad they gave him something suitably fashionable. Well, at least as fashionable as Daisuke can be. That jacket is definitely quite Daisuke in terms of aesthetic (and I'm fairly certain they're deliberately invoking his actual winter jacket from 02). I wonder if Tachikawa Seiji is on this movie?

I might be looking into it too much, but I do take interest in the fact they pointed out the outfit looks like a winter one (even if Seki had to troll a bit about that). As much as people constantly go on about Digimon being associated with summer, that's really only Adventure, and in 02's context summer was only a fraction of the series and one side story movie. Unlike Adventure's "long summer vacation" narrative, 02's story spanned the four seasons, and its climax and emotional payoff resolutions are heavily associated with the winter in episodes 38-50, to the point they stopped the real-time calendar to have the rest of the series show that part in detail. Setting it in winter creates a strong, distinct contrast from Adventure/Kizuna's summer, and in 02, the fragile beauty and soft melancholy of the season brought out a lot of how 02 distinguished itself from Adventure by concentrating so much on the themes of overcoming grief and adversity...