#ask-anguirus

I can't say it's "stabilizing" much, but we had a double whammy of Xros Wars and 02 (original series!!) content at the same time, and 02TB's anniversary is soon, so I figured I might as well!

As it turns out that's exactly what happened. A bunch of transphobic former Who fans had a meltdown and mass reported me. My Twitter is now restored for however long that app lasts.

It's an interesting format for sure. I'm guessing they're trying to find a way to keep "constant content" going in light of the loss of the anime timeslot and all that (the card game's doing well, but there's only so much it can do by itself).

Speaking of which! Let's talk about the elephant in the room, which is Digimon losing its timeslot and Ghost Game not getting a follow-up anime! In previous occasions, every time Digimon lost a timeslot and the anime went on hiatus again, that meant the franchise was in danger of dying (again), but...as of earlier this year, Digimon is now Toei's third best-selling IP internationally. So it is highly doubtful that the anime is going back on hiatus simply because things aren't doing well.

So, what's actually going on?

We're used to the idea of "Digimon should run back to back if it does well," and that's true of series that are explosively popular (which Digimon is not right now, even if it's not on the verge of dying either), but in actuality, the Fuji TV 9 AM slot is a high-demand one to the point most franchises don't get to run for three years on it consecutively. That kind of thing is rare enough that Japanese fans familiar with the timeslot have commented that Digimon has probably accomplished a lot getting to keep it for the last three years. There are only two IPs that have ever gotten to run for four consecutive years or longer on that slot: one is Dragon Ball (I think "not being as profitable as Dragon Ball" is hardly something to freak out about), and the other is Digimon itself.

That financial report I just linked says that Digimon is Toei's best internationally selling IP including overseas sales. While we've had a lot of reports recently about Digimon's financial success, they all specifically note that it means internationally and not just Japan -- and, granted, that's still important especially because Toei and Bandai have been trying to aim for more of an international market in recent years, but that's what's telling us that the video games and card games are what's carrying Digimon now, not necessarily the anime, which currently has very little influence outside Japan besides the Crunchyroll simulcast (and probably some East Asian language dubs), and I imagine that doesn't contribute very much. And the Adventure: English dub doesn't seem to be coming out anytime soon...

Like I've said, the card game is doing great, and sets have been coming out in Chinese and Korean as of late.

So while I'm no financial analyst, I'm guessing they've decided to put a hold on the kids' anime right now because it's not a very good outlet for their current best option, which is to focus more on building an international market and solid base. That doesn't mean kids' anime will never come back, and it also doesn't mean the franchise isn't already in a much better situation than it was when Frontier, Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon ended, because the recent success of the video games and card games gives them a lot more of a foothold to do more business ventures, and maybe they can funnel that into actually getting partnerships to dub future kids' anime if they want to do that again. Moreover, it's true that in the past, the franchise would hit life support every time the anime stopped, but that's because the franchise was dependent on having a running anime for attention, which is not the case now because the card game has been doing fine independently of the anime. So I think it's pretty easy to understand that having an ongoing kids' show won't be the best option for them at the current moment, and meanwhile Digimon Seekers is coming out in multiple languages at once, so you can see what the strategy is here.

They're all pretty friendly, easy-to-get-along-with types, so I imagine there'd hardly be any friction of note at all. If anything, the more amusing thing to be concerned (sort of?) about would be the fact that both Haru and Hiro are in middle school, so Daisuke would be a little confused by how he's the senior but also younger than them.

Yeah, as far as 02 goes, the Adventure kids keeping the Digimon from their parents at all was more to do with the fact they knew their parents were likely to associate "the Digimon being there = something dangerous happening" and didn't want them to worry than any idea that their parents would have objections to the Digimon being there. Which ends up being unfounded in some cases, too (for instance, Koushirou's mom turning out to be surprised "Tento-san" isn't there at the end of 02 episode 27). Takeru seemed to have been very open with Natsuko about the fact Patamon was there for the entirety of 02, it was just during 02 episode 43 when he had to admit to her that his presence had come with more dangerous incidents happening under her nose.

Absolutely. The D-Reaper's complete motivations aren't delineated particularly clearly, but while most portrayals of "AIs just following its programming" usually tend to lean on the idea they're mindless and don't know better, the D-Reaper definitely seems to have a sadist streak. Its (or more specifically the Juri imitator's) language also phrases things in ways you really can't interpret as fully detached; it's clearly interested in humanity and Digimon, it's just that the "interest" is in how disgusting and worthless it considers them to be.

Notice that the D-Reaper's stated motivations aren't about anything like how humans being "destructive" will endanger the world if left unchecked, like Yggdrasil in Savers or Leviathan in Appmon. It also doesn't even bring up the idea that it’s following its original directive of being a cleanup program; it's the other humans who discuss it themselves. It consistently justifies its reason for destroying everything as simply being that humans and Digimon are not "worthy" of existence because it decided that they're weak, pathetic, and self-destructive. That's not something that comes from following a directive; that's something that comes from developing a concept of condescension and pure, undistilled malice. It's true that its motivations originated from that directive of being a cleanup program, but that directive was twisted into the most malicious form possible.

Probably...almost everyone in Hunters? It's been heavily hinted (to the point of being considered an "open secret") that the series was originally conceived of at the last minute to hold onto the timeslot until Saint Seiya Omega could air, so if it's true that the series was made primarily to stall, Hunters has way more effort put into it than any series in its position has any business having. I'm almost feeling tortured here! You knew you only had two cours and barely anyone was watching at 6:30 AM and you still came up with the concept of the Hunt and a number of backdrop characters with their own interesting backgrounds? Despite knowing it was unlikely you'd be able to do anything major with it? I appreciate the fact you guys were so inspired, and it's led to a lot of really interesting fanwork, but also, most of what was in Hunters had no business being stuck in a two-cour created to reserve a timeslot that was already awful...

It probably beats having production staff have to torture themselves for half a year working on something really boring, but as an audience member I feel like I'm having food dangled in front of me.