#baromon

Here’s an unnecessarily long recap; I told you they started happening eventually. Rather than briefly summarising the events of the episode to remind us, it feels like we’re being made to watch several of the important scenes over again, and I’m just there twiddling my thumbs waiting to get to the new stuff. It’s nearly two minutes long. Some very detailed Ultimate-level Digimon are onscreen a lot in this episode, more so than usual up until this point; this is probably why. Animation budgets.

Anyway, recap eventually over, ElDoradimon’s appearance out in the Yokohama bay caused a huge tsunami over the waterfront. I wonder if Kurata did damage control on this – since he knew what he was about to do, he could have sent word ahead to the human world telling them the Digimon were about to “invade” the city and people should evacuate. But he also could have not bothered to do that; I wouldn’t be surprised. We’ll see later this episode that at least some people haven’t evacuated yet.

Everyone on the Digimon side is staring in horror and shock at finding themselves in the human world. The Digimon citizens especially deteriorate into panic, and I don’t blame them. From their perspective, their entire home has just been forcibly dragged into an alien world full of people who want them all dead. That’s terrifying.

As a couple of wayward Gizmon: XT descend on the city, MirageGaogamon and Rosemon dispatch them easily. (Is this the first time any of the Digimon partners have stayed evolved in between episodes? I think it might be. Except for ShineGreymon at the beginning of last episode, but that shouldn’t count when he then promptly devolved for no reason.)

Baromon, at Yushima’s behest, tries to calm the citizens so that they still stand a chance of winning the battle.

Yoshino:  “Besides, that muscular idiot will be here soon.”

Ah, yes. The most appropriate way to describe Masaru. (He and Ikuto and their partners have not quite yet arrived through the Gate, which is still hanging open above them.)

Baromon:  “Yes! We still have Suguru’s son with us!”

Piccolomon: “Suguru’s son will take care of this somehow!”

Yes, clearly! The power of that perfect legendary hero who turned a desert into a lake just by punching it is definitely still here and able to win you the battle, somehow, even though it hasn’t done so yet. This thought actually rallies the citizens into cheers again. They are so desperately clinging to this much harder than they should, but I suppose anything makes them think there’s a chance is good.

Tohma:  (But… ElDoradimon has fallen into the human world. What the hell is Kurata thinking?)

Credit to Tohma, he’s able to not let this Masaru’s Dad Is Awesome moment pull him into his jealousy and stays focused on the important strategic concerns. Kurata is also here now, having hitched a lift through the Gate on one of his Gizmon, chuckling to himself.

Just as the Digital Gate is about to close, Yatagaramon shoots out of it with his three passengers. (Somehow Masaru and Agumon are now on his back along with Ikuto, even though they were in his claws at the end of last episode.)

For some reason, Yatagaramon then flies a good ways into the human city and deposits Masaru and Agumon on a random rooftop. They immediately rush back across the roof in the direction of the sea and ElDoradimon, but are blocked by the chain-link fence that Japanese rooftops have.

Masaru:  “We can’t stay here. Let’s go!”

You also could have not come here in the first place??? If getting to ElDoradimon was you guys’ highest priority, as it should be, why did Yatagaramon stop here?

The real reason for this, of course, is that this is where the writers wanted the fight with Kouki to begin. He arrives through his own (presumably space-time bomb-induced) Digital Gate on the rooftop, having somehow pinpointed Masaru’s exact location, at which point it makes sense for Masaru and Agumon to want to stay and deal with this here while they tell Ikuto and Yatagaramon to head back to the Holy Capital.

(Really, though, while having this fight with Kouki amidst the human city was important to the episode, there’s other ways this could have worked. Kouki could have led Masaru into the city on purpose after their fight began closer to ElDoradimon, especially since, from the perspective of Kurata’s grand plan, this is really just one big distraction to keep Masaru out of the way.)

Masaru and Kouki both roar and charge at each other, meeting fist-to-fist and flaring up with their respective Digisouls.

Masaru:  “That bastard Kouki… There’s something different about him this time!”

Ha, Masaru can sense just from punching him that Kouki’s stronger than before. I enjoy his ability to pick up on things like this intuitively through fighting; it’s very him.

Kouki somehow levitates into the air – geez, Masaru and co. never get to do that from the power of their Digisouls, unfair – before evolving into BioDarkdramon. Masaru evolves Agumon in turn.

…I suspect that the only real reason ShineGreymon randomly devolved at the beginning of last episode was for the purposes of having a scene here where Agumon is unevolved and so Masaru and Kouki get to punch each other, human-to-human, one more time before the real fight starts. Otherwise, ShineGreymon could have stayed as ShineGreymon throughout all of last episode, he could have been the one to fly them hurriedly back to the Digital Gate, and the fight with Kouki could have started more immediately without Masaru getting awkwardly stranded on a random rooftop he had no reason to come to.

Anyway, as the two gigantic armoured Ultimate-level dragon monsters charge at each other, opening time! The very first shot of it features ShineGreymon grabbing this fancy sword, which we will be seeing in this episode. I don’t know if said sword really deserves so much importance as to be put right at the beginning of the opening, though.

Back at the Holy Capital, Rosemon and MirageGaogamon are busy dispatching any Gizmon: XT who get close – several of them at a time, as you’d expect, because evolution levels. A couple of the city’s Pumpmon (Perfect-level) are inspired to get in on the action, so they use their Trick-or-Treat attack, which involves dropping a giant pumpkin on the enemy’s head to take control of them, apparently, and using this they get two Gizmon: XT to destroy each other. I might otherwise raise an eyebrow at regular Perfect-levels being able to so easily deal with these Gizmon: XT that were supposed to be a fair bit stronger than Perfect-levels should be, but perhaps if they’re using trickery to turn the enemy’s own strength against it, that’s one way to trump the usual power levels.

Meanwhile, on a long bridge over the sea (probably a real Yokohama landmark, knowing Digimon), a military van is acting as a portable command centre for Kurata.

What’s really rich is that the tech guys working there are wearing what looks like DATS uniforms. Either Kurata had his men wear knock-offs of that uniform out of spite towards DATS, or possibly, these are actual former DATS technicians who sided with Kurata during the whole bit between episodes 25 and 26. You know, where Kurata came in claiming that Mercurimon had attacked them and the main DATS team had traitorously sided with him and all Digimon are dangerous monsters who need to be eradicated.

Technician: “Currently, the enemy suppression rate is at 37%.”

Presumably what he means by this is that they’ve currently killed 37% of the Digimon who were in the Holy Capital to begin with. Calling it a “rate” doesn’t make much sense – but upon examination (of a Japanese online dictionary), it seems that might be a subs thing; the word used for “rate” here can apparently also mean “proportion” and should probably have been translated as that in this context.

Kurata:  “Throw the XT beta army at the enemy Ultimate-levels.”

Here’s an interesting little tidbit that could help explain why these Gizmon: XT have been getting progressively less threatening as they’ve grown in number. It seems he really has been mass-producing these things to the point that some of them are just beta versions that probably really aren’t as strong as the one he showed off in episode 25. Or, at least, that’s one way we could choose to interpret his use of the word “beta” here.

Kurata:  “Kouki-kun will continue to keep ShineGreymon busy.”

Yep, Kouki really is doing nothing but playing distraction. Not that Kouki minds, I’m sure, since he’s been champing at the bit to get a rematch with Masaru for several episodes now.

As the enemy suppression percentage reaches 40, Kurata takes this as his cue to begin implementing the next stages of his plan, which involve something called the DHS, and the Javelin’s Core. The latter is an absolutely massive metal javelin, which begins to be lifted into the air by four large helicopters. Along with that, some military ships move out into the water, carrying unusual-looking cannons on their decks.

Back in the human city, ShineGreymon and BioDarkdramon are wrestling each other in midair. As BioDarkdramon manages to kick his opponent away for a moment, he takes the opportunity to round on Masaru, tiny and fragile and an easy target, back on the rooftop. ShineGreymon tackles him away before he can get close, and then, for Masaru’s safety, offers him his hand to climb up on. Riding on your giant Digimon partner, not for the sake of transport, but for the sake of fighting! (Though, actually, Tohma did this first.)

Reporter:  “The monsters who are threatening us have suddenly intruded into the gulf coast!”

Ah, yes, those terrible monstrous Digimon are invading us again! That’s legitimately how this development must look to the human civilians who don’t know why ElDoradimon really ended up here. This isn’t really the main point of Kurata’s move to drag the Holy Capital over here, but it’s certainly helping with his propaganda that Digimon are horrible dangerous threats to humanity’s safety.

Reporter:  “Right now, a weapon designed by Professor Kurata to protect us is on its way. […]”

Miki:  “They’re making it sound like Kurata is a defender of justice.”

They sure are. Kurata, humanity’s hero, here to save us all from these vicious scary Digimon with his brilliant inventions!

Megumi:  “Shh. We’re still wanted criminals.”

Also, hey, it’s Miki and Megumi! We haven’t seen them since they stayed behind in the human world in episode 27, but they’re still here, having apparently been dodging arrest from Kurata’s people all this time. (Though, really, Megumi, you might not want to say you’re wanted criminals out loud like that, not when you’re here amongst a crowd of people watching the news report.)

Reporter:  “The government has declared their full support to Professor Kurata in his efforts to resolve this problem.”

Just in case anyone was ever wondering how Kurata got enough money and resources to create this ridiculously many Gizmon, not to mention some of his other toys he uses this episode: looks like he’s getting a lot of government funding and help from the Japanese military. This is a lot of the reason why he dragged ElDoradimon over here – in the human world, his home turf, he has access to a lot more stuff than he could reasonably bring to the middle of nowhere in the Digital World.

Chika and Sayuri are in their living room, watching this report, wondering if this means Masaru is back in the human world, hoping he’s okay. Sayuri must have been feeling so helpless this whole time; at least now that Masaru’s here again, within her reach, it’s something.

Out in the city, a bunch of human civilians (who are hopefully busy evacuating if they have any sense) watch the two giant armoured dragon monsters chase each other through the sky overhead.

Masaru is surfing on ShineGreymon’s shoulder now. That’s definitely not a very precarious position that should really put him at huge risk of falling off; it’s fine because anime physics.

ShineGreymon, the one being pursued, circles all the way around a skyscraper in order to get himself behind BioDarkdramon instead. He begins charging a Glorious Burst (telegraphing your location by calling your attacks, guys!), but turning to him upon hearing this, BioDarkdramon casually hangs there, making no attempt to dodge.

BioDarkdramon:  “Go ahead and shoot! Do it if you’ve got the guts.”

He’s hovering in front of a skyscraper full of civilians who haven’t evacuated yet. If ShineGreymon used a ranged attack here, it’d slam BioDarkdramon back through the building, killing hundreds of innocent people.

Masaru:  “That’s dirty, Kouki!”

BioDarkdramon: “Dumbass! There’s nothing clean or dirty in a fight!”

Oh, but there is. Masaru’s street fights are very anything-goes, but only insofar as that involves the people who have chosen to fight. He has always had very strong principles about not harming those weaker than you, those who aren’t involved and therefore haven’t made the choice to risk getting hurt. Bringing unrelated innocents into this and putting them at risk is disgusting tactics according to Masaru’s standards. That is Not What A Man Does.

Kouki doesn’t give a damn, though. He’s perfectly happy to get a few hundred innocents – innocent humans – hurt or killed if it’ll let him win.

There’s been a lot of obvious similarities between Masaru and Kouki, in how they’re both reckless hotheads eager to fight any opponent and who refuse to take losing lying down. But here’s their big contrast, made even clearer here than it already was from all of Kouki’s assholery in previous episodes. Masaru, despite his fighty nature, is a fundamentally good person with a strong moral code – his concept of manliness! – that he adheres to no matter what. Kouki doesn’t frickin’ care about any of that and only enjoys selfishly exerting power over others.

If anyone ever imagined, upon hearing that Masaru is a notorious street fighter, that this means he’s nothing but a violent thug who only cares about beating people up, they’re wrong. That’s what Kouki is, and Masaru’s nothing like Kouki in the ways that really count.

BioDarkdramon: “Also, let me tell you something else. You aren’t able to attack me, but I can attack you as much as I want!”

At this, BioDarkdramon charges at ShineGreymon with an attack. ShineGreymon dodges at first, but then, seeing BioDarkdramon continuing on right towards another skyscraper, has no choice but to put himself back in the way and absorb his momentum, just barely saving the building from destruction.

Not only is Kouki completely chill with potentially getting a few hundred innocents killed, he’s also totally willing to use that, and the fact that Masaru has actual standards where he doesn’t, in order to get himself an advantage. Those are some really horrifically dirty tactics, risking innocents just for his own gain. Masaru must be fuming.

(It’s this that makes me think things would have worked fine if their fight had started out by the bay, instead of Yatagaramon randomly bringing them far away from where they wanted to be. Kouki would have wanted to lead Masaru and ShineGreymon into the city during the fight anyway, precisely so that he could use this dirty tactic to stand a better chance of winning.)

…Well, I say Masaru’s probably fuming, but actually, after ShineGreymon blocks the hit, BioDarkdramon flings him to the ground and Masaru implicitly passes out from the impact for a little bit while we cut to other things.

Back at ElDoradimon, where Rosemon and MirageGaogamon are still working together to take down Gizmon, and Yatagaramon approaches overhead, four military ships have surrounded the city.

At Kurata’s order to initiate the Digital Hazard System – the DHS mentioned earlier – they fire their cannon things, which turn out to be a strange kind of solidified energy that works something like ropes, lashing onto each of ElDoradimon’s feet. Not that ElDoradimon was going anywhere anyway, but Kurata really wants to make sure it stays put.

The energy-ropes apparently also hurt, because the poor city turtle roars like it’s in huge pain. Baromon, horrified at seeing his beloved living city suffering, throws aside all sense of self-preservation and desperately climbs up onto the ramparts to try and appeal to his foes.

Baromon:  “STOP! Don’t put ElDoradimon through any more pain!”

The humans driving the ships probably can’t even see him from this distance. Kurata certainly can’t. Even if they did, they wouldn’t care. Digimon are just vicious monsters, right?

All Baromon actually succeeded in doing with this is to expose himself to attack and forget to watch his back. One of the Gizmon: XT still skulking around the city takes the opportunity to shoot a laser at him from behind, piercing right through him.

Baromon:  “T-Tell Suguru’s son… to take care… of ElDoradimon…”

As Yushima and some of the city’s warriors watch in horror, the last thought Baromon clings to is still the notion that their heroic saviour’s son will be able to somehow miraculously turn things around.

(He doesn’t even seem to realise that Suguru’s son is currently nowhere near the Holy Capital, busy settling a personal score and dealing with a diversion that’s threatening his own city. Masaru is just one person, not some kind of perfect legendary hero.)

With that, Baromon dies. They actually remember to show his egg disintegrating, for once, I guess because he’s a reasonably important character and they want to hammer it home that he’s really gone.

Gawappamon furiously fires off an attack at the offending Gizmon. The shot direction keeps managing to make it ambiguous as to whether any of Gawappamon’s attacks actually defeat a Gizmon: XT, which is good, because I’d be complaining about evolution level violation if they did. Gawappamon is only Adult. Given how dire things are getting, I’m really surprised Yushima hasn’t pulled out a stronger evolution. I’d expect him to be capable of it; Satsuma was.

Along with the ships chaining ElDoradimon down, Tohma and Yoshino notice the helicopters overhead carrying the javelin’s core. Out on that long bridge across the bay, there’s way more than just the one military truck Kurata’s using as a base. He’s got rows and rows of them filling the whole bridge, all of which open up to reveal countless Gizmon: XT. The swarm of Gizmon begin to fly towards the javelin’s core, which is now hanging directly above ElDoradimon.

Both of these fancy weapons of Kurata look Very Bad, so Tohma orders MirageGaogamon to deal with the Gizmon and Rosemon to go for the ships.

Back in the human city, Masaru regains consciousness, clutched protectively to ShineGreymon’s chest. (Aww, look at him protecting his comparatively small and fragile aniki.)

BioDarkdramon: “What’s wrong, Daimon Masaru? You finished already?”

Masaru:  “Don’t look down on me! Come down! I’ll kick your ass!”

I love the sheer Masaru-level audacity. It very much comes across like he personally will kick the giant dragon-monster’s ass, because ShineGreymon is currently lying on his back, not seeming ready to get back into the fight just yet.

Kouki responds by attacking the building ShineGreymon protected earlier, attempting to collapse the entire thing onto Masaru. (Geez, I hope the people in it evacuated during the interim while Masaru was out; it is very possible they all just got killed.) We get a very rare heroic instance of the “Did I get him?” *smoke clears* NOPE trope, as it turns out ShineGreymon got up just in time to shield Masaru from the whole-ass building falling onto him, while barely seeming hurt from the impact. Because, you know, that’s just a thing Ultimate-levels can do with their utterly ridiculous levels of power.

ShineGreymon: “Aniki, are you okay?”

Masaru:  “Thanks!”

BioDarkdramon: “Hey hey, being all chumly, are we? You make me puke!”

Shush, Kouki, this is a shounen anime, being adorable friends is a requirement. Also it’s nice to see a rare moment of ShineGreymon feeling like a character in his evolved form, caring about protecting his (tiny and fragile!) aniki.

Apparently no longer even trying to hide that this whole thing is just a diversion, Kouki goes on to taunt that Masaru shouldn’t even have the time to waste around here anyway because of what’s happening to ElDoradimon.

Masaru looks over towards the sea to see the javelin hanging above the turtle’s back, as the swarm of Gizmon: XT begin to wrap around the comparatively gigantic core, coating it with a layer of thousands of Gizmon.

Masaru:  “Wh-What is that?”

Kurata:  “A weapon that’s made specifically against ElDoradimon. The Gizmon Javelin.”

The writers are using that narrative trick of switching between two scenes at once for the sake of some more dynamic exposition. But though it sounds like Kurata is answering Masaru’s question, in reality, he’s nowhere near him at all. He apparently just felt like gloating at an audience of two technicians who must already know full well what the Gizmon Javelin is. Continuing to be very full of himself and his genius inventions, this Kurata.

(The fact that he designed this weapon specially for ElDoradimon also lends some amount of credence to my theory I mentioned a few episodes ago, that his assassinations of SaberLeomon and Mercurimon required preparation and special honing of the Gizmon to destroy their data specifically. Killing an Ultimate-level is not as easy as just shooting it with the regular old death laser without any planning, it would seem – and especially not an Ultimate-level this huge.)

BioDarkdramon: “Once that’s completed, ElDoradimon is dead meat. Wha’cha gonna do?”

Kouki is having a great time taunting Masaru about how he can’t be in two places at once, both defending the Holy Capital from Kurata and his own home city from Kouki’s wanton destruction. The latter is even more tricky right now, given that ShineGreymon’s usual ranged attacks will also do a number on the city if he tries to use them.

BioDarkdramon fires off a shockwave at the pair just to punctuate his point. ShineGreymon is unharmed, but Masaru goes flying out of his grasp and ShineGreymon has to reach out and catch him. Again: so tiny and fragile! ShineGreymon working so hard to protect his aniki!

BioDarkdramon: “Daimon Masaru, you are powerless. Bite your nails while you watch ElDoradimon disappear! After that, I’ll savour my time beating y—”

Masaru:  “No thanks! I’ve got no plans to stand by and watch this happen!”

I love how, despite Kouki’s attempt at evil gloating, just full-on being a huge asshole and trying to enjoy watching his enemy suffer and squirm, Masaru shuts him right down and is having none of it.

Masaru:  “No matter how many times I’ve fallen, I’ll stand right back up again! Again and again! As long as there’s still a possibility, I’ll never give up! You are going down!”

Like hell he’s ever going to let himself just sit there and be powerless, no matter how bad things get!

(And really, despite how dire things look and the way Kouki’s trying to taunt him about this, Masaru and ShineGreymon are both still standing, able to fight. This really isn’t necessarily a situation in which he feels powerless as much as some of the other things he’s been through.)

From the strength of Masaru’s sheer stubborn determination, and as the intro to Believer starts up, his Digivice begins to glow in his pocket. This honestly isn’t any particularly interesting or unique kind of emotion from Masaru here that’s triggering a new power, but also this new power isn’t especially strong or useful either compared to a full-on evolution level, so I don’t really mind.

Glowing with the same power, ShineGreymon punches the ground and summons up a fancy double-ended sword out of a ring of flame. (It’s a cool animation, so don’t think too hard about the fact that it makes it look like he just pulled it out of the tarmac of this ordinary human street.) This is the GeoGrey Sword. Not sure why it gets named after his Adult-level and isn’t, like, the ShineGrey Sword, but hey.

Now that he has a melee weapon, it’s a lot easier for ShineGreymon to safely fight without risking levelling the city every time he attacks. In this particular instance, summoning up a giant sword is pretty useful and exactly what he needs to turn the tides!

(It… really won’t be the rest of the time, though. Get ready for me to poke fun at that.)

This time, Masaru stays on the ground instead of riding on ShineGreymon’s shoulder, which is less Friends but probably a lot more practical, considering the way ShineGreymon’s spinning and dancing around with his sword moves.

One of his swipes manages to slice into the… I hesitate to call it “skin”; leathery fabric? …the non-armoured part in BioDarkdramon’s midriff, and Kouki is furious. How dare Masaru and his partner injure him! What do you mean this fight isn’t just a one-sided beatdown in which Kouki taunts Masaru about his powerlessness and savours his suffering as revenge for the defeats in previous episodes.

BioDarkdramon: “All of you will die!”

I really want to take note of the specific Japanese phrasing here, for reasons. Kouki doesn’t directly use the word “die” – what he says literally means “disappear” – but apparently the subbers felt like it was appropriate to sub it as this anyway. Someone like Kouki is entirely the sort of person who wouldn’t beat around the bush and would get very rough and direct about death when he’s furious like this, so I’m going to assume that, despite the literal wording, this is a turn of phrase that is nonetheless frequently used to mean death in Japanese, enough that it might as well be what he’s literally saying. I want to trust that the subbers used their judgement and knowledge of Japanese connotations to sub it that way to give us the correct and most accurate effect.

This matters to me a lot; you’ll find out why in a couple of episodes.

BioDarkdramon happens to have placed himself above ShineGreymon in the air, which you’d think would instantly solve the ranged-attacks-would-wreck-the-city problem. ShineGreymon can fire a Glorious Burst at him from here and it’d dissipate harmlessly into the sky. Maybe we can pretend this is a sign of Kouki being so furious that he’s getting careless, but in practice it’s meaningless, because now that he has his new sword, ShineGreymon isn’t even thinking about the ranged attacks any more.

BioDarkdramon fires off an orb of dark energy at ShineGreymon (and the city), but ShineGreymon uses his new sword like a baseball bat to deflect it and send it into the ocean instead. Actually another pretty useful application for the sword! that we will never be seeing again.

(Also, the animators have already forgotten to keep drawing the wound on BioDarkdramon’s stomach, whoops.)

ShineGreymon: “This is the end!”

BioDarkdramon: “Cut the bullshit! This won’t end. It’ll never end! Not until I beat you!”

Kouki: the world’s sorest loser ever, as you’d expect from an asshole like him.

They charge at each other in midair with their respective blades, and ShineGreymon remains unharmed as he runs BioDarkdramon through, defeating him. He catches the unconscious Kouki and the egg and places them on the street, then he and Masaru rush off to try and help ElDoradimon. No way Masaru’s going to sit around having a conversation with his defeated Bio-Hybrid rival like the other two did; he’s got better things to do right now, besides which he wouldn’t even care about anything Kouki had to say.

Kurata hears that BioDarkdramon has lost, but he barely cares, because Kouki did his job and provided ample distraction; the Gizmon Javelin has finished forming. We never even saw any of MirageGaogamon and Rosemon’s attempts to take out these weapons, but we can assume they were largely fruitless against the sheer size and scale of them. Even Ultimate-levels have their limits when Kurata’s basically levied the entire Japanese military and spiced it up with his own anti-Digimon tech.

Just to give you a sense of how huge this thing is: it’s really freaking huge. I do not blame MirageGaogamon for not being able to take that down. Exponential increase in power from a higher evolution level only goes so far; there must be thousands of Gizmon: XT in there.

Masaru:  “ShineGreymon, we’ve gotta destroy that thing!”

Oh, Masaru. He and ShineGreymon are rushing to make it there as fast as they can, determined to feel like they can do something about this. In the urgency of the moment (and perhaps the still-lingering idea that he’s the saviour’s son and the whole city’s counting on him specifically), it doesn’t seem to occur to him that obviously Tohma and Yoshino and Ikuto must have been working on destroying that thing the entire time and getting nowhere, in which case he’d be no different. He just doesn’t want it to not be possible.

(As they fly towards the bay, they happen to pass directly over the news crew. Chika, watching on TV, realises her brother really is here – I doubt she could see Masaru directly, and she’s not seen ShineGreymon before, but it’s a fair guess that he might be the next evolution for Agumon, so, sure.)

But even if ShineGreymon taking out the javelin were somehow miraculously possible, it’s too late. Before he can even get close, Kurata gives the order, and the javelin begins to drop.

MirageGaogamon and Rosemon, seeing this, immediately switch tacks from trying to take out the Gizmon to just getting their partners the hell out of there. Tohma and Yoshino are still there in the capital, and the capital is screwed. Gawappamon and Yushima also implicitly manage to abandon ship, along with a small scattering of the city’s warriors, but most of them probably weren’t so lucky.

The poor city turtle roars in agony one last time as the javelin pierces through it, turning the city to rubble in an instant, disintegrating ElDoradimon into data and a soon-to-be-lost egg just a moment later. It’s pretty stark and horrifying, all of the onlookers watching in horror as this gigantic, beautiful creature is torn apart, all while Kurata chuckles to himself like it’s the best day ever. All the Digimon who were still inside the city must have been killed too (all the baby Digimon who were sheltering inside from the battle!), hundreds if not thousands of lives wiped out in an instant.

As debris floats past, Masaru stands on ShineGreymon’s shoulder, staring at the gigantic empty space where an entire city just was, having been powerless to get there in time, to stop it, to fulfil his promise of protecting the city (and living up to his dad’s reputation)… and with no other way to express it, he just roars in desperate anguish.

The remaining Gizmon are sucking up all the life energy from this, of course. This was the big haul that Kurata wanted, to get him enough energy to fulfil his other goal. We get another glimpse of that thing in the tank, just to remind us what he was working towards.

Not long after, the DATS group – the usual four, plus Yushima – are standing at the waterfront with their (surprisingly still evolved!) partners, looking out at where ElDoradimon no longer is, trying to process their overwhelming loss.

Ikuto:  “We couldn’t stop it in the end.”

Yoshino:  “We were useless.”

Oh, Yoshino. I’m sure everyone’s feeling that way, but it’s very heartbreakingly her to be the one to voice it.

Masaru:  “Not yet!”

Yoshino:  “Masaru!”

Masaru:  “The battle’s not over yet! There’s gotta be those in the Holy Capital who survived! We have to save as many as we can!”

Oh, Masaru. Everyone else was ready to lick their metaphorical wounds and feel sorry for themselves, but no. Masaru will not feel powerless; he will not accept that they just lost and there’s nothing they can do. There has to be something they can still be doing to make a difference. Even if it’s only working to save the scant handfuls of surviving Digimon who might have made it out in time, that’s something they can work on that means they aren’t just giving up. He is so stubbornly, utterly incapable of letting himself fully acknowledge the terribleness of a situation and I love him for it.

(And I mean, it’s fair that of course they should try to focus on doing that! But it is very very Masaru to refuse to even think about how much they lost and grieve for those who just died before turning to that.)

As the group head out on their partners (oh, that’s why the writers kept them evolved) to go look for survivors, a couple of men in suits are observing Tohma through binoculars and noting that he’s the one they’re looking for. Before Tohma can climb onto MirageGaogamon’s hand to head off too, the men approach him.

Man:  “Master Tohma. We’ve come for you.”

Given the respectful way they’re referring to him, this doesn’t seem like a sinister kidnapping sort of thing; rather, they simply require his presence for some reason. Despite the better things Tohma has to be doing right now, this is evidently something he can’t refuse, as next we see he and Gaomon are in a helicopter heading away from the site of the battle.

Masaru notices Tohma isn’t following them, sees him in the helicopter, and calls out to him in vain. He has no idea that Tohma was called away; all he knows is that he’s leaving. Why would Tohma be abandoning the fight at a time like this?!

Overall thoughts

For a Masaru-focused episode, which are usually my favourite things, this one isn’t massively interesting or issuey, but it’s fine and solid enough. (And, hey, unlike with Yoshino, at least we have plenty of other excellent Masaru episodes to choose from, so I can hardly complain.)

On an objective scale, Kouki is arguably the least interesting of the Bio-Hybrids, because he doesn’t have any kind of issues that are the root of him doing this. Thanks to Ivan being terrible, though, Kouki comes in the middle of my personal rankings of the trio anyway. He may not have any issues, but he is a solid foil to Masaru, very similar to him in a lot of superficial ways but completely the opposite in the ways that really matter. He serves that purpose well, and this episode in particular does a great job of highlighting it.

Kurata’s approach to this battle continues to be impressive even as it’s horrifying. Again, I enjoy the way this mini-arc progresses – how the previous two episodes’ developments were all leading towards this one, in which Kurata had ElDoradimon in such a hopeless position that there was really nothing anyone could do to save it. It’s neat how, though each of these three episodes may have felt on the surface like victories in that the Bio-Hybrids were defeated, our heroes kept losing ground each time in the actual battle that mattered and ultimately utterly failed.

---

After a quick recap, we open with the Holy Capital’s preparations to fend off attack from Kurata’s forces. ElDoradimon has moved into the centre of a huge lake, implicitly upon Tohma’s suggestion. The DATS crew and Baromon are standing at the top of one of the city’s tallest towers as Tohma explains that this is a vantage point from which they can see all around, so any Gizmon who come close enough over the lake to attack will expose themselves to a counterattack.

Baromon:  “Yes.” [he turns to Masaru] “You chose a good place. It truly is impenetrable.”

This whole strategy was clearly all from Tohma, but Baromon gives all the credit to Masaru anyway, like Tohma’s just some lackey who answers to him. I don’t think he’s doing this to purposely be malicious towards Tohma; I think he and the rest of the citizens are still so hooked on Masaru being their beloved saviour’s son that they don’t realise he’s not the only important member of this little band of humans who showed up to help.

Masaru:  “Dad protected this place, so I’ll do all I can to do the same!”

Baromon:  “That’s our saviour’s son! I’m entrusting our friend to you.”

Agumon:  “You’ve got a lot of responsibility on your hands, Aniki.”

Masaru doesn’t pick up on the fact that Tohma wasn’t given the credit he deserved, but I think that’s also not out of any kind of malice towards Tohma and is instead because of him being wrapped up in his own feelings about this. His dad came here and saved this city and is their legendary beloved hero; Masaru simply has to do everything he can to live up to that, and that’s all he can think about right now.

Gaomon:  “It was Master who came up with the strategy!”

Tohma:  “A saviour…”

Tohma was watching bitterly from the moment Baromon heaped all the praise onto Masaru, but it’s Gaomon who actually voices that Tohma really deserved the credit. It seems that Tohma’s also still kind of wrapped up in his own kind of dad issues. Because Masaru has the unquestionably awesome father, apparently that means he gets to be the one who’s praised for everything, even things he didn’t do, and that’s just how having an awesome dad works…?

(It really isn’t, Tohma; Masaru needs to stand on his own merits, and Gaomon is right to point out that you deserved the credit here.)

Meanwhile, at Kurata’s camp on a nearby hill, Nanami is observing ElDoradimon’s location through a telescope.

Nanami:  “That’s the best strategy that can be made out of their current condition.”

This begins to highlight the issue with Tohma’s “perfect strategies”. They’re not unconventional or unpredictable in any way; they’re the single most optimal thing that can be thought up. Which means that anybody else who has a similarly good head for strategy can look at the situation Tohma is in and predict the exact strategy he will use before he even uses it.

Nanami remarks that someone smart must have come up with this, and Kurata tells her it’s got to be Tohma.

Kurata:  “By merely judging from his IQ, you can tell that Tohma-kun’s intelligence is beyond that of an ordinary person’s.”

This might just be a subs thing, but the “merely judging from his IQ” bit always bugged me. What do you mean merely; judging someone’s intelligence is the entire point of an IQ. You can also judge Tohma’s intelligence from, I don’t know, his PhD and medical license at the age of fourteen, it’s not hard.

It's notable how Kurata refers to Tohma with -kun, which, considering Tohma is much younger, is probably a looking-down-on-him thing, despite having addressed him as “Doctor Tohma” to his face a few times prior to this.

Kurata:  “He is most commonly categorised as a genius. Yes… Just like you.”

Nanami:  “Hm? That sounds interesting.”

And here we finally get told about the obvious parallel between these two. Nanami has, on more than one occasion, made a point of going after Tohma during their fights, so I strongly suspect she’d already picked up on Tohma’s intelligence before.

She plays it off here like she’s only just realising it, but that could be because she doesn’t care enough about Kurata’s opinion of her to bother explaining that she’d already figured that out herself. Being a genius, she’s bound to be very used to having other people assume she hadn’t figured out something that was obvious to her from the start.

Kouki:  “It doesn’t matter what they come up with. I’ll crush them with my own hands!”

Much like Masaru, Kouki doesn’t give a damn about strategy and insists he’ll win through raw power alone. He crushes an empty packet of potato chips as he says this to drive the point home (having been munching on them earlier in the conversation; again, the most disgustingly casual approach to genocide).

Ivan:  “Garbage… must be properly disposed of. Those are the rules.”

This might have been a neat continuation of Kouki’s metaphorical chip-packet treatment, except for the fact that Ivan isn’t really the kind of person who would think of his enemies in this situation as garbage like Kouki basically does. And also except for the fact that Ivan then explains that he totally made a good metaphor but definitely isn’t saying this out loud oh my god please stop with this one-dimensional unfunny joke. I am so ready to be done with Ivan soon.

Kurata:  “Anyway, there’s no need to rush. Don’t you think it’s boring to simply win? Since they took the trouble to defend themselves, let’s play with them for a bit first.”

Kurata is beginning to show signs of getting rather power-crazy. He started this because he’d genuinely convinced himself that he must destroy all of these horrible vicious terrifying Digimon for the safety of humanity. But now he’s not feeling like it’s urgent at all. He knows he has enough power to be able to achieve his goal in the end, and he’s started to enjoy the thrill of having that power over his enemies in and of itself.

As he speaks, we see an Igamon – one of Ikuto’s ninja friends he brought here last episode – floating silently and unseen over the camp.

Later, back in the Holy Capital, this Igamon has reported back about having found the enemy’s base camp, where all the Gizmon are assembled as well.

He also drew a definitely-very-helpful sketch of the human who was their leader. Masaru, Tohma and Yoshino stare at it in bewildered exasperation.

Igamon:  “The saviour’s face is marked with sweat!”

Baromon:  “Is the enemy that formidable?!”

I love that Igamon (and Baromon, apparently) have such faith in his drawing skills that they think the humans’ reaction is clearly one of great fear, and not anything else.

Tohma:  “Igamon, was this man wearing a white robe and glasses?”

Igamon:  “Yes. He was.”

Tohma tactfully finds a way to confirm whether this human was Kurata without insulting the poor Igamon’s artistic ability. He tried, bless him.

We cut to the humans and their partners gathered in front of a crowd of Digimon to give a speech about the upcoming battle. They’re all sitting in kinda throne-like seats, with Masaru’s being the biggest and fanciest because he’s the saviour’s son.

Baromon:  “Everyone! As of now, we have an announcement from our saviour. Quiet down and listen closely.”

Baromon makes a point of grandly introducing the words Masaru is about to say. He (and Igamon just earlier) have also shifted from calling Masaru “the saviour’s son” to simply calling him “the saviour”. All of this can only be adding to the pressure Masaru feels to live up to his dad’s reputation here.

As Masaru stands up and clears his throat to begin the speech, he actually seems kind of nervous. Though he’s really good at speeches about his manly principles, those things are always very spontaneous in the heat of the moment. Doing this thing that is supposed to be a speech, in front of a huge crowd, a crowd who admired his dad and is expecting him to be just as awesome, is quite a different matter. It’s a little daunting to him, as much as he’s trying his best to hide it.

(Though, to be fair, all of them are blushing, even Agumon, Yoshino and Tohma. They’re all clearly feeling kind of awkward about being put in this position of such revered importance when they’re just here trying to help.)

Yoshino:  “Don’t slip up, saviour.”

Since we know Yoshino doesn’t actually see Masaru as some grand saviour the way the citizens do, she clearly means this not as further pressure but as a light-hearted little tease at the ridiculousness of the situation, to maybe help Masaru feel a bit more relaxed.

Masaru:  “We know where the enemy is located! Now we’ll march right in and bring Kurata down!”

This is… the entirety of Masaru’s “speech”. Really wasn’t something that needed so much hyping up from Baromon, and of course Masaru’s opinion would be as simple and straightforward as “we should charge in there and fight the thing”.

This elicits some confused mumbling from the crowd, as even Baromon questions that they’re going to make the first move. (Though I wonder whether Baromon is questioning the recklessness of it, or whether he’s only confused because he’d got it into his head earlier that it was “Masaru’s” plan to stay put and defend themselves.)

Ikuto and Falcomon, who are also here but standing off to the side for some reason (I guess Baromon didn’t have enough fancy seats), speak up to agree with Masaru’s approach.

Falcomon:  “We’ve had enough of Digimon getting hurt!”

Ikuto:  “Also for Mercurimon and Yukidarumon… We’ll end this fight quickly!”

At this, the crowd’s mood quickly shifts into cheering and agreeing. It’s pretty interesting how Masaru alone couldn’t inspire this attitude from them; it’s hearing Ikuto and Falcomon talking about it from a Digimon perspective, avenging fallen friends and preventing more deaths, that really gets the crowd on-side.

Tohma:  “Wait! This is a trap!”

[the crowd’s cheers quieten into confused mumbling]

Masaru:  “A trap?”

Tohma:  “We were able to find their location so easily. It’s not like Kurata to be this careless. He must be intentionally using his camp as bait, in order to force us to divide up our troops. We should stay here for now and wait for the enemy to come to us.”

Tohma, as ever, has picked up on the more subtle strategies being used by their enemy, and is advocating the most careful, cautious approach. Everything he’s saying makes a lot of sense.

Revolmon:  “That’s…”

Pumpmon:  “You’re thinking too much into it…”

But to a crowd that’s just fervently got on board with the reckless gung-ho approach of simply charging in there and fighting and winning, it mostly sounds like Tohma’s trying to ruin the mood. It’s much harder to start cheering and getting excited about a strategy that comes down to sitting and waiting to be attacked.

Masaru:  “I don’t care if it’s a trap! As long as Kurata’s defeated, the fight will end!”

Oh, Masaru. He didn’t realise it was a trap until Tohma pointed it out, but even knowing that, of course he doesn’t care. Of course he still wants to charge right in, because this is still the simplest and most comprehensive way to solve the problem as far as he sees it. They’ve spent so much time wandering around the Digital World trying to find Kurata, helpless to meaningfully protect the Digimon without knowing where the source of it all is, and now he’s right there, dammit!

Tohma:  “Then you’re just doing what Kurata wants! He’s waiting for us to make our move!”

Masaru:  “Then we’ll just go ourselves! You don’t have a problem with that, right?”

I really like Masaru’s approach to this. He and Ikuto (he puts his arms around Ikuto and Agumon as he says this; it’s pretty cute) want to charge right in at Kurata, and nothing will ever make them change their minds about that – but that doesn’t mean that Tohma can’t still do his own strategic defensive thing back here, right? He knows that he and Tohma have entirely different opinions about the best approach to this kind of thing, so rather than insisting solely on his idea, he’s letting them both do their own preferred approaches. They’re not mutually exclusive!

As I talked about a fair bit in the early Masaru-Tohma rivalry episodes, the best way to strategise with Masaru in your team is to accept that he is never going to not be Masaru, and work around that. Tohma can do that. He’s done it before.

…Though, Tohma did make a point that Kurata’s plan is to make them divide their forces by having some of them run into the trap. Masaru and Ikuto are only a small group, but still, ShineGreymon and Yatagaramon are two of their most powerful fighters who won’t be able to protect the city because of this. I bet that’s on Tohma’s mind.

Tohma:  “This isn’t one of your little school fights! If we don’t follow a strategy, we can’t protect the Holy Capital!”

Perhaps because of that, or because of the sheer magnitude of what they have to lose if they fail, or simply because he’s still frustrated about Masaru getting all the praise and attention just because of his dad, Tohma isn’t willing to accept this and let Masaru go do his thing so easily.

Masaru:  “A good offence is the best defence! I’m going to kick Kurata’s ass and that’s that!”

[the crowd begins cheering again]

Crowd member: “Words of a true hero!”

Yes, the most heroic words: go fight the thing and kick the enemy’s ass. The gung-ho offence approach really is far easier for a scared and angry crowd to get behind. And Masaru’s their legendary hero(’s son), not Tohma.

(Though it’s still notable that it was actually Ikuto who really got the crowd on board with charging in in the first place, rather than Masaru. Yet they’re now unconsciously associating all of their excitement and fervour with Masaru anyway, because of course their saviour’s son is the best leader.)

Tohma stares at the crowd as they cheer for what he can’t help but see as the obviously stupid and reckless strategy that’s going to get them all killed.

Tohma:  “Why doesn’t anyone understand?”

It really must be so painful and frustrating for him right now, knowing that he has the right ideas about this but feeling like nobody’s listening to him. And all because of Masaru’s reckless brute-force approaches, and because Tohma’s not the one with an indisputably admired father.

Yushima is here too, sitting off to the side. (He got a chair, for some reason, even though Ikuto didn’t.)

Yushima:  “Well… It might be best to just go with the flow.”

Tohma:  “No way… Even Yushima-san agrees with them…”

I don’t think that’s necessarily what Yushima is doing, actually. From the way he phrases this, it seems like he understands Tohma’s argument and agrees with the merits of his strategy, but he also acknowledges that right now, there’s nothing Tohma or anyone can actually do to change the citizens’ – or Masaru’s – mind and have Tohma’s approach happen. You’ve just gotta accept Masaru’s Masaru-ness and work around it, like I said.

But Tohma’s in such a state right now of feeling like nobody’s listening to or understanding his viewpoint. He can’t help but see this as Yushima – someone he thought of as pretty sensible and likely to see his point – agreeing that Masaru’s approach is totally the best one, just like everybody else.

Later, as the sun sets, Masaru’s little band of four gets ready to head out.

Masaru:  “I’ll definitely have beaten Kurata the next time you see me.”

Yes. Definitely. Go in there, defeat Kurata, stop the genocide and save the Digimon. (And live up to his dad’s reputation.) It is very definitely going to be this easy.

Masaru:  “So take care of defending this place for me until then, Tohma!”

Masaru – unsurprisingly – seems completely oblivious to all of the issues and frustration that Tohma has been harbouring about this. Sure, they had a bit of a clash back there during the speech, but they have arguments about strategy all the time and it’s never a big deal, so why would this be one? He’s counting on his friend and comrade to have his back, just like always.

Tohma’s eyes narrow just slightly at this, but not in an especially resentful-seeming way. Whatever he’s feeling here, he’s able to keep it mostly inside.

Tohma:  “You don’t need to tell me that.”

This could read like a casual bit of banter between friends. But I think Tohma might mean it rather more literally in this instance. Masaru doesn’t need to tell him to do the thing that was Tohma’s plan in the first place. Tohma knows Masaru isn’t deliberately trying to steal his credit, but the suggestion of anything in that direction still frustrates him just a little.

Masaru chuckles, still oblivious to anything going on with Tohma and seeing this as friendly banter, and gives a casual see-ya.

Then he jumps down towards the Digimon-boat that’s already carrying the others, juuuust a little too late as it sets off, and lands in the water like a doofus, having to frantically swim after it to catch up. Our glorious saviour, everyone!

Tohma:  “I can’t believe that reckless guy is considered a saviour.”

Gaomon:  “I fear for the future.”

At least Gaomon can snark with Tohma about this, assuming this is just casual snark on Gaomon’s part and not him genuinely being worried about the outcome of this battle given Masaru’s recklessness. I’m not sure. Either way, Gaomon is always on his master’s side like the good dog he is.

Lalamon:  “You think so?”

Yoshino:  “I think the reason why Masaru continues to take such risks is because he trusts you, Tohma.”

Yoshino gets it! She didn’t say anything at all during their argument back at the speech, but she was paying attention and can see Masaru’s attitude for what it is, because she’s not wrapped up like Tohma is in the sense of inferiority it gives him.

Masaru really is genuinely trusting Tohma to hold the fort back here and isn’t doing this in an attempt to steal all the glory or completely ruin Tohma’s strategies – quite the opposite! Masaru and Tohma’s contrasting approaches can make them a really good team if they use both approaches in tandem while giving the other space to do his thing. Masaru knows that, even if Tohma’s kind of forgetting it right now.

At Yoshino’s words, Gaomon looks up at Tohma in surprise, like he’s only just realised this too and is hoping it’ll make his master feel better. But Tohma continues to stare doubtfully into the distance, unconvinced. Just like last time they clashed way back at the beginning of the series, his discomfort about all this isn’t really coming from Masaru at all.

My injured wings

will awaken a miracle

And I will flutter once again

And it’s opening time! I enjoy this first handful of lyrics from the new opening quite a bit. This sense of overcoming struggles and continuing to flourish even though you’ve been hurt, using the very part of you that’s been hurt, is an image that’s quite appropriate for multiple storylines in the later parts of this series.

Masaru:  “Kurata! Prepare to die!”

Damn, Masaru’s feeling vicious as he and Ikuto and their partners rush towards where Kurata’s camp is. The actual Japanese line didn’t directly mention death, but from what I can make out, his phrasing is something in the direction of strangling, so, yeah, pretty to-the-point there.

Meanwhile over at ElDoradimon, Tohma and Gaomon watch as three Gizmon – just the Adult-level AT versions here – approach over the water. Stationed on the city walls, an assortment of Digimon with ranged weapons (why do so many Digimon have guns) fire at them and miss spectacularly, then some Igamon hiding under the water throw shurikens at them and take out two of them in one shot each. Baromon deals with the last one that made it through before it can reach the city.

That was pretty easy. In fact, going by the strength that a single Gizmon: AT was shown to have in episode 25 – one Adult-level held its own against DATS’s three Perfect-levels even before Kurata evolved it to Perfect – these Gizmon: AT here are significantly weaker for two of them to go down in a single attack from an Adult-level Igamon. So much for all those lines in episode 28 about how these new Gizmon are definitely a lot stronger!

We’re starting to reach the point where the Gizmon, including the XT ones soon enough, are becoming extremely subject to the Inverse Ninja Law: the more of them there are, they less of a threat they are. But if we think about it (possibly a little more than the writers ever did) that could make some kind of sense. Kurata mentioned that the one he had in episode 25 was made from modifying a bunch of regular Digimon to turn them into a soulless puppet. But once he starts mass-producing Gizmon, there can’t be that many Digimon that he was able to get hold of as a resource to create each and every one. So it just about logically follows that these mass-produced ones he must be using now, if they’re not made directly from mashed-up-Digimon juice, could be quite a bit weaker.

Regardless of all that, it’s also a thing that Kurata only sent in a handful of ATs just now when he has plenty of XTs lying around. Tohma says that this was just a probing attack to get a feel of their strength, and I guess we’ve got to go with that. I imagine the writers mostly wanted to show us a brief glimpse of something resembling the large-scale warfare that ought to be going on here, before Tohma spends the rest of the episode in a much more one-on-one kind of encounter.

Tohma:  “The next place they’ll attack will be over there.”

Tohma’s referring to a waterfall at the edge of this elevated lake, the one point at which water is flowing out of it. Should the waterfall be destroyed, the lake will drain, and ElDoradimon’s current defence of being surrounded by water on all sides would be lost.

(It’s a little unclear in this episode in particular why this would be such a bad thing, because all of Kurata’s forces can fly over the lake anyway, so all the lake really provides the city is open space to see the enemy coming, which would work just as well with a dry open lakebed. However, the water being there is in fact a relevant factor that the Digimon side can’t afford to lose, as we will see next episode.)

Since the waterfall is such an important potential weak spot in their defence strategy, Tohma heads over to protect it. Alone. (Well, with Gaomon, but.)

If it’s so important, you’d think he’d want to bring a large amount of forces with him, to maximise their chances of defending it. But he doesn’t. I don’t think he even tells anyone else he’s headed here. Tohma’s perfectionism and insistence on relying on nobody but himself to get the job done is showing again, at perhaps the worst possible time. After everything earlier in the day with the citizens buying into Masaru’s approach over his and refusing to give him any of the respect he deserved, he doesn’t trust anybody else with this most important part of his strategy.

And also, now look who’s dividing up your troops, Tohma. The whole point of him protesting Masaru and Ikuto rushing off towards Kurata was that it would leave fewer powerful Digimon behind to defend the city, and yet now Tohma’s depriving them of the help MirageGaogamon could give, too.

Tohma:  “Thank goodness. It appears…”

Nanami:  “Nothing’s happened to it yet, hmm?”

As he reaches the waterfall, Nanami is here too, standing atop a tall tree for drama points, echoing Tohma’s thoughts. Being a genius like him, she predicted that he would come here for this exact reason and came herself to confront him.

Tohma:  “Who’s there?”

Nanami:  “Dear, dear. Have you already forgotten my voice?”

It’s really quite reasonable that Tohma wouldn’t remember her voice; the previous times the DATS team encountered the Bio-Hybrids, Nanami didn’t speak up that much and only interacted with Tohma in particular in any way in her Digimon form, which had a different voice. But apparently Nanami feels like she ought to be at the forefront of Tohma’s mind, just like he’s been in hers since she noticed he was a genius. (Has Tohma even noticed in turn that Nanami is a genius? I don’t think he has.)

Nanami turns to face him, rattling off his exact strategy regarding the waterfall and why he came here to protect it.

Tohma:  “You were able to predict everything?”

Tohma appears a little stressed and caught off guard by this. He’s not used to people predicting his strategies – if someone can see right through it like that, it’s really not such a perfect strategy at all.

Nanami:  “Anyone could see it, if they just gave it some thought. Wouldn’t you agree, Doctor Tohma Norstein?”

Clearly not just anyone could figure it out. But Nanami lives in a world where all these sorts of things are so completely obvious to her, and it’s so frustrating that nobody else can see it. Tohma here is one of the only other people who can, just like her.

(Tohma was almost having the same kinds of thoughts earlier, as the crowd ignored his strategy that was the obviously correct approach in his mind, and he hated the way that nobody else could understand that.)

Nanami:  “I’m quite interested in you.”

Of course she is. Somebody else who gets it, who isn’t so frustratingly slow and stupid like the rest of the world, who might actually understand what it’s like to be her?

Nanami:  “I wonder for how long… you will entertain me!”

That’s something she can entertain herself with. Though it is also interesting to note how she seems to be resigned to the fact that even Tohma won’t be able to entertain her forever, that sooner or later she’s going to grow bored of him, too.

At this, she dramatically leaps from the tree and floats daintily to the ground with her parasol that is definitely not actually big enough to slow her fall that much, but anime logic I guess. Landing behind Tohma, she suddenly goes for his head with a fast and precise kick, and he only just dodges out of the way. Nanami’s got herself some physical fighting skills to go alongside her smarts, just like Tohma!

I guess for the sake of making a mini-cliffhanger out of revealing Nanami’s badassery or something, we get a brief cutaway to Masaru’s little group. Some Gizmon: XT rise up in front of them, Agumon laments that it really is an ambush, and Masaru does not care and is ready to kick their ass.

Anyway, back to Tohma. Gaomon rushes at Nanami with a spinning punch attack, and she elegantly flips backwards out of the way. Mid-air, she lets go of her parasol, letting it fall into Gaomon’s face and block his view of her as she rebounds off a nearby rock and slams into his stomach with a kick. Some impressive tactics, as you’d expect from someone like her.

Tohma:  “She’s reading Gaomon’s movements!”

Nanami:  “It’s not that difficult. When you’re as smart as I am, you already know what he’s about to do.”

Again, Tohma’s strategies (and by extension Gaomon’s) are very predictable to someone like Nanami.

Nanami:  “Nothing that moves within your hearts is left unseen to me. Absolutely nothing.”

Reading his strategies is really not the same thing as knowing everything he’s feeling. But Nanami’s a genius who always knows everything and is certain she’d also know about how a fellow genius would see the world, so she believes this, nonetheless.

Nanami:  “But… There is one thing I don’t understand. Why… Why are you fighting?”

If there’s something going on in Tohma’s head that doesn’t match with how she feels a genius should see the world, it totally must be something that doesn’t make sense, something she needs to ask him about and figure out. It couldn’t simply be that, despite him being a fellow genius, he’s otherwise a completely different person from her.

Nanami:  “The Digimon’s existence won’t bring you any worth. There’s no reason for a genius like you to fight them.”

That sure is not even remotely the point of the reasons one should have to oppose a genocide. Nanami genuinely doesn’t seem to realise this.

In fact, given his baggage with the Norstein family – we’ll be getting to that! Soon! – this lofty concept of “worth” is bound to be the last thing Tohma wants to be told he’s obviously supposed to care about. His expression as he responds to her is probably mostly horrified at her not getting why murdering sapient beings is bad, but perhaps a bit of it comes from how close to home that comment might have hit.

Tohma asserts that Digimon are friends who can connect with humans (as Gaomon makes it back to his side to agree) and that he can’t allow Kurata to get away with letting them suffer. Nanami stares at him for a moment, and then chuckles, before looking down at him in contempt.

Nanami:  “How absurd. Did you think you could fool me with that ‘defender of justice’ talk?”

Tohma:  “What?”

Nanami:  “You just feel a sense of superiority from helping those who are weaker than you. Even when you’re executing DATS’s missions, the honest truth is that you’re only doing them for your own conceited self-satisfaction!”

(These lines are accompanied by this very fun shot of the camera zooming out from Nanami, showing her image reflected in Tohma’s eyes, and then zooming out further from him to show his image reflected in Nanami’s eyes in turn. It gives the impression that she’s looking right into his soul, that he’s the same as her and she knows everything about him. Kudos to the storyboarder for that one.)

It's really not that hard to accept that Tohma is helping the Digimon simply because he cares about them and it’s the right thing to do. That’s what any decent person would do, genius or not. So Nanami’s insistence that Tohma’s friendship talk must be a load of bullshit to cover up more selfish reasons really actually says a lot more about Nanami than it does about Tohma.

She has spent so long isolated from everyone else due to her nature as a genius, looking down on them all for being stupider and weaker than her, to the point that she can’t connect with and care about anybody else on a personal, emotional level any more. Giving herself a sense of superiority is the only reason she could ever conceive of for helping somebody else, so she’s utterly convinced that Tohma, a fellow genius, must see things the same way and have the same attitude.

But Tohma can’t see that she’s projecting. Her words rattle him, because it must not feel entirely untrue to him. As a genius who’s always the smartest person in the room, he probably can’t help but feel some sense of superiority to everyone around him in a certain way, even though he knows he shouldn’t. The Norstein family would also have drilled into him a certain idea that he should consider himself superior to anyone not of their noble heritage, to an extent. And he does care a lot about his own sense of pride and self-satisfaction, as evidenced by his insistence on doing everything perfectly. Enough of this is somewhat technically true about Tohma that it must be making him wonder whether the part where this means he doesn’t truly care might be true as well.

(It doesn’t, Tohma. You can have all of those mental vices and yet still care about helping other people who need it anyway, because you’re a decent person at heart.)

Gaomon:  “Don’t make fun of Master!”

While Tohma may be frozen, not sure what to make of her words, Gaomon is such a good dog and immediately leaps to defend his master’s integrity – literally, as he throws himself at Nanami for a punch. She effortlessly blocks it with one hand.

Nanami:  “What a boring attack.”

Seems like this outburst of Gaomon’s was complete Masaru-style head-on recklessness without anything resembling one of Tohma’s usual strategies behind it, if Nanami’s going so far as to call it boring. It’s pretty adorable that Gaomon got so heated about her insult to Tohma’s character that he charged right in without even thinking about being strategic.

In another quick cutaway to Masaru’s group, ShineGreymon (who evolved offscreen, hooray) dispatches the Gizmon. As Masaru celebrates that that should be all of them, some more Gizmon: XT rise up before them in a suspiciously similar way to how they did before. Masaru is, if anything, even more thrilled.

Anyway, back to Tohma again. Gaomon is still furiously leaping after Nanami, trying to punch her, but she barely seems to care about him. She dramatically falls backwards off a high rock ledge, away from Gaomon, to land next to Tohma.

Nanami:  “Tohma… I understand your loneliness. The thirst in your heart that nothing you do can satisfy.”

Tohma:  “What would you know?!”

Nanami:  “I know. After all, both you and I… are of the same race. You can’t help but feel lonely, can you? After all, everyone else around you are idiots. There isn’t one person out there who understands you. Being a genius means being alone.”

Really, Tohma’s right. What would she know? She’s continuing to insist that because they’re both geniuses (she doesn’t mean “same race” in a literal sense), she definitely knows everything about he sees the world.

All of this comes with an extremely strong implication that this loneliness and lack of connection to all these idiots around her is a feeling Nanami is very familiar with. She’s just barely skirting around directly admitting that these are her own feelings, instead projecting them onto Tohma, but that’s clearly why she’s doing all this. There’s some actual sadness in her eyes there as she says that geniuses are always alone.

Nonetheless, this is still getting to Tohma, as evidenced by his expression here, and the fact that he flashes back to earlier events as she talks about this: his inability to convince anyone of his strategy as they all listened to Masaru’s reckless approach instead, even Yushima and Yoshino seeming to take Masaru’s side.

The inclusion of Yoshino here, from when she tried to tell Tohma that Masaru trusts him, is especially interesting, because in the context of Nanami’s words, it implies that Tohma saw this as yet another person not understanding or listening to him. It was really sort of the opposite of that! She was essentially saying that Masaru understands Tohma, in his own way, and in turn that meant that she did too! Tohma’s friends don’t need to be geniuses who can follow all of his logic in order to understand him and care about him, but right now he might be forgetting that a little.

Tohma:  “In that case, let me ask you this. Why are you supporting Kurata?”

Tohma doesn’t appear to have a proper rebuttal to the loneliness thing right now, based on the fact that he changes the subject. I suppose this is somewhat related to the topic of being surrounded by idiots, but it sure is dodging the loneliness point entirely.

Tohma:  “Why do you side with a fool who fears Digimon and wants to eradicate them?!”

I love this; it doesn’t take a literal genius, but Tohma is plenty smart enough to know that Kurata justifying his irrational fear and hatred of Digimon to the point of genocide is nothing but the behaviour of a huge moron. Yeah. Damn right it is. I also like that Tohma is trying to appeal to Nanami with this, even turning towards her and fervently grabbing her shoulder as he says this – surely she’s also smart enough to see what a fool Kurata is?

Nanami chuckles.

Nanami:  “I don’t remember siding with him.”

Of course she’s able to tell that there’s no actual logical righteousness or justice in what Kurata’s doing, like he constantly insists there is. She certainly isn’t in this because she agrees with him.

Nanami:  “Hunting for Digimon is just another way of passing the time.”

Gaomon:  “What?!”

Nanami:  “Like I said, when you become a genius like me, everything bores you.”

But she doesn’t care about the Digimon either. She’s so disconnected from everybody else in her little genius bubble that she doesn’t really care about anything. She’s just along for the ride, because she’s bored, and getting to turn into a powerful creature and defeat creatures from another world she’d never heard of before seemed more intellectually stimulating than anything else she could find. It’s a kind of horrifyingly casual reason for her to be participating in a genocide, but it makes a lot of sense for the person she is.

Nanami puts her hand over Tohma’s hand that’s still on her shoulder. Not to pull it away, but rather to keep it there, like she wants to hold onto this sense of connection between them (even though Tohma did that for an entirely different reason than what she wants this to be).

Nanami:  “But now I’ve found something much more interesting. Will you join me, Tohma Norstein?”

Tohma:  “What are you saying?”

Nanami:  “Only a genius can understand a fellow genius. If you join me, changing this world to whatever we please isn’t a mere dream.”

Nanami acts like this is all about changing the Digital World into some sort of massive twisted playground for herself and Tohma. Heck, she drops that idea completely casually like an afterthought, still stuck on the idea that Tohma totally feels exactly the same way as her, as if this thing she’s thinking about as an ideal goal must obviously be what he wants, too.

But really, there’s no way Nanami wouldn’t be able to try and do this on her own, if she wanted to. Kurata is also quite the technological genius and has come this far with destroying the Digital World; Nanami, being even more of a genius than him, could totally go further, if she so chose. This isn’t about her not being able to do this without Tohma. It’s more that she doesn’t see the point in doing so without somebody to share it with.

Like she was insistently projecting onto Tohma, acting like it was only his problem and not hers, she’s lonely, desperately reaching out towards this one other person in the world who might actually understand her and be able to connect with her. The whole idea to take over the Digital World or whatever is really just an excuse, something for them to do with themselves for there to be a point in them partnering up at all. She’s only acting like that’s the main point of it all because she refuses to admit that this is all about her being hopelessly lonely and reaching out towards him for companionship. No. No way. She’s a genius; she’d never do something that irrational.

There’s a heartbeat sound effect as Tohma stares at her in horror for a moment. I don’t believe that he’s actually tempted by this offer for a second (though it’s possible, for reasons, that the writers could want viewers to at least consider that he might be). Rather, this is presumably him being taken aback at the sudden realisation of how utterly batshit this woman is, someone he was just a second ago trying to reason with on the basis that surely she can tell Kurata’s a fool. He’s probably also not all that happy about her casual implication that obviously geniuses like them should want to take over the Digital World and use it as a playground, either.

They’re interrupted by the sound of an explosion from the lake. Some of the Gizmon: XT are straight up self-destructing as a means of attack, taking out the Igamon stationed in the lake, while Ivan watches on, effectively acting like a general for the Gizmon army. Man, Kurata must have ridiculously mass-produced these things if he’s willing to throw so many units away so carelessly. There’s plenty of ways a Gizmon: XT could take out an Igamon – or most other Digimon in the city – without this. Like he indicated at the beginning of the episode, Kurata really is kind of playing with his food and flexing the confidence and power he has over them purely for kicks.

Hearing that this is happening, Gaomon suggests he and Tohma should head back to the scene of the fight to help.

Nanami:  “That’s not the place for you to return to.”

What do you mean a genius like Tohma might actually genuinely care about protecting these worthless Digimon things, no, that can’t be right, as a fellow genius he’s definitely meant to be exactly like her.

Nanami:  “Now, come with me. Let’s build a more exciting world.”

Still making it all about that supposed end goal rather than her screamingly transparent need for company. She also articulates the point of her goal to change the Digital World a little more clearly this time – she seems to think she can make it into something exciting that she can have fun with and never get bored again. (And yet that’d still be pointless to her without anyone to share it with.)

Tohma slaps away the hand that Nanami had put close to his face.

Tohma:  “I refuse. I have a duty to protect the Holy Capital.”

Oh, Tohma, still always making things about duty. That’s not entirely inaccurate; he effectively kinda does (though really, not as much of one as Masaru does right now given the whole dad thing), but, did he need to put it like that? He could also just say that he wants to defend the city because he cares about Digimon. This is his choice, not just a “duty” that he’s obligated to fulfil. It’s very telling that it doesn’t occur to Tohma to frame things that way.

Nanami:  “Even though you’re a genius… you’re a stubborn blockhead.”

Yes, clearly, if Tohma doesn’t want to go along with her and wants to keep defending the Digimon, he must actually be an idiot, for not choosing to do the thing that obviously any genius should totally want.

Really, for all she’s been insisting she knows everything about Tohma, she barely knows him at all. She knows nothing about his Norstein upbringing that’s given him this ingrained sense of “duty”, nor about his bond with Gaomon and DATS that’s made him care about protecting the Digimon. But no, it couldn’t possibly be that Nanami doesn’t know everything. She’s a genius, she’s always right, so he must be wrong, even if he’s a genius, too.

Nanami:  “Then, I’ll just have to make you understand through force.”

That’s… not actually going to achieve the goal you want, Nanami. She wants a Tohma who agrees with her and joins her willingly, hence why she’s been projecting that that’s totally the person he is. Coercing him into changing his mind through force isn’t genuine co-operation. But she’s so desperate for his companionship one way or another, and/or so utterly convinced that her worldview is right and he’s just being stupid in a way that can totally be beaten out of him, that she doesn’t see that.

Tohma:  “We’ve defeated you once. You can’t win against us now.”

Nanami:  “Evolution isn’t your special privilege.”

I like Nanami’s line as she reveals that she can now evolve to a higher level, too. Of course she’d hate the idea that Tohma could have any reason to look down on her, to be more special than her.

Nanami:  “Hyper Bio Extra Evolution!”

That’s the evolution call for their Ultimate-levels: same as before, but with the word “extra” added in there. They use exactly the same stock animation for their equivalent of charging a Digisoul as they had before. Conveniently, all three of these animations happen to obscure the characters’ mouths for most of it, so that they could be re-used for these new evolution calls without worrying about the different lip-flap. Clever animators.

And then she evolves into BioLotusmon, who is… a sexy fanservice flower lady. Of course she freaking is. Ugh. I really liked BioCoatlmon, a pretty, winged snake with a neat design that isn’t inherently feminine in any way. But nope, we couldn’t possibly keep her in a nice gender-neutral or even feminine-but-not-sexualised form for her Ultimate-level, not when she’s Female™, gotta get those boobs out.

She’s also really gigantic, unlike Rosemon, because this episode (her only episode) features her going up against MirageGaogamon. The writers obviously figured that’d look silly if they weren’t evenly-matched in size.

BioLotusmon: “Let me show you… my new power that is beyond the Ultimate level!”

Gaomon:  “Beyond the Ultimate level?”

Don’t freak out too much, Gaomon, because I’m not sure I buy this. Granted, the Bio-Hybrids at their Perfect levels were noticeably somewhat stronger than a regular Perfect. But it seems that Kurata can only keep ahead of the ridiculous exponential escalation of evolution levels up to a certain point. Note how he very conspicuously has not created any kind of Ultimate-level Gizmon form, which you’d think would be the first thing he’d try.

Tohma:  “We don’t know what her abilities are. Be careful.”

After evolving Gaomon, Tohma is continuing to be his usual strategic, cautious self. He likes to know his opponent’s skillset so that he can plan a strategy around that and doesn’t enjoy dealing with something he can’t predict.

Both MirageGaogamon and BioLotusmon have that teleportation-like level of speed as they dodge each other, but BioLotusmon repeatedly manages to get herself behind MirageGaogamon and create openings to attack, boasting again that she can read his movements. As Tohma rushes towards his fallen partner, BioLotusmon blocks his way and addresses him, and her face and voice melt away into Nanami’s.

Suddenly, things get very trippy, as snakes with Nanami’s upper body (featuring boobs, of course, that part is clearly very necessary; this is another episode with that Evidently A Straight Dude art style, sigh) float towards Tohma and coil around him. What really must be going on here is Nanami using one of her Digimon abilities to show him this as an illusion, smoothly enough that he didn’t even notice her beginning to do so.

She continues to try and coax Tohma into joining her, all while still making it about how Tohma is totally the one who wishes to no longer be surrounded by idiots and to be with somebody who appreciates and understands him, how the only thing going on with her is her boredom, how this is all about creating and controlling a new world. This is still very much actually about her own loneliness, but she will not admit that – not even to herself, I don’t think – and projects it all onto him.

For not the first time, she reaches out to caress Tohma’s face, which can’t be making him comfortable at all (though unwanted face-touching is really only one objectionable part of this trippy snake illusion she’s currently trapping him in). This lack of respect for his personal space is another sign of Nanami insisting that he obviously totally wants to come with her and couldn’t possibly be uncomfortable about this whole thing.

Tohma, again, firmly pulls Nanami’s hands away from his face.

Tohma:  “I… I am not that self-conceited!”

I love Tohma putting it this bluntly, implicitly pointing out how conceited she’s being at the same time. Just because Nanami’s got it into her head that the best thing for a genius to do is take over a world and make it her plaything, that doesn’t mean that Tohma’s up himself enough to think he should, or even could.

Tohma:  “There’s a source of power in this world that even I can’t calculate!”

Nanami:  “Daimon Masaru, is it?”

Tohma:  “That’s right. There are times when I’ve been saved by his abilities.”

Aww, look at Tohma’s faith in Masaru’s ridiculous unpredictable nature, still here long after he grew to respect it in episode 5, and even despite the niggles and jealousy that Masaru’s presence has been giving him lately. Genius calculations don’t always account for everything; sometimes it benefits to have the completely opposite approach. And Tohma is smart enough to understand that!

Nanami:  “So you rely on something like him.”

Tohma:  “Rely on him? Me?”

This, though, gives Tohma pause. For all of his faith in Masaru’s approach to things, he doesn’t like it being framed as him relying on Masaru. No. Tohma’s not supposed to need to rely on anyone; he has to be able to do things all on his own. That’s why he came to the waterfall by himself.

Nanami:  “There’s no such thing as something beyond calculation. That’s just an excuse.”

Tohma himself would have said that at the beginning of the series, until the situation in episode 5 forced him to open his mind to Masaru’s unpredictable approaches. Nanami refuses to accept this because she hasn’t been in a similar situation with a similar person – and she probably never will, because she’s so completely walled herself off from anyone who isn’t as smart as her that I don’t think she’d ever be willing to give somebody like Masaru a chance, no matter the circumstances.

Nanami:  “If you continue to stay content living with fools, you’ll only neglect improving yourself!”

Tohma:  “That’s not…”

As if Tohma hasn’t been improving himself plenty since he started hanging around with Masaru and becoming more accepting to his kind of attitude. Tohma’s become a hell of a lot more open-minded and willing to try different approaches and work with others since then, and that’s nothing but a good thing. Tohma’s insistence on doing everything alone and sticking to rigid, logically-optimal, predictable strategies are his biggest weaknesses, as this episode has been illustrating!

(I’m not sure whether Tohma’s line is him struggling to even be able to articulate this himself, or whether it simply gets cut off because Nanami interrupts him out of refusing to listen to his side of the argument.)

Nanami:  “Throw away your worthless friends and your insignificant self-satisfaction!”

Funny how the two things she’s telling him to throw away are actually kind of the two things she wants him to have more of. She’s asking him to become friends with her instead (but it’s okay, because she’s a genius and not a worthless moron). And she’s basically been telling him to have more self-satisfaction by lording their genius over an entire world with her (but that’s fine, because it’s the right kind of self-satisfaction, about geniuses being always right, not a kind of self-satisfaction born from humility and accepting that he doesn’t know everything, what kind of genius would ever do that).

There’s some more very creepy trippy stuff (what are those arms) as she continues to try and lure him in with her illusion – and then MirageGaogamon, the goodest dog, shatters through it while calling out for his master. Just before he tackles BioLotusmon away, we see that she was holding Tohma in her giant hand, confirming that yes, this was all some kind of power of hers and wasn’t just the animators deciding to be very weirdly metaphorical today.

Tohma’s breathing heavily as MirageGaogamon asks him if he’s all right. Yeah, not surprising that he’d be a bit shaken after that, even as he assures his partner that he’s okay.

In another brief Masaru cutaway, this time it’s Yatagaramon who takes out a Gizmon. And then more Gizmon rise up, in… oh dear, that’s the third time we’ve seen that same exact bit of animation this episode, isn’t it.

Ikuto:  “What’s more, they keep showing up the same way like all the others!”

Ikuto actually lampshades this, which is pretty hilarious. Gotta give credit to the writers there; if their animation budget gave them no choice but to repeat this bit of animation multiple times to pad out time, the least they could do is have a little nod to it, as a way of saying, “yes, we know, we don’t like it either.”

MirageGaogamon: “Master, she can predict all of my movements. Please guide me through your orders.”

Anyway, back to the fight; MirageGaogamon doesn’t realise that asking Tohma to guide him is not going to solve this problem. Nanami understands the strategies of a fellow genius, so she’d be just as good if not better at reading Tohma guiding his partner than she is at reading MirageGaogamon alone. But MirageGaogamon is being a loyal enough dog that he believes the only problem is that he’s not clever and unpredictable enough, and surely Tohma will know exactly what to do to outwit her, because his Master is the best smartest person who never fails! What a good dog.

Tohma:  “Attack Pattern! Gamma Formation 0.25!”

Tohma begins barking out these codenames for strategies, which is the kind of thing we haven’t really seen from him since the very early episodes when he and Gaomon were first introduced. This may well be the writers having awkwardly forgotten that Tohma even did this until it become relevant to the narrative of an episode again. But maybe we can charitably interpret this as Tohma having drifted out of using such unnecessarily elaborate strategies since he loosened up to Masaru, and now he’s slipping back into old habits because of the way Nanami’s been getting to him, or simply because he thinks Nanami is smart enough that he needs this kind of thing for once.

(Still doesn’t entirely answer how these codenames, which are evidently for things they’ve decided on and practiced in the past, can work with the new abilities that MirageGaogamon has only recently gained since his new evolution. Unless we want to imagine that during their implied long journey to the Holy Capital offscreen, Tohma spent some of that time drilling new strategies with MirageGaogamon. I bet that drove Masaru a little nuts.)

This particular codename appears to refer to MirageGaogamon rushing towards his opponent and then speed-teleporting behind them, before… completely ruining any element of surprise by calling his attack. I know that’s a thing Digimon are apparently obligated to do, but geez. BioLotusmon sees through it, of course, and we’re supposed to think of this as her having predicted the clever strategy rather than her simply having heard him yelling behind her and dodged in time, shush.

Tohma orders another attack pattern, and this one looks a lot more impressive, with MirageGaogamon moving fast enough to clone himself into eight, and then all of the clones attack in one movement that’s actually just a diversion for him to appear behind BioLotusmon as she dodges it. …Then he ruins it again by calling his attack. BioLotusmon turns around to block, seeming more impressed but not remotely to the point that she can’t handle it, and we’re still meant to be taking this as her figuring out the strategy rather than oh my god MirageGaogamon stop calling your attacks, okay.

(As she gloats, there is a completely unnecessary boob jiggle. Animator, no, stop it, you are terrible.)

What follows is what I interpret as a montage of MirageGaogamon loyally asking his master for more orders, which all repeatedly end in him being out-predicted and beaten down each time he tries one. We don’t see Tohma give the orders, nor the actual attack patterns themselves, but the shots of BioLotusmon attacking are cut together abruptly enough that it feels like a montage skipping bits in between, rather than that she’s simply beating the crap out of MirageGaogamon while Tohma stands there helplessly. Nanami wouldn’t want to do that; that wouldn’t be the fun way to win.

The point of all this, though, is that MirageGaogamon is such a good dog. No matter how many times Tohma’s attack plans fail to work and he gets hurt because of it, no matter how much more stressed Tohma looks as he pores over his digital organiser and tries to think of something better, MirageGaogamon stoically keeps asking Tohma for his next orders anyway, continuing to believe that this time, surely, his Master will think of something that will work.

As BioLotusmon kicks MirageGaogamon to the ground yet again, she decides she’s had enough entertainment and plants one of her staffs at the top of the waterfall, as a threat.

BioLotusmon:  “If you join me, I’ll leave the waterfall alone.”

This is still her very much missing the point of getting Tohma to join her. She’s supposed to want him to join willingly, but if he did that, he wouldn’t care about the waterfall and ElDoradimon and this threat wouldn’t be needed. She must be getting desperate enough to have his company in any way that she’s willing to coerce him into it (after which, judging by everything we’ve seen, she will probably continue to fervently insist to herself that he totally wanted it and chose it for himself).

Tohma:  (She’s predicting all of my calculations. What the hell should I…?)

Tohma doesn’t even consider the offer at all (of course he doesn’t) and is continuing to try and figure out a way to defeat her. An idea hits him, and he closes his digital organiser entirely before getting up on MirageGaogamon’s shoulder.

MirageGaogamon: “Master, it’s too dangerous.”

Tohma:  “Just do it.”

MirageGaogamon: “Yes.”

Aww, what a good dog. He’s worried about the danger (to Tohma, rather than to himself), but he’ll follow his Master’s orders anyway!

MirageGaogamon begins to simply charge straight at BioLotusmon. She raises her other staff and fires a beam of dark energy at him, and Tohma orders him not to dodge it; he braces himself and endures the attack as the energy hurts both of them. (Tohma really did not actually need to be on MirageGaogamon’s shoulder for this and all that’s doing is getting himself hurt too, but it’s the spirit of the thing, okay. They’re in this head-on reckless strategy together.)

MirageGaogamon powers through the attack through sheer force of will, getting closer and closer to BioLotusmon until he’s right in front of her, at which point he knocks the staff out of her hand and fires his signature attack at point-blank range. No amount of strategy is letting her dodge that, and she was never going to be able to predict this. What kind of genius would make such a stupidly reckless move?

On her knees, defeated and about to devolve, Nanami struggles to make sense of what just happened.

BioLotusmon: “You plunged in while receiving my attack head-on… Just what sort of calculations did you use?!”

Tohma:  “None. I just thought that if we got close enough to attack at point-blank range, we’d be able to pull it off.”

BioLotusmon:  “I lost… to such a foolish attack…”

He didn’t use calculations! He did a Masaru! This is the exact kind of reckless, head-on, still technically a strategy kind of strategy that Masaru has been known to come up with to win fights before, and sometimes, it’s the right approach! Tohma is open-minded enough to understand that, which is more than can be said for Nanami. That’s exactly why she could never have predicted this and why this worked.

Just before devolving, as BioLotusmon screams in pain and sore-loser-ness, she lets out one last burst of energy connected to the staff she planted at the waterfall, causing it to explode. The waterfall is destroyed, and water begins flowing rapidly out of the lake, just as Tohma was trying to prevent. Tohma beat Nanami in the fight, but Nanami refused to let him have that win and destroyed what he wanted to protect in the end, out of spite. I don’t think she even really cares about how this is going to affect the ongoing Digimon war, now that she’s no longer able to take part in it. She just didn’t want to let Tohma win.

(But it was a legitimately smart move of her to plant the staff there to begin with, not only as a threat but also as a back-up plan should she happen to lose.)

A quick cutaway to Kurata shows him watching the water drain away, not caring that BioLotusmon’s signal is gone if she took the waterfall down with her. Masaru and Ikuto are apparently still busy fighting the endless identically-animated hordes of Gizmon on the way to Kurata’s camp. Kurata offhandedly comments that Kouki might not even get his turn to fight at this rate; Kouki does not seem happy about that suggestion.

Devolved, Nanami lies injured on the ground, her broken Digivice and the egg of her Digimon form lying beside her. I guess being defeated this thoroughly simply beat the Digimon data right out of her.

Nanami:  “I… I haven’t lost to you… Because… What you used was… Daimon Masaru’s power…”

Man, talk about a sore loser. You’d think she’d be even more mad at losing to some reckless stubborn idiot like Masaru, but right now she’ll take anything to get one up on Tohma and feel like she at least hasn’t lost to him. But it’s all bullshit, of course, because Tohma’s open-mindedness and willingness to work with others and acknowledge more approaches than just the genius one are precisely the strengths he always had over Nanami, and those are his strengths, even if they involve other people.

With that, Nanami… to be honest, it kind of looks like she dies, and the show is pretty ambiguous about it for a while, but she will in fact be cameoing in a much later episode, so she’s actually just falling unconscious.

Tohma:  “Masaru’s… power?”

Despite everything I’ve been saying here about Tohma’s willingness to accept Masaru’s approach being a good thing, Tohma himself has not properly internalised any of that. Especially not now, after all the doubts of his that Nanami’s words managed to dig up, and after this episode’s earlier events fuelling his jealousy towards Masaru. He doesn’t want to have had to rely on Masaru’s power in order to win. He’s supposed to not need to rely on anyone except himself, right?

Gaomon is a good worried dog but still isn’t talking to him about this stuff enough, leaving Tohma to just stew silently in his own emotions.

Tohma:  “Why… do I feel so irritated?”

As ever, it’s not really Masaru he’s irritated by. Tohma doesn’t understand it because he doesn’t quite realise that he’s frustrated at himself, for his inability to live up to his own ridiculously high self-sufficient standards of perfection.

Overall thoughts

A really great episode among a string of just-pretty-okay-ones! This is easily my favourite episode in the Bio-Hybrids arc. Look at how many issues it’s full of. Delicious.

Even before we get into the main bulk of the episode, the beginning has some great stuff: painfully drawing out Tohma’s jealousy at Masaru for having an awesome respected dad, bringing back the clash between Masaru and Tohma’s approaches and laying on Tohma’s frustration at everyone favouring Masaru’s. This is not only fun in and of itself but is also setup for some Important Stuff to come soon.

Then, of course, there’s Nanami, who makes an excellent villainous foil to help us explore Tohma’s genius issues and jab at his doubts. Nanami’s also just a fascinating character in and of herself and easily the best Bio-Hybrid. She’s a terrible person, of course, but she’s complex and messed-up and all of her psychology makes a lot of sense for who she is. I love her blatant projection of her loneliness onto Tohma; it’s so screamingly clear that that’s why she’s asking him to join her, but she refuses to admit that and insists that it must be true for him. There’s also more fun Setup going on in this Nanami stuff as well, though I should probably restrain myself from indicating exactly what.

And I love the way that Tohma manages to win the fight by pulling a Masaru. It’s the perfect solution to defeat an enemy who matches him in the genius department, and proof that Tohma’s better than Nanami because he’s more open-minded than her. What’s even more fun, though, is that winning this way gets to Tohma, because what do you mean he can’t just rely on nobody but himself for everything. Refusing to rely on anybody else is also very appropriately the reason he failed to defend the waterfall regardless; things might not have turned out this way if he hadn’t insisted on going there alone.

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After another reasonably short recap (I really overestimated how soon they’d start getting long, huh), we begin the episode with some more of Masaru’s fighting against endless Gizmon: XT on the way to Kurata’s camp. This time, it’s actually well-animated, as ShineGreymon throws a Gizmon into a tree and slices it – and the tree – up with his claws.

Then literally one shot later, Masaru’s looking around, and… why is Agumon there. Why did you devolve, Agumon? There’s obviously a good chance there’ll be more to fight! Masaru can’t just evolve you at will like everyone else can, you know!

Ikuto and Falcomon hurriedly call them over to a cliffside where they can see the lake where ElDoradimon is positioned – or rather, the quickly-emptying lakebed, after Nanami destroyed the waterfall last episode.

Falcomon:  “But with the water gone, ElDoradimon is left wide open to attack!”

It’s still a little weird that they’re acting like that’s such a big deal on a dry lakebed as opposed to a full lake, when the Gizmon who are attacking it could have flown over the lake anyway. Again, there is actually a meaningful disadvantage to the water being gone now which we will get to in this episode, but it’s not something obvious and certainly nothing that’d be likely to occur to Masaru’s group here.

Agumon asks if they should head back, but after a moment of looking worried, Masaru says no.

Masaru:  “I left Tohma to protect ElDoradimon. It’ll be okay.”

He still trusts Tohma to have his back and hold down the fort, just like Yoshino knew he did! (And he doesn’t have any idea that the lake got drained specifically because Tohma failed to protect it despite his best attempts, heh.)

The four of them continue on their way to attack Kurata’s camp. As the sun rises, Ivan stands among a huge army of Gizmon – AT and XT versions – along the perimeter of the lake, while the Holy Capital’s army of Digimon watch them nervously from their positions on ElDoradimon’s ramparts.

Baromon:  “I didn’t think they would drain the water. Now ElDoradimon is…!”

Still not actually any significantly more exposed than it already was, as far as you should be able to figure! (Though, do note the fact that Baromon had no idea the lake might be drained; here’s confirmation that Tohma very much didn’t tell anyone about the waterfall being the key potential weak spot in the strategy when he went off to defend it alone.)

Yushima approaches and tells them to calm down and not to waver, because this is still a fight that they can win.

Baromon:  “That’s right! We have our saviour’s son on our side! We must keep standing until he’s gotten us our victory!”

Yushima didn’t even mention Masaru at all, but apparently even a tiny bit of renewed positivity is enough to send Baromon back into clinging to the idea that Masaru will definitely save them, and all they have to do is buy him enough time.

At Ivan’s order, the Gizmon troops swoop in and swarm around ElDoradimon. They’ve still got those suction thingies to drain life energy from the Digimon they kill; it sure says something about Kurata’s confidence here that he’s willing to have the Gizmon spend some of their time doing that in the midst of a big battle.

Yushima gets in on the action and evolves Kamemon… still only to his Adult level form, Gawappamon, for some reason. You’d think he’d already be able to evolve him at least to Perfect and that now would be a good time to show off that form of Kamemon’s. We will see Kamemon’s Perfect form once much later on, but if we had his Perfect now, that future episode could instead show off his Ultimate form, which we never see at all.

Gawappamon is able to… not necessarily destroy, but hold his own against a Perfect-level Gizmon: XT. Yeah, told you these things are gradually decreasing in power and threateningness.

Somewhere up in one of the city’s towers, Lalamon is very valiantly Nuts Shooting her heart out to hold off a Gizmon: XT that’s looming in a window (I guess it appeared so suddenly that she didn’t have time to evolve).

She holds her ground until Yoshino rushes in carrying a barrel over her head and smashes it into the Gizmon’s face, man look at her being impressive and badass and getting in on the fighting herself. Masaru would approve.

The impact knocks the Gizmon back, but Yoshino’s momentum also sends her tumbling out of the window into a long drop. Lalamon zooms down to grab her by the jacket and luckily is somehow strong enough to lift an entire human’s weight.

Lalamon:  “Yoshino, you’re amazing! You took down a Gizmon: XT!”

Yoshino:  “Thanks…”

She did and it was awesome and she deserves to feel proud of herself for that. (Well, the Gizmon’s not completely destroyed, but it’s out of their hair for now and probably at least a bit weakened, is the point.)

They land lower down on the city and rush towards a nearby explosion at one of the outer walls, only to find…

Ivan:  “I’ve found you, my beloved honey.”

Yoshino:  “Huh?”

Lalamon:  “‘Honey’?!”

Yoshino:  “I’m getting a bad feeling about this…”

Yeah, I don’t blame you for feeling that way, Yoshino, because that’s exactly how I’m feeling about this development, too. Brace yourselves for a whole scene of Ivan’s terribleness.

Ivan:  “‘I love you’… is something I could never say out loud.”

You don’t love her, you barely know a goddamn thing about her, you absolute creep. And how in the world is it possible for him to consistently not be aware he’s saying this stuff out loud. This is a terrible caricature and not a character.

Ivan wonders how she could have possibly known it was him before she turned around (it’s because you’re the only person who hits on her and who says his thoughts out loud, you freaking moron) and concludes it’s totally because she must be in love with him too, oh my god he is terrible. Yoshino bluntly points out the reason why it was obviously him, and now he acts flustered and embarrassed that she knows his deepest feelings, urgh.

Yoshino:  “You’re not even trying to hide them, are you?”

Honestly I’m tempted to believe this is what it is, because being like this on purpose would make him just slightly more of an actual person, but on the other hand it’d also make him even more of a massive creep. Not that I care enough to really come down with a strong interpretation either way, because this is barely a character here.

Ivan:  “So that I can earn the privilege of dating you… Fight me, Honey!”

THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS, you creep! Even if you did beat her in a fight, she wouldn’t owe you a goddamn thing. Urgh ugh ghhh.

Yoshino is appropriately bewildered, but apparently Lalamon is feeling fiercely protective.

Lalamon:  “I accept your challenge! But if I win, you’re not allowed to go near Yoshino ever again!”

Lalamon. Lalamon, I appreciate your desire to protect Yoshino from this asshole, but this is not the right way to go about it. By accepting his challenge, you are validating the idea that he ‘deserves’ to go out with her if he wins, and that is not okay. The only way to deal with such a preposterous moron is to refuse to engage with him on his bullshit terms at all.

Ivan:  “Hahaha! I’ll win and go out with Honey!”

See! He thinks this means it works that way! No! Stop it!

Lalamon:  “Once you see my evolved form, you’re gonna pass out from a squirting nosebleed!”

Geez, apparently Lalamon is self-aware about her Ultimate form being blatant fanservice.

The entire tone for this scene is trying to be very overtly comedic, which, A, a dude pressuring a woman into feeling obligated to date him is not funny, and B, even a scene that was funny would be a bit of a tonal whiplash in the midst of this battle to defend a city from genocide. Come on, writers.

Yoshino drags Lalamon away from her fierce battle taunts to have an aside conversation with her.

Yoshino:  “Just a second, Lalamon! Why are you accepting the match?! What’ll happen if something goes wrong?!”

Yoshino doesn’t outright say as much, but she’s clearly thinking about the fact that if Lalamon does lose, she’ll just have “““obligated””” Yoshino to go on a date with Ivan by having accepted his terms at all. Which is exactly the problem! And despite how ridiculous and bad this scene is being, I do still appreciate that Yoshino realises this and is trying to point it out and wants none of this nonsense. Always the most competent and the most Done with everybody’s bullshit, I love her.

Lalamon:  “Chances are, he’s the one who’s commanding the troops.”

Yoshino:  “So, you’re saying, if we keep Ivan occupied, the Gizmon’s attacks will weaken?”

Lalamon shifts into whispering as she says this to Yoshino – and this is an actually legit reason to have Ivan’s fight! I sincerely hope and want to believe that Lalamon’s fierce taunting and acting like she was buying into the whole stupid dating-ultimatum was all an act so that Ivan wouldn’t realise there was another more strategic reason for her doing this.

Lalamon:  “We can’t just keep him occupied. We need to knock him down so he’ll never do anything bad ever again!”

Also a fair point – they do need to defeat Ivan anyway so that he won’t keep murdering more Digimon, so who cares about the bullshit “terms” he made up for a fight that they’re determined not to lose for more important reasons anyway?

Rosemon:  “Now that I have the power of the Ultimate level, Ivan is no match for me.”

It seems that part of the reason they’re so confident they’ll win this is because they’re not aware of the fact that the Bio-Hybrids can now also evolve to Ultimate. Nanami’s the only one who’s shown that power so far, and she was alone with Tohma.

Ivan’s evolution into BioSpinomon is actually animated in a cool way. Instead of a simple wave of Digisoul acting like a screen-wipe transition between the two forms like most non-fancy-animation evolutions happen, we instead see his body distort and morph, scales and spines growing out of his skin, Ivan groaning as it happens. It’s still fairly tame in how it looks because this is a kids’ show, but there’s some body horror to that; the process seems grotesque and painful. Which is neat, especially because this is an unnatural method of evolution! I wish all the Bio-Hybrids evolutions were animated like that, but alas, this is just a one-off stroke of inspiration by whoever decided on it for this episode.

Rosemon:  “I’ll show you that size is no indication of strength!”

Oh, Rosemon, stuck being the human-sized one among the Ultimate-levels. (Even Lilamon was about twice a human’s height.) BioSpinomon is indeed a fair bit bigger than her, though not as giant as ShineGreymon and the like, because that’d be a bit too much of an awkward size-difference for this fight.

As BioSpinomon meets one of Rosemon’s attacks with his own, matching it in power, he boasts about how much faster and more powerful his new form is, and then turns it into a line about how his “love for Honey is infinite”, urghhh he is the worst.

And the writers decided to have that be the note on which we go to the opening, which I also do not appreciate!!!

Riding on the wind of dreams

and surpassing the glittering rainbow

I continue on towards my journey

Anyway, the new opening again, reminding me that Savers is in fact a good anime which I love despite current appearances to the contrary. It has the usual sort of main character shots showing the various evolution stages of their partners that most Digimon openings do, and I like these ones more than in the previous opening. They’re more dynamic, and feature the characters in poses that seem like they’re upset and brooding about something; I enjoy the once-an-episode abstract reminder that these characters very much have Issues.

…I’m showing Yoshino’s one now because unfortunately this is the most singly Yoshino-focused episode we’re going to be getting for the rest of the series, which is not a fact that I’m a fan of.

Anyway, back to the fight, Ivan is still insisting that if he wins this he can “make Yoshino his lover” and I hate it, thanks. At least Yoshino continues to be completely Nope about all this.

BioSpinomon: “Your cold words only prove the love you secretly feel for me.”

Oh my GOD, no means no, you absolute troglodyte.

BioSpinomon: “I-want-to-share-a-juice-drink-with-two-straws Bomber!”

Ivan then goes into a series of attacks that he gives his own stupid names – here’s just one example, I couldn’t handle quoting more than that – of things he wants to do with Yoshino. I am very thankful this is a children’s anime and therefore these are all G-rated cutesy romance things rather than what they could be from the mind of a creep like him, but still, ugh, bad, shut up.

BioSpinomon: “This is all so I can get Honey and have a loving relationship with her.”

Shut. UP. She’s not a freaking prize, you objectifying piece of trash.

What’s also so jarring about this is that Ivan wasn’t even this bad in previous episodes. When he first saw her, it was just “hm, she might be my type”, and now it’s suddenly all “I’M MADLY IN LOVE WITH YOU”. It did not need to be this way, even if we have to stick to the previously-established fact that, okay, he happens to find her attractive. You are busy carrying out a genocide, dude, do you not have better things to be focusing on.

Yoshino, still frustratedly Done with all this nonsense, fervently tells Ivan she has no desire to do any of the things he mentioned with him (though frankly I don’t know why she’s even bothering when he’s already made it clear he doesn’t care what she wants and refuses to listen to the word “no”).

Rosemon:  “Don’t worry. I’ll never hand you over to him, Yoshino.”

I really really want to think that Rosemon is only saying this to continue to play along with Ivan’s nonsense so that he doesn’t realise this is a distraction tactic, but I’m not at all sure that’s what the writers want us to think.

This shot of them staring each other down like Rosemon is equally invested in fighting with Ivan over Yoshino sure doesn’t make it seem that way. Apparently Ivan’s terrible writing spilled over onto Lalamon’s character just a little, which makes me sad.

Yoshino:  “What… are you two doing?”

At least Yoshino continues to be 1000% Done with all of this nonsense, not letting the fact that even Rosemon is somehow in on it sway her from displaying the correct attitude here. Good.

Anyway, we get a scene change now! Finally we can move onto something else that isn’t that bullshit, dear god.

Tohma is carrying Nanami’s ambiguously-unconscious body through the forest near where the waterfall was. Gaomon is unevolved; apparently Tohma still hasn’t considered the concept of evolving him for faster transport.

Gaomon:  “Will you be heading back to the Capital now? Or will you join up with Masaru to deal with Kurata? Master? Master!”

Gaomon asks him these questions, but it seems Tohma was zoning out and didn’t properly register anything. He stares at the unconscious Nanami, remembering what she said to him when she lost, about how he only won because he used Masaru’s power.

Gaomon:  “Master!”

Tohma:  “No. Masaru said he’ll be fine on his own. Let’s hurry back to Yushima and the others.”

It takes another prompt from Gaomon to finally get him to respond. Given what he was just thinking about, I suspect Tohma’s choice to leave Masaru to his own devices isn’t entirely a strategic one and is also because he can’t bear to put himself in a position where it’ll look like he’s relying on Masaru again, having Masaru take all the credit for victory.

We go back to the fight with Yoshino, which I’m not as grumpy about this time, because the writers are about to finally remember how to do their job properly. Rosemon makes a shield out of thorny vines to block more attacks coming their way, which is a neat ability of hers that I don’t think we ever see again.

Out of nowhere, a Yashamon (Armour-level, essentially Adult, doesn’t stand a chance) leaps in and valiantly attempts to attack BioSpinomon from behind. He notices and slams it to the ground before it can reach him.

As the injured and shaking Yashamon begs him in terror to spare its life, BioSpinomon slowly and deliberately removes one of the huge bladed spines from his back.

Yoshino:  “Ivan, don’t!”

Yoshino calls out to him as she realises what he’s about to do, and there’s something I really like about this. Despite the utter preposterous nonsense she’s just had to deal with from this asshole, she still can’t help but try and stop him murdering someone, even using his name in an attempt to appeal to the human person that surely must be in there somewhere beneath all the bullshit.

(And she’s not entirely wrong there; we are finally, actually about to get into the part of Ivan that’s something of an interesting character, thank god.)

Ivan doesn’t listen or even acknowledge her appeal, and he stabs the Yashamon to death.

Rosemon:  “How could you…?”

Yoshino:  “You’re despicable… How can you still regard yourself as a human being?!”

BioSpinomon: “Despicable?! This is merely business!”

Note how Ivan’s not precisely denying the accusation he’s despicable and practically inhuman; he’s dodging and deflecting the point. He explains that he was hired by Kurata for money, and in exchange for that, he let Kurata modify his body and use him for hunting Digimon.

BioSpinomon:  “It is my duty to obey Kurata’s orders. Hunting for Digimon is my business!”

Yoshino:  “This is the worst.”

That’s Yoshino’s usual catchphrase, but in this instance I might have been tempted to translate it as “You’re the worst”, for once, especially with the grim stare at Ivan that it comes with.

In a quick cutaway to Kurata’s camp (Masaru’s group still hasn’t shown up there yet) he gets a video call from some of his troops out in the battle near ElDoradimon.

(Kurata was also yawning before the call came. So tedious, this genocide business.)

Specifically, the troops are on the dry lakebed near ElDoradimon’s feet, setting up some kind of device there. This is why the waterfall being destroyed mattered; the human troops wouldn’t be able to do this with the water still there. It’s also notable that directly underneath ElDoradimon, near its feet like this, is effectively a blind spot for everyone up in the city, blocked from their view by the turtle’s giant body. Nobody on the Digimon side has any idea this is happening right now; they’re all too caught up in fighting the hordes of Gizmon up top.

The soldier informs Kurata that the operation will be complete in five minutes, and a timer starts counting down.

Kurata:  “Now, it won’t be long before the greatest chapter in the history of mankind begins!”

Still very much with that gloating. Obviously his deeds are going to be the greatest thing humanity has ever seen; his genius inventions and power to destroy an entire species make him the most important human ever, right?

As we cut back to Yoshino and Ivan, Yoshino is giving Ivan an impassioned speech about how Digimon are people and can be our friends, so what does he mean killing them is just “business”?

Yoshino:  “That doesn’t upset you? Do you not feel anything from seeing the pain and suffering… of the Digimon that you’ve hurt?”

BioSpinomon: “Having a heart is unnecessary for business, Honey.”

(Urgh, there’s an actual meaningful point in Ivan’s line but I hate that it comes in the same breath as calling her “Honey” yet again, do you not see the contradiction in this statement, Ivan. Or rather, writers.)

What Ivan’s really saying here (yet deflecting from in the way he talks about it) is that having basic human feelings about the Digimon he’s murdering for money is getting in the way of his job, so he’s chosen to forcibly suppress those feelings and not let that stop him. That’s actually somewhat interesting! A lot more so than him being an asshole who never cared in the first place, like he’s appeared to be up until now.

Yoshino:  “Don’t call me your honey!”

Really Yoshino should have been objecting to that point in the first place, simply on the grounds that she doesn’t want to be called that. But her saying this here in particular is at least showing that she’s just gained an especially strong disgust for Ivan as a person after hearing that he’s willingly suppressed his feelings to let himself murder Digimon for money.

And the interesting thing is… this isn’t entirely unlike Yoshino herself, in certain ways? Obviously she’s not doing something as horrible as murdering Digimon for money, but I’ve talked here and there about how she must have never really wanted to join DATS in the first place. She must have been forced to, because it was the only way for her to keep Lalamon with her. And then somewhere along the way she apparently suppressed those feelings of hers about hating being forced into this, to the point of coming across like DATS’s policy about that is totally acceptable and okay to her.

This is a way in which Ivan could have been an actual interesting foil and parallel to Yoshino! If the writers hadn’t spent so much of their time making Ivan The Worst, they could have gone into this and spent this episode using him to parallel and explore that part of Yoshino that’s always been low-key there but never highlighted! Sigh. I am disappoint.

BioSpinomon:  “I won’t ask you to understand. But I will carry out the orders that Kurata gives me without complaint.”

Based on this, Ivan also appears to have suppressed the part of himself that cares about having other people understand his actions. He is willing to have everyone else think he’s a heartless monster, if that’s what has to happen for him to carry out his orders.

(This sentiment sure seems contradicted by the earlier parts where he was trying to get Yoshino to date him now, doesn’t it, sigh. But at least he is being an actual character and treating Yoshino like an actual person now; better late than never.)

BioSpinomon: “This is the contract that I voluntarily sought after!”

Rosemon:  “It’s not just your body… You even sold your heart to Kurata.”

Rosemon sums it up pretty well; Ivan was willing to give up his integrity and decency as a person in order to get this money from Kurata, and he even seems somewhat aware of that. It doesn’t seem like he’s doing this just out of greed, because greedy people who only want to be rich don’t tend to care about their integrity in the first place.

All this makes Yoshino even more determined to defeat Ivan, so Rosemon fires off a furious series of attacks at him, including one called Ivy Hug in which she summons thorny vines from the ground around the enemy to grab hold of them. That’s another neat ability of hers that we never see again. Clearly Forbidden Temptation and its G-rated nudity is far more important for us to be seeing all the time, right.

Rosemon:  “Someone who’s given up his heart has no right to speak of love.”

EXACTLY, Rosemon! Thank you for summing up precisely why Ivan’s terrible caricature “comic relief” nonsense traits actively harm the part of him which is an interesting character that we’re seeing here. The whole point of Ivan’s issues is that he’s willingly suppressing all his emotions to be able to do this, so why the hell is he not also suppressing his attraction to someone fighting against him? And why does he have that ridiculous habit of saying his thoughts out loud if he’s trying to suppress them all?

(Note how literally none of the thoughts he’s ever “accidentally” said out loud have had anything to do with his feelings about murdering Digimon. I’d actually be somewhat more on board with that whole thing if they had been! It’d still have been a little bit silly, but Ivan saying stuff like “I feel so awful about killing all these Digimon… but I’d never say that out loud,” while Kurata and Nanami and Kouki just kinda raise their eyebrows in response would at least feel somewhat relevant to the point of him.)

Rosemon’s comment was seemingly intended by her to be a battle-ending one-liner, but we’re doing the whole “smoke clears, nope he’s still standing” thing again here. Ivan is really determined to earn that money that he’s murdering Digimon for.

BioSpinomon:  “I have a reason for carrying through with this mission. For that, I will give him my body, my heart… Everything I possess!”

It sure doesn’t sound like this “reason” that he’s willing to both physically and morally destroy himself for is just money in and of itself. He needs that money desperately for something, and that something can’t really be himself if he’s sacrificing everything for it like this.

With that determination, he fires a huge blast of blue flames at the pair, and Rosemon has to use her body to shield Yoshino, getting badly hurt herself in the process. BioSpinomon winds up for another attack, intending to finish them off.

(Oh hey look at him coldly getting ready to murder the person he was trying to freaking date earlier, it’s almost like that earlier part made no sense for his actual meaningful character)

Rosemon:  “Yoshino, run…”

Yoshino:  “What are you saying? Stand up, Rosemon!”

Aww, look at them being friends! Rosemon wants Yoshino to stay out of danger, but Yoshino wants to stay and help, and she can, helping Rosemon to her feet. There’s something neat about having Rosemon be the same size as a human here, because it allows Yoshino to physically support her and makes this feel like more of a human moment between regular friends than it really can with the giant Ultimate forms.

With Yoshino holding onto her friend for companionship and support, Rosemon gathers her strength and fires her attack to get into a big dramatic beam-war with BioSpinomon’s blue flames.

Yoshino:  “We can’t lose… I won’t… I won’t let you kill anyone any more!”

Just when it looks like Rosemon’s about to be overpowered, Yoshino refuses to accept it and explodes with her fiercely rekindled determination to never let anyone get murdered ever again. I like to think that it’s that emotion powering her Digisoul within her partner that gives Rosemon the strength to turn the tides and overwhelm BioSpinomon.

Over at Kurata’s camp, just as Kurata gets the news that BioSpinomon’s signal has been lost, Masaru and Ikuto and their partners finally make it there. (You know, if Agumon had stayed evolved at the beginning of the episode, you could have got here a lot quicker and flattened Kurata a lot easier, just saying…!)

Falcomon swoops forward, intending to drop a smokescreen on Kurata, but before he can, Kouki leaps in and punches him out of the air. It shouldn’t be a surprise at all that he is also willing to straight-up punch Digimon even in his human form.

As Kouki taunts them about how long they took to get here, Masaru charges in – only for Kouki to dash forwards and grab Masaru by the face to fling him back, yikes, that’s kinda brutal. I mean, Masaru is bound to be used to this kind of thing from his anything-goes street fights, but still, ouch.

Yoshino and Rosemon approach Ivan lying defeated on the ground, back in his human body with his Digimon form reverted to an egg next to him. Yoshino notices a photo poking out of his pocket and takes a look at it.

Ivan:  “Give it back…”

Yoshino:  “Ivan!”

Ivan:  “My photo of my siblings… Give it back!”

The photo shows nine siblings, all of them little kids, while Ivan is the eldest by far. The family must have come from an impoverished background, likely with no parents in the picture any more, so many mouths to feed – Ivan as their big brother would do anything to get his siblings the money they need to live a decent life. Even turn himself into a monster, physically and morally.

Yoshino stares at the photo, realising what Ivan meant earlier when he said he had a reason for going through with this, something he was willing to suppress his emotions and destroy himself for.

She gives the photo back to him, and he clutches it to his chest fondly. I kinda like that, as well as his desperation to get the photo back in general. It’s probably been ages since he’s seen his siblings after joining Kurata’s mission, and he must miss them a lot.

Yoshino:  “Ivan, you idiot! You gave up both your body and heart for money! Do you really think your family will be happy about that?!”

She’s got a good point there. He got them the money to live comfortably, sure, but they’re going to be devastated and horrified if they ever find out what their beloved big brother did for their sake!

Ivan doesn’t say anything else, but he does start to cry before passing out. Seems maybe he realised on some level that Yoshino was right.

Yoshino:  “He takes advantage of other people’s weaknesses… and makes them do things like this… I’ll never forgive Kurata for this.”

Granted, surely there must have been plenty of other potential ways for Ivan to make the money he needed to support his siblings without having to become complicit in genocide. But I like Yoshino’s line here and the angle it suggests: Ivan was desperate, and Kurata preyed on that desperation by offering him this opportunity, perhaps in such a way that Ivan never realised there was any better way out. Seems like Kurata knows that younger siblings whom somebody would do anything to help and protect can make for a conveniently exploitable weak point.

God, look at Ivan being an actually interesting character with issues and arguably-sympathetic motivations, what a wild concept. I legitimately like this aspect of him; it’s just such a shame that it was never visible until nearly halfway through this one episode.

Elsewhere on ElDoradimon, the Gizmon are retreating away from the battle, and Yushima wonders why. Meanwhile, Tohma – oh my god he’s evolved Gaomon for transport, it’s a miracle. That’s a grand total of two times that’s happened so far this series, let’s keep a count of this, I don’t think it gets much higher.

Flying towards the city on MirageGaogamon, Tohma also sees the Gizmon retreat, but from his vantage point he can spot something else as well that those stationed on the city itself can’t: the devices that the human troops have set up around ElDoradimon’s feet. He lands near one to investigate it – it’s a cluster of space-time oscillation bombs, set to go off, with less than thirty seconds left on the timer. Far too late for Tohma to do anything to disarm them.

(If only you’d evolved Gaomon sooner, huh? Alas, it happened this way for the writing convenience of having Gaomon be Gaomon for the earlier scene where Tohma was brooding about Nanami, and now having MirageGaogamon out so that Tohma could actually get back to the city in time to be there for any of this at all.)

Back at Kurata’s camp, Ikuto helps Falcomon to his feet and evolves hi – oh dear, you guys don’t realise you’re on a time limit here, you don’t have time for lengthy evolution animations. (Maybe we can pretend this scene actually began a little bit before the scene with Tohma such that they happened concurrently, because we see the timer at 25 seconds and yet it takes something closer to a minute in episode runtime for the bombs to go off after that. That or Yatagaramon’s evolution doesn’t actually take up any in-story time at all despite how long the animation is.)

Yatagaramon looms over Kurata, and again Kouki simply leaps into the air and kicks him this time, still 100% willing to attack a Digimon in his own human body. Kurata watches all this calmly and chuckles, knowing that the timer’s about to hit zero and they’re going to have bigger problems to deal with than him once it does.

Kurata:  “It’s showtime!”

He still likes to drop this line when he’s about to do something genius and murdery. Everyone come and marvel at The Kurata Show.

The space-time bombs positioned all around ElDoradimon’s feet detonate, creating one huge Digital Gate on the ground beneath it, bigger than the city turtle itself, and ElDoradimon begins to sink into it. Not only was Kurata’s camp a distraction for Masaru’s little group, the entire battle with the Gizmon was a distraction for everyone, so that they would be too caught up in that to notice his real plan. Kurata’s going to drag the Holy Capital itself and every Digimon in it into the human world.

(Despite how Yoshino and Lalamon decided to fight Ivan in order to distract him from leading the troops, it’s actually entirely possible that Ivan engaged with the pair in order to distract them, knowing that his role was to buy time until the bombs went off. I would certainly like to think that all of the dating nonsense was Ivan merely pretending to have a shallow foolish reason for getting caught up in this “distraction”, so that Yoshino doesn’t realise really he’s the one distracting her. I don’t know if I have enough faith in the writing of Ivan to believe that’s really what they were going for, though.)

As Masaru’s group watch this unfold in horror from the hill the camp is on, Kurata catches a ride on a Gizmon and flies off. He could have done that the entire time, but it seems he was content to sit and act as “bait” to draw Masaru here and distract him for long enough, knowing Kouki would protect him from actually getting killed by any huge angry Digimon. Plus, if he hadn’t stayed here until the key moment, he wouldn’t have got to gloat to his enemies, and that’s clearly very important.

Masaru is still faced with a Kouki intent on punching his lights out, and it’s possible he’d have been down for that fight, but thankfully Yatagaramon has his priorities straight and grabs Masaru, Agumon and Ikuto to fly them towards the city as fast as he can. If they don’t get there before ElDoradimon sinks all the way through and the Gate closes, they’ll be stuck here on the Digital World side, completely unable to help.

Kouki:  “Are you running away, you bastard?!”

Kouki, do you not think he has slightly better things to be doing right now than fighting you. Not everything revolves around you. You’ll get your chance soon, chill.

As Yoshino and Rosemon stand in the sinking city, at a loss for how to stop this, MirageGaogamon flies past, and Yoshino and Tohma exchange a glance. Tohma doesn’t say anything, partly because it’d be difficult to hold a conversation at this distance, but also perhaps because, what is there to say? The last time he saw Yoshino would have been just before he headed off on his own to guard the waterfall without telling anyone – and he failed, and now ElDoradimon is sinking because he couldn’t protect it.

(He can’t even really blame it on Masaru recklessly running into a trap, because even if he and Ikuto had been here in the battle, what could they have done to stop this either?)

Kurata’s Gizmon swoops over the scene just so that Kurata can survey his handiwork and gloat to nobody at all about how this is all just as he planned. Look, I’ll give him this: it was a legitimately good plan. Nobody suspected this until it was far too late, not even Tohma, who knew that keeping the lake filled with water would be important but didn’t quite manage to pick up on the reason why.

Yatagaramon and his three passengers get caught up in a frantic aerial chase back to the city while Gizmon try to shoot him down. (No, this does not count as evolving for transport, because Ikuto evolved him earlier for the sake of fighting.) Yoshino and Rosemon watch from a distance, powerless to do anything to actually help.

Also, please appreciate this shot of them waist-deep in interdimensional void. This must be a very weird experience for anyone in the city.

As the Gate slowly begins to close and more Gizmon crowd around Yatagaramon and grab hold of him, the big crow does a rapid spinning attack to shake them all off. It works, but it also makes Masaru extremely dizzy. The troubles of riding a giant evolved Digimon who is also trying to fight things.

Ikuto is fine though, somehow, and eggs Yatagaramon on into one last desperate swoop to make it into the Gate in time.

In the human world, out over the Yokohama bay, the huge Digital Gate that’s opened in midair slowly deposits the entire giant city turtle down into the water, sending a huge tsunami out from where it landed. From the perspective of human civilians who’ve only known Digimon as this mysterious dangerous invading force, this probably looks like more of that.

Overall thoughts

Well. This is another episode that I often consider a candidate for my least-favourite episode in Savers, for obvious reasons. The first Ivan scene here is terrible and the only point in Savers at which I actively dislike what I’m watching. But the rest of the episode’s still pretty decent, so it’s hard to hate it that much as a whole?

Once they get into the second half of the episode and Ivan starts being an actually interesting character, I can appreciate what they’re going for there! If the idea of him as someone who’s willingly suppressed his empathy for the sake of making money for his starving younger siblings was something they’d leaned into more for his entire screentime and not just literally this one part, I’d appreciate Ivan a lot! But geez, it sure is incredibly undermined by absolutely everything else about his portrayal up until that point.

Still, better late than never. At least it’s something. Thanks to this, my opinion on how to fix The Ivan Problem in this story is not “ditch him entirely”, but rather, “expand upon this actually good aspect of his character while ditching all the terrible parts entirely”.

Thanks to Ivan being mostly terrible, we also miss the opportunity to focus on Yoshino and get into her issues in this episode. There totally is potential for Ivan to be an interesting foil to her, in that she’s also been going along with DATS simply because she’s had to for the sake of Lalamon (who’s like family to her!) and has suppressed all the parts of her that never really liked this arrangement in order to get by. That could have been great! But no, clearly the more important thing to do with Yoshino’s Bio-Hybrid rival is have him hit on her because she woman. Urgh. Come on, Savers writers, you are usually so much better than this, why did this happen.

Still, on the bright side, we are now done with Ivan and never have to hear him say words ever again.

Yoshino and Ivan aside, the other thing I do appreciate about this episode is the overarching plot of it with the space-time bombs. Kurata’s plan with that really is quite impressively clever and unexpected. Each of these episodes spent fighting for ElDoradimon has a distinct progression from one stage of the battle to the next, so that all of the background action outside of the individual Bio-Hybrid fights doesn’t feel samey, and I enjoy that.

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After the recap (still short, but I’m bracing myself for them to get painfully long sometime soon), we open on the DATS trio and their partners – Ikuto and Falcomon are still off elsewhere – wandering through a foggy forest. They’re headed towards the Holy Capital, like BanchouLeomon told them to at the end of last episode, but they appear to have been wandering with no sign of it for quite a while.

Masaru:  “Are you sure it’s around here?”

Tohma:  “The compass is pointing in this direction. Of course, that’s only if the information that BanchouLeomon gave us was the truth.”

Tohma still seems slightly unsure about whether they should trust BanchouLeomon. He did pick up on how there’s definitely a lot that BanchouLeomon wasn’t telling them, at the end of last episode; maybe this is a product of that.

Masaru:  “A banchou never lies!”

Oh, Masaru. If he’s a banchou, then he must be a Good Person and a Man, and therefore someone who wouldn’t lie to them, clearly. (He certainly has not picked up on the fact that there’s definitely things BanchouLeomon wasn’t telling them about himself or how he knew the stuff he taught them last episode.)

Tohma:  “Then what? Are you saying that I’m wrong?”

Masaru insisting that BanchouLeomon definitely told them the truth isn’t actually contradicting anything Tohma said just now! This is surprisingly confrontational for Tohma’s usual standards; I guess the idea is that they’ve been wandering for long enough without reaching their destination and everyone’s starting to get rather irritable.

Masaru:  “Are you picking a fight or something?”

Tohma:  “You’re the one who’s biting my head off!”

Uh, you’re kind of both biting each other’s heads off unnecessarily. It’s actually kind of interesting to see an argument like this between Masaru and Tohma for the first time in a while, even though they’ve long since learned to respect each other despite their differences. I wonder if that’s deliberate, because of what this episode is going to begin setting up on the Masaru-and-Tohma character arc front in other ways.

Yoshino:  “Oh, geez! Stop it, you two! Not here!”

Yoshino, as ever, has to be the one to step in and exasperatedly break up the argument. She is still the best and these two would still be lost without her.

They’re interrupted by huge crashing noises that shake the very ground, and they find themselves faced with an absolutely gigantic turtle Digimon that carries an entire city on its back. This Ultimate-level Digimon, ElDoradimon, is the Holy Capital they’ve been headed towards.

(You know. It’s an amazing thing how you can have the characters get told to head to an Important Place at the end of an episode, and then at the very beginning of the very next episode, you can just have them… get there. No filler, no fuss, skipping over an implied large amount of boring travel time offscreen, moving right along and getting straight to the next plot point. What a wild, ingenious concept. On my first time watching Savers, I never dreamed this could happen; I expected them to eventually reach the Holy Capital in… I dunno, maybe ten episodes’ time or so.

(…Can you guess which other Digimon series I am vagueing about here.)

As ElDoradimon lowers its head towards them, a Baromon standing on top of the head comes to greet them. He introduces himself as the mayor of this city and welcomes them inside.

Baromon:  “We have a warm reception waiting for you in the palace. Now, come along. Come this way.”

Masaru:  “Hey, thanks!”

That’s all Masaru and Agumon need to begin heading inside, straightforwardly taking things at face value. Hey, they’re being welcomed, that’s cool, why shouldn’t they accept this hospitality?

Yoshino:  “Wait, Masaru! Don’t just walk off when you please!”

Yoshino’s a little less enthusiastic, but she mostly just seems irritated at Masaru heading right in without waiting for them; she doesn’t have any issues with following. Tohma isn’t so sure and lingers behind for a moment.

Gaomon:  “What’s wrong, Master?”

Tohma:  “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Cautious as Tohma is, he seems to have picked up that it’s rather odd for them to be welcomed so openly as soon as they arrived. The citizens had no way of even knowing they were coming, and… haven’t the majority of Digimon they’ve met in the Digital World been rather hostile towards humans, for very understandable reasons? Strange that these ones are being so friendly.

But it doesn’t seem like Tohma can quite consciously pinpoint these reasons to be concerned, so after Masaru calls for him to come on already, he shrugs and follows them in.

Masaru:  “It’s gotta be a big feast!”

Agumon:  “I wonder if they have Sayuri’s fried eggs!”

Masaru:  “No way, it won’t be Mom’s cooking!”

Of course, the main reason why Masaru and Agumon are so eager to head right in without questioning things: food? Food. Of course it won’t be Sayuri’s fried eggs, Agumon, come on.

As they head in, Baromon quietly chuckles to himself, just in case we hadn’t picked up from Tohma’s hesitance (or the title of the episode, geez) that there’s something fishy about this.

Aaaaand it’s the new opening, at last! I like this one even more than the first one, and there’s a good amount of fun stuff going on in it that I’m looking forward to mentioning bit by bit in the rest of these episodes.

For now, here’s a shot which I believe is the sole reason it took so long for us to switch to the second opening, even though we’re a fair few episodes past the halfway point of the series both numbers-wise and narratively. This one shot strongly implies some kind of connection between BanchouLeomon and Suguru, so it would have been a spoiler prior to the end of episode 29, which reasonably strongly implied a connection between them in the actual narrative.

Back from the opening, we find ourselves in some kind of secret lab of Kurata’s, where Kouki, Nanami and Ivan are inside liquid-filled tanks.

Kouki:  “Damn it! Damn it!! Give me power, Kurata! Enough power so that I can crush Daimon Masaru to pieces!!”

Kouki is banging on the wall of his tank, still being a huge sore loser after their even more comprehensive defeat at the end of last episode. He doesn’t even seem to care about the fact that this power he’ll be getting to let him settle the score with Masaru won’t be ­his power at all (and never really was).

Meanwhile, Ivan and Nanami are just kinda chilling and waiting, unbothered by their defeat entirely.

(They’re also all unclothed, but the tanks have some Convenient Glare hiding the guys’ private parts, while Nanami is in a kneeling position to cover herself. The latter incidentally fits her character, too; she’s probably kind of bored of waiting around for this. It’s very satisfyingly not sexualised, for which I am grateful.)

Kurata explains that if he rewrites the Digimon data in their DNA into stronger Digimon data, that’ll let them evolve to the next level. If it’s as simple as he’s making it sound, kinda makes you wonder why he didn’t do that in the first place, but I guess…

Kurata:  “The only problem is… if your bodies can handle it.”

…the stronger the Digimon data you’re working with, the more volatile and dangerous it gets, and Perfect-level is the strongest level he could manage to be sure wouldn’t kill them. There’s no use in half-human half-Digimon weapons when they’re dead.

Kouki is absolutely determined that he can handle it, because he wants his revenge. Ivan is worried but doesn’t think he’s voicing this out loud and oh my god please stop with this terrible nonsensical character quirk. Nanami is relegated to being Ivan’s straight man again, but perhaps that conveniently allows her to avoid mentioning anything about her own feelings about this dangerous process.

Kurata:  “Well then, everyone. Since I have your consent, we will proceed.”

Really the only one who gave anything resembling consent was Kouki. The other two didn’t explicitly say no, but that doesn’t mean they gave active consent either. Not that it’s surprising in the slightest that Kurata doesn’t really care about that.

He pumps some darker red liquid into their tanks, and as it covers the three humans, they begin screaming and thrashing around in agony. Kurata simply turns away and monologues about how much stronger they’ll be when this is finished (a completely pointless gloat when the trio are clearly in no state to listen to him). Again, no surprise that he doesn’t give a damn about these three as people and is merely seeing them as his brilliant creations, useful tools to help him murder all the Digimon.

Masaru:  “Damn it! Let me go, you bastards!”

Back in the Holy Capital, things are not going well. I like how it opens with Masaru yelling over an establishing shot, before we even see that the three humans have been tied up together, their Digimon partners also tied up nearby.

(I also like, given how obvious it was that Baromon’s welcome was not to be trusted, that we skipped right over the part where he and his people actually dropped the pretence and turned on them. That would not have been any kind of surprise or plot twist and so we didn’t need to see it happen; it would have honestly felt patronising if the writers had presented it like it was supposed to be a surprise. Much better to have it presented this way, like it was inevitable from the beginning, because it really was.)

As you might expect, given all of the Digimon-massacring that’s been going on elsewhere in the Digital World that the Holy Capital has evidently got wind of, Baromon assumes that these humans have come here to murder them all.

Masaru:  “We came to the Digital World to help you guys! You can’t treat us like this!”

Baromon:  “Help us? It’s you humans who are making us suffer in the first place!”

Still with that (rather understandable, given the circumstances) generalisation of humanity: if some humans are causing Digimon to suffer, then all humans must be the same way. Baromon’s far from the first we’ve seen with this attitude.

Lalamon tries to protest that the only human at fault here is Kurata. Maybe she’s the one to speak up because she’s hoping they’ll be more likely to listen to a fellow Digimon.

Oh my god, given Lalamon’s shape, she should be able to just… fly upwards to escape the ropes. The problems with trying to convincingly tie up a Digimon who’s basically just egg-shaped.

(Also please appreciate how fluffy Gaomon’s tail is in this shot, because I do.)

Masaru:  “If you defeat him, the Digimon hunt will end!”

I enjoy how Masaru is framing this as if it’ll be just that simple. Just defeat one guy, right? Easy! It’s not at all like this stopping-a-genocide thing might in fact be extremely difficult and he doesn’t really have any idea of where to start when it comes to defeating Kurata, nope, this is a very easily-solvable situation.

Masaru:  “As humans and Digimon, let’s join forces and fight together!”

I do like him stressing this, too. He and his human friends are here to help, but he’s not thinking of it as the humans doing all the work to save the helpless Digimon. He’s here to help the Digimon save themselves. Digimon-human harmony and co-operation! Just like his dad was (still is?) after!

Baromon:  “Silence, all of you! We have absolutely no intentions of joining you humans!”

Baromon cuts them off without properly engaging with the argument that it’s a different human at fault and these humans here are on their side. Maybe on some level he acknowledged that as likely the truth – and yet, it seems that his prejudice towards humans in general because of these atrocities runs deep enough that he refuses to accept help from any human at all, on principle. Ikuto was also like that, once upon a time.

Some Pumpmon lift them up and carry them away, with Masaru YELLING AND PROTESTING the entire time, I love him. Yoshino is also mumbling a few complaints about how roughly they’re being handled. Tohma is silent, and has been for most of the encounter. He’s probably kicking himself and wishing he’d voiced his reservations before they walked right into this like morons.

Baromon considers what to do with the Digimon partners.

Baromon:  “I’d like to say that those who side with the humans are guilty of the same crime… but I shed silent tears at the thought of executing fellow Digimon. Why don’t you come with us?”

He genuinely seems to be willing to welcome them as part of the city and forgive their “crime” of siding with humans. Kind of some double-standards showing there – he’s able to empathise with them because they’re Digimon, but not to the point of acknowledging that these humans that they clearly care about and stood up for just a moment ago might also be worthy of that same compassion.

Also, yeah, he said “executing”, and he’s not kidding around. The humans are about to be straight-up publicly executed in a giant arena full of Digimon citizens roaring with excitement. The three of them have been tied to large posts that rise up dramatically through a smoking trapdoor in the middle of the arena – Baromon’s really going for spectacle here. Agumon, Gaomon and Lalamon, still tied together, are being forced to watch by Baromon’s side.

(It’s quite important here that this is one of those Digimon series where the human has to actively do something in order to get their Digimon partner to evolve. Evolution would instantly solve this situation, but the humans can’t reach their Digivices while they’re tied up like this.)

Masaru is still yelling and protesting, of course. Tohma and Yoshino mostly seem kind of exasperated that they’re being thrown into an execution so quickly without any chance to defend themselves. This feels like not quite the right mood to have for the gravity of the situation, but let’s assume that they’re doing this as a way to try and cover up how they must be really feeling about the apparent impending death.

Baromon announces that another human will be joining them, and a fourth post rises up. Tied to it is Yushima, aka the Chief of DATS, aka…

Masaru:  “The old man with the Digivice!”

I am amused that this is how Masaru still thinks of him and calls him upon seeing him again, despite having learned his actual name and role since the last time they met.

I assume Yushima must have also arrived at the city fairly recently, because you’d think that if he’d been here for a while, they’d already have executed him by now. I guess he got captured earlier in the day, and Baromon was already preparing his dramatic execution ceremony when Masaru and co. happened to show up too. Convenient quadruple-execution, how exciting!

Yushima:  “What’s this, you three were caught, too? How pathetic.”

Masaru:  “Who’s the most pathetic one here?”

All of you, is clearly the answer to that, Masaru. I love the frustrated pose he manages while tied to a post.

Baromon:  “Go, Cerberumon! Turn the humans into mincemeat!”

This city’s chosen execution method is literally to have one of their fiercer Digimon straight-up rip the humans to shreds. Yikes. This scene sure is a weird mix of being mostly played for comedy and yet extremely dark when you actually stop and think about the situation the protagonists are in.

Gaomon:  “Release Master!”

Baromon:  “Humans who discover the existence of the Holy Capital cannot be overlooked!”

This is… some kind of reasonable reason for this that isn’t just pure prejudice. It makes sense for Baromon to be afraid of humans finding out that this city exists, because there are a lot of Digimon living here who would be a prime target for Kurata if he got wind of this place. Baromon may be worried that, even if these humans aren’t hostile, they could somehow leak the location of the city to Kurata if he lets them go.

The Digimon refuse to accept their partners’ fate and keep fervently but uselessly trying to break free of the ropes. (Purely by pulling on them, mind you. Just like when they were in a similar predicament in episode 15, why is Agumon not at least trying to fire off a Baby Flame, come on. Also Lalamon’s Sing A Song has clearly been completely forgotten about, because that’d be too powerful in this situation. And yes, her escaping the ropes by flying upwards is still definitely not an option, because shush, okay.)

Pumpmon:  “Forget about the humans. The humans squish us like mere insects. Humans and Digimon are two existences that are and will always be incompatible with one another!”

This Pumpmon guard has a condescending smirk on his face as he says this, like he genuinely believes it’s just obvious that these humans are getting what they deserve. These three Digimon are clearly stupid and wrong for having any kind of affection for humans, right. Not surprising; there must be such a huge echo chamber of hatred for humans among the Digimon culture lately, given what Kurata’s been doing.

Agumon:  “That’s not tr—!”

Gaomon:  “You’ve got it all wrong!”

Lalamon:  “Humans and Digimon can become friends!”

I love how all three of them are all so determined to argue that this is wrong that they’re practically fighting each other, talking over each other and pulling against the ropes to get to be the one facing Pumpmon to tell him this.

Baromon:  “Impossible. The hearts of those who’ve been hurt by what the humans have done will never be persuaded otherwise.”

Baromon is actually being more reasonable and less overtly racist about this than most of his citizens, it seems, since he provides an actual reason for why he believes it’s impossible. It’s definitely fair that, right now, from the average Digimon’s perspective, the idea of Digimon and humans ever forging harmony must seem utterly absurd.

Baromon doesn’t quite say as much, but I wonder if the grief and rage of the Digimon citizens might be a lot of the reason this execution is happening, even if he may on some level be aware that these humans are perhaps not the ones at fault. The Digimon public is so deeply furious at what humans are doing to them that there must be an awful lot of them who simply want to see some humans get punished for it, not caring whether or not they’re the right humans who actually might deserve it. I feel like the publicness and spectacle of this execution may be because of that.

Baromon:  “Becoming our allies and fighting the humans is your best choice. If not… You will also be executed.”

I guess he’s only willing to extend so much compassion to fellow Digimon – he’ll only accept them as new allies if they renounce all of their attachment to humans and start hating humans themselves. He’s still thinking about this in too much of a black-and-white way to realise that these Digimon already want to become their allies and fight the humans – just specifically the bad humans who actually need to be fought.

As the three Digimon partners glare at him defiantly, Agumon suddenly notices another Digimon walking towards them behind Baromon. Everyone else is so focused on the impending execution that they don’t notice. It’s Kamemon, Yushima’s partner, who evidently managed to avoid being captured himself, here to pull a rescue!

The Cerberumon approaches Yoshino first and leaps at her, but as she shrieks and tenses up, it gets blasted aside by a Nuts Shoot from Lalamon at the last second. Moments later, Gaomon leaps into the air to cut the ropes tying them to the posts… with a punching attack, somehow, okay.

Tohma:  “Why did you…?”

Gaomon:  “I couldn’t abandon you.”

Tohma, why is that even a question. Of course Gaomon would never stand there and let you get killed, and was never going to listen to the prejudice being spouted by these Digimon citizens when he knows better. Is this Tohma’s duty thing making him think that Gaomon should have reverted to some kind of inherent duty to Digimon the moment they got separated? Come on, Tohma, he’s your good dog, his duty is to you.

…Actually, this may be partly a subs thing and partly an untranslatable thing. The question word Tohma uses can mean “why?”, but it can also mean “how?”. So perhaps, Tohma meant it as a “how”, but Gaomon heard it as a “why” and answered as such. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Gaomon that it doesn’t even make any sense for his master to be asking why he’d save him, because Gaomon is always ready to tell Master the reason why. He is such a good dog.

(The how, of course, is that Kamemon broke them out of their ropes.)

Baromon is still ready to continue the execution and orders the Cerberumon to keep attacking the humans. He probably isn’t expecting four fragile little humans to be able to do much against it without weapons. Masaru, now freed, goes in to punch it, but Cerberumon leaps over him and heads towards Yoshino again.

Yoshino:  “Don’t think you can get away with what you did earlier!”

Yoshino’s being impressively badass here, getting payback for the Cerberumon almost killing her a moment ago, now that she can fight back. (It’s not really apparent in the animation or voice acting, but this must be taking a hell of a lot of courage!) She takes off her jacket and uses it like some kind of bull-fighting cape, dodging at the last second to leave it hanging over the Cerberumon’s face and blinding it, so that Masaru can get an opening to punch.

As Masaru’s Digisoul appears in his fist, both Baromon and ElDoradimon itself instantly react to its presence, the big city turtle letting out a long cry. Masaru goes to do a Digisoul Charge but gets cut off by Baromon. As in, he actually gets cut off mid-stock animation, which is pretty amusing; that’s supposed to be a free action!

Baromon’s calling off the execution, because he recognises that Digisoul. Once, several years ago, ElDoradimon was stuck unable to travel across a huge sandy desert because of its weight, slowly dying of thirst (which would have doomed everyone living inside the city, too, because Digimon disintegrate when they “die”). Except then Suguru showed up, and, realising ElDoradimon’s plight, he PUNCHED THE DESERT with a fist full of Digisoul. This somehow cracked the ground enough that it allowed water to well out, turning the desert into a huge lake and saving ElDoradimon’s life.

That’s how badass Masaru’s dad is. He punched a desert and turned it into a lake, just so that he could be an awesome hero to a city full of Digimon. It’s utterly preposterous, but also, I don’t really mind, because it’s not like it’s a deus ex machina solution to a problem in the story’s present. The purpose this really serves is to be an example of this completely unreachable legendary hero status that Masaru’s dad has accumulated over his time in the Digital World. And I have zero complaints about that, because this sort of idea is extremely relevant to Masaru’s issues. Maybe not just his, either, as we’ll see in a bit.

Baromon:  “That Digisoul of yours that burns like fire! Y-You’re Daimon Suguru’s son, are you not?!”

Interesting that Baromon immediately jumps to assuming this is Suguru’s son, despite that Digimon don’t do families and shouldn’t necessarily be able to draw that connection. I can only imagine that this means that Baromon invited Suguru to hang out in the city for a bit after he saved them, and while he was there he chatted with them about himself, including mentioning that he had a son. Just like he did while chatting with Mercurimon! Suguru really does care about his kids.

This whole thing is quite reminiscent of what happened with Mercurimon, in fact. A Digimon who’d bonded with Suguru back in the day but had since grown to hate humans thanks to Kurata’s massacres gets his faith in humanity rekindled by Masaru – not because of anything special Masaru himself did, but rather because of the reminder of Suguru’s spirit through their matching Digisoul.

Pumpmon:  “That’s Daimon Suguru’s son?!”

Other Digimon: “He’s… Daimon Suguru’s…”

It’s not just Baromon, either; Suguru seems to be quite famous throughout the entire city. None of the Digimon want to harm the son of their famous saviour, so it looks like Masaru and friends will be getting that welcome feast after all.

Masaru stares at his fist for a moment. He’s probably having a lot of feelings about how him sharing his dad’s Digisoul caused this entire city to erupt into adoration for them, all thanks to how awesome his dad is.

Yoshino:  “Masaru! Your father’s amazing!”

Masaru:  “I guess so.”

On the surface, though, he’s being pretty low-key about it, despite the sheer amount of Dad Feelings he’s bound to be having right now. It’s honestly kind of interesting how, though Masaru’s reactions to anything involving his dad are just screaming with the fact that his dad’s more important to him than anything, that’s not on purpose of him. It seems that he’s actually on some level kind of trying to hide that as best he can (which is not very well at all).

Meanwhile, Tohma’s not joining in to congratulate Masaru on having an awesome dad. He’s just standing at a distance, staring at him.

Gaomon:  “Are you all right, Master?”

Tohma:  “…Yeah.”

Gaomon:  “Master?”

At least Gaomon has picked up that something’s bothering Tohma here. Though he’s such an obedient dog that he’s not going to press it too hard, like usual.

Here’s the feast, which I guess low-key answers the question of what everyone eats in the Digital World – fruit? Literally just fruit and nothing else, apparently. Is there such a thing as some kind of reverse scurvy that they’d get from that?

Baromon:  “I never would have dreamed that you were the son of Daimon Suguru.”

That’s actually kind of backhanded when you think about it. Wouldn’t have guessed that you’re your awesome heroic dad’s son, because you’re nothing like him! I doubt he means it that way, though; this is probably just Baromon trying to be polite and apologetic and make an excuse for almost executing him. Masaru certainly seems to take it purely as an apology and not register any kind of backhanded implication at all, because good old straightforward Masaru.

Tohma’s catching up with Yushima, who’s got wind of DATS having been destroyed and is chill with not being called “Chief” any more – though knowing him, I imagine he wouldn’t have been much for official titles beforehand either.

Yushima:  “It appears I’ve caused you quite the painful experience.”

Masaru:  “You’ve got that right!”

I like that Masaru’s the one to react to this, because he did literally break the Digital Dive equipment back in episode 19 in his desperation to get back to the Digital World and rescue Yushima.

Yushima recounts what he’s been up to since he was last seen at the end of episode 18, when he was holding off Mercurimon so the others could get back to the human world safely. Mercurimon’s huge attack that closed the Digital Gate conveniently blew Gawappamon and Yushima clear out of his palace in the ensuing shockwave.

Since then, Yushima and Kamemon have been travelling through the Digital World, learning from various Digimon that Suguru is indeed on a mission to find this Yggdrasil figure like Mercurimon told us.

Yushima:  “I figured that we’d need that man’s help to prevent an all-out war between the humans and Digimon, so we went on a journey to follow his tracks.”

Good on Yushima for thinking of this as stopping a war, even without having heard about the part where Kurata caused everything. He really is a lot more peace-and-negotiation-minded than most everyone else in DATS was. Too bad he was stuck in the Digital World for the whole arc between episodes 19 and 25, or he might potentially have been able to stop Kurata from getting an opportunity to murder Mercurimon.

Yushima and Kamemon’s journey to find Suguru apparently involved some good old wandering aimlessly through deserts. Gotta have some of that in a Digimon series! I’m glad most of it happened offscreen in this one.

Kamemon:  “And along the way, we came upon this Holy Capital, which is why we’re here.”

[there’s a long pause]

Yoshino:  “…He talked!”

Kamemon said words! But as soon as Yoshino points this out, he hides in his shell.

Yushima:  “Kamemon is shy. He rarely speaks in front of other people.”

Aww, this implies that Kamemon does speak a lot more when he’s alone with Yushima! He must trust him and feel safe around him. Friends! I guess he spoke up here because he’d been alone with Yushima for so long that he kind of subconsciously forgot he wasn’t for a second.

Baromon:  “Daimon Suguru is like the Messiah to us.”

The word Baromon uses here can be translated as “Messiah”, but it’s not solely referring to the Jewish term and can also simply be translated as “saviour”. It seems the subbers realised that this was unnecessarily religiously-charged, because they’ll quietly switch to translating it as “saviour” in all future episodes that use this word. I’ll do the same thing for the rest of this episode, too. Whenever you see “saviour” in any upcoming quote in this post, the subs didn’t actually say that, but they should have done.

Tohma:  “A saviour…”

Tohma just kind of murmurs this to himself, still having Thoughts about how awesome everyone seems to agree Masaru’s dad is.

Agumon:  “Aniki, what’s a ‘saviour’?”

Masaru:  “Um, it’s a…”

Yoshino:  “It means he’s stronger than a banchou.”

Either Masaru doesn’t know that word any more than Agumon does, or he just isn’t entirely sure how to explain it. Or, perhaps, he could, but he feels a little bit awkward about telling Agumon just how unreachably awesome his dad is.

I love how Yoshino chips in with the perfect explanation for Agumon to understand it. She knows how these dorks work.

Masaru:  “Yeah, that’s it!”

Agumon:  “He’s stronger than a banchou?! Your dad’s amazing!”

Masaru:  “I guess so!” [he laughs awkwardly]

Masaru’s expression seems kind of miffed that Yoshino stole his explanation. Either it’s because it’s making him seem like less of a wise and knowledgeable aniki who knows things, or perhaps, it’s because he’s not entirely okay with Yoshino actually voicing just how much stronger than him his dad is? His voice manages to sound fairly casual about it all, at least. He’s still being very low-key about agreeing about how amazing his dad is, despite how deeply and wholeheartedly he definitely does agree with this sentiment.

Not wanting to listen to any more of this talk about the awesomeness of Masaru’s dad, Tohma gets up and walks outside to a balcony to get some space. Gaomon follows, because he’s a good dog who can tell something’s up.

Tohma:  “A saviour, huh…?”

Gaomon:  “Master? Are you feeling ill?”

Interesting that illness is the first possible explanation for his behaviour Gaomon guesses at, though. The reality is that Tohma’s having bad feelings relating to his issues, but it seems that Tohma talks about his feelings and problems so little, even to Gaomon, that it doesn’t occur to Gaomon at first that this could be what’s going on. Tohma, talk to your dog-friend more, he’s here for you.

Tohma:  “No. I was just envious… that he has a father who can be respected so unconditionally.”

At least Tohma’s talking about it now! Gaomon didn’t even specifically prompt him to, precisely, but it is because Gaomon came to check on him that he’s able to open up a little. Good dog.

What Tohma is clearly implying without actually saying here is that his own father is not the greatest. We haven’t heard anything about Tohma’s father specifically before now, but he’s another important piece of Tohma’s issues who’s going to become a bigger part of Tohma’s arc soon, so dropping a little hint at his relevance here is appropriate.

Gaomon:  “That’s rare… To hear you being jealous of someone.”

Tohma:  “Jealous? Me?”

Gaomon:  “Master…”

Tohma:  “I see… I’m being jealous…”

It feels a bit weird to have Tohma respond with such surprise to Gaomon saying he’s jealous, when he himself said in the earlier line that he was “envious”, and those two words mean basically the same thing in English. What I can only assume is that the two different words here in Japanese have different enough connotations that it’s not such a stretch that Tohma wouldn’t have realised that he’s the latter despite admitting to feeling the former.

His thoughts get cut off as he notices a trio of Gizmon: XT approaching from a distance. Kind of a good thing that Tohma happened to need to go brood alone for a bit so that he could notice this and give some advance warning of the attack.

Some of the city’s Piccolomon fly out to fight, and get instantly disintegrated by the Gizmon’s (not even striped!) lasers. Piccolomon are Perfect-level, which, uhhhh, kinda ruins all my lengthy justification back in episode 28 of how it actually totally could be possible for the lasers to not kill Yatagaramon I swear. Maybe Yatagaramon’s just stronger or more protected because he’s powered by Digisoul. Maybe Kurata’s improved his Gizmon some more since then. Shush, I don’t know.

Presumably the eggs are still being disintegrated every time a Digimon is killed by a Gizmon, but at this point the animators seem to be forgetting to show that. Instead, they want to make sure we see that the Digimon’s yellow glowy life force energy keeps getting sucked up by the Gizmon’s suction thingies every time they kill one. Yushima picks up on this as soon as he sees it.

The DATS trio rush out to help, of course, and Yoshino and Tohma evolve their partners right away, straight to Ultimate level, which they’re never not going to do from now on because Savers is better than to use evolution padding (more than twice). Rosemon grabs hold of a Gizmon from a distance with her Thorn Whip attack, allowing Masaru to run across the whip like a tightrope and get his punch in. They really do have some creative ways to let him do that sometimes.

With Agumon evolved too, the three Ultimate-levels deal with the three Gizmon: XT very easily, one attack each. I suppose this instance isn’t really the Gizmon: XT actually getting any noticeably weaker than the one in episode 25 was, so much as it’s just Ultimate-levels being ridiculously overpowered.

Kurata was capable of having his Gizmon flout the usual rules of evolution levels lower down, with how the Adult-level one gave the three Perfect-levels a run for their money, before Kurata even evolved it to Perfect itself. But perhaps there’s only so far he can go with that, and no matter what he does, he can’t quite match the power of an Ultimate-level with just a Perfect. Kind of also tracks with how his Bio-Hybrids were originally Perfect-level, and they did seem to be a little bit stronger than regular Perfects – however, making them Ultimate-levels was life-threateningly risky to the point that Kurata has only resorted to it now after their Perfect-level forms were defeated. Kurata’s artificial Digimon-engineering prowess cannot keep up with the sheer exponential escalation of natural Digimon power levels past a certain point, luckily for us.

As the team’s celebrating their victory, they’re interrupted by the sound of another lone Gizmon: XT attacking near the tower in the centre of the city. The first three were just a diversion to draw DATS’s forces away to a distance, allowing this other Gizmon to sneak closer unnoticed. ShineGreymon and co. flew out unnecessarily far during their fight and now have to zoom all the way back.

Masaru sees that ShineGreymon isn’t going to get there in time, and he curses and runs back in towards the centre of the city himself. I don’t know whether he really thinks he can get there fast enough either, because the city is huge and he moves a lot slower than ShineGreymon does, nor whether he genuinely believes he can take on a Gizmon: XT on his own. But, you know, it’s Masaru. You’ve got to appreciate the Masaru-ness of it.

As the Gizmon prepares to attack, with Masaru still not close enough to help, it’s stopped in its tracks by some smoke bombs falling on it from above and obscuring its vision. It’s Falcomon, here with Ikuto to be big damn heroes!

Honestly it’s kind of silly that Falcomon isn’t in Yatagaramon form right now, but that’s for the sake of showing off the reinforcements that Ikuto brought with him: ninja-like Digimon called Igamon. They’re only Adult-level, but there’s a few hundred of them here, and with a co-ordinated attack, they manage to take out the single Gizmon: XT. Sheer overwhelming numbers is one way to trump the gap between evolution levels.

Ikuto:  “BanchouLeomon said we need power. Mercurimon always said we need friends to help protect the Digital World. So I thought, maybe having power means having friends.”

Ikuto has definitely realised he’s in a shounen anime. It’s cute that he got part of this from Mercurimon! …Although, if Mercurimon did often say that friends were important for protecting the Digital World, it kind of makes me question why it took so long for Ikuto to realise that Falcomon was his friend. That whole “warriors don’t have friends” idea doesn’t work so well if Mercurimon actually talked about friends quite a bit.

(I guess one way to reconcile this is to imagine that Mercurimon noticed Ikuto was leaning too hard into the warrior thing and not thinking of Falcomon as a friend, and so in an attempt to undo the damage he’d inadvertently done, he started talking a lot about friends protecting the Digital World in the hope Ikuto would internalise it. Looks like Ikuto finally has, even if it took all of Falcomon’s support throughout his self-loathing arc, and also Mercurimon’s death, to properly sink in.)

Still, Ikuto’s entire offscreen trip to find “power” does turn out to be rather underwhelming: he’s brought reinforcements who are mostly going to be cannon fodder in the upcoming battles rather than interesting characters. This whole Gizmon attack here also feels like it was written largely for the sake of Ikuto and his friends getting a chance to come in and save the day. Ikuto disappearing for a few episodes is kind of transparently actually for the purpose of not having him around for the Ultimate evolution arc of the main three, so that Ikuto can have his Ultimate-level evolution later, because he only just got his Perfect one. Oh well.

As Masaru and Ikuto dramatically shake hands against a backdrop of the sunrise and prepare to fight together to defend the Digital World, Yushima has gone to where one of the Gizmon’s suction devices fell to check it out. He confirms that it really is Digimon’s life energy they were sucking up and bitterly wonders what Kurata is planning to use it for.

Cut to Kurata, standing in front of the giant tank containing something – something that looks rather like a large, sleeping Digimon – that we saw him gloating in front of at the end of episode 25.

Kurata:  “Now, indulge in more and more of the Digimon’s lives and grow bigger! All for the sake of granting my dreams…!”

All of the life energy is being harvested in order to get pumped into this thing, which Kurata evidently has some plans for – plans that might not entirely be the same thing as his Digimon-genocide plans at this point, based on the way he words it. It’s still very Kurata that he’s come here to gloat about it, even though this Digimon is clearly asleep and isn’t actually an audience. Apparently this is more important to him than keeping an eye on the modifications to his Bio-Hybrids and making sure they don’t, you know, die.

He only heads back to the Bio-Hybrids’ room upon getting a message that they’ve woken up. The process was horribly painful for them, but they survived and are doing fine now that it’s over.

Kurata:  “How are you feeling?”

Kouki:  “Great! This is the best I’ve ever felt!”

Ivan:  “I can feel power swelling up within me!”

Nanami:  “It’s not bad.”

I like that Nanami’s opinion of this new power, that she can presumably feel just as strongly as the other two, is so understated. She’s not in this to feel powerful.

Kurata gets a call from a soldier in the Digital World: more news about a certain Gizmon squad being defeated. The fact that Masaru and co. are the only ones capable of taking down Gizmon is, it turns out, kind of a bad thing, because all it ends up doing is telegraphing to Kurata where they are. Because of this, Kurata now knows the location of ElDoradimon. Baromon was right to be worried about humans finding the city.

Kurata orders all of his troops, as well as the newly-improved Bio-Hybrids, to head over there.

Kurata:  “If I kill ElDoradimon, my ambitions will be nearly achieved.”

Seems like he’s ballparking that the life energy he could harvest from ElDoradimon, as well as the thousands of Digimon living on it, will be enough for that rather large pet he’s got floating in the big tank back there. He’s still in this to murder all the Digimon, of course, but at this point he’s got something else in mind, too.

Overall thoughts

Yeah, this episode’s… just kinda there. It’s alright, not terrible, but nothing especially exciting happens in it either. Perhaps I can do my usual excuse and say this is sort of a transitional episode? At the very least, it does exist largely as setup for this mini-arc around ElDoradimon, introducing the group to the city in a relatively low-stakes context before we get into the more interesting battles ahead.

We do get to see some more of the Digimon’s prejudice towards humanity and how Kurata’s massacre is affecting them, but at this point, we’ve seen a lot of that kind of thing already, so none of it’s especially new. It should in theory be rather stark and brutal that the citizens are willing to execute any humans who show up, but I wish the actual execution sequence had leaned more into the terror potential of the situation our heroes were in. I could have dug that a lot, but instead it’s played largely for comedy, which is a shame (to me).

Definitely the best parts of the episode are everything about Suguru – not so much him punching the desert itself, but how his legendary status makes both Masaru and Tohma feel. Tasty setup for important stuff to come, in more ways than one.

The Gizmon attack at the end is also not that exciting and feels pretty gratuitously there for the sake of having some conflict in the second half of the episode – and for giving Ikuto a way to return dramatically (his absence having also been largely arbitrary to serve the evolution progression rather than for anything interesting). I suppose the attack also does serve to allow Kurata to discover the city’s location and lead to the following episodes’ conflict, so it still did need to happen in some form.

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