#koji minamoto

Okayyy huge delay thanks to being bounced between different interests, but here’s everyone together and some scattered thoughts about this crossover AU under the cut! Obviously spoilers for Digimon Frontier and The World Ends With You (2007):

Koji Minamoto 💙💗🐺

This one was a pretty interesting watch, although I definitely had more fun with Digimon Fusion (only the dubbed seasons, I haven’t seen the sub at all, and I barely watched the first episodes of Xros Wars because I was on a different hyperfixation and unfortunately couldn’t commit to three things).

The characters in this were pretty chill, I didn’t have too many complaints about them. But that’s on the main cast side, it’s a character who isn’t a main that’s the one who burns me up inside: Koji’s dad.

I hate that motherfucker so much.

So, from the jump, I did NOT like Koji’s dad. His first impression was not smiling upon him kindly. So Koji is actively mourning his mom, and his dad has his current partner and is upset that Koji doesn’t like her because he doesn’t want to replace his mom.

So his behavior towards his current partner is a point of contention between the two, because this new person isn’t his mom, but his dad is intending to be with her and loves her dearly. I don’t know how they were introduced, or how long they had been together, but from Koji’s general behavior start to finish, his main issue is that he feels like this new partner is being pushed onto him before he’s ready.

I also don’t know how long Koji’s mom has been “dead” because as far as I can remember, they don’t really get into it too much until later, and even then there’s still some missing info. Koji isn’t being given enough time to navigate his grief at his pace, and this new woman combined with his dad’s lack of empathy further strains his relationship with both.

As the show progresses with the kids in the Digital World doing Digidestined shit, I start thinking. Frontier is one of the few Digimon series I didn’t finish as a kid, but as a teen/young adult, so I caught details I wouldn’t have if I was younger.

As mentioned before, Frontier, at least in the dub, doesn’t go into the “death” of Koji’s mom or much about his bio-parent’s relationship. I always thought that if his dad really liked his mom, he would’ve been more understanding and gentle with Koji’s feelings and his grief.

Because we don’t know how long she’s been dead or when she was said to have died, although I assume she was said to have died after giving birth to her sons, it’s hard to know how quickly Koji’s dad’s relationship progressed and how quickly he introduced his new partner to Koji.

Then comes the plot twist, she’s still alive!! But she’s really ill, and Koji isn’t an only child, he’s got a twin brother! The waters get muddy again, because now it’s three adults who may or may not be part of the problem.

For example, there’s the scenario where the grandma told Koji’s dad that her daughter died for whatever reason, maybe she hated his guts and wanted them separated, who knows.

Maybe the daughter/Koji’s mom knew that she was too sick for both her kids and thought it’d be better to say she was already dead. Okay, fine, sure, but what about your other son? If you’re too sick for one, and your old mother is taking care of you both, why not have them together with your husband, well, ex-husband?

At the end of the day, there’s not enough information for me to properly criticize these adults, but I can at least say that I don’t like Koji’s dad based on what I have seen and saw from him. I do dislike his mom and grandma though, but not too much because they weren’t around until much, much later, which basically means there weren’t enough scenes with them in them for me to pick apart and get mad at.

The ending also pissed me off a little. Like, I’m glad Koji’s got a relationship with his whole family, and that his brother didn’t die after falling down the stairs and evil digimon shit, but I was more upset because again, what kind of fuckery do the adults have going on?

We could’ve avoided a lot of issues from the start if Koji’s fuckass dad wasn’t trying to force his mourning son to have a relationship with someone who he wants to be his son’s stepmother when he isn’t emotionally ready for that kind of attachment yet.

That’s like losing a family pet and then being given a new one and being expected to treat it as if it’s the same pet, or something adjacent to the same pet.