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Revisiting Digimon Adventure. Revisiting Digimon Adventure 02. Digimon Tamers Blind Watch in Two Languages
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Leaving the care center and entering the next chapter, which is a big Leon chapter, has my hackles rising with Leon taking attention away from Grace again. I don't like the way that everything she can do, he can do better. I don't like that there are no benefits to playing Grace at all.
I mean. I do get why we want to bring back characters for the return to Raccoon City. Grace is the daughter of some obscure character from the Outbreak games while Leon is a core Raccoon City survivor protagonist. And they brought Sherry back too for a big Resident Evil 2 reunion!
...fuck Claire, I guess. But this has pretty much become the "Fuck Claire Redfield" franchise so I can't really be surprised at this point. Sometimes she gets to appear in a movie where she's tied to a chair while Leon fights a big monster.
At least she'll always have Revelations 2.
In any case, the thing that has my hackles up is that I don't think it's fair that Leon gets to have infinity free stealth kills with his infinite durability hatchet. Like, why the hatchet even has a durability meter when you can refill that meter for free at any time is beyond me. But I don't think it's fair that he can use it for stealth kills.
Leon gets to be Better Than Grace at action because he's the big recurring action hero who's been through a hundred of these incidents by now and become a professional. I'd expect the same from Chris, Jill, or Claire if they turned up.
But I don't like that Leon also gets to be Better Than Grace at sneaking through a horror environment too. If you're going to draw a line in the sand at the start and say "Leon is the action hero, Grace is the horror survivor," then playing Grace should offer some benefits over Leon at horror surviving.
Grace being able to concoct chemical Instant Zombie Kill drugs that she can use in place of Leon's arsenal should be a point in her favor. But instead it's just a limitation imposed to weaken her; She has to concoct these drugs because she doesn't have Leon's Infinite Durability Murder Hatchet. The drugs are just another way she is the lesser protagonist, because she can run out and Leon can't.
Watching Goodbye Lara right now, highly recommend. It's a sapphic yuri retelling of The Little Mermaid: Lara (Ariel) turns to sea foam after being rejected by her prince and is awoken in modern day Japan and must find true love to break a curse, but this time, she falls for an aloof, tomboy boxer girl. Gorgeous anime with painted backgrounds, fantastic character animation, great color design, and flat cel-shading. Feels like a classic 2000s OVA, even down to the jpop love ballad OP.
Fun fact about Megidramon and Chaos Dukemon, canonically they are one and the same being. A living embodiment of a Digital Hazard, it's appearance is in the eye of the beholder. To some it's a Black Knight, the messanger of calamity, and to others it's a Demonic Dragon, the one who will bring about the end of all things.
It's a pretty clever way of dealing with the problem imposed by the D-Ark giving Guilmon a Good and Evil evolution and then the anime giving Guilmon a separate unrelated Evil evolution.
Hemolytic Injectors are the best thing ever and I love them ever so much.
I have seven and I feel invincible.
Just met Harry. Also, I'm pretty sure I know what happened to Emily's sister.
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Hemolytic Injectors are the best thing ever and I love them ever so much.
Moving through the care center is putting a lot of my concerns about the Grace/Leon split at ease. Grace's gameplay is pretty fun and, at least at this point, seems to be taking up a larger portion of the game than Leon's.
Resident Evil's had this thing for a long time with invulnerable stalkers that you need to creep around and it honestly kinda sucks. It just gets old having to creep around a big invincible guy in a game that's exploration-focused.
You're expected to stop and examine every room but you're also expected to not do that because every five seconds A BIG INVINCIBLE GUY IS GOING TO SHOW UP AND CHASE YOU and then you have to drop what you're doing and run away.
Take your time but HURRY THE FUCK UP but search everything thoroughly but MOVE YOUR ASS AND STOP WASTING TIME but inspect every nook and cranny for items and keys BUT GRAB THE FIRST ITEM YOU SEE AND GET OUT BECAUSE HE'S THERE HE'S THERE HE'S THERE
It's a really obnoxious contradiction of game design choices that has driven me up the wall in multiple modern Resident Evil titles. I hate invulnerable stalker stealth sections.
Requiem takes that idea and goes "What if we just made the regular enemies into the stealth section?"
Metal Gear Solid-ing around basic-ass zombies is the most fun that enforced Resident Evil stealth has ever been. It enhances the survival horror gameplay and makes some of the ideas they wanted to use with the invulnerable stalkers actually work.
Like, part of the purpose of the invulnerable stalker is to force you to make inventory management choices. Do you stay and fight the stalker or do you flee?
This, however, is stupid. You flee. You always flee. It is never worth fighting the stalker, not ever, because every bullet plugged into an unkillable enemy that will just get back up is a bullet wasted. That's not an interesting choice. It's just a fucking recurring nuisance that bogs down the game and very quickly becomes more annoying than scary.
But when it's the basic-ass enemies, then it really does become a choice. Which zombies will you use your limited resources to eliminate? That's an interesting choice to have to make.
Resident Evil: Requiem is the first time that Resident Evil's stealth mechanics have actually been fun to play.
Now, for the next game, if we could get some more complex stealth mechanics, that'd be great. I'm stunned that we've been doing stealth mechanics for like four or five games now and our actual options for sneaking are still limited to "Crouch" and "Do not crouch".
Digimon Tamers 35 - The Name's Dukemon! The True Ultimate Evolution / Give a Little Bit
Previously on Digimon Tamers: Leomon fucking died. I don't. I don't have a way to make that funny. He fucking died, y'all.
Okay first of all sorry it took me literally all day to respond to this... hard to feel like getting anything done in this stupid bloody heatwave...
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Given what happens next episode... I'd chalk it up to plothole.
And believe it or not but I was just thinking about this episode a few weeks ago and only then just noticed that particular incosistancy.
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Believe it or not the Agumon toy was not what Takato was gonna see in the bedroom simulacrum vision thing...
The original plan before they went with toy... meeting Tai and Agumon from Digimon Adventure.
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... sadly this is the last we see of it. Outside of this one episode the characters never make note of the Hazard symbol on Guilmon (and this Digivolved forms) and what the Digital Hazard is only ever clarified in supplementary material related to the franchise at large rather than specifically Tamers.
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Two other bits of info.
First: Like with the Tamers going to the Digital World 3 episodes earlier than planned, Gallantmon wasn't suppose to appear this early as sponsors for the show wanted the Digimon partners Mega leveled forms to appear in episodes released close to the Christmas season for toy promotional purposes.
Second: Y'know how I mentioned a while ago that Impmon was originally planned as Takato's Digimon partner, and Chiaki J. Konaka had to pitch and convince Bandai/Toei on going with Guilmon instead.
Well unbeknownst to him the opposite had already happened with their respective Mega forms. Digimon character designer Kenji Watanabe had already designed Beelzemon as a Dark Hero protagonist for the series, but Bandai and Toei rejected the idea and that the new protagonist Digimon had to be the one that would be opposing Beelzemon and that's how Gallantmon was eventually created.
Konaka's character notes on Guilmon even note that his final form was decided before the series had begun. Which might might explain why design wise, aside from the Guilmon shaped visor, the red bits, the Hazard symbol and the triangle symbols, there isn't much linking Gallantmon back to Guilmon... at least in comparison to the other Mega forms were gonna see, or even prior ones like WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon.
Digimon Tamers 35 - The Name's Dukemon! The True Ultimate Evolution / Give a Little Bit
Previously on Digimon Tamers: Leomon fucking died. I don't. I don't have a way to make that funny. He fucking died, y'all.
So we finally have reach the answer that has been haunting Takato and the narrative as a whole "Can the divide between man and monster be crossed?" The answer is a resounding yes (i mean of couse it is there wouldn't be a franchise otherwise) but the real question is how and why? The answer is the one that's been obvious to us since the beginning. Man and monster aren't different in any way that matters. Sure our instincts might be different but monsters can be humanistic and kind, just as humans can monstruous and cruel. Guilmon evolved into Megidramon because Takato put a line in the sand, that him and Guilmon were separate, it didn't matter what experiences they shared, so he pushed him to fight, imposing his feelings onto him for his own personal self-satisfaction, which in turn caused the partnership to break. It's only when Takato accepts that him and Guilmon aren't separate but rather united by their friendship and shared experiences that he can finally breach the divide between man and monster, and they can become one.
Dukemon continues the trend of being heavily inspired by the Agumon line, but subverts it's original premise. Previously the Guilmon could be best described as "The Agumon line but bigger and badder". More spikes, more blades, more guns, more firepower. But Takato has grown past the childish need to be bigger and stronger, so instead of becoming a dragonic super-soldier like WarGreymon, he becomes something nobler, a dragon knight in shining armor, Dukemon(i mean there's nothing distinctly nobler about a knight compared to a soldier given that they're the same thing but from different time periods, outside of one being richer, but this is a kid's show and i don't expect it to have that level of self-awareness)
This ties heavily into the symbolism of Ultimate Evolution. Ultimate level is meant to symbolize transcendence and self-actualization. This id why in the previous shows reaching this form required divine intervention and why it didn't have a big emotional breakthrough attached to it(because self-actualizing was the point of the rest of the show and that it also happend to the characters who didn't reach Ultimate) But in this show where they are Asuras that stand against the gods themselves, they can't rely on them to reach a higher state so they must instead rely on the thematic foundation of the story to carry them to the next level(similar to how Jogress worked in 02) literally crossing the boundary between man and monster by joining together(seriously this show owes so much thematically to 02 specifically and no one gives it the props it deserves💀)
Continuing through the game, one thing I appreciate about Requiem is the way its story is making an effort to connect back to Raccoon City.
We already saw strides being taken in Village to resurrect Umbrella and this further makes me think Capcom's finally figured out the problem with Resident Evil: Blowing up Raccoon City and then killing off Umbrella was a mistake. Getting rid of the series's setting and its antagonists cost them their brand identity.
It's a problem that started in RE4 and became more noticeable as the series went on: What even is Resident Evil? For a long time, it's just been that a character might appear in this largely self-contained horror story who happens to be named Chris Redfield or Claire Redfield or Sherry Birkin. But any sense of story momentum from game to game ended after Code Veronica.
For a while now, Resident Evil hasn't really had a plot. It's just been about globetrotting to somewhere to fight some kind of thing that someone is doing. As long as there is a gun in a character's hand and it's being shot at a monster you can call it Resident Evil; It has nothing else tying the games together.
But it's not willing to go whole hog and just become an anthology series either. It wants Chris Redfield to be able to walk onscreen to thunderous applause. It just. Doesn't. Really. Know. What to do with him. Because the story he was a character of ended when he got Wesker in 2009.
So the way they're bringing back Umbrella and now bringing back in Raccoon City makes me think they're finally starting to remember that. Like. Events happening now that are informed by events that happened in previous installments is how you build an interesting continuity that's worth investing in.
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Also, RE: Requiem letting you choose between first- and third-person camera perspectives is a cool idea but there should be a button that flips perspective for you. It shouldn't be hidden away in the Options menu.
Capcom, learn from Bethesda. They've been letting players flick between first- and third-person perspective with a button press for years.
Also got a bit of a vibe off the tutorial introducing this saying "Grace should be played in first-person to enhance the horror and Leon should be played in third-person to enhance the action."
First, spoilers, thanks. I did not know Leon was going to be playable.
Second, I dunno. "Horror for the female character, action for the male character," gives me a vibe but I don't want to make a thing of it based just off of this. We'll see how it goes.
“First, spoilers, thanks. I did not know Leon was going to be playable.”
…How the hell did you somehow not know about Leon being playable? Even if you weren’t obsessive about it, I don’t think it was hidden information. Not just the website for the game talks about it but there’s even a honest-to-god Porsche commercial about the game.
As for the gender vibe you got…I can see where it comes from but I saw it as recreating the feel of RE:7, since it was the first main RE game that had first-person AND was the beginning of the turnaround for Resident Evil in the late 2010s.
Basically, replicating the tone of RE:7 for Grace and the tone of RE:4 for Leon.
Personally, it’s still curious to me that they decided to demarcate the two halves of Resident Evil: the horror and vulnerability with the shooting gallery aspect of carrying around so much ammo and power on you as you get through the game.
The comparison to RE:7 is part of what makes it feel weird. Like. RE:7 featured Chris the way Requiem features Leon, but they didn't have you play Chris for half of RE:7.
The cynical part of me wonders if they felt no one would buy the game if it was just Grace. As I'm going through, I can't help comparing both to RE:7 and Silent Hill f. I'm withholding judgment until the end, but on the surface, the decision to split the game between survival horror Grace and action hero Leon is certainly raising an eyebrow with me.
Without further context of how Leon gets used, the kneejerk reaction is that it reads like a lack of trust in Grace to carry the story herself and become the action hero that Jill and Claire's stories let them become way back when.
I think theu started from a point of "We want to see if we can use multiple protagonists to capture both the survival horror and action gameplay styles"
And then progressed to "Leon is super popular and will sell a lot of copies, so lets put him in the aqction role"
Which just left the Survival horror role for Grace by default.
Though I will admit, I tend to be very generous in my interpratations of things, so I could be being over generous here
Digimon Tamers 35 - The Name's Dukemon! The True Ultimate Evolution / Give a Little Bit
Previously on Digimon Tamers: Leomon fucking died. I don't. I don't have a way to make that funny. He fucking died, y'all.
I was waiting for this. This moment is still one of my favorites in Digimon, and helped cement Takato as my favorite Googlehead.
Finally, a Mega that felt earned - no last-minute prophecy bullshit, no magical plot device from the Exposition Dragon that only deigns to upgrade the central characters for some reason, but as the result of Takato's character arc that he has been building for some time now. He goes into deep introspection, comes out with a new understanding, and is reward with one of the most popular Megas in the franchise.
And yes, they did rewrite his epiphany for the dub, and I remember it falling a bit flat when I was watching it as a kid - but I didn't care, it was still the coolest thing I'd seen in Digimon at the time. The whole "not really alive" thing kinda came out of nowhere, anyway.
Oh, and the music - after two seasons of the dub just regurgitating the Digi-rap for every single transformation sequence, the new music was already a breath of fresh air. But then we reach this brand new final form, and the music actually changes to this sweet ethereal sound? I can't tell you how impactful that was on first viewing. I feel like this is the first season the dub team really paid attention to the soundtrack, and it shows here.
As for the form itself, Gallantmon is the first one to not be obviously derivative of Greymon's line. It still does the Greymon thing of abruptly 180ing from giant cyborg Dino to smaller humanoid warrior, but the similarities end there. Takato's still a fan of Greymon, but for this final form, when he's finally connected with his Digimon like never before, he's mainly doing his own thing.
Also, Gallantmon is a much, much better name than Dukemon - it's far more indicative of the "Noble Knight" thing Gallantmon has, plus it keeps the "G" theme of all his other forms' names. Besides, Dukes, Earls, Barons and the like have a long history of being the bad guys of English literature, so people in the West don't really associate them with knights to begin with.
Oh, and you know how the Digimon's voices and personalities didn't really change this season, no matter how how high up the evolutionary level they got? Well, here's it's finally subverted - Gallantmon is far more verbose than Takato or Guilmon ever was, because he's the end result of Takato's newfound maturity.
One final note - Beelzemon's line of "I don't recall asking for forgiveness" has been mentioned on TV Tropes for years, as a lampshade of how the classic "This is Unforgivable" line in Anime kinda falls flat to Western ears.
And yes, they did rewrite his epiphany for the dub, and I remember it falling a bit flat when I was watching it as a kid - but I didn't care, it was still the coolest thing I'd seen in Digimon at the time. The whole "not really alive" thing kinda came out of nowhere, anyway.
I wouldn't say it came out of nowhere. They've been bouncing back and forth the theme of what measure a digital life has since the beginning, it's just that it used to be a point of contention between Takato and other characters.
It started as:
Ruki: Digimon are just data. They aren't real living things. Takato: How can you say that!? Guilmon is a real living thing!
And then it became
Yamaki: Digimon are just data. Their existence has no value and I'm going to destroy them all. Takato: How can you say that!? Guilmon is a real living thing!
And let's not forget.
Takato: Don't you worry that Terriermon will disappear some day? Jianliang: Not really. He's just data. It's not like he's a real living thing. Takato: How can you say that!? Guilmon is a real living thing!
The early arc was full of Takato shouting down everyone about how Guilmon is totally 100% completely real and valid and should be acknowledged as a living creature.
Which is why it hit him so hard when Mizuno told him, "Yeah, he's a bunch of data assembled in the image of your blueprint."
Because if Guilmon is data then it means everyone else was right and he was wrong. Guilmon is not a real living thing. He never was. Takato was talking out of his ass in every single one of those altercations and doesn't he feel foolish now?
Which brings him around to his epiphany that it doesn't matter that Guilmon is data; He can be a real living thing anyway. After shouting "He's NOT just data, he's REAL" over and over and then finding out he's just data, this episode sees Takato having to find his way back to "But he's still real anyway".
As for the form itself, Gallantmon is the first one to not be obviously derivative of Greymon's line. It still does the Greymon thing of abruptly 180ing from giant cyborg Dino to smaller humanoid warrior, but the similarities end there. Takato's still a fan of Greymon, but for this final form, when he's finally connected with his Digimon like never before, he's mainly doing his own thing.
Is he? Dukemon/Gallantmon feels very much in line with the design philosophy behind Omegamon/Omnimon and Imperialdramon Fighter/Paladin Mode. So much so that Digimon lore would later create a whole category, the Royal Knights, to connect Omegamon and Dukemon as the same Kind of Thing.
Takato just made his own big fusion armored knight warrior. The main difference being that he's filling the role of the other fused entity rather than having Terriermon or Renamon do it.
Eh, Takato's never shown to be a fan of Davis or Veemon's evolutions. Besides, Imperaldramon is only similar in being humanoid, he's not a knight of any kind. I certainly never made any connection between them. Then again, I never saw the second movie as a kid, and only sort of knew about Paladin Mode.
Still, I like how Guilmon's final form is not "WarGreymon, but better," like all his other forms were. Even if he's similar to other Digimon, I find him unique enough in his own right.
Thinking about the way BND uses MJ and the way Spidey 5 is likely to use MJ sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, and I think I've put my finger on why the MCU Spider-Man feels so offputting.
Basically, what it comes down to is that the MCU Spider-Man movies don't really know what to do with Peter's supporting cast or personal life or... Or the very concept of Peter Parker as a human person outside of being Spider-Man.
Homecoming was probably the most Peter Parker that an MCU film has featured on account of its mission statement of keeping Peter grounded.
But then Far From Home took him away from his setting and supporting cast to send Spider-Man globetrotting with S.H.I.E.L.D. and Mysterio. It still found excuses to bring his class along with him, though, so he could get into Peter-like shenanigans in these strange locales and start a relationship with MJ.
Nonetheless, May and Ned were reduced to recurring gags.
And then No Way Home pretty much kicked Peter to the curb. From the moment Doc Ock arrives on the film, it is 100% a Spider-Man movie. MJ and Ned are paired up to wander around being Spider-Man's sidekicks for a bit, May's killed off, and ultimately the very concept of Peter Parker is deleted from the universe.
Which then brings us to BND, whose central thesis is that Peter Parker is an integral part of who Spider-Man is and that Spidey needs to be feeding his Peterness too. It reconnects Peter with MJ and Ned, and ends with the promise of a restoration of Peter's identity outside of work.
But. LIke.
What does that even look like? Who even is Peter Parker at this point?
Peter has no day job. He never went to college. He's apparently independently wealthy enough to afford multiple years of housing and supercomputers and shit without an income; No idea where that money came from.
He doesn't have Aunt May. He doesn't have the Daily Bugle or Horizon Labs or anything. He doesn't have Midtown High anymore. He's never really been established to have any sort of dreams or aspirations besides "be Spider-Man" or alternatively "get that cute girl to be my girlfriend".
Flash sometimes exists for like one or two scenes of a movie.
It feels like we started Homecoming with a notional idea of Peter Parker and then spent the next three films subtracting elements from him. What is there left to build from?
If the idea at the end of BND is that Peter's going to take more time to be Peter then Spider-Man 5 is going to have its work cut out for it figuring out who Peter Parker even is. Who he can even be in the corner he's been written into.
But I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the Peter elements of Spider-Man 5 are just going to be spent on "get that cute girl to be my girlfriend", since they left that "MJ has a boyfriend now" plot thread dangling. Maybe it'll be about rekindling his relationship with MJ. Or maybe Black Cat will be in it and it'll be about how she's all wrong for him and then it'll be about rekindling his relationship with MJ.
I do not buy for one second that the MCU actually intends to leave Peter and MJ split up. I thought before BND that we were going to have to spend a movie painstakingly watching them get back together, and now I've increased that estimation to two movies of painstaking Will They/Won't They shipping of a couple that already did and it was already fine before they fucked with it.
But also. Like.
I hope it's not just Ned and MJ. Because Peter needs, like, an actual life. Even if he's going to have to build it from scratch because the films have burned all of his bridges to the iconic Peter Parker stuff.
Please let the big Spider-Man plot of movie 5 be in service to Peter's growth and development as a person rather than just having Peter be what Spider-Man does in his downtime. Peter needs another Spider-Man Homecoming to detox from the No Way Home/Brand New Day double-whammy.
I think what it really comes down to is that the MCU just doesn't really do personal stories about the protagonist where the villain his hero persona fights reflects some element of the personal struggle going on in his civilian life and helps him grow as a person through their conflict.
It does have those kinds of villains, mind. But it doesn't have those supporting casts and status quos and relatable life lessons for the human side of the superhero. This is because the MCU tends to treat its heroes as full-time heroes.
It's just that this is more noticeable with Spider-Man because. Like. We expect Iron Man to always be Iron Man when he's onscreen, even if he's not in the suit. We expect Captain America to be Captain America and to deal with Captain America type problems, not regular people problems. We expect Thor to always have his Thor face on and always be doing Thor things.
But we expect Spider-Man to have a rich, robust life as Peter Parker. We expect to see him doing Peter things just as much if not moreso than Spider-Man things, and for Spider-Man to be a tool to facilitate Peter.
And the MCU has struggled to deliver that because it just isn't the type of story the MCU tells. The MCU is much more comfortable operating in the "Bruce Wayne is the mask that Batman wears" space, and that just doesn't really work for Spider-Man.
The gradual erosion of the Secret Identity has been going on in the superhero genre for a while now, though the MCU being the juggernaut it once was has certainly contributed heavily to it's decline.
Part of it is an issue of managing time. Comic Books pivoting to a writing for the trade model means that there's less room in each issue to focus on building a civilian supporting cast, and creators increasingly pivot towards having the heroes interact with other heroes instead of civilians (There's a very good post by Maxwell Grant on Tumblr that discusses how this has lead to Amanda Waller losing her complexity and becoming a one note villain)
With TV shows, the pivot towards shorter seasons has left less room for playing around in a status Quo. Seasons have to be serialized, episodes have to push that serial narrative forward, and there's no room for the civilian Superhero divide. The Supporting Cast has to just be the supporting cast, for both sides of the hero.
Which have some upsides to. ironically, given your fers about MJs future, this trend has contributed to a lessening of will they won't theys in movies. Outing the Superhero to their love interest eliminates the missed meeting drama that was prevalent in Superhero stories for decades.
The Love Triangle between Clark Kent, Superman, and Lois Lane used to be a core element of Superman stories, and I can't remember the last adaptation where Lois was still in the dark by the end of the first installment. And while I feel Superman as a character is harmed by the lack of Dichotomy between his two identities, Lois figuring things out is a better look for her.
Which gets at another big difference, a desire for the Supporting cast to carry it's own weight in the story. In the old days, a Supporting cast was there to cause problems for the hero. They would drive social situations that put the hero in conflict with his duty, they would try to uncover the heroe's identity making them take greater efforts to hide. They would be endangered to make the latest villain's scheme have more stakes.
Nowadays, there's more of an effort to give the civvies a role that contributes to the resolution of the problem. Most commonly in the form of "The Guy in the Chair" who talks to the hero while he's in the field, and feeds solutions to him that the hero would have just come up with on his own in the old days.
The result is that even the support cast doesn't have much of a civilian life in narrative anymore.
Also, RE: Requiem letting you choose between first- and third-person camera perspectives is a cool idea but there should be a button that flips perspective for you. It shouldn't be hidden away in the Options menu.
Capcom, learn from Bethesda. They've been letting players flick between first- and third-person perspective with a button press for years.
Also got a bit of a vibe off the tutorial introducing this saying "Grace should be played in first-person to enhance the horror and Leon should be played in third-person to enhance the action."
First, spoilers, thanks. I did not know Leon was going to be playable.
Second, I dunno. "Horror for the female character, action for the male character," gives me a vibe but I don't want to make a thing of it based just off of this. We'll see how it goes.
“First, spoilers, thanks. I did not know Leon was going to be playable.”
…How the hell did you somehow not know about Leon being playable? Even if you weren’t obsessive about it, I don’t think it was hidden information. Not just the website for the game talks about it but there’s even a honest-to-god Porsche commercial about the game.
As for the gender vibe you got…I can see where it comes from but I saw it as recreating the feel of RE:7, since it was the first main RE game that had first-person AND was the beginning of the turnaround for Resident Evil in the late 2010s.
Basically, replicating the tone of RE:7 for Grace and the tone of RE:4 for Leon.
Personally, it’s still curious to me that they decided to demarcate the two halves of Resident Evil: the horror and vulnerability with the shooting gallery aspect of carrying around so much ammo and power on you as you get through the game.
The comparison to RE:7 is part of what makes it feel weird. Like. RE:7 featured Chris the way Requiem features Leon, but they didn't have you play Chris for half of RE:7.
The cynical part of me wonders if they felt no one would buy the game if it was just Grace. As I'm going through, I can't help comparing both to RE:7 and Silent Hill f. I'm withholding judgment until the end, but on the surface, the decision to split the game between survival horror Grace and action hero Leon is certainly raising an eyebrow with me.
Without further context of how Leon gets used, the kneejerk reaction is that it reads like a lack of trust in Grace to carry the story herself and become the action hero that Jill and Claire's stories let them become way back when.
Digimon Tamers 35 - The Name's Dukemon! The True Ultimate Evolution / Give a Little Bit
Previously on Digimon Tamers: Leomon fucking died. I don't. I don't have a way to make that funny. He fucking died, y'all.
I was waiting for this. This moment is still one of my favorites in Digimon, and helped cement Takato as my favorite Googlehead.
Finally, a Mega that felt earned - no last-minute prophecy bullshit, no magical plot device from the Exposition Dragon that only deigns to upgrade the central characters for some reason, but as the result of Takato's character arc that he has been building for some time now. He goes into deep introspection, comes out with a new understanding, and is reward with one of the most popular Megas in the franchise.
And yes, they did rewrite his epiphany for the dub, and I remember it falling a bit flat when I was watching it as a kid - but I didn't care, it was still the coolest thing I'd seen in Digimon at the time. The whole "not really alive" thing kinda came out of nowhere, anyway.
Oh, and the music - after two seasons of the dub just regurgitating the Digi-rap for every single transformation sequence, the new music was already a breath of fresh air. But then we reach this brand new final form, and the music actually changes to this sweet ethereal sound? I can't tell you how impactful that was on first viewing. I feel like this is the first season the dub team really paid attention to the soundtrack, and it shows here.
As for the form itself, Gallantmon is the first one to not be obviously derivative of Greymon's line. It still does the Greymon thing of abruptly 180ing from giant cyborg Dino to smaller humanoid warrior, but the similarities end there. Takato's still a fan of Greymon, but for this final form, when he's finally connected with his Digimon like never before, he's mainly doing his own thing.
Also, Gallantmon is a much, much better name than Dukemon - it's far more indicative of the "Noble Knight" thing Gallantmon has, plus it keeps the "G" theme of all his other forms' names. Besides, Dukes, Earls, Barons and the like have a long history of being the bad guys of English literature, so people in the West don't really associate them with knights to begin with.
Oh, and you know how the Digimon's voices and personalities didn't really change this season, no matter how how high up the evolutionary level they got? Well, here's it's finally subverted - Gallantmon is far more verbose than Takato or Guilmon ever was, because he's the end result of Takato's newfound maturity.
One final note - Beelzemon's line of "I don't recall asking for forgiveness" has been mentioned on TV Tropes for years, as a lampshade of how the classic "This is Unforgivable" line in Anime kinda falls flat to Western ears.
And yes, they did rewrite his epiphany for the dub, and I remember it falling a bit flat when I was watching it as a kid - but I didn't care, it was still the coolest thing I'd seen in Digimon at the time. The whole "not really alive" thing kinda came out of nowhere, anyway.
I wouldn't say it came out of nowhere. They've been bouncing back and forth the theme of what measure a digital life has since the beginning, it's just that it used to be a point of contention between Takato and other characters.
It started as:
Ruki: Digimon are just data. They aren't real living things. Takato: How can you say that!? Guilmon is a real living thing!
And then it became
Yamaki: Digimon are just data. Their existence has no value and I'm going to destroy them all. Takato: How can you say that!? Guilmon is a real living thing!
And let's not forget.
Takato: Don't you worry that Terriermon will disappear some day? Jianliang: Not really. He's just data. It's not like he's a real living thing. Takato: How can you say that!? Guilmon is a real living thing!
The early arc was full of Takato shouting down everyone about how Guilmon is totally 100% completely real and valid and should be acknowledged as a living creature.
Which is why it hit him so hard when Mizuno told him, "Yeah, he's a bunch of data assembled in the image of your blueprint."
Because if Guilmon is data then it means everyone else was right and he was wrong. Guilmon is not a real living thing. He never was. Takato was talking out of his ass in every single one of those altercations and doesn't he feel foolish now?
Which brings him around to his epiphany that it doesn't matter that Guilmon is data; He can be a real living thing anyway. After shouting "He's NOT just data, he's REAL" over and over and then finding out he's just data, this episode sees Takato having to find his way back to "But he's still real anyway".
As for the form itself, Gallantmon is the first one to not be obviously derivative of Greymon's line. It still does the Greymon thing of abruptly 180ing from giant cyborg Dino to smaller humanoid warrior, but the similarities end there. Takato's still a fan of Greymon, but for this final form, when he's finally connected with his Digimon like never before, he's mainly doing his own thing.
Is he? Dukemon/Gallantmon feels very much in line with the design philosophy behind Omegamon/Omnimon and Imperialdramon Fighter/Paladin Mode. So much so that Digimon lore would later create a whole category, the Royal Knights, to connect Omegamon and Dukemon as the same Kind of Thing.
Takato just made his own big fusion armored knight warrior. The main difference being that he's filling the role of the other fused entity rather than having Terriermon or Renamon do it.
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Oh another quick fun fact about Rayearth:
Y'know how Fuu loses the glasses when she has the full transformation to pilot Windam?
Apparently its not that her sight gets magically fixed, Windam is adjusting his screens to her glasses prescription
Oh, that's neat. I did think it was just her sight getting magically fixed. I think in the anime, they actually say something about Fuu not needing glasses anymore because Cephiro is a land governed by will and she's just powerful enough to will herself to see or something.
What do you think Abo and Cado are doing in Super? We know the special's canon, Tarble was mentioned twice (once in Battle of Gods as an option for the ritual, once in Broly as a surviving Saiyan). Super focused a surprising amount on Freeza and the Freeza Force, and in all their scenes and focus arcs, we don't see hide nor hair of Abo or Cado.
Where were they while Sorbet took over the Freeza Force, Freeza got resurrected, the Freeza Force took a huge L on Earth, Freeza got resurrected again a few years later, and Freeza recruited Broly?
It is stated in the special that they were Ginyu Force tier back in the day, but have since trained up to Freeza level (though presumably this means 1st Form Freeza, since that's the form Tarble has context for and that's the one he imagines when he makes that statement, and that fits with them putting up a decent fight but losing to base Goten and Trunks).
So presumably they wouldn't allow Sorbet to push them around, the Freeza Force is a meritocracy, and they were definitely stronger than him. But it also seemed like Sorbet wasn't even the strongest guy in his own reign, it seemed like Garana, Tagoma, and Shisami were all stronger than him (in case you don't remember Garana, in DBS, Garana and his men were wiped out by Champa looking for a Super Dragon Ball, and losing his second-strongest guy (after Shisami) was what convinced Sorbet they needed to revive Freeza).
Notable that Garana and Shisami were the two strongest in the Freeza Force, implying that they were either stronger than Abo and Cado, or that Abo and Cado left and weren't part of the Freeza Force.
I think it's possible they left, the special ended with them joining the party and eating the radishes happily, so maybe after making friends with the guys who destroyed the Freeza Force, they couldn't remain as part of it. Still, you'd think they would at least be mentioned, where they fucked off to. Maybe Freeza kills them to clean up loose ends. Maybe Cheelai and Lemo make contact with them, since they've gone rogue now too. I dunno, something. What do you think?
They left the Frieza Force to open an interstellar chain of food trucks selling hot dogs. Spaceships that toodle around the galaxy, stopping by various space stations or swooping down planetside to sell hot dogs.
I don't actually know, but Toriyama would definitely have written something goofy like that if pressed on it.
Sure, why not?
In the special, they seemed to really like Goku's daikon radishes, so one of the items on the menu is Bánh Mì style hog dogs with pickled carrots and daikon radishes, like this:
The Son family are their main supplier of daikon radishes, they stop by Earth every month or so to buy more.
