/animu/ - Anime & Otaku Culture

>>94616

The first season is anything but a "cute kids show", shit gets real near the middle of the plot and stays that way for quite a while. The second season is lighter and easy going, it`s actually really comfy with all the callbacks to season 1.

Digimon 3 shouldn`t be shown to kids.

>>94637

I saw Season 1, but only the ending.

>>94645

I'm read that some other time, I wanna watch Digimon first so I don't spoil myself

>>94646

Actually, it's rather spoiler-free and is just world building explain how and why all the Digimon series are canon.

>>94647

thanks anon

>>94616

Digimon is much more than a Pokemon ripoff. As referenced in >>94645, the lore is deep as fuck, but that picture barely touches the surface, and mostly talks about the video games. The cool part is that everything across all media is canon, and things across different media tie together pretty well, once you get into it.

But when you start, you'll probably just start with the first three or four seasons of the anime, and not get into that multiverse stuff at first. Each season builds up a pretty deep story of its own, and has a strong cast of characters. Each one is pretty archetypal, but that's part of the plot, and they all fill their roles well. It's well structured, and even all the episodes near the start that feel like simple monster of the week stuff end up being significant eventually.

Season 2, Digimon Adventure 02, is considered by many to be weaker than the rest, but it's the same universe as season 1, Digimon Adventure, and it builds the world in interesting ways. The new protagonists are mostly forgettable, but the old guys are still around and the villains are cool.

Season 3, Digimon Tamers, is a new continuity (but not really if you get into the video games and multiverse stuff), and it's quite a bit darker and more serious, leaning harder on more complex characterization, and a little less on the plot and worldbuilding, although that stuff is still good. Everyone says this or Adventure are the best seasons.

All the rest are okay but few would say they're the best. Except for Digimon Adventure Tri, which isn't even okay. It's garbage. They brought back the original continuity almost 20 years later, obviously to bank on the nostalgia, but then they didn't do anything that made the original good. Barely any plot, and tons of focus is stolen from the old characters in order to focus on a new Mary Sue who everything revolves around and everyone loves for no reason. Also there are tons of things that don't seem to make sense when you remember what happened in the original. Even if you really love Adventure and Adventure 02, don't think the next step is to watch Tri, it's shit. Just watch Tamers third.

The manga, Digimon Adventure V-Tamer 01 is also great. The main character is an alternate version of the main guy from Adventure anime, but it's not him, it's multiverse stuff. It begins before the first anime, but ends after Season 4, Digimon Frontier. You can probably just read it after Frontier.

As mentioned, the games are canon, especially the first Digimon World and the newer Digimon World games. Digimon World 2 and 3, and the ones on DS, are all completely unrelated to each other and don't seem that important to anything else, although there are smaller connections. Digimon Adventure 4 is actually a lead-in to an otherwise standalone (but not really because multiverse stuff) CGI movie, but it kind of sucks anyway. Also, all these games have different gameplay styles entirely.

The Digimon games on WonderSwan are essential to the lore, but only the first has an english translation. The first two go between Adventure and Adventure 02, the third and fourth go between Adventure 02 and Tamers. Then there's a fifth one that would go after Tamers but nobody cares enough to talk about it and it's japanese only so I don't know as much about it. Also the Digimon Battle Spirit games are originally from WonderSwan, and the upgraded version of the first game never got ported to GBA. They seem to tie into the other wonderswan games a bit.

Digimon is a top tier autism sink. Very deep world. Highly recommended.

>>94697

>>94645

I've heard about the entire Digimon universe being a single canon across all forms of media, but how did the creators manage to keep it consistent without doing some asspulls and retcons here and there? Do the original creators hold that much sway over the franchise? Are they that autistic with their vision? Such a thing is basically unheard of in Western media and even in Jap media there are many franchises where the spin-offs can be considered canon, but not really since their connection to the main series are sketchy or forced at best.

>>94703

>Digimon universe

You mean Digimon Multiverse. It has been explained that there are multiple Earths with their own respective Digital World. All the digital worlds are connected, so each Earth/Digital world is treated as a Server.

>>94616

The first season of Digimon was a good kids show, with a proper story and adequately explored lore. You wouldn't just assume it was a game adaptation, but you would hope they turned it into a videogame eventually.

>>94716

And it cut all the lewd good stuff

>no bath at illusion mansion

>cast keeps their clothes after the illusion

>mimi and sora are fully clothed during the ship scene

>>94703

Depends on your definition of asspull. Of course you also shouldn't just hate all retroactive continuity as a concept. There are good retcons, bad retcons, and some that are just meh.

Digimon continuity isn't as tight as something like DC or Marvel. It just slowly builds up and they add things over time. Since things are in different universes, there are excuses for when certain things don't line up perfect. There are also things like times when the entire server that a Digital World runs on is rebooted, which is not literally the same as a continuity reboot, but it helps to explain a few things.

Each thing is mostly standalone, except for things that are explicitly sequels to other things. But then you get little references here and there that tie things together that you previously thought were unrelated. When I was a kid and Digimon World came out in America after the Digimon Adventure anime was big, I was disappointed that Digimon World didn't seem to reference it at all. Another game called Digital Card Battle, of all things, later crosses over characters from Digimon World and Adventure 02, and establishes that they were the same universe after all, and it makes sense because, in Japan, Digimon World was out much earlier than Adventure, and was one of the first pieces of Digimon media. It takes place long before Adventure, explaining differences in the world. But it informs backstory to one character who is only somewhat important to Adventure, but goes on to be very important to the WonderSwan games, and then his role in the WonderSwan games is essential to establishing the multiverse, particularly the connection between the Adventure universe and the Tamers universe. It all ties together.

tl;dr: it evolved slowly over time, so the evolution of concepts naturally leads to the evolution of a world. But also multiple universes and retcons connecting the universes makes it tie together more strongly.

So can we all quit the Tamers dickriding for once and admit that the season still has problems?

>majority of digital world arc is filler and monster of the week shit with less imagination with their locations than adventure

>Leomon in general felt forced as fuck

Guy was introduced comparatively late into the story so he didn't have nearly the time to develop like the other kids and digimon did. He didn't even digivolve once. He never really felt like a true member of the team. His death probably wouldn't have been nearly as important to the story or it's viewers if he wasn't that important to Juri because that's what he was in the long run, just something to fuck with Juri.

>Hirokazu, Kenta and Shaochung all get digimon that don't do jack fucking shit, they exist only for the purpose of giving every character digimon and they don't even get any time to hang out together before they're sent back

>light beam things felt really contrived and are never explained despite being one of the defining features of the Tamers digital world (don't say some fucking wonderswan game explained it, fuck you)

<things that can warp you literally anywhere, even to different dimensions

<when the characters are stuck in one they're still within a few days' worth of distance between eachother

>>94756

I've only watched the ending of Season 1. Aside from its kinks, is Tamers still great?

>>94784

This cap is bullshit because the person writing it only cares about characterization and not about plot. Both are important, and while I would agree that Tamers is slightly better with characterization, Adventure is better with plot. Adventure has a much more interesting world to explore. Adventure is also very well structured, with even the earliest episodes, long before Crests are introduced and even longer before they're explained, still tying into all that stuff very well, in retrospect. Not that this isn't done in many Digimon series, but Adventure does it best.

It all goes together anyway, and thus it's best to just watch them all in order and see the series evolve. Matrix Evolution is the logical progression of Jogress, and the logical progression of what Digivices do. The first Digivice, the Digivice 01 from V-Tamer 01, only allowed the tamer to send items to the Digimon remotely.

Then Gennai and Homeostasis make the new type of Digivice from Adventure, where they are specially made to work with specially altered Digimon and specifically Chosen Children, and they can harness the energy of specific emotions from those children and turn it into data to make their partners temporarily Evolve. Note that if someone uses a Digivice and/or Partner that isn't theirs, they can't use this special feature, and the Digivice will only function like the first version, where all you can do is send items remotely. (See: Ryo using Taichi's Digivice.) Then you get the D-3 (which only makes sense when you realize that the one from V-Tamer 01 counts and is the Digivice 01), though the D-3's new powers to use Digimentals for Armor Evolution and open Digital Gates isn't relevant to my point.

But the Tamers' Digivice then advances the process of the Adventure Digivice, which can turn the Chosen Children's emotions into data for the Digimon to use to evolve. So we see this relatively early on when we see the Tamers' emotions affecting the Partner's emotions. Then they become even more connected, and the Tamers can feel the Partner's pain, and finally they can actually fully merge together, not just the Tamer's emotion, but the entire Tamer becomes data to make the Partner evolve further. Also, note that in regular Jogress, technically one Digimon is becoming data that is absorbed by the other, which is why it is possible to reach those same forms even without Jogress. But in Jogress, just because one is used by the other doesn't mean that their mind doesn't still exist and influence the whole.

In short, Digimon is best when viewed together. Tamers has better characterization but Adventure has better plot, but it all leads together anyway.

>>94782

It's good but it's a show that lives and dies on it's character development. It really can't do anything else well, but it's stellar at writing the main cast and it does a lot of that.

>>94784

I know that 02 gets a lot of shit but I think that Oikawa is an underrated villain because of how completely pathetic every single aspect of his life was.

>>94804

02 kind of wastes the interesting Dagomon stuff, but it gets way too much hate. It's still pretty good. It has good worldbuilding and Ken is a good character. The new guys aren't as great, but the old ones are still around and still good.

>>94889

Haven't seen it in like 15 years, but she's Season 3. Everything you really need to know about it is self contained, so just watch that season. Your pic related is the result of the series running gag.

>>94889

>>94924

Yes, it's Season 3, Digimon Tamers. It's self contained enough that if you watch it on its own you shouldn't even notice that you're missing connections. It's also one of the best entries in the franchise, so check it out.

Anything new with Digimon?

>>95399

Survive is supposed to come out this year, but I don't think we've heard anything about it in six months.

>>95399

Digimon Adventure 4 movie confirmed for Spring 2020. After Tri being awful, people are pissed. Especially since the guy behind Tamers wanted to do a sequel to that, and did an audio drama proof of concept and everything, but it was passed up in favor of more Adventure. Personally, I'm an Adventurefag, but Tri was garbage and felt much less like Adventure than Tamers did. I just hope the next movie is actually like Adventure and not like Tri. Perhaps it is foolish of me to have any hope at all.

>>96581

Fuck Adventure, I want Tamers 2.

>>96588

Yeah but that has already been explicitly shot down. Maybe next time...

>>96607

Honestly, I do tire of the fact that cartoons are so sanitized when watching what they used to get away with.

>>96606

Each anime and most of the games can be understood on their own, but the crossovers are cool. You don't need to worry about them at first, but then you start noticing things carrying over between entries, despite those entries taking place in different universes. At first it feels like the series is sabotaging itself by having each entry be so unrelated, but luckily some autists working on it have realized that and made the multiverse, reconnecting everything together so you don't completely lose your emotional investment every time.

I don't really think the artstyle is that incoherent. The only example in your pic that strongly stands out is the one with the eyes too far apart. That said, you have a very good point about the stock animation being used to an absurd degree. But as you said, the OST makes up for it. The battles may largely be the same bits of stock footage for evolutions and signature moves played over and over, but the songs that play over those battles still make them feel cool.

>>96632

>kids are stupid and fragile little flowers and anything marketed at them shouldn't have deeper themes for an (eventual) adult audience or violence whatsoever.

Digimon Tamers HAS deep and dark themes and they're pretty well done too... But to act as if it was literally Evangelion or Serial Experiment Lain (For Kids :^) ) is doing a disservice to it. Plenty of kids (including myself and my brother) watched the original Digimon Tamers without censorship and it being dark was what made the show great... Because it was scary, with real world issues (abuse, losing a loved one, etc. It all can happen when you're a kid you know?) but it was STILL, at its core, a show about monsters evolving and battling and kids KAADO SLASHin' shit with their digivices.

Then, I rewatched it and the deeper themes still held up to the time... But it's certainly not some deep psychological seinen and even the darker shonens out there (like FMA 2003) beat it to it.

>>96632

Such a smol grill having such dekai curves should be illegal and it probably is in cuckowealth cunttrees.

>>96632

>What`s your favorite child friendly theme on tamers then? Is it the emotionally broken little girl fetish or the child abuse undertones, maybe the mercy killing stuff or the unbirthing shit.

Most of it is just about the power of friendship, just like every Digimon entry, and most anime in general. The things you describe aren't even themes, they're just things in the show. Characters and events. Also, the "child abuse undertones" are so subtle that they're practically made up. Same goes for the "unbirthing" shit.

Tamers deals mostly with the same subject matter as Adventure, but it does do it with a somewhat darker tone. It's the tone, not the content, that makes it darker. Juri has emotional breakdowns, just like Sora and Yamato and Hikari and Ken, who become so depressed that they go to the dimension of sad emotions ruled by Cthulhu. Should we say Adventure 02 isn't for kids because of Ken and Wormmon clearly being a case of domestic abuse? Hell, there are creator confirmed incest undertones between Taichi and Hikari, as early as the very first series.

Tamers is for kids. It just takes a more somber tone and lingers on negative emotions a little more, rather than getting over sad things quicker and having more lighthearted adventures instead. Of course Adventure and others also do this, but just to a slightly lesser degree.

>>96635

>(abuse, losing a loved one, etc. It all can happen when you're a kid you know?)

Note that these things are both central to Ken from 02. Tamers just focuses a bit more on it. Not that it wasn't very important to 02 as well.

Also, doing these things in a manner that incorporated them into an actual good plot with fun action is what makes it good, as you say. It doesn't need to be some 2deep4U piece of navel gazing shit. It's kaiju narnia and it happens to have good characters and development.