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bookofholsety
you know the drill by now. here be major, major spoilers. go watch the thing already. actually, now would probably be a really good time to watch the entire series, since the finale is out in probably just a few hours. no more dicking around with interminable waits between the films!
OK, right off the bat, let's get the
Nishijima's partner was fucking BEARMON.
i officially take back that bullshit i was saying about how his partner totally should've been a lizard/dragon, because this is objectively the better outcome. i don't even care that frankly, there's a child-level lion right there who was specifically designed to evolve into LoaderLeomon, or that i'm sick of Bearmon always being depicted evolving into lions. That's not important anymore. Know what is important, though?
The bear boy. The bear boy is here. The motherfucking bear boy is here. 11/10 movie of the year everyone else can fuck right off
Ahem.
i'm not going to lie. From my perspective there's a bit of a problem with me continuing to write these, one which is probably the biggest reason i keep putting them off for months at a time only to suddenly hasten when the next bit of Tri is right around the corner: the fact that you can boil just about everything i have to say down to "yeah it's still good and fun but it also feels pretty flimsy after part 3 burst through the door and blew my fuckin mind". Even if i still like the things, it's still so much easier to ramble at length about the parts i take issue with, to the point that i've had all of that in this writeup done for months and am only writing this part just days before part 6 is out. It's a disease with me, really.
Anyway. In hindsight, i can't help but see part 4 as something of a breather: a quick pause off part 3's climax to regroup, to tell a softer, lower-stakes, more optimistic bridging story, and to take a moment to ready itself for the home stretch. Naturally, part 5 is the start of said home stretch, and i absolutely adore the basic concept of what's going on here: the idea that after all this time, all these structural elements that they've taken for granted - being divinely chosen heroes of the digital world, the existence of a clear-cut good ally on the cosmic scale - are being stripped away, and not out of direct malice but out of a judgement that it's necessary for the survival of the digital world. i find myself very attracted to the probing of the exact nature of a divine or prophecised hero, a concept that Digimon as a franchise has, naturally, always played very much on the straight and narrow. It helps that in Tri's case, while it's obviously a downer of a revelation that they're now rejected by the same digital world that wouldn't still be here if it hadn't been for them, and in that Homeostasis and Jesmon are very much obstacles if their objectives happen to diverge (which of course they do vis a vis Meicoomon), it's not cause to completely give up in favour of super-depressed moping around. They know they've still got work to do, even if the resident deus ex machina doesn't agree with them.
Granted, now that i've said this out loud, this seems pretty obvious as a genre thing. Yeah, no shit the heroes of what's still basically a shonen anime aren't going to give up against impossible odds, even if said odds are more existentially hostile than usual. Yeah, no shit said heroes are determined to save their friend from a force that's trying to destroy it (more on that in a moment). Even so, i feel like this part could've been mishandled very easily in that nihilistic edgy sense that's so common nowadays; hell, my own personal writing projects revolve around probing the concept of prophecised heroes in a light which, quite frankly, is pretty fucking depressing by design, so on reflection i suppose that coloured my perceptions of what Tri did; of course that traditional Digimon optimism is a surprise to me in this context, when i've been basically dwelling on the same concept in a much less optimistic light for like eight years now! This is an extremely silly tangent, but there it is nonetheless.
And hey, the means by which the digital world/Homeostasis expresses this newfound hostility toward the chosen children by actively changing itself - fucking with the terrain, time and weather, are pretty fun and make for some neat setpiece scenes early on. Given that most Digimon series (including the original Adventure) aren't really in a habit of playing with the idea of the digital world as anything but fairly static environments like our own that just happen to have gigantic demon bugs in it, deleting mountainsides out from under the children's feet was fairly novel and refreshing in its simplicity.
In my opinion, the biggest strength of part 5 is its examination of the tangled relationship between Meiko and Meicoomon. Of course, it's something they've been dropping hints about all along - that last scene in part 2 where berserk!Meicoomon sadly looks back before fleeing comes to mind - but here, i feel, is where they thread it all together into a cohesive whole and present something of a fascinating picture: a digimon whose exceptionally intense emotional dependency on her human partner is both her saving grace and her greatest weakness, the mere temporary absence of whom being enough to push her to the brink, and the mere presence of whom being enough (in the past, anyway) to call her back from it. The idea that Meicoomon literally draws her power from her fear, both from threats to herself and threats to Meiko, and that technically everyone involved in trying to confront her has been making this worse all along, is a concept that i utterly adore. There's never been anything quite like it in the series before, and i like how it even answers a question we never even thought we had: suddenly, everything that's happened so far with Meicoomon makes total sense.
And naturally, the fear revelation shines an interesting new light on Meicoomon's motivations. These aren't something i thought about much prior to this point, i admit, but in part 3 in particular she came across as something of a malevolent force of nature, possessed only by a need to lash out and destroy with no regard for her prior life or connections. But now, her fear humanises her in a manner of speaking; she might be uncontrollable, but she's doing what she does because in this haze of fear she believes she has no other choice in order to survive. It's certainly not rational (what fear is?), but it's understandable and sympathetic, and combined with the rare sign that she does, in fact, still recognise Meiko and desire to protect her (after all, this is exactly what evil Gennai played on to make her go berserk the second time), it's clear that no matter how bad things seem, she may not be entirely beyond help and is still worth at least trying to save. It's an interesting and novel dilemma, and it's most enjoyable to see all the pieces fall into place to establish what's really going on with her.
Meiko's half of the equation, while certainly not as outwardly destructive, is remarkably self-destructive; the idea that she loves Meicoomon so much that she's always been willing to put up with just about anything for her sake, whether it's in the form of completely shrugging off being clawed pretty deeply by her as a child, or that moment at the start of the film where she seemingly accepts that Meicoomon is going to kill her. There's always been a certain element of self-flagellation to Meiko, made clear when she repeately blames herself for everything that's happened with Meicoomon and insists that the others (up to and including Meicoomon herself) should hate her for it as much as she hates herself, but damn if she's not desperate to save Meicoomon. That climactic sequence in which she decides that the only way to save Meicoomon is to end her suffering is absolutely beautiful, both in terms of that visually conveyed sequence in which something snaps in her and the reality of the situation sinks in, convincing her that that's the only hope left for Meicoomon's sake, and in terms of the fact that absolutely nobody can agree on the matter. Yamato and Jou's outrage and grief at the very idea, versus Taichi's determination to take the least-worst option left to them, is a wonderful scene, even if (or arguably, especially because) it's promptly rendered moot by circumstances very much outside their control. There was no easy answer, the best possible way out at that point would not have been pleasant at all for anyone involved, and they didn't even get that. There's something quite resonant to that, in my opinion.
As a side note, Raguelmon is bar none my favourite digimon design from, at the absolute minimum, the past decade. This isn't exactly a new revelation; this is how i've felt on the subject ever since some animu news site posted that first screenshot of Raguelmon in action, but it bears repeating because holy hell that's a great digimon. It cuts such a distinctive and evocative figure, and it looks cool, imposing and unsettling all at once without falling into the usual, vastly overwrought trappings of a lot of modern ultimate-levels (hello, Jesmon, you incomprehensibly spiky piece of shit). It's exactly what it needs to be, and the design communicates its narrative purpose perfectly at first glance. i can only hope that future designs for other works continue this trend to some extent or another.
Also of note is the work that part 5 does with Taichi, posing a nice climax to the arc that Tri set him on. Right from the beginning i was quite taken with the idea of the near-adulthood ex-shonen hero that part 1 presented: one genuinely unsure of his place in a world that doesn't involve making fuckoff-big dinosaurs bigger, one forced to confront for the first time, from a viewpoint now tinged in the more mundane responsibility of age, the fact that working with said fuckoff-big dinosaurs has serious, tangible consequences on the world and people around him, and one genuinely uncertain and fearful of how to act under the weight of this realisation. The brazen decisiveness of his childhood is long gone, and with it, an unambiguous way forward to do the right thing.
They've been toying with that undercurrent ever since, and as far as i'm concerned, it pays off very nicely here. By this point Taichi has spent the better part of four films grappling with these issues on and off, and all of that culminates in this wonderful moment where he realises that one way or another, somebody isn't making it out of this. Everything that Yamato has been trying to tell him from the start - that the cost of inaction is too great - finally clicks, and with a signal to Omegamon he makes his choice. He tries his damnedest to ensure that he makes it out as well, but as he suspected, it isn't enough and he takes the consequences of his choice.
i mean, this was pretty obviously never going to be the end for Taichi by any means. It was abundantly clear even before we saw him show up on part 6's poster that he's still going to get a happy ending after all this. Lest we forget, the one time a Digimon series actually killed off a human lead for real, he got revived by the power of friendship at the end. Even so, even if the consequences of Taichi's choice weren't mortal ones, they were still severe both for himself and the rest of the chosen, and that doesn't take away from what the choice represents in his broader arc.
On a much quicker note, there's also the follow-up to part 4's revelations about Himekawa. Her present activities are thoroughly unsettling and macabre, with a psychological bent reminiscent of Tamers' darker moments (though naturally nowhere near as detailed, given the disparity in run time in which to work with her), and continues to provide a sinister, less wholesome mirror to what the chosen children (Meiko specifically, this time) are presently going through. i appreciate how open-ended they left her fate for the time being: it's clear that something's happening, but they're pacing themselves nicely on this one and saving the answer to that question for part 6. In the meantime, what she's doing is just about anyone's guess. Maybe she ended up as part of the Grotesque Ophaniraguelmon Fleshmass? Who knows?
Honestly, in hindsight, Himekawa's entire stake in the broader events is pretty interesting, in that she constitutes an antagonist that the chosen children never even knew they had. Despite being a fundamental cause of everything that's happened, her path has diverged so far away from the meat of the matter, both for the heroes and for Yggdrasil, that unless Nishijima tells them everything (unlikely, given he doesn't know much himself), the chosen have basically no reason to ever know about her hand in all of this or what became of her. There's something kind of sad, almost poetic, about that.
Oh, and the ending credits song is pretty damn lovely. It makes up for those issues i was having back in part 4 with that frustrating underuse of Ai Maeda's versatility and range, too, so that's nice.
My biggest issue with the film by far is with its handling of Hikari, specifically the part where they dovetailed right back into the traditional Oh Shit We Have To Write For Hikari Yagami Now Syndrome. It's not really a secret that Hikari was, unfortunately, the worst written character in the original Adventure by a significant margin; i mean, i like her well enough, but she was never given an inch to breathe on her own terms like the other seven were. Her only real character trait in either series was basically "she is nice and happy and i guess she also has a whistle," and instead the narratives insisted on her existing chiefly as a walking plot device. Any episode giving her any real focus is either about her basically being Digimon Jesus and not having much of a say in it, or features her only insofar as a source of drama, conflict and development for Taichi, Takeru, Tailmon or even Wizarmon. 02 didn't do much at all to improve her situation, doubling down on mystical plot devices with an added serving of being a comedic romantic football for Takeru and Daisuke. The most i can really say about her there is that her friendship with Miyako is cute, i guess, but even then, sticking her next to Miyako really just highlights the stark difference in shits given about writing personalities between the two.
i'd long had very high hopes that Tri would throw poor Hikari a fucking bone. So far, it's done a fine job of pulling novel deep dives into each of the original characters' psyches, with results ranging from excellent (Taichi, Koshiro and Takeru) to decent but kinda hamstringing itself (Jou and Sora). Then there's its consistent undercurrent of work exploring Meiko and the grief caused to her by her awkward situation. In addition, i've long felt that the previous Tri parts' portrayal of Hikari was a genuine step up from anything that came before it and seemed to be working toward something good for her, though in hindsight i can't say i can really back this feeling up with anything in particular. Either way, i'd hoped that with this track record, Hikari getting centre stage in part 5 would mean that we're finally getting that long-awaited coup de grace turning her from a satellite to Taichi and Tailmon to her own person, clearly realised (if not to the same extent as her fellows because hey, one movie can't fix nineteen years of neglect all at once).
But then, it just.... didn't happen.
The film certainly showed the potential seeds of how it could explore Hikari in proper detail, with pre-release synopses promising a story wherein the stress and strain slowly eats away at the perpetually happy eighth member of the Chosen, but it promptly does nothing with them. She gets three key scenes in which she and her issues are unambiguously the focus - the first "the digital world hates us" campfire scene, the scene where she rejects Homeostasis, and the climax - and that's it. The film makes no effort to tie them together or to give the same continuous undercurrent of facing her worst fears that the other Chosen got. Hell, one can even construe the campfire scene as shooting down that pursuit; she bucks up quickly when the others reassure her, and then we're back into traditional Hikari territory when she promptly turns around to reassure Meiko herself. From then on everything seems status quo with her, as she resumes her traditional backseat for a solid forty minutes with Meiko and Taichi getting the majority of the attention, and shortly after a rousing fuck-you speech to Homeostasis we nosedive right into her suddenly being completely and utterly broken by the disappearance of Taichi.
Honestly, what happened to her still makes total sense, and the scenes aren't even bad in isolation. It's just... so unsatisfying as a narrative presentation, suffering severely from skimping out. The film sorely needs something - anything - to tie them together; say, an occasional cut to Hikari sitting there smiling, only to... i don't know, let the smile falter because what's happening is so terrifying and antithecal to everything she's been through so far that it's starting to grate on her? Ideally it'd take a lot more because god knows Tri has done a fine job of extending that courtesy to everyone else, but hey, it's Hikari, baby steps.
It's a shame, too, because the core idea of what's going on here is such an interesting one. So much of Hikari's life has revolved around being Digimon Jesus and having all these unusual spiritual connections to the digital world, that having it suddenly yanked out from under her, leaving her without something everyone's taken for granted for so long, is a concept ripe for exploration. I can see that, plus the big realisation that Homeostasis wasn't all that sympathetic all along and the sheer savagery of Meicoomon's situation, slowly destabilising her with the loss of Taichi being the coup de grace, but the sparse and tidy handling of her problems before that point leaves the loss of Taichi coming across as the sole factor to break her so spectacularly. As much as Taichi is a big deal to her, this results in the biggest climax of the entire Tri run coming across as... well, par-for-the-course Hikari writing. Bugger.
(That said, i do find it mildly amusing that Part 5 has the exact opposite of the problems Part 4 had: Sora's arc was built up really well with a consistent, fairly natural-feeling current of conflicts arising, only to be bungled by a subpar climax, whereas Hikari's has what would have been a fantastic climax had they bothered properly building everything up to that moment. Huh.)
While i'm on the subject of Hikari and Tailmon, i just have to say one other thing: yes, Toei, we get it. Angewomon has boobs and an ass. Settle the hell down already. That one shot of Angewomon bending down to protect Hikari and conveniently having both assets prominently sticking out on display was excruciating. Stop it. Please, for the love of fuck. Almost makes one pine for the days when Adventure had an animation budget of about five cents.
The other real problem here is that something feels inherently.... off about the pacing and the broader context. It's a strange situation, too. On one hand, the entire premise of the film is that shit is hitting the fan in a much more urgent way than before, not just in the climax. You've got Meicoomon on the loose, the delineation between the worlds collapsing, angry digimon everywhere in the real world, a lot of pissed people and governments, and Meicoomon-induced catastrophes around the world. Yet, from the Chosen Children's perspective, things seem to be more or less status quo - even knowing that the ball isn't exactly in their court and they don't really have the resources to personally escape the digital world or track down Meicoomon, they seem remarkably content to have the traditional campfire scenes and to spend the night hiding at school.
On the other hand - and this is the odd part - despite the problems here, i don't think i could personally bear to see any of these sequences removed for one very simple reason: by and large, they're very good. With the possible exception of the campfire scene, just about everything serves a clear and useful purpose vis a vis characterisation and setting the tone. The overnight school sequence is instrumental in establishing a sense of grim resolve about what is to come, with Meiko and Taichi left to reflect on their situation knowing full well that shit is about to hit the fan. Now naturally, if you were to properly restructure the film to correct the pacing issues here, you wouldn't just drop this content wholesale; the entire point of editing and rewriting is to make this sort of thing more cohesive with the whole of the film, so in a sense this reaction of mine doesn't really wash - if paced right, all of these characterisation moments would still be there, school or no school.
On a related note, while i'm glad that we got a nice, meaty battle scene compared to part 4's disappointing 30-second-long one (and one which actually gave all of the partner digimon's perfect forms some time in the spotlight, too!), once Alphamon arrives it feels almost... inorganic. The fight is very much framed as a brutal free-for-all - Meicoomon vs Jesmon vs Omegamon vs Alphamon - with just about every side having a reason to take pot shots at all of the others, but it's got this mildly irritating habit of consistently breaking down into pairs of one-on-one clashes rather than the more opportunistic, less structured clusterfuck of its concept. It's a minor nitpick, sure, but part of what made part 3's climactic fight so compelling and gutwrenching to see unfold was that exact feeling of anarchy and unpredictability, so it's too bad they couldn't pull it off for what might well be the last big-ticket fight sequence of the entire Tri run. Everything between Jesmon's arrival and Alphamon's arrival was pretty solid though.
In a rather hasty conclusion given it's 1am on the night before part 6 comes out at this time of writing and i just want to get this shit done already, that's Tri part 5, i suppose. It's pretty good, warts and all.
