I was definitely one of those kids who saw Digimon and thought “this looks like a rip off of Pokémon” and ignored it. It’s not like I never watched the show, I do have a VHS tape with a few episodes that I’ve watched at least once, but there was definitely something missing for me. Now, I’m almost thirty and my partner and I only watched Pokémon and thought “shall we give Digimon a try?” Why we thought that, I can’t say, but we definitely felt like there was something missing in our lives and we wanted to fill that void.
As expected, this series is kid-friendly. All of the character and Digimon designs are spot-on, the dialogue is a bit over the top, the music has an incredible late 90s, early 2000s vibe, and things like stats and types are clearly displayed on screen so that kids can easily see what their favorite guys can do. However, we didn’t actually start with this series because we figured if we were going to do it, we should do it right. Which in turn led us to the Digimon movie.
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No, don’t worry, avid Digimon fans, I’m not talking about that terrible amalgamation of three different movies that makes almost no sense, I’m talking about the original Digimon Adventure. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Digimon Adventure is the prologue to the main Digimon series, and was released in theaters the day before the TV show aired in Japan. It’s just a short little film, about 20 minutes long, and you know what? It’s kind of incredible – and surprisingly scary.
Digimon Adventure is actually directed by one of the best anime film directors, Mamoru Hosoda, in his directorial debut. You may be more familiar with Hosoda’s other solo works, such as Summer Wars, Wolf Children, and most recently Beauty and the Beast. He is an amazing director, and his style was already on display in Digimon Adventure. However, he really managed to pack a lot of pressure into a short film.
As mentioned above, Digimon Adventure is a prologue that tells the story of protagonist Taichi Yagami and his sister Hikari. One night, Hikari wakes up to find strange things happening on the family computer, when an egg emerges from it. The two then take care of the egg until it hatches into Rollermon, a little pink creature that’s basically a talking head with big ears and is a bit goofy most of the time. Things heat up quickly when Rollermon evolves into Agumon, the classic orange dinosaur we all know and love. Is he a bit scary?
In the series, Agumon is a bit goofy like his first form as Rollermon, though he’s more powerful in combat – notably, he’s about the same height as Taichi. However, Digimon Adventure’s rendition of him is different, transforming him into a slow-witted, aggressive monster that’s six to eight feet tall. He’s completely dinosaur-like and seems to have no problem destroying everything in his path, and when a giant bird-type Digimon that also behaves horribly attacks, Agumon evolves again into Graymon, who is now a T-Rex-sized monster that’s just as terrifying as the classic dinosaur.
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While all of this is happening, Maurice Ravel’s Bolero serves as a whimsical soundtrack that really highlights the surreality of it all. Keep in mind that Taichi and Hikari are only six and four years old, respectively, so they’re definitely not old enough to be dealing with kaiju-level threats here. It’s a really wild movie from start to finish, and I was immediately hooked. I honestly haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I saw it.
The Digimon series was really just a silly little movie that started out as a monster of the week, but Adventure really leans into the monster part of the eponymous series. They’re portrayed as destructive and violent, even at the end Greymon is still the kids’ friend, and actually asks the audience to think about the consequences of such an event. It feels very ahead of its time, more like the kind of movie you’d see in the post-Pokémon boom era than when Pokémon was at its most powerful.
The animation is also fantastic, there’s so much energy in the two little ones that you feel like they’re actually children, unable to control their fine movements. They’re instantly charming, and I feel like very few animations capture the charm of children, which I think really added to the stress I felt for them having to face off against giant digital monsters.
I do know that Digimon fans have long said that the original movie was good, but I think the Pokémon movies are good too because they look pretty good and are a good way to kill time without being in a “hey why didn’t this thing get an Oscar” kind of way. I certainly didn’t know how dark it was either, but now that I know, all I can say is that even if you didn’t like Digimon, you should check out Digimon Adventure.