Digimon Frontier: The "HATED" Season | Billiam

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Brief Summary

This video is a review of Digimon Frontier, where Billiam shares his thoughts on the series, highlighting both its flaws and some aspects he enjoyed. He discusses the plot, characters, villains, and overall impact of the show, comparing it to other Digimon series and analyzing why it may have led to a decline in American interest in the franchise.

  • The plot of Frontier is simple but has a lot of filler that doesn't reflect the lore.
  • The characters are one-note and their drama feels forced.
  • The villains are repetitive and their motivations are unclear.
  • Frontier changed the formula of Digimon, but not in a way that was engaging.

Introduction

Billiam reflects on his early experiences with Digimon, noting that he didn't see every episode when it originally aired due to limited availability. It wasn't until YouTube that he was able to watch all of Digimon Adventure and other series. He expresses his love for the partner Digimon concept, which made him initially dislike Digimon Frontier because the kids transform into Digimon instead of partnering with them. However, he acknowledges that there are many great stories without partner Digimon and states that the issue with Frontier lies in other aspects.

Digimon Frontier Plot

Digimon Frontier takes place in a separate universe where children receive a mysterious call to pursue their destiny and board a train to the digital world. Five children are chosen to become the legendary warriors by transforming into Digimon to stop an ancient evil. The plot is simple but well-constructed, with early foreshadowing. The conflict revolves around an ancient feud between beast-type and human-type Digimon, but this conflict isn't well-represented outside of the backstory. The series contains a lot of filler that doesn't contribute to the world-building.

Characters

The main cast of Frontier includes Takuya, Koji, Tommy, Zoe, and JP, but their characters are not well-developed. Tommy repeatedly learns the same lesson about fending for himself, while JP and Zoe learn the meaning of friendship. Koji has attachment issues due to his mother's supposed death, which later turns out to be a lie. He also has a twin brother who is controlled by an evil Digimon. Takuya, as the main character, lacks a strong dynamic with the others. The character drama feels forced and unrealistic, with external magical forces causing conflict rather than genuine character interaction.

Villains

Frontier's villains, particularly the five evil legendary warriors, overstay their welcome. Their repetitive actions involve scanning data to gain power, leading to the kids losing until they eventually gain more power. Unlike Digimon Adventure and Tamers, where villains had other motivations, Frontier's villains solely focus on defeating the kids. The characters lack a motivating force to stay in the digital world, choosing to remain for unclear reasons.

Conclusion

Billiam clarifies that his review is not meant to be angry and lists aspects he liked about Digimon Frontier, such as the dynamic between the kids, Bokomon, and Neemon, the rebirth of the celestial Digimon, the flexible power scaling, and the English dub. He argues that Frontier gets a bad rap for changing the formula, but it was conforming to existing anime tropes rather than innovating. The characters are boring, the world is inconsistent, and the story moves slowly. Billiam considers Digimon Frontier the end of classic Digimon in America, leading to a hiatus and a decline in American interest in the franchise. He suggests that the show's lack of engagement caused viewers to dismiss it, especially those skeptical of the change in formula.

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Transcript

Full transcript of “Digimon Frontier: The "HATED" Season | Billiam”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.

0:00 did you father was one of the first serialize shows I was exposed to but it was hard to watch it all I didn't originally see every episode when it was airing and there was no complete set of VHS volumes released just a few here and there it wasn't until after YouTube came around that I was able to completely and legally watch all of Digimon together I finally got to rewatch all of Adventure and the other Digimon series which I only caught a few episodes of as a little guy tamers and frontier a show it's just completely turned me off part of what makes Digimon Digimon are the partner Digimon a special digital monster chosen her hand-picked for a certain kid the kids relationship to the Digimon will often act as a surrogate to show how the kids learn and grow up the relationship

0:46 between the kid and their Digimon was something that I really valued in the series I was so in love with the partner concept of the idea Digimon would get rid of it was genuinely upsetting and frontier the cast did it partner with Digimon they turned into Digimon but this seems to be many people's only complaint about Digimon frontier I remember liking frontier when I rewatched it all those years ago so it's time to realize something there have been tons of great stories where the main character doesn't have a Digimon the iliad Citizen Kane Gossip Girl Digimon frontier isn't bad because the kids transform into Digimon no it's bad for completely different reasons means they've gone off without again you are a

1:31 small sliver of light in this dark dark world but first special thanks to verb for sponsoring this video head out to VR video slash Billiam to receive a 30-day free trial of burb premium vert premium provides a wide variety of ad free content from a large selection of content sources it has quickly become one of my favourite platforms to watch content and if you want to hear about my personal experience with verve stay tuned until the end of the video that's VR v dot KO slash Billiam to receive a 30-day free trial of Verve premium I really don't want this to be an angry review I'm not coming at this from a place anger or from a desire to rant I was just bored while watching frontier

2:19 consider this my catharsis frontier takes place in its own universe separate from the other Digimon shows it begins one evening with every child ever getting a phone call by a mysterious adult telling them they need to pursue their destiny and board a train right before 5 p.m. the kids are all taken to the digital world well most of the children go home 5 in particular start hanging out with one another their cell phones turn into detectors which allowed them to transfer data from the digital world and channel the power of the legendary warriors allowing them to turn into Digimon they eventually learned they were chosen over every other kid after arriving in the digital world to put an end to some ancient evils the plot the frontier is simple but it's genuinely well constructed there's early foreshadowing two things that don't pay

3:06 off until the very end of the series and the conflict of the entire show involves this ancient feud between the higher powers of the digital world but there's a lot of filler in the world bill doesn't seem to reflect what we're told about the lore we learn about this ancient war between beast-type and human type Digimon eventually the war ended in three celestial Digimon took over to govern the digital world kerubim on a beast-type along with a fond Iman and Serafim on two human types kuru Biman turned evil and raised a beast-type army to usurp the other to which it was able to raise due to the belief that beast-type Digimon didn't have enough political power this backstory is told over and over again but we never see this conflict between the two Digimon types outside of when

3:51 the backstory is explained the kids get beast-type and human type transformation but that's really all that's mentioned from it there's also a lot of filler and filler can be great a single episode does not have to drive the plot forward filler can be good for world development Bonett feels disconnected from everything else the world seems to be less real and let me tell you this world is already not very real you back to your partner in exchange for all women so initially the cast of frontier is made up of five characters Takuya Koji Tomi Zoe and JP besides their perceived role in the show leader little kid angsty boy I couldn't tell you much about their character I can't tell you what happened to them and the

4:36 character beats they want you to recognize but it all feels so OneNote Tommy is a little kid who needs to learn to fend for himself okay he does like five times and every time he learns this exact same lesson they frame it like it's the very first time he's ever even thought about it JP and Zoe had trouble making friends but now they know the true meaning of friendship and Koji while Koji has attachment issues because his mom died when he was very young and now he doesn't want to get too close to his stepmom oh but but there's a big twist in the middle of the series it turns out his mom isn't actually dead his dad just lied to him so he can get his dick wet yeah you don't need to play nice with stepmom anymore she probably knew about the whole thing also turns out Koji has this secret twin brother whose primary

5:23 conflict as he's being controlled by an evil digimon once he finally joins the team he adds nothing to their dynamic Takuya well Takuya wears goggles so he's the main character I think a lot of the problems I have with these characters is I don't really understand their dynamic I'm not sure I'll ever understand them I feel like with this many filler episodes there should really be a strong chemistry between these characters but the filler is always used to explore a new set of digimon characters the character drama which is introduced is either repeated until it's obnoxious or completely not relatable of course in fantasy stories there are unrealistic situations but the good ones have human emotion lying underneath everything it should be drama from character interaction with magic not character

6:10 drama because of magic in the original Digimon show the problems the characters faced were fantastical and whatnot but the motivating factors for the human characters weren't worrying about a loved one living up to high expectations being attracted to your sin Digimon frontier there's a lot of situations where an external magical force causes character conflict like a Digimon infecting Tommy's dream not being able to control a powerful spirit an evil dark force controlling your actions and obscuring your memories it's boring because there's no proxy for that feeling in a real life jeremy renner I get it now I hope you're doing okay frontier also has a way of making its villains overstay their welcome there are one-off villains here and there which are fun like ice demi-monde but that's only because this English

6:56 voice is a Christopher Walken impression do have tasty data like those ovens yummy but a large part of the story involves five evil legendary warriors who are just the worst okay I actually do have a dub specific critique if you're gonna come up with an obnoxious quirk for a character's voice like talking like Gollum a mobster yo you want her to rough them up for years an English man now should study an opponent face or a southern belle make sure they're not characters who are around for nearly 30 episodes and please make sure there are extensive scenes where they're all interacting with each other with their silly voice every time they're going up against a villain it's

7:41 the same exact thing the villain wants to scan data from somewhere to gain more power the kids lose the villains win and tell eventually the kids get more power I feel like Digimon Adventure and tamers did the right thing with their villains although the same power dynamic happens between those kids and the villains usually there's another story unfolding while the characters are either trying to reach a similar goal or stop the kids from succeeding an adventure they got to get home and maybe stopping this villain will help that or they have to save a kid before the villain gets ahold of them it isn't until the end of the series where the plot is solely we have to defeat the villain and when they do decide that saving the digital world should be their primary objective we've had over 40 episodes of meeting

8:27 characters and understanding the importance of this place it's something they have to learn to care about but frontier is literally driven by the fact that the kids don't know what they're supposed to do and they're on their way to a location where hopefully they'll find out what they're needed for there's no motivating force the characters always have the option to go home they choose to stay in the digital world because I don't know it'll be fun I guess I think the backstory to frontier is well thought out but how the characters interact with that story is not I really don't want this to come up as an angry review I think getting angry at media you don't enjoy is kind of silly if you enjoyed frontier that's great and just for you here's a list of

9:13 things I actually liked about Digimon frontier that really didn't fit into an organized setting I really enjoy the dynamic with the kids guides Pokemon and Niemann they have this really adorable chemistry I like it when cherubi montserrat faman and ofany mana are reborn as their rookie stages and I'll play around with each other it's adorable I like how there's no strict adherence to the power scaling of Digimon levels if you want a champion level Digimon stage 4 to beat up a mega level Digimon stage 6 it should totally be able to as long as it serves the story I really appreciate how the English dub cut out fanservice for an eleven-year-old and also I love the English dub theme it kicks ass which is such an upgrade to the weird original

9:58 theme song which I love nostalgically but it really isn't so good y'all this video gets 10,000 likes I'll do a cover of the frontier song I don't even sing but I'll do it I feel like Digimon frontier gets a bad rap for changing up the formula and you could argue it was doing something new but I really don't think it was the concept of kids turning into superheroes through a transformation sequences seen all throughout anime it was Digimon doing something different but it wasn't trying anything new it was conforming to something that already existed I wanted to like the show because the only bad thing I've ever heard about it was the kids turned into Digimon but that's only the reason why people dismissed it I wanted to be able to say give frontier a chance but it's not good its characters are boring the world isn't consistent the story moves slowly it's repetitive and then it also changes the formula I

10:47 consider Digimon frontier the end of classic Digimon in America Saban had been purchased by Disney who took over dubbing with frontier in and did you Mon took a 3-year hiatus from producing anime I can't help but to feel like the lack of an interest in Digimon frontier is what forced the series to take a hiatus which caused American interest in the franchise to begin to fade shows need casual viewers to succeed not everyone can be a hardcore fan and whenever I talk to anyone who even barely watched Digimon growing up they always say they stopped watching with the one where they turned into Digimon I feel like if the show were engaging people wouldn't have dismissed it regardless of the big change but unfortunately those who are

11:33 skeptical of the change those who needed to be convinced of the concept had nothing to grab on to Digimon was so heavily perceived as a Pokemon clone to get past that stigma it had to be better than Pokemon and when it wasn't people stopped paying attention all right now that I've done Digimon frontier I think I'm going to take a hint from the Digimon production team and take a little bit of a hiatus from Digimon content and by that I mean I've already started watching the next series because I've already started getting requests for it love y'all special thanks to verb for sponsoring this video head out to VR video slash Billiam to receive a 30-day free trial of a verb premium Verve premium offers a great

12:20 selection of ad free content from a wide variety of sources including crunchyroll and Funimation for anime and recently Nick splat which has a great selection of classic Nickelodeon shows I've been checking out a bit of choc zone for the first time in forever and that may be a video waiting to happen Verve is available on a wide variety of streaming devices and its online sync feature has become essential for my review workflow for these Digimon videos I watched Digimon try and frontier completely through verb and it's quickly become one of my favorite platforms so check it out help out the show and go to VR video slash Billiam to get a 30-day free trial of Verve premium thank you for watching this video if this is your first video of mine please consider subscribing to see more great Digimon content if you already subscribed

13:06 consider following both Twitter and Instagram that's where I keep up dates about where I am and win the next videos coming out as well as what's going on in my personal life so anyways thank you for watching have a good day and I will see you next week

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