Digimon The Movie Was Actually Amazing.

0:00 as a kid i thought digimon the movie was the pinnacle of all things digimon i absolutely loved it and it was one of the first movie experiences i cherished and for years that's how i thought all digi fans felt about the digimon movie that it was some of the best digimon content we've ever had until i grew up and saw how others really felt about it now obviously that's not how everyone feels but there's no doubt that digimon the movie is a way more controversial subject than i thought before i looked into it and that controversy comes from something else i had no idea about when i sat down to watch the movie when i was just six or seven years old it was actually a compilation of three different completely unrelated movies so at long

0:45 last i finally sat down and rewatched our english version before watching the three original japanese movies back to back to discover if i was actually wrong in the movies we got weren't as great as i remembered and i discovered something that digimon the movie still rules and its haters are being kind of mean this is my defense of the fox kids masterpiece digimon the movie let's start at the beginning after the success of the pokemon movies fox wanted to capitalize on that popularity with their own movie based on the digimon property the only problem is that no such digimon movie on the scale of the pokemon movies had ever been released in japan there did however exist three smaller digimon specials that had been released for toy animation seasonal fares digimon adventure our war game and digimon hurricane landing transcendent

1:32 evolution the golden digimentals fox decided that these three movies would instead be put together into one film for american audiences rebranded as digimon the movie except saban entertainment didn't actually have the money for a full two-hour epic depicting everything from the three short films so jeff nimoy the person in charge of the american digimon localization as well as the lovably dorky voice of tantamon got to work on both cutting the films down into one 90-minute movie while trying to make all three parts narratively fit together so how did he and the writers do on this pretty ambitious task let's go through the original films and their american counterparts for comparison firstly we're treated to the magnum opus of all digimon music with the digirap which everyone unanimously agrees is cool and good and there is no problem here so let's just jump into the actual

2:18 movie the first part of the digimon movie and its source material just titled digimon adventure follows tai ankari's first meeting with the digimon while in america this served as a sort of prequel flashback in japan it actually predated the adventure series as a sort of prologue and actually not much has changed in the dub from the original we get some narration from kari that continues throughout the whole film which is suitable since she's the only character who appears with a speaking role in all three films the narration also helps tie these three parts together a little more cohesively and kari's american voice actor laura jill miller has the voice of an angel so i'm not complaining she goes into giving a bit of context for digimon the digidestined and the adventures they'd go on some people criticized the movie a bit for being alienating to viewers who weren't already familiar with digimon so i think some credit is due to the dub

3:04 for doing what little they could to get some introduction out of the way which is something the original short films never actually do this is also when the american movie introduces willis who takes a starring role in the third part and the third film it's a little clunky to introduce him now i mean he's not a part of the first two japanese films at all but it works as a brief aside and doesn't impact the rest of the story of this section after that it's mostly edited down for time which i think helps keep the fast-paced momentum of the movie i also prefer the redone music here which we'll get into that soon because that's a whole other segment while the original has this sort of whimsical marching sound going throughout it the dub provides its own original score that keeps more in line with the rest of digimon the movie we also get some reused music from the american digimon tv series that really makes it feel part of that universe the biggest change here is actually a cut scene showing tai

3:50 and kari's dad coming home drunk and some of the more violent stuff from the fight scene i get why some fans might be upset about the more mature stuff being cut but for a younger american audience i can totally see why it's not pivotal to the story at all and it's definitely something that would upset younger american fans and more importantly their parents watching along with them so now on to the best section of the movie and the best of the three original movies are war game like the section before it there isn't much cut from our war game and it's actually the most faithful part in here the only major differences again are the inclusion of willis which i think work great in context and the music actually there is a major difference that being that they made an entire subplot out of tai's mom and it's hilarious she goes from a pretty nothing character in the original to having this whole thing with cooking these weird dishes that for some reason izzy loves and it's actually super funny i don't think

4:36 i even caught onto this as a kid but re-watching this movie i'm impressed with how many new jokes they were able to cram in here so do i have enough of this stuff it's me it's the first time i've used flour to bake a cake mom back to the story while in the original film izzy finds out about the online virus digimon through some random anonymous friend from la this person has now been changed to willis which works really well at keeping him relevant in the film while not changing the original much at all i can practically see the writers sighing in relief that they managed to fit this together so easily in both films the virus heads to america in the japanese it's to launch a nuke while in the dub it's to reach willis and launch a nuke again this is a small change that doesn't change the outcome being that the nuke is now headed towards japan i also want to shout out the voice acting again i've always loved the american digimon voice cast and they really stand out here

5:22 mona marshall as izzy probably gets the most to do in the whole series in this one and it's great but joshua seth as tai is especially amazing that guy's practically carried the american digimon dub on his back for 20 years and this movie is some of his best work i think now would be a good time to talk about music changes because it's most noticeable in this second part while the original film had a good if pretty standard original soundtrack digimon the movie goes hard on a soundtrack full of ska and punk from the late 90s and early 2000s and while some people may find it outdated now i absolutely loved it as a kid and only appreciate it more now for what it is this perfect musical time capsule it's the music that really separates the digimon movie as its own thing and this is probably most clear in the climax of our war game when omnimon is taking out swarms of diaboromon in the original film this moment is

6:08 scored by a ominous choir that while suitably majestic honestly feels like it would fit better in something like an evangelion movie meanwhile the american version blasts this pop punk rock song that gives it a youthful energetic feeling that i absolutely ate up as a kid and it still fires me up moments like this continued throughout the movie with action scenes and montages scored by artists like fatboy slim and smash mouth and like i said earlier the original score is great here too taking cues from the iconic digimon theme to bring some really emotional moments while it's definitely a subjective feeling i can't separate digimon the movie from its music and i think it really gives it a unique feeling from straight out of the 2000s when you couple that with the tech on screen it's just again this perfect time capsule and now we come to the final and most controversial part the american adaptation of digimon hurricane landing or hurricane touchdown

6:55 jeff nimoy actually planned on keeping digimon the movie solely based on the first two short films and releasing the third movie separately but this idea was shot down by saban instead hurricane touchdown was cut down by 30 minutes and heavily edited to fit the other two parts it's the most drastic change in all three and viewed as the weakest link in the movie by most fans but after watching the full japanese hurricane landing hurricane touchdown movie by itself i have to ask was it ever that good to begin with you take that background i mean it's not bad by any means but the third film is also the weakest of the three original short movies in fact hurricane landing even has a different director the first two films were directed by mamoru hosoda arguably one of the greatest anime film directors of all time hurricane landing was directed by shigeyasu yamauchi who's probably best

7:41 known for his work on a few dragon ball z movies and like those movies hurricane touchdown feels like a decent anime special but nowhere near the cinematic quality of our war game so right out of the gate the third part of the digimon movie was always adapting a slightly lesser movie with less screen time but in the end i think its format actually helped the movie more than heard it we start this part of the movie off by finally bringing willis to the forefront with one of his two digimon kokomon transforming into wendigomon while in the original movie this just sort of happens the dub explains that this is actually the virus from our war game infecting it i think this is again a pretty good change to keep everything in the digimon movie tied together and once again doesn't change the actual sequence of events only the context willis has even more backstory that i'll come back to in a bit again we have to talk about the music in this part which is the biggest upgrade here

8:27 i'll agree that the music difference up until now has been a subjective taste but i really don't enjoy the original music in hurricane touchdown it alternates between this sort of awkward country guitar and really off-putting jazzy i don't even know what to call it [Music] i guess i sort of know they were going for by making wendigamon and its evolution seem creepy and the guitar and the jazz is kind of supposed to be like an americana thing but it makes all the action scenes kind of hard to watch with how dissonant the music is the dub of course keeps the same ost filled with orchestral and punk music it loses some uniqueness i guess but i vastly prefer a more lighthearted score over what we got originally the next biggest change is all the cuts

9:12 most notably the b plot of the original digidestine being kidnapped during hurricane touchdown heck a lot of people who only ever watch the dub don't even know this ever was supposed to have happened and while it's a pretty big thing to cut in retrospect i don't think it's that bad of a change if you really had to lose something i mean it's not purely a positive cut it's cool seeing the original team pop up again in the japanese version and it adds a sense of urgency to beating wendikemon but in the end i don't think taking them out affects the overall story too much we don't even see them get rescued it's kind of a non-issue by the end and this is willis story after all i can see why they want to save more time to focus on him and the zero 2 team and his digimon there's some more cuts here and there but by and large it still follows the same storyline just edited for time so we basically get the slightly abridged version and i think it works more than it doesn't the original hurricane landing is kind of a meandering movie the pacing

9:59 is weird we don't really know what's going on for a lot of it and the characters jump around constantly turning this whole movie into a climax of sorts and just shortening it a bit to keep it moving faster actually makes it a more fun watch in my opinion and again this is coming from someone who just watched both versions back to back it's not all perfect there's some weird editing in spots and the pacing still isn't great but i think the severity of the cuts by some critics is a bit over dramatic we still get all the same action and emotional beats just slightly repackaged the second major change about willis is revealed halfway through this part when he explains that he was the one who originally created the virus digimon in our war game when he wanted another friend to play with this idea is completely made up in the american dub and it actually adds another layer to his character while tying in the our war game section in a suitable way again we seem to like to poke fun at

10:46 this movie being a kind of chimera of films that didn't fit together but they did a pretty good job making them fit together i have to say up until this point willis is insistent that he should deal with wendigemon alone while in the original this is just because when digimon was originally his kokomon the dub actually takes this one step further it makes it even more tragic he thinks everything that's happening is his fault pokemon being corrupted is a direct result of his actions he didn't appreciate what he had and now he's facing the price for it it makes him a lot more of a tragic character and i like the reason for his stubbornness a lot more in the dub on to the ending both films kind of have a rushed awkward conclusion it makes a bit more sense in the original and is a bit more violent too but again i think i like the faster pacing of digimon the movie more we finally wrap up with maybe the strangest part of the dub

11:32 pokemon dancing to all star by smash mouth it's stupid and it doesn't make sense in the movie but i still love it anyway in the end despite the controversy inside fox and with the fanbase i think adding hurricane touchdown to digimon the movie was a deserving end cap this was after all the first time we got to see some digimon action take place in the west you know in america digimon adventure up until that point never shied away from the fact it all took place in japan so getting to see our favorite digi characters battle in new york and colorado was a pretty cool thing worthy of being on the big screen heck i'm canadian and even i thought it was cool seeing the digidestine show up in america and i think that is where i'll conclude my argument here in defense of digimon the movie despite any flaws i loved digimon the movie as a kid and i still do today and doesn't that mean it did its job as a kid i didn't notice the strange pacing

12:18 or editing i loved it for the fights the music the jokes the epic moments their job was to put three movies in one and in the eyes of a young digi fan they succeeded i never had a clue it was three separate movies at that time and i don't think most american fans did either until learning about it online years and years later there's also the fact that we simply never would have gotten anything from these three films in english if they hadn't been edited together and dubbed for america there's no way they would have released these three specials in the original languages in theaters and even less of a chance that we'd even like it in that format back then i was six and they made the absolute best movie they could in the eyes of a six-year-old digimon fan today i appreciate the movie for the memories it's given me the hard work of the localization crew and how they were able to take three completely different movies and somehow create a mostly convincing story through it all i'm glad we ever got a digimon movie at

13:04 all and more glad still that 20 years later we're still talking about digimon the movie you