Digimon Tri: A Problematic Sequel | Billiam

0:00 Digimon remains one of my favorite shows I watched as a kid unfortunately Digimon has been dismissed by too many people because of its perception as a Pokemon clone to which I say probably a little bit the way in which Digimon was marketed makes it hard to dismiss the Pokemon influence but revisiting Digimon Adventure shows it was a truly unique and heartfelt story since I was like 5 I've wanted to follow up to Digimon Adventure and when Digimon tri was announced in August of 2014 I was beyond excited but from announcement to conclusion my excitement completely died but that wasn't because of my reaction while watching it Digimon Adventure tri was originally supposed to be a 15th anniversary project released in the spring of 2015 but it was delayed

0:45 until late fall of 2015 and it was changed format to a 26-episode series to a series of six movies it went from something that would have taken six months to complete to something that would take three years with the new installment being released every six months or so I didn't even keep up with it while it was on I watched the first movie which was split up into four episodes so oh yeah the series was changed from 26 episodes to six movies and they took those six movies and cut it back into 26 episodes and it feels like it I didn't watch it again until the sixth and final movie was released my thoughts well it's interesting Digimon Adventure tri takes place three years after 0-2 in six years after the

1:33 original Digimon Adventure most of the cast is getting close to graduating high school and all is fine until the Digimon returned to battle off a new threat portals from the digital world are opening up all over the real world releasing Digimon infected with a corruption virus causing them to become stronger and violent between it all a new digidestined Mako shows up with a mysterious little cat Digimon make uman there are many mysterious mysteries such as the identity of two government agents the disappearance of the cast introduced an 0-2 and why everyone's Mickey Mouse hands drink this review will contain spoilers where did you want adventure was about the kids growing up and taking on responsibilities did you want adventure try seems to be about how the kids relationship to the Digimon changes as

2:18 they're getting ready to put on their big kid pants and become adults they're trying to figure out their careers and the writers are trying to figure out how to connect to the out of character careers made at the end of zero - how does Matt the rock star become an astronaut well he just thinks of it on a whim I think one of the flaws for having the relationship to the Digimon be a focus is the fact only God Tommen has ever really been developed as their own character the rest of the Digimon have only ever served as character complements or contrast to the kids they don't really have their own development apart from them usually their personalities can be described with one-word quirks hungry sassy silly etc there's a point in try when the digital world has to be rebooted the Digimon lose their memories of the kids and their shared adventure yeah nothing about them changes because their entire

3:05 experience during adventure did nothing to change or evolve their character my relationship to the kids is what defines my relationship to the Digimon unless time is spent developing the Digimon as their own unique characters then we're not going to feel for their perspective only the kids when Patamon is infected I feel in worry for TK not Patamon 26 episodes it's plenty of time to further develop their characters but unlike the original Digimon series the plot is complicated and a little convoluted so more time has to be spent pushing the plot forward than spending time with the characters with a cast this large usually the better option is to go with a more simplistic plot line so you can spend more time with each character there's not a lot of urgency from the

3:51 characters and that's primarily because there's no motivating force to get the characters to take action as much as I like the scenes at the spa the school festival and the subplot about Izzi being more fashionable because he likes Mimi it feels out of place when there could be a Digimon attacked at any moment there's also a little concern about the fact that the 0-2 kids are missing which would be a great motivating factor for the kids to get up and do something which could the plot forward instead we're just waiting on a Digimon to appear into the city to drive the plot forward it's entirely out of the character's hands and instead the plot is progressed through seemingly random occurrences although I feel like the plot is kind of lame the basic foundation of the story is really solid a Digimon virus which

4:38 makes Digimon active violently is a really interesting idea and the way the lore is expanded ties into a lot of the aspects of Digimon lore which I never thought would be explored within the adventure timeline yaga stroller king drasil was introduced in other digimon series the idea of the quantum see the network connecting the digital world dark ocean and that place was explored within adventure 0-2 but never given a name learning more about homeostasis a being which was only briefly in Digimon Adventure was also appreciated finally my mind was blown when I learned the identities of the two government agents were two of the original and digidestined which were only briefly talked about in the original series and the decision to make their partner the Digimon sovereign was super creative in

5:25 a clever twist I've long wanted to learn about the original digidestined I have revisited the Digimon wiki over and over again hoping to find new information about it I even read pan theories however a problem I have with a lot of high fantasy series is there's not an easy way to answer questions about the lore without compromising the plot at hand that's why compendiums are published about things like Star Wars game if their owns Lord of the Rings the worlds created for these series are far more expansive than the story being told and there's not a lot of opportunity for the characters and the primary stories to interact with people or beings that have knowledge of the deeper lore and sometimes when a story is specifically created to explore the lore it can be really messy because it favors clumsy exposition over plot progression Digimon

6:11 try feels messy at times the two biggest entities driving the plot or homeostasis of being which desires peace and balance in the digital world and king drazen the self-proclaimed king of the digital world who is a Digimon supremacist these divine beings have no physical form instead they have agents acting for them but they're not even the primary villain there's not really a primary villain to beat the closest thing we have to that is make cumin the partner to the mysterious new digidestined Mako alright sit down get your comics ready it's time for Billy M's blood takes get out of glass of milk these are spicy a consistent argument I'm seeing against Makos character is she's a Mary Sue okay that doesn't really describe a problem those

6:57 are just buzzwords essentially a Mary Sue is a female character who is flawless has unexplained talents or is a self inserted character basically people who use the word on ironically will just create new criteria for it so they can continue to use it as a critique let's examine these so Mako isn't actually a self inserted character the argument is just being made because she's shipped with ty who's the main character of Digimon it's common in fanfiction for writers to put themselves in a relationship with the main character Mako and Ty being shipped together is fine by me because it's not like they hook up or anything he just wants to call her at the end of the series that is the extent of their relationships and are you aware of how teenagers date there's no character or relationship building involved it's just let's date sometimes not even that next is Mako

7:44 flawless I mean she certainly self conscious and this is explained in the series she speaks a different dialect than the rest of the kids she's new and her Digimon hasn't evolved yet combined with the fact her Digimon is well murdering other Digimon and yeah it makes sense that she's a little self-conscious now what about being super talented with no explanation well oh my god okay she's pretty okay at sketching I that that wasn't explained I definitely needed a seventh movie in the Tri timeline to explain why she's pretty okay at sketching this is totally unexplained oh my god now pal Mon is making a sketch too I've watched all of Digimon and I've never seen pallemans artistic abilities explained what a MarySue calling Mako a Mary Sue is just

8:30 creating a scapegoat for more of the problems within the series it's an easy buzzword to throw around but it's not productive or constructive don't get me wrong Mei is not a great character but she's a symptom of the problems with try not the problem itself but she's necessary for the story they were trying to tell me cumin is infected and make Ozark is to make the right decision about needing to defeat mikuma her arc is contrasted by Hema colwiz arc we see how he Macao was driven to bring back her dead Digimon and where it ultimately takes her to evil but Mako understands for the greater good that make Amon has to die with the focus of the series being the relationship to the Digimon these are the extreme examples

9:16 of that relationship the fourth movie isn't called loss for nothing wait wait a minute however she comes to the conclusion about mikuma needing to die way before the action takes place meaning her arc is done way too early in the sixth and final movie it's ty who ultimately decides mikuma needs to die and he convinces the rest of the kids it should take until the end for Mako to come to this conclusion and it should be up to her to convince the rest of the kids we should see more of the struggle she goes through to come to this conclusion witnessing the consequences of make Aman's violent actions and witnessing how he Mikawa went to the dark side to save her Digimon when may Kumaon finally dies it's an emotionally effective scene I'd be lying if I said I

10:01 wasn't just a little bit destroyed by the Tomich line but as for why she's needed for this particular story can you imagine if the scene were make Kumaon dies was with any of the eight original kids into their Digimon would you want to see them say goodbye to their Digimon the characters we've been watching for almost twenty years and they wouldn't be able to make a bold decision like that anyways because it's canon that the Digimon are still alive decades later listen I'm not crazy about me but I'm also not crazy about any of the Tri versions of these characters my biggest problem with her is her name couldn't you name her something a little different than her Digimon Mako refers to make coolin as mei-chan and mimi gives Mako the nickname name a so

10:49 sometimes that I'm reading the subtitles I'm not sure who they're referring to hey before we continue with the video I just wanted to give a quick shout out to my patrons who claimed the patreon reward tier so special thanks to Shannon cardi david zen quility mecha fish man Tanner Reis tankinson Cyril Evert and special thanks to everyone else who has continued to pledge to that reward tier and all the other patrons last month for Ward tyr got delayed a little bit because I've been travelling a lot but it will be coming out in the next two days and that review is for Digimon Tamers Battle of adventures and towards the end of this month I'm also going to be posting a sort of exclusive experimental review I've been doing a

11:34 lot of reviews about toys and games and card games so I'm gonna try to do kind of a let's play of a card game that's coming up that I'm going to be reviewing so stay tuned for that so special thanks to all of my patrons and now on with the video when I first saw the image of the new art style I was all about it and I'm still liking it to an extent but when combined with the voice cast and changes and personality changes I often have trouble recognizing these characters as the ones I grew up with after watching the first four films in English I went back we watched everything in Japanese there are weird directions the voice actors were given in both situations my main problem is the weird stoicism all the characters have during stressful moments I guess their characters are supposed to be grown-up and yeah

12:21 seventeen-year-old ty is obviously going to be different than eleven-year-old ty but I feel like the heart of the characters are gone at times there's not a lot of energy in the characters and there's not a lot of energy in their performances sometimes I'm expecting a character reaction and nothing happens sometimes something dramatic happens in the audio cuts out for dramatic effect but that only works at the moments surrounding it or energetic and loud you can't go from a quiet moment to a silent moment and expect a dramatic contrast at one boy a villain takes on the appearance of 10 ichigo g one of the four missing kids from the 0-2 cast from the entire cast perspective this is ken it's even attacking the kids with the digimon which belongs to Kenan Davis however the kids have no the tation when they decide to fight ken

13:07 and imperial german this should be an emotionally conflicting scene instead they hop into battle and even cheer when imperial german is defeated yes they can be relieved a threat is gone but they think they just had to fight against a friend of theirs but nope not only do they not acknowledge they just defeated their missing friend but there is barely any acknowledgement of the kids disappearances Corey and TK go to school with three of the missing kids and they're never even like hmm I wonder why all three of them are missing eventually Matt gets a half-assed indirect explanation from one of the government agents as to why they're all missing and that's fine enough from all eight of them the characters odd behavior and odd performance to me is

13:53 the foundational problem with Digimon Adventure tri I feel like these aren't the characters I grew up with and the characters have always been the strong point for Digimon Adventure there's a scene in Adventure zero - we're all goo Mon complements ty on how much he's matured and grown up it's a small short moment but it does so much more for me than tri does with the character throughout all six movies the weaker characters make the show drag on at times at the very least I was looking forward to seeing these characters animated well with decent action but decently animated shots are made less exciting by poor editing choices poor sound mixing and stoic characters let's talk about one of my biggest problems that has never been a problem for me with Digimon it's ad is evolving you

14:39 learned that 3d animation doesn't look good in the series before why are you trying it again I mean look how ugly this is it doesn't help for how long these animations take either look at all this dead space where nothing is happening part of these sequences could so easily be cut down if you watch the episodic cut the runtimes aren't even consistent they range from 21 to 25 minutes so there's no reason why the evolution sequences couldn't be cut down in the original series the sequences were often edited and sped up to keep up the pacing but the surrounding action but they just let it play out and try however I actually I really like the way that the ultimate and mega animations look the 2d animation is very slick the movement has this rhythmic pacing to it and this was

15:34 a bootleg I found that out of convention it was like 20 bucks the implied intensity of the action scenes are never able to be fully realized there's too much cutting back to the kids still shots and interruption even excitingly cut scenes are often plagued by unexcited music and oddly silent sound effects and characters the Battle of alpha man in reunion should be awesome but there's this kamar elevator music style cover of Braveheart playing and then there's all the silent reactions I'm so used to yelling and talking in reactions and anime fight sequences this just makes it awkward to be honest did you mounted venture tri bores me at times I would rather have a classic style English dub complete with characters talking where there was no audio before I have to admit it can be a

16:19 little dull what I'm trying to say is after all this time of complaining I sincerely miss the dizzy rap there are so many flaws with try which is a shame because it's core concept is really creative and interesting but there's so many conflicting ideas and tones trying to be conveyed I almost wish it was a full 50 episode series so more ideas could be explored in depth in the quiet fun moments with the characters could find a natural place I feel like try must have been changed a lot during its production making it into six movies allowed for extra revenue

17:05 sources and also would have given to--a a lot of time to determine whether or not they'd leave room for a sequel I feel like why certain things were hinted at and certain plot lines were left open was because they felt like a sequel was possible and lo and behold a new digimon adventure a movie project is in the works with some of the original creative team behind the original adventure working on it at the end of tri I'm left feeling disappointed and ultimately with mixed feelings I like a lot of the ideas explored but I wish it felt like the characters I watched growing up and then the series ends with this they have the audacity after disappointing me to play a cast rendition of butterfly the main theme and suddenly I love it I remembering why I love this series so

17:51 much I love these characters and I still want more Digimon Adventure I'm making more Digimon videos I'm collecting two cards I'm listening to butterfly over and over again and now I'm sitting in a tattoo parlor and I look at that I got a Digimon tattoo this song the imagery and everything about this show is so powerfully nostalgic to me yes I wanted more from try but I'm just happy it exists the connection I feel to this story into these characters is the kind which can only be developed through the emotionally vulnerable eyes of a child as an adult the flaws of this series become more and more apparent but as I continue to talk about Digimon more and more especially on my channel I've grown to appreciate it a lot more and despite the fact that Digimon Adventure tri was ultimately a little bit of a disappointment I'm still extremely

18:37 excited to see what's next hey thank you for watching if this is your first video of mine be sure to subscribe if you're already subscribe be sure to follow me on both Twitter and Instagram YouTube is constantly making it more difficult for subscribers to see content creators videos so if you want to make sure you get everything from me hit the notification button and follow me on all those proper social media links down below anyways thank you for watching have a good day and I will see you next week