#look at all the lines!!! teehee i still really really like this style of digital painting it's super super fun to do!!! and also secondly

[fizzingwizard]

I fell asleep as soon as I got home and didn’t get to write about Kizuna. xP So belatedly, here are my thoughts.

Warning: Spoilers for Digimon: Kizuna Last Evolution

So to start with, some context: I had a bad day at work. Not gonna go into details, but it was the sort of thing to put you out of the mood for seeing a movie, even one that’s a childhood treasure. I almost didn’t go.

In addition, because of what happened at work, I had to stay an extra hour, which meant I missed the first 25 minutes of the movie. I’m not sure how much story I actually missed - probably there was 10 min or so of trailers - but it’s possible I missed some framing. Usually the cute, fun, get-to-know-the-character moments happen in those beginning scenes, and I didn’t get to see those. When I walked in, Taichi and Yamato were having a meal together and talking about how their lives were all changing, but the Digimon stayed the same. So that’s where I’m starting from.

One more thing - I haven’t read the Kizuna novel. It sounds like if you did, you already know everything that happens. (Possibly reading the novel is more interesting than seeing the movie.) Sorry if I’m surprised by things y’all already knew!

For those who don’t like reading my long-winded posts:

Kizuna is what I would have expected from a Digimon sequel before Tri came out. That is, it’s predictable.

The art is quite good, except when it’s not.

There’s not enough of characters who aren’t named Taichi or Yamato.

Yamato is extremely COOL.

Koushirou has some good moments.

Tri is actually still canon, which I didn’t know - Meiko appears briefly in Kizuna.

It was fun to see the 02 kids, but they didn’t do anything special, although they did more than some Adventure kids.

It ends with the partner Digimon disappearing ‘forever,’ but also with Taichi putting in I think his thesis in politics specifically between the human world and the digital world. So everything seems geared to reach the 02 ending, where we know they were with their partners. So I guess at least we can headcanon that they find a way to reunite :/

OK so.

The art is really nice in this movie. Very smooth, very anime movie-like. I preferred Uki Atsuya’s designs and it did feel a little weird to go back to a more wide-eyed, innocent style now that the kids are older, but it was so lovely that I didn’t mind. Tri really lacked smoothness in the animation, so this was refreshing.

There are some times where the animations falters or some error happens - at least twice I noticed characters’ mouths moving without them saying anything, and there’s a scene where Taichi gets blown back by Eosmon’s attack and when he sits up his, um, backside is quite pronounced, like on-the-cover-of-Playboy-pronounced x’D Who knew Taichi was so thicc?

I liked in the beginning when they fly through cyberspace to take on Eosmon and it’s just like the cyberspace in Our War Game and Diablomon Strikes Back. The beginning was a bit promising. Omegamon is called on to help but his evolution breaks down, and fortunately Menoa knows all about why. There were some strong emotional moments when Taichi seizes the chance to help with a Digimon situation, and even stronger when they find out their partner Digimon are going to leave when they become adults and commit to a path (since apparently becoming an adult means you no longer have the endless possibilities of childhood). Digivolving speeds up the process.

Taichi and Yamato react very strongly. Other Chosen don’t seem in danger yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Takeru breathes a sigh of relief when he checks his digivice and realizes there’s no countdown, but Yamato’s and Taichi’s digivices are glowing with a countdown clock. Yamato screams and runs off to do anything he can to stop this. Taichi tries to deny it, but then Gennai appears in his apartment (which I think he cannot afford because we never see him turn on the lights :P) and tells him it’s all true and there’s nothing we can do about it. Then it’s bye-bye Gennai.

Oh, but before Gennai shows up Taichi is showing Agumon his apartment, and Agumon immediately finds his porn stash. I mean, that’s what you get for having magazines and DVDs instead of just using the Internet, Taichi, you moron. Teehee.

So Menoa and Imura convince the Adventure kids to “help” them, saying they’re trying to save the Chosen’s trapped consciousness. Yamato immediately figured out something’s not right, but pegs Imura as the likely suspect. However, he’s suspicious of Menoa too. Remember in Tri, when he sneaks after Nishijima and Himkawa, and gets them to talk? This is that only More. He lurks in stairwells, he goes without sleep, he researches online databases, he gets the 02 kids looking up details on Menoa, he follows Imura to some secret hideout covered in the typical secret agent decor of Papers Pinned To Walls With Illegible Writing.

As fun as it is to watch Yamato be all Men In Black, shouldn’t it... be... Ken? X’D Or are there many secret agents in space?

When Imura confronts Yamato, Hikari and Takeru have been taken prisoner. Somehow. They’re tied to chairs and Koushirou gets sent a message from Hikari’s phone saying in many different languages “Which one will be next?” So Taichi and Yamato hurry to the scene. At this point, Mimi has already had her consciousness abducted, and we now find out Jou’s KO’d too off screen.

Yamato sees Imura sitting on the stairs holding a gun. He lifts the gun and says “Takeru is already -” and I as like OMG THEY KILLED TAKERU!? but the gun is just... for show x’D Takeru has had his consciousness trapped. So has Hikari. Yamato makes good with Imura and they realize they need to go after Menoa, that she’s the one behind it all. Uh, too late though, because Menoa’s already moved against Koushirou, I think because she wants his information on Chosen Children around the world, and traps his consciousness as well. But not before Koushirou is able to track the location of Eosmon and leave the coordinates in a message for Taichi.

I don’t like Menoa. First of all, she’s a foreigner who likes to insert random English words where they’re not needed, and her accent is one of the worst I’ve ever heard x’D If you’re gonna cast someone who can’t speak a language as a speaker of that language, how about not have them actually speak it? But also, she’s not interesting. She had a Digimon partner - surprise! - who was a butterfly - surprise! - and who disappeared when she entered the path to adulthood - surprise! - and who she’s been grieving for ever since, so her big master plan is to somehow trap the consciousness of all Chosen Children around the world in another dimension where they can live inside their memories and never have to grow up. (The Digimon too.) She refers to it as her “Neverland.” None of this interests me. Yawn.

She is able to trap all the Adventure kids except Taichi, Yamato, and Sora. But don’t get excited about Sora not being trapped - Sora has decided not to fight anymore, and she sticks her decision the whole movie long. Sora is almost completely absent.

So now almost all the Adventure Chosen have been abducted and most of them didn’t even get to do anything, unless they were all being super awesome in those first ten-fifteen minutes that I missed. The 02 kids do not get trapped and when Eosmon copies start raining down around the world, they run around trying to stop them. Daisuke is adorable. Pretty much just what you’d expect. Iori is Iori. Miyako is her exuberant self. Ken is forgettable X’D I’m so sorry, Ken. Someone give him a hairstyle. My problem with the 02 kids is because, as much as it sucked that they never turned up after their inauspicious start in Tri, having them around isn’t really improving anything. Nostalgia, sure. But they’re too busy doing research and fighting to have those nice character moments we’d like to see. They do the shonen anime thing of Stating the Obvious and Promising to Unite As One and that’s it for their dialogue. They’re polite and take turns letting each other say the predictable line. At least we know Stingmon still calls his partner “Ken-chan.” <3

Taichi and Yamato use Koushirou’s coordinates to go after Menoa in her world. But not before Yamato reacts with irrational strength when Taichi suggests they save their trapped friends. Because saving them means digivolving, which means the process of losing their partners forever will speed up. “Taichi!! Are you okay with that??” Taichi’s like, “Um... no, but people are trapped and need to be rescued.” And Yamato’s like “Oh right.”

So they go and are attacked by Adventure-age versions of their trapped friends and also random Digimon. There’s quite a lot of blood?? Someone, I think Yamato, has a freaking Drimogemeon attacking him. He doesn’t get gored though lmao. Eosmon has a billion copies and they’re around the world going for Chosen Children. They bring out Omegamon and he gets his leg chopped off, whee. But both Digimon are physically intact when the evolution is broken.

Menoa is completely mentally unstable and fuses with Eosmon to become their “goddess.” Taichi sticks his hand out zombie-like under the pile of Digimon attacking him and yells at his Adventure-age friends “We must move on!” (ie, grow up). He is able to crawl to Hikari and blow her whistle with a huge breath.

This snaps everyone out of it. At this point I think “Okay! Big battle all together!” But nope. It’s still just Taichi and Yamato, who get new evolutions that look like Thundercats, and go after Menoa. While some song plays making it difficult to hear dialogue, they defeat Eosmon which makes the copies around the world disappear, and then they find Menoa trapped within her own memories of her partner, Morphomon, and rescue her as well. Menoa’s last scene is being handcuffed by Imura.

Then Taichi and Yamato go out separately with their partners and have a last conversation with them as the countdown clock is about to expire. Yamato plays his harmonica. Agumon tries to ply Taichi for food. We get Agumon’s vantage point looking up at Taichi and it’s like “wow you’re huge now.” Agumon and Gabumon both ask their partners what they’ll do tomorrow. Just as Taichi and Yamato think of an answer, they look and their partners are gone. Taichi and Yamato do some pretty impressive sobbing. Then we see them some time later hurrying on with their lives under symbolic cherry blossoms. The end!

The credits show scenes of the Chosen living their adult lives, the younger ones still with their partners, the older without. It ends with a peek at Taichi’s thesis, representing step one towards becoming a diplomat between the human and digital worlds. Like I said before, since we know they still have their partners in the 02 epilogue, it’s strange to me that they kept everything the same except that. So let’s headcanon that they’ll meet again o.O I guess

So if you read this far, you probably got the vibe that I wasn’t super impressed by Kizuna. But it’s not a bad movie. Tri pretty much spoiled me. I get that there are people who really don’t like Tri for various reasons, but to be honest, I think that even if you dislike it, you have to acknowledge what a gift it was. Six movies that gave every character something to do and mostly avoided the predictable stuff, not entirely, but much better than would be expected from an anime movie. Tri did so many interesting things. It’s got its flaws, a couple big ones, but I can never get past how it built everything up and what it resulted in.

But Tri’s number one strength comes from having six movies to tell the story. Kizuna has just one. If Tri had been condensed into a single movie - say we meet Meiko, the infection happens, she’s the origin, before the partners lose their memories Meiko asks the kids to kill Meicoomon, Daigo dies saving Taichi and then Taichi kills Meicoomon, the end - Idk if I would have liked that. It wouldn’t have gotten the build up it needed. I wouldn’t have learned to love Meiko. Stories need pacing, they need development, and more of each the more characters there are. Tri had the time to give us that.

I wasn’t expecting Kizuna to be like Tri - both the art style and all the info about it said otherwise - so I have to say that all in all, Kizuna is the movie I originally would have expected a Digimon sequel to be. It’s got That Plot that every fan read or wrote on fanfiction.net back in the day, where the kids lose their partners as a result of becoming an adult. I always hated that plotline because it was so predictable. If everyone can think of it, how can you call it creative?

But it is quite Japanese in a way, the appreciation for “the transience of things,” what they call 物の哀れ. Sora’s final ikebana display includes what I assume were cherry blossoms rising above a field of colorful flowers. Cherry blossoms represent this ephemerality in Japanese culture because of their short flowering time and how their appearance marks the beginning of spring. So in that way it’s all very striking and real. But I just personally don’t like it and never have. Also I think that for me, because I was so moved by Kokuhaku, there wasn’t much chance for this plot to have the same effect: Kokuhaku simply did it better.

I do think Kizuna is appreciable on its own and that if Tri weren’t a thing I’d have liked it better. I am not sure if I’m gonna go see it again. I might! I got a Koushirou clear file for going this week. (... The postcards we got for going to Tri were way better, though xP) So could at least go and collect more maybe.

But Kizuna has a big downside, which is that it’s just as obsessed with Taichi and Yamato as Tri was, but it’s even more felt due to the time constraints. At least with Tri, we got to see everyone do something at some point. In Kizuna, they don’t even try. Mimi, Jou, and Hikari are barely around and get their consciousness trapped early on. Takeru at least gets to join the initial fight with Eosmon, but I think that’s due to wanting to give a nod to Our War Game and maybe just because fans like Angemon. Then Takeru’s gone. Koushirou gets to be his brainiac self, I don’t really have a complaint about his treatment, except in the final battle where he’s just there. And Sora simply isn’t around period. Tri didn’t have the 02 kids, ok, that’s too bad... Kizuna has them but they’re boring and most of the Adventure cast doesn’t get to do much either. Is this really better, guys?

When you’ve got a cast this big, I don’t think you can do things the typical way. I’m an X-men fan, I should know. Lol.

That’s it for Kizuna! I’m still happy it exists, and have to admit that I might have had a slightly more positive take if I hadn’t been in such a bad mood from my day, so I hope that on a second viewing, whether I go to the theaters or wait to find it online, I will find more bits to appreciate.

#kizunaspoilers #digimon kizuna #digimon last evolution kizuna #digimon #kizuna