hey digimon hey digimon, monster friends to the boys and girls

warning: original Japanese and dub names interchanged because I watch both and can't decide on a name

It seems the problem with Frontier is that the writers had plans for Takuya, Kouji, and Kouichi, then realized they needed more characters because the season didn't have Digimon to step-in as their partners, and thus be potential candidates (or at least bounce off of) to develop. So they decided to add some kids that weren't your standard noodle boy, that being the overweight kid, the female kid, and the younger kid. Unfortunately since they had no plans, it felt like they just did whatever they wanted for them, saw that their arcs didn't work, and so eventually gave up and made it the Takuya and Kouji show. 
 

Of course, when I read reviews that also assume the writers simply stretched out parts of the season to even make that 50 barrier, they probably didn't have enough story in the first place either, which adds a little credibility to my theory. It's the opposite of the 02 problem which has a million characters good and bad, with a million plot points that all lost its bearings and as a result, ended with plotholes galore. 

 

This is rather disappointing because Frontier had the least amount of characters to develop to date. Adventure started out with fourteen characters in the very first episode, introduced all at once with constant stat screens. Four seasons later and they decided to devote a good six or seven episodes to Takuya and Kouji losing horribly to two random Royal Knights. 

 

What's even more irritating is how easy it could've been to mitigate those problems. You wouldn't need to stretch out a bunch of Royal Knight episodes if the other four just had their own Fusion/Double Spirit Evolutions as well. There's no need for everyone to turn burst mode or bio-merge or whatever, but there's absolutely zero reason for the other kids to not have the fusion evolution at least. So as the other four get those evolutions, there's four episodes you don't have to devote to the Royal Knights pummelling our heroes anti-climatically and destroying more parts of the Digital World.  Episode Forty where Tomoki confronts his bullies could've been a fine episode for him to fusion evolve, except maybe his penguin form might cause a laughing stock considering he deliberately avoided using his human spirit unlike everyone else. Obviously this episode should take place earlier in the season, say before the main duo get their unity evolutions or whatever they were called.

 

Have everyone in a fusion-form finish off Cherubimon, and then the unity evolutions where the less important kids give up their spirits cause the demise of the Royal Knights instead. Then they would fight Lucemon for a few episodes, fail, Kouichi dies, and then Susanoomon shows up with every remaining kid fused instead of just goggle boy and loner kid. At least even if there are a few annoying episodes where the Royal Knights destroy them, it'd be all of them as a team instead of a few of them sitting on the sidelines trying to chuck snowballs at them.

 

I'm not here to just harp on Frontier however, considering it's probably my favourite season subjectively thanks to nostalgia and my love of the whole sentai theme with animal-themed armour. (Wild Force was my favourite Power Rangers season!) They're only third (or second considering I tie Adventure/Tamers) but they're second because of this nostalgia. In my brain I should know better, but in my heart, Frontier is there to stay. There's a lot of issues Frontier covers that other seasons don't seem to touch on as much. Bullying for example was something I strongly identified with, so seeing Tomoki being so heroic to those bastard kids in the aforementioned episode forty ended up being one of my favourite episodes. The kid actually does become a better person in this season, so he's pretty much my favourite kid of the entire franchise. (Yes, more than TK and Kari!) He's up there with Ikuto, who is probably second.

 

As for Zoe/Izumi...let me start by saying, as a kid, I never actually noticed her very skimpy/fanservicey outfits as Digimon. No seriously, I didn't notice how much skin Kazemon and Zephyrmon were showing at all. It didn't really bother me, or look like anything out of the norm. I thought Kazemon was cool because she had that same visor thingy the angels and my personal favourite Digimon of all time, Silphymon had. So I thought she was in the same league as them despite being pretty terrible at fighting. Zephyrmon looked like a cool ninja lady, which was rare for me at the time as most ninja people were men. I was really, really high on the episode she received the beast spirit because for once, the girl was the one that had to be depended on as the guys were helpless, and Zoe did not have any trouble controlling her beast form at all. 

 

Looking back, Izumi is not really the paragon of Digimon females, but somehow she worked for me as a kid, so I actually see her as one of my favourite Digimon characters and yes, that is sort of sad. She was better than Sora in my opinion and despite Mimi's impressive development, my patience for her whining in Adventure was a minimum. Yolei was very...eccentric, and while Rika is considered to be the best female character Digimon has to date, I'm never really fond of the cold and stoic standoff-ish character. So that left me with Izumi and still leaves me with Izumi because Yoshino is terrible.

 

Which again, is sort of sad.

 

Oh I forgot about Hikari...never cared for her. Gatomon was cool though!

 

Overall I did not generally like Digimon for female characters or as role models, and objectively they really only had one, arguably two awesome girls in the franchise. (What is Xros Wars?) But they do need to be somewhat competent at least if they're not going to have a lot of depth or importance. Even if characters are not the biggest part of Digimon for me (this includes the guys, yes) they still needed to be likeable for the season to be strong. Unfortunately I did not enjoy Savers whatsoever for the very reason that none of the characters, save sometimes Ikuto, did anything for me.

 

As I said before, cold and stoic does not do, ruling out Touma. If only that one episode where he was utterly ridiculous in his suit trying to impress Masaru's sister was more frequent. Yoshino is terrible and Masaru is fine for a boy growing up and seeing this badass teenager punch giant demons in the face, but not for me. I never thought Digimon would really ever have such a character in its franchise. It always had its share of idiot heroes, but never a guy so hot-blooded that his mantra to life was fist-fighting every punk out there and bonding with his Digimon in the exact same way. Digimon was always about necessary fighting, not eager blood-knight fighting. He was too shounen for me, which I find kind of odd because Savers was advertised as being targeted to an older audience, instead it ended up being the opposite of Tamers.

 

Tamers was supposedly targeted to kids, but as a child I completely skipped the season finding it slow and dull. As an adult I now appreciate its wondrous storytelling and three-dimensional characters. Savers I had assumed would also be something like that, but ended up feeling like a terribly-dubbed kids anime on the Disney Channel, and this was me watching the original Japanese. Yoshino may have ended up as just a bland female instead of downright terrible had her voice-acting not been the worst performance I've ever heard in any form of media ever, which was highly discouraging considering I used to think of Japanese voice-acting as a very professional and talented field of work. 

 

Considering Ikuto did not show up until at least fourteen episodes into the season, and started actually showing depth instead of his overdone "humans-are-evil" shtick halfway through the series, Savers was agonizing to go through. Luckily there were some decent side-characters, including the badass Mercurimon and that ferret Satsuma had. One reason Silphymon ended up being my favourite Digimon ever was due to Hawkmon (but Gatomon being awesome helps too) and how he did not have to have matching genders with his partner. I thought it happened again, except the Digimon this time being a female and thus a female character I could fall back on every time Yoshino opened her mouth, but it turns out it was just a very feminine-sounding male. I had never been so disappointed in Digimon.

 

Sure it had those two expies of the Hypnos girls, but I never had much thought on the Hypnos girls themselves so why would I care about the ones here now? We can't even assume their Digimon are of the other gender, except maybe because KnightChessmon looks like a robust male. Then again, the Piyomon this season is a brightly pink bird who happened to be male this time and was partnered with Masaru's sister, who was alright. But what does that mean for Yoshino? That not only is she the token girl, her Digimon is even more of a token girl!? And had Yoshino not had such an inexperienced voice-actor, Lalamon would be in the spotlight for worst female ever. What the hell did she do besides be useless and then be fanservice?

 

And yes, it was pretty easy to notice her fanservice. Even my oblivious child-self could not ignore the wiggling ass during Rosemon's evolution. What the fuck happened, Digimon!? WHY!? It's almost like the target demographic for this season was strictly male teenagers...and suddenly everything makes so much more sense.

 

I could complain about Masaru's near-invincible father or how flat and stereotypical BanchoLeomon ended up being, but I'll end with something usually considered Savers' strength. Don't get me wrong, Kurata was a despicable shit, but he pretty much ended up being the entire cause of literally everything bad in the season. Ikuto's parents are dead!? KURATA!! Masaru's dad is lost!? KURATA!! The Digimon want to kill us all? KURATA!! Touma's sister is sick and there's no cure? KURATA!! Isn't there a sole problem in this entire series that can't be traced back to Kurata? I guess he technically didn't invent or pass on whatever made Touma's sister sick. Touma's the only one whose individual angst can't really be traced back to Kurata, but he meddles with him anyway. Yoshino has no angst, or whatever that piano sibling stuff that came out of nowhere and disappeared just as fast was supposed to be. It's hard to feel sorry for her when she's the only one whose family never appears at all, and said sisters never really step into her life to give her actual angst. It's hard to feel sorry for her feeling inadequate around everyone else when she's inadequate around everyone else for ninety percent of the season. And when they had other chances to give us something to work with, they never do. Everyone gets Ultimate at the same time and she ends up sharing with Ikuto for burst mode, telling us nothing new or interesting at all. Writers, WHY DOES SHE EXIST!? 

 

See, this wouldn't be a problem (except Yoshino, she will always be a problem) if Savers wasn't supposedly aimed at an older audience. If the conflict can all be traced to a single source, and it ends up being an irredeemable power-hungry psychopath, it paints everything very black and white. If Kurata did not exist, everything will be a-okay! Or maybe he's so unbelievably outrageously reprehensible that other shady people/Digimon can't possibly make a splash. Either way, every problem leading back to a single extremely evil dude makes the show feel more like a kids show and less like a show supposedly aimed at an older audience.

 

I almost wished I watched the dub instead so the atmosphere of the story would be more fitting. The dub cut a bunch of the darker aspects and actually directed the season for kids. Also Yoshino's voice actress is probably infinitely more superior and so she could be more tolerable, or at least ignorable. They probably didn't utilize a very one-dimensional high-pitched voice for Lalamon, but I guess there really was no point for a different voice considering Lalamon was so one-dimensional. Every season's strongest point is when the sixth ranger character is developed and slowly brought into the party. For Savers, it was its only watch-able arc. I guess that's what a lot of people say about Frontier, but at least Frontier had a respectable, awesome ending and not that bullshit Savers had.

Digimon is a great franchise, but I hope Xros Hunters is its end at least on the Anime front. There's too many ups and downs and discrepancies for anything truly great to rise back from the ashes once again. Besides the end of Hunters apparently had the goggle (and not goggle) boy of every season returning to help out the heroes, and then be a power source for ultimate back-scratcher Excalibur! They shafted Frontier again by never showing the super awesome EmperorGreymon. He could've appeared by already having taken the spirits from half his friends before he got there, and then Kouji could actually show up to combine with him for Susanoomon. (It never would've made a difference for other cameos since everyone else doesn't show up anyway) Instead Kouji ends up being the only lancer kid involved in a fusion that never shows up. What a damn shame and no, a glowing ball does not count. (Kouichi also appears to be dead, so take that as you will...especially when Grani comes back to life for Dukemon but then leaves before the final episode making Crimson Mode literally pure fanservice...) Having Aldamon not even scratch the enemy is rather embarrassing. Are they secretly implying that yes, it was a terrible season? Bleh.  

But yeah, Digimon. This will probably be my last rant on anything Digimon related...unless I somehow get coaxed into watching Xros Wars. It'd just be further ranting! So...yeah.