Previous>>23834724
What are your evaluations on Beatbreak's Perfects?
https://twitter.com/digimonweb_net/status/2070160087272882438It's Digimon's 29th birthday (June 26 1997)
>>23920793ScourgeChiropmon, Azhdarmon, and Murasamemon could be adult stages. MonarchLizardmon feels like a lazy parody. Bearcatmon is okay, I guess.
>>23920807Azhdarmon would be fine as a Perfect if it evolved from something like KausGammamon instead of just putting on a hat and gloves.
Did the performance mode for Time Stranger drop yet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wrbPMD2FTA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7JK-jLa0no
>>23920793Incredibly boring.
New Digimon.
https://twitter.com/digimon_tv/status/2070434712745816333New visual poster.
>>23921232That snake is really nice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVLk5Tr5cpEThis year's Digimon Times.
https://digimon.net/digitalworld-Iliad/Digital World Iliad.
>>23921236The broadcast confirmed a trailer for the next arc after episode 37, which I can't help but be excited for.
https://x.com/digimon_tv/status/2070839563015344469New ed called Kiss of Life confirmed for next episode onward.
>>23922464No, that's the artist. The song title is BREAK IT
>>23922490Thanks for the correction
8 episodes behind, going to catch up today, and I'm going to post thoughts here (I know, not my personal blog) so I have some sort of accountability and don't procrastinate further.>>23920793>MurasamemonLeomon if he PerfectI like him more as a character (like Leomon), and I mean if WereGarurumon can be a Perfect, so can this guy. He's cool enough, and him annihilating Pyramidimon with black rain was a highlight of the series.>AzhdarmonI keep forgetting how to spell this, and it's not super distinguishable from Rhamphomon. Less of a design, more of a plot beat and occasional character with Monodramon being Light's biggest fan. Also a bit underwhelming for a Perfect in terms of strength.>MonarchLizamonHe's grown on me a bit. Yeah, the design is really derivative which takes away from how unique Gekkomon and ArmaLizamon were. Not quite as cool as RizeGreymon, but his first evolution is really great.>ScourgeChiropmonCool name for what is ostensibly a Raptordramon clone. Not really cool or particularly powerful-looking, much like Raptordramon.>BearcatmonI just like it is all, feels fitting.
I wanted to comment a few months ago that I thought it was weird that there were a lot of Shangri-La eggs in the background, I felt like I didn't notice that before, I thought it was just the one. Here's guessing that Wong is trying to use them to birth another Digimon god event by gathering "ideal humans" to birth a bunch of Digimon in one place.Episode 29 (Dangerous Fandom)Chiropmon: イケメンヴァンパイア (ikemen vanpaia; handsome vampire)Gekkomon: つけ麵三杯だ (tsukemen sanbai da!; three cups of tsukemen (noodle dish))FABULOUS, but mostly a buffer episode and it shows in the visuals and with the conversation at the end. Fine as a Reina episode but I think that the rest of Glowing Dawn felt unnecessary, where Kyou's only purpose for being in the episode was to inform everyone who Rose is. If Rose wasn't in the episode, it would be completely skippable.Episode 30 (Wings to Protect You)I feel like this would have been better served as the two-parter compared to the original Makoto Shangri-La egg story. It even feels like both stories could have been combined into one, with Tsukasa in the same role as Haruko. There's a very similar premise to both stories, where Makoto is drawn back home and a shady businessman father is using their kid to target Chiropmon. I know they said that they considered mentioning Makoto's twin as far back as episode 8 and 9 but decided not to since it wouldn't have amounted to anything then, but it does make this episode feel vestigial, and maybe like Tsukasa deserved more focus than Haruko. Overall I think that Makoto's background should be more relevant to what's going on in the story, but it hasn't really felt that relevant outside of his focus episodes.
>>23923046>Overall I think that Makoto's background should be more relevant to what's going on in the story, but it hasn't really felt that relevant outside of his focus episodes.Makoto's story as a whole feels completely independent of the show. It's genuinely odd. You could put him and his story in any Digimon season and it would fit.
>>23923046Also they did the same Chiropmon character beat where they focused on his guilt for Makoto's circumstances, so it did feel like a retread. The original two parter introduced the woman with the BelialVamdemon mask, but I also feel like they built her up just enough to seem important but wrote her out later without real payoff. At this point, I think that Makoto just doesn't have enough personal story material, it's mostly just his background. Maybe they could have said something about his mother or lack thereof, or more about his time with his grandfather.Episode 31 (One Step Forward)Gekkomon: 国民柚子胡椒じゃないから (Kokumin Yuzukoshou ja nai kara; Cuz he's not the Lemon of Civil Pepper; yuzukoshou is a lemon pepper paste)Tomoro: 国民保護省な (Kokumin Hogoshou na; It's Ministry of Civil Protection)I like how Hitomi continues to pop into the story even if she's used mostly to facilitate early parts of the episode's narrative before disappearing.All this time I thought Rose's underlings were male and female, but they're actually the lesbians from Sailor Moon but as Team Rocket. Oleamon is exposing my gap in knowledge between Adventure: and Ghost Game. Brilliant Thorn makes me wonder if Tactics really was just filled with shitters. Don't care much about Chihiro, but I like what they did with Algomon, and this is the first time that I've ever heard them explicitly comment that there are special Digimon whose names don't change when they evolve. Algomon also feels like Beatbreak's first large-scale incident in the present. I also can't believe how much Shida animation is in this episode, so that's where he's been, and there was a good amount of sakuga and wonky CG. The ending to the episode was really good, probably the best episode of the GIFT arc so far.
Episode 32 (Cold Rain)And here I thought Panjamon was Maki's original partner. I can't believe that I never picked up on Hyougamon being an icy counterpart to Panjamon in the same way Ogremon is to Leomon. But I like the little Adventure references like that, or how the final battle of the second cour took place in a desert with the protagonist evolving his Digimon to a cyborg t-rex Perfect, or how the cast is in "Hikarigahama".The flashback stuff with Maki is really well done, her holding the knife to the guy's throat is the coldest thing in that room of ice, so cold that she can only shiver right after. Their relationship is handled well for something so short and I wish I could remember the name of those flowers she had so I could look up the hanakotoba. This is the only time I've ever been genuinely moved by a Leomon death.Overall this is probably one of the best episodes of Beatbreak if not the best so far, the storyboarding, animation, and direction are all really solid and the only thing holding it down is the GIFT stuff which feels somewhat tacked on to the real meat and potatoes. I really enjoyed how we got natural world-building details in Maki's flashbacks, from seeing the construction of the Shangri-La egg to the formation of Cleaners, it gives a bit of a timeline. Seeing Maki immediately go for the kill on Curimon (lol, Gammamon) with a fucking knife was expected but also required, and the emotion is just handled so well, especially for a character like Maki who has been relatively detached.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y6NBCNFu-Y
I checked the previous thread for comments on the episode and I thought the comment about Tomoro being the one to stop Maki was interesting. I also felt that although him being the one to stop Maki from deleting Curimon made a great contrast to the beginning of the series and how much he's changed, while also having some real poignancy, I also felt while watching that Tomoro wasn't the character to earn this role in the episode itself. This is a problem I have in focus episodes (particularly the Vamdemon episode) where the other characters feel mostly irrelevant to the plot and come in too late to really contribute. Tomoro-focused episodes tend to work a bit better because they feel more like they contribute to the narrative as a whole, but I still don't think he was relevant enough to this Maki story outside of being the main character of the series to do this. I almost feel like Kyou should have gotten it, but the narrative didn't build him up adequately enough as being relevant to Maki's past, even though Murasamemon being another Leomon expy and Kyou having Maki's and Panjamon's philosophy feels like it could naturally lead to that. I still think Tomoro could be the one to stop Maki, but that Kyou's meeting with Maki should have been shown earlier, maybe have her express some skepticism about people changing, and then have Tomoro stop her and have her see how much Kyou has changed him be what keeps her from going over the edge.I think that the best episodes are the ones where multiple characters get focus and significant roles, the coliseum cage match two-parter is a good example where both Glowing Dawn and Tactics felt important as characters. The Algomon episode ran the risk of Adventure:'s few episodes where the other kids sit in the park trying to be important while Taichi/Yamato/Takeru actually do something, but it just threaded the needle by letting Tomoro be the main character but having the rest of the team contribute in meaningful ways.
>>23923876Episode 33 (Midsummer Ghost)A number of these episodes feel like they could exist outside the GIFT arc, this could have happened in episode 26 and it wouldn't feel any different. In the beginning, I felt like the slow pacing of the first cour was a bit of a detriment, but it at least had the excuse that it was allowing its characters to be shown to the audience, and Gekkomon finally evolving at the end of the cour felt like a triumph. But I think that episodes like this going forward, particularly if this series is only four cours, is somewhat indicative that Beatbreak has a sound premise and characters, but not a ton of plot. I don't think this episode really pushed anything forward for characters or story outside of "Raito is now working with Honoka and Kaito", but even Hotaruko and Granite felt a bit underused, while Kyou is absent, Makoto and Reina get written out, and Tomoro has to carry the story for just long enough to make Raito's return feel like a surprise (not that it is). This makes Tomoro and ArmaLizamon feel like punching bags that just have to hold out until the story arbitrarily decides to move forward.I was expecting a bit more summer antics based on the preview, but what can you do.
>>23924193>I was expecting a bit more summer antics based on the preview, but what can you do.Oddly enough, this was addressed in the latest Twitter Space that occurred yesterday in place of the episode; here's someone commenting on it: https://twitter.com/mazaki_kei/status/2071025488773214663 >'Episode 33 was supposed to be a laid-back summer episode with everyone goofing around, but in the end, it turned into "we have to fight after all..." and became a survival game episode.' It was a survival game episode, huh... Yeah, maybe so...Like you say, the only thing it actually did was give Raito another reason to eventually fight Tomoro and also to not be with Hotaruko & Granit. The fact Makoto & Reina are written out to the extent they were not even revisited at the end of the episode is absolutely bewildering. I also did not enjoy the 'Makoto attempts to help Hotaruko' scene whatsoever, but I already said my points on that in the last thread.
>>23924201It's a bit of a shame, Tactics as an organization wasn't super fleshed out even during its arc, but it was just enough that it was enough to leave it on being disbanded. Bringing in Team One as a holdout but making them stand-in villains of the week (their names are fucking Ichinosuke, Nichika, and Sanpei) didn't add anything, and the characters that should have been given something (Hotaruko, Granite) feel like they're in exactly the same place as before, while Raito almost feels like a bit of a regression as a character. I mean does anyone think he's going to come back as a serious rival?I don't feel like I know anything new about anyone or the world, and the episode itself wasn't particularly entertaining as a standalone episode. I think that's the weakest kind of filler, the type that just exists without substance. Compare the Mummymon episode which creates a lot of fun character interactions you wouldn't be able to imagine in any other episode.Makoto and Reina did come back at the end, but it happens so quickly and is barely acknowledged that I had forgotten it myself.
>>23924217The problem with the episode is it's all about Raito, not Team Seven as a whole. He's EXTREMELY popular for various reasons, so he was brought back. But given Raito comes back, that means Hotaruko and Granit have to be involved. And you're correct, those two effectively take the back seat in what should have been the trio's episode together. I think more should have been shown about how the two performed as Cleaners post-Tactics, because in the Tactics arc they genuinely appeared to be extremely compatible with each other, and Raito was always the one fucking things up. But it's not addressed at all other than 'Granit is Hotaruko's errand boy'. I also find it annoying that it appears her telling the truth to her family was done off-screen, because let's be honest: she can't have brought a brown boy and his armoured creature home without explaining what's been happening. Chef Ludomon however was adorable.>I mean does anyone think he's going to come back as a serious rival?The fact they've introduced this plot point of him training with Kaito and Honoka means he 'will'. I just know there's going to be a Tomoro v Raito episode in the final cour and it will be embarrassingly gay.>Makoto and Reina did come back at the end, but it happens so quickly and is barely acknowledged that I had forgotten it myself.But we genuinely don't see them again after they're knocked out. Their final appearances are in pic related. There's still roughly 13 minutes of the episode remaining at this point. It was ridiculous that they did not reappear after this.
>>23924284Oh, I misremembered hearing Honoka's voice off-screen as Reina showing up, but they really did just disappear.I don't think Raito is going to add much going forward because his character feels resolved. Maybe they could do a parallel with Kyou and Kaito, but I don't really get how it would further his character. I'm still a couple episodes behind, and the plot is running again, but the initial impression I got was that Kyou in his younger days was a kid who was very lonely and angry at the world, and he took out his frustration by fighting Digimon. He and Kaito would have had a competitive, harmful rivalry where they feed off each other. I'm more interested in seeing their dynamic explored, but I think Tomoro and Raito have different motivations, even if Cougarmon compares Kyou's old e-Pulse to Tomoro's black e-Pulse.
Episode 34 (Inside the Mask)Reina showing insecurity regarding Perfect from the very start of the episode feels like it's way too late and irrelevant to everything we've seen so far. I'm fine with Reina being insecure if she starts being mocked for her own weakness and sees further evolution as the only way to not be dead weight, but until this point, this has never been an issue. She and Wolvermon beat Vamdemon on their own. MonarchLizamon has been a thing for 10 episodes, we see them practically every episode now. It makes the writing feel very artificial and episodic when I wish we could have seen this part of her character appear from time to time. I'm fine with the content of the episode writing, just not that some aspects are only appearing now. It also feels unnatural for characters to comment on Reina and Pristimon not being able to reach Perfect when nobody did before, it's very telegraphed.An older sibling being compared to the sun further cements Kyou, a surrogate older brother, going from Venus to the sun. The moon reflects the light of the sun, showing an older sibling's influence, particularly on Tomoro.I feel like Tomoro and Miharu should have met more than twice for this reveal to him to be more dramatic. If each episode with GIFT had involved Tomoro having a conversation at the hospital or inviting Miharu somewhere where she can personally watch how he handles situations, I think their later connection to one another would feel more deserved. Once again, it feels less like an issue with the writing of this episode, and more like they should have done more in previous episodes where story content was lighter.
Episode 35 (Wild Instinct)Really good Reina episode, I think it was more interesting/original to watch than the Makoto Perfect episode. I thought the jet skates would look cooler though. Nice to see Wong start to be relevant again. I really hope this goes beyond four cours, because trying to put Kaito, Honoka, Kanada, and Wong all into one arc (especially one that would likely have less than 12 episodes) while occasionally bringing in previous plot elements like the big lore drops as well as Ultimate evolutions seems a bit crowded.I've had this thought for a while, but while Makoto makes for a fine supporting character, he feels like the weakest link. He's always there because they need someone for analysis, but he's not as interesting as Koushirou in Adventure, or the other Glowing Dawn members. While family is obviously a major part of his backstory, I feel it a lot more in everyone else's characterization. We've hardly seen Reina's backstory, just some hints of abandonment from her parents and relatives and having to struggle with Pristimon on their own, but I really feel like she's one of the elements that makes Glowing Dawn a family and truly appreciates it. Makoto never questions his role in Glowing Dawn, he just knows he wants to be there, while Reina has shown both insecurity in her role as both a fighter and slight mentor/sister figure and a deep desire to maintain this family.
>>23924314>It also feels unnatural for characters to comment on Reina and Pristimon not being able to reach Perfect when nobody did before, it's very telegraphed.This is why I didn't like any aspect of Reina's evolution. It's so poorly structured BearCatmon feels compulsory rather than genuinely earned. And I don't particularly like BearCatmon even as a design. Just feels a bit too "human".>>23924363>while Makoto makes for a fine supporting character, he feels like the weakest linkDefinitely. Being the Koshiro equivalent (10 year old analyst) I was genuinely looking forward to Makoto. But everything about him is so detached from the grand scheme of things it feels difficult to appreciate him. His evolutions have both been achieved in Shangri-La (as you said, both with very similar premises) and his role in the Tactics arc ended up being myopic about Hotaruko. The fact he ran away from his biological family instead of being abandoned should have played more of a role than it has done, because he made a conscious choice to leave, unlike Tomoro & Reina. However, Chiropmon is very cute and I do enjoy Night and Scourge.
What's your favorite episode or scene from the first four Digimon anime entries?https://twitter.com/Digimon_Anime/status/2071519290176499880https://www.toei-anim.co.jp/digimon_selection/vote/
>>23924972I'm fine with the plot points themselves, but it's this thing where I think "This feels like something that was figured out about her character from an early point, but they didn't properly build up to it at the correct points". After all, Wolvermon is the first evolution sequence at the start of the first episode. Murasamemon appears, but gets an abridged evolution sequence near the end of the first cour and only a full one at the end of the second, and that was to foreshadow what an actual Perfect evolution looks like. Gekkomon is the main character's Digimon, an evolution that gets priority in every other series barring Tamers, and they specifically wait until the climax of the first cour to let it happen. Not only that, but it's finally the debut of an insert song tied to evolution, and you can even go back to the very first episode and realize it's the song Tomoro is listening and drumming to on his way to school. The pacing all feels deliberate.Because I was behind, when I saw ScourgeChiropmon's and BearCatmon's evolution scenes devoid of most context but the most very basic premise for the episodes or the odd line, my mind filled in the gaps. I thought Tsukasa was going to be a much more active character in the episode ala Haruko, but he's just sullen and sits in a wheelchair until he decides to help Makoto and apologizes for everything. In my head, ScourgeChiropmon was tied to Makoto's bond with Tsukasa somehow, like maybe he was standing up for him. Similarly, I thought that Reina would develop an insecurity at not reaching Perfect and that would be a connective thread throughout the episodes, maybe it starts with some comments from Rose in the Vamdemon episode, feels like falling behind in the ScourgeChiropmon episode, have some losses as Reina starts to feel like dead weight, and have it culminate in the episode we got.
>>23925202Adventure - Episode 21, for obvious reasons. Though my favorite scene might be when Mimi's hat goes flying off in episode 54 and Butter-fly starts playing without the instrumentsAdventure 02 - Really hard to pick a specific episode, I like a lot for all sorts of reasons and scenes. Hard to pick a scene too, but I particularly love the scene when Iori's grandpa tries to befriend Oikawa even knowing who he is and it nearly works. Scenes like those are what made Digimon feel like a series with actual writing.Tamers - Also really hard to pick a specific episode. Favorite scene might be from near the end when Takato starts to get teased that he has feelings for Juri, and he's initially a little insecure, but stops and admits it without hesitation, resolutely saying that he wants to save her and holding no shame. It's the moment where we understand that the meek, sensitive boy we've been following has completed his character arc and become a brave knight in shining armor, both literally as Dukemon and mentally.Frontier - Maybe episode 21 or 22, but I feel like the return to Akiba Town episode is something special, and there are a lot of episodes I like on the Dark Continent. The Koichi reveal (With Broken Wings) with Velgrmon is a really good ending to the episode.
>>23924972If they wanted to get it out of the way faster, they could have had Reina save the day by pulling Bearcatmon out of nowhere, then revealing that they'd been training hard to unlock that form in secret. It would feel like she had more agency in it at least.
I just bought Time Stranger, carrying on from demo data. Also finished Cyber Sleuth yesterday but haven't started Hackers' Memory.The Time Stranger Downloadable Content sure looks not worth their price, even on discount.
>>23925482I don't necessarily like the idea of evolution being tied to pure training. When I look at Kyou and Murasamemon, I get the impression that he just has naturally high innate power, but power in this series is e-Pulse, which is tied to emotion. Some people like Tomoro have overwhelming potential just because of who they are as a person, his innate rhythm makes his e-Pulse high quality (hence the pulse). So evolution is more likely to occur for people who experience profound emotion and growth. And of course there are Digimon that just naturally evolve over time, but this has always been something they play fast and loose with. The natural state for Klay's partner started as Sunarizamon but became Proganomon over time. Kyou presumably started with Liollmon just going by the card game.But if they flashforward 20 years, I don't expect an adult Tomoro to be partnered with ArmaLizamon or MonarchLizamon as the base state, it's going to be Gekkomon just like pushing 40 Taichi still has Agumon and mid/late 30s Daisuke still has V-mon and young adult Masaru has Agumon. That's just how they want to keep things recognizable.
>>23925660I don't mean "they used their e-Pulse over and over so it got stronger", I mean that the act of acknowledging your problems and committing to improving yourself through training is itself the kind of shift in mindset which can dye your e-Pulse in new colours.We know from Tactics that you *can* improve your e-Pulse through training. Yes it's only one approach and not even the best one, but with Reina being a "wild" type she might be someone who lacks fine control of her e-Pulse and would benefit from training her focus.
>>23925721But the best e-Pulse is the one where u bee urself :)
https://twitter.com/Digimon_up_en/status/2071790836937793966Meramon.
>>23923418That was one of my favorites too, for all the reasons you listed.>The flashback stuff with Maki is really well done, her holding the knife to the guy's throat is the coldest thing in that room of ice, so cold that she can only shiver right after.I thought that was great, too. Really appreciated the juxtaposition between how stoic she came off during the scene (with her body language afterwards revealing she was bluffing after Hyogamon's owner took off) versus how she went for Curimon with little fanfare. >>23923876I think that was my post you're thinking of, and as you saw, I totally agree with you. Though again, I have to repeat, while I appreciate them not hitting the audience over the head with how far Tomoro's grown since the beginning, his response as to why he stopped Maki was so uncharacteristic that it added to the reasons you stated for it feeling unearned.In hindsight, it's interesting how quickly Tomoro's fallen into the main character role compared to early on, where it felt like they tried harder to keep him from overshadowing the others. I wouldn't say it's on the level of 2020 Taichi, but as you've stated, it's definitely noticeable.>>23925436>I thought Tsukasa was going to be a much more active character in the episode ala Haruko, but he's just sullen and sits in a wheelchair until he decides to help Makoto and apologizes for everything.As disappointing as it was, it was necessary for the slight red herring they pulled with him prior to their dad being exposed. Also that despite his understandable resentment, he's not that bad a guy.>>23925721They really swept the idea of training e-Pulse under the rug rather quickly, didn't they? At the very least, it seems to be something reserved for antagonists for the time being. Really hope it comes back up in the main cast's favor before the show's over.
Episode 36 (Twisted Code)I'm actually sitting here realizing that the whole "abduct Won while everyone else is distracted with Bombermon" plan doesn't make sense because Bombermon targeted multiple facilities. Why not go after Won during the Sapotama facility incident? Sure, maybe the final facility was the one that affected his route, but what if Glowing Dawn resolved the case before that? The timing just seems somewhat narratively convenient.Tsukasa returning so soon is surprising, I'm glad that he's appearing outside of his one episode, but I'm not sure if him being in this role is really necessary or the logical progression to what we saw. I wish more time had gone into speaking with Tomoro in the previous episode over what he thinks about this situation with Miharu and GIFT, because the impression I get is that they just didn't talk about what happened. But it feels like things are moving again now that the big players are showing up.Overall it was a fine enough episode. I'm unclear as to what literally happened involving Chifuyu. She's dead, didn't seem to get coldhearted, but did she kill herself out of guilt and grief? Her water bottle is on the floor, so it must have fallen somehow. It's also now almost entirely empty instead of half full, but the floor doesn't seem wet. It's still daylight when Miharu left, but she was likely out for less than an hour, so it's not like the water could have dried in that time. We see that it's 8:11 PM when she gets back, but we can't tell the time on the clock when she leaves. So did she drown herself with a bottle of water?
https://twitter.com/digimonweb_net/status/2072092823562637325
https://twitter.com/digimon_tv/status/2072153720729809228
https://twitter.com/digimon_tv/status/2072153229937496553
