Episode 5 – DIGIMON BEATBREAK

Since last week’s episode slowed down the storyline a bit to focus on Tomoro forming more of a bond with Reyna, I imagine the next few episodes will be equally dedicated to letting Tomoro learn more about his teammates. Instead, this seems to have gone in a completely different direction, and we’re getting a storyline about… a land rights battle involving the underworld. It’s certainly not what I expected from a show that relies so heavily on cyberpunk aesthetics, let alone one that Digimon exhibit. Still, there’s enough here to make me curious about what’s going to happen.

While on an errand for the others, Tomoro and Geckomon end up running into a small settlement on the outskirts of the city. There, they discover that the residents of the town are being harassed by a gangster organization called the “Koala Society” who want to turn this place into a casino, and the only thing stopping them is the leader of another organization called the “Panda Group” and his partner Pandamon, who is the protector of the town. The basic conflict here isn’t terribly original, but similar to last week’s episode, a lot of the smaller details help make it more than the sum of its parts.

Much of the scenario is built around the use of Sappotamas and the standardization of artificial intelligence, and it’s interesting to see a group of people who are clearly skeptical of the use of such technology and live simpler lives. While this isn’t mentioned much, it at least shows that this technology hasn’t quite taken over society yet, which makes me wonder if we’ll see a larger form of resistance against it in the future. The lack of Sapotama in this town also has something to do with Pandamon’s relationship with the leader of the Panda group. rather than being born from Zapotama like everyone else Digimon We’ve seen that The Boss and Pandamon only met by chance, with the former spotting Pandamon on the verge of death and feeding him some electronic pulses. The only thing that truly connects the two of them is the exchange of vows to care for each other like parents and children, which creates some problems for Pandamon, as the eldest can only provide so many electrical pulses in his old age, and the lack of energy leaves Pandamon too weak to continue fending off Korakai.

taking into account the usual emphasis Digimon Have some kind of destined connection with their human partners that is quite significantly different from how everyone else does franchise Tends to function, and I’m all for it. It makes the partner dynamic more complicated than we usually get, and even more complicated considering how rare it is to see adults having their own partners. Digimon since most other entries tend to limit Digimon to the children. Since the villain group in the OP hints this might not be the only example of adults having their own Digimon I hope we see more partnerships like this in this show, as they could lead to all kinds of interesting stories for the rest of the show. Speaking of relationships, I also loved seeing Gekkomon decide to become brothers with Pandamon purely to provide him with more food. How simple this little guy is, I would be fine if he existed primarily to further Tomoro’s development in the same way most people do Digimon The gang tends to do that, but I’m certainly not opposed to seeing the show try to make him his own character, and after watching Pandamon take a few bullets for him at the end of the episode, I’m curious to see how that will ultimately affect him.

For all the positives I’ve listed, this is probably my least favorite episode so far, largely because I’m not quite sure what to make of it. While some of what we see here does help flesh out the scene, it doesn’t change the weirdness of this storyline, as it feels a little removed from everything else the show is setting up. The only major clue between this and the previous one is that Korakai was the one supporting the cargo thieves last week, which to be honest I was a little disappointed with because the Korakai boss didn’t look like a very exciting person outside of his villainy. Digimon The sidekick has a tommy gun (which definitely sells the whole gangster vibe if nothing else). Hopefully there’s someone else pulling the strings, but truth be told, he’s not very intimidating. The visuals of this episode are also down a notch compared to the previous four, and while it still has some decent action montages, it otherwise feels much more conservative than what we’ve gotten before. Much of it would feel less jarring if this was all relegated to a one-shot adventure, but it seems like this plot will be at least two parts, which makes it even weirder to see so much time devoted to something that feels like it should be a side story.

At the same time, it’s just because of this weird feeling that I’m really excited to see how this all ends. It’s hard to tell where exactly this plot is going to go, and while unpredictability isn’t always a good thing, I certainly would rather be surprised than not surprised, and the suspense here did a good job of keeping my attention. There are a lot of ways this ends up feeling like an unnecessary detour, but despite the strangeness of the events here, the writing remains as solid as ever, so for now, I’d like to believe that the payoff here is worth the investment.

grade:

digimon beat Currently live broadcast
crunchy.