Episode 4 – DIGIMON BEATBREAK

After spending so much of the opening episode establishing its setting and how Tomoro fits into it, it only makes sense: Rhythm Break Inevitably it takes some time to slow down. The point of this episode isn’t to do anything too major, but instead focus entirely on Tomoro helping others in his first real bounty hunting gig, which makes it feel more like a monster-of-the-week set-up than what we’ve gotten before. While that sounds like a knock on it, I don’t think lower stakes is a bad thing. What this episode may have lacked in story progression, it made up for in strengthening the dynamics of our main cast.

For the most part, the actual plot of the episode can be summed up pretty quickly. Shining Dawn (Mukyo) goes out to catch a cargo thief, but Tomoro’s unwillingness to control Geckomon or devote all of his energy to things that have nothing to do with helping his brother leaves the team in trouble until he learns the value of friendship and softens his attitude towards his new companions. It’s all pretty simple on paper, but the execution here is what ultimately matters, and the actual goal of this episode was mainly to establish a rapport between Tomoro and Reina, and I’d say it succeeded. Since most of the first three episodes were centered entirely on Tomoro’s perspective, we didn’t get any sense of his teammates, let alone Reina, but now that we know a little more about her, I like her a lot.

I said in my last review that Tomoro felt unusual as a person Digimon The protagonist, since he’s closer in personality to the brooding foils of these characters, so since Reina (so far) seems to be Tomoro’s foil, it only makes sense that she seems to be someone with all the standard protagonist qualities. Her hot-headedness, desire to be in control, and willingness to put herself in danger to protect her friends basically make her a female version of Ty. Digimon Adventure (Which hopefully means she won’t be marginalized like some others before Digimon There are heroines). This also makes her the complete opposite of Tomoro, who still works mostly out of self-interest and is not much of a team player, thus protecting Reina from harm even if he is injured Digimon After the attack, Tomoro still has trouble accepting her as a friend. Similar to Geckomon’s situation last week, the two were only willing to go easy on each other once they learned more about each other’s situation. In Reina’s case, we learn from Makoto that she grew up without a family, drifting between different groups of cleaners before meeting Kyo, so to her, this group is all she really has. This struck a chord with Tomoro, who pretty much only had his brother looking out for him, and after the reconciliation, they worked better together on their second attempt to stop the cargo thieves. Again, there aren’t any surprises here, but it’s a great example of how much can be gained from a simple plot premise. While Toplo’s life seems to be more stable because of his brother, he and Reina seem to have grown up in isolation, and knowing that they both had such similar experiences makes their contrasting personalities all the more interesting. I’m curious to see how the show will capitalize on this.

The attention to character pacing wasn’t the only part of this episode that I enjoyed. I still love the show’s absolutely fantastic action scenes, and given that 2D car chases are becoming increasingly rare in anime, it’s nice to have a fight at the end that’s mostly about trying to chase a motorcycle. It also made me laugh to see how cargo thieves exploited the collision detection systems of self-driving AI cars to carry out robberies. This may not necessarily be a criticism of Tesla, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the animation staff here are a little skeptical about the reliability of this technology. Finally, while there’s very little plot development here, the episode reveals that the cargo thieves were hired by an anonymous backer. We don’t know who they are, which makes me wonder if this could be the way we see the rival team of cleaners in the OP.

I can see this episode being laughed at for feeling like a “filler” (especially considering how serious the previous episode was) Digimon series is), but I also feel that modern usage of the term has been exaggerated. Not every episode of the show needs to be constantly pushing the story forward, and sometimes, it’s nice to relax and focus more on building chemistry between characters, or just simply doing something fun. Having some breaks can make the big moments in an episode more effective, and for a long-running show like this, being able to strike a good balance between good one-off episodes and major storylines often works better than trying to have something big happen every week. The episode still felt solid despite the fairly light stakes, which feels like a good sign that the show might be able to achieve that balance, and if we’re going to go a long way, I can only hope that any future escapades are just as entertaining.

grade:

digimon beat Currently live broadcast
Crunchy roll.