Score: A-

So this movie was quite the ride! As one would expect this was both a movie that showed the cast reuniting with their digimon and focused on Sora’s journey especially. What did surprise me was how much we found out about what Himekawa’s motivations were. Certainly I can sympathize with where she started out. As a kid losing her digimon partner had to be horrifically traumatizing. But, clearly we saw how tragedy can give birth to obsession. She became someone so obsessed with getting back what she lost that she became willing to ruin the lives of everyone around her. Truly Himekawa became a monster. But this movie was also showing how the main cast can stand up even in a bad situation. And even without memories some things just remain intact.

Episode 14
And here we go again! It seems fitting that the second half of the movie series kicks off with some actual answers or at least some interesting information. So this basically confirms for us that Nishijima and Himekawa were part of a previous incarnation of the Digidestined. I’m not sure if they were the first Digidestined or simply a previous group of them though. Regardless this at least confirms that and raises some interesting questions. At the very least this flashback gives something to guess at as to why Himekawa seems to be purely evil. She and her comrades gave their best effort, fought against the Dark Masters of their generation (hopefully those guys aren’t coming back), and sort of won.

In a sense they won since the fight seemed over, but there was a cost. Himekawa’s partner seemed to perish in that fight. All the others ended up evolving into mega forms except for hers. That whole thing is an interesting discussion on its own though. I mean the other digimon digivolved into some pretty legendary creatures. Digimon we recognize from the games and other Digimon series. Basically they are the Four Holy Beasts that represent the four main directions (north, south, east, and west). There’s a lot of symbology and mixture with Japanese and Chinese Mythology.

So we’ve got Ebonwumon (the Black Tortoise of the North), Zhuqiaomon (vermillion bird of the South), Azulongmon (azure dragon of the East) and Baihumon (white tiger of the West). Put simply these are basically god tier Digimon. We’ve seen Mega Digimon before, but this is a pretty mythical class of them.

All of that just leading to Himekawa seeing their allied digimon obliterate her partner and defeating the Dark Masters. And naturally she asks the question of why only four were chosen. A fair one since if only four could become those megas…why were five of them summoned in the first place? A darn good question. And that leads to that monologue about traits which does seem directly tied to digivolution. In a sense saying that the ones that evolved received influence from the traits of the others and evolved due to that. In a sense Himekawa and her partner were left out in the cold. That might explain why she is so pissed in the present and may have a vendetta against other digidestined and the digital world itself. Or it might mean nothing….I don’t know.

Moving on to the main cast…not a lot happened. They met up with their partners again and are rebuilding relationships. That’s about it. Everyone is trying to deal with the fact that they have to start over. They have all these memories and bonds, but none of that is with their friends. In a sense it’s even worse than when they first met. At least back then there was a clear instinctual bond and the digimon themselves first recognized that they were partners. That may be due to the work Gennai did on the eggs. That augmentation may not remain after the reboot. That’s a worrying thing since they really have to struggle to make new bonds. The characters just want to be with their friends…but the digimon can’t fully understand why.

And naturally since this is a movie focusing partly on Sora…she’s got the worst situation of them all. The other digimon are at various degrees of uncertain to friendly, but Yokomon is fairly hostile and suspicious. A strange thing since even the Yokomon we saw back in the original series were all pretty easygoing in general. I’m curious why Yokomon is so hostile at this point. And yet despite those suspicions she isn’t leaving either. It just sucks. Sora cares as much as anyone and yet Yokomon is utterly rejecting her. At least we can predict that will be figured out before this movie is over, but I hope it is soon.

So much about Meicoomon and the implications of him remembering everything is scary. If Meicoomon is still the same as before then will the infections just start all over again? There was a point to the reboot initially though. Having a ton of champions, ultimates, and megas causing utter havoc is a nightmare scenario. At least after the reboot there isn’t much danger out there. But it does mean that things aren’t ideal. They still don’t know why Meicoomon is like this and what is going on. They have to track Meicoomon down and start figuring things out step by step. Hopefully they can resolve it.

Episode 15
Well this episode was a lot about confirming speculation. It basically nails what Himekawa has been up to and why. Her digimon partner was literally sacrificed so the others could become those god tier Megas. Even more horrifying is that the evolution of the others cut Tapirmon out of the circle of resurrection that the digital world has. Normally a digimon killed will return to an egg at the Primary Village and then grow up again. But in this case her partner has no way to come back. In that sense I can understand the desperation of having lost a loved one and wanting to get them back. Of course it doesn’t remotely excuse her actions. In order to reboot her partner back into existence she screwed up the digital world itself and the lives of the other digidestined. That isn’t ok.

The sad thing is that Nishijima had no freaking clue until now that she’d been continuing her work. Instead of just letting go she took what he said to heart. It was painful for him to watch her try to bring back her partner…so she cut him out and didn’t let him see what she was doing. I guess that didn’t quite work out as he planned. At least we know for sure that he’s a good guy. And at least the digidestined can count on him to help once he gets things under control. In a sense with Himekawa going rogue in the digital world he can take over her position and get that organization working as it should.

Of course things aren’t great right now. As usual…Tai and Matt really don’t have a clue what to do about Sora. Can’t quite blame them for the “what a pain” moment in the forest. It is tough. Sure she can say they can’t read the mood and are dense at times, but she also closes up all the time. It is hard especially for those who aren’t as perceptive to dig into her head. It’s obvious to us that she’s having trouble with Biyomon, but for the guys they probably had their hands full. Simply reuniting with their partners has been a difficult road. Regardless it just shows that triangle situation that has remained pretty low key for the last while. They are there when Sora is in trouble, but can’t easily get through to her. And she’ll probably be fine by the next time they see her XD.

For the time being though I can sympathize with Sora. Everyone else is having a relatively easy time with this. Sure Gabumon is a bit shy around Matt, but in general they are slowly building up friendships. It is literally only Biyomon that is being a jerk. In that sense I kind of blame the writing. If one is going to be a jerk then there should have been multiples that were suspicious. It seems a bit unlikely that only one single digimon partner would be acting like this. Regardless it sucks for Sora. I get Biyomon being suspicious in general. If people show up you’ve never seen and act familiar it’d be weird. Of course I think they all should be acting like that to a degree, but such is. At least Sora crying and having a breakdown froze up Biyomon’s jerk mode. Even she isn’t that heartless.

Oh hey Machinedramon! Been a while….what the heck!? Oh joy the reboot brought back the Dark Masters, thanks a lot Himekawa…Of course it may not be them. He didn’t exactly speak and was basically just a berserk monster. I’d say that’s suspicious but a weird thing about Tri has been how many higher level digimon don’t speak. So Machinedramon just howling and making a fuss doesn’t seem that weird. He may be very much the beast we saw in the first season just minus any dialogue. We’ll have to see what happens.

Regardless that was a close one. Everyone nearly died. Of course they couldn’t just jump into battle and evolve…the characters should have understood that. There is so much uncertain here; are they even properly connected through the digivice right now; can the digimon even evolve like they did before? I have no clue whatsoever.

And it all ends with them transported all over the island. Interestingly of course they are all in places that have some special significance to them. Not a good situation at all though. The distortions mostly cut them off from their respective partners and some aren’t near anyone at all. This is going to be tricky and curious to see how the following episodes play out for this movie.

Episode 16
Geeze by the end of this episode I’d probably just wait for death if I was in their shoes. Or at least randomly yell out “oh come on! Might as well bring on the rest of the Dark Masters you jerk!” I mean bad enough Evil Gennai is sadistically hunting them down, but he’s basically got the Dark Masters under his control. Why even taunt them with just Machinedramon and Metal Seadramon? Just bring the whole squad out and end this in an instant. Of course it is downright silly that they aren’t dead already. I know the movies have tossed digimon levels out the window harder than Xros Wars did but….what the heck is taking so long for a Mega to hunt down some rookies?

Regardless, Evil Gennai has the main cast in a bad spot. They are so helpless in comparison to this guy it is actually silly. At least he’s stopped pretending to be Ken…but it hardly matters when they are just as confused as ever. Evil Gennai is a psycho and seemingly Yggdrasil has utterly corrupted him. That normally would be referring to the mythical tree from Norse Mythology, but likely has a more direct connection to the digital world. Probably some kind of super program or system that is on a god tier level. Regardless, if something that utterly powerful is trying to screw everyone over…it’s not a good situation.

About damn time that Biyomon started to turn a corner. Honestly, I still don’t get her. She acts like a jerk to Sora almost the entire time…but then is ok with helping her out later? I guess they made the point in this episode that some kind of instinct remains within the digimon partners, but not sure in this case. Is this version of Biyomon just a jerk of a tsundere? Maybe I’m also a dense type, but I don’t get it. She intentionally takes action to antagonize Sora like sticking close to Meiko, but…helps out in a pinch? Oh well, at least she’s basically working with her.

Talk about a troublesome partner with Meicoomon though. I mean throwing random attacks all over the place and could have seriously hurt if not killed Meiko in the process. I mean geeze upset when Meiko isn’t there and then pissed when she is. Pick one darn it! Meiko deserves full credit though in holding her ground and dealing with it. She didn’t let what was basically a temper tantrum slow her down. She was there to reunite with Meicoomon and did so. And despite all the problems that seem to connect to Meicoomon’s very existence…right now Meicoomon is pretty stable. So we’ll see how long that lasts.

Episode 17
So yeah, Evil Gennai just got creepier. I mean come on man you are evil enough as it is. We don’t need you to start getting creepy with Meiko. Just focus on being evil man, doing just fine on that front. Crazy Gennai did a solid job outthinking the heroes. Of course he didn’t really have to outthink them though. He has the Dark Masters at his beck and call. Just summon all of them at once and have 4 Mega Digimon straight up murder the heroes who at that time couldn’t digivolve. But the heroes do need to avoid straight up dying so…he couldn’t do that one.

Instead he went with the reasonable option of splitting up the group and just attacking a helpless Meiko. They probably should have left someone behind who wouldn’t run off like Sora did. Though they didn’t really have a solid plan put together that said she had to stay behind. So in the end it was just that they were outplayed in this case. Which makes sense, they were getting swamped with Dark Masters and hardly had time to even think.

My honest condolences to Tapirmon for how this episode played out. Talk about a messed up situation there. Bad enough that originally the situation required a sacrifice to help save the day and he died. That action ended up removing him from the digimon life cycle. But then after resurrection through the reboot and has to deal with a total yandere in Himekawa. Did no one inform her what would happen? It’s a reboot! It undoes everything that happened in the past. It isn’t some kind of convenient tool that only erases the death and leaves the memory intact. Everything before and after their meeting was eradicated! But no, Himekawa can’t comprehend this and goes all yandere on Tapirmon. Well I suppose that’s what happens to some people who have lived a life of obsession all these years. She can’t just be happy that he’s alive.

Well in the end that may mostly cover Himekawa’s role in this. She’s just a lunatic that Yggdrasil and Evil Gennai (who is probably also taken advantage of in a sense) used for their purposes. She may not have much else to do with all this really. They needed a Captain Ahab, someone so obsessed that they didn’t care what the consequences of their actions would be. In a sense it’s remarkable that she was willing to screw over humanity and the digital world for her own selfishness.

There was some fun in this episode to be had though. Just nice to see all the digimon going nuts and unleashing hell upon even berserk forms of the Dark Masters. That should leave basically everyone except for Kari and well Meiko without their partners having fully evolved. And with two movies to go that is more than enough time really. It is nice to see the various fully evolved forms of the cast. While it was remarkably easy for TK and Patamon to get their fully evolved version…they did have their character arcs in the previous movie anyways. This one was really mostly about Sora and so it was nice for her to finally get a chance to shine. But it was only to a degree since they basically ganged up on Machinedramon there. Several mega pile up.

While I still don’t get Biyomon’s motivations at all in this movie…at least things worked out. She mostly dumped the whole tsundere nonsense after fully evolving to Phoenixmon. And it is kind of nice that her Mega form is basically going back to the animal side rather than the semi-human type that her ultimate evolution ended up as. Though I am kind of amazed that Sora’s ribs, spine, and rest of her body weren’t crushed after getting hit into the cliff by Machinedramon. You wouldn’t think that guy knows how to be careful enough to avoid killing a human. But apparently he picked that up. I wasn’t a huge fan of the insanely long transformation scene they went with for this episode, but the action itself was cool. It was great to see Wargreymon flinging Metal Seadramon around and Phoenixmon unleashing some hell.

Kind of sucks for Meiko that all that awesomeness was happening…while she was getting beaten and nearly killed by Evil Gennai. It’s too bad Meicoomon is apparently not strong enough to deal with that guy without going into a berserker form. He got everything he wanted there. Putting Meicoomon into a berserk state could really end everything. It was bad enough before and who knows how much worse it could get. At least it is possible that Meicoomon will murder the heck out of Evil Gennai before anything else.

It is kind of unsavory how Evil Gennai looks at humanity in general. Yeah, sorry we aren’t immortal buddy. Doesn’t mean people are worthless. Though clearly there is a power struggle between the side that supports humanity and digimon as partners and Yggdrasil that is happy to just see humanity wiped out and allow the digimon to prosper. I’m kind of worried what might happen down the road. The sides are mostly revealed, but there are still a couple movies to go. Though at least with that many movies….we might actually see the current condition of the S2 crew. Look I didn’t like S2, but if you are going to acknowledge it existing then at least let us see what is going on with them.

As a whole this movie wasn’t bad. It did advance the story, revealed what the villains are mostly after, and the main crew are all together again. Now they have to deal with what is going on and hopefully save Meiko before her potentially broken neck kills her…I hope they don’t take advantage of the digivolution sequence to eat up time like they did here. The combat song is awesome for this series…but like 5 minutes of it is a bit much. But I still liked the fourth movie. It was cool seeing the various mega forms like Phoenixmon and Seraphimon. I can only be hyped to see all these megas kicking rear in the following films.