Score: C

Episode 22
And here we go! I will say this episode heavily focused on easing us into the last Tri movie. There really wasn’t a lot going on outside of the main cast getting back to the real world and somewhat processing Tai going missing. There was a fair amount of flashback/recap which I really don’t think should be necessary. People should have the ability to recall or rewatch the last few scenes from the last movie. But oh well. This episode was pretty basic. Of course Kari is a bit of a mess. Her digimon has become a pure monster and her brother might be dead. That’s going to seriously mess up anyone. I also really hope people stop asking if she is ok. Of course she freaking isn’t! Who the heck would be ok in that scenario?

In situations like this I like to focus on what the characters are going through because they sure as heck don’t know he is alive. Everyone will take that kind of thing hard, but of course there are characters more impacted by this than others. Matt has to step up and rise to the top of this group. He can’t afford to sit around for too long. Sora is pretty emotionally shaken up which is understandable. She’s known Tai personally for as long as anyone there outside of Kari. They have somewhat shelved the romantic questions hanging overhead, but that is another element impacting her reactions. Though no doubt few are feeling it as hard as Kari. Potentially losing a precious family member that has been a constant existence her entire life would be agonizing.

There just wasn’t too much outside of that in this episode. The bad guys have their anti-humanity/real world weapon and are going to just let the real world get worn away by the digital one. While Homeostasis has a plan in all this…that probably involves killing Meicoomon and Gatomon so I can’t say they are an ally here. Somehow the main cast is going to have to find a way to stop this fused monster, save it at the same time, and deal with the aftermath. As one would expect the world itself is at stake here. There’s no room to mess it up. Matt may not be overly motivated to take on Tai’s job…but he’s got little choice. He is effectively the second in command though hey I wouldn’t mind Sora stepping up and filling Tai’s shoes XD. I think she’s got that in her.

Episode 23
I swear the end of this episode was there simply to take shots at those complaining about the disappearing act of the S2 protagonists XD. Not that they physically appear or god forbid get spoken lines though. Now Tai and Nishijima are thrown into a classic situation of picking between bad choices. Either do nothing and let the S2 cast die or send them to the real world and get blown up themselves. Now look I didn’t love the S2 crew as a whole, but I’m not wishing death upon them either. I just wanted the S1 crew to get the spotlight and find a reasonable way for the S2 crew to step back a bit.

No doubt Tai will figure something out. They aren’t actually going to kill him off or the S2 crew. Not that I expect that group to be allowed to get in on the action, but they should survive all this. Should be interesting to see how they solve this dilemma with crazy man breathing down their necks.

As a whole things are looking pretty bleak. We’re actually at a stage where the idea of rebooting the real world is being thrown around. Not sure if I even grasp the full implications of that kind of idea. I could somewhat grasp the part about rebooting the digital world, but this is going to another level of crazy. No doubt that has to be better than letting the entire world be destroyed, but I agree with Izzy that the costs of that kind of plan would be extreme. I salute his efforts to try and find another solution. But not necessarily going to be easy to manage that in an even more extreme time crunch than he had with the previous reboot scenario. It is funny though that Homeostasis really has a human approach to these things. If you run into trouble then just reboot the darn thing.

In general things are looking bad. In a straight up fight the main cast doesn’t stand a chance. They can’t overpower this OP fusion. Ordinemon is no joke in terms of frankly just being too much for the cast to handle. That thing can move fast for that incredible size and seems pretty impervious to harm. I can kind of see how rebooting reality sounds like a reasonable strategy in comparison to trying to beat that thing in a fight. At least the main cast is able to bounce back from these things relatively easily. And hey on the positive side they seem to be recalling the idea that the main cast can fight by calling out their attacks. Considering the first few movies this is actually a pretty major accomplishment in my mind.

This movie does move the story ahead a bit more and fit in some (limited in terms of motion) action. Tai is still very much doing his own thing and might want to try surviving his current crisis so he can go and help out the others sooner than later. I’d throw around the idea of the S2 crew getting into the mix…but I’m pretty sure the reboot hit their digmon so they aren’t going to be able to help out again anytime soon. I really hate the whole reboot thing as a whole. Even if the digimon are helping out right now they have still lost entire adventures worth of memories. There’s no getting that back.

Episode 24
The conflict continues although I’m still not sure how exactly things will play out. It seems unlikely the whole reboot option will be exercised, though I’m not sure how they can avoid it. But at least everyone seems to be focused on doing whatever is possible. Sadly the most they can do right now seems to be protecting soldiers from getting killed. To be fair that isn’t a bad thing since it would be a shame for those soldiers to throw their lives away. Yet, if they can’t find a good solution or the reboot option fails, well then they might just end up dead anyways.

No real shock that Tai survived getting blown up. Neither was it a surprise to have the S2 cast survive, but not show up. Though I guess sort of seeing a silhouette inside the tubes is more than we’ve gotten through all these movies to this point. Of course they had to be hospitalized, we can’t handle any more characters in this story! I just find it comical how they can’t even show the faces of the S2 cast.

I’ll give credit to Nishijima for not wasting time. It was fairly obvious that he was going to trap Tai in that pod and send him back with the rest. And it is a sacrifice that feels satisfying since he was dying anyways. Heck he probably bled out before the place even exploded. At least they got Tai and everyone out of there alive. I’m somewhat confused how the main cast doesn’t know Tai is alive considering they know that S2 cast are alive and in the hospital. Did he not appear with them in the same place? Sure he didn’t need to go to the hospital, but I’d think his name would be out there for Izzy to discover.

No shock either that Kari is basically going through a living hell. I’d say TK has a point in trying to keep her from putting it all on her own shoulders…but he’s also a hypocrite. If he was putting everything on himself and hiding Patamon’s infection from the others does he really have a right to criticize Kari being understandably distraught? I get being concerned about her. But frankly this situation is so horrific that she should be on the verge of collapse. Her partner has become a monster that could destroy everything and her brother could very well be dead. Those are pretty good reasons to be upset in all honesty.

Things are moving along. Not an overly thrilling episode, but not that bad either. I don’t feel the same tension here as there was say back in S1 when they needed to hold the line against Piedmon while hunting for Matt. Here it is more like no one really knows what they want to do or what they should be doing. They know that the world ending is bad and the reboot isn’t an ideal option….and yet they don’t know what they should do instead. We’re not out of time for them to figure that out…but we are kind of getting close to that point.

Episode 25
Ok, things are starting to turn for the main cast. It isn’t perfect yet to be sure. Meicoomon is still pretty berserk and being used to cause havoc. But hey at least they got Gatomon out of that mess XD. And it seems the show agreed that the memory thing would be terrible to keep going long term so they found a way to clear up that issue. I can actually buy that since they already established Meicoomon still having full intact memories. So it does make some sense that during all that mess that the rest of the memory data was still inside of Meicoomon as well. And frankly I’m willing to just buy the logic here so long as the main cast have all their memories.

Again the weird and random nature of Kari’s powers remain pretty handy. You can’t even say it’s that odd that she could have this weird psychic link with Gatomon and Meicoomon after apparently being led by the spirit of Wizardmon. It is pretty weird to be sure, but hey it works. And certainly on an emotional level having Wizardmon help in some way save Gatomon is quite nice. That guy always went above and beyond for her in life so why not after death? The whole idea of digimon reincarnating kind of makes that scene a bit weirder, but hey the mysteries of death can’t be fully understood even in the digital world.

I will say props to Hackmon for stepping up. He isn’t just a blind follower for Homeostasis. Sure at his core he agrees with the direction and goals of Homeostasis but he has his own will and ideas. Stepping up and probably pushing for the whole reboot thing to be dropped did help save the day (somewhat). Things of course aren’t fully resolved here. Yggdrasil is still making a move and Meicoomon is still being used for a terrible purpose. But getting those memories back is crucial. On an emotional level the main digimon having their memories will let them dig a bit deeper in this conflict and there is now a good chance to actually get through to Meicoomon inside of that monster.

Let’s see where things go with this final episode. They have a lot to cover. Of course Tai needs to make his dramatic return. But they also need to settle this whole incident and try to come up with a satisfying conclusion to the plot threads they’ve got going. Not going to be easy in the slightest. But I think they can at least make a solid ending with where they’ve got themselves right now.

Episode 26
You know, I’ve really been too soft on this whole project. I loved the original Digimon series. Grew up on that dub and one of the first anime I can remember watching. Honestly it’s kind mixed up in my memories whether I saw Digimon, Dragonball, Inuyasha, or Slayers first. Regardless this is a franchise and a series that really meant a lot to me. But yeah this last episode has so many of the same problems of the other episodes and the other movies. The action wasn’t all that good, the digimon still can’t name attacks anymore, the digivolution poses after they finish still look stupid, and the story isn’t that great.

I don’t mind the idea that characters have to make sacrifices and such. Sometimes you can’t get the ideal solution to your problems. But it isn’t as if the original series didn’t get that. You had the Angemon sacrifice in the first arc. The show had a ton of allies laying down their lives from Piximon to Wizardmon. But for some reason it is played as if Tai has reached some level of enlightenment here. That now he understands that you have to choose and make tough choices. Yeah they weren’t making tough choices when their city was being invaded or when Wargreymon had to endure being beaten to a bloody pulp by Piedmon while they had Sora and TK search for Matt.

In the end I suppose Tai had to learn to make the difficult choice to brutally massacre his own allies to get the win. Even the Dark Masters were kinder with how they tried to kill the main characters than how the heroes in this story picked apart Ordinemon. Just rip apart wings and then cut her in half!

Even the ending itself was a bit weird. The main threats here was psycho Gennai and Ygdrasil. The former just walks off laughing evilly (because that’s his main character trait) and Homeostasis apparently seals Ygdrasil. One would wonder why the heck that wasn’t done during this crisis when it was apparent Ygdrasil was behind all of this. I’m glad we padded out the movies with repetitive digivolution sequences so we could not have any time to actually deal with the main villains of this story.

I think the most damning thing for these movies is the pacing. They took their time in the early ones and I was fine with that. They had 6 movies after all. And the first few movies weren’t all that bad. But it’s just crazy that they didn’t pace themselves out to actually resolve the issues. We’re just trusting that S2 cast actually survived all this. I love how we never got any scenes with them. I didn’t love S2, but I’ll say it did give the S1 cast more respect than Tri has given them.

The ending itself was pretty silly. We effectively end this entire adventure on Tai basically saying “I know we brutally massacred your partner, but hey we’re still friends right?” If not for the fact that Tai and his friends have super powerful entities on their side I’d probably respond with “heck no!” I’m so glad they found a way to restore the main cast’s memories so they can continue onward with their happy lives XD. And seriously what was with the awkwardness there? Was Tai supposed to be looking uncomfortable because they massacred Meicoomon or because they are hinting at a potential romantic interest? Not sure how I was supposed to read that.

I don’t mind the main cast getting power-ups either. But where did that last one come from? It didn’t appear like they needed it. Omnimon was doing just fine against Ordinemon without all that. Sure it probably made it easier to rip Ordinemon apart, but hardly necessary. The original appearance of Omnimon was cool because you understood why it was happening. Here? It was just “hey we’re at the climax so give Omnimon a new form.”

I feel like I was holding out hope for the last movie to bring it all together. But it really doesn’t. The individual episodes were passable. I didn’t really hate them until I got to the very end. But…this really has turned out to be a pretty mediocre sequel for Digimon Adventure. That’s Toei for you. It shouldn’t have been that hard to make another sequel set in that universe. But everything was so darn weird and awkward. I’m repeating myself, but I can’t help it. Why do things like make the digimon almost feral in combat? Sure calling out attack names might not be necessary, but why do it sometimes and not at others? I don’t mind not touching on the S2 cast, but it was too weird how the characters seemed utterly disinterested on the fact that they couldn’t contact them.

At least the movie has an ending. And they effectively allow for character motivations to line up with the S2 epilogue. And that’s what I’ve got to say after a near 3 year journey following these movies. The animation quality took a dip as they went along and the nostalgic thrill of seeing these characters again kind of ran dry after it took 3 years to tell this story. Can’t say I’m going to miss doing these massive posts. It wasn’t a terrible series of films. I did enjoy some parts of it and thought it raised some good questions. But it certainly didn’t live up to the excitement I felt upon a sequel for the original series being announced. And I don’t think my expectations were too high. But hey this has been a ride. I hope these reviews were worth reading through.