Score: B+

I’m glad the story decided to make a pit stop with Tomoro’s school and with Hitomi. Getting back her E-Pulse was one of his most determined moments in the show thus far. Good choice to at least follow-up with her since clearly he’s not going back to school anytime soon. This episode did make me wonder what Tomoro’s legal status is though. Is he suspended? Clearly he’s a cleaner and important forces are in favor of that. But is he not allowed to go to school? This episode didn’t really cover that, but it does make me wonder.

Rough day for Gekkomon

The best parts in terms of action was Gekkomon fighting the holograms by himself and Tomoro turning the tables at the end. There was good sense of drama with Gekkomon fighting in the dark and not knowing what he was even up against. All the more so since he was fighting without access to Tomoro’s E-Pulse. The rescue was timely, but I enjoyed the one-sided fight for what it was.

At least the second fight really advanced the idea that Tomoro’s E-Pulse will be part of some huge shift in the story. He’s got way too unusual an ability for it to lead nowhere. He even managed to short out Mimicmon! The power was too much and too buggy that it couldn’t handle it. That did allow them to escape a fight that honestly they were going to lose. Which isn’t a shock since Gekkomon was out of energy and Wolvermon just isn’t that strong. They needed a good way to resolve things and having Tomoro abuse his ability was it!

Rough day for Hitomi

It was nice to see Hitomi again honestly. She’s obviously never going to be a main cast member (unless things radically shift), but she’s a likeable individual. Clearly she’s put the pieces together or at least suspects that Tomoro was responsible for her recovering. I’m not sure she fully grasps that his E-Pulse was partly a reason why she was targeted in the first place, but on the positive side Tomoro isn’t exactly hiding that. She made a good call in seeking Tomoro out when she needed help…even if he’s still pretty sloppy at this Cleaner thing. At the very least she’s not so blind to reality now that she can’t see how shady things are. That simple road she saw for herself isn’t so clear anymore.

He may be evil…but I don’t hate him

I know the story doesn’t want that, but I’m kind of with the shady organization on this one. Mimicmon was beyond dangerous. With just a single negative thought that thing emerged and acted on its own to try and kill multiple people. I’m sorry…but I don’t care about something like that getting taken out. Unless it’s partner was secretly very evil and pretending to try and stop Mimicmon…this thing straight up ignored its partner and put a mission of murder above all else. I can’t even blame the guy really. Who hasn’t had a negative thought about some rude jerk or crazy driver? Imagine if something emerged to execute that thought and you had no ability to stop it. He was certainly a sleazeball, but he’s just a normal jerk. Not a serial killer. But that’s what Mimicmon would’ve made him an accessory to.

Presuming of course they are being honest about killing it. But I doubt they made it’s capture such a priority to simply erase it. There’s obvious value in an entity that can store people and convert them into e-pulse fuel to say nothing about its ability to control computer systems.

When!?

This is probably going to be a weekly thing (even though I’ll try not for it to be), but the wait for Gekkomon to digivolve is getting old. This is actually getting silly. Feels utterly like they intend to wait until the end of the first cour to reach Champion and frankly that’s just too long. Don’t have to do it in episode 2, but we’re in episode 8 and it doesn’t even feel close. Not even lightly teasing at it or even dark digivolution again. It’s fine to want to make it earned or something. But at a certain point the show risks getting old and stalling out.

You can’t escalate the threat without doing the Pandamon thing of slotting in a friendly Ultimate to carry the slack. Wolvermon is a very underpowered Champion which works while you keep the threat low, but then there’s not much to do in order to escalate it. And at this point there’s little chance we Gekkomon digivolve until the end of the cour. Whether or not I cover this into the winter season…might determine if I even get to talk about what his Champion form is like! At this point we need something absurd. I mean go all out Dark Digivolution because Kyo died. Or saving it for some huge crisis which gets them dropped into the Digital World (which should exist in this show). It has to be huge and far more than just a normal change.

Will see where Tomoro’s story goes

This was overall a pretty solid episode. I enjoyed seeing Hitomi again, enjoyed the darker side of these events, and the use of Tomoro’s E-Pulse to turn the tables was great. I do hope we see something actually develop with the shadowy organization or the potentially shady top tier cleaners soon though. I’d just like a bit of forward momentum. This was more an episode to just kill a bit of time while reminding us that Hitomi exists. Solid, but nothing crazy.