Score: B-

On the positive side this episode had the first group digivolution sequence. Took a while, but I’ll certainly take that. No surprise that this episode was all about Tomoro and Gekkomon. There was a bit going on with Kyo’s prior position being revealed, but that was a relatively small part of the overall story.

I get the frustration…

I get what the story wants here. Gekkomon is a reflection of Tomoro and his issues with him are issues with himself. It’s easy enough to see how Tomoro’s temper just made things worse and was a problem. And saying things like he wished Gekkomon hadn’t been born is a terrible thing to say. All of that makes sense and it’s not an absurd direction that the story is trying to go down.

But Gekkomon is really annoying! He really is. Tomoro started off in a good place here. He got his first paycheck and was looking forward to doing something for his brother who he hasn’t been able to do anything for. The story just hasn’t gotten around to even trying to find the Digimon that has Asuka’s E-Pulse. And things just constantly blow up on him. Gekkomon stupidly tries to eat his money (tell me how that reflects Tomoro’s nature) and then he absolutely throws a tantrum when Tomoro tries to leave him behind. Apparently he’d gotten Gekkomon to accept that he’d be left behind for these, but not this time. And honestly a lot kept piling up that frankly wasn’t Tomoro’s fault. I won’t blame Gekkomon for not getting the incredibly personal reason why Tomoro wanted a red scarf. But come on!

That’s a rough sight

Tomoro has growing to do, but he’s also one of the most traumatized Digimon protagonists I’ve seen overall. His parents are mysteriously arrested when he’s a kid. There’s weird nature to his e-pulse that has made him an outcast from childhood. He feels guilty about his older brother having to drop everything to take care of him. Then his brother gets practically killed and he hasn’t been able to do a thing about it. This guy’s life has been very brutal. I won’t even touch the fact that Gekkomon being born practically forced Tomoro outside which led to his brother going down. Now to be fair there was the intention to lead him to Hitomi’s e-pulse. But it still wasn’t a great memory. Gekkomon being born from all that would understandably make him flawed, but geeze that level of frustration wasn’t going to help a damaged individual like Tomoro.

I really thought this would be something

One thing I will complain on is how they are handling Gekkomon digivolving. And I think it’s fair here because they again teased Dark Digivolution and did nothing with it. At this point I need him to Dark Digivolve into Godzilla for this to be worth it. Which probably won’t happen since the way this episode wraps up at best will lead us to a natural digivolution next week. Sure, it led to a decent power-up this week, but it would’ve been way more interesting to go all out with this. Hard to say if Gekkomon will Digivolve next week or if it’ll take another episode past that. Within the first 12/13 episodes however it SHOULD happen. I say should because who knows. Maybe they’ll keep Gekkomon a super rookie for the whole show. We can’t say for sure.

Team leader is in the action!

Back to positives though…Kyo did something! He actually accompanied his team on a mission from the start. I’m not even sure we’ve actually seen that, ever. Maybe when Tomoro was being rescued in the second episode? But even then Tomoro wasn’t part of the team at that point so I wouldn’t say that entirely counts. Maybe it reflects him recognizing that leaving his team to just go it alone isn’t a good thing to always be doing.

I’m sure Raremon would’ve been relatively simple to handle if Gekkomon didn’t fly off the handle and get in the way. But that didn’t work out which led to Flaremon creating all kinds of havoc. Someone that Kyo couldn’t easily shove out of the way. There’s plenty to unpack there in terms of why Kyo left the elite status he had as a cleaner behind him. I’m sure it has plenty to do with why he chose the route of relative pacifism. But that can be tackled when the show gets there. I’m just glad to see him participating in things.

Here’s hoping 12 is a good one

There are elements that frustrated me here. But I don’t want to be entirely negative either. The story is moving along. I just hope we don’t have all the blame going on Tomoro for how things play out. If Gekkomon isn’t taking some heat for his behaviour as well that’s just unfortunate. But no point worrying about things that haven’t happened yet.