[*This was a forum response that I made on an anime forum topic about what you thought about the Digimon franchise. It is a very short, sweet response that I thought also made for a good article at the time as well. Enjoy! =D *]
O.K., as someone who watched Digimon series 1 on FOX Kids, bought the videos, two of the comics (*yes, there were comics*), played “World” and “World 4”, bought the fan magazines, and saw the movie, Here are my thoughts:
I loved the first series, I thought it was better than Pokemon because it gave their character’s more emotional development than Pokemon ever did. Some might argue, “but MegaDaffy, what about the Pokemon movies? There were emotional character developments in there, weren’t there?” and to that I bluntly say “No, there were subtle morals in ‘The First Movie’ and possibly ‘Heroes:Latios and Latias’. Not emotional character development such as giving the characters ‘pasts’ and actual feelings.” Also contrary to JO [JesuOtaku], My favorite character was Tai. I thought he was just plain cool. I also agree with TheShades and thought the dub voices were well done. The script (*most of which was brilliantly written by Jeff Nimoy*) was also good too.
I thought the second series was O.K. but got lost in the story half way through and eventually just dropped Digimon altogether at that point. I didn’t care much for the “newer” characters of the series (*still liked TK and Kari though*) and the emotional character development/backstory that was in the first series was spotty at best here. In short, I didn’t really care for it and eventually lost interest halfway through.
I didn’t watch any of the others other than an episode of “Data Squad”, which I actually thought was pretty good despite the fact that the setting and story (*and classic characters like Agumon*) were completely changed.
“World” was O.K. but I was disappointed with it more because I thought I’d be playing an adventure from the first TV series rather than just raising and fighting my own Digimon (*which of course was Agumon because as I mentioned before, Tai was favorite character of the series*). Other than that,the game itself was fine despite the fact that I could never win any of the battles.
“World 4” was also O.K. I didn’t really have any expectations for this, which was good because this also brought a big change to the series. In this game, you play as a Digimon that would be sent on rescue missions to save other Digimon (*or at least that’s as far as I’ve gotten*). That’s right, we’ve done away with “human” characters at this point and have now made the Digimon themselves the star of the show.
Finally, we come to the the “theatrical” movie (*I say “theatrical” because according to AnimeNewsNetwork, there were two-three other direct-to-video/made-for-tv movies that I did not see*). I’ll just come out and say this, This movie was o.k. when it first came out and was still O.K. when it was released on video. nowadays…It borders between O.K. and average. Once again, I was disappointed by this because I was expecting more than what was actually there. I thought I’d get more of a story for the first and second part of the movie but no. Instead, the 2nd half of the movie gets the full story while the 1st and 2nd part felt more like they could have been part of the TV series. Let’s not forget that the transition between the three movies felt like they were thrown together and disrupted the flow of the movie. On the plus side, I really liked the soundtrack of the “English” version of the movie. Even if none of it (*with the exception of SmashMouth’s “All Star”*), felt in place. Sidenote: I also noticed that two of the songs on the soundtrack itself weren’t used in the movie (*and yes, I also bought the soundtrack to the movie… and yes, I am a complete nerd*).
That’s pretty much all I have to say at this point. Thank you for your time!
RT Gomer Productions 