Episode 38 | DIGIMON ADVENTURE 02 In Retrospect 

I came for the Southpaw stuff from the farms, but stayed for the Digimon deepdives

This sums up my problems with Digimon adventure 02 pretty nicely. However, there is one thing you missed about the episode. Namely that in Japan, while they celebrate the holiday(a result of the american occupation post WW2) the japanese christmas has one aspect the rest of the world does not have. It's essentially a mini valentines day(in fact, its not the only one in japan) where the holiday is very much a time for couples doing all that couples do. Hence why it was chosen for the purpose it was. As for what 02 should have been about, What you say is pretty much exactly why i've always felt like oikawa should have been one of the original generation that came before Taichi and his generation. 02 was a series that should have been all about chosen children that fell to darkness. that is why Ken works so well, and why the show immediatly began floundering once his arc was over. In this case they needed to do one of two things. either make Ken's journey back to the light longer, or the villain they replaced him with needed to have all the same themes, just with a different take on the idea. This is where an origninal chosen child oikawa could have fit in, had he been the overarching main villain that stepped in to fill the Kaizer's shoes. Arukenimon and mummymon are not bad in themselves... but they are henchmen characters. nothing more. unlike jessie and james, they dont have the charm to work as characters on their own. however, if they were introduced as the henchmen of the villain who stepped in to fill the shoes immediatly after the kaizer was done and over with, they could have served as much better characters. and the most damning thing is that oikawa actually fits in surprisingly well as the mastermind behind Ken. the entire thing, the spores, his motivation, the ultimate purpose of the dark towers, it all fits together way moreso than it has any right to do for such a mediocre show... it's just that because of the stupidly repetitive plot progression and the monster of the week formula between the kaizers defeat, and Oikawa stepping in, nobody remembers the second half of the show as Oikawa's story. Hell, he even has deep connections to Hida, the ONLY one of the new trio of heroes that had anything going for him(the problem he had was that he unfortunatly, despite having a good character arc, was BORING. and that unfortunatly is something that no amount of interesting character can do anything for.). as for the other two heroes, there is probably nothing that could be done to salvage Daisuke, but there is one obvious change that could be done to save Miyako. Emphazise her crappy homelife, and then build a character off of that. Like... if this girls greatest desire is to get to spend time with her parents withouth any of her siblings around, that SHOULD mean she probably has a very shitty homelife, where she feels(rightfully or not) that she gets no love from her parents at all, that they give all their love to her siblings, while they expect her(the oldest and the heir) to allways drop everything to do her familial duty and help around the house, and taking care of her siblings, who she has no real attachments to. Thats a good idea for a character background, and you could take it in a LOT of interesting directions. It would explain a deep(and if competently written, unhealthy) love for the digital world, that could serve as a nice mirrior to Ken. It's her escape from her homelife, the one place where people give her the appreciation she feels she deserves, and so she throws herself into the idea of being a chosen one with all she has to a level that mayhaps disturbs or unnerves all the other kids. They are her friends, but they dont really understand her, and while the rest have a relatively good relationship with their parents, Miyako doesn't. unlike all the rest of the kids, she HATES going home. In that way, there are two characters you could have her bond with who actually understands her. Sora, and Ken. Both of them understand what it's like to have parents who it seems do not love them, and both of them understands just wanting to get away from it all in something else. of course with Sora it would require her arc actually finishing, but within the context of 02 with the 3 newbies as the focus, i see no reason why this could not have been done. all in all 02 had a LOT of good ideas. which unfortunately was never allowed to reach a finish. like Dagomon, who could have served as a much better side villain than Blackwargreymon ever did, and could have evolved into Daemon, which not only would have served to make his inclusion much more natural, but exploring both of them could have given both characters some much needed depth in both personality and motivation. alas none of it was never meant to be.

I'm actually surprised you're not aware of this part: The head of the project had always planned for Yamato and Sora to be together, but didn't inform anyone on the staff, so everyone was under the impression that Taichi and Sora were going to get together, which is why there was a hint towards it in "Our War Game." In his mind, it was more about creating a subversion of expectations, feeling it would be cliche for Taichi and Sora to get togther. So them getting together in this way, was more about keeping it a surprise. Which still makes it dumb.

Here I thought I missed on the other Adventure 02 episode retrospective, although this one video already feels like a good overall critique of the shows writing. Merry Christmas!

Another great video! Part of me wants a Digimon Kaiser Arc retrospective so the only good (by comparison to the rest) arc's covered, but I also feel you already summarized your views here and can respect that.

I like those remarks on inconsistency about chosen kids character development. They repeat it over and over in Adventure verse. It's like a trait. Merry Christmas to you as well.

I enjoy this episode subjectively but you did a really good job pointing out most of the issues this episode (and the show as a whole) had

You were incredibly restrained, but I think You nailed it perfectly on the head without getting lost in the weeds of trying to justify case by case, it's just utterly directionless and gimmicky even if people like it, it's because of branding.

Great video, I started watching Digimon Adventure 01 around episode 32 I wanna say, just after Vamdemon invaded Odaiba and was instantly hooked and watched every episode until its conclusion and then back tracked to watch the first half of the series while waiting for Adventure 02 which I was 10 years old when that started airing. I found myself just as engaged with the show during the initial Digimon Kaiser arc, and that peaked at episode 13 "The Call of Dagomon". The darker theme and tone of the episode gave me goosebumps and was unlike anything the series had presented beforehand. I was so excited with where the show was going to go from there, only for it to be an incredibly rapid decline in quality to which by the time this episode you're retrospectively covering here came along, I was completely checked out. Even as a 10 year old Adventure 02 managed to make me lose interest in something that I was so incredibly hyper fixated on. Such a shame.

Now I totally want you to analyze "Billy and Mandy" one of these days :)

My beef with digimon 02(and it's sequels) is: it's closest thing any other animeish fictional works got similar treatment to modern Pokemon anime

Ah, I see you weren't yet visited by the ghost of past christmasses.

I get the feeling that you didn't care for Digimon Adventure 02 lol. Are you going to be doing a retrospect for it at all?