Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning

I went to the movie with some kinda hope after watching the trailer Pretty soon after the movie started I got disillusioned pretty fast because the movie mostly consisted of building up the backstory for a totally boring new character (poor boy got abused in his childhood, had a rough family background) and waaaaay too much talking for a Digimon movie... Overall the fight scenes and evolution scenes where animated in a fresh, modern style - yet this is by far not enough when you lack the overall feeling for a Digimon movie because of missing real, extended fights... Gotta say that this movie lacks nearly everything for justifying giving it a positive review - was a real disappointment to me and have to say: Guys,don't waste your time watching this utter disgrace to the Digimon franchise

Just finished watching the limited run in US theaters (Nov 9th) in Japanese with English subtitles. I went into the movie without any expectations and really enjoyed it! The movie is VERY story driven which may not be everyone's thing - but as an adult that grew up with the franchise I really enjoyed it. The new character has a very dark backstory, and while it initially comes off as 'dark'/'edgy,' I really enjoyed it as the movie continued/they fleshed out his character more and more. The animation style is modern and high quality - it was great to see the 02 gang older and in their different stages of life. If you enjoy story rich anime and Digimon- I think you will enjoy!

I'll give you the short answer: watch it if you are being nostalgic of the old show, don't otherwise. Let me get this straight. They put quite a bit of effort into bringing all the nostalgic feelings from that show. Many references, many cameo appearances, even the music, the inside jokes, all of that just bringing up memories of me watching 02 over and over again during my childhood. But unlike Digimon tri. before it, the characters did not get the chance to shine. It feels like they tried to create tension but couldn't because they can't really end it in this one? Digimon Adventure has what, 7 movies made? They would want to try and match that with 02, maybe? So instead we get this. A mixture of multiple interesting points that goes nowhere. So if you want to watch it, go ahead, judge it yourself. I went in knowing major spoilers and still enjoyed it somewhat. It wasn't bad, but it is not flawless either.

My score and general thoughts aside, please take note of this important TRIGGER WARNING! This movie contains depictions of Extreme Child Abuse. If you are sensitive to seeing rather graphic depictions of small children being severly abused, DO NOT watch this movie! It has some incredibly harrowing and disturbing scenes, and is much darker than any previous entries in this line. It also goes pretty hard on the eldritch horror. For more details on the abuse see the end of the review. (Slightly spoilery, hence I put it at the end.) Also, if you were looking to see the events of Kizuna be addressed/resolved, you’ll be disappointed. For all that it’s marked as a sequel it certainly doesn’t feel like it. No mention of anything that happened, in fact certain lines seem to indicate it didn’t happen at all. Now that aside, I found this movie incredibly disappointing in many ways. If they'd made this a standalone movie unconnected to any of the series (except perhaps Ghost Game) and focused properly on just Rui and Ukkomon, and their story; maybe this could have been good. As it is, they didn't do justice to either the new (original) story or characters, nor to the existing Digimon Adventure/02 story. Everything was rushed, and no one involved had the finesse to properly tie together the old and the new, even if they’d had more time. Both the new and old characters were done a disservice. The resolution to Rui’s story was rather ham-fisted, and the message was muddled, and slightly problematic. Absolutely zero thought was put into the Zero Two gang beyond surface level aesthetics. They are copy pasted from their younger selves to the point that Miyako still calls Ken by his last name despite them having been comrades and friends for over ten years at this point. Their dialogue and interactions are pretty much unchanged and while we see them at their jobs, none of their dialogue reflects this. Aside from Daisuke cooking ramen, and a few remarks and jokes about it, no dialogue reflects anything new going on in their lives except a throwaway line about Taichi being too busy to talk to his family. (That depressing tidbit is the only verbal glimpse we get into their lives.) No talk about bosses or coworkers, or anecdotes about the kids Hikari works with; plans for the future? Well Daisuke’s making ramen, possibly for a boss we never see. Hmm you wanted to know about Ken or Takeru? Too bad. Is Iori really working at a law firm already? How is that going? Who knows? (For all my gripes with Kizuna at least the characters felt and acted like they were actually older.) Aside from a couple of cute comments and lines here and there, nothing is added, the status quo is kept. Except you know, the giant bomb blown into the lore part way through the movie. Metaphorically speaking. Thus we reach the part that annoyed me the most (aside from Miyako calling Ken by his last name, seriously wtf?), about how the Adventure/Zero Two part was handled. It’s clear no one cared about either of the series that came before, not the characters and certainly not the lore. Adventure put a lot of thought into its lore, building it up over several hours’ worth of episodes; and Zero Two had a few interesting tidbits too. The writers of this movie arrogantly decided that their rushed little narrative was more important than respecting any of that. This is one of the largest retcons in the series, and it is poorly thought out, badly executed and just overall offensive to anyone who cared about the story and lore of the original. It’s lazy and disgusting and to top it all off, it can’t even resolve things without creating at least one plot whole within its own narrative. The fights were boring, the horror was out of place, and there was zero breathing room in between events, overall a mess of a movie. This would have made more sense as a sequel to Digimon 2020 if they absolutely had to tie it to the Adventure line. In a happier timeline we got a slice of life ova instead. TLDR: Rushed in every way. Zero respect for the characters. Zero respect for the existing story and lore. Poorly handles the mature themes it chose to tackle. Overall a hollow movie, which cannot live up to what came before. The opening scenes where you get to see the characters living their lives are worth checking out though. (This movie is still leagues better than Tri at its worst, but at least Tri had some interesting lore at its best. Overall I don’t hate this quite as much as Tri, and Rui is much more interesting than Meiko, but it’s still awful for the majority of its runtime.) The music was good to average, the animation was decent, the art was a mixed bag, the voice acting was solid. Subs were slightly off at times, but fine overall. God I wish I never watched this movie beyond the first few moments. Under the stars is a more detailed but slightly SPOILERY trigger warning: *************************************************************************** More detailed TRIGGER WARNING: If you are sensitive to seeing rather graphic depictions of small children being starved, beaten, and left to slowly freeze to death, DO NOT watch this movie! ****************************************************************************

I grew up with digimon and hold a lot of good memories of those times so it goes without saying that it means a lot to me, now with the last couple of new releases on these years with the ovas of tri or this new movie of digimon 02 we can get to see more about what was about our beloved characters and their life after all these years which for all fan of the franchise was amazing to first galnce but.... sadly just like with tri this movie also is not what we deserved story wise or actually generally speaking in comparision with the original ones. One of the problems here that comes to light very early on and pretty obviously is the overly fast pace of it with an introduction that just feels like tries to skip and go straight to the main dilema without giving a proper room to developt not only to the new character (with resolutions very poor and silly on rui dilemas for example) but the situations that take place also and this stay present along all the movie, i didnt like it and there should be in another format to begin with (series or ovas) to deliver a proper and compelling story. Not gonna throw spoilers but the plot on this movie is on scope under my eyes huge and on paper sounded good but just due to the aformentioned wasnt handled properly, i mean what is touched here is linked to the origin of ALL (season 1 and 2) the digidestined and yet with all that promesing premise does a very bad job on narrating it. To mention something about owada rui design wise was kinda generic on my opinion, persona kinda also the same but what make him decent enough as an character was his backstory that was good sure the way how was resolved was lame and shows how little effort was putted on the climax of the movie yet i would even go far to say that still is better than Meiko Mochizuki of tri though wouldnt be a bar really hard to surpass given the standarts of what we are talking about. The battles are little to null on this movie and even if the plot takes much more relevance on this one neither of these two are decent enough wharever be because is not present at all or because is not handle properly on each respective case. It tries to pay homage to some degree with introducctions that resemble the older movies, mentions of characters like Willis or events of previous movies like "Digimon Adventure 02: Diablomon no Gyakushuu" or even showing a more young tai and hikari that we could place a little before the first movie "Digimon: The Movie", all these little nuances are hugely appreciate it and gives much more weight to the movie but doesnt hold for the things that sins even if are a good touches. Sound wise we can hear remix versions of cclasics like target or brave hearts for the ost in general was pretty forgettable leaving aside those more memorable songs. The ending arise the question of what is gonna be from now on given how ended, because the truth is most things here were very dissapointing, the experience that i had with this movie leaved me cold as fuck and the only way i can see that this can be fixed is releasing this again but like a series with more scenes and overall development. It wasn't a good digimon movie by any means and i just wished like with tri that the people involved on this installments cared more for the franchise itselft and fans that are awating to get a proper secuel of the same quality of the old ones. There might be people who are not so demanding and find this movie entertaining or even good but i feel for most of us is not something that i would recommend mucyh more less if you are a avid fan of digimon.

I for the life of me cannot figure out who this film is for. With sweeping retcons which contradict the previous materials and yet characters and a plot which assumes that you have watched up to the most recent content in the Adventure timeline, 02 the Beginning is just a confusing mess when you lay it out. Last Evolution was very clearly for adult superfans and handled it with grace, this very much feels like a solid stand-alone Digimon film which had the 02 cast thrown in slapdash. There's deep cut references yet a total ignorance to major plot points throughout the rest of the series. I just don't get why they couldn't have made this a Saviors (Data Squad), Xros Wars, or Ghost Game movie, it would've made infinitely more sense. Even ignoring everything besides 02, Hurricane Touchdown, and Diablomon's Revenge (the 3 materials directly referenced), you're still missing out on screentime for some of the core 02 cast. Iori (Cody) in particular has very little to say throughout the movie and pretty much everyone besides Daisuke (Davis) and Ken are not much better off outside of some fun banter. Last Evolution suffered from this a as well with characters like Jo and Mimi, but it's particularly more noticeable since this film A) advertised itself as the big film for the 02 cast instead of the former which was always advertised as a Taichi focused film and B) the 02 cast in particular is much smaller than the Adventure cast, following 6 characters instead of 8. As it is it's like a 6/10 and exclusively saved by the excellent psychological horror vibes and 02 cast bantering. But I feel like especially if it was a Ghost Game movie it could've been like an 8/10 or better and required very minimal rewrites.

To me, this movie is just something necessary, mostly, to clear the mess they made in DA:LEK, but not great on it's own. And no, it doesn't have anything to do about the characters, there's nothing wrong about them. The main story is a bit depressing but good, although it feels like it was a bit forced and rushed. On that part, everything seems good, although I do have a huge problem on the fact that they made the evolution scenes like the old series. Let me put it like this, back then, its common for an anime to use a template scene, especially when it's a long series... Rurouni Kenshin did it, Gundam Seed did it, so obviously it's not weird if digimon does it, and weirdly but understandably, they still do it 'till now. Now, since it's a template, it was made to fit all kind of situations and locations within the story. NOW, doing such thing in this movie, where the place is different, with an obvious different situation, not only is it cringy for a grown up to watch (since most likely the people who watch this movie would be a grown up being at least about 25), it also feels weird. Some might argue, "but that's the nostalgic parts" or so, but, how about the movies before this, I.E. DA Tri? they made a new one, which is simpler, and makes more sense when it comes to something someone might see randomly at random places: the digimon turns into an egg, and emerged as a new digimon. IT MAKES SENSE. Now, where will you find a castle to shoot at, and why does imperialdramon have to shoot at a castle every time it digivolves to it? That doesn't make any sense, and no matter how much I love digimon, I hate the fact that I did get hyped by it back then, since it doesn't make any sense...AND THEY CHOSE TO USE IT HERE? SERIOUSLY?

You have to show your brave heart and watch this! Is so cool to get to know things you never did think about in the world of Digimon and how the name implies: The Beginning. The story: 10/10 More dramatic than we had before, but different does not mean bad because it does not use the same formula. It also leaves some questions and is open for another movie in the future. The music: 10/10 We got new and remastered music for the same songs from Adventure series. The art: I can't say is the best because we got Broly, but is good enough for a movie to watch in theaters. Evolutions: Remastered of course, and very cool as always, I cant wait the blu-ray release to rewatch all of these. What is missing: The movie could be a bit more long to add more fights in some way, and the armor evolution that could be added in this extra time.

Man, Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning has me so conflicted. I've grown up with the series and have a strong attachment to it, even though I do feel Digimon Adventure 02 is one of the weaker seasons for a variety of reasons. I will admit that I've only seen the first two Tri movies and haven't seen the Kizuna movie, mainly because I hear those movies really screw around with the lore that the TV series established, made the cast act really out of character, and didn't treat the 02 cast well. So when it was announced that the 02 kids would get a third movie dedicated to them, Digimon fans were pretty hyped, seeing it as the producers apologizing for how badly they shelved the 02 cast when the Tri movies were being made. But I started to get worried when it was announced that the movie would focus on a new character who is apparently the actual first official DigiDestined. How would that even work? Didn't Tri already do that? But Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning was released into the wild, and...it's better than I expected it to be, and I did enjoy it quite a bit, but it's really held back by really questionable decisions. After the events of Kizuna, the cast of Digimon Adventure 02—Davis, Yolei, Cody, TK, Kari, and Ken—are going about their lives and following their passions. One day, a gigantic DigiEgg appears at the top of Tokyo Tower, and a mysterious message appears all across the world: "May everyone in the world have friends. May they each have a Digimon." Other than that, it doesn't do anything over the course of the week, so the public considers it pretty harmless. Later, a mysterious man tries to climb Tokyo Tower to make contact with the egg, only to slip and fall. After he's saved by the kids and their Digimon, the man in question, Lui Ohwada (Yes, his name is actually spelled that way), explains that the giant DigiEgg is actually his old partner Digimon, Ukkomon, and that he is apparently the very first human to ever officially partner with a Digimon. The revelations and potential crises that follow will put everyone's relationships with their Digimon to the test, especially since Lui doesn't believe that humans and Digimon can ever truly be friends after what he himself has experienced. Okay, I'm going to get the positives out of the way first, as I actually did enjoy this movie quite a bit. Way more than I expected considering all that I've heard about both Tri and Kizuna, so don't take this or my rating to mean that I hate this movie, because I don't. Even though 02 isn't one of my favorite seasons, I did enjoy seeing the cast again, and it helps that Davis has become a lot less obnoxious and actually develops in this movie! The animation is great and I really appreciated that ExVeemon and Stingmon's DNA digivolving sequence—which had always been done in 3D in the series—was done in traditional 2D animation here. The music was really nice too, and even though I haven't heard the 02 music much since I haven't seen that season in Japanese yet beyond Hurricane Touchdown, it was used to great effect. And I enjoyed Lui and his story! I liked that The Beginning wasn't about saving the world from getting destroyed by a Saturday morning cartoon villain and that the villain in question isn't even a bad Digimon, just someone who didn't realize why their way of going about things was bad. I loved all of that, I liked Lui's character writing and his backstory, and the psychological and horror themes were also really well done! Seriously, I want to rate this movie so much higher than I am, so much higher...if it wasn't for the fact that The Beginning seems to be on a mission to completely ignore/retcon every single rule that the first two TV series established in regards to its lore! For one thing, Ukkomon is somehow able to give Lui one of his eyes, and this should not be possible because Digimon are not flesh and blood beings, just packets of data, and if Digimon die in the real world, they cannot be reborn. This was already established with Wizardmon's death in the first Adventure anime! But my biggest beef with The Beginning is that it claims that Ukkomon alone is responsible for not only the creation of Digivices, but the existence of DigiDestined as a whole, which is also not true. One of the episodes of Adventure established that a group of humans created the Crests and Digivices when Homeostasis scanned the data of the children who saw the Greymon/Parrotmon fight years before the events of the series. Hell, there was a group of DigiDestined that came before the Adventure cast, two of which were prominent characters in Tri, yet this movie tries to claim that Lui is somehow the very first DigiDestined, which completely goes against continuity! Like...why ignore the series' most basic lore? Why couldn't Lui just be a regular person who just happened to have problems with his Digimon, like with Willis in the Golden Digimentals movie? Willis didn't need to be made into this super special DigiDestined kid in order for his story to be compelling. Say what you will about Golden Digimentals' own continuity issues, at least you can chalk that up to having different staff from the TV series that didn't realize certain events in the movie would conflict with the TV series. Seriously, the whole movie could have been just Lui asking the 02 kids for help with Ukkomon and it would have been better off. It sucks that I can't like this movie more than I do, because there is a good story in there that has a lot of potential, but it's completely bogged down by the creators' attempts to completely ignore already established lore and continuity to make Lui more special than he really needs to be. Not to mention poor Angewomon gets completely nerfed and she doesn't get to do anything for the rest of the movie. My only other issue with the movie is with its English dub, which for the most part is good...but who the hell thought it was a good idea to make Robbie Daymond give Armadillomon a voice that makes him sound like Donald Duck?! I don't know if this was their attempt to be more faithful to Armadillomon's Japanese voice, but it really doesn't work here, and I say this as somebody who is a huge fan of Robbie Daymond! It really says a lot when Wayne Grayson of all people somehow manages to do a better take on Armadillomon than this English dub did, and Grayson's only in the recent re-dub of Golden Digimentals! Poor Robbie Daymond, you deserved so much better. Overall, Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning is an interesting experiment that I actually did enjoy to an extent, but again, its complete lack of interest in respecting its own lore and established continuity results in it being a very flawed experiment at best.

When the fans of Digimon Adventure watched the return of the series eight years ago in the Tri movie series and later in Last Evolution Kizuna, they felt something not minor was largely missing: the members of the second generation of chosen children and protagonists of the second season of the series 02. Where were they? How could they be ignored just like that? Not only by the writers, but also by the 01 members themselves? If they had already been introduced, were part of the universe and had already achieved enough relevance after having enjoyed an entire series dedicated to them? Was the class of questions everyone was asking themselves. Having ignored them as if they had never existed or had never been important characters was never something well-received, and this regardless of how much each fan may have ever liked them. Even though the 02 children were never as popular as those of the original series came to be and always remained rather in their shadows, just for plot-decency reasons they still existed and deserved to be remembered and participate significantly in the return. The announcement and arrival of this film, “Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning”, was thus understood as a way to correct this mistake with a story this time around dedicated completely only to them and created excitement among fans since finally they were going to be able to see their beloved characters return rightfully so and have their moment to shine, even if that was for a limited time. However, it didn’t turn out to be exactly what was expected. To have been promoted as a new story about the members of 02, this new installment is in reality essentially a story whose focus is a whole new character: the mysterious Lui and his complicated relationship with his special digimon Ukkomon. The cast of 02 here only acts as satellite characters orbiting around this newly introduced character and the conflict caused by his digimon, limiting their participation as mere witnesses and circumstantial assistants to the new event related to the Digitalworld. Beyond revealing “where are they now and what are they doing now in their young adult lives” at the beginning of the film, it doesn’t do much else with them that is both meaningful and interesting about them. They were the ones who happened to be there to help save the day and that’s all. Introducing new characters doesn’t need to be something wrong of course, but if doing so will be to the detriment of the characters that are actually the main ones making everything focus on the new and barely anything on the main from whom we expect to see more or if their introduction and their conflicts do not really have strong narrative ties to them that make their participation indispensable (this is: they and no other than they could have participated and allowed this new story), then we are certainly before a disappointment, especially considering that this was supposedly going to be an opportunity to develop a meaningful story about them after having been previously put aside. This becomes even more problematic when remembering that already in their own mother series Digimon Adventure 02 and its related movies that followed it not much meaningful was done with them with the exception of Ken. This was the chance to fill those development holes and treat the rest of the members with greater attention, something that unfortunately wasn’t achieved once again. On the other hand, it’s not good news as well that this new addition to the Adventure universe introduces plot elements that necessarily enter in conflict with previously established elements. The new character Lui presents himself as yet another character claiming to be the first chosen child or the first human being with a digimon partner as if the contenders for that position weren’t already enough, whose extraordinarily powerful and mysterious digimon called Ukkomon with a wish-granting divine-like ability apparently is the real reason behind the existence of the digivices and the metaphysical relationships/connections between humans and digimons after having unintentionally misunderstood one of the wishes of his partner. Although this theory is initially presented as mere speculation on the part of Lui and that it is possible that nothing he claims is effective, the truth is that what happens towards the end of this short story seems to confirm it, which if understood as true necessarily and in an immensely unfortunate way would contradict or invalidate much, if not all, of the entire Adventure universe shown before and would come off as very disappointing because this seeks to make us digest the idea that all the story we knew until now was, in reality, the result of mere chance and not something with more meaning as we always believed and understood. Even in the best of the cases where we try to reconcile in a far-fetched way what is brought up here with all the previous knowledge, the truth at the end of the day is that this only contributes to unnecessarily convolute the universe and create unnecessary confusion. And even having ideas or story concepts previously introduced and left unfinished in the original series, such as the Black Sea and its nature for example, it seems even more absurd to have developed this instead of having used the opportunity to take up and explore what for a long time has been pending. They also didn’t even use this opportunity to introduce new digievolution levels for both Sylphimon and Shakkoumon, as is usual with each new installment. It would appear that the movie is then useless and a waste of time, but, counterintuitively, it’s not the case either. Strictly from an internal perspective, things do not look as bad, and in fact it becomes something that ranges from acceptable to satisfying, working even much better than the standard “cash-grab” shounen typical movie. For one thing, regardless of whether or not he is the first chosen child as he claims to be, the truth is that Lui, his difficult past marked by child abuse, his complex relationship with Ukkomon and the consequences derived from it turn out to be quite interesting, and certainly much more than what previous new-character cases like the ones of Meiko or Menoa ever were. Thanks to a good characterization, presentation and a very human and surprisingly dark and disturbing execution even for the usual standards of the franchise, the movie makes him someone with whom we can connect and empathize, making him memorable. For another thing, that it hadn’t focused on them, doesn’t take away the fact that anyway it was more than a pleasure to see the 02 members on screen again interacting altogether this time as grown-ups. Led by the contagious and explosive personality of Daisuke that remains intact, the 02 team always stood out for how close to each other they were compared to the 01 one, and the movie knew very well how to reflect that through scenes, notable dialogues, inside jokes and references to the past which was quite wholesome to see. The animation is also stunning and likely one of the best the franchise has ever seen, the usage of the classic 02 themes like Target, Break Up! and Beat Hit! is exciting, the story flows very well considering the short runtime, and it is welcome that the conflict this time didn’t have as its basis a standard fight between good guys and bad guys but rather a complex situation to solve, which helped the attention to be put on the human aspects and the messages to communicate instead of the action sequences that here are rather few and short, just like it was in Last Evolution Kizuna before. For all these factors, forgetting for a while where the expectations were placed and how detrimental it is for the continuity of the universe, the film still works quite well and is quite enjoyable. Unfortunately, as much as the aforementioned qualities are certainly appreciated, it’s clear we cannot just ignore and overlook the issues explained earlier, …

I will always be a digimon fan at heart and I cry at many epsiodes and media about digimon from the touching stories and nostalgia. Unfortunately Digimon 02: the beginning has failed to understand "digimon adventure" Yet it has done "digimon" well. What do I mean? Digimon is about compelling stories that touches the heart about continued growth, learning and relationships. The story of the new character involved tells a very compelling story about exactly that given its run time and shared run time with the digimon 02 main cast. However this story does not belong to a digimon 02 sequel movie. It feels like the producers wrote a compelling story and stuffed it into the digimon adventure 02 universe, ignoring the existing cast, their characters and the prequals of kizuna. Watch for a compelling story (with some questionable decisions in the plot). Do not watch as a fan of digimon adventure.

For a movie clearly made to pander to people like me, grown-up Digimon fans, it sure spent a long time on a surprisingly depressing new character. Very dark stuff, I was honestly a little surprised. The art was passable. I liked the song. I still enjoyed all of the moments with the OG cast interacting with each other and their Digimon, and I liked it more then Kazuna, so that's something. There's not a ton of action, but that didn't bother me as I really care more about the characters. If you really like the 02 cast, it's worth watching but be prepared for a kind of intense story from the newcomer.