Title: Digimon: Digital Monsters
Published by: Madman Entertainment (Australia / New Zealand)
Based on: Original Anime Series
Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy and Drama
Audio: English Dubs
Subtitles: None
Aspect Ratio: Full-Frame Original Ratio (4:3)
Runtime: 675 minutes
Cost: $49.95
Classification: This title has been classified PG for Mild Animated Violence.
Special Thanks: Madman Entertainment PR Team for providing me with a review sample of this title.
While there are many people who still wait eagerly for the possible DVD re-release of Sailor Moon or Card Captor Sakura, Madman Entertainment has stepped forward and brought another eagerly anticipated DVD re-release currently exclusive to the Australian fans…. Digimon: Digital Monsters, also referred to as Digimon Adventures. They released the first collection of 26 episodes in September and from the looks of it, their online store has run out of stock at least once before and stores always seem to be out of stock, meaning that it seems to have been a successful release. While I am sure a majority of readers who are around my age would already know about the second half of this series, for those who were too young to have watched this series on Cheez TV or one of the two or three youth in Australia who didn’t watch it at all, then I hope this review will keep you up to date with everything in this collection.
Seven kids at summer camp are mysteriously transported to another reality, where they are befriended by a group of strange creatures who call themselves “Digimon,” Digital Monsters. The seven children are now dubbed as the DigiDestined, tasked with protecting the Digital World from evil Digimon like Devilmon. Can they save the Digital World and find a way back home?
This season of Digimon is spread out into a number of arcs and to quickly recap the events of the first collection, it consisted of the File Island arc where the seven digidestined kids landed in the Digiworld and while attempting to adapt to the environment are chased by Devimon, an evil Digimon who was taking control of the island and its inhabitants through black gears. The second arc was the Crest arc where they had to find crests to allow their Digimon advance to the next level while under attack of Elvis impersonator Etemon. The third and final arc had the digidestined finding one another after getting separated with Tai falling back into the human world and could be considered the start of this collections first arc.
This second and final collection has two major arcs within it – the “Hunt for the 8th Digidestined” plot where the team head back to the human world where their home city has been isolated by fog and under attack by Myotismon who plans to kill an unknown child in the city due to be a member of the Digidestined team. However, the major and in my opinion most boring arc of the entire season has them back in the Digiworld under attack by the four “Dark Masters”, four of the strongest Digimon who want to eliminate them in order to continue wreaking havoc. While this arc may be the most bland, in terms of content it is the strongest as it uncovers the mysteries about why they were chosen and the reason everything up to this point had occurred. It also allows the return of many old characters which worked and didn’t – for example having Etemon appear in a Mega form for one episode really felt anti-climatic and would have been equally helpful to the storyline if he didn’t return.
The human world storyline is hands down the highlight of the series, and it was good to see they actually managed to develop a strong storyline that kept some serious tone through the entire city being held hostage by the evil Digimon, people uprising against them and the effective use of how they didn’t just go with the most simple plot of finding the eighth Digidestined but kept the suspense up for a few more episodes. As I mentioned above, the Dark Masters were one of the bland points of the series, but the storyline elements that came up from it were the most well told in the entire story. It didn’t show it was just kids who saw Digimon prior or who all randomly attended a summer camp but were selected for a reason, and why not everything went as smoothly as it was supposed to. The storytelling was enjoyable to say the least.
They also took the initiative to at least attempt to justify battle strategies. As a recurring trait through other Digimon series, there are three primary types of Digimon: Data, Vaccine and Virus where each result in different stereotypical personality’s but also different strengths and weaknesses to other types which were complemented by the stages of digievolution. The issue is, and I feel that this has been the case with another few series – they only took this fact into account a few times – with the final battle resulting in a battle of virtues over battle strategy. The major issue that this collection shared with the first, although I believe was rectified in the second season was that they kept separating which provided character development but also dragged on and on and on, and would have benefited from more teamwork.
For the most part my thoughts on both visuals and sound are exactly the same as the first collection, which you can read HERE. The visuals still look aged, but still gave the impression of nostalgia, and they did up the uniqueness on Digimon designs. In terms of sound, they still kept the same handful of tracks which after 52 episodes you never really wanted to hear again. This especially held true for the opening theme which was still included in every digivolution sequence, and looped with every evolution even if there were 8 at one time… at least they decided to include “Digivolve into Ultimate” and “Warp Digivolve” into the sequences for the respective digievolution. The voice actors are retained and I stand by my comment in the original review that the English dub is of a solid quality and they did keep all the Japanese names of places and so forth which was nice.
You will be happy to know that they did sneak a small bit of extra content that I don’t believe has ever been added to an English release of this title. They included clean opening and ending themes for the Japanese songs, which was a nice touch and it was good to see how close the animation actually was between the English and Japanese versions. Also included were trailers for Summer Wars, The Melancholy of Haruhi-chan, Digimon: Data Squad and Deltora Quest.
In the end, this was the original and in my opinion the most memorable Digimon series. For those who grew up watching the series, it would be a great nostalgia hit and you should enjoy the storyline that unlike so many others, wasnt as heavily modified to appeal to the child audiences. For those who are new to the series, the outdated design might shock you at first, but it will definately be a great stepping stone before the hopefully to be announced soon acquisitions of the other seasons.
Final Score
Storyline/Character Development: B+
Design: B
OP/ED Sequences: C
Music/Voice Acting: B-
Packaging/Extras: B
Personal Opinion: B+
Overall Score: B
