Following on from last week’s review and, of course, our podcast discussion episode, it’s time to watch the third episode of Digimon Adventure: (2020)!
Opening thoughts
Episode 2 of the series had such a weird and huge leap in pacing, so I’m extremely excited how Digimon Adventure 2020 Episode 3 and the show in general will proceed on from here.
Also, will episode 3 be where we see some cool evolving credits? Let’s watch and find out!
Digimon Adventure 2020 Episode 3 “And to the Digital World”
Digimon Adventure 2020 Episode 3 Review
When the episode started, I realised that there are still no evolving credits and now I’m losing hope, seeing as it would have been a nice point to throw Yamato in.
Anyway, as for the episode, Taichi and Yamato are floating and glowing as Omegamon basically talks to them possibly mentally? It’s fairly cool. Koushirou can’t analyse Omegamon as Algomon and Omegamon fight in a very Our War Game’ way.
We get the opening tune playing an instrumental version during Omegamon fighting and powering up because it’s a Shounen.
Algomon is destroyed and basically nobody has spoken in this episode yet and we’re seven minutes in. Koushirou breaks the silence to inform us that the missile needs to be stopped because apparently everyone else forgot about it.
I’ve never gone from “Wow, this episode is so quiet, somebody talk!” to “Oh it’s okay you guys can shut up again.”
Taichi says they should blow up the missile and he and Yamato’s Digivices glow which sends them into some missile part of the network I guess.
There’s some pretty visuals and lights in this moment as Omegamon diverts the missile and sends it into space, where it explodes into a display that is seen throughout the world.
Koushirou’a laptop and electronics around the world seem to switch off and Omegamon sends some random rainbow beam out from his wings which basically makes the Aurora Borealis, which sends Taichi back to the train station and the electronics turn back on. I legitimately thought the light show was just them being send to the Digital World, but, no, apparently it’s just pretty.
We get a scene of Hikari and Taichi’s Mother in a park and now I think that Hikari is actually magic the way that she looks up and smiles knowingly. Magic Hikari could be cool.
Now we get Koushirou deciding that he should make up for the lack of talking in the first half by talking about what literally just happened for several minutes straight.
Taichi doesn’t really question it because everyone is safe, but then he asks if it’s a dream despite the fact he still has a Digivice. Taichi feels bad for not asking Yamato where he lives and then says that he and Koushirou should keep it quiet. He then thanks Koushirou and says that he helped so much and everything is okay because of him. Which is nice, because he’s not taking the credit as, let’s be real, Koushirou literally did everything besides the actual fighting.
Taichi stops the lift from leaving to remind Koushirou that he came over to talk about camp and they laugh it off, but it’s okay, because Taichi literally will forget again in the next scene.
Taichi comes home and asks if his sister is okay after everything. She then thanks him and runs off. Meanwhile, Yamato asks Takeru of he’s okay and Takeru says he stayed home. They’re talking over the phone and they want to see each other soon, no reveal about their family dynamic, though.
Yay! We’re at camp, Joe is showing some kids how to cut vegetables. Taichi and Koushirou are talking about everything again and how the story is being reported as an error. So we get a second wall of text info dump from Koushirou – great.
Joe cuts his finger, which distracts Koushirou, causing him to drop his laptop, which Sora catches. Sora is wearing a visor, not a helmet. Apparently Sora is really cool and is in Taichi’s class, but they’ve known each other for a long time.
Koushirou is wondering why the missile targeted Japan, which is a good question. The children returns home and then it seems that Algomon is reborn, which, again, turns off electronic devices across Tokyo, causing outages.
The children are home from camp now. We didn’t see more than like five minutes of camp and we only got to see about three seconds of Joe, which is kind of weird and i found that the pacing threw me off here just a bit.
The power outage appears to be growing and Koushirou predicts its spread when he gives us the THIRD info dump in the episode.
Both Taichi and Koushirou’s Digivices glow and Taichi leaves to where Koushirou is. Taichi tells Hikari to stay home and safe, a feather is seen behind her as he runs off.
Taichi wonders if Agumon is calling for him. When Taichi and Koushirou see each other, their crests glow and three lights fall towards the network – orange, red, and purple.
Taichi opens his eyes and sees that their not in the network. He is reunited with Agumon and we see Steggomon and Brachiomon – which is really great to actually see some Digimon that I would say haven’t appeared nearly as often as they should have in the animated portion of the franchise.
Agumon informs us that we’re in the Digital World.
Again, the episode ends what feels at a weird point that makes the show feel more like a quick story like an OVA or movie rather than any of the previous seasons.
Rating for Digimon Adventure 2020 Episode 3
3/5
Okay this episode was much easier to grade than the last episode – it had some stunning visuals and has me excited for more, however, the fact that this episode felt like it spent the majority of the time giving us an info dump and not much else, I can’t rate it as high as the previous episodes.
Was this a bad episode? No. Am I disappointed? No. Was I bored? No. Do I feel that the target demographic may be bored out of their minds during the info dump portions? Yes. Was I bored during the info dumps? A little?
I understand that this episode sets up some relationships between the characters that existed before the show, which prepares us for their introductions, and I understand that we need to know that Algomon is back and doing something evil still.
However, I felt that this episode had forty minutes of stuff that it crammed into twenty minutes. The camp scenes were blink and you miss it, the call between Takeru and Yamato felt kinda fast.
In general, I am looking forward to episode 4 as surely, with the infodumps out of the way, we can get back into some truly enjoyable content and, while my thoughts on episode 3 seem quite negative, a 3/5 is still a passing grade and there were still plenty of great things in this episode.
The shots in the battle between Algomon and Omegamon were so reminiscent of Our War Game and were so wonderfully animated and pretty to look at, however, it felt weird seeing it occur so early in the story and there was no addressing of how we jumped to Omegamon (which, I would assume is explained later on in the series – I hope so anyway).
Also, I thought that we’d spend more time at camp or that the children would all meet at camp or get sent into the Digital World at least a little but camp was a setting for such a short period of time I got lost in the pacing.
So what were your thoughts on Digimon Adventure 2020 Episode 2? Let me know in the comments or in the discussion thread on /r/Digimon!
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I’m just really disappointed with how they handled omegamon and the series in General. Why is omegamon here? Like what was the actual point other than to get him out of the way? Anyway it seems like they split all the children into 2 groups of three in each. I wonder If it would stay like this for a good chunk of the series. Anyway I’ll still watch but this is giving me a lot of tri vibes and I’m very wary of what to come. I’m still hold out for the best
I enjoyed the episode. Yes there were a lot of info dumps but after one and a half episodes of straight fighting it was nice to slow down for a bit. I didn’t notice it myself but I saw it pointed out that the group seems to be split into two groups (Tai, Sora, and Izzy in one with Matt, Joe, and Mimi in the other.) with the younger kids left out so that should be fun to explore. To be honest I’ve always considered the original Adventure seasons to be the weakest in the franchise (Tamers and Frontier were my top two though Appmon has shifted both of them down one place.) and with Tri being a step up for the most part and the reboot better than both, I’m lookinf forward to more.