Digimon Tamers, until Appmon’s release, was my favourite season of Digimon.
However, I still believe that Tamers is not nearly as amazing as some people believe. It has issues, it has boring bits, it has slow bits, but it’s still a great season and gets pretty serious.
Best
Episode 39 – “Song of Sakuyamon” (“Whirling Ultimate Flower! Sakuyamon Evolves”)
This episode has the amazingly display of growth from the girl who didn’t care about the lives or feelings of Digimon and didn’t consider them as anything more than tools.
Ruki is ready to die for the Digital World and jumps into the D-Reaper with her partner and friend just to save a Digimon (well…Culumon isn’t exactly a Digimon but whatever) and work out more about stopping the D Reaper to save the Digital World.
Ruki goes from saying that Digimon are just data and not real to loving and wanting to be friends with the Digimon. It’s amazing growth that takes 39 episodes (it’s not just a 180 pulled for no reason!).
I always feel that evolution episodes (especially to levels past Adult) should be the best episodes in the season as they need to be emotional and have some sort of build up for the character’s story arc and growth and this episode performs beautifully. It’s warm, it’s emotional, it feels like an amazing emotional pay off.
Dullest
Episode 32 – “Shibumi Speaks” (“The Mystery of Guilmon’s Birth! The Mystic Water Space”)
In this episode, Takato, Li, Terriermon, and Guilmon go for a swim, speak to Jesus and get an info dump for twenty minutes and that’s about it.
I get it, lore is important.
But I was bored and if I’m bored I can’t understand how the demographic felt watching this (I don’t even remember watching this episode as a kid. I must’ve been enthralled).
Worst
This is actually a really hard decision. While Tamers is, as every other season, pretty slow in the first few episodes and it has some bits later on which are a little dull, there aren’t many BAD episodes. There are a lot of great episodes with great parts and even the duller episodes have good parts in them which makes me not consider them bad episodes. So choosing the worst episode is actually pretty hard.
Oh wait nevermind Episode 22 had the characters lose for twenty minutes straight and it was not just boring but frustrating. Juri gets into Digimon.
Episode 22 – “The Boar Wars” (“Vikaramon Appears! Protect Our Town!”)
Nailed it.
So that’s it for Tamers.
Agree? Disagree? How do you feel? Is Ruki best girl (second to Eri, obviously)?
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