Digimon |
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HWith the airing and eventual
success of Pokemon in late 1998, every network was
scrambling for anime with the word "mon" in the
title. Now, I'm pretty sure that Digimon was the first
out in the States, not in the form of a cartoon but in
the form of a Tamagotchi-type battle toy. What a great
idea for a multiple episode anime series(please note the
sarcasm)! Despite being the first out in the states, the
Pokemon franchise beat it by being the first on the air,
and Digimon followed the TV show act in fall of 1999. Why
am I comparing these two? Well, mainly because Digimon
seems like a cheap copy to cash in on the "mon"
craze. Game shows become popular, and we get about a million rip-offs of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire." Survival shows, we get copies of "Survivor." Get my drift? In the brilliant minds of Fox Kids(though the show originated in Japan so I have to give some credit there), children of America ate Pokemon up like it was chocolate covered sugar cubes, so why not run Digimon? Once again, they have dumbed down an already inferior product by "Americanizing" it. Fox did it once again with the wonderful "Escaflowne," and the WB is doing it with Card Captor Sakura. These networks have to realize that anime is not just a fad, and trying to cash in on any show they can get their hands on is completely idiotic. Frankly, running anime uncut on networks would be out of the question, due to the TV-as-babysitters lifestyle that most parents live. Oh, I forgot. I'm supposed to review Digimon. Actually, it really doesn't bother me that Fox is running Digimon the way it is. The show really isn't that good to begin with. I just tend to go off on a tangent when it comes to certain networks running anime. Digimon is the story of seven kids, Sleepy, Dopey, Bashful, Grumpy... You can probably tell that I'm kidding at this point. At least I hope so. Their names don't really matter. You can just call them the leader, the quiet one, the genius, the nerd, the vain girl, the other girl, and the little kid. In fact, if these were their names it would make reviewing this a whole lot easier because the characters are simply just cardboard cutouts(and I'm not talking about the animation, I'll get to that later). Just pick a plotline and you can basically write the story yourself. I still haven't figured out what stereotype Sora fits into... Anyhow, the characters get sucked into another world while at summer camp, The Digiworld. The kids find out that they have to save the Digiworld from the evil Devimon, who intends to destroy it. Why does he intend to destroy it? Well, he's evil, and I guess that's as good a reason as any. If you made it through that sarcasm-drenched paragraph, you can probably tell I'm not too big of a Digimon fan. I'll say that the story had promise, even if it was part of the "mon" fad, but too many things weighed it down. There was a bright spot in the middle where I thought the show was going to start getting better, but the pacing of the story went a little off-kilter and way too much was rushed once I got to the end of the series. What little there is of a story moves along pretty quickly. Basically the kids end up in the Digiworld, they find out why the are there, they get split up, regroup, and then they battle the ultimate evil thingie(tm). The only character I somewhat liked was Matt. He had some real motivations, and would probably do the same thing I would do if I was forced to hang around such a bunch of sappy characters. I have to give Matt some respect because he knew how to kick some butt when the need arose. The other characters weren't as good, and even though some of them got their own episodes to develop, I still found most of them predictable. I haven't mentioned the writing so far, and I feel something needs to be said about it. To quote the great Jay Sherman, "It stinks!" I might be judging on harsh standards for Saturday morning cartoon fare, but I have seen many, many Saturday morning shows written smarter than this. Like with the great Americanizing of many other shows, the show is filled to the brim with insipid dialogue and horrible puns. Let me give you a look inside the writers' heads. Writer One : OK, in this scene Tai says, "This is great!" Writer Two : No, no. Let's have him say, "This is digiriffic," or, "digitastic!" Writer One : Awesome! But what should the other Digimon say when he shoots his ice beam? Writer Two : Ooh, how about, "You need to CHILL OUT!" Writer One : Brilliant! It's no wonder why Fox pays us so much money! That's just an example of some of the dialogue I had to sit through. I wasn't too happy with the dialogue, and word on the street is that the original translator isn't, either. I didn't really care for the art style. Too many of the human characters looked exactly the same, and most of the Digimon were butt-ugly. Just why are most of the kids wearing gloves? I did, however, enjoy the backgrounds as they were done in a very nice watercolor style. The animation, well, it did improve throughout the series. It went from being as animated as Colorforms to being as animated as a web cartoon. It's not really a great looking show, and sometimes the animation was so choppy it was distracting. Cramming thirteen episodes into one disc doesn't really help the video quality either, with the show looking below average most of the time and unbelievably soft some of the time. I did enjoy what music there was, and I'm a little ashamed to admit that I enjoyed the horrible theme song. You can put this on into the "so bad it's good" category. The sound is also very nice, with a great surround mix that I wish some other titles had. There aren't many extras here. What we do have are little bumpers that Fox made for the show, or Digi-Bloopers. Some of them got a chuckle from me, but I really don't think I'll be watching them again. One thing that made me mad was the fact that the original Japanese language track wasn't included. This isn't surprising as the show is probably cut differently from the Japanese original, and Fox probably wants a sterile product that won't confuse the kids of America. Digimon is a great deal if you're a fan of the show. If you are a fan, by all means pick it up. If you aren't a fan, those thirteen episodes really aren't of much value. Hey, you won't see me buying a thirteen episode set of "She's the Sheriff" anytime soon. - Bob Mackey |
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