Now you may be wondering what is up with that title
Let me rephrase that
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Are we on the same page now?
Good.
Digimon Adventure Tri got announced as a TV series about a year ago, but then things changed and it got turned into a series of 6 movies which are actually compilations of 24 episodes. And man, the wait was absolute murder. When it got changed into a “movie series” the entire thing was delayed by half a year which only annoyed fans and made me cry a little.
So after numerous delays, a few really good looking trailers and about a year of anticipation and hype, does the first Digimon Tri movie meet the expectations?
In short:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
In more detail:
This review.
So this is mostly gonna be really scatterbrained and messy because I just finished this thing like 6 hours ago and I’m still crying from happiness because oh my god Tri’s first movie was just about everything I wanted from this.
Let’s get all the not so important things out of the way, this thing looks really good. Some faraway characters do look a bit…reaaaally off model but all the characters from a decent distance look great, the Digimon themselves are super detailed and some of the fight scenes are just really really damn cool.
The ost does a rather good job setting the mood for things and it fit with every scene really nicely.
Now for what really matters in this kind of thing, the story and characters.
The story and characters were both the most exciting and terrifying part of Tri, while I was excited to hang out with the cast I grew up with all those years ago, now around the same age as me, part of me was also completely terrified that the new writers would get the characters completely wrong and that the story would just be some excuse schlock to get the old cast back together for money (Ala Digimon Xros-Wars Hunters)
Oh my god. I am so glad this was NOT the case.
The story is actually really interesting, it plays around with a secret organization, an all new powerful Digimon who might be part of a group that’s been a mysterious thing throughout the franchise, a new girl who suddenly turns out to be a new Digidestined, all the Digidestined from 02 apparently getting beaten really hard and nobody remembering them. There’s a ton of really interesting set-up in this first movie and I’m excited to see where it’ll go.
Most importantly though, the characters.
It’s without a doubt my favorite part of the film.
The characters feel completely natural extension from what they were in Adventure but now as teenagers, relationships start to develop from the side but they’re not at all intrusive, our protagonist tai starts to face new challenges he never even thought about as a kid. There are a bunch of really sweet moments and overall it really makes me happy to be with this old cast again.
I guess if I had one complaint is that there isn’t much to the new Digidestined girl, she’s very typically shy and there’s not much beyond that, there’s a ton of mystery around her that might have something to do with the disappearance of the 02 cast but we’ll have to wait and see about that one.
There’s also the slower pacing but it didn’t bother me since it was filled with all kinds of great and fun moments.
So far Digimon Adventure Tri is taking some great steps and I would love to see this thing go even further, all I can say for now is that the first movie has made for a really strong start. Plus with all the small moments to make long time fans like myself happy, there’s always some value.
And hey, even if this ends up crashing and burning later, we’ll always get plenty of TaixMatt
No I’m dead serious.
Digimon Adventure Tri is currently available on Crunchyroll in certain countries
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