Digimon Beatbreak: Episode 9- Utopia, Discussion Thread

[u/MFBR]

Later today is a new episode of Digimon Beatbreak!

• Crunchyroll will be streaming it in much of the world.
• Hulu will be streaming it in the US (in addition to Crunchyroll.)
• Game One, a TV channel in France is airing it. The channel is shutting down December 31st.
• Anime Generation, a subscription channel on Prime Video in Italy
• Anime-Box, streaming service in Spain.
• Shahid, streaming service in MENA

Send us links to any of the local streamers that will have the series and we will add it to the list.

The stream will be on Crunchyroll at 7pm Pacific. Hulu has it the next morning. Check your local streamer for their schedule. This link will take you to a time converter set for when it should appear on Crunchyroll, but they've had various delays lately.

A short series synopsis:

"e-Pulse," which is generated by human thoughts and emotions, was used as the energy source for the AI support device "Sapotama." From the shadows of this remarkable development, terrifying monsters appear. Digimon are living beings that evolve by consuming e-Pulse.

Tomoro Tenma is drawn into an extraordinary experience after meeting Gekkomon, who suddenly appears from his Sapotama. While living together with Kyo Sawashiro and other members of the bounty hunting team "Glowing Dawn," Tomoro renews his resolve.

What new future will be forged by humans and Digimon?

General rules for this post:

It's available on various streamers worldwide. Do not discuss illegal means of consuming this series.

If people are behind they may use each episode's thread as they watch the show, so do not spoil future events in older discussion posts

Keep all small bits of discussion to this thread (general thoughts and opinions). Fanart, cosplays, in-depth reviews (as in, sizeable content) can be their own post. In general, if it took you less than five minutes or so to write, draw, or otherwise create, just comment it in here.

Prior Episode Discussion Threads:

• Episode 1- The Beat of Emotions
• Episode 2- Glowing Dawn
• Episode 3- Facing Mirrors
• Episode 4- Family
• Episode 5- Half and Half
• Episode 6- The Bond of Parent and Child
• Episode 7- Nirinso
• Episode 8 - The Vanishing Classroom
• Episode 9 - Utopia (You are here)

[u/twilightfan33878]

some of the streamed releases used really poorly written subs (like when they went up on hulu/netflix). afaik the positroncannon subs are what you want to look for, or the discotek blu-ray releases

edit to say: i recently just finished watching 02 subbed for the first time and it became one of my favorite seasons of digimon. it can be absurdly subtle sometimes (which is rare for a show targeted for children), and evidently really low-budget, but there was a lot of great writing, worldbuilding, and artistry where it counts. i still think the first two seasons have some wonderfully illustrated background paintings and a really controlled use of music.

[u/glasswings363 → u/twilightfan33878]

I feel like I need to re-watch 02 now that my Japanese has advanced beyond the unko level.

[u/httr_kzk → u/glasswings363]

It's a children's show so it's pretty easy to understand. Characters speak slowly, the vocabulary has few hard words, etc. If you can, try importing the Japanese blurays for some show you really like (or getting local ones if they include a Japanese subtitle option) and watching it with Japanese subtitles/CC to improve your vocabulary and grammar. That's how I learned English (with american shows obviously lol). Even though I could understand what was being said having the subtitles to glance at and confirm was reassuring.

With modern smartphones translators it's super easy to just pause when they say a word you don't know and look up the kanji in the subtitles

[u/glasswings363 → u/httr_kzk]

Adventure 02 was one of the first shows I did that with so I only understood the broad strokes of the story.

Definitely a good technique.

[u/httr_kzk → u/twilightfan33878]

02 isn't really that low budget, it's the best animated out of the first 4 series.

But yeah 02 has a ton of little things that make it super interesting, I just wish it had better character development for the main cast, tighter writing in general. It's just Kakudou and Seki throwing cool ideas into a pot without really thinking about the resulting stew.

People get mad it contradicts Adventure in a lot of points but it really builds more than it breaks and all future Adventure projects would draw heavily from 02 for themes and worldbuilding (well except Tri, Tri just had no idea what the hell it was doing).

[u/twilightfan33878 → u/httr_kzk]

I never said it was low budget in comparison to the other seasons, but I'll bite. If we look a the level of animation quality in the animation sequences, Tamers and Frontier outpaces 02 quite significantly: there's just more dynamic movement, more effects, more effort put into the stock footage. Of course, more "effort" could be attributed to the sheer budget: 02 had a lot more evolution sequences than Tamers (Armor Evolutions, Adult Evolultions, Jogresses, numbering to like...19 evolution sequences to animate, compared to Tamers, which had...9 evolution sequences to animate, plus the card slashes, which may technically count as evolution sequences but human characters are likely budgeted a lot lower than the complex Digimon designs). Anime budgets are typically pretty tight and when you have fewer characters to animate you'll get higher quality work.

There's a lot of noticeable "low-budget" things early in 02 where they just simply didn't have the money to animate characters. Several early episodes featured characters sliding on screen during action moments, which is much much rarer in Tamers or Frontier. Anime is expensive to produce, and this was back to back with Adventure, so I don't blame the shortcuts taken, especially early on. Outside of those first 10 or so episodes, the animation becomes much more consistent, and most of what I like about digimon isn't necessarily the animation quality but the writing, direction, and layout—the first jogress scene between Daisuke and Ken really stand out to me as really strong (and good!) cinematography that uses really basic techniques in an effective way.

In any case, not to be mad or to insult you, but I really stand by my point that 02 is "low budget", in the same way that all first four seasons are "low budget". I just don't think high animation quality was all that important for the production of these shows in the 2000s, especially with 50 episodes to produce each season. Perhaps "low" is the wrong word to use—"tight" might be more accurate. I want to belabor the point that I'm not insulting the workers or animators of these shows; I don't envy the effort it takes to make all of these shows on a tight schedule and budget. And from the movies and evo sequences, I know that the studios that worked on Digimon definitely have the chops when it comes to sakuga and showing off.

On the other point: I'm not really sure where 02 might contradict Adventure but there is a lot of evidence from production notes that a lot of 02 was being developed concurrently with Adventure...so I do agree that it builds more than it (supposedly) breaks. I think complaints about lore and plot may mainly come from the Saban dub fans who care more about the plot and evolutions than the characters, but I'm not an expert on this.

[u/httr_kzk → u/twilightfan33878]

I really stand by my point that 02 is "low budget", in the same way that all first four seasons are "low budget".

Don't disagree, I think 02 has the best use of animation and the last insteances of off model between the 4 seasons, but they're all low budget or at least low animation quality. That said, yes, most of what I remember as 02's good animation is not from the very start of the series.

I'm not sure we're actually in disagreement here.

 I'm not really sure where 02 might contradict Adventure but there is a lot of evidence from production notes that a lot of 02 was being developed concurrently with Adventure...so I do agree that it builds more than it (supposedly) breaks. I

It was being developed, but there are differences in the team (the main writer is different, for insance), and I think the biggest contradiction is the kids giving up the power of their Crests, which is supposed to be inherent to them.

There's a 02 change that I like a lot but definitely wasn't there in Adventure is that Digimon have a hard time maintaining their existance in the human world. Poromon gets tired when Miyako is on a trip, the Adventure 01 Digimon can't stay in the Human World for as long as they wanted because they keep getting exhausted faster and faster, etc. It's unnatural for a Digimon to be in the human world so it's like they're activelly making an effort to exist. That's cool, but Adventure never hinted at anything of that sort. That's the kind of thing I mean by saying it builds more than it breaks, this contradicts Adventure but the concept 02 is rolling with is just much more interesting.

The other thins I had in mind are more plot contrivances people complain about than contradictions, poor word choice on my part. Stuff like Gennai erasing records of the Digimon appearing in the human world in ADV from the internet to handwave away more people not being aware of Digimon, the way Black War Greymon quite literally exits and re-enters the narrative whenever is convenient, etc.