Post — Aaron Ngo

Major Spoilers are included in this episode review. Please read with caution.

The latest episode—“The Fist of the Beast King Roars”—established how the show will be sort-of structured moving forward. I stress sort-of because what I thought was going to happen didn’t—and for once while watching this show, that’s a good thing.

While the “Tai and Matt show” is still an ongoing thing, at least finding the other children isn’t the next plot thing. At first, I thought the “find the Holy Digimon” was going to spin its wheels based on last week’s cliffhanger, but luckily Tai and Matt are actually going to pursue that right away.

Izzy and the others ended up back in the Human World but without their partner Digimon. They are currently MIA. I didn’t like that aspect, or the other kids getting sidelined, but once Kari and her mom came across the kids, I saw the potential set-up with the other kids recruiting Kari—or maybe they’ll do Digimon stuff in the Human World similar to the “Myotismon Arc”. It’s way too early to tell, but Kari is hanging out with the other kids for the time being.

Tai and Matt have encountered Leomon, and learned more about Devimon’s plan for the Digital World. My current theory on Devimon is that he might be all the previous villains from the original series—Devimon, Myotismon, and Piedmon—all rolled into the same Digivolution line. Like Devimon might Digivolve into each villain later on.

Or maybe not. I’m spitting ideas to see how the reboot is handling Devimon since he’s here way longer than he was in the original series, and I’m wondering why that is assuming the reboot is going to cover the other Digimon villains too like Etemon, Myotismon, and the Dark Masters.

I thought the animation was good as always, but the action sequences weren’t portrayed realistically when certain Digimon shot at them with their laser guns. Like either those Digimon had really bad aim, or plot armor decided to go Power Rangers and make everything hit the background instead.

Also, Velgemon from Digimon Frontier made an appearance in the episode! Velgemon is a Fusion Spirit Evolution, and that’s pretty awesome. Neamon—saw earlier in episode 13 and another Digimon from Digimon Frontier—was also mentioned by Leomon. I’m liking the diversity in Digimon, showing that the reboot isn’t afraid to change things up with what Digimon could appear.

The cliffhanger blew my mind, when we saw TK was the “cargo” Tai, Matt, and Leomon were trying to retrieve from Valvemon—the enemy Digimon fortress that looked too similar to Cannonbeemon from episode 13. Since I mentioned episode 13 twice now, I’m having similar feelings to last week’s episode when it comes to recycling material we already saw in the reboot. Hopefully, I will be able to forgive the Digimon writers if they follow up TK’s official debut into the series with some awesomeness!

The ending scene showed Angemon is confirmed as one of the Holy Digimon being held hostage somewhere. So, I was proven somewhat wrong when I said TK and Kari weren’t coming anytime soon in last week’s episode review. They are actually getting set-up for their debuts. I’m looking forward to next week’s episode with TK and Patamon joining Tai and Matt. Then it’ll be the “Tai, Matt, and TK show”, and that’s something different alright! Also, how disturbed Matt was when he saw his little brother trapped inside a cryotube was animated perfectly to display that reaction.

Overall, Digimon Adventure Reboot episode 19 did some nice table-setting that had several potential paths the series could take moving forward. With TK and Kari actually coming onboard with the rest of the DigiDestined, I really do hope I can say, “After the first 20 or so episodes, this anime gets really good.”

Episode 20 should be an amazing one! (Hopefully…)

Thanks for reading this episode review, everyone! I’ll see you all—except Sora, Izzy, Joe, and Mimi—next week in the Digital World!

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