Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning
November 9, 2023
This is not a spoiler-free post. It contains heavy spoilers for Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning. If you haven’t had the opportunity to watch it yet, consider yourself warned, and feel free to click away.
Also, as the movie is still in theaters, I’m unable to include screenshots of the film. Here’s a promo poster, just so it isn’t all text, but I can’t illustrate all my commentary like I usually do in this blog.
It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of the Digimon franchise and the Digimon Adventure timeline, loving them more than any other work of fiction. But while loving Digimon Adventure 02 and Digimon Adventure tri., I still refuse to acknowledge Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna; so treat my opinions with the according respect or grain or salt, depending on your own views.
“May everyone in the world have friends. May they each have a digimon.” It’s a noble sentiment, one myself and many other digimon fans around the world would happen to agree with – and it spreads around the world on computers, in the manner of many a message from those in the digital world [ Diablomon in Our War Game for instance, or (probably) Yggdrasil in Digimon Adventure tri. - causing chaos on Earth.
A digimon called Ukkomon is responsible; in this essay, I intend to argue that he was absolutely right about everything and did nothing whatsoever wrong. Only 60,000 people with partners, as late as 2012? Even doubling every year, we’ll have to wait until 2029 (not 2027! Though the math is close enough that maybe there’s rounding or an exponent slightly higher than 2 involved) until everyone has a partner, a friend, and this in a time when humans without digimon are facing what’s been described as a “loneliness epidemic”? It’s just not ethical.
On the whole, I think it’s better to give everyone a digimon and simply deal with whatever chaos it causes.
To back up a bit, the movie revolves around a giant digitama that materialized in the sky above Tokyo Tower. There is an association between Tokyo Tower and wishes, most notably in CLAMP’s works – it even opens the gate to another world in Magic Knight Rayearth. There is a shrine in the building, one appealing to many a tourist, I myself, when I had the opportunity to visit, placed a wish tablet asking to open the gate to another world – is that the genesis of this whole incident? However, it’s notably absent, until now, from the Earth of Digimon Adventure; an episode is set there, featuring a battle with Death Meramon and the tower becoming warped through heat, but the power of wishes is exclusively associated with the digital world, and Tokyo Tower does not take you there.
On the whole, I think not throwing in a little reference to DeathMeramon was a missed opportunity – Daisuke did complain about the heat (in February!) but he was in the kitchen cooking Ramen.
This is not the only thing missing. Digimon movies rarely spend all that long in the digital world – even most of tri. is set on Earth – and 02: The Beginning continues that trend. Taichi gets a cameo on television and Koushirou gets a mention, but having their senpai actually help out was a big part of 02, and Koushirou in particular was practically a member of the team, watching the computers or explaining things or helping them understand their D-3s while the younger kids explored the digital world. Admittedly, after tri., a bit of turnabout was called for, and Koushirou is quite understandably busy after a digimon incident, and Miyako did try to call, but I still missed him.
In any case, the wishes in this film are associated with digimon, and with Tokyo Tower. It is Ukkomon who has the power to grant them, and he does – many times, all to make his partner Lui, who he meets as an abused four year old boy, left out in the cold as punishment. One is reminded of the concept of wireheading with the sort of happy, repaired life he leads from then on – would someone really enjoy life if they had all their wishes granted? Humans do need challenge, we do need failure, if everything always goes right it’s just not meaningful – although Lui’s life before they met was way too far tilted to the suffering end of that scale.
There’s also the issue of Lui’s mother. Digimon Adventure has some of the best and most touching portrayals of parenthood in anime, one which has repaired many a frayed relationship, including those of the chosen children themselves. It’s one of those shows that reminds parents and children (especially children starting to grow up and assert themselves) that the others are human, that we make mistakes, that we’re all trying our best and not bad people and we should try to understand each other.
Lui’s mother, however, is downright abusive. She’s not evil, not irredeemable, she has reasons (stress, mainly – money issues, a husband on life support) – but she still leaves her son covered in bruises. It’s an interesting spin, but Daisuke’s instinct to intervene is 100% correct and I’m so glad Ukkomon could protect him from her.
Ukkomon heals said father, and for years, they have a happy life. But one is reminded that friendship requires understanding and communication, and that digimon, as much as they love us, still have fundamentally alien minds. Lui witnesses his parents raised from the dead, and traumatizes and horrifies them, there’s a fight, Lui smashes his own digivice with a baseball bat and Ukkomon melts… I legit cried at this scene, it’s so sad.
I don’t think Ukkomon’s actually responsible for their deaths in the first place by pushing them too hard (the father was on life support, and health problems that severe can come back, while stress and overwork, like his mother faced, can also be awful for one’s lifespan,) I think he’s just fixing them, but as with many fights, who’s “correct” if anyone is ambiguous, and this is Lui’s point of view.
The same goes with the battle finally making its way to Earth – Lui (unlike some other isekai protagonists, such as Paul no Miracle Daisakusen’s title character at the very origins of isekai anime) did not ask for opponents or challenges at any point. A digimon partner may imply someone to fight, but it may not, and hostile digimon entering Earth predate 1996, Parrotmon in Hosoda’s original Digimon Adventure film came in 1995.
The question of what, if any connection, Ukkomon has with Homeostasis is left open, although I believe the two concepts can be reconciled – perhaps choosing a few children to save both worlds is separate from everyone getting a partner digimon, for instance, or perhaps Ukkomon fulfilled the wish with Homeostasis as the means. Or perhaps it was an ongoing process, greater than either, inevitable with computing and beyond anyone’s ability to stop – but Ukkomon accelerated it all along.
It is worth noting that, of all the pre-Taichi Chosen Children we meet – or even those associated otherwise with the digital world (Hida Hiroki, Oikawa Yukio) – Lui is the only one alive in 2006, and even he was without his partner, who was assumed dead. The parts about a reconciliation after many years – he says he wishes for nothing, he has so many regrets about his own past, but it’s just such a touching and appealing tale. You’ll always make up with your digimon partner, sooner or later; human relationships, when they break down, come with too many regrets.
I’m focusing a lot on Lui, and this is his story, the same way Hurricane Touchdown! The Golden Digimentals is Wallace’s. (and Wallace himself, like the international kids, gets a cameo – it’s nice to see Lopmon and Terriermon alive and well.) But that Digimon Adventure 02 is in the title as well, and this story wouldn’t work half as well with the older kids.
The partner digimon get some really funny comedic moments, and the issues of digimon & human bonds that grew over time hit harder when both Ken and Hikari are in the human cast and alluding to their own struggles. Daisuke’s just such an outgoing person, perfect for making friends – he’s got fist bumping and talk about friendship that are way more persuasive than anything you’d get from Yamato, and his boundless faith in Lui (albeit with a backup plan, now!) succeeds where I wouldn’t trust Taichi’s more rational and often cautious approach. Hikari talking about the need to understand what others really want – she’s had a past of both total selflessness and not understanding others similar to Ukkomon’s own, and it ends with her giving herself up to Vamdemon to protect Tokyo.
I loved Takeru, the ultimate Digital World old hand and someone who still had nightmares about losing Patamon, being the one to resist and notice the potential consequences of defeating Ukkomon undermining all the bonds between humans and digimon. And I love how it’s Hikari, with nearly as long a history, that talks him out of it, by believing in the strength of everything they’d been to and speaking of the greater good.
Admittedly, Miyako and Iori didn’t get anything quite that great, but 02 sometimes sidelines them a bit as well… and they’re there and helping and Iori’s even pulling strings at his old computer club. There’s even DaiKen and MiyaKen shipteasing, it’s great.
Even the end – the return to a digitama, a rebirth – has echoes of Hurricane Touchdown and tri., a troublesome digimon returning to the beginning. And as for losing digivices – they lost the crests in Adventure, didn’t need them, they had the power all along.
Maybe as early as March 2012, Miyako will say “digital gate, open” to her computer, and it’ll activate on a voice command.
10/10 I love this movie.