Explaining my Obsession with Digimon: The Movie
You remember all the Roman Empire talk from a couple years ago? About how supposedly a lot of dudes are constantly thinking about the Roman Empire, and how this gave way to a trend of people calling their own obsessions their Roman Empire?
Well with that in mind, if anything is my Roman Empire, it’s Digimon: The Movie (2000), and the movies that went into making it. I want to take some time to talk about its history, and why I find it so fascinating, and why I think people who don’t even care about Digimon might be fascinated too.
The Original Movies
Before Digimon: The Movie, there were three different movies: Digimon Adventure (1999), Digimon Adventure: Our War Game (2000), and the two-part movie Digimon Adventure 02: Hurricane Touchdown (2000).
All three of these original movies were created to be shown at the Toei Anime Fair, a bi-annual event where there would be screenings of movies based on Toei anime properties. This is what a lot of older Dragon Ball and One Piece movies were made for.
Digimon Adventure the movie was shown the day before the TV series Digimon Adventure first aired. It take place years before the TV series and shows Tai and Kari having their first experience with Digimon, both good (Greymon) and bad (Parrotmon). It’s a kaiju movie starring two children, essentially about the power in the friendship between a huge monster and these kids.
Digimon Adventure: Our War Game takes place after the original TV series and has half of the original group come together to defeat Diaboromon, a virus Digimon that’s attacking the internet. Between Diaboromon destroying communication systems, and the continual references back to a B-story of Tai and Sora getting into a fight over a misunderstanding, it’s a movie very interested in how we communicate (or sometimes struggle to do so). Plus, it is the first appearance of Omnimon, so that’s a pretty big deal.
Digimon Adventure 02: Hurricane Touchdown is by far the most different of the three. It is the only one with a different director, it’s much slower paced, and it follows a different set of characters (including Willis, a new character made for this movie). Willis has twin Digimon, but one was corrupted and is now kidnapping Digidestined and is de-aging them as he searches for the Willis he knew before this corruption. All the older Digidestined are captured, and it is up to the new ones to save them. It’s a story that feels more deeply internal than the others; more about the idea of a past friendship becoming toxic and having to move on rather than stay who you were just for the sake of that friendship.
There were three separate releases for these three movies in Japan. But when they make it over to English audiences, these movies are all brought together to make Digimon: The Movie.
Digimon the Movie
4Kids Entertainment, the company behind the English dub of the series, decides to bring these three movies to theatres in North America. Only, they don’t want to keep them separate, they want the three movies edited into one singular story.
Jeff Nemoy, one of the writers for the English dub of Digimon (both the series and the movie), wrote about this situation in a blog. There’s vague talk from producers about deals with Japanese contacts, and how they may have been obligated to use all three movies. So it was up to Jeff and Bob Buchholz to figure out a way to make this work.
The main way this whole thing is accomplished is by having Kari narrate the whole thing, because she is the only character to appear in all three. They have Willis continuously mentioned throughout, telling us at the beginning that he got his Digimon at the same time Tai and Kari met one, and then making him responsible for the birth of Diaboromon.
Ironically, as important as they are making Willis, his movie, Hurricane Touchdown is actually the movie that really gets the brunt of the edits, cutting it down to about half of its original runtime. Everything about the original Digidestined being kidnapped and turned into children is completely erased. The other two movies, while tweaked, remain relatively intact.
In the end, the first movie acts as a prologue, the second a show of what Digidestined can do together, and the third is teaching Willis this lesson. Basically, they come together to show us how with friends you can get through anything. And if you’re a Digidestined, you always have friends.
Quick aside: On top of the three Digimon movies, there is also an Angela Anaconda short that plays before the rest of it. In a fun reversal, where all the Digimon movies were edited down to make this one movie, the Angela Anaconda short got reedited and extended to make half an episode of its TV series.
Whether or not this was a good idea or a bad idea, whether it was the best possible version of this idea or even the worst one, the fact is: it happened. The choices that went into making this what it is are a huge part of my fascination.
Think of it from the perspective a writer given this assignment. You are given three separate movies that (mostly) have characters in common, but have huge jumps in time, tone, and themes. You have to take these three stories and turn them into one singular cohesive story while only changing how it is edited, and what dialogue is used. You don’t get to have anything new animated.
So, this is already incredibly interesting to me. But the story doesn’t end here...
Digimon: The Movie’s Last Evolution
Twenty years after the release of Digimon: The Movie we get a new theatrical release with Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna (2020).
Here’s the thing about Last Evolution Kizuna, when you break down the plot, and you look at a lot of the specific shots being used… It’s Digimon: The Movie again!
It’s not literally the exact same movie, it’s not exactly a remake, but stick with me here.
We have the opening fight against Parrotmon, just like Digimon Adventure. It’s specifically the four characters most involved with Our War Game who go into the internet to fight Eosmon, this movie’s bad Digimon. Agumon and Gabumon become Omnimon as you listen to a clock tick down (only this time, Omnimon loses). There is a bad guy kidnapping Digidestined and turning them into kids. In the end, the main characters have to realize the importance of moving on and letting go of a friend rather than being trapped in their pasts.
Ultimately, this is a different story than Digimon: The Movie. This isn’t about how friendship can let you do anything. This is a movie about reaching adulthood; of reaching your potential; loving everything about the childhood that made you you, but letting yourself grow beyond it. While it’s still not 1:1, it hits much closer to the themes of Hurricane Touchdown, the movie that was least represented in Digimon: The Movie.
To make a Marvel metaphor, Last Evolution Kizuna is to Digimon: The Movie, what Iron Man’s Mark 2 armour is to his Mark 1 armour. Tony Stark made the Mark 1 armour in a cave with whatever scraps were around. When it came to the Mark 2, Tony was able to take that idea and rebuild it from the ground up in an environment where he had full control to do it any way he wanted.
So, this means we have three movies, reedited to make a fourth movie, which then had its premise essentially used as the basis for fifth movie.
Back to looking at this from a writing perspective: even if just for the academic exercise of imagining how you might do it, these feel like a must watch. If given the job to write a version of the three movies as a single story, would you have done it differently? If given the chance to take that idea and rework it into a totally original movie, how would you make the same set up tell a different story?
It All Comes Back Around
As of December 2024, there has been an English dub bluray release of the original three Digimon movies for the first time ever. A third time a version of these movies has come out in English, but their first time that it’s happened in their original forms.
Twenty-four years after the release of Digimon: The Movie, some English-speaking fans are seeing Hurricane Touchdown in its entirety for the first time ever (and the other two as well, but again, this one was the most drastically different).
And now that it’s all come full circle, and I’ve gotten myself to write about it, maybe – just maybe – I can stop thinking about it eventually.
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