Digimon: The Movie

I'll start with the bad news. Anyone who has never seen the series could get very confused.

Glad thats over. Digimon is a great movie, the sound track is awesome, the comedy is classic and the story line rocks.

The animation harks back to the Japanese style of 10/20 years ago, and is less simple and Americanised than the series. The script is full of one liners and hilarious slapstick. The humour will have kids and adults laughing out loud so parents can have a good time too.

The action is very fast paced and this where non-fans could fall down. It could get a little confusing even avid watchers of the show could get lost.

This was nothing like Pokemon, and cannot be called a rip off as there is no similarity apart from "mon" being in the title. But I greatly advise any fan off the growing "mon" world to see this one.

Except for the previews for several horrible kid movies and an excruciating ten minute Angela Anaconda short, Digimon: The Movie was a great film!

I think that my friend and myself were the only people in the theatre who understood it, as the little kids and their parents probably had no idea what was going on or why. It's a deeper movie than I expected, and hard to understand if you haven't been following the TV show to become acquainted with the characters and their world.

The animation is great and fun to look at, there's a lot of comedy, interesting characters and rad monsters. I was surprised to find there was even a little poop.

If you're a fan of the show, you'll probably love every second of the movie, although a lot of it is apt to fly right over little kids' heads.

I've been a fan of Digimon Adventure and Zero Two for about four years now, and when I heard they were coming out with a movie in America for it I got excited.

So when I finally saw it, it was somewhat of a letdown. Sure, the movie has its funny parts, but it was too changed from the original Japanese versions that it just can't really compare. For one, the three "parts" don't really have anything to do with each other. They're three separate movies in Japan (and there was a fourth one later that never made it's way to the US), and they should have stayed that way. Plus, chunks were left out of the movie to cut down on time, parts that were rather important to understanding the plot as a whole. Some of the jokes were funny, but some were quite stupid, and of course a lot of them portrayed Daisuke (Davis) as being more stupid than he was shown in the Japanese version.

However, I understand that many people cannot understand raw Japanese, and as of yet there is no official subtitled version legally released, so if you enjoy Digimon and are looking for a good laugh, I would still recommend this movie. Though I admit I enjoyed the four Japanese movies better than this one, it's still a movie I found good enough to go out and buy and watch from time to time. It's cute, it's fun, and how can you not enjoy a movie about a bunch of kids and their pet digital monsters trying to save not just one, but the best of two worlds?

I really can't bring myself to insult this movie as it got me into anime. Actually, to rephrase that, it got me interested in the idea of anime: Akira got me into PROPER anime.

As for the film, it is actually pretty good. Digimon is one of those anime series that, while aimed at younger audiences, is actually very enjoyable. There are funny moments, and the fight scenes are cool without being too violent.

The film is split into three loosely linked sections, the first really just setting the story up, but containing a cool fight scene at the end. The second part is the longest and most enjoyable: it features Tai and Izzy trying to stop a Digimon with a virus that has taken over the internet. This section contains the best jokes and interaction between the characters, and has a good plot and animation. The third part I didn't like so much, but for the record is takes place later, and deals with the aftermath of what happened, this time set in the USA.

Obviously, Digimon: The Movie is just a kids picture, and the animation and plot are pretty basically, but it will be enjoyed by fans of the series, children who are into anime, scifi, etc. and even my more mature (i.e. older!) anime fans like myself who just want a fun little film to pass the time with.

It took me forever to figure it out, but after enough searching, I found out why.

I found that the movie was a lot like the show, so close that it seemed like they had just thrown three episodes together. The only reason I put up with this, these three 'episodes' were effectively on their own and were referred to briefely in the series (well, 2 of them were).

It ends up that I was half right. after searching, I found out that it isn't three episodes strung together, but currently there are some 6 digimon 'movies' released in Japan, and three of them are in this single movie that we saw in the western world. It seems that the Japanese form of a movie is 30 minutes long (how this works is beyond me).

Outside that, it was enjoyable. I had fun watching it, taping it and watching it again, and catching all the jokes they had. It's what makes the series enjoyable, and it sure saved the movie.