Digimon Adventure: 2020

I watched the original when it was first airing. It was a great mix of character development, serialized storytelling and strong villains. Truly original for the time. This new reboot has none of that charm, it meanders and drags out stories. All the character development is gone, the characters spend less than half of the series together and don't grow as a team the same way we loved in the original.

I know I am solely basing this rating off of how this compares to the original, maybe that isn't fair but IMO if you're going to reboot something it should end up better than the original This isn't even close.

This is a loosely remake from the original series. It started well with new digimon, an interesting main story and entertaining side stories. However, it has a great directing problem. The story focus way too much on the protagonist Taichi leaving all others with no important roles, specially in the second half of the series. It seems like the others are there just because they were there in the original. Taichi bizzarrely teleports with no explanation to the others locations to secure he will appear in very episode. Yamato who was a protagonist in the original series, now there is only 2-3 episodes where he is important out of 66. Sora is another character who is treated very bad. Sometimes the plot seems aimless, with bad time allocation.

You know, when you like the franchise, you enjoy watching some new digimons animated and some mechanics being used like digimon geting more than one evolution line. This shows explore some old things like experimenting with them but wih no too much more planning than nostalgia or fanservice (in a non sexual way). Bad news is that it uses "Adventure" name with that goal and I know is a reboot and it should be distant but one thing is being different and another one is to be somehing completely far from the original, wich is not bad at all if you call it wih another name so you have nothing to compare with. Besides that, as an individual product, music's okay, it has big argumental issues and they could have put more love in animation and character development, It lacks of spirit and cliffhangers are really poor. There are some rescueable chapters with its own plot wich work apart from the main story wich are only disturbed by a main character that needs atention all the time. If you want to see forgotten digimons animated, some pokemon-like chapters wich only work without the main story, and some forgotten evolution mechanics used again, watch it, but with no more expectations than that..

The first three episodes are the only good thing of this reboot, they show how a Digimon series should be. The rest is a original series bad copy, too slow and not interesting. Digimon fans have grown up, the series age target should not remain 10 yo.

After watching more of the series, my initial fears got confirmed. Digimon was always a shounen, albeit a very character driven one. And here we have the 2020 reboot, taking the sooner to extreme limits and the latter totally out of the product. 'Digimon adventure 2020' (code named 'Digimon Adventure Psi') can be just summed up as a collection of battle episodes with an exhaustingly repetitive script. Threat arises (causing planet extinction risk from day one), absurd battle with no coherence at all ensues, deus ex machina victory happens (usually due to unexplained phenomena or the characters shouting out very loud), threat that was over reappears in a more threatening way to have an excuse for another episode. The characters that drove the story in the original run and were likeable, relatable persons with emotions and strong bond between them are plain robots with the mere function of riding their Digimons, remember us how unexplainable everything happening around them is and shouting their Digimons' (and occasionally other character's names) an average of five times per minute. Or that is the case at least for the two "main" characters of the story, the rest of the kids have been cut back to a lesser role than an extra would have in any other show.

Animation wise the new re-imagining of 1999's franchise originating title edges the original, feeling very pleasing visually during some episodes (even if the sloppiness of the sequences they had no interest on investing time on, like some digievolution sequences for "lesser" Digimons, is almost insulting) and keeping in the vibrant colour palette of its predecessor that makes it so attractive for younger kids. The soundtrack, although not in the level of the masterful score of the first 'Digimon adventure', is still pretty good and definitely up to the standards of the franchise. Little matters any of it as the script makes it an unbearable ride for anyone looking for a bit of emotion or warmth in it, or at least a coherent, thrilling story. 'Digimon adventure 2020' is, at best, a mediocre shounen enjoyable by the youngest of the family, but it's in no way an entertaining watch for a newcomer to the franchise, and it is like salt in the recent 'Digimon Tri' wound to all of us who grew up with the original and expected a tweaked, improved storyline with the humanity and emotion that glued us to the screen twenty years ago intact.