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Adventure Episode 22: Forget About It!

In this episode, it's the Demidevimon show! That rambunctious little scamp tries to get TK to abandon and forget about his friends. It's an awful way to achieve his real mission.


I've gained a new appreciation for Demidevimon. I was never a big fan of his the first time watching through, but in his debut performance he's nothing but a scene-stealing, quick thinking, manipulative son of a bitch. I loved it.

Maybe my former distaste for his character is due to what lies ahead. This is a weird set of episodes coming up here in the void between Etemon and Myotismon. Most of them have the same pattern: Demidevimon smooth-talks someone into keeping one of digidestined at bay, the digidestined suffers along without fighting, Sora quietly nudges things back on course, Demidevimon is exposed, curses the day and flies off. It's not an award-winning formula, and it's a good thing it doesn't last long. But for now, it's a winner.

What a great move to have Tokomon fill in the blanks of what happened during Tai's absence. It's a rough story and there's no better perspective than from the youngest member and the weakest Digimon. Tai's significance to the team had sort of just been assumed and he had become the leader so naturally that no matter how many times he screwed up (which was practically all he did in the last arc), nobody imagined anyone more pragmatic or thoughtful in charge. It's amazing how headless the digidestined were without him. As the futility mounted and the weeks went by, once Sora thought it best to venture out on her own, everybody else came to the same conclusion and split.

The conclusion we have to draw from it is that Sora, Izzy, Joe, Mimi and Matt each figured they would be more effective on their own. It's a sad scene when Matt drops his brother off at an abandoned amusement park and heads off himself. As much as Matt says he's upset that everybody wanted to venture off on their own, secretly he wanted the same thing. A week later, TK is broken.

It's a perfect time for Demidevimon to grace the scene and “offer his services” finding Matt and getting an answer. He maintains the buddy-buddy attitude with everybody, even when he delivers the bad news to TK and absorbs Tokomon's mistrust. In an epic move, he plays the race card, accusing Tokomon of prejudice. After all, just because Demidevimon looks totally evil can't possibly mean that he is. Tokomon, being the racist monster he is, attacks Demidevimon and earns TK's wrath. When Tokomon refuses to apologize, TK casts off his digivice and tag and runs off. It's good engineering.

It also establishes Tokomon as a pretty hardy character too. The In-Training levels don't get a whole lotta love, and in fact Tokomon evolves to Patamon this very episode. But for once, Tokomon steps into the spotlight and shows himself as a fiercely supportive ally that will do everything he can for TK, even as TK doesn't appreciate it or lashes out against it.

What's funny about Demidevimon's plot is that his ultimate purpose was to render the Crest of Hope unusable. This would have been accomplished if he had done nothing at all. TK was quickly losing hope and didn't really need a push to abandon the notion that Matt would return. In fact, the only reason it glows was because Demidevimon pushed and provided the adversity needed. The crest can't grow if it's not tested, and Demidevimon's inevitable exposure offered just enough encouragement to TK: for all he knew, Matt was still determined to come back and that's reason enough to keep believing.

Streetlight! People!

My Grade: A-

Loose Data:
  • So... uh... everybody else I can kinda understand, but what compelled Mimi to split apart from the group?
  • Not only is it the first appearance of Demidevimon, it's also the first appearance by the random swan boat! The random swan boat- sending digidestined off to find themselves since 1999.
  • It's a shame Tokomon evolved, because I want to start calling him Flopsy now.
  • What's with dramatic evolutions to Rookie always followed by said Rookie getting its ass kicked? First Agumon in episode 17, and now Patamon gets tossed around. Thankfully he steps up because losing to Demidevimon in a fight would have been really humiliating.

3 comments:

  1. Pretty much agree with this entire review. This is a really good episode and it and the next four episodes are the last of the formulaic stories in the series before shit starts getting real. And really, it's probably the best ones, at least when going by the original intention. By that I mean...OK, bear with me as I explain - A LOT of time past while Tai and Koromon were lingering in the real world. In that time, these things happened:

    - The DigiDestined split up
    - Myotismon, who rules in the castle on the edge of the continent, took note of this and told DemiDevimon about it, as well as the importance of the crests. The plan was thus to prevent those crests from glowing to the point they'd lose their power, and then steal them away from the kids so that they'd be left powerless to stop Myotismon's future schemes.
    - Sora overheard this conversation but DemiDevimon fired a cheap shot at her about how her crest would never glow anyway. This shook Sora but didn't make her back off from pursuing DemiDevimon in order to sabotage his plans.
    - At one of their arranged contact spots, Myotismon later demanded that DemiDevimon make haste on stealing the crests, and if he failed in any of these plans, there'd always be "consequences."
    - DemiDevimon ensured that Izzy and Tentomon fell into Vademon's dimension so that Izzy could lose his curiosity for gathering knowledge.
    - DemiDevimon arranged for the Gekkomon to let Mimi into their castle and make her a princess so that her sincerity would be compromised.
    - DemiDevimon met TK and built up his hopes about Matt not having gone away for good before volunteering to go fly to find Matt and check on him. When on the other side of the lake, he actually got Joe stuck working for Digitamamon's restaurant and ensured that Matt wound up stuck working there too, hoping both their friendship and reliability would be strained.
    - DemiDevimon flew back to TK and lied to him about Matt not wanting to see him again, which made TK lose his hope and cut ties with Tokomon. And that's where Tai and Agumon came back in.

    So it's a pretty intricate story spread across these five episodes and though you have problems with them, I personally love the way the story comes together in the end.

    On DemiDevimon himself, he's one of the all-time great evil minions in this anime. He's Derek Steven Prince's first role in the dub too, and I gotta say, his voice is...odd. I don't know what made him go with the weird big city accent for this part - I think he might be channeling Gilbert Gottfried here but I'm not sure. It actually does work, though. (If the character's original voice was faithfully replicated, he'd probably sound like Eric Cartman from South Park!)

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  2. There's another continuity nod here: both DemiDevimon and the Gazimon mention working under Etemon, and what they're doing now that he's gone. It's notable in DemiDevimon's case because it's not clear whether he's lying or was just offscreen while all the pyramid battles were going down, and we definitely know he's working for Myotismon now. If he was working for Etemon, was it as a double agent, was it his prior employment, or was it openly work for two masters who knew about each other?

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  3. DemiDevimon sounds like Pesci ( from Home Alone) Joe Pesci would have been a great Stand in ( when ever the other voice actor was busy).

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