Adventure Episode 17: The Crest of Sincerity

In this episode, Sora and Mimi run around wearing towels as they battle a giant cock monster who had hardened his male opponents. Yes, this is still a kids show.

 

Let us cite the Laws of Anime, a tome that has existed since the dawn of the internet, handed down from the gods to explain anime physics. This is rule 34:

(No, not that Rule 34, although this episode certainly helps enforce that one too.)

“Any female with an excessive amount of clothing will invariably have her clothes ripped to shreds or torn off somehow. If there is no opportunity to tear off the afore-mentioned female's clothes, then she will inexplicably take a shower for no apparent reason.”

Yes, we have reached the Gratuitous Shower Scene episode. We've already had the public bathhouse episode, which we got a couple good jokes out of. Then we had Mimi's bath episode, which was a pretty good punchline to a pretty good scene. The gratuitous shower scene, on the other hand, was not at all funny and lingered for most of the episode. It's one of a series of bad decisions that make for a truly awful episode.

The pain starts with two cases of selective memory as the children are yet again wandering the desert aimlessly. With the heat bearing down, Matt and Gabumon joke about how the latter's pelt really needs to be removable, even after it's clearly been established that it is. Gabumon's just self-conscious about removing it. The second is Palmon who fantasizes about turning into a giant cactus to offer the whole group (including herself, apparently) some shade. As it so happens, Palmon can turn into a giant cactus and it would have actually been a pretty damn clever thing to do. Instead, they see a non-Togemon giant cactus... which turns out to be a non-real giant cactus.

The cavalcade of stupidity continues when Holo-Gennai shows up and is not only completely useless in giving the kids direction, he goes out of his way to make them doubt their ability to properly raise and train their Digimon. As if they aren't freaked out enough by Tai's stunt in the last episode. In these initial appearances, Gennai's kind of an asshole.

Suddenly- take a good hard look at the motherflipping boat! This Boat Is Real, and Sailor Numemon lets them all aboard after Mimi sluts it up for him. For a moment, let's assume that this is an elaborate trap by Kokatorimon to trap the digidestined on a boat. Why the hell does Mimi need to slut it up to gain passage?

Anyway, this time Izzy and only Izzy is suspicious of the free room and board, and even recalls the two previous times they were fooled. Naturally, Izzy shrugs it off and dives into the food with Matt and TK. Tai and Joe (the two with crests) get their swim trunks and their flippy-floppies and go poolside. Sora and Mimi take off all of their clothings and hit the showers. A human captain, whom neither the viewer nor the digidestined had seen before, sheds his quite unnecessary disguise to reveal Kokatorimon. He's working for Etemon and would have contacted him if the Gazimon weren't such doofuses and kept the dark network functioning. Somewhere in here, there's also an unnecessary scene to remind us that Etemon is also quite the doofus.

Stunningly, it's all a trap and all the boys are captured and their Digimon turned to stone. The effort to trail the girls goes cold as they had apparently sensed danger with enough time to throw on towels and escape out a very high window (yes, in the shower) to the deck. So then... yes... they run around in towels as the big giant chicken chases them. Biyomon and Palmon digivolve and beat him up.

The final moment of stupid is after they disembark and a not yet dead Kokatorimon chases after them with the whole damn ship. Rather than dodging to one side to take advantage of a cruise ship's limited ability to turn, they run straight ahead until they reach the fabled giant cactus. They hide behind it, hoping that a plant is strong enough to resist a cruise ship plowing into it. By a stroke of luck, it is, the ship's destroyed and Mimi gets her crest. Palmon stares up at her, dumbfounded at the events of this entire episode. I'm not going to bother trying to explain or defend this one.

My Grade: D

Loose Data:

• The first shot of the cruise ship's interior is a grand staircase eerily reminiscent of Titanic. Nobody ever uses it.
• They tried to make it a big scene when Koromon turned back into Agumon, symbolic of him forgiving Tai for last episode. He got a pretty long transformation sequence. Shame Agumon was incredibly useless fighting.
• Here's the million dollar question- With the boys tied to a netting and left to cook in the intense heat, do you think the girls rescued them before or after they put their clothes back on?