Frontier Episode 49: Lucemon on the Loose

In this episode, Susanoomon defeats one half of Lucemon. Unfortunately, that was his collected, stable half. The other half is making a beeline for Tokyo.

All right! Susanoomon! Here we go! Just as we thought that Koji was going to have a problem controlling the spirits of light and darkness, the collective anger towards Koichi's death and Lucemon's evil comes to a head and kaboom! Takuya and Koji bio-merge and finally the spirits of all ten Legendary Warriors are truly united. As it was with the legend, this will finally be what destroys Lucemon, right?

Well yeah, but you'd think they'd take more than five minutes. Susanoomon lets Lucemon start into his Paradise Lost Punch (that is the greatest attack name in Digimon history for so many reasons), then gets bored with it halfway. C-C-C-Combo Breaker! After countering the light-dark thingy in neat fashion, he then whips out a big ass light blade and slices both the dark area and Lucemon right in half. The whole thing happened so fast it made the final fight with Velgemon look like a Dragonball Z battle. Lucemon's scanned and once again the day is saved thanks to the Powerpuff Girls.

Obviously that's not the end and nobody with a brain (or at least advanced knowledge of the number of episodes in the series) would expect it to be. Lucemon's obviously going to have a final final form that will pose more of a challenge. Still, the fact that this battle is over so quickly is downright criminal. First off, it makes sissies out of EmperorGreymon, MagnaGarurumon and by extension the Royal Knights. They couldn't even scratch this guy! Secondly, after such a limp showdown, the rest of the episode is spent repositioning the pieces, giving dramatic speeches and not doing anything substantial.

Lucemon's Shadowlord Mode is an impressive beast to be sure. While we can appreciate the way his previous form balanced light and dark, there's something to be said about removing the light element completely. That was probably the side interested in bringing order to the world and finding other beings too imperfect to deserve free will. Without it, it's pure chaotic evil and he has no time to stick around. He's off to conquer the real world!

It's bad enough that the rest of the episode is spent flying after it, regardless of whether or not all of those forms actually have the ability to fly (looking at you there, Kumamon). The chase is peppered by speeches by each of the five, giving us a brief summary of what they've learned and why they're extra-determined to save the real world. Normally, there's no problem with this as the real world under threat has always added a bit of gravity to the situation and the speeches, while cheesy, are par for the course. The particular nature of this season makes these speeches not only hokey, but downright offensive.

Adding the real world to the equation this late feels like a last-ditch effort to make us care. It's harder to worry about the empty husk of a Digital World as it exists now, so sights turn to something more familiar. It's a cheap and fattening addition to see the massive panic of random people freaking out over electrical surges and looking up to the sky expecting to see Godzilla. If we're really supposed to care about the Digital World equally (which should be one of the underlying themes of the season), we shouldn't need drama in the real world. That makes the kids' speeches particularly bothersome, as they tap an extra well of anger and determination that shouldn't exist. Not after so much talk about fighting for their new Digital World home. Saying you're going to do whatever it takes to save your friends back home is cringe-worthy when all your friends in the Digital World are dead.

My Grade: C

Loose Data:

• The way Susanoomon gets out of Lucemon's attack by splitting up and reforming is neat and all, but raises a lot of questions. Is this an ability unique to Susanoomon? Is there an element of sacrifice involved? It seems like he can do it whenever he wants like some sort of phase-shift, and if it's that easy to regenerate into Susanoomon, why don't they do it once Shadowlord Mode starts flying off?
• That bigass blade of Susanoomon's is so huge it has crosshairs.
• Did we really need everybody's full-length evolution sequences? We've seen plenty of Kumamon, Kazemon and Beetlemon already.
• Koji's dramatic speech mentions buying flowers for his birth mother. The clip shown is from a scene where he's buying flowers for his stepmother.
• Desperate to kill time, we get another shot of them all getting on their trains at the beginning, just because they reach the now-ruined terminal.
• You know who barely gets mentioned in this episode? Koichi. Boy, they all got over his death real fast!