In this episode, a poor baker needs
money to save his family, so a Digimon helps by giving him a gambling
addiction.
Last one! There's light at the end of
the tunnel! Thomas has picked up on the pattern of Digimon trying to
fulfill human desires and sets off for America to research this
phenomenon. Apparently only America has a supply of human guinea
pigs. In the meantime, Marcus and Yoshi are left to deal with one
more case, one that threatens... absolutely nobody.
The saving grace of the last three
episodes were that each of the main characters had an emotional
connection to one of the involved parties. Yoshi had some sort of
bond with Neon, Thomas idolized Harris, and Marcus is related to
Kristy. The effort to establish a similar bond this time is
embarrassing. When Agumon eats a box of buns that Miki and Megumi
brought to share, Marcus takes responsibility and promises to buy
them buns of equal quality. His target bakery is shut down because
the best way to solve your financial problems is closing your
successful, popular business.
Yeah, Marcus is determined to get this
bakery opened again because he's afraid of returning to Miki
empty-handed. Much as I want to give Marcus credit for making good on
his partner's crime, this is just silly, and the whole episode hinges
around Marcus being determined to get this damn manju. As in it's
entirely possible that this case doesn't get closed if Marcus wasn't
dead set on making up for Agumon's gluttony. The radars are so
ineffectual that any of Vilemon's activities would go down as mere
blips on the radar. It didn't even detect the trio of Demidevimon
directly interfering with a horse race. Only Lalamon sensed them, and
only because Marcus dragged her and Yoshi to the track.
Really, other than the internal family
strife and a rough day for the bookies, who's being harmed by
Vilemon's antics? Shitori's excessive greed is inexcusable, but
there's no denying that his gambling success got the family out of a
real jam. He closed the bakery to care for his sick wife, and
borrowed money from some mobsters to pay for her health care. Thanks
to Vilemon, she's able to get the treatment she needs and he gets to
keep his thumbs. The bakery is only reopened due to Vilemon's
interference, yet everybody seems to overlook this fact. Given the
big show Harris made about forfeiting his title bout as he earned the
opportunity unfairly, that's a bit hypocritical.
What separates this encounter from the
others is that it's the first time the Digimon is clearly running the
show. Every other time, the humans are either selfish or take an
innocent request (or insincere in Kristy's case) too far. This time,
Shitori is only praying for money to keep his family together, but
Vilemon possesses him to take it to the extreme. Under his own
control, Shitori easily would have cashed out after the first
trifecta and gone back to making his Guilmon bread.
It adds up to a significant development
in the human-Digimon emotional connection that Thomas is away
researching. His research is supposed to be part of the plot
advancement we've been waiting for, but all we get this episode is a
couple scattered shots of him talking to old professors and some
unethical human research. He returns frantically demanding that
security be heightened, but his actual findings have to wait until
next time.
Hmm... maybe the fact that security was
apparently low might explain why the system wouldn't bother to notice
three monsters shooting a bunch of syringes into horses.
My Grade: C-
Loose Data:
- Thomas has to request time off to research his theories on Digimon. Wouldn't that qualify as being job related?
- Agumon asks if America is edible. If it is, it's probably even more unhealthy than all that manju he ate.
- The occasional hostility Miki and Megumi show towards Yoshi is delightful. You get the sense that they're jealous that she's considered a main character, or at least that she gets to leave HQ from time to time.
- This episode is too lousy to praise it for being mature, but it does feature the mafia, horse betting and a gambling addiction. Not bad, but it still felt like it should have ended with a cute short where Lalamon explains betting odds to children.
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