In this episode, King Drasil offers
a reminder that yes, Kurata was pretty damn evil and that he's going
to be a tough act to follow now that he's dead.
For a series with only 48 episodes, it
sure feels like there's a lot of recapping going on. The last time
the animators felt like taking a break, at least the clips were
relevant and showed off the unbreakable bonds between the humans and
their Digimon partners. This time, however, the effort to catch up
Craniumon (surrogate for the few people that decided to jump in for
these final ten episodes) on all the action is a big waste of time.
This is the start of a new arc, and rather than showing off the
danger the new enemy poses, the new enemy spends the whole time
marveling at just how evil the last one was.
The “new” enemy is King Drasil and
the Royal Knights. What is their quest? Why, they want to destroy a
world and everybody inhabiting it! What else could it be? Between
Frontier, X-Evolution and now this, you get the impression that
that's all these guys do. Rather than defend their kingdom from
threats such as, to use a random example, Kurata and his army of
Digimon-deleting Gizumon, they like to sit around and wait for the
opportunity to completely annihilate a world. As stated in Frontier,
the Royal Knights are clearly elitist nobility types with no interest
in protecting the common mon. Digimon media outside the anime like to
pretend the Royal Knights are good guys. That's why nobody cares
about Digimon media outside the anime.
The imminent threat of two worlds
colliding and eliminating each other sorta makes it impossible to
call this a breather episode. At the same time, King Drasil's magic
screen takes up most of the time. Through this, he decides to look
back at all the crimes mankind has committed on Digimon. And by
mankind, we mostly mean Kurata. While King Drasil isn't so fond of
the way DATS conducts itself, almost all of the scorn is on Kurata,
which he uses as a proper representative of humans. It's similar to
the way D-Reaper interpreted the thoughts of a grieving Jeri to
justify deleting humanity. It's one of the flaws of pinning this
entire conflict on one man as King Drasil's being really unfair here
when it would be more interesting if he had a legit argument. Again,
if Kurata was this bad, maybe King Drasil could have done something
before allowing Belphemon's revival.
Still, as misguided as King Drasil's
solution is, at least he has one. DATS sees the impending threat and
shrugs its shoulders. They hop right into damage control mode and
help save airplanes, prevent buildings from falling on little girls,
and evacuating people to wherever it is that will keep them safe from
the world being blinked out of existence. To the actual problem at
hand, they have absolutely no idea what to do. Thomas spends most of
the time making nice little diagrams illustrating just how screwed
they are. Their part of the episode is little more than a “Two
Worlds, One Dimension” reaction video.
BanchoLeomon comes through in a way
that you'd think the others, or at least Marcus and ShineGreymon,
would have considered. Is it totally unfeasible that BanchoLeomon
would be able to support the weight of the Digital World on his
shoulders, buying time for the two worlds even though the proximity
is still going to produce infinite level of chaos? Yes, and it's even
more unfeasible that this doesn't kill him.
Also unfeasible is that Thomas and
Yoshi try to dissuade Marcus from crossing into the Digital World.
Even though BanchoLeomon says this is the only hope to find a
solution, and that not doing anything would mean throwing in the
towel and welcoming the end of the world. Crossing over is dangerous,
it's crazy, and it's pretty much par for the course for this series.
Why hesitate now?
My Grade: C
Loose Data:
- Gotta love the old trick of showing the Digital World above a series of recognizable landmarks (and, apparently, Antarctica) to show that it's a worldwide problem.
- It isn't mentioned and it probably wasn't supposed to be this obvious, but King Drasil is totally rocking the Spencer Damon look. We'll pretend we didn't notice until next episode.
- King Drasil accuses mankind of putting their lives above those of the Digimon, then decrees that slaughtering the entire human world and everything on it is a fitting course of action.
- Thomas tells Marcus that thinking third-dimensionally doesn't help. Like Marcus is just going to flip a “quantum physics” switch and view everything with a fifth-dimensional perspective.
Man, I miss the Kurata arc already, though at least Craniamon (Craniummon?), Thomas' conflict with his father, and the Burst Mode forms will make it worthwhile. Have to agree with your rating for this episode. It was basically a clip show with a generic "kill all humans" antagonist rising up.
ReplyDelete" Again, if Kurata was this bad, maybe King Drasil could have done something before allowing Belphemon's revival."
As much as I like to presume that the Royal Knights were fighting offscreen, there's no evidence they ever lifted a finger against the Gizumon invasion. It's a pity because, without it, King Drasil (King Drasil? Seriously?) looks like an idiot at best.
Man, you didn't go hard enough on this episode OR this arc. I thought this was one of the biggest series killers I'd ever seen. Instead of going the logical route and bringing in the other six Demon Lords besides Belphemon, something that was actually built up in the earlier episodes of the series and referenced again recently, they throw us a total curve ball out of left field by making King Drasil, a character mentioned in passing before and with no indication that he was a villain of any sort, the final Big Bad, in a plot that basically retreads Merukimon and SabreLeomon's roles while also feeling like a rehash of both the D-Reaper AND Lucemon, even right down to Mona Marshall's voice and the f**king Royal Knights! Total. LETDOWN.
ReplyDeleteAnd the fact that Drasil has five forms (counting the computer-Drasil and the crystal-Drasil at the end at half a form each).
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