In this episode, the barrier between worlds
weakens and Taichi poofed away before everyone’s eyes. Best thing
you can say about the team’s mentality is they haven’t split up
yet to get stuck in a restaurant, castle, or dimensional void. That’s
an improvement!
As well as Coexistence positioned all the
characters for a smooth finish, it also left several plot angles left
to resolve and several questions left to answer. Our Future benefits
greatly from the former, following the exact course laid out for it
while only surprising us with a few details on how it executes tri.’s
climax. The question becomes how much time it spends ticking off the
required boxes along the way and how much it stops to explore what’s
actually happening. In the end, the movie invests as little as
possible on the mandatory elements, decides one wasn’t mandatory
after all, and instead commits itself to the same sort of careful
character work that makes tri. so great. But just as the last one to
leave gets stuck with the check, the lack of love for all the
essentials that have piled up since movie one is a stark reminder of
tri.’s main problems.
The first part is all character, dealing with none
of those required boxes. That makes it an antsy opener knowing
there’s now twenty fewer minutes to face what must be addressed,
not helped by prolonged visuals of the worlds swallowing each other
and Hikari’s distorted flashback. It still hits hard, as the nasty
sight of Taichi’s fall plants that seed in her head that she may
have to go through life without him. The mere thought alone, even
without definitive proof, was dark enough to allow Meicoomon to
absorb her partner. Like she always does, she muscles through as long
as she can before finally giving in later in the real world, forcing
everyone to acknowledge that whether or not they believe Taichi’s
dead, they do have to face this world-destroying threat without him.
And most of them remember how well things went last time they tried
to navigate all this without him. Of course, that’s foreign to
Hikari.
Like last time Taichi ditched them, the first step
is wandering aimlessly through the desert and the second is Sora
deciding the team should fracture to ensure someone’s looking for
Taichi. What’s different here is we can see just how poorly Sora
processes this. She sees Yamato committing so hard to following the
Taichi playbook and chasing the next battle, while knowing what he
really wants is to return those damn goggles. While Yamato insists on
continuing to fight, he’s patient enough to let her pour out her
true feelings, struggling to accept the worst possibilities or dwell
on just how many they just lost. It’s not only a huge deal that
Sora can openly express her problems, especially at a time when
nobody else is, but that Yamato realized she was hiding something and
gave her the opportunity.
Yamato ends up hearing a lot of this as Hikari’s
meltdown brings down the whole room and forces everyone to confront
the real possibility. It threatens to be a mass spiral when Hikari
blames herself for the mess. Watching this, Meiko gets a taste of
what she put the team through last movie and almost breaks down again
before the other girls put a quick stop to it and insist on looking
ahead. But everyone suffers, especially Takeru and his deep concern
for Hikari. As de facto leader, Yamato has to take in all of it.
He’d be the first to admit he’s not ready for
that burden. Yamato freaked out when Taichi’s growth led him to ask
harder questions. Yamato never wanted to be asked harder questions.
He had enough trouble answering the ones to get him through the first
time. The remaining movies showed Yamato trying to accommodate this
new maturity without having to go through it himself. Now he has no
choice. All of Taichi’s reservations about making decisions on
imperfect information and endangering others smack Yamato in the face
with Ordinemon about to destroy everything and no clear way to stop
her. He has his meltdown in private to avoid crushing morale further,
but thankfully Gabumon is there. Not that he has any specific
answers, but that’s not what Yamato needs. He just needs Gabumon
there. And he promises he always will be, ready to pull Yamato out of
whatever cave he falls into next.
My Grade: B+
Loose Data:
- Say what you want about post-reboot Piyomon, that attitude sure paid off interrupting the scene of Sora and Yamato. And since it’s post-reboot, she has no knowledge of their past history. Not that we do either, but at least we’re on the same page.
- As much attention as we felt needed to be paid to Mr. Mochizuki and his desperate efforts to keep the Digimon invasion under control, it’s fun that the remainder of the movie makes it clear the one to focus on is Hackmon. It’s maybe not the most necessary scene, but a reminder of Hackmon’s stark refusal to let humanity have any say in this crisis sets the tone for what’s to come. It’s also a confirmation that Mr. Mochizuki may bury himself in his work sometimes, but in the end he really does just want to know his daughter’s safe.
- Koromon crying out for food was another obvious and slightly lazy way to break up the angst. What makes this time a little more egregious is the potential to go a little deeper than that. Digimon don’t do so well in the real world without their partners, and addressing that with Koromon would have been nice. His off-screen evolution to Agumon is also arguably a sign of hope that Taichi is still alive. The sudden way it happened isn’t unprecedented and doesn’t technically break any rules, but it warranted a mention.
- While it’s reused from the last movie, the Digimon snooping on everyone’s private conversations is both silly and sort of not. These guys are still coming off the reboot and while their bonds with their partners have been renewed, all the responsibilities that come with the job may not be. Seeing their peers in action in intimate conversations with their partners (plus Meiko in Agumon’s case) is not just a curiosity, but also potentially instructional and reassuring that they’re all capable of the same.
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