In this movie, Meiko’s challenges become as
clear as ever, while trying to figure out what’s actually happening
to the world and Tai’s reactions to them challenge us almost as
much.
Loss and Coexistence have some of the more
transparent writing issues in tri. Loss reaches far to set up the
main character conflict and doesn’t get the most out of its second
half. Coexistence returns to the same melancholy note for much of the
movie and saves all of the intensity for the final act. The dub of
Loss used some extra lines to fill in many of its problems.
Coexistence has so much talking to begin with it doesn’t have as
much room to hide. All a dub can do is convey what’s happening in
these conversations as concisely and with as much emotional impact as
it can. While it has some successes, it’s far less successful at
its job, and in some cases blurs the picture even more.
It has some highlights to be sure. Anything
involving background mumbles and whispers comes across much better in
English. The partners are shouting out their charges in the stills of
them fighting hostile Digimon in the Digital World. We hear the
audible concerns of people seeing the partner Digimon in the real
world. The whispers about Matt’s fear of ghost stories is slightly
perceptible and doubly funny (as is most of the scene, save for Meiko
sometimes rushing through what should be drawn out small-town
horror).
One massive improvement in the dub is in the way
it better connects Meiko’s grief, the lessons she hears from the
other digidestined, and her mistakes in the final fight. It’s easy
to confuse her actions with not hearing the lessons the others are
trying to impart on her. Now it’s clear that she heard all of it...
only to apply it wrong. She hears about the notion of partnership
and, in particular, Kari’s key line “becoming your partner’s
best hope” and takes that to mean she’s solely responsible for
bearing the burden, the pain, and the blame Meicoomon is suffering
through at this point. Meiko wants to put it all on her own shoulders
to relieve her partner, rather than sharing the load equally. It’s
no wonder Meicoomon isn’t having that, but Meiko continues to
persist, to the point where she doesn’t want to live if her partner
truly has to die.
Other performance highlights are in Daigo, who’s
on fire as he seethes over being passed over again and refuses to let
the current digidestined meet the same fate. His and Maki’s
situations are especially crushing knowing now how their final acts
go. And Kari has an MVP performance as she has to go all over the
place, flexible in her hushed fear of the Digital World hating them
to the passionate support of Meiko to her ferocious rejection of
Homeostasis to the monotone way she summons Ordinemon.
The problem comes in when some of the translated
lines add even more confusion to the mix. While the Digimon around
the world are portrayed to be motionless and simply in position to
attack, their snarling during cutaways suggest they are not dormant
and multiple characters suggest the attack has already begun. This
creates a truly chaotic situation the digidestined would have no
defense for (especially since Tai shuts down a second world tour). It
also undermines Ordinemon’s role as the switch to activate the
carnage (or suggests that the switch had already flipped).
Worse yet, when Meiko makes her dramatic final
decision, Tai’s initial dramatic agreement becomes muddied by a
long speech where he seems to go back and forth between supporting
Meiko’s decision and demanding everyone stay together. One second
he’s not letting Homeostasis have the final say, the next he wants
Omnimon to pull away so Jesmon can kill Meicoomon, then he’s
talking about protecting their own. He’ll get a chance to reflect
on this decision (or indecision) in the underworld, but in a movie
that’s already a challenge to process, talking out of both sides of
his mouth doesn’t help anyone.
My Grade: B+
Loose Data:
- In a rare case of sub censorship that goes away in the dub, the bloodstains during Meiko’s flashback are red again, where the episodic release changes it to black. This is a striking difference!
- The dub rolls with the same credits every movie, despite confirmation that other actors have been participating. The communications officer watching the invasion sounds an awful lot like Jamieson Price, which means the communication officer is basically Commander Sampson.
- Hackmon does not explicitly mention Apocalymon in the dub, an interesting omission since, similar to King Drasil, it’s a namedrop that fills in a lot of blanks without having to dive in to much. Maybe dub Apocalymon was too much of a joke to be responsible for all this.
- Nobody should be surprised that Meiko got a light southern accent to represent her Tottori roots, although it’s a bit inconsistent in the relevant scene. The real silly dub moment comes earlier when she’s referred to as being from “down south,” which in Japan would put her somewhere in the ocean.
- Gennai celebrating Jesmon’s appearance seems to be voiced by someone other than Jeff Nimoy. Either this is a preview of him going even further into madness in the next movie or they forgot to dub a line while Nimoy was in studio.
- Remember that precision-dropped “prodigious” in movie 1? Izzy saying it when Ophanimon Falldown Mode shows up is the opposite of that.
Hackmon, Jesmon, Joe's Kido and Professor Mochizuki are voiced by Aaron LaPlante.
ReplyDeleteThe dub does name drop Apocalymon during Hackmon's speech At least in the version I watch. He says a "a part of Apocalymon's data is contained in the Libra" right around the 13 minute mark. Though this still doesn't answer the biggest question as to whether or not Meicoomon has hot and cold running water.
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