Digimon Beatbreak Episode 40
Klay commenting the Wong pulled one over on them is interesting, because, ultimately. It wasn't necessarily Wong. Don't get me wrong, it probably was Wong responsible for hiding Souji's identity once he got arrested. But Souji got arrested independently after nearly dying. He was presumed dead because they never found a body, not because Wong orchestrated a fake death.
I brought this up last episode, but what's with the kids aversion to thinking Kyo has a shady past? They know Kyo was a 5 star. They know the 5 stars are shady. They know the Glowing Dawn believes in 2nd chances? They have all the pieces? Why are we pretending this is a reveal 40 episodes into the season???
I had to go back and check if Kyo becoming a 5 star at age 11 was new information to the Glowing Dawn kids, and it was kind of ambiguous. It was revealed via caption in a flashback. So… it could technically be new to the kids, but I assume no.
Kyo is 22 during the events of the show, 20 when he took in Reina, which means he was even YOUNGER here. I'd guess about 18 maybe, considering how much time between Kyo leaving the 5 stars and meeting Reina. Kyo is an adult during the events of the show, but I think it's also important to remember he's a young adult. He's not much more than a teenager himself. I don't mean to say Kyo is actually just a baby or anything or to minimize his maturity. But to contextualize his maturity relative to other adults, like Maki and Souji, or the teens like Reina and Tomoro.
It wasn't that long ago that I was Kyo's age with a sibling Tomoro's age. So I know that age-gap dynamic pretty well. Which is to say, that it's a little condescending to be 22 and believe you are vastly more mature than a 15 year old. It's not nothing, but it's not Kyo is more experienced than them, in charge by default, and takes responsibility for the health and well being of the kids because there are no other adults. He's team dad, but he's NOT literally their dad. He's not so much older than the Reina and Tomoro that parental is a accurate descriptor of their relationship imo. He's still figuring out adulthood himself, and is for the first time in these past couple years, putting into practice what he learned at the tail end of his teen years.
Part of why I bring this up is because it's generally more acceptable for Kyo to lean on the kids as if they were peers, than it would be if he is more a parental figure. A part of what got Tomoro into this incident is Asuka taking on the burden completely on himself, and practically sacrificing everything for the sake of his brother. Which isn't wrong per se, as Tomoro was only about 10. But also as Tomoro approached the age Asuka was when he first took custody of Tomoro, the one sidedness of the relationship bred resentment and self-loathing in Tomoro in a way that perhaps wouldn't have happened if Asuka allowed Tomoro to contribute to the household. Asuka tried being a parent to Tomoro when he simply was not mature enough to be a parent to a teenager because, Tomoro, the teenager was mature enough to put himself in Asuka's shoes to know what Asuka was giving up. And for Reina she was on her own for a long while, before she met Kyo at 13. So she didn't need someone to come in and take responsibility for her life out of her hands. She needed someone to provide a safety net. Kyo is not an adult whose job it is to protect them one-sidedly.
To love is to also let yourself be vulnerable, to allow others the opportunity to care for you in turn. Young children tend to be an exception to this, but the kids of the Glowing Dawn are not so young that they are an exception. So part of being a family means sharing the burden, and that means Kyo relying on the kids to have his back. I think this is leading to Habakirimon of course, but I'd be shocked if the kids presence doesn't help Kyo in some way. That Kyo learning to let himself be vulnerable is a part of this.
Back to the episode itself, Personally, I found this episode to be a bit, underwhelming. While it overall explains a lot about Kyo; the start of Nirinso, the origin of his bracelet, cooking abilities, pink apron, many of Kyo's current beliefs and what inspired Kyo to take his life in a different direction, taken on it's own it's not particularly compelling.
So much of the backstory of Karina and Minoru as characters is given as Karina monologuing to Kyo. It's lampshaded with the justification of Karina being a talkative person, and Kyo not being. But it's still essentially a lot of telling us the backstory, than it is showing us why these people are so important to Kyo.
Ultimately, we the audience, can only care about Karina and Minoru through the fact Kyo cares about them. But Kyo's care for them is largely confined to this one episode. It's not… bad exactly. But in a show that already has dozens of one-off characters defined by the loss of loved ones and adoptive family it's nothing special. It's sort of retreading ground we got with the Panda-gumi, Haruomi and Elizamon, Maki and Leomon, Chihiro and Algomon, Miharu and her sister and Wizarmon, Yume and Tinkermon etc.
Minoru and Karina have haunted the story since the beginning, being responsible for basically everything that makes current Kyo who he is now. But for that level of importance, I feel their actual characters are treated so disposably. I think this could have been solved by having more direct foreshadowing to their existence earlier on. To give us more of an idea of someone to be attached to. The idea of a little sister figure in maybe some of her old clothes left around Nirinso. Maybe give Reina and Karina some similarities to maybe prompt the idea that maybe Kyo was inspired to take Reina in because he reminded her of Karina. Maybe show us Minoru giving Kyo some parental advice. (Minoru does look pretty young, but he's old enough to have worked at a university prior to the Kano island incident and Kyo calls him Oji-san).
Actually, I do wonder if there were supposed to be parallels between Kyo's old family and new family. Kyo as Minoru, Makoto as Luxmon, Reina as Karina and Tomoro as Kyo. The three babies as the kids 3 digimon. Otherwise the same number of characters in Kyo's old and new family seems intentional. But it's hard to say.
All we knew is there was someone important who taught Kyo to be different from how he was as a child… but we knew so little a lot of people assumed it could be Asuka. If they had shown us those graves earlier, or had Kyo alluding to fail to protect someone earlier, we would have an idea of something to get attached to so this reveal would hit harder. I think Kyo's backstory is well done otherwise, but I think it does lose it's impact basically being treated on the same level as a lot of other minor characters. They're so important to Kyo, and thus the Glowing Dawn that I think we should have haunted the narrative more than what they did.
And I suppose we'll find out what exactly happened to the kids next week. But considering they're still in Perfect form, they can't have been beaten that badly.
