This episode was decent, but had a major case of the uglies. Everyone was off model, but Lopmon and Terriermon got it the worst with their faces changing drastically from frame to frame. It was actually kinda charming in how derpy things looked, but it definitely took away from the drama.
Notes:
I understand Jian's frustration with Shiuchon, but he crossed a line when he hit her. Not cool >:/ Glad Hirokazu and Kenta did something useful for once and offered to stay behind with her and Juri. Finally they serve a purpose!
The best looking thing in this episode was definitely all of the background art, but that's because they didn't need to animate it lol. Still, I like this "ominous final boss" setting
So the "God" all the deva have been referring to was Zhuqiaomon (what a mouthful). Aren't there like multiple Gods though? What are the other digi Gods doing rn? Are there multiple "religions" in the digital world?
Sooo Culumon is a "Digi-Entelechia" which, according to Google, is Latin/Italian for entelechy which is a concept Aristotle came up with that boils down to "the inherent force which controls and directs the activities and development of a living being." Whew! I guess that pretty much fits what Culumon does to a T. Seems like a ridiculously grandiose term for such a silly creature tho lol
I kinda think Zhuqiaomon is a little too close to a Birdramon/Phoenixmon combo in design. It's a "meh" design for me. I felt like I couldn't appreciate it much in this episode because it was mostly obscured by flames/hard to make out in general
Was glad to see that Terriermon wasn't perfectly fine after falling into a pit last episode. That raised the stakes a bit.
The scene where Guardromon just watches Shiuchon fly off into the abyss made me laugh out loud. Hirokazu's partner would be a big dumb idiot lol
Shiuchon wanting to fight for Lopmon but not quite knowing how was adorable.
Whelp, I was wrong. I guess everyone's fusing with their digimon partner now. Why are they still calling it "Matrix Evolution" that's confusing...Really liked the transformation sequence and I like SaintGalgomon's design too! I think the ultimate forms are looking much better than the perfects. Kind of feels like more care was put in.
With the ultimate forms, I wonder how much of the designs were inspired by the human characters? I don't really know that Dukemon gives off Takato vibes (same for SaintGalgomon and Jian). I guess they are more human-shaped though.
I was glad to see that Zhuqiaomon wasn't defeated so easily (I'd be mad if just SaintGalgomon was enough), but I'm also really sick of the "okay, we win! -pause for 2 seconds- OH NO! He's actually totally fine!!" twist. You're not fooling anyone Digimon, you've done this a zillion times.
In 1998 now-defunct Japanese children’s publishing house Keibunsha (勁文社 not to be confused with the two other Keibunshas 啓文社 and 慧文社) published a guide to the then-new Digimon Pendulum 1.0: Nature Spirits. While the guide includes illustrations and some general strategies for raising Pendulum series Digimon, Keibunsha’s information was in no way competitive to what V Jump later offered in their own Pendulum guides. The statistics, unique character art, scenery, and superhit graphs are all absent from these guides. Instead Keibunsha substituted in character profiles ripped from Digimon Web, stock art, and incredibly generic tips on raising that can be found in practically any magazine flyer.
In fact, the newest information the Keibunsha guides brought to the table was a chart of D-1 Grand Prix tournaments from the end of November ‘98 to the end of January '99. Looking back, it’s no surprise that Keibunsha eventually went out of business. Their guides are redundant, uninformative, and mostly fluff. Probably the most galling moment in the Nature Spirits guide is the “battle” between File Island and Folder Continent Digimon on pages 62~66. In order to promote the Pendulum series, Keibunsha created imaginary battles between Digital Monster series Digimon and their Pendulum counterparts; naturally the Nature Spirits trump their Ver. 1~5 opponents in every battle.
The original Keibunsha guide sold for 550 yen plus tax, the currency equivalent of about $6. I paid $11.64 for my copy, and that was a sale. The original price was $38.80–after shipping the original total would have been $48.20, and I got away with just over $21. Part of my incentive to scan and review this guide is so that no one else will throw their money away on these overpriced books. If you’re in the market for collecting Japanese Pendulum guides, V-Jump’s trump all else. You can download a mostly-finished scan of the entire book here. Pages 76~83, and 94 up to the guide contact information are duplicates of pages 74~75 and 86~87, and so have been omitted. An English index of what’s found on each page can be found below.
annaxmalina
stormborns
izzy806
jbbartram-illu
origamiaround
kianamaiart
snowghoul
