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DNI/BYF:
(soft dni) proship/anti-anti/etc. (this is just a personal comfort thing and should not be compared to anything else on this list, please. Our sys doesn't identify as antiship, but I include this heads up because we tend to get way too "it's that deep" about all the art we like lol, and ik that can rub a lot of folks in that community the wrong way.)
anti-otherkin
homophobic/transphobic
terf/radfem/swerf
transmed
queer exclusionist
racist, pro cop
ableist
anti-endogenic, anti-nontraumagenic, anti-thoughtform, etc.
All caught up on beatbreak and ngl while i wouldn't say i hated the ep it was kinda sour for me for one reason specifically
Spoilers for ep 33 below
So far Ichinosuke is like, beatbreak's third named brown character and considering his hairstyle he's also the first black coded character and ngl the fact that so far the only brown characters in beatbreak have been antagonists (granit is a civilian now but he is also a former antagonist) is not sitting well with me at all
I've also been noticing a lack of black/brown civilians, so much so that I am currently in the process of checking past episodes to see if i can prove myself wrong but I am 12 episodes in and it's not looking good...
Part of me still hopes that we might get an episode with brown characters that aren't antagonists but it's looking pretty fucking dire rn
We probably wont ever see Tactics 1 again. Really felt like a waste of an episode when we've already done the Tomoro and Raito stuff over and over. I dont understand why they didnt just make it GIFT members instead of random Tactics leftovers that did not and will not matter.
EXACTLY EXACTLY EXACTLY! UGH!!!
FUCKING WASTE OF TIME IN THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY!!
long ass rant below the cut. you have been warned.
there are so many ways this episode could have been WAY more interesting but the writers chose none of them and instead gave us the most egregious kind of "filler" possible (i really hesitate to call a lot of stuff filler but this fits the bill)
we have:
fucked up weird animation
characters you haven't seen in forever or thought about in forever suddenly showing up only for 2/3 of them to get kidnapped and have no interesting character moments
TOMORO is the one that doesn't get drugged? HUH??? you go out of your way to show chiropmon going "weird" multiple times. chiropmon does nothing about it. makoto gets drugged. you could have had MAKOTO interacting with raito (something we hadn't seen yet)
hell! you could have had reina interacting with raito (let her call him a jackass! the narrative is too kind to that little shit as it stands!). why? pristimon has a refined sense of smell from "drinking" so much tea.
BUT NO EDGY BLUE FUCKER IS HERE AWWW YEAH WE GOTTA GET SOME CLIPS OF HIM INTERACTING WITH TOMORO! (i was telling one of the discords i'm in that i low key think the decision to do this was to get raitomo shippers to do free advertising for the show and i'm not convinced i'm wrong. no tremendous hate to raitomo shippers but i don't see the chemistry and i think this kind of shit is beatbreak's equivalent to teen wolf queerbaiting but that's another essay for another time when i don't have things to do)
the ONLY thing i think i liked about this ep was like. we see the digimon doing stuff on their own ig. raito confirmed caring about monodramon is nice.
now to be clear on my "filler" definition here: i don't think every episode has to have plot or shit to be worth the airspace. for me, "filler" is an episode that feels like it's just there to say you had an episode.
in appmon, there's an episode that's a series recap with silly things in between (a clip show) that they did in part because they got moved to a different time slot; this is the most rudimentary kind of filler. it adds nothing but reminding you of what has happened before.
in transformers: prime (bear with me here), there's a clip show episode that could similarly constitute "filler." but while being a recap, it also has a narrative frame that gives the clip show new context and texture. it tells us something about the world and makes us appreciate what the writers are doing better. nothing of plot relevance is done. this is "filler," but it is still filling.
then you have the episode of beatbreak that just came out. it isn't a clip show, but the thing about it is that we didn't really learn anything new about the world of the story. "raito bullied other tactics teams! :(" yeah what the fuck else is new he's an asshole. this was some first draft shit that really comes across as wanting to be subversive about the beach episode trope and instead fails to deliver on both beach episode needs and story needs.
"raito is working with a five star" is maybe the only important part of that whole episode, and it isn't given enough gravity in the moment for me to take it seriously. we're supposed to think the five stars are this corrupt organization thanks to klay being our intro to them! gasp! "you're working with the five stars?!" tomoro says. two camera shots later he smiles at raito because he says "i want to get stronger and beat you tomoro" GAG SHUT THE FUCK UP.
that writing doesn't tell us why raito is interested in working with the five stars. it doesn't establish anything new about raito and essentially wastes our time for about five minutes at the end of the episode with the writing team winking at raitomo shippers like "yes we see you blowing up the beatbreak tags." it's not in character for tomoro to brush off someone working with the five stars so easily. it's bad writing for him not to be more pissed than a quick ":( but five stars bad"
we don't learn anything new about granit or hotaruko either. they're there to just get kidnapped.
this is the kind of episode that the more i think about it the more angry it'll make me, and that's disappointing off the heels of what is maybe the best singular episode of digimon in the entire franchise (i am not exaggerating). "cold rain" was insane.
Digimon fans spamming tweets with the latest new evolution (without any content warning) just 2.5 seconds after the latest episode dropped and before its available on most sites just so they can have a hit tweet without caring about how many people they have spoiled:
Kind of deeply despise the way everyone just immediately brushed past the insane racism/xenophobia in Beatbreak especially because there’s no way it isn’t coming back eventually. Are we just going to keep ignoring it because the right to comfort is more important then acknowledging the show isn’t perfect and actually fucked up in one of the most heinous ways it could
this is exactly why i've been so quiet on beatbreak tbqh.
long ass post below the cut. think of it as a pseudo part 2 to my xenophobia in beatbreak essay.
after the end of the tactics arc with all that albida shit it's like... how am i supposed to keep watching this without the malignant presence of racism tainting the experience? especially when i know the racism is not just localized to klay fucking arslan. because it's going to pop up like a jack in the box every time they decide to remember the chairman and genjo.
i'm so tired man. i'm so fucking tired.
like you can't be a politically interested show and not check your racism even a little. when the show is done and over i'll probably suffer a rewatch just to do a proper write up on the racism, because i've seen enough already to tell me that klay isn't the end of it.
for that matter, i have to wonder how the chinese fanbase is taking beatbreak rn.
i also have to also wonder if the veneer of politicism is just a symptom of the aesthetics beatbreak is employing. it's clear to me that bb is a cyberpunk genre digimon series, and the expectation of cyberpunk is that you talk a lot about politics. if you don't think hard about what you're saying, you'll inevitably fall flat.
this is why cyberpunk 2077 was such a mixed bag, and why a lot of mainstream cyberpunk is such a mixed bag. there are so many wonderful essays on the subject of the genre, including video essays about works like blade runner, the matrix, etc..
now, people who have been following my blog for a while may know that i have an english degree. i am, in fact, going to grad school for an MA in english/media studies. part of the lead up between undergrad and grad school for me has been just reading a lot more contemporary work and seeing how it handles things i am concerned about.
this is to say: the broader my reading, the more easily i pick up on odd flaws and not so small ones alike.
i don't have the energy at the moment for something too lengthy, because i'm having a flare up, but i want to contrast digimon beatbreak with becky chambers' "wayfarers" series. this is a sci fi series set in the future where humans had to evacuate the earth in a mass exodus to escape the consequences of earth's human-caused destruction.
we don't see that exodus, but we do see the aftermath many years later. humans are part of an intergalactic community, a la star trek. and, in the vein of the original star trek, the wayfarers series engages with a lot of themes relevant to our mundane reality: poverty, racism, political corruption, genocide, and so on.
beatbreak is, ostensibly, also interested in these things. we see a lot of evidence on the matter. the difference is in how those different topics are handled and what the conclusions they imply are.
in a series like wayfarers, chambers pretty actively makes an attempt to make an inclusive future while also not shying away from the very real atrocities people can commit. when characters do something racist, it's given context to show the consequences on those who are the target of said racism.
the first book has a pretty good example of this, even if it's engaging in something closer to fantasy racism; basically, one crew member is racist against aandrisks (a sapient species with reptilian features). this is a recurring part of his character, with consequences on everyone around him. he also doesn't magically become not racist the second his aandrisk crewmate does something self-sacrificing for him.
we contrast this with beatbreak, meanwhile, where the racism seems like a subject that the authors are afraid to talk in too much detail about. granit and klay obviously experience some kind of racism, but is contextless and all in the past. it is divorced from them in the present, which is only worsened by klay's backstory (itself based in orientalist caricature with just enough allusion to real world events that it pisses me off).
the difference here is that chambers fully commits to racism grounded in the reality of her novels. while that may seem a far cry from how racism functions in our world, she builds it in a way that highlights how nonsense it often is; it is an architecture of society that is built from a desire to separate into groups (sometimes imposed by a higher authority).
beatbreak, however, wants the aesthetic of engaging with racism without doing the legwork to ground it in the reality of its fiction (itself very close to the reality we live in). the fall of albida echoes a lot of real-world conflicts over resources that are oftentimes predicated on colonialist projects. granit, meanwhile, is from a nameless country that, as far as we know, just had some war crimes done to it i guess! isn't that horrible? look at how antiracist we're being in the beatbreak writing team!
to me, it comes across a mixture of unchecked racism via klay's character, combined with a gross oversimplification of real world atrocities under the pretense of wanting to look more politically engaged than your research shows with granit. we can name japan! japan still exists! can we also name any southwest asian country? uhhhhhhhh apparently not!
i get that beatbreak started off really strong, and that might've ingrained it as a comfort to a lot of people, but you do yourself no favors if you ignore the bad parts of what you consume. to do so is tantamount to political mithridatism. it won't make you racist outright, but it will teach you to habitually ignore racism in the media you watch.
i love digimon to such an extreme degree, but this silence on the part of beatbreak's internalized racism is an extension of a pattern. if you don't want to hear that, i'm sorry to bear that news. but a lot of this fandom doesn't ever address how fucked up a lot of what digimon does is, whether that be whitewashing (RIP daisuke's melanin) or outright racist monster designs (please look a little more closely at shit like garudamon).
i think we should be able to handle talking about the racism in the room with us more often than a klay fucking arslan level catastrophe.
this is maybe the silliest thing to be annoyed at beatbreak about but every time a piece of media uses tarot cards and only uses major arcana cards i think i explode a little more inside
might only be so annoying to me because we have a two nickels situation about it in media recently--- read a book that only mentioned major arcana from the tarot, and now watching a show that only mentions major arcana.
The way Daisuke was whitewashed in later 02 Media hurts me physically (also in fanarts omg it is not that difficult to let a guy keep his melanin)
The horrible EPILOG treated him better than the newer movies in that sense
he deserves his melanin especially because they CAN clearly draw him with his actual skintone whenever they draw him in the og style.. does he just canonically get whiter or what??? Smh this sucks
I love BeatBreak and I don't think they had any malice when doing it, but as an Arab fan I have to say that its very disappointing how both Klay and Granit are obviously meant to be SWANA-coded, but its Klay (the evil one) who has a Turkish last name, was shown in traditional Arabic-looking clothes, living in a building with Arabic-looking architecture and a Digimon partner shaped like a literal Egyptian Pyramid.
While Granit (the good one) is named Luka and both he, his nation and everyone from it are racially ambiguous and there's nothing in-your-face SWANA about them.
Sure it might not be thee worst case of racism in fiction, I'm just mentioning it as an example since I'm currently watching the show and it happened in front of me, but it happens everywhere. SWANA people have been demonized so much in mainstream media to the point where some people aren't aware of their subconscious racism that makes it easier for them to associate Arabic/SWANA aesthetic with evil characters because it feels more "natural" to them, but never ever do the same with non-evil characters who instead are either made to be ambiguous or get associated with different cultures (EX: Vivi from One Piece live-action.)
I know some annoying person will tell me its not that deep, but its little things like these that plant seeds for subconscious racism and makes people think that everything SWANA = evil, because that's all they have been exposed to.
Head writer swapped his ability to write a good narrative about colonialism and the inability to write women. Now he can write women but trips over himself to be racist and lean into Orientalist tropes.
I was already worried about racism in Beatbreak since we were introduced to Granit, Klay, and Chairman Wong. Out of the three of these characters, I think Granit is the only one that's been handled acceptably (ie: not completely fumbled).
As of this episode, though, I can say my concerns with Klay and Wong are pretty founded. In this episode, Klay is revealed to be from a made-up nation somewhere implied to be "the Middle East." Albida is a caricature, and Klay seems to have only been given Proganomon so that he can have Pyramidimon as a partner Digimon.
What we are told about Albida is annoyingly vague in every way--- we can have Japan be named, but can't pick a country to research and talk about in this cyberpunk dystopia?? We can allude to "foreign meddling" in Albida's politics, but can't say with our whole chest any country that has participated in such a thing? Like is the Colonizer in the room with us right now? We can name Japan but can't have the balls to say "America did some war crimes in that region?"
We follow this with my concerns about Wong that I've had ever since the idea of a "World Government" was introduced, as well as the idea of a mysterious "cabal" that controls it (the Five Stars, essentially). For those of you unfamiliar with this framework, it's oftentimes used to portray a sinister "other" who is secretly controlling things for their own nefarious reasons. It's a common antisemitic trope, for context.
Now, before this ep I was thinking it might be possible to spin this in a way that didn't come across as violently sinophobic. That was before we found out that Chairman Wong is actually behind the catastrophe that destroyed an entire island, and covets that power still. A friend of mine pointed out that this being on a secret research facility parallels the sinophobic attitude that China is to blame for COVID. Which. Uh-oh.
Do I have a conclusion for this? No, not really. Beatbreak is about halfway through. I don't think I can conclude this completely until we see just how much racism was hiding underneath the icing of what could have been a palatable story with some unchecked -isms. Instead, with the sunset of the Tactics arc, we enjoy the sight beneath the icing, burnt and bitter with ideas that should have been challenged long before they made it to production.
I guess it's just lucky timing that I have a fairly competent video essay on Orientalism in Japanese media to point to. Go watch this video on the Gerudo from the Legend of Zelda by skittybitty. Or don't.
Beatbreak was looking to be my favorite season, despite my reservations, but it's looking instead to be the one I fight my feelings most on because of how sloppy it's handled non-Japanese characters. Us never learning where Granit grew up should have been the first warning, I suppose.
(said with sarcasm as I glare at EX 13 Chivalrous 13's announcement)
As an Appmon player this is frustrating since it means we are now unlikely to see an EX set for the anniversary, and I don't know if Bandai gives a shit enough to give us a 10th anni set for Appmon when Tamers is also celebrating its 25th.
The reason I don't think EX 14 can be the Appmon Anni set is because of something digi-lov pointed out about how EX sets tend to alternate between V Pets and themed boosters. Shambala is a V Pet set, thus, EX 13 is a themed set, and EX 14 will be a V Pet set.
We know what BT 26 is (Timeless Bonds), which leaves BT 27 and BT 28 for the year's release, as well as 3 undefined starter decks.
I kind of doubt we'll see more appmon in the decks unless we get more Lv 4s like the Sakuya Dogatch. Thus, that leaves us to have to hope BT 27 or 28 are an anniversary set (which I really think is unlikely).
i desperately need the digimon community's media literacy to go up (although i guess that's too much to ask from xitter and reddit...) bc wtf were the reactions towards the seraphy beating raito scene in ep 19 that i saw on there ppl were acting like Naito was beating Raito bc he was being an asshole and hurting Monodramon when i guarantee that he could care LESS about that Naito directly works for Klay "i host digimon auctions and human trafficking rings" Arslan i HIGHLY doubt that Naito thinks digimon are creatures with thoughts of their own, emotions, and general sense of autonomy
Naito beating Raito was because he accidentally killed their expensive Tinkermon that they were planning to sell. Let me repeat that. This grown ass man beat a child bc said child accidentally killed the expensive Tinkermon that they were planning to sell. If Naito cared abt Raito being an ass and mistreating Monodramon he wouldve already beat that behavior out of him Naito does not give a single fuck about that 😭
