Digimon Beatbreak Sexism
I little while ago I posted this about Reina's role in the Glowing Dawn. And I still stand by all of that, but I'd like to note that while Reina is an invaluable piece of the Glowing Dawn, the narrative doesn't spend any time dwelling on it (actually it doesn't dwell much on the glowing Dawn dynamic much instead as more of a symbol but I digress).
But what I was kind of waiting until the season was done to do was talk about the sexism at play here. And well. I've seen enough.
I think the first thing to note just so we understand what we're working with here, is that Reina is the Taichi to Tomoro's Yamato. I don't think I need to spell out the archetypes here. But Tomoro is clearly intended as a subversion to Digimon's typical protagonist.
When I say Reina is the Taichi to Tomoro's Yamato, this is not a surface level observation. This is not she's reckless red fire to Tomoro's edgy moon. SHE'S THE LEADER. At least of the kids. And she's the one with the aversion to talking about her issues while Tomoro (like Yamato) will scream them to your face. She's the one who takes initiative to go after their goal (bounties), while Tomoro fixates on his brother and his well being. Reina is emotionally unintelligent and often unintentionally upsets people. While Tomoro is sort of purposefully keeping people at arms length.
Tomoro and Reina as foils was set up early on, and then more or less resolved by episode 5. Which is a bizarre thing to do for a pair of characters whose dynamic strongly echoes that of the franchises golden boys.
But okay. Maybe the Taichi parallels weren't on purpose and they just kind of accidentally made a Taichi to fill the void on the team left by Tomoro being more of a Yamato.
How was Reina's character presented to us at first?
Making a female lead the experienced one while the less experienced male character is the one who gets to be the big strong hero is a well established (sexist) phenomenon. And it's well in play with Reina. But the thing that makes it particularly insidious here is that Reina isn't even the MOST experienced member of the team. That's Kyo. Something sort of weird that I don't think means anything, but think is worth pointing out is Murasamemon is treated as Kyo's partner's default form. But it's not. It's Cougarmon. Meanwhile, Reina who started out at Adult, has her partner default be treated as Pristimon, Child, by the marketing. As if she really is on the same level as Makoto and Tomoro.
I easily accepted this facet of Reina's character for a couple reasons. The fact that it places her at the center of the Glowing Dawn, see other post. It's actually not unheard of for non-protagonists to already have Adult level when we meet, see Savers and Adv: 2020. Perfects and Megas are where the drama is. The character bio description caught my attention, so it seemed she had some sort of relevance to fights already plotted out.
But the Glowing Dawn itself was NOT set up properly (A discussion for another time) and thus Reina's role within it left painfully unexplored.
Sure is interesting that the exploration of the Glowing Dawn as a group rather than individuals is minimal, despite it's importance to the plot narrative. And also that the character whose most central to the group dynamic/the character whose character revolves the most around the Glowing Dawn is the sole female member.
And the seasons that DO have main cast members starting with Adult, are seasons where Adult is reached within the first few episodes. It took until episode 10 and 12, and Adult episode was treated as a big deal. Reina didn't even get a FLASHBACK showcasing her Adult evolution. It does not count as an evolution. And of course, 30 episodes into a 48 episode season, we've seen nothing come of the "In an attempt to break through stalemates, she often runs out of e-Pulse and collapses."
Which is really weird considering often is used in that statement implying it is a regular part of the flow of battle for the Glowing Dawn. Being halfway through the season, without seeing this implies that the often was a lie, if we do end up seeing this at all. And not seeing it? What was Reina passing out during a fight going to put too much focus on her role in a fight? Would they have to actually make Wolvermon do something?
I had assumed, once it became apparent that Adult level was going to be a big deal (Both two parters), that Reina would be the first Perfect. While Beatbreak is able to be more creative with its pacing than a typical digimon season, not being bound by merchandising, to a certain extent that pacing IS used for a reason.
Reina getting the first perfect would make her the last kid to get an evolution episode, but the first perfect, in order to space out the fact she had one less evolution to achieve than the other kids. Sure there's still sexism to the fact she has one less, but it would sort of disguise it.
But that didn't happen. Nor did they give her any equivalent episodes, like, say a flashback to the founding of the Glowing Dawn to make up for Kyo and Reina's lack of Adult episodes? The closest Reina gets is in episode 15(Little Courage, the Taichi parallels continue), which isn't even about Reina, Pristimon just happens to give us some Reina lore here.
So, lets talk Tactics arc.
Logistically, Reina getting her perfect in the Tactics arc would have broken the level symmetry between the two teams.
Except, Reina's Tactics foil, Granit, was at a lower evolution stage. Instead of Reina getting an evolution herself, she played a key part in Granit's. Which I actually do like. That's a clever way of going about it.
Except… Reina herself is still stuck at the power level of an Adult. And as much as her helping Granit helps inform her character, her character development is still largely being replaced by a male character.
I've basically got mixed feelings on this because I do think Reina was treated about as well as Makoto during the tactics arc, maybe even a bit better. But because she lost out the worst in the Glowing Dawn arc (even Kyo got a focus episode with Nirinso), it's not enough to make up for that. She did get some focus early on, but that focus was split with Tomoro. Not her own.
Especially since on the Tactics side RAITO AND GRANIT GOT EVOLUTION EPISODES. Raito to Perfect and Granit to Adult. You know who we didn't get an evolution episode for? Hotaruko. I think otherwise Hotaruko is treated fairly, but even so. No evolution.
SIDE NOTE: Raito I think is often regarded as the goggle head to Tomoro's "rival" but I don't think that accurately gets the full picture. It's very common for Digimon to split the "rival" into two. Or, rather my Digimon metanalysis hot take is that Ken is not a Yamato he's his own unique thing. Ken is the rival, Yamato is the lancer. Koji is Yamato, Koichi is Ken. Yuu is Yamato, Ren is Ken. Arata is Yamato, Yuugo/Yuuko is Ken. Rei and Yuujin are Yamato and Ken though I don't necessarily know which is which. Etc. Etc. Etc. My hot take is that Takeru IS IN FACT the Yamato of 02. Please note I am not trying to oversimplify these characters into boxes. Just acknowledging that it is not uncommon for Digimon to use Ken as an inspiration in addition to using Yamato. Raito has Ken parallels, in being a genius antagonist who is only trying to live up to that title. He visually, and with his digimon does resemble more of a goggle head. So I think if I were to put him in a box, I'd call him a Ken with Daisuke mixed in. A rival and a secondary leader.
BUT it does not help my belief that, Reina would be a better foil for Raito than Tomoro is.
I though it was kind of weird when Raito and Reina and Tomoro and Granit were paired together in episode 13. And those ARE the pairs with matching blood types. So it's not like this didn't occur to them.
Raito and Reina are both leaders, both desire the approval of their superior, Raito because he wants to prove his genius label, and Reina because she'd been abandoned so many times before. Both are collectors. Both claim to be more pragmatic than what they are, as both are actually pretty emotional. Neither is very emotionally intelligent. Raito gets in trouble for disobeying orders several times, and Reina despite her prioritizing her teams safety does ultimately go along with freeing prisoners easily enough.
Naito is abusive towards Raito. Kyo gave Reina a place to belong. Raito is the absolute leader of TT7. Reina collaborates more with her teammates who don't always listen to her. Reina takes responsibility for her mistakes and her teammates mistakes and celebrates her teammates successes. Raito blames his digimon for his own mistakes, and sees himself as not good enough.
Granit and Tomoro are both relative newbies, whose Digimon was born around the same time as the loss of a loved one. A loved one who had supported them though an underprivileged life-style. Granit had no where to go and was taken in by someone who sought to use him.
Tomoro was taken in by people who, despite grumbling by teammates for him to pull his weight, took Tomoro in for his own well being. Granit is emotionless, Tomoro's defined by his strong emotions. Granit habitually chews gum. Tomoro drums.
Now, I don't think the switch was a bad idea exactly. Tomoro catching Raito's interest, Tomoro probably not the best character to help Granit out. But it did come at the cost of letting literally anyone but Tomoro have some focus. Specifically Reina. As I said before, Reina is the heart of the Glowing Dawn. Tomoro JUST got here. So if we're doing an evil mirror team, wouldn't it make sense to make the character at that teams heart get focus? Even if Tomoro and Raito are still rival with each other, we could have still gotten some Raito vs. Reina leadership contrast to flesh out all involved parties.
We could have given Reina ultimate to go toe to toe with Raito, and then still let Tomoro have his big moment against Klay.
The plot of episode 19-24 could have certainly used a second draft anyway to streamline what was going on but I digress.
Where are we now?
The interlude arc gave us a Makoto episode, but not a Reina episode. Reina was arbitrarily assigned the ad-break card in Elizamon's episode.
And of course, Makoto got his perfect before Reina got hers. As of now, the single female character is the weakest member of the team. Even if this leads to a "feels unhelpful to the team" arc, (which to be fair, kind of has some set up?) would not erase the fact that that arc would be just a cheap justification for the female character to be weak.
Though… this arc is heavily focused on female characters. And I AM fully expecting Reina to get focus here. But you can't retroactively set-up a character. This is a broader issue I have with Beatbreak, where the show would be so much better if episodes 5-8 of the "Glowing Dawn" arc actually focused on establishing the Glowing Dawn. It wouldn't fix everything, but it would at least make many of the moments about the Glowing Dawn feel more natural and earned.
And I don't know. I think giving Reina focus in the "evil mirror of Glowing Dawn" arc would have made more sense than arbitrarily in an arc where the main villain and her subordinates are female. That almost feels more sexist than if they'd just made Hotaruko and Reina rivals. But the arc isn't over yet. So I'll reserve judgment until then.
My current crack theory/hope is that Reina has achieved perfect before but it was so traumatizing she hasn't achieved it sense.
Unfortunately, it's too late no matter what they have planned for Reina here. We are 30 episodes in. You can't have a main character go 30 episodes in a Digimon series without a single new evolution. That's where Digimon's bread and butter is.
Back during Savers Yoshino only got her Perfect evolution episode to herself, but had to share both Mega and Burst Mode. Tohma and Masaru got their own Burst Mode debuts and Ikuto got his own Mega debut.
Back during the Xros Wars era, everything was Red and Blue. They only released those two Xros Loaders, the video games were named Red and Blue. Sure Nene appeared in Red while Kiriha appeared in Blue. Kiriha got his theme color. Nene was hidden behind Taiki's Red. Nene if she got any sort of official acknowledgement was the Black of Twilight. Which was taken over by her brother.
Her digimon partner didn't get a golden evolution like Kiriha and Taiki. Sure, the narrative sort replaced that with a new Digimon. But that's still the writers covering up that she's not being given the same beats as the boys. That doesn't change the fact that the weight placed on the moment of a first new evolution is heavy and to deny that from a character is to deny them a big place in the narrative. Digimon is a toy franchise first. Denying them the gimmick is literally to deny them space in the franchise.
DENYING DIGIMON CHARACTERS, DIGIMON EVOLUTIONS, IS TO DENY THEM A PLACE IN THE FRANCHISE.
The franchise is literally built around this gimmick, if you have a character who does not do that gimmick, even if they hold an important role in the story in other ways, it is a blatant disregard for them on production side. They aren't worth their own episodes, their own stock footage, even the opportunity to be in the running for "Best evolution sequences" in the fandom going forward. They aren't worth spending time and marketing on. Regardless of the quality of an evolution moment, an evolution is a highly marketable moment. And it says a lot, who and who does not get these moments.
And in Beatbreak, it's apparently not the female characters.
And unfortunately, it's not the worst Digimon's ever been about it. The fact of life is I'm used to it. I am still quite fond of the Glowing Dawn and Beatbreak has a lot of interesting stuff to talk about. But one of those things is the frustration I feel about the mistreatment of the female cast.