I don’t remember whether you’ve discussed this before (and I’m really sorry for bringing it up again if you have!) but why do fans believe that Frontier “killed” the Digimon Franchise?
I noticed you mentioned recently that the creators believed the franchise was on its way out anyway since Tamers, plus I recall that Savers came three years or so after Frontier ended. Since I wasn’t active in the fandom during those discussions, I’m curious to know why fans used the drastic term “killed” when talking about Frontier. I’m guessing it has a lot to do with Frontier being the only season to not have the classic “partner Digimon” concept?
It's really nothing more than faulty logic. Frontier was the last series before Digimon anime screeched to a halt (at least until Savers). So that means, clearly, it didn't do well enough for the franchise to continue. If it had done well enough, they'd have made another series, but they didn't, so that means it was a failure and killed the franchise. Makes sense, right?
Well, technically, it is true that Frontier did badly enough that the franchise died for a time. That's not actually false. It's also true that a yearly anime like Digimon not getting renewed for another year is a very bad sign, and that ever since Frontier the franchise has always been in serious danger of dying, with Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon all being false starts that never succeeded in fully bringing it back. But it's also true that in order to have saved the franchise from the downward spiral it was already deep in by the time of Tamers, Frontier would probably have had to perform some kind of absolute miracle to save the franchise from not dying. It takes more than just a year to kill a series! Let's look at Digimon toy sales figures from Adventure through Frontier:
Adventure: 16.0 billion yen
Frontier: 4.5 billion yen
So yeah, Frontier's figure is undeniably bad, but a basic understanding of economics tells you it just happens to be in the unfortunate position of being the last one to take the fall in what was already clearly an exponential curve downwards. (In fact, I had the benefit of recently speaking with a Japanese Frontier fan -- and reading their posts even when they weren’t directly talking to me -- who said that they remember Digimon merch lines already starting to die out when Frontier was starting to air, meaning that it was in that self-feeding loop downfall position where they weren't producing the very merch that was supposed to help it gain revenue. We've still never gotten a complete soundtrack release.) And these things fall outside the purview of just Frontier too, because there were also the issues of:
Changing family structures leading to lower viewer ratings and other issues across the board for all anime from all companies
The Pendulum Progress (the V-Pet that Bandai released during Frontier's era) completely bombing, especially due to Bandai's attempt to venture into the Southeast Asian market being handled clumsily
The Toei Anime Fair (that is to say, Toei's structure of showing back-to-back short movies in theaters, which all Digimon movies were released under up until Frontier) bombing at an abysmal one-fifth of the previous year's revenue, resulting in Toei never holding another Anime Fair ever again (previous Toei Anime Fairs with Digimon usually involved sharing with a major big-ticket franchise like One Piece or Doremi, but here it was really just…uh, Kinnikuman)
Basically, it was just a disaster in all directions, so, again -- while Frontier may have been one of the last straws, it also probably would have needed to pull some kind of amazing miracle to yank the franchise out of that rut.
Now, keep in mind that the "Frontier killed the franchise" mantra mostly came from a fandom from 10-15 years ago, when a lot of fans were probably teenagers who didn't know or think much about how anime or media mix franchises are produced, but unfortunately this fanbase does tend to have a lot of preconceived notions like those that a ton of people just…never bothered to reconsider even after they became adults and should know better. And to be fair, not everyone happens to know about the above franchise statistics, and some of them were only translated, let alone released, very recently. From my understanding, the Japanese fanbase seems to have less of a perception that Frontier was the sole perpetrator, if only because they have easier access to said statistics.
But, well, you know, as much as it sucks to think about, a lot of people in this fanbase love to be rude to Frontier, so the idea of it as a "franchise killer" conveniently suits that angle, especially because Tamers also has a tendency to get put on a sacred cow's worship pedestal (and a lot of Tamers fans wouldn't dare admit that Tamers was just as big of a part of the problem, at least in terms of financial performance). So Frontier's an easy scapegoat. It's the weird series with no partner system! (Insert any complaint anyone has about Frontier's writing.) Clearly that must have made it able to singlehandedly tank the franchise in one fell swoop, and the Digimon franchise would have totally still been a profitable behemoth if they hadn't made it! Right? Yeah, uh, no. That's not how it works!
Now, as for the question of whether Frontier would have been successful if it'd come out under much better circumstances...well, of course, we'll never know. Media mix franchises have so many parts that the answer could probably honestly be anything. But to end this post on a happier note, the Japanese Frontier fan I spoke with went to DigiFes and wrote about the experience. They were worried about whether this year’s DigiFes would be popular when it was mostly about a movie with very little info and an anime series that hadn't had much in 20 years, only to have their fears completely blown away with how absolutely wild and feral the crowd went at everything, especially Miyazaki's performance of The Last Element. Which also led to their conclusion: Frontier has been getting so much love this year because, quite simply, it has a lot of fans who love it. That much is undeniably true, no matter what.
