#piscesdragon8

[shihalyfie]

In Adventure 02 Episode 44, Ken Ichijouji is kidnapped in a truck that's right-hand drive. His friends are chasing after him in a car that's left-hand drive. Is it true that a LHD vehicle in Japan is considered to be a major status symbol with a high resale value?

Sort of, but not really. For it to be a left-hand drive vehicle, it would almost certainly have to be an imported car, and it is true that "foreign car = you're rich and have status" used to be a stereotype, but nowadays people will get it because they wanted to invest in a specific model of foreign car for some reason (maybe they were dissatisfied with domestic Japanese-produced ones, and the only models they liked were left-hand). A lot of people will also outright avoid it because of how inconvenient it is to drive in Japan's road system, which isn't compatible with it at all, and it's also much more difficult to keep it maintained in those circumstances.

Of course, that doesn't mean having a left-hand drive car doesn't come with some kind of money and status at all, because buying and maintaining an imported car is expensive, but since the Kido family is a prominent and esteemed family of doctors, it's reasonable to think they'd be able to afford it and would be willing to put up with the trouble if they consider the car to be important enough, especially since Shuu seems to be a traveling scholar. It's a family that tends to be picky and low-compromise, so this probably falls in that category.

Incidentally, Kyoko from Cyber Sleuth also has an imported car (well, putting the other considerations about its, uh, nature aside). While it's not mutually exclusive, I think the modern association with it is probably less "rich and elite" and more "hipster and unique".

[shihalyfie]

In Digimon Our War Game, the grandma brings food to Matt and TK while they're watching a baseball game on TV. Matt looks unimpressed or disgusted by it. What was on the plate?

It's ohagi, which was confirmed by the official storyboard book (the disparity between Takeru and Yamato's reactions is even noted there!). There's nothing particularly unusual about ohagi, so presumably Yamato isn't a huge fan of sweet things.

Funnily enough, it also ends up being Armadimon's favorite thing in 02, although I don't know if that had been established yet during the movie's production (the same book shows that Miyako was still "the girl in glasses who will be in the second series" and even had pigtails at the time).

[shihalyfie]

How come Gabumon didn't dark digivolve after Matt was manipulated by Cherrymon?

The mechanics behind what constitutes dark evolution aren't very well-defined, but an implicit requirement behind it is that it also presumably involves an emotional disconnect between one and one's own partner. The SkullGreymon incident involved Taichi emotionally pressuring Agumon to levels that made him uncomfortable, but in Yamato and Gabumon's case, the latter said that he'd stick by him no matter what, and it was a mutual agreement (even if for a distorted purpose).

[shihalyfie]

I heard that Matt became an astronaut because Adventure 03 would've been about outer space. How would that idea work?

The general gist of it is that Adventure was in the Digital World, 02 was in the real world, so the third series would have been about space, and all three of them would have been about the theme of fighting against forces inhibiting evolution. There's more than that, but that's generally the important part (and with beta ideas, it's always hard to say how solidified they were rather than just "ideas conceived that never got off the ground").

[shihalyfie]

In Adventure 02, the original villain was suppose to be Matt, not Ken, who would turn to the dark side. Do we have any more information about how that would work if the idea wen through? Matt was already manipulated into fighting Tai

To be more precise, that was a suggestion that was on the table at one point, but it's never been said how long that was on the table and how seriously it was taken. Given that this was when talks for 02 had just gotten off the ground, that means it probably would have been during the Odaiba or Dark Masters arc, so my personal guess is that the plot point of Yamato fighting Taichi in Adventure might have been because of that discussion, as in, once they scrapped the idea for 02, they repurposed it into a late Adventure plot point. That's just my guess, though.