"What it did have was heart. In a landscape of children’s cartoons that were primarily episodic comedies, Digimon presented a story that dealt with the rawness of preadolescent emotions in an honest, direct way. You could identify with the characters, and not just because they came from the “real world”, but because they were truthful in their flaws and failings. The fantasy here wasn’t so much going on an adventure as it was having understanding, caring companions who would stick with you through the good and bad. There are too many touching moments of friendship, sacrifice, and struggle in the series to recount them all, but one in particular has stuck in my brain. One of the kids, Matt Ishida, begins the series as a stereotypical lone wolf with a protective side when it comes to his younger brother T.K. He constantly butts heads with Tai, the group’s defacto leader, and ends up getting separated from his companions. Wandering into a dark cave with only his Digimon Gabumon accompanying him, Matt despairs over his failures as a brother and a friend. Pushed to voice his feelings by Gabumon, he explains that he fled from attachments after his parents’ divorce, preferring solitude and refusing to let anyone see him express vulnerability. Gabumon just listens, tells him to cry if he wants to, and embraces him, saying that he’s felt lonely before too. The cave vanishes, and Matt goes on to help his friends out of similar emotional traps. This was totally wild. Earnest, if fleeting, discussion of family separation, isolation, and emotional pain was not common material for cartoons at the time. Today, kids blessedly have access to more and more television that treats them as people, that tells them that it’s okay to make mistakes or be upset sometimes, and that celebrates difference. It wasn’t quite that way in the late ’90s."
