THREAD: I was long overdue for a re-watch of #Digimon Adventure tri. (I originally viewed each installment months apart and forgot numerous details along the way). I've finally revisited it years later and discovered it's both far better and far worse than I remembered. #デジモン

Following tri. during its original run was... an emotional experience. The highs of "They're back after 15 years!" were offset by a disenchanting wave of lows: the deaths of Kōji Wada, Yūko Mizutani, and a growing concern for Toshiko Fujita. (We later learned she was very sick.)

My biggest complaint in 2015, the decision to recast all eight Chosen Children, is petty in light of all we've learned since Ms. Fujita's passing. The new cast never deserved such vitriol, and they've grown on me during this re-watch (especially Natsuki Hanae and Hitomi Yoshida).

Binging this 6-part OVA in 2021, distanced from the behind-the-scenes woes that mired my perception of it in 2015-2018, allowed me to approach tri. on its own terms and give it a second chance. Unfortunately, my feelings are mostly the same: This sort of thing ain't my bag, baby.

Despite touting itself as a grown-up Adventure, tri.'s scripts (overseen by Yūko Kakihara) feature some of the most juvenile and melodramatic #Digimon stories we've seen. There's no shortage of teen angst, yet emotional conflicts are resolved all too easily. Nothing feels earned.

Attempts at humor fall flat. Entire plot threads and characters are tossed aside without explanation, while others are purposely left unresolved and open-ended. Not to strengthen the narrative or provoke deeper thought, but seemingly only out of hope that we'll beg for a sequel.

Worse yet, the relationships between the humans and their #Digimon are so thoroughly mishandled. The Chosen Children are now frustrated babysitters, while the Digimon are shoved into a kennel and ignored. Then they immediately pivot by insisting how sacred these partnerships are.

And the treatment of the 02 cast is still asinine. If you want to write them out of this story, why do so in a way that consistently draws attention to their absence, and portrays the main cast in such an apathetic light? This couldn't have been handled any worse if they'd tried.

I'm honestly a big fan of Atsuya Uki's character designs, especially for the monsters (Just look at the Japanese posters and home video releases; they're gorgeous!). But only rarely are they paired with an animator who can do right by them. I still long for what could have been.

The only element of tri. that exceeded my expectations are the vocal songs, which include Kōji Wada's very last performance, new songs by AiM and Ayumi Miyazaki, the return of veteran songwriting team Michihiko Ōta and Hiroshi Yamada, and a whopping 21 (!) character songs. Bravo!

As for the remaining soundtrack, Gō Sakabe's score is the very definition of hit-or-miss. And we run into a problem the franchise had never encountered before: sloppy music editing. If you have to loop "brave heart" for seven minutes straight, you've missed the point of the song.

It’s not without merit. Gomamon's great in Part 2. Part 3 can be very touching. I like the ghost story bit in Part 5. The moments that work are definitely worth something, but that “something” amounts to only a fraction of the time you'll spend to indulge this nearly 9-hour tale.

I'm glad tri. exists. If nothing else, we got some great songs and it gave the new cast a four-year practice run to prep for the far superior LAST EVOLUTION movie. But if you forced me to pick, I'd say this is just about the worst thing to come from this franchise in its history.

This isn't a very positive review, but rest assured I'm a big fan of #Digimon! If you'd like to read more thoughts, check out this thread where I rank my top-ten episodes from the "classic" era of Digimon animation (Adventure, Zero Two, Tamers, Frontier). https://twitter.com/MagicBox_67/status/1272206515492003842