Wotutu's Wonders: Review: Digimon Adventure

I'm sure all of us around the age of 15-25 remember watching Digimon; that techno opening and the dream of travelling with a strange monster that could actually tell you stuff (sorry Pokemon...).
If, like me, you watched it in a country other than Japan or America, you probably suffered the same problems trying to watch it in sequence; the local channel would buy 10 episodes, loop them randomly then suddenly have a new episode, then you're right back to episode one. I'm not sure if it was editing or if the battle with Devimon was actually that long!

How does the subbed version of this classic stand? I dedicated loads of time to watching all 54 episodes of this and I regret nothing. Read more after the break!

Please don't be put off by the non-techno and seemingly not bad-ass opening song, you will come to cherish this dearly as the episodes go on and it will become a symbol of personal struggle and greatness *tears up a bit*

For the most part the dub characters are pretty unchanged from originals, minus a few Americanisations which are tasteful and able to be excused. The personalities match up well also. However the dub suffered in it's decision to give cartoonish voices to otherwise deep and serious characters such as the Chosen Children's Digimon.

Although the storyline is quite formulaic; find Digimon, fight people, drift apart, unite, fight people etc, it still maintains enough depth and slight plot twists to remain engaging. Perhaps the main thing that got me was the open talking about death, the children even make graves for departed Digimon, also the mention of regeneration which pertains to an afterlife. I imagine the American version had it's scissors trimming away at that one.

It's a monster series, kids befriend these beings, go on an adventure. Great anime for a kid, right? You may want to rethink that as I have as quite a lot of grown up topics come up and it may at the very least lose some of the younger audience. Subjects such as adoption, divorce and sibling separation, still-birth, sudden death, parental pressure, adhering to gender stereotypes. This surprised me, I've never been able to watch enough of the English dub to see if any of this made the cut but I can imagine most didn't. For an adolescent series,

I can sing it's praises for discussing these real-life things in a way that teens could take it in as almost subliminal messaging. There's also a sense of anti-war with the focus on fighting bringing suffering but that conflicts with the sense of justice and "it's better to fight and try than for people to just die", but this can tie in okay if there's an afterlife ^^;;;

I really enjoyed the character development and watching the bond between children and Digimon, and the most poignant of these has got to be Yamato and Gabumon, I can't say due to spoilers but it's just hearbreakingly loyal and stands apart from everyone else. However there are some things that just seem to be accepted and not really gone into...... by this I mean Hikari. What the heck...

Besides the repetition of that ONE SONG *twitch* for every evolution and Joe's annoying voice (or anyone's) when they go "OIIIIIIIIIIIIIII", there aren't many pitfalls in this anime and I'm not ashamed to admit I cried at the end... the timing of that song was perfect. Though I wish they splashed the money on a better frame-rate and less jarring animation for Mimi's hat.