izzyizumi reblogged
I’ve finally found you, Taichi!
izzyizumi reblogged
rayana-moved-deactivated2021070
A collection of thoughts about Digimon Adventure / 02 / tri.’s lore #04
Meiko’s Meicoomon cannot evolve like most digimon partners
The real tragedy of Meiko and Meicoomon’s partnership seem to be that from the very beginning once one of Apocalymon’s shard became part of its digiegg, fate sealed it that Meicoomon would never be a normal digimon that is able to evolve.
This isn’t entirely obvious at first because Meicoomon is shown to change forms such as those of Meicrackmon Vicious Mode and Raguelmon. Hackmon takes Daigo by surprise in “Digimon Adventure tri part 6: Symbiosis”, when he explains none of those forms are actual evolutions. They seem to be more like unnatural mutations triggered by fear and darkness instead.
The irony lies in how in spite the continuous encouragement Meiko gets from the Chosen Children during the tri series all of this only seems to contribute to make her all the more aware of just how different her relationship with Meicoomon actually is compared to that of Agumon and Taichi’s.
1) For instance, usually when a Chosen Child is in danger the situation immediately triggers the digimon partner to evolve and attempt to save his or her life. This was one of the first rules Taichi found out at age 11 the first day he stepped into the Digital World and it’s interesting how even after the reboot this connection seems to have not been severed. While it does take some re-bonding at first, the Chosen Children remain connected to their partners one way or another.
Meiko’s realisation in Symbiosis soon after Dark Gennai attempts to strangle her seems to be that even though Meicoomon does react because she is in danger, her partner actually goes berserk instead and in such a way her very existence becomes a threat to her very own life and to those around her; even the balance of the world itself. Instead of saving her life like WarGreymon would have saved Taichi, Meicrackmon actually attempts to kill Meiko before whatever sparkle of conscience still residing within her stops her from actually doing so.
If Meicoomon’s issue were simply that she had a dark evolution, then her situation would be simply like that Agumon’s evolution into SkullGreymon. As Sora tries to explain at some point, this could in theory be overcome just as long as Meiko didn’t give up on her relationship with her digimon and tried again, over and over, as many times as it took until Meiko raised her properly.
Good old Gennai has explained towards the end of the classic series digimon such as Skullgreymon aren’t necessarily worthless or bad either. It’s simply this form of evolution “didn’t serve the purposes of their mission at the time”. I have been thinking, this might be the reason the Chosen Children find themselves not only struggling to fully grasp the magnitude of Meiko’s predicament, they desperately want to believe Meicoomon’s existence doesn’t need to be purged and that it may also be saved. What goes unsaid, however, is the Chosen Children desperately cling to this belief not necessarily for Meiko’s sake, but for their own. Their desperation turns them especially blind to Meiko’s situation.
Hackmon also explains unlike most Chosen Children who are protected by their digimon partners, it is Meiko who exists to keep Meicoomon safe and happy - just enough to prevent her from succumbing to the dark shard that threatens her existence and turns her over-sensitive to fear.
Here resides the issue of Meicoomon’s existence. Fear.
2) There’s this apparently irrelevant moment Agumon tells Meiko “he wasn’t scared at all” with the story she has told the group. Meiko’s actual story is hardly scary, if not silly, but it serves a purpose. It delivers the right context for Meiko to realise again how different Meicoomon is.
Unlike Agumon and as far as Meiko knows, Meicoomon has never been able to feel safe without her around. Meicoomon would go as far as to even stalk her to school just so she wasn’t affraid and lonely. Her father has also noticed and pointed this out once Hackmon revealed the true nature of Meiko’s mission.
Fear is the trigger to Meicoomon’s berserk episodes as well as her dark mutations, simply due to the fact within her resides the shard of the one creature that represents “all digimon who resented having to disappear of the course of evolution”.
But it isn’t so simple as that Meiko blames herself even though Apocalymon is the real issue. The issue may be actually that Apocalymon’s very fear of deletion has Meicoomon overreacting to everything and anything that seems to pose a threat to her existence (and therefore Apocalymon’s shard) no matter how small.
Overall, Meicoomon’s situation isn’t quite like Skullgreymon’s, and once Daigo fills her and the eight Chosen Children in with the information Hackmon has shared, it isn’t surprising Meiko cannot bring herself to believe in the conforting words the Chosen Child constantly deliver her. As much as she wants to believe them it seems at this point she knows better. This also seems to be the reason, one way or another, Dark Gennai’s words have scarred her so deeply.
“An existence that shouldnt’ have existed. A Chosen Child that shouldn’t have been chosen.”
In the end what really is left is the simple love she has for Meicoomon. While sad the only act of true love at this point is to put Meicoomon out of her misery just so she stops suffering, this is already different of the reason the Homeostasis want to put her down. For the Chosen Children and as far as they are concerned, only this love matters and nothing else. It’s the one thing Meicoomon and Meiko have in common with the rest of the Chosen Children.
#rainbow09#rainbow09 meta#rainbow09 tri meta#rainbow09 meiko meta#tri meta#tri#meiko meta#meiko#meicoomon#apocalymons shard#apocalymon#digimon lore#gennai#skullgreymon#(RAY HAVE I EVER SAID I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY LOVE YOUR METAS)#(OH MY GOD THANK YOU FOR PUTTING THESE THINGS INTO WORDS)#(AS ALWAYS)#('the Chosen desperately cling to this belief not necessarily for Meikos sake but for their own')#('Their desperation turns them especially blind to Meikos situation)#('FOR THE CHOSEN CHILDREN AND AS FAR AS THEY ARE CONCERNED')#('ONLY THIS LOVE MATTERS AND NOTHING ELSE')#(THANK YOUUUUUUU)#(;A;/ ;A;/ ;A;/)#(IT'S SO HARD TO EXPLAIN ALL OF THIS IN A WAY PEOPLE UNDERSTAND AAAAA)#(..... ;; ;; I've lost a lot of very important people in my life too so ..... yeah .... ;;)#(so Tri really hit me hard in SO MANY WAYS I really don't think people ..... understand what it was trying to say)
Anonymous asked:
Do you see tri as a deconstruction of digimon as a whole? if so do you think they did a good job? what tropes do you think were “deconstructed“? (like the original children having such a tragic ending, daigo and makis final fate, mieccomon sacrifice and final death, all the political stuff with mei´s father), or do you think it was just darker version of digimon?
I haven’t thought too deeply about this, but I wouldn’t call tri. a complete deconstruction.
After all, the main “patterns” we’ve come to expect from a Digimon (and, specifically, a Digimon Adventure) story are all there: a group of chosen children who evolve their partner monsters in order to save the world from darkness and destruction, while exploring themes such as friendship, courage, hope, personal growth, and becoming an adult. The essential elements that made the original series stand out are also mostly preserved: a bildungsroman against a background of fantasy/sci-fi/action-adventure, with references to other works of fiction, mythology, technology, and philosophy. Even the more “external” characteristics of the show (music, colour, visual gags, callbacks to the other series, the relatively “static” roles of the characters within the team) were very recognisable.
However, in my opinion tri. did go beyond following the old formula and avoided being a by-the-book sequel, by bringing new ideas to the table.
Specifically, there are two big aspects than, in my opinion, make tri. feel slightly “different” from the previous series; even “darker”, as you put it.
First, it has to do the writing and the storytelling decisions that were at the basis of this story. I’ve been writing about this for a while, but tri. is deliberately hermetic and ambiguous. It doesn’t even attempt to provide the audience with direct answers to everything. It eschews a typical three-part story structure and the hero’s journey. It tells a detailed, complex story using suggestion and winks, and expects the audience to unite the dots and come up with their own reasons for what is happening. Moreover, it is a show that seems to ask people to rewatch it multiple times, to reinterpret everything that happens continually, and to reflect deeply about what we are seeing. In other words, it requires the viewer to engage with the story on a deep level, wanting us focusing more in matters of feeling and themes than (it often feels that way) plot intricacies, brushing away whatever it doesn’t consider “important”.
This means that watching tri. can often be a frustrating and confusing experience. unsettling even. As a result, it is no wonder that this approach is unpopular with many viewers, because not everyone is going to be satisfyied with a show that doesn’t provide direct answers and tells a story in a convuluted way. The line between “subtle” and “lazy” is very thin, as is the line between “ambitious and profound” and “convoluted mess”.
However, the way I see it, this approach was deliberate, not to mark a contrast to the relative “straightforwardness” of Adventure, but also to confront the adult audience’s expectations.
In other words, the fact that tri. is “messy and confusing” reinforces some of the larger themes in tri., namely the fact that adulthood itself is messy and confusing, and doesn’t give you all the right answers. There isn’t a single Big Baddie to defeat; instead, the Chosen Children are caught in the middle of a powerplay between multiple agents, feeling lost and lacking easy solutions. When Taichi says “I see more and understand less”, that ends up being very applicable to what the audience experiences when they watch tri. unfold for the first time.
I think the second point is related to how. tri. presents a somewhat bleak vision of what happened post-02. In other words, the answers it gives to the question “What happened in those three years?” aren’t exactly what most of the audience expected or wanted to hear, nor did it correspond to what many of us had imagined.
Maybe Taichi did not grow up to be a confident and fearless leader. Maybe the 02 kids did not stay best friends forever. Maybe Takeru and Hikari are bad friends. Maybe Yamato and Sora did not start dating at 14 and stayed together all their lives. Maybe Jou’s doubts about his future and his priorities weren’t completely resolved when he was 12. Maybe the Chosen Children go back and forth in their development and continue to be imperfect and forget what they learnt. Maybe being an adult Chosen Child isn’t all sunshine and roses. Maybe Homeostasis is actually not a friend. Maybe the human world doesn’t embrace the digimon. Maybe sometimes you have to kill a partner, and it won’t be reborn. Maybe humans can die even though you never really did anything truly wrong. Maybe the kids’ troubles are never going to end completely.
Again, I think this may have been a deliberate answer in order to emphasise the themes of the series, and the rough path to adulthood. You can’t always get what you want. It doesn’t make tri. a “dark” show, but it does show that they aren’t interested in only giving viewers happy moments sprinkled with a few sad moments, to maximise nostalgia and be exactly like Adventure. Instead, they throw the audience uncomfortable ideas about the world and the characters they love. (Another reason why so many people react negatively to tri.)
To sum up, I don’t think tri. is a “desconstruction” of Adventure; it just tried to tell a more complex, ambitious story while emphasising a less-than-idealistic vision of growing up. It treats the audience as adults, expects them to do a lot of homework and it doesn’t pull any punches. However, this also means that it is much harder for it to succeed and to please everyone. In the end, each fan is going to have a different view and a different appreciation of what tri. attempted to do… and no-one is wrong or right.
#izzyizumi rambles#adventure hearts#meta#analysis#tri meta#tri analysis#tri#advs#bokura no mirai spoilers#bokura no mirai#(THANK YOU)#(as always)#(ok but seriously)#(I am. so tired)#(that said)#(I don't think Takeru and Hikari were bad friends)#(Tri actually made me like Takeru more a bit somewhat)#(finally after years a ahaaa)#(I still have a like hate relationship with him though a-ahh)#(ok but yeah)#(there was also that earlier magazine article that DID mention Hikari talked about DAISUKE and Takeru with her friends yeah)#(the Christmas article)#(so I don't think they totally forgot)#(anyhow yes otherwise)#(no one is wrong)#(but at the same time)#(I could do with a lot less negativity guys I am so tired)#(THIS FRANCHISE IS LIKE 20 YEARS OLD OVERALL)#(I also really need to find that post on Japanese storytelling again bc yeah it can often lead to 'not giving all the answers')#(but yeah Michael was still canon in that older article and interacted with Koushiro so!!)