I'm probably procrastinating with JRPGs right now

A translation of a series of articles posted on the Digimon Partners website between February 2022 and October 2023, detailing information about Digimon animation production and planning, especially in regards to Digimon Adventure, Digimon Adventure 02, and Digimon Adventure 02 THE BEGINNING. All of them were written by Eri Shimomura, producer for THE BEGINNING.

As of this writing, updates for the series seem to have stalled, so I have posted all of the available parts released up until now and may update the post retroactively if more appear.

(Original title: “Interview with the creator of our promotional art: An Interview with the Design Room”)

A translation of two interviews posted on the Digimon Partners website on April 27 and May 2, 2023 respectively with promotional illustration producer Asako Tsukahara, regarding production behind promotional and merchandise art for Digimon Ghost Game and Digimon Frontier‘s 20th anniversary.

Translation of an interview from the April 2022 issue of V-Jump with Digimon Ghost Game director Masatoshi Chioka, with assorted questions about the series.

(Full title: “Digimon Ghost Game broadcast commemoration special project: Interview project with series director Masatoshi Chioka-san!”)

A translation of an interview posted on the Digimon Partners website on November 14, 2021 with Digimon Ghost Game director Masatoshi Chioka, featuring responses to user-submitted questions.

Since Digimon Ghost Game is heavily advertising itself as being “1話完結” (episodic), I wanted to clarify what this means to avoid confusion. Literally, the term is “a resolution per episode”, meaning that some kind of subplot must begin and end within each episode without being overly dependent on having seen the prior ones. The term is usually brought up in the context of accessibility, because it means new viewers can easily jump in midway or miss an episode without getting too lost. However, this does not mean that there can’t be an overarching plotline or buildup in the background; it simply means that immediate subplots cannot be overly reliant on it to the point it’s difficult to follow.

Some examples of series that have been described with this format include:

As you can see, this is already a very common format for Western TV shows, and is mainly considered less so for Japanese anime; however, even Digimon has had series or large portions of series that have informally been considered to follow this format. Ghost Game distinguishes itself in terms of prominently advertising itself this way, presumably to encourage people to not be intimidated by it, but it’s not particularly new for this franchise.

(Full title: “Interview with Hiro Amanokawa’s voice actress Mutsumi Tamura-san and Gammamon’s voice actress Miyuki Sawashiro-san from TV anime Digimon Ghost Game: What are the innovations and charm points of this series, according to these two?”)

A translation of this Animate Times article from October 2, 2021, featuring an interview with voice actresses Musumi Tamura (Hiro) and Miyuki Sawashiro (Gammamon) about their work in Digimon Ghost Game.

A translation of an interview from the November 2021 issue of V-Jump, with Digimon Ghost Game series director Masatoshi Chioka regarding the series.

A translation of the comments for Digimon Ghost Game included with the press release on its website from September 10, 2021, from voice actors Mutsumi Tamura (Hiro Amanokawa), Miyuki Sawashiro (Gammamon), Yuu Kobayashi (Ruri Tsukiyono), Kazuya Nakai (Angoramon), Akira Ishida (Kiyoshirou Higashimitarai), and Yuu Shimamura (Jellymon).

Since Masatoshi Chioka was announced to be a director for Ghost Game, I'm bringing back this amusing old incident involving him for fun. (This incident has a joke referring to it in the next-episode preview at the end of Adventure 02's episode 16.)