I'll be annoying once again, about people slandering my boy Daisuke and my favorite episode in 02.
i'll be quoting my long thread from bsky/tweeter.
The premise (of this episode) is to show how Daisuke NEEDS something to focus, or else he will be running in circles. And when he's running in circles, he's setting up to call for Hikari's attention.
"But there's times he asks her something and she just dodges by agreeing with Takeru!"
The times Daisuke asked her something, or made an attempt to be hella cool have nothing to do with her feeling awkward around *him* -- it's about *herself*. Because when you reach to Kizuna drama CD... Hikari is very vocal about what *she* wants to do. And in the same story we also get her witnessing Daisuke being so cool and himself, to the point she praises his determination and efforts to achieve his dreams.
This episode is to be a comic relief after all the heavy atmosphere from the previous chapters. To balance with the next episode, which is about Ken and Ken ONLY and it's more a feel-good ep. Daisuke is a funny character so of course a light-hearted ep like this works.
If you don't know... Digimon evolution is triggered when the digimon and partner are usually in sync -- be them in danger, or be them willing to protect someone (like Sora's case in OG Adventure, or Miyako's in ep 25) So basically Daisuke couldn't evolve V-mon AT ALL.
Another factor is the fact Daisuke had no malicious intentions -- he never wanted to "beat" Takeru, his entire focus was to impress Hikari. As far I'm concerned, wanting to impress someone does not sound mean-spirited enough to make Daisuke fill himself with negativity and thus dark evolve V-mon.
Also he legitimately apologized to V-mon, asked for the others' help and was definitely not showing such an arrogant aura. Remember that Taichi was acting weirdly in Adv'99 case? He made everyone give their food to Agumon so he could evolve. He wasn't even taking in consideration Agumon's wellbeing and feelings either.
Ken Kaiser was also arrogant, forcing Agumon into experiments, and he only managed to get MetalGreymon *because* he cheated with a gimmick. Anyway, back to the ep 22.
There's also the factor that, since Daisuke got in legit real trouble by consequences of his own shenanigans, it's quite obvious he would've evolved V-mon normally there in the end. Again, he lacks malice.
Even when facing Tortomon, he had no bad intentions. And yes, he literally meant it when he asked Tortomon about washing hands before attacking. Yes, that's Daisuke. Yes, he meant it literally. This kid really has no fear of looking pathetic sometimes.
Basically, Daisuke had no second intentions the whole episode (just acting weirdly) -- the closest to something "bad" was him intentionally making V-mon mad and then tearing the bridge. BUT, SURPRISE! The next scene is him explaining to V-mon AND APOLOGIZING!! So yeah, he's not a bad person.
To sum up, Daisuke did not dark evolve V-mon in ep 22:
- Because he had no malicious intentions with it
- He never was rude for real, or conceited
- He put himself in real danger in the process
- He wasn't in-sync with V-mon for a half episode
- Forcing your digimon to evolve only.
- Mandatory for character development
