Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Digimon Savers – episode 11

August 15, 2006 on 10:22 pm | In Digimon Savers | Comments Off

“Bring back the bond between parent and child
Evilmon’s bewitchment”

I’m not sure if a Faustian pact with a Digimon counts if you enter it unconsciously. In fact, my notes for this episode include the line “Wow, these Mephistos suck”. You get yourself some Evilmon and some Picodevimon, but they’re a bunch of morons.
That’s not to say that this is a bad episode, because this particular Digimon formula is nothing if not workable. Its use of euphemism is surprising, but there are no surprises otherwise.

Touma goes to America to research something undisclosed with a Professor Stimson. On the home front, our friend Masaru is contracted by the OLs to buy some manjuu.
Problem is that Shiratori, the man who makes manjuu, has been consumed by a gambling addiction, which is then matched by an addiction to the “Great God of Good Fortune” – the Digimon Evilmon, whose Picodevimon minions hit the road to bring great amounts of money through. Can Masaru help his friend’s father escape all of the metaphorical and literal demons befalling him?

There are several things about this episode that don’t make any sense: one can see how the Picodevimon can fix a horse race, but how do you fix a car and bike race with your digi powers? Why is it that Geogreymon is immune to the psychic attacks of Evilmon?
You see, Evilmon’s psychic attack is something along the lines of a nightmare from which its victim can never wake. Obviously this can’t literally happen to Geogreymon or we’ll lose the show, but he doesn’t even fight his way out of it, he’s all “Argh no!” and then the barrier shatters and he says “Bahaha! Just foolin’!”
That’s almost as creative as that other old story telling chestnut: “Well, somehow we managed to get out of that predicament.”

I was quite disappointed by the fact that Shiratori’s son, Koichiro, is motherless. His being motherless in and of itself is not bad, but the situation is presented as “we lost a lot of business when my mother got sick”. Sick covering “got sick and died” in this instance. Anime children have dead parents all the time. They’ve been having dead parents for a good forty years now, they don’t need to start getting sick and disappearing now.
The best parts, and by best I mean “most silly”, are the playing of “moralising music” during the parts where Masaru are telling Shiratori about the importance of being a good father, and every single part where Masaru has a scene with shots that imply “I miss my father :(“. It’s at times like these that Digimon Savers is not subtle in the slightest, but I have no complaints on that front.

I do have complaints about the fact that all of these damned Mephistophelean Digimon just get bigger to fight. Any instances where Digimon demonstrates a lack of imagination are normally cushioned by imaginative Digimon evolutions. Not so here.

The episode ends on a “cliffhanger” suggesting a revelation (“cliffhanger” quoted here because I have the next four or so episodes on my computer and can discover it whenever I feel like it). That revelation may well change Digimon Savers for the better and bring me the story that I crave. Until then, repent on your death beds, humble humans! Perhaps the Digital God will have mercy on your souls.