Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Digimon Savers – episode 13

“Masaru’s New Power
Evolve, Rise Greymon”

Let’s go to the Digital World! With this sort of declaration made at the end of an episode, you can tell that we’re about to head into the next stage of the story.

The story that we get here is a little girl’s impassioned plea for peace, and several traditional story devices.

Where is the creator?

Spoilers

Piyomon attacks Mercurimon and is reduced to digitama form. He rehatches with a desperate need to find Chika, but a blindness to the realities around him. As Piyomon continues to digivolve, Masaru decides to solve all of the problems the only way that he knows how.

I’ll start by discussing the abortive part of this episode: Chief Hashiba, of confidentiality services, comes onto the scene to shut down DATS. For some reason, DATS is allowed to continue operating and gets its closure cancelled because they demonstrate just how hard they rock for the benefit of Hashiba. Or humanity. Whichever is better.

Hashiba was an unnecessary complication in an episode that should be about the classic story of someone with one vague memory existing only to follow it but no longer comprehending it. That was the twist of one series that I grew to love (for obvious reasons, I will not disclose which series that was here), and I could feel that to an extent in this episode, without as much emotional pull as would exist in an entire series, or a movie, devoted to the concept.

Digimon morality gets a bizarre workout in the form of Masaru realising that he is not the strongest man in the world. He grows emotionally, which somehow also makes his power to beat things up rise exponentially.
So, I’ll get this straight for you:

Realisation that you cannot use your fists to solve all of your problems = Realisation of reserve of inner strength based on emotion that allows you to strengthen your fists and solve all of your problems.

Yeah, I wish I was stronger too.

With the preview revealing that Ikuto is a boy, I can no longer subscribe to the idea that Ikuto is Masaru’s father. My other hunch was that Mercurimon, seeing as he has a human face hiding inside that mask, might be Masaru’s father. I suspect this might be revealed before too long, so I should really stop speculating so hard.
Still, Digimon Savers: good stuff.