Digimon Adventure

Digimon Adventure
Cover of the U.S DVD box-set.
デジモンアドベンチャー
(Dejimon Adobenchā)
Genre Adventure[1]
Anime film
Directed by Mamoru Hosoda
Written by Reiko Yoshida
Music by Takanori Arisawa
Studio Toei Animation
Released March 6, 1999
Runtime 20 minutes
Anime television series
Directed by Hiroyuki Kakudō
Produced by Keisuke Okuda
Written by Satoru Nishizono
Music by Takanori Arisawa
Studio Toei Animation
Licensed by
Saban Entertainment[2] (1999–2001)
BVS Entertainment (2001–2010)
Saban Brands (2012–2018)
Hasbro Studios (2018–present)
Original network Fuji TV
English network
M-Net (K-TV), Boing
Original run March 7, 1999 – March 26, 2000
Episodes 54
Anime film
Our War Game!
Directed by Mamoru Hosoda
Written by Reiko Yoshida
Music by Takanori Arisawa
Studio Toei Animation
Released March 4, 2000
Runtime 40 minutes
Anime film
Digimon: The Movie
Directed by Mamoru Hosoda
Produced by Terri-Lei O'Malley
Written by Bob Buchholz
Jeff Nimoy
Music by Udi Harpaz
Amotz Plassner
Studio Fox Kids
Toei Animation
Saban Entertainment
Released October 6, 2000
Runtime 97 minutes
Anime film
Digimon Adventure 3D:
Digimon Grand Prix!
Studio Toei Animation
Released October 3, 2009
Runtime 7 minutes
Game
Developer Prope
Publisher Namco Bandai Games
Genre RPG
Platform PlayStation Portable
Released
  • JP: January 17, 2013
Related works

Sequels:

Spin-offs:

Digimon Adventure (デジモンアドベンチャー, Dejimon Adobenchā), known as the first season of Digimon: Digital Monsters outside Japan, is a Japanese anime television series created by Akiyoshi Hongo, and produced by Toei Animation in cooperation with WiZ, Bandai and Fuji Television. It is the first anime installment in the Digimon media franchise, based on the virtual pet of the same name. The series aired in Japan from March 7, 1999 to March 26, 2000. It follows a group of children and their partners attempting to save both worlds from evil, after arriving in the "Digital World" for the first time.

An English-language version produced by Saban Entertainment aired in North America between August 1999 and June 2000. A video game adaptation of the series by Prope was released for PlayStation Portable on January 17, 2013. The series was followed by Digimon Adventure 02, which takes place a few years after the events of Adventure. For the series' 15th anniversary, a series of films taking place a few years after the events of Adventure 02, titled Digimon Adventure tri., was released from 2015 to 2018.

Plot and characters

On August 1, 1999, Taichi "Tai" Kamiya, Sora Takenouchi, Yamato "Matt" Ishida, Koushiro "Izzy" Izumi, Mimi Tachikawa, Joe Kido and Takeru "T.K." Takaishi, are gathered together at summer camp. As they discover the petals of snow falling in the middle of summer, they receive a small gadget resembling a sort of gaming device. The children are transported through a portal, and into a strange digital dimension known as the "Digital World". They each befriend one of its inhabitants, known as Digimon (Digital Monsters). The Kids also discover their devices are called Digivices, which are needed for their partner Digimon to digivolve into stronger forms and combat enemies.[3]

On File Island, Tai and his friends discover that they are "DigiDestined", who are meant to save the Digital World. When Devimon separates the island into pieces and Tai from his friends, they reunite themselves and defeat Devimon, restoring the island to normal. Gennai contacts and informs the DigiDestined that they should travel to the Server Continent, in order to retrieve artifacts called Crests, which will make their Digimon partners Digivolve into even stronger forms. As the Kids retrieve their Crests, they confront another Digimon, called Etemon. When Tai defeats him, he ends up returning to the human world and is reunited with his sister Kari, who was unable to join them at camp and discovers that only a few minutes have passed since they left. When Tai receives a message from the Digital World, he leaves Kari behind, unaware that an eighth Digivice is in their home.

Tai and Agumon return to the Digital World, and learn that his friends were separated again and tormented by Myotismon, who attempts to prevent them from using the power of their Crests. After Tai reunites with his friends, they learn that Myotismon is searching for the eighth DigiDestined in the human world. There, Tai learns that the eighth child is Kari, who is partnered with Gatomon. As Tai and his friends unite themselves, Kari gains her Crest. When Myotismon reveals his true form, Agumon and Gabumon achieve Mega forms, in order to defeat him.

Tai and his friends return to the Digital World, when they discover that the human and Digital Worlds are connected. They learn that the Dark Masters are the ones devastating their world and have created Spiral Mountain. The DigiDestined defeat one enemy at a time, slowly freeing the Digital World and destroying each piece of Spiral Mountain. During their journey, they learn that they were chosen after witnessing a fight between two Digimon in the human world four years ago. An argument between Tai and Matt causes them and their friends to go separate ways. The remaining members continue to defeat the other Dark Masters and other enemies. However, they reunite themselves once again. After defeating Piedmon, The DigiDestined confront Apocalymon, who attempts to destroy both worlds. The DigiDestined use their crest power, in order to destroy Apocalymon. With the Digital World restored, Tai and his friends leave their Digimon partners behind.

Development

In 1999, a short film based on the virtual pets called Digimon Adventure was released. However, shortly after the film's storyboard was completed in 1998, producers at Toei Animation were requested to turn it into a television series.

The DigiDestined's character designs were created by Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru. The staff had decided to name the characters based on kanji that related to luck.[4] For the original Japanese version of Digimon Adventure, all music was composed by Arisawa Takanori who was best known for his compositions for the Sailor Moon franchise and Galaxy Fräulein Yuna. In addition to composing original music for Digimon Adventure, Arisawa Takanori has also recycled and made remixed versions of several music tracks from Sailor Moon Sailor Stars.

When Saban acquired the US rights to the show, Wendee Lee, Michael Sorich and David Walsh became the voice directors. The original soundtrack of the show was replaced by music composed by Udi Harpaz and Shuki Levy. For the Saban dub, Shuki Levy recycled several music soundtracks from Starcom: The U.S. Space Force, an 1980s cartoon produced by DIC Entertainment, in addition to recycling/reworking some of the music from the Princess Sissi, Masked Rider and Spider-Man: The Animated Series TV shows.

The English version of Digimon Adventure was somewhat unusual at the time it was dubbed. Most anime dubbed in the 1990s changed the names of characters and locales for the sake of localization. In Digimon, however, most names of the DigiDestined remained unchanged or were shortened to Americanized nicknames, and almost all name references to the locations in Japan visited during the series were retained. Some Digimon names were modified into English equivalents.

In addition, the dialogues are heavily changed. While the Saban's English dub focused on being humorous, clever and funny, the original Japanese and other international versions as well as the English subtitled version of Adventure took a more serious approach.

Media

Anime

Digimon Adventure was produced by Toei Animation and ran for 54 episodes on Fuji TV in Japan between March 7, 1999 and March 26, 2000. Saban Entertainment licensed the series in North America and produced an English-language version which aired on Fox Network between August 14, 1999 and June 24, 2000. The English version featured an original soundtrack and made changes to character names, as well as edits pertaining to certain aspects such as violence to make the series more suitable for younger audiences. The series was released on DVD by Twentieth Century Fox (Saban's parent company) in 2000 and by Buena Vista Home Entertainment in 2002. A complete DVD boxset of the English dub was released by New Video Group on October 9, 2012 in the U.S[5] and was released by Madman Entertainment on June 18, 2014 in Australia.[6] Digimon Adventure and its sequel, Digimon Adventure 02, were added to the Netflix Instant Streaming service on August 3, 2013 in separate English dubbed and Japanese subtitled versions. The initial subtitles used were incomplete and contained many translation errors, and Toei has responded by gradually replacing the older subtitles with newer, more accurate tracks beginning the day of the initial series upload. The series was removed on August 1, 2015, after nearly two years on Netflix when Crunchyroll acquired streaming rights to the English dubbed versions and Funimation acquired rights to the English subtitled versions, the English dubbed version of Adventure returned to Netflix while the English subtitled version of Adventure are now exclusive to Funimation.

At an event celebrating the series' 15th anniversary on August 1, 2014, a new Digimon Adventure series, Digimon Adventure tri., was announced, scheduled to air in Spring 2015, depicting the main characters as they enter high school. The event also announced a Blu-ray Disc box of the original series, to be released in Japan on March 15, 2015.[7]

The main opening theme for all episodes aired in Japan is "Butter-Fly" by Kōji Wada. "I wish" by Ai Maeda is used as the ending theme from episodes 1—26. She also sang the ending theme titled "keep on" from episodes 27—54. The series also uses three insert songs, "brave heart" by Ayumi Miyazaki, "Seven" by Kōji Wada and "Yūki o Tsubasa ni Shite" (勇気を翼にして, "Winging the Courage") by Toshiko Fujita. For the North American version, the opening theme for all episodes is "Digimon Theme" by Paul Gordon.

Short films

Two short films based on the series were released in Japanese theaters in 1999 and 2000 respectively, with a 3D short film shown in 2009. The first two short films were combined with one of the movies from Digimon Adventure 02 and was released as Digimon: The Movie in North America.

Digimon Adventure

Digimon Adventure (デジモンアドベンチャー, Dejimon Adobenchā) is the first Digimon short film. It was released in Japan on March 6, 1999, a day before the television series began airing in Japan. It was released in the United States on October 6, 2000 as the first part of Digimon: The Movie.

This film acts like a pilot episode for Digimon Adventure. The first story focused on Tai and Kari Kamiya four years before their adventure in the Digital World. It shows their first encounter with Digimon and what happened to them (as well as the other children that saw it became the other DigiDestined) when they participated in their first Digimon battle after raising a quickly growing Botamon. In the story, that Digimon hatches from a Digi-egg and eventually digivolved into Greymon to fight a Parrotmon who appeared in the city. The events from the movie were used in episodes of Digimon Adventure to explain why Tai and company became DigiDestined.

Children's War Game!

Digimon Adventure: Children's War Game! (デジモンアドベンチャー ぼくらのウォーゲーム!, Dejimon Adobenchā: Bokura no Wō Gēmu!)[8] is the second Digimon short film. It was released in Japan on March 4, 2000 and in the United States on October 6, 2000 as the second part of Digimon: The Movie.

Set a few months after the battle against Apocalymon, Izzy discovers a virus digimon on the internet, and decides to get help from Tai. The evil Digimon initially defeats Agumon and Tentomon by Digivolving to his higher levels rapidly, but a second confrontation sees Diaboromon pummeled by WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon. However Tai's internet connection becomes flooded with emails from various children across the world, causing WarGreymon to freeze at a critical moment, allowing Diaboromon to defeat both Digimon and escape. Diaboromon then begins to copy himself rapidly, and infiltrates the American military to fire missiles at the neighborhood of the Japanese Digidestined. Wargreymon and Metalgarurumon chase the copies of Diaboromon to another part of the internet, hoping to locate and destroy the original, as the copies will perish and the nuclear strike will stop. However, the two Digimon are hopelessly outnumbered and are almost killed by the repeated attacks of the many copies. Tai and Matt, desperate to help their partners, actually phase into the Internet and miraculously revive them. The hope of the many emails of the Kids watching the battle causes both Digimon to merge, evolving into Omnimon, one of the most powerful entities of the Digital World. Omnimon quickly obliterates the copies, but the original proves too fast to hit, until Izzy comes up with the idea to redirect the Kids' e-mails to slow Diaboromon down to a crawl, allowing Omnimon to finish him off seconds before the missiles hit. As the crisis ends, the ICBM aimed at Japan deactivates and lands harmlessly in Tokyo Bay.

Our War Game! appears to be inspired by the 1983 film, WarGames and later served as the inspiration for director Mamoru Hosoda's film Summer Wars.

Digimon Adventure 3D: Digimon Grand Prix!

A stereoscopic 3D short film, Digimon Adventure 3D: Digimon Grand Prix! (デジモンアドベンチャー3D デジモングランプリ!, Dejimon Adobenchā: Dejimon Guran Puri), was shown at Toei Animation Festival on October 3, 2009 and was later included on a set of DVD works released on February 21, 2010.

Films

Digimon: The Movie

Digimon: The Movie is an English-language movie released in North America by 20th Century Fox on October 6, 2000. The movie edits together both Digimon Adventure short films as well as the Digimon Adventure 02 movie Digimon Hurricane Landing!! / Transcendent Evolution!! The Golden Digimentals, editing some scenes and story details to form one story.

Manga and comics

Digimon: Digital Monsters
Cover of issue #1
Publication information
Publisher Dark Horse Comics
Schedule monthly
Format Limited series
Genre Comedy-drama, Fantasy
Publication date May 2000 – November 2000
No. of issues 12[9]
Creative team
Written by Daniel Horn, Ryan Hill
Artist(s) Daniel Horn, Cara L. Niece
Colorist(s) Zachary

A manga adaptation illustrated by Yu Yuen Wong was published in five volumes. Tokyopop published the series in English. In North America, a comic book adaptation of the Devimon arc was published by Dark Horse Comics between May and November 2000.

Light novels

Hiro Masaki, one of the screenwriters of Digimon Adventure, co-wrote a novelization of Digimon Adventure with series director Hiroyuki Kakudō.[10] The light novels were separated into three parts.

Drama CDs

A series of mini-drama CDs were released throughout the run of Digimon Adventure and included supplementary audio dramas that did not influence the television show's plot. In addition to this, character image songs for the main DigiDestined were included. The first drama CD was released on November 5, 1999, followed by two more releases on December 3, 1999, and January 7, 2000. A final drama CD, titled Digimon Adventure: Original Story: 2 and a Half Year Break was released in 2003.

Video games

Characters and Digimon from Adventure appear throughout many video games based on the franchise, such as Digimon Rumble Arena.

An RPG based on the original storyline of Adventure developed by Prope and published by Namco Bandai Games, also title Digimon Adventure, was released for the PlayStation Portable on January 17, 2013, part of the line-up of video games of the 15th anniversary celebration of the franchise.[11][12] The game covers the entire series as well as the second Japanese movie, Bokura no War Game, and sees the return of all the main voice actors.[13] The game also features original story elements and an unlockable dungeon mode featuring the protagonists of the other anime series in the franchise.[14]

Reception

On its initial release,[15] the series found a rather large success in the United States.

There was some initial suspicion among American viewers that Digimon was a Pokémon rip-off that was meant to cash in on that show's success. However, audiences eventually noticed some notable differences with the Pokémon TV series: characters that grew up and aged during the course of the story, a more real-world setting, realistic character interaction and development, and more complicated stories with distinct science fiction and societal themes. The English dub gradually improved as well, making fewer and fewer alterations to the Japanese original by later episodes. As a result, many young viewers who quickly outgrew the simplistic Pokémon TV series, with its never-aging characters and repetitive story structures, migrated to Digimon instead.[16]

On Anime News Network, Luke Carroll gave the Digimon: Digital Monsters - Collection 2 DVD an overall grade of D+.[17]

References

  1. ↑ "Digimon: Digital Monsters Season 1 Collection". Madman Entertainment. Archived from the original on August 22, 2014. Retrieved January 20, 2018.
  2. ↑ Lazarus, George (March 8, 2000). "Digesting Latest Promotion For Kids: Digimon". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2010-09-03.
  3. ↑ http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/description/random052/00699210.html
  4. ↑ "Memories of Our Digimon Adventure, Part 6". Digital Scratch. Archived from the original on 2011-10-11. Retrieved 2016-10-18.
  5. ↑ "New Video Group to Release Digimon Adventure Season 1 on DVD". Anime News Network. 2012-08-02. Retrieved 2012-10-19.
  6. ↑ "Digimon: Digital Monsters Season 1 Collection". Madman.com.au. 2014-06-18. Retrieved 2015-05-29.
  7. ↑ "Digimon Adventure Anime Returns Next Spring in High School Sequel - News". Anime News Network. Retrieved 2014-08-01.
  8. ↑ "「デジモンアドベンチャー ぼくらのウォーゲーム！」がYouTubeで配信中　4月16日までの期間限定". ITmedia (in Japanese). 2018-03-22. Retrieved 2018-10-08.
  9. ↑ "Digimon" DarkHorse.com
  10. ↑ Kakudou, Hiroyuki; Hiro Masaki (2001). Shōsetsu Digimon Adventure: Ima Bōken ga Hajimaru. Tokyo: Shueisha. p. 260. ISBN 978-4-08-630029-2.
  11. ↑ "Sonic Creator's Prope Studio Develops Digimon Adventure RPG". Anime News Network. 2012-08-22. Retrieved 2012-10-19.
  12. ↑ Gil, Andrea (2012-10-19). "Prope's Digimon Adventure finally got a release date". TSSZ News. Retrieved 2012-11-23.
  13. ↑ "Digimon Adventure PSP to Cover All Episodes, 2nd Film". Anime News Network. 2012-10-18. Retrieved 2012-10-19.
  14. ↑ "Digimon Adventure PSP Game's 4-Minute Promo Streamed". Anime News Network. 2012-11-19. Retrieved 2012-11-23.
  15. ↑ "Digimon Adventure: Volume 1 : DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video". Dvdtalk.com. Retrieved 2015-05-29.
  16. ↑ Camp, Brian and Julie Davis. Anime Classics Zettai!: 100 Must-See Japanese Animation Masterpieces. 2007. p.106.
  17. ↑ Luke Carroll (February 12, 2012). "Digimon: Digital Monsters - Collection 2 DVD". Anime News Network. Retrieved November 11, 2014.
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