16th Anniversary of X-Evolution

[MarcFBR]

It's January 3rd in Japan, so today is the 16th Anniversary of when X-Evolution aired on television!

(Various text below has been used in prior anniversary articles.)


X-Evolution was based on Digimon Chronicle, the mini comic included with the Digimon Pendulum X V-Pets. It's an abridged and altered version of that story, with the most notable change being the removal of any human characters, which is still reasonably rare in Digimon stories.

Originally announced as a full length feature, a press release re-announced it as a TV special a little more than a month before it aired, with only some of the initially announced merchandise.


X-Evolution was directed by Hiroyuki Kakudou, well known to Digimon fans as the director of Adventure and 02.

The screenplay is credited to two writers:
Kazunori Ito, who worked on Dirty Pair, Ghost in the Shell, .hack, Patlabor, Urusei Yatsura, and a number of other well known franchises.
Miu Kawasaki, who worked on .hack (including various novels for the franchise) and Air Master.

Imagi animated X-Evo during their early upswing and it ended up being one of the few bigger projects they did that ended up being released.


While X-Evolution came and went reasonably quickly, it did end up getting a DVD later in 2005, some elements were used in Digimon World 4 (released as Digimon World X in Japan a couple days after X-Evo came out), and while various announced toys didn't ever appear after their initial announcement in a press release, the Digitalize Booster Pack for the Digimon card game had a large number of cards featuring characters from the movie (using their movie CGI renders), and Alphamon continues to get new products with X-Evolution branding (a big one being the Digivolving Spirits figure.)

In addition, Digimon Chronicle, which X-Evolution was based on, got a sequel story to tie into the Digimon X V-Pets.


Last year X-Evolution streamed as part of DigiFes 2020 Online. As promotional fodder for that, we finally got a good high quality version of the poster art (embedded above.) Towards the end of 2020 we also got a teaser for an Alphamon Ouryuken Figuarts, which hopefully we will get more info on soon.



So despite coming and going itself relatively quickly, elements of X-Evolution still pop up a decent amount.

 

[Yamato-san]

Probably should've also mentioned how almost all of the featured Digimon had their voice actors from the various anime series reprising their roles, which was pretty awesome.

But man, crazy to think it's been this long. Anyway, I loved this movie. Characters kept escaping death in pretty cheap ways, but other than that, it was great, and I really clicked with its message about survival. It also stands out a bit in that this is one of the few Digimon stories out there in which humans aren't involved at all. Had this been a full-on series, I could see myself ranking it up their with Tamers..... though on that note, it is a bit of a shame that a single TV movie was the only thing that the X era of Digimon could muster in terms of an anime. Nevertheless, this sole piece of animation sure is an impressive one.

 

[BlankShell]

I watched this again recently (not long after the previous anniversary, I think haha) and it's... an odd movie. It's definitely one of those things that you're more invested in by knowing the franchise; feels like a bit of a missed opportunity at the time to get new fans, but oh well. It had a lot of good concepts and themes overall so it's always nice when future media draws from that well.

God I hope we hear more about the SHF Alphamon Ouryuken soon.

 

[Unknown Neo]

That was an odd movie. But it's really been that long? Huh. Well it was something. At least we got some Digimon from it.

 

[Mattman324]

though on that note, it is a bit of a shame that a single TV movie was the only thing that the X era of Digimon could muster in terms of an anime.

At least it's not as bad as the video game front, where the main thing the X Digimon had was, well, World X.

 

[Sparrow Hawk]

16th anniversary huh. In old discussions, like people said, I loved this movie for not involving with humans. 100% Digimon.

 

[Yamato-san]

though on that note, it is a bit of a shame that a single TV movie was the only thing that the X era of Digimon could muster in terms of an anime.

At least it's not as bad as the video game front, where the main thing the X Digimon had was, well, World X.

I honestly liked World X. It's grindy as hell, sure, but I got some enjoyment out of collecting a set of visually diverse weapons and training up my Digimon to be able to use them (though I guess it was intended more for multi-player).

 

[DigitalJex]

I love this movie for being a self-contained digimon story without human involvement. I wish they made more stand alone movies that covered DigiWorld history/lore

 

[Mattman324]

a set of visually diverse weapons

If the diversity in weapons or Digimon was more than skin deep World X might have actually been a good game. But I'm pretty sure the only weapons that played notably differently in that game were the guns, and they all played the same too. Which meant that not only was the game exceedingly grindy, but it was also even more repetitive than any other game in the franchise, which is bad when it's taking number 1 in a franchise long known for grindy and repetitive games.

And either way, the point is that it's the only game X-Evo got, which is a really bad look unfortunately. You'd think they'd throw in at least a few X Digimon in other games, they're just slight model edits for a number of them.

 

[Yamato-san]

If the diversity in weapons or Digimon was more than skin deep World X might have actually been a good game.

Honestly, I'll take that as a compliment. I'm just sick of the amount of people writing off the game as if it's deserving of being put on the same level as infamously glitchy, unplayable messes.