I was a winner as well. Here's my entry:
I recently watched Adventure all the way through for the first time since its original air date, and I was impressed and moved at the quality of the writing in the original Japanese and in the English dub- it was definitely an affirmation of my love for the series. So, after finishing Adventure, I wondered what I should do next. I could either watch Adventure 02 again or opt to skip right over it and go straight to my favorite series, Tamers. After some deliberation, I decided to start 02 simply because I wanted some more time with the original 8 children; I wasn't ready to move on. I must admit, though, that my favorite thing about the show other than the characters was picking out the differences in the art styles between episodes, and that was mostly what I was thinking about when I started 02.
Allow me to explain: Adventure was done by a few different teams of animators. I can't say for sure who animated it or where it was done other than the in-house team at Toei Animation, but it's pretty clear just from watching all of the episodes back-to-back that they were done by different people. The episodes animated by Toei themselves, for example, feature much more noticeable noses and very curvy faces. Another very frequent style, and my favorite of them, has very small noses- in some shots the kids don't even have them- and very round faces. Yet another style I noticed features very sloppy, almost American-looking characters comparable to 80s cartoons like Ninja Turtles. It's also noticeable that plot-heavy episodes have more attention to detail. The differences are subtle, but they exist, and they're there for anyone to see.
So, after noticing all that, it became a game to me to see which style was used in each episode, and when I started 02, I started playing the same game. Right off the bat it's clear that the budget was increased ever-so-slightly- you can tell because the Toei style is used in more episodes, and in-house animators at Toei cost more than the outsourced teams that worked on so much of Adventure. This means that my favorite animation style, the round no-nose style, is gone- which was quite a bummer to see. However, it was still fun to see the slight change in styles between series because the changes tell so much about the success and status of the show. Adventure was, of course, hugely successful, and you can tell when you look at the animation in 02- it looks more like other Toei productions like Dragonball and Sailor Moon in style, as if Toei had grown proud to have Digimon on its portfolio and worked harder to make it really shine. There is also less reliance in general on computer effects, and when CGI is used, it looks miles ahead of the poor effects sometimes used in the first series.
These differences may be minor to everyone else, but to me, the art tells all about the show- links it to its history, makes it clear which episodes were big events when they came out- and links Adventure and 02 together in a way that even their connected stories can't do. The ways the two are drawn tell a story about how they're related in a way that transcends the shows themselves and enters real life- so, to me, Adventure and 02 are connected most strongly by their art styles.
