A bunch of interesting stuff happened in this episode but the more I think about it the less seems interesting in a particularly positive or fulfilling way.
The elephant in the room occupied by this episode was no doubt the animation which was several steps down from where it used to be in the first few episodes. The previews already showed this so it wasn't a surprise, but it not being surprising doesn't really make it any better.
Plenty of shots that looked like cardboard cutouts shifting and floating, but thanks to modern filtering, warping and easing effects it's at least not as bad as when it happened in 1999.
The only visually impressive parts of the episode were some of the nice detailed backgrounds and Agumon's evolution sequence.
It is just a shame that it was Birdramon's introduction episode that was hit with such a quality drop, as the opening showcased just how neat and stylish her fiery wings look when animated fluidly and with enough detail and now in the actual episode... not much of this to be seen. It wouldn't have been nearly as distracting if it happened to Ikkakumon for example.
With COVID I guess there's reasons not to be too nitpicky about production values but still, let's hope that the animation recovers to its former glory over the next few episodes, or at least in time for the first more major battles.
Anyway, onto the content of the episode...
As an introductory adventure it was mostly alright.
And I know what everyone is thinking: It doesn't really make sense that Sora would just happen to have all that gear with her from a normal shopping trip. Gloves, binoculars, knives saws, lighters, rope, those are all tools that can be used to stalk, kidnap and kill a person, so clearly either Sora or her parents are secretly serial killers in this continuity, getting ready to hunt down their next victim! There's even a soft hat could be stuffed in their captives' mouth to muffle their terrified screams.
Jokes aside, I am still not sure how much they wanted to associate the whole emergency supply situation with Sora's character in general. To be precise I do not believe that we are meant to think that that Sora routinely shops for such things.
After all Tokyo is facing massive spreading power outages and especially since this was brought up shortly before the raft scene I think the implication was that she was buying emergency supplies in anticipation of those impending blackouts and not just for fun, which would fit better with her caring character.
It still doesn't really add up because much of the stuff she bought, the rope, the weird flip-saw, binoculars would be that directly helpful for a power outage.
For this problem too there is an obvious solution; I mean whose imagination would go nuts upon hearing something about "power outages" and "emergency" and who would just run out and accumulate a bunch of less than helpful "supplies"? A 10 year old would. At that point in development there's not much of a sense of specific priorities or preparation for complex future events.
When I was that age I believed my life would be drastically improved by fake sunglasses with rear-view mirrors.
And honestly going from "what do you need to survive without electricity for some time" to "what do you need to survive in complete uncivilised wilderness" is exactly the sort of wild association that a child would come up with.
This is still not exactly satisfactory.
One reason is based on practicality, because it still seems off that her parents would just let her run out with god knows how much money to buy all that stuff.
The other reason is more abstract: It doesn't feel right to present an argument explaining something as a logical consequence of a childish thought process if for the rest of the episode the characters don't behave especially child-like.
Like being oddly composed for someone who just ended up in a monster filled wilderness (and it shouldn't make that much of a different if they are actual dinosaurs or not). Basically this interpretation would require Sora to be more involved/upset about the power outages in the human world than she is shown to be about the actual monster adventure part.
I feel the episode kind of tried to address this with Taichi's "no time to think" line but it still ended up feeling very lazy.
Speaking of unreasonable behavior, I am running out of patience seeing Taichi basically jumping at every single enemy Digimon (even magically summoning whacking stick), as if he he had much of a chance. It was semi believable with the Algomon because they were tiny squishy baby jellyfish, but not with Adult level Digimon.
I am technically all for Tamers being less passive but if it ends up making them seem like complete idiots without any sense of self-preservation (while miracolously getting away unhurt every time) then that is not solving anything. That is simply exchanging something that was slightly annoying at most for something that feels absolutely dumb.
So yeah, much of the characters' behavior this episode seemed generally unconvincing.
This is the sort of thing that I will never accept, but I can endure it if there's other interesting things happening around it.
Does the new Adventure offer enough interesting distractions? For now it does. The background story of the chosen children and their Digimon getting a bigger spotlight in episode 5 rather than episode 45 could change up the dynamic of the story considerably.
I also wonder how they will handle the story with the characters starting split off from one another rather than together. Sure the original split them up into groups as well but it is a very different kind of story when the characters aim to assemble again versus the team never really having assembled in the first place.
I also do hope that we'll continue to see characters in configurations that the original did not really show. For example for all the *cough cough* fandom drama about Sora and Taichi we really never got episodes like this one that focused on them as a duo.
So in that spirit I'm hoping for the next few episodes to bring Jou together with Koushiro and Mimi together with Yamato as opposed to the other permutations which we have already seen (this still leaves Takeru and Hikari with each other but those two will probably join the party later anyway and under weirder circumstances).
I would also love for the next episode to step back in time at first and show us how Koushiro actually met Tentomon before getting to the part in Whamon's stomach, because Tentomon's introduction in this episode was rather abrupt.
And lastly, a note about the Soundtrack:
With the first few episodes being an almost-autonomous intro "package" I was hoping that the limited range of the soundtrack was indicative of thematic focus as well. With just a few active characters introduced, in a limited setting fighting one enemy, keeping the music as tight and focused as the action felt appropriate.
But now with the story shifting gears, into full adventure mode in the Digital World and the introduction of more characters I was hoping that just like the setting the music would open up in terms of variety, introducing more themes showing off more styles.
But so far the entire soundtrack is stubbornly structured around just a few simple musical themes, with the same standard string orchestration and sometimes a few electronic moments. And I am starting to get a bit annoyed at that.
In a way it reminds me (mostly structurally of course) of the score of "Interstellar", where there's also just a handful of core motifs performed with specific instruments that are reused in various combinations and various intensities throughout the whole score. The difference is that the interstellar score only needed to "fill" one movie and not 50 episodes of material.
It's still early, and there's plenty of time but I really hope there'll be some more musical variety soon.
I also didn't care one bit about the new Evolution song. Completely generic J-pop which doesn't appeal to me at all. I can't remember if Appmon had any insert songs but if it did have them they must have been as generic as this one in order for me to completely forget about them, and I'll probably have forgotten about "Be the winners" by next week as well.
