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It's an adventure to big for television!
Something SPECIAL for Odaiba Memoria/Digimon Day! It's time for a breakdown and scans of something that goes back a number of years... the original DVD release of Digimon the Movie!
I won't be reviewing the film itself that much, as everyone has their own strong and built over years opinion on it, but I thought it'd be good to archive elements of the release itself.
But a little bit...
The movie came a bit early into the run of Season 2 in the US (in fact, if you saw it opening day, Raidramon showed up in the film even though he was introduced in the show the next day.)
The movie is a composite film of the original Digimon Adventure film, Children's War Game, and Hurricane Touchdown. So you get a portion that's before season 1, a portion inbetween season 1 and 2, and then the last part is 'during' season 2.
And an Angela Anaconda short about them going to see the Digimon the Movie... The most amusing part of that one is that Jeff Nimoy directed the film, and they seemed to have inserted it without him knowing... he's mentioned first knowing about it when he saw it at the premiere.
Sections 1 and 2 largely retain their original plots from the Japanese release (while rewritten heavily), along with some mild bridging material inserted to make it relate to section 3, along with some narration elements from Kari. The third section, was chopped down heavily, removing an entire subplot (likely to it's advantage, as the original sort of forgot to finish it.)
It has many flaws, but it's still fun to watch. I recommend ordering a pizza, watch it with a friend or two and just have a laugh.
This was purchased as new old stock of the original US DVD release of the movie from February 6th, 2001. This was 5 months after the release in US theaters on October 6th, 2000.
Any screencaps from the DVD are lossless PNGs that have been aspect ratio corrected.
Most images in the article are smaller copies from our gallery (to keep loading sizes smaller for everyone), but link to the full sized versions when clicked.
Scanning was done at a high quality, and compressed and shrunk to reasonable sizes, along with reasonable quality JPG compression. I've explained my workflow in my personal thread and will answer any questions involving it or the processes used.
First up will be the physical stuff.
The front cover is the front size of the case insert and uses the well known (and confusing.. and mocked, and yet somewhat beloved) poster artwork for the movie with a few notable changes, included but not limited to... the Season 1 kids 'tiles' being gone, Magnamon being increased in size by quite a bit, both angels being shrunk, and the one that always bothered me... removing the bottom half of the Digivice where it said 'The Movie' to replace it with a slightly bigger 'The Movie' text. Not to mention that Omnimon fella has been removed.
Text also identifies it as a feature length film.
The back cover has always been another oddity. It connects it to Toei by mentioning DBZ and Sailor Moon... then you get a description that is almost entirely based around the 2nd portion (Children's War Game), but with a touch at the end from the 3rd (Hurricane Touchdown), but the bit from the 3rd film wasn't used in the dub.
The screenshots to the side stick with the Hurricane Touchdown theme, but they aren't shots from the movie... they were pseudo-screenshots that were used in a few areas of the Japanese release, but use the style of the TV show rather than the movie.
Bonus features are identified on the back, and this was early enough for DVDs when a screenshot of the menu was worth showing. This section also includes any relevant technical details. They miss a subtitle track though...
Oh, and the movie is a few seconds under 89 minutes, but the back says 83.
Because I could scan it flat since the entire thing was an insert, we also have the spine of the insert. This just continues the gradient from the front of the case. It includes the Fox Kids logo, the DVD-Video logo, and the 'original' final version of the Digimon the Movie logo.
The DVD also comes with a small unfoldable insert inside the case
The front appears to be the standard poster image (with a digital green border theme), with a few slight changes. The most notable is the lack of all the various advertising text (minus the Fox Kids presents.)
The image also looks like it might have 'some' elements squished a bit, as the characters don't appear to be quite as tall as they were on the poster.
Although much of the above doesn't description doesn't matter for one reason... everything has also been moved around a little bit, which feels a bit odd (if you are looking at the theatrical poster, the easiest way to notice is how elements have been moved around regarding Magnamon covering up, or being covered up, by various things.)
The back uses the gradient/energy wave theme again, and uses the original movie logo. A proof of purchase is also included.
And it unfolds to reveal.... a plot description 'and' a chapter listing. This was certainly the height of luxury for a DVD almost 20 years ago.
The inside drops the movie gradient/energy themeing, but keeps the green border, and moves the overall theme something closer to the elements that were used for the show. The description is the same as that on the back of the box.
We also get screenshots again, one from each of the 3 portions. And this time it appears they are all, in fact, screenshots from the film itself. Classy.
The DVD itself goes with the green theme.
The disc just uses the green pattern and again, the original, Digimon the Movie logo, along with any necessary text and logos.
And there is a physical extra...
A poster! It's folded in the case and uses the cover version of the poster art (with updated logo and no tiles or Omnimon.) Due to being less vertical than a DVD case, they've oriented it slightly less vertically (Magnamon ends up covering more of the bottom of the logo, etc.)
Of course, sitting in a DVD case folded for nearly 20 years left the seams very visible.
I didn't have the time to remove them, but luckily my friend Logan did.
And he did a great job I'm sure. But then he made a key mistake that anyone who works in Photoshop with scanned assets has done... autosave was turned on with an ultra high resolution PNG, which caused issues (I believe it froze his ability to do work for roughly an hour or so, and then the work was lost) and then he had to rush through and redo it.
It still looks great, but probably not as good as what he originally did with more time. We may go back and clean it up a bit later though.
And that's it for the physical... onto the disc contents itself!
The video is encoded using MPEG2 at 480p with an average bitrate of roughly 8.2 Mbps. Considering the age I was expecting a dumpster fire, but the bitrate is actually 'very' high for a DVD, and the overall video quality is oddly very good for the era and holds up oddly well for legacy DVD content.
The DVD is encoded at 30fps, but the pulldown was done properly, and any player should be able to reverse the pulldown to get clean 24fps playback. (That and progressive wasn't always a guarantee for movie DVDs back then...)
Digimon the Movie on DVD looks... good?
There are some issues, the most obvious being the film is cropped and pan and scanned to 4:3. While it happened a lot back then, it's still insanely disappointing.
The video also has a tendency to jitter around. Again, not abnormal for the era, but getting more used to modern film scans, and digital animation, this doesn't tend to happen as much anymore (this was in fact an issue with the Japanese Blu-rays of the various Digimon movies to some degree, especially Children's War Game, as many of them used old film scans.)
It includes 2 audio tracks. English Dolby 5.1 at 448k, and English Dolby 2.0 at 192k.
The audio quality is overall pretty good and standard for the time. Many DVDs now still use roughly similiar settings.
2 Caption tracks are included, English and Spanish.
The DVD menu is a bit flashy and over-designed for my tastes, but this was common in the era as DVDs became more popular. Using pixel art on the main menu was a nice touch, but with yellow used as part of the theme it isn't 'quite' as visible as it could be. The main menu is completely dedicated to the third portion of the movie.
The DVD submenus aren't bad, but stuff like the chapter menu has to many places to click to make navigation easy. Each page gets 4 chapters, and there are 5 pages total. The chapters themselves are laid out in a square, but the chapter names are vertical. I like the images, but it feels like a bit much (especially with the slightly angled text, etc.)
The Language and Extras menu feels a bit more usable. They have less oevrall things to see, and return to using pixel art like the main menu.
Time for the extras!
We get 2 extras.
First up is the theatrical trailer for the film. The trailer is basically 'just' for the Children's War Game portion and is narrated by the king of movie trailers, Don LaFontaine. The video and audio is fine, perhaps a touch less cleaned up video than the film itself.
The other extra is an animated music video for Len's version of Kids in America which was heavily connected to the film. The video quality for the music video is hell. It looks like it was 240i, scaled up to 480p, then interlaced 'again' to 480i. Or maybe it was just 240p scaled up incorrectly and finished to 480i, it's hard to tell because it just... ugh.
Of note, the music video includes a handful of Digimon characters and involves the band going to see Digimon the Movie, the footage of the film when used is letterboxed widescreen.
Digimon the Movie received an interesting, but oddly competent and good DVD for the era, with more than a few aspects even holding up compared to current DVDs being released.
The lack of the Japanese originals will always be a sore spot for some people (ditto on the cropping that was normal for thee ra) but the actual encoding and work done on the release seems pretty good for the era.
I'd say the DVD team Fox had at the time did right by the movie, taking into account the standards and norms of home video production at the time.
It's kind of nice to go back and expect the technical aspects to be a tire on fire and you actually find something was actually treated right...
We can argue about different aspects of the movie and it's localization, but the overall release was done well.
The Angela Anaconda short is still pretty shit though.
Screencaps were taken largely at random while jumping around the movie. Owing to the unique way DVDs are encoded, the DVD screencaps have been adjusted lengthwise to the proper aspect ratio, as they would appear while actual watching.
Various additional screen captures are in our gallery.
The screen captures include numerous screen captures from the DVD, including various menu captures.
The scans can also be found in the gallery, along with a few additional photos of the packaging.
The scans are very small compared to the master scans I did (the work and backup folder structure for the scans and screencaps is roughly 12.8 gigs.) If you want to see a specific screencap of something give me a rough timecode if you can.
Our Odaiba Memorial/Digimon Day 2019 thread can be found here.
If you have any questions about the release feel free to ask.
Digimon the Movie was reviewed using a copy purchased at retail.
Lots of Digimon stuff is coming out soon and supporting us via our Patreon or donations would be greatly appreciated so that we can do more breakdowns and improve the site. Feel free to join us in the Discord if you want to chat about the release.
More things to come!
Images are hosted on our gallery and embedded on the forum, so let us know if anything is acting up.
A bit more to dig into the movie release if you want to, from days of long ago... Chris McFeely's old fanatics guide to the movie!
Affiliate links for Digimon items of interest on Amazon.com:
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Complete Edition for Switch
Digimon Survive for PS4
Digimon Survive for Switch
Digimon Survive for Xbox One
Digimon 20th Anniversary V-Pet
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 1 Blu-ray Combo
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 1 DVD
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 2 Blu-ray Combo
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 2 DVD
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 3 Blu-ray Combo
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 3 DVD
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 4 Blu-ray Combo
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 4 DVD
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 5 Blu-ray Combo
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 5 DVD
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 6 Blu-ray Combo
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 6 DVD
Digimon Adventure tri. Collection on Blu-ray
Digivolving Spirits WarGreymon
Digivolving Spirits MetalGarurumon
Digivolving Spirits Diablomon
Digivolving Spirits Angewomon
Digivolving Spirits Alphamon
Digivolving Spirits AtlurKabuterimon
Digivolving Spirits HolyAngemon
Digivolving Spirits BlackWarGreymon
Something SPECIAL for Odaiba Memoria/Digimon Day! It's time for a breakdown and scans of something that goes back a number of years... the original DVD release of Digimon the Movie!
I won't be reviewing the film itself that much, as everyone has their own strong and built over years opinion on it, but I thought it'd be good to archive elements of the release itself.
But a little bit...
The movie came a bit early into the run of Season 2 in the US (in fact, if you saw it opening day, Raidramon showed up in the film even though he was introduced in the show the next day.)
The movie is a composite film of the original Digimon Adventure film, Children's War Game, and Hurricane Touchdown. So you get a portion that's before season 1, a portion inbetween season 1 and 2, and then the last part is 'during' season 2.
And an Angela Anaconda short about them going to see the Digimon the Movie... The most amusing part of that one is that Jeff Nimoy directed the film, and they seemed to have inserted it without him knowing... he's mentioned first knowing about it when he saw it at the premiere.
Sections 1 and 2 largely retain their original plots from the Japanese release (while rewritten heavily), along with some mild bridging material inserted to make it relate to section 3, along with some narration elements from Kari. The third section, was chopped down heavily, removing an entire subplot (likely to it's advantage, as the original sort of forgot to finish it.)
It has many flaws, but it's still fun to watch. I recommend ordering a pizza, watch it with a friend or two and just have a laugh.
This was purchased as new old stock of the original US DVD release of the movie from February 6th, 2001. This was 5 months after the release in US theaters on October 6th, 2000.
Any screencaps from the DVD are lossless PNGs that have been aspect ratio corrected.
Most images in the article are smaller copies from our gallery (to keep loading sizes smaller for everyone), but link to the full sized versions when clicked.
Scanning was done at a high quality, and compressed and shrunk to reasonable sizes, along with reasonable quality JPG compression. I've explained my workflow in my personal thread and will answer any questions involving it or the processes used.
First up will be the physical stuff.
The front cover is the front size of the case insert and uses the well known (and confusing.. and mocked, and yet somewhat beloved) poster artwork for the movie with a few notable changes, included but not limited to... the Season 1 kids 'tiles' being gone, Magnamon being increased in size by quite a bit, both angels being shrunk, and the one that always bothered me... removing the bottom half of the Digivice where it said 'The Movie' to replace it with a slightly bigger 'The Movie' text. Not to mention that Omnimon fella has been removed.
Text also identifies it as a feature length film.
The back cover has always been another oddity. It connects it to Toei by mentioning DBZ and Sailor Moon... then you get a description that is almost entirely based around the 2nd portion (Children's War Game), but with a touch at the end from the 3rd (Hurricane Touchdown), but the bit from the 3rd film wasn't used in the dub.
The screenshots to the side stick with the Hurricane Touchdown theme, but they aren't shots from the movie... they were pseudo-screenshots that were used in a few areas of the Japanese release, but use the style of the TV show rather than the movie.
Bonus features are identified on the back, and this was early enough for DVDs when a screenshot of the menu was worth showing. This section also includes any relevant technical details. They miss a subtitle track though...
Oh, and the movie is a few seconds under 89 minutes, but the back says 83.
Because I could scan it flat since the entire thing was an insert, we also have the spine of the insert. This just continues the gradient from the front of the case. It includes the Fox Kids logo, the DVD-Video logo, and the 'original' final version of the Digimon the Movie logo.
The DVD also comes with a small unfoldable insert inside the case
The front appears to be the standard poster image (with a digital green border theme), with a few slight changes. The most notable is the lack of all the various advertising text (minus the Fox Kids presents.)
The image also looks like it might have 'some' elements squished a bit, as the characters don't appear to be quite as tall as they were on the poster.
Although much of the above doesn't description doesn't matter for one reason... everything has also been moved around a little bit, which feels a bit odd (if you are looking at the theatrical poster, the easiest way to notice is how elements have been moved around regarding Magnamon covering up, or being covered up, by various things.)
The back uses the gradient/energy wave theme again, and uses the original movie logo. A proof of purchase is also included.
And it unfolds to reveal.... a plot description 'and' a chapter listing. This was certainly the height of luxury for a DVD almost 20 years ago.
The inside drops the movie gradient/energy themeing, but keeps the green border, and moves the overall theme something closer to the elements that were used for the show. The description is the same as that on the back of the box.
We also get screenshots again, one from each of the 3 portions. And this time it appears they are all, in fact, screenshots from the film itself. Classy.
The DVD itself goes with the green theme.
The disc just uses the green pattern and again, the original, Digimon the Movie logo, along with any necessary text and logos.
And there is a physical extra...
A poster! It's folded in the case and uses the cover version of the poster art (with updated logo and no tiles or Omnimon.) Due to being less vertical than a DVD case, they've oriented it slightly less vertically (Magnamon ends up covering more of the bottom of the logo, etc.)
Of course, sitting in a DVD case folded for nearly 20 years left the seams very visible.
I didn't have the time to remove them, but luckily my friend Logan did.
And he did a great job I'm sure. But then he made a key mistake that anyone who works in Photoshop with scanned assets has done... autosave was turned on with an ultra high resolution PNG, which caused issues (I believe it froze his ability to do work for roughly an hour or so, and then the work was lost) and then he had to rush through and redo it.
It still looks great, but probably not as good as what he originally did with more time. We may go back and clean it up a bit later though.
And that's it for the physical... onto the disc contents itself!
The video is encoded using MPEG2 at 480p with an average bitrate of roughly 8.2 Mbps. Considering the age I was expecting a dumpster fire, but the bitrate is actually 'very' high for a DVD, and the overall video quality is oddly very good for the era and holds up oddly well for legacy DVD content.
The DVD is encoded at 30fps, but the pulldown was done properly, and any player should be able to reverse the pulldown to get clean 24fps playback. (That and progressive wasn't always a guarantee for movie DVDs back then...)
Digimon the Movie on DVD looks... good?
There are some issues, the most obvious being the film is cropped and pan and scanned to 4:3. While it happened a lot back then, it's still insanely disappointing.
The video also has a tendency to jitter around. Again, not abnormal for the era, but getting more used to modern film scans, and digital animation, this doesn't tend to happen as much anymore (this was in fact an issue with the Japanese Blu-rays of the various Digimon movies to some degree, especially Children's War Game, as many of them used old film scans.)
It includes 2 audio tracks. English Dolby 5.1 at 448k, and English Dolby 2.0 at 192k.
The audio quality is overall pretty good and standard for the time. Many DVDs now still use roughly similiar settings.
2 Caption tracks are included, English and Spanish.
The DVD menu is a bit flashy and over-designed for my tastes, but this was common in the era as DVDs became more popular. Using pixel art on the main menu was a nice touch, but with yellow used as part of the theme it isn't 'quite' as visible as it could be. The main menu is completely dedicated to the third portion of the movie.
The DVD submenus aren't bad, but stuff like the chapter menu has to many places to click to make navigation easy. Each page gets 4 chapters, and there are 5 pages total. The chapters themselves are laid out in a square, but the chapter names are vertical. I like the images, but it feels like a bit much (especially with the slightly angled text, etc.)
The Language and Extras menu feels a bit more usable. They have less oevrall things to see, and return to using pixel art like the main menu.
Time for the extras!
We get 2 extras.
First up is the theatrical trailer for the film. The trailer is basically 'just' for the Children's War Game portion and is narrated by the king of movie trailers, Don LaFontaine. The video and audio is fine, perhaps a touch less cleaned up video than the film itself.
The other extra is an animated music video for Len's version of Kids in America which was heavily connected to the film. The video quality for the music video is hell. It looks like it was 240i, scaled up to 480p, then interlaced 'again' to 480i. Or maybe it was just 240p scaled up incorrectly and finished to 480i, it's hard to tell because it just... ugh.
Of note, the music video includes a handful of Digimon characters and involves the band going to see Digimon the Movie, the footage of the film when used is letterboxed widescreen.
Digimon the Movie received an interesting, but oddly competent and good DVD for the era, with more than a few aspects even holding up compared to current DVDs being released.
The lack of the Japanese originals will always be a sore spot for some people (ditto on the cropping that was normal for thee ra) but the actual encoding and work done on the release seems pretty good for the era.
I'd say the DVD team Fox had at the time did right by the movie, taking into account the standards and norms of home video production at the time.
It's kind of nice to go back and expect the technical aspects to be a tire on fire and you actually find something was actually treated right...
We can argue about different aspects of the movie and it's localization, but the overall release was done well.
The Angela Anaconda short is still pretty shit though.
Screencaps were taken largely at random while jumping around the movie. Owing to the unique way DVDs are encoded, the DVD screencaps have been adjusted lengthwise to the proper aspect ratio, as they would appear while actual watching.
Various additional screen captures are in our gallery.
The screen captures include numerous screen captures from the DVD, including various menu captures.
The scans can also be found in the gallery, along with a few additional photos of the packaging.
The scans are very small compared to the master scans I did (the work and backup folder structure for the scans and screencaps is roughly 12.8 gigs.) If you want to see a specific screencap of something give me a rough timecode if you can.
Our Odaiba Memorial/Digimon Day 2019 thread can be found here.
If you have any questions about the release feel free to ask.
Digimon the Movie was reviewed using a copy purchased at retail.
Lots of Digimon stuff is coming out soon and supporting us via our Patreon or donations would be greatly appreciated so that we can do more breakdowns and improve the site. Feel free to join us in the Discord if you want to chat about the release.
More things to come!
Images are hosted on our gallery and embedded on the forum, so let us know if anything is acting up.
A bit more to dig into the movie release if you want to, from days of long ago... Chris McFeely's old fanatics guide to the movie!
Affiliate links for Digimon items of interest on Amazon.com:
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Complete Edition for Switch
Digimon Survive for PS4
Digimon Survive for Switch
Digimon Survive for Xbox One
Digimon 20th Anniversary V-Pet
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 1 Blu-ray Combo
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 1 DVD
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 2 Blu-ray Combo
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 2 DVD
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 3 Blu-ray Combo
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 3 DVD
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 4 Blu-ray Combo
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 4 DVD
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 5 Blu-ray Combo
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 5 DVD
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 6 Blu-ray Combo
Digimon Adventure tri. Part 6 DVD
Digimon Adventure tri. Collection on Blu-ray
Digivolving Spirits WarGreymon
Digivolving Spirits MetalGarurumon
Digivolving Spirits Diablomon
Digivolving Spirits Angewomon
Digivolving Spirits Alphamon
Digivolving Spirits AtlurKabuterimon
Digivolving Spirits HolyAngemon
Digivolving Spirits BlackWarGreymon
