DIGIMON BEATBREAK

Episodes 1-3

Digimon is a franchise that's been near and dear to my heart ever since kid me first laid eyes on Greymon, so I'm glad that the franchise has gone through enough of a resurgence that we're getting new anime entries semi-regularly again. While the original Digimon Adventure remains a classic, and I have a lot of nostalgia for it, one of the things I personally like the most about Digimon on the anime front is how willing it is to change up its formula with each new non-Adventure related iteration, and while some series turn out better than others, I've found something to appreciate about nearly all of them. That being said, it would be a lie if I were to say that the last few Digimon TV series weren't something of a mixed bag. Digimon Universe: App Monsters was a fun show, but felt like a bit too blatant of toy commercial compared to other entries, the Digimon Adventure 2020 reboot, focused a bit too much on action and lore at the expense of dropping the character drama that made the original version work while also being just plain boring to watch, and although I really liked Digimon Ghost Game as a piece of good horror media for kids, as an overarching story, its extremely episodic structure left a lot to be desired. With all that in mind, I suppose it only makes sense that Toei would try to go for something a little more modern in their attempts to bring new audiences into the franchise, and while it's hard to tell how successful this will be at that in the long run, I can at least say that DIGIMON BEATBREAK seems to be off to a really strong start.

The thing that stands out the most about Beatbreak so far is its setting, which has a lot of room for potential. While cyberpunk dystopias aren't exactly “fun,” they do tend to make for interesting setpieces, and Beatbreak seems to be taking full advantage of that. Even just within these first three episodes, we've got the Digimon being presented as monsters sprouted from faulty AI, scrappy bounty hunters competing with each other over capturing them, and at least a couple of potential conspiracies regarding why the government is trying to so hard to keep the existence of Digimon a secret, or why there seems to be some a cover-up after our protagonist Tomoro saw his brother hospitalized by one after the events of the first episode. There's a lot to shift through, but the show seems to be striking a good balancing between doling out new information while simultaneously setting up larger mysteries, and given that this show is set to last about a year, it's nice to see it laying out this much groundwork so quickly, and I can only hope that continues when it inevitably dips into a more established groove.

Beatbreak's cyberpunk setting also lends itself pretty well to some potential social commentary, and I'm interested in seeing exactly where the show goes with it. Digimon as a franchise has always tried to reflect our relationship with technology in one form or another, so it's nice to see this show go all in on that by setting itself in a future where society is largely managed by AI, and its potential dangers are being purposefully obscured by the government. Sure those potential dangers involve potentially having weird monsters sprouting sprouting from egg shaped digital devices, but when those egg devices are treated with the same reverence as Apple products, and seem to regulate everything from food intake to how to play music, it does seem like a mirror into where our own future could be headed if AI investment companies are allowed to keep have their way in normalizing its use. Of course, given that the Digimon themselves are AI, it's hard to know exactly how hard a stance this show will take against it, but having their existence be perceived as glitches in a supposedly perfect system rather than that of sentient life does at least imply that it'll have some things to say about the effects of its use, so I'm certainly curious to see how that plays out in future episodes.

Nice as all the world building and plot set-up is though, the real heart and soul of any good Digimon series tends to lie more on the strength of its human cast rather than its freaky little monsters, and Beatbreak seems to be doing pretty well. Tomoro feels like the right kind of protagonist for this kind of setting, as much like the Digimon, he's also seen as something of a glitch due to strange anomalies his e-Pulse causes in Sappotama devices, and that seems to have left him fairly isolated within the show's current society. This isolation also makes him a bit of an anomaly as a Digimon protagonist, as compared to the usual gung-ho or hot-blooded Digimon leads like Taichi/Tai from Digimon Adventure or Takuya from Digimon Frontier, he feels much closer in personality to their foils like Yamato/Matt or Kouji, who tend to operate more as loners that have to come around on trusting others. While this is certainly a strange departure from tradition, it's a very welcome one, since Tomoro being a lot rougher around the edges than a typical Digimon gives him a lot more room to grow, and also gives this show a lot more to work with if it's story is going to be centered around him more so than his new teammates.

This also has the added benefit of making his relationship with his new monster buddy a lot more interesting. While nearly every Digimon protagonist warms up to their partner almost immediately, Tomoro is a lot more initially distrustful of Gekkomon, and with how much of a chaotic gremlin the little guy is, the two make for a fun little odd couple. At first, a lot of Tomoro's dislike of his new companion seems to understandably from how bad his first encounter with a Digimon went, and watching him nearly force Gekkomon to kill a Digimon for attacking his classmate does certainly drive home how much he's driven a desire to get payback for what happened to his brother, but it also seems like there's more going on beneath the surface. We see over the course of the third episode how, even as a small kid, Tomoro's inability to interact with AI the same way as everyone else really tormented him, and since Gekkomon is also an AI, he just sees this goofy lizard as a reminder of how alone he feels. It's only when the other Glowing Dawn members tell him that even perceived glitches like Digimon have a right to live that he starts to feel any connection towards Gekkomon as a kindred spirit, and I appreciate the fact that the show trusts its audience enough to avoid having to say any of this explicitly. That makes me feel a lot more confident that Beatbreak's writing might have what it takes to appeal to both kids and adults, and for a new Digimon series, that's basically the best I could ask for.

All that said, if you're watching this for some cool monster fights, rather than a tight story, Beatbreak seems to be delivering pretty well on that end too. For as much love as I have for Digimon as a franchise, its anime incarnations have almost always looked stilted, and even the action-heavy Digimon Adventure reboot only looked good in a handful of specific episodes. Thankfully, it seems as though Digimon is finally getting the same love and attention from Toei as its sister franchise, Pretty Cure, on the animation front, because these first few episodes have some gorgeous-looking fights. It looks really smooth so far, and I'm especially fond of seeing Gekkomon getting to swing around on his tongue like he's Spider-Man, since it helps in making the action here feel a lot more dynamic and exciting. I am a little worried about how long the show will be able to maintain this level of quality, but considering that Toei's 2020 reboot of Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai managed to look consistently good across its 100 episode run, I'm fairly optimistic that this could hold the whole way through without any serious dips. Even with my high expectations as a long-time fan of the franchise, I've been really impressed with just how well DIGIMON BEATBREAK has managed to kick off. If it can maintain its current level of momentum, it could end up as one Digimon's strongest anime entries to date.

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DIGIMON BEATBREAK is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.