Guest Post: Unearthed Treasures with Firechick: Digimon Adventure Pilot (82/100)

Digimon has been a part of my life for about as long as I can remember. I religiously watched the 1999 TV series as a kid, along with the seasons afterward (With the exception of Data Squad and Fusion). It’s one of those series where every time I rewatch it, I always manage to discover something new about it. At one point, I saw commercials for Digimon The Movie, but I couldn’t go see it in theaters at the time due to other obligations like school. Years after that, I was able to rent it on VHS from a video store. It was…certainly something. I found out later that Saban’s Digimon The Movie was actually three movies mashed into one, cutting a lot of content in the process, far more so than they did with the series. Later in life, I saw two of those movies in their original format, this one included, with English subtitles, and I was surprised with just how different they were from the edited versions that made up Digimon The Movie. Coming back and rewatching the Digimon Adventure Pilot as an adult, with full knowledge of the TV series, I’m even more impressed by just how good this short film is as a prequel to the series and on its own merits.

Two young children, Tai and his younger sister Kari (Yes, I’m going to use their English dub names), are shocked to find that a mysterious egg magically popped out of their computer. The egg eventually hatches into a mysterious creature who calls itself Koromon. Although confused and baffled as to where it came from, it doesn’t take long for the kids to befriend Koromon. Later that night, Koromon suddenly changes into a large dinosaur who begins causing mass destruction and wandering the streets of Tokyo, with Kari on its back. Things get even more dangerous when another creature, a green bird monster, appears from the sky and fights with the newly evolved Koromon, with Tai, Kari, and several other children caught in the crossfire.

If you’re thinking this movie is kinda short, you’re right. The Digimon Adventure Pilot is basically a 20-minute short film that premiered in theaters the day before the TV series aired on Japanese TV, fully intended to be seen as a prequel to the latter. The story it tells is pretty simple, showing a bunch of kids befriending a monster and then getting caught in a monster fight in the middle of the city. It’s simple, but effective and it doesn’t try to be anything it isn’t. Helping this is the fluid animation and direction courtesy of Mamoru Hosoda, who directed this along with the second Digimon movie to come after this, Our War Game. The colors are muted and there isn’t a lot of shading, but no detail is ever skimped, and the animation itself switches wildly from minimalistic to absolutely gorgeous, and it really works here. The Greymon/Parrotmon fight is especially well animated, actually showing their destruction in detail along with things like the movement of their claws and how their bodies overwhelm everything around them. The whole fight is brutal and visceral without ever going over-the-top, and it just works!

The soundtrack is especially interesting here, because in the Japanese version, it’s just one long song, being Maurice Ravel’s 1928 musical composition Bolero. I don’t know whose idea this was, but I think it was a stroke of genius considering the piece itself is only 15 minutes long, this is a 20-minute movie, and it’s used to great effect as everything builds and builds as it gets to the end. I don’t know if the producers had to pay royalties to use Bolero here or not, as from what I can find, Bolero’s copyright doesn’t expire until January 1st, 2025, so it’s not in the public domain in certain countries yet. Of course, you can’t have Digimon without the late great Kouji Wada’s “Butterfly” which plays during the end credits. But don’t tell that to Saban, who felt the need to shove in a crap ton of unfitting electronic music and pop rock songs in a desperate attempt to cater to the 90s kids, like songs by Fat Boy Slim and Smash Mouth.

The characters are a bit harder to talk about because Tai and Kari are very young children in this special, and the movie is mainly just about them befriending Koromon and getting caught up in the monster attack that follows. Then again, this movie isn’t really about giving them deep characterization. That’s what the TV series is for, but the pilot does provide some important context for a major event that happens in the TV series, showing why this event had such a big impact on the characters in the series. But that’s not to say Tai and Kari don’t have any charm to them here, and the animation is good at showing their personalities through their actions and body language. Though I do balk at the idea of a seven-year-old Tai cooking for his toddler-aged sister (Also, why is Kari, here a four-year-old, in a high chair?!). Seriously, no kid I know ever learned to cook while in the single digits. Seriously, what is it with anime and depicting children as being more self-sufficient than they are?!

On its own, the Digimon Adventure Pilot is a very solid intriguing movie that does an amazing job at laying the foundation for the franchise that spawned from it. If you’re a Digimon fan, you owe it to yourself to check out this prequel.