DIGIMON BEATBREAK

Episode 7

While I had a decent time with the yakuza feud from the last couple of episodes, I was pretty eager to see the show either jump back onto its main plot or spend a bit more time developing the main cast. This week's episode does the latter as it puts a bit of spotlight on Kyo and uses it to further explore how Digimon are generally treated within this series. Although there's still quite a lot we don't know about Kyo, what we do learn helps to paint a better picture of what kind of person he is, and gives us one of the show's best episodes yet.

When Tomoro is tasked with trying and failing to cook breakfast while Kyo dips out for the day, we learn from the others that this isn't exactly new for him, and he disappears fairly frequently. With the general air of mystery that's surrounded him since his introduction, it's hard not to clock this as suspicious, and his behavior only looks shadier when we discover that he put out a request for a Cleaner job that he doesn't want the others to know about. This job seems to involve a Digimon called Black Gaogaomon that's been attacking humans, but when Tomoro has the misfortune of nearly becoming its next victim, he's rescued by Kyo, who turns out to have been hiding…a Digimon daycare

While I wasn't expecting Kyo to be a secret main antagonist or anything, with how aloof he is, I wouldn't have been surprised if he was up to something a bit more morally ambiguous than all his family talk would imply. With all those doubts in mind, the last thing I was expecting his big secret to be is that he takes care of baby Digimon in his spare time. More specifically, he's created a shelter for these Digimon as they'd otherwise be erased by the government if discovered, and this includes the devolved forms of some of the Digimon he and the others have defeated. It's a surprisingly selfless act, but also an extremely dangerous one, as even these small Digimon need to feed on the e-Pulse of humans to survive, and feeding them all by himself has taken a toll on his stamina. It's a tough situation, and one that Tomoro isn't quite sure how to handle. First, because he's worried about Kyo, but also because one of the Digimon being sheltered is the one he nearly forced Gekkomon to kill a while back. Even though Tomoro has softened up at least a little since then, the Digimon is still terrified of him, while Tomoro himself is still clearly bothered by the memory of what he did. With how easy it would have been to brush that incident to the side, it's nice to see that the show is willing to let some of the negative consequences of Tomoro's actions linger a bit, and I'm curious to see how they'll affect him as he continues to change.

All of this on its own would have made for a pretty good episode to chew on, but what really elevates it is when we discover Black Gaogaomon's true nature. It turns out that he was abandoned by his Owner for refusing to go around attacking humans on their orders, and they left him chained up before he managed to escape. However, just like the baby Digimon here, he also needs to feed on the e-Pulse of humans in order to survive and has been tormented between his natural impulse to feed on humans and his desire not to harm them. This is far from the first time a Digimon show has done a story about one of them being mistreated by their partners, but being outright left to die is a level of cruelty I wasn't expecting, and with the existence of Digimon being treated much more casually than in other entries, it's good to see Beatbreak talking full advantage of that, even for circumstances as sad as this one.

Thankfully, we're at least spared from seeing this turned into an outright tragedy as Kyo takes it upon himself to offer Black Gaogaomon some of his e-Pulse and reveals that he dreams that humans and Digimon might one day be able to co-exist. Under lighter circumstances, this would come off a bit cheesy, but between Kyo's actions to protect the baby Digimon he's taken in and how much he empathizes with Black Gaogaomon's story, the sentiment here feels sincere, and it makes me hopeful that the show will continue to do as much as it can to expand on this theme of co-existence. This also won me over on Kyo considerably, and he seems to be a lot more earnest than some of his aloofness would imply. At the same time though, having him turn out to be a such a self-sacrificial person has me worried about the likelihood of him making it out of this show in one piece, as anyone who's seen a Digimon show or two knows what this franchise likes to do to its sacrificial lions (and him having a giant anthropomorphic cat for a partner isn't exactly helping matters). There might yet be hope for him as the episode ends with Tomoro asking Kyo if he'll teach him how to cook, which indicates that he wants to become dependable enough that Kyo will be willing to lean on him a little. It's a nice way of helping to further expand their relationship, and it makes for a good way to cap off this week's events.

While I've mostly been focusing on the Kyo-related parts of this episode, there were other aspects about it I liked too. For one thing, it was nice to hear a little more about the group that's been featured in the OP, as it's revealed that they're an elite band of Cleaners called the Five Stars, and garnered such a strong reputation for hunting Digimon that their position within the government gives them more authority than the ministry in charge of regulating them. Since they're so high up the pecking order, I imagine this means we won't actually get to meet them for quite a while, but a band of supercops does seem like a fairly fitting group of antagonists for a cyberpunk series, so hopefully the show will take full advantage of that when it comes time to properly introduce them. This episode was also a good return to form on the action front, and while the battle animation here still isn't quite on the same highs as the first couple, it's an improvement over what we got in the yakuza mini-arc, and has alleviated my fears that the show's production might have been frontloaded. Although I'm still not sure where the show is going in the long term, I was really impressed with how well this episode took advantage of Beatbreak's setting, and it makes me excited to see what else this world has to offer.

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DIGIMON BEATBREAK is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.