DIGIMON BEATBREAK

Episode 11

With the first cour of Beatbreak winding down, I guess the show is finally ready to return to its central plot and the topic of Tomoro's brother, Asuka. There's still quite a lot we don't know about him, and what we learn here helps to convey why he means so much to Tomoro, even though it also leaves us with as many questions as answers. Learning more about their connection also helps in pointing out just how rocky Tomoro's current relationship with Gekkomon is. While there's always been some friction between these two, it all ends up coming to a head this week to help set up what's sure to be a pretty explosive finale to the first quarter of this show's run.

Upon finally receiving his first paycheck from his work as a Cleaner (which, I suppose, really tells us how broke these kids are, considering Tomoro's just now getting paid), Tomoro decides to get a present for Asuka and tells the others a bit more about his family. Initially, the two brothers lived alongside their parents, but one day their parents were arrested by the Ministry of Civil Protection. After being left to fend for themselves, Asuka ended up dropping out of school to take care of Tomoro. This all obviously raises a lot of questions about Tomoro's parents and what exactly they could have been up to that got them carted off by the government. Maybe they had a hand in the creation of Digimon, or wanted to make their existence public? We do know that Asuka seemed to know a thing or two about Digimon before getting frozen, so perhaps he discovered their existence while looking into what happened to their parents? That's a pretty big hook to dangle in front of us, and given that this show hasn't been shy about poking at how dubious its government system is, I'm pretty sure that whatever's waiting on the other end of the line will be interesting to talk about.

For now, this fractured home life conveys how much Asuka means to Tomoro, as he's been his only family for years. However, all that feeds into Tomoro's growing frustrations with Gekkomon as he insists on following Tomoro around while he's shopping. It's clear the little guy just wants to hang with his buddy, but his usual tendencies to ignore whatever anyone tells him and do as he pleases gradually cause Tomoro to see him as more and more of a nuisance. The misunderstandings here are all about as straightforward as you'd expect from this kind of plot, and in a more typical kids' show, it would all be kind of annoying. Thankfully, Beatbreak has done a good job of getting across how awkward Tomoro and Gekkomon's relationship has been up to now, so even at its most irritating, this all just feels like a natural evolution of existing tensions rather than being forced for the sake of drama.

In between all that, the gang has to deal with a sudden Digimon attack when an extremely divorced dude accidentally gives birth to a Raremon, and it starts wreaking havoc. When the Golden Dawn crew is hired to stop it, Gekkomon's desire to show Tomoro he's not useless just causes him to keep getting in the way, and makes Tomoro finally snap as he wishes he'd never given birth to Gekkomon to begin with. This causes something inside Gekkomon to break as he starts blindly attacking Tomoro, and right in time for us to finally get introduced to one of the Five Stars, Kaito, who pops up to deal with Raremon.

It turns out that he and Kyo have quite a bit of history, as Kyo was apparently once a member of the Five Stars himself, and going by how antagonistic Kaito is, it's clear that Kyo didn't walk away on good terms, so I'm excited to learn about whatever the story is there. Kyo himself is mainly focused on ensuring Kaito doesn't pick a fight with the others and almost succeeds, but Gekkomon's fit of madness leads him to try attacking Kaito, and when Kaito's partner, Flaremon, nearly erases Gekkomon, Kyo and Murasamemon shield Gekkomon and Tomoro from the attack, leaving both out of commission. That leaves the episode on a pretty mean cliffhanger, and the stakes here seem dire. I'm sure that Tomoro and Gekkomon will have to try and mend their relationship to survive their encounter with Kaito in one piece, but given how big a mess their communication problems have caused, it seems like they'll be in for a rough time getting there.

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DIGIMON BEATBREAK is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.