DIGIMON BEATBREAK

Episode 4

After spending so much of its opening episodes establishing its setting and how Tomoro fits into it, it only makes sense that Beatbreak would inevitably take some time to slow down a bit. Rather than doing anything too major, the focus of this episode is entirely on Tomoro helping out the others in his first proper bounty hunting gig, and it makes for one that feels a bit more like a monster-of-the-week setup than what we've gotten previously. While that might sound like a knock against it, I don't really see the lower stakes here as a bad thing. What this episode might lack in story progression, it more than makes up for in strengthening the dynamics of our main cast.

For the most part, the actual plot of this episode can be summed up pretty quickly. The Glowing Dawn (sans Kyo) goes out to catch a cargo thief, but Tomoro's unwillingness to keep Gekkomon in check, or put his all into anything not related to helping his brother, causes the team to slip up, until he learns the value of friendship and softens up on his new companions. It's all fairly straightforward on paper, but the execution here is what ultimately matters, and with the actual goal of this episode largely being about creating a rapport between Tomoro and Reina, I'd say it succeeds. Since so much of the first three episodes was centered entirely around Tomoro's perspective, we haven't gotten a feel for his teammates, much less Reina, but now that we've gotten to know her a little better, I like her quite a bit.

I said in my last review that Tomoro felt unusual as a Digimon protagonist since he's a lot closer in personality to the brooding foils of those characters, so since Reina (so far) seems to be Tomoro's foil, it only makes sense that she seems to be the one with all the standard protagonist qualities. She's hot-headed, revels in being in charge, and doesn't hesitate to put herself in harm's way to protect her friends, which all basically just makes her the female equivalent of Tai from Digimon Adventure (which hopefully means she won't get sidelined later on like some of the previous Digimon heroines have). This also makes her the exact opposite of Tomoro, who is still largely working Glowing Dawn out of his own self-interests, and isn't much of a team player, so even when Reina gets herself injured shielding him from a Digimon attack, Tomoro still has a hard time accepting her as a friend. Similar to what happened with Gekkomon last week, it's only when they learn more about each other's circumstances that the two are willing to cut each other a little more slack. In Reina's case, we learn from Makoto that she grew up without a family and drifted between different Cleaner groups before meeting Kyo, so to her, this team is all she really has. This resonates with Tomoro, who's pretty much only ever had his brother looking out for him, and after making up, they do a much better job of cooperating on their second attempt to stop the cargo thief. Again, there aren't any surprises here, but this serves as a good example of being able to get a lot out of a simple episode premise. While Tompro seems to have had a bit more stability in his life thanks to his brother, he and Reina do otherwise seem to have grown up being isolated, and knowing that the two of them have had such similar experiences makes the contrasts in their personalities more interesting. I'm curious to see how well the show will take advantage of that.

The focus on the character beats wasn't the only part of this episode I liked. I'm still enjoying how absolutely stellar the action scenes in this show look, and given that 2D car chases have become increasingly rare in anime, it was nice to get a fight towards the end that mostly consisted of trying to chase a motorcycle. I also got a bit of a chuckle at seeing how the cargo thieves were able to exploit the collision detection systems of self-driving AI cars for their robberies. That might not necessarily be a potshot at Teslas, but I wouldn't be surprised if the anime staff here were perhaps a little skeptical about how reliable that kind of technology is. Lastly, while the amount of plot progression here is very minimal, the episode reveals that the cargo thieves were hired by an anonymous backer. We don't know who they are, which makes me wonder if this will be how the show sets up the team of rival Cleaners that we see in the OP.

I could see this episode getting derided for feeling like a “filler” (especially given how episodic the previous Digimon series was), but I also feel like that's a term whose usage has been overblown in our modern day. Not every episode of a show needs to be constantly pushing the story forward, and sometimes it's just nice to get something laid back that's a lot more focused on building chemistry between characters or just plain goofing off doing something fun. Having some downtime can make the bigger moments of a series more effective, and for longer-running shows like this one, being able to strike a good balance between good one-off episodes and major story beats is usually more effective than trying to make something important happen every week. That this episode still felt solid despite keeping the stakes fairly light feels like a good sign that this show will probably be able to pull off that balancing act, and if we're in for a long ride, I can only hope that any future side escapades are just as entertaining.

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DIGIMON BEATBREAK is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.