DIGIMON BEATBREAK

Episode 8

Of everything I would have expected to get out of DIGIMON BEATBREAK this week, an episode of Digimon Ghost Game wasn't one of them. I suppose it was only a matter of time before the show decided to dabble in something horror related if its going to stick to episodic escapades for awhile, but this episode really does feel like it was stripped right out of its predecessor, right down to its general plot and how it decided to use its monster-of-the-week (albeit with nothing quite as disturbing as some of that show's best material). While this makes for an odd and somewhat more formulaic episode than usual, it's by no means a bad one, and its conclusion finds a few new ways to dig a little deeper into Beatbreak's themes.

This time, the setup here involves Tomoro reuniting with his classmate Hitomi, who seems to have completely recovered from her Cold Heart symptoms, and accidentally learns about Gekkomon's existence. She decides to recruit Tomoro to solve the disappearance of some missing classmates, as they've been disappeared by a shadowy and mysterious force that turns out to be a Digimon called Mimicmon (which is just a big, creepy monster chest, but with guns). So yeah, it's a plot right out of Ghost Game, and even borrows some of its horror style framing to keep Mimicmon just out of sight while it chains up its victims to feast on their e-Pulse. Also like Ghost Game, the Digimon's motivations are less antagonistic and more the result of not quite understanding the intentions of humans. In this case, the misunderstanding involves a student who was resentful of all the kids with better test scores, and when he muttered about wanting to be rid of them, Mimicmon was born from his Sappotama and decided to take that literally. It's hard to know if all these Ghost Game similarities are simply the result of some coincidental staff overlap or an intentional homage, but it certainly isn't the worst way to an episode that's a bit more self-contained, and it results in another solid Digimon fight, so I'm fine with what we got either way.

That said, if there's one knock I have to give about the battle this week, it's that given how much it played up the tension of Gekkomon desperately trying to save Tomoro from having all of his e-Pulse consumed, and seeing the two of them completely synch afterwards, I thought we might finally see Gekkomon's Digivolution. I suppose the content of this episode wasn't quite dramatic enough for a development as big as that, but since most Digimon shows tend to regularly dish out evolution sequences by now, the fact that we've gone this long without them is a little strange. To its credit, the show has managed to deliver on some cool Digimon fights even with Reina and Kyo being the only ones who can evolve their partners, but since Digivolution sequences are the closest thing the franchise has to a consistent formula, the battles just don't quite feel the same without them (especially not without the insert music that normally accompanies them) I do hope the payoff will be worth the extra wait.

Putting aside those quibbles, the actual highlight of the episode ended up being its conclusion. After Mimicmon is defeated and reverted into a baby Digimon, Tomoro and the others have a run-in with a government official who takes it into custody and marks it for disposal. This doesn't sit well with Tomoro after everything he heard from Kyo last week about his desire for humans to co-exist with Digimon, and the ending here is only made more depressing when the student responsible for Mimicmon's creation shows no real remorse for what happened, much less any concerns about what happened to his Digimon, as the only thing he cares about is moving up in the world so he can live alongside the elites in the Shangri-La Egg. It's another depressing but effective example of how easy it is for humans to take advantage of Digimon for their own ends in this setting, and it's nice to see Beatbreak continue to wrestle with darker themes than usual for a Digimon series. Speaking of themes, the conclusion also allows the show to further embrace the punk part of cyberpunk as the result of the student's obsession with climbing the social ladder disgusts Tomoro enough that he decides to start marching to the beat of his own drum and drops out of school. With how inconsequential the rest of the episode seemed, I really wasn't expecting to get an ending as heavy as this one, but it's good to see that this show isn't willing to pull its punches, and I especially appreciated how much of this was communicated through the episode's presentation rather than explicitly telling us how Tomoro feels about what happened since it further demonstrates how much Beatbreak is willing to trust its audience. I imagine Tomoro and Hitomi will cross paths again eventually, and it would be cool if meeting Gekkomon serves as setup for giving her a partner Digimon of her own, but with the way this episode wrapped up, I'm kinda hoping it commits to Tomoro's decision to walk away from an ordinary life, even if that means we won't see her for a while.

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DIGIMON BEATBREAK is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.