My Apologies if the format for this review feels a little sloppy, I'm really just making this review to ramble about one of my favorite anime of all time.
also this review effectively spoils the entire show as im really just talking about the plot and certain aspects of it that I like, so be warned
Very recently (like, less than a day after writing this review) I have re watched Digimon savers, and due to it being a show I watched when I was VERY young (like, 6-7 year old young) so by default I already have a positive bias due to nostolgia, but once i booted up episode one and watched Masaru beat the shit out of Agumon along with the opening, the goofiest grin came across my face. My doubts was gone, I knew I was watching my favorite anime of all time
The Beginning
The first arc of Savers relies on the monster of the week format. It begins with introducing DATS and the structure of the digital world to the viewers through Masaru and Agumon, of course, due to Masaru's hotblooded nature he tends to screw up a lot, but that's the point. The level of immaturity Masaru (along with our other main characters Yoshi and Thomas) are a constant theme throughout the show. Thomas's immaturity is very easy to see via his overconfidence and over reliance of stats, but Yoshi's "greater than thou" attitude she gives towards her junior Masaru. However this is all setup for the trials our cast will face later on throughout the show. Although I believe other shows handle the monster of the week format better, it serves it's purpose in getting us to care for our cast
The iconic "Masaru vs Piyomon" episode is the first turning point of the plot. Masarus desperation to protect his sister Chika. As the plot tells you, Masaru's dad is not very present during the show, and Masaru's entire personality revolves around attempting to be half the man his dad was (hence why he always rambles about manliness and what a true man is) and this fight is the culmination of Masarus character up to that point. Sure, while it's really funny, it's also a great character moment for Masaru as it shows how far he's willing to go for his family, but it also exposes his self centered way of thinking as he's not thinking about what CHIKA wants. Either way, amazing scene, amazing episode.
Enter: Digital World! After this fight Masaru and Agumon achieve their "Ultimate" (or perfect if you're a sub purist) evolution in RizeGreymon (better than MetalGreymon fight me) and along with Yoshino and Thomas. head to the Digital world to pursue Merkurimon, who has allegedly sent Piyomon to the human world to destroy it. Upon entering the Digital world, the gang meets Ikuto (who I WILL be gushing over later) and while in the Digital world Yoshi and Thomas along with their partners obtain their ultimate forms in Machgaogamon and Lilamon. I'm beginning to realize that I'm just summarizing the plot right now so its time to do some character analysis.
MachGaogamon debuts in episode 15, where the gang have to fight a digimon that puts our cast in nightmares à la Death 13 from jojo part 3. In this dream Thomas re-experiences his mothers death in the 3rd person, powerless to prevent it. This powerlessness is why Thomas over relies on calculations as much as he does. He backs up on them so that he will never fail to protect someone ever again. As we know, the evolution mechanics in Savers operates off of something called "digisoul" a power fueled by pure emotion, and the regret Thomas has for letting his mother die along with his determination to never let something to never let something like that happen ever again is what allows MachGaogamon to take stage.
Moving on to Yoshino, with the exclusion of Ikuto for obvious reasons, she is the cast member with the tightest relationship with her partner. But the main conflict she faces is that she suffers from impostor syndrome. She always felt like she was inferior to her peers, wether it be the girls she played piano with, or being arround her other DATS squad members. That feeling of inferioirty skyrocketed when both Thomas and Masaru were able to evolve their partners to the Ultimate Level while all she did was get sick and forced Masaru and Thomas to take care of her. But this is where Lalamon comes in. Out of anybody else, Lalamon knows how hard Yoshi works and how good she is. She deserves to be on stage with everyone else because she is just as valuable as everyone else. Realizing this is what allows Yoshino to get the encouragement she needs, and allows Lilamon to take flight.
After everyone has achived their Ultimate evolutions, the battle with Mercurymon begins, and without sugarcoating things much, the cast gets WRECKED. After said wrecking, Mercurymon reveals why he hates humans. They raided the Digital world and slaughtered digimon in hordes, to put it short, it was a genocide. In this genocide, Ikuto's "Mother" Yukidarumon was murdered which is why he identifies as a digimon and hates humans to the extent he does. Now whether you want to see this attack on the digital world as commentary for real world events or not, this is clearly a result of immaturity on the part of humans (I did say that it was a major theme of the story)
A human with a Digimons Heart After this, Masaru and co. bring Ikuto and his partner Falcomon back to the human world with them. Due to this, the Digimon formerly on Ikuto's side begin to treat him as traitor and begin to label him as "human". Both this event and Masaru's actions to protect him is what begins to kick off Ikuto's character arc as he's beginning to realize that while humans are capable of kindness, his fellow Digimon are also capable of cruelty.
The remainder of this arc is about Ikuto forming his own moral code divorced from the information he's been feed. He meets his real parents and gets his backstory revealed. His parent's accidentally opened a digital gate and it sucked him in. Yukidarumon found him and took him in RIGHT before Ikuto's parents were able to open another gate to rescue him. Ikuto naturally forms a bond with his "real" parent's quickly, and this bond is what allows him to easily take the blame for the incidents that occurred so that nobody else can be inconvenienced. Once again, this is proof of Ikuto learning how to actually think for himself
Of course Ikuto doesn't stay away for long, but while it's good he's learning how to think for himself and expand his mindset from his biases, he's beginning to develop guilt about his very existence. If it wasn't for him, the human and digital world are at war. Forunately, we have our Aniki Masaru give Ikuto a pep talk about manliness and how anyone who prevents a man from eating must be served JUSTICE! But to nobodies surprise that doesn't really change Ikuto's views on much as he still questions the validity of his existence.
Ikuto's entire thing right now is whether if he can return to the home he had in the digital world due to knowing that not all humans are evil. but that comes to a climax in the coming story beat. However before I get to wrapping that up, I have to talk about Kurata
Remember what I said about the main theme of this show being immaturity? Well nobody exemplifies it better than our favorite Digi-Genocider Kurata! I shit you not, every main conflict in this show is caused by Kurata's pure desire to murder Digimon. He wants to kill digimon so much, he made artifical digimon that solely exist to perma-kill digimon by destroying their eggs. It's almost comical to an extent but thats what I like about Kurata as a villain. Despite the fact that Digimon are as intelligent as humans and can be communicated with (as seen with the conversation between Mercurymon and Suguru) he operates in the worst possible faith by treating Digimon as a threat to humanity instead of learning to live with them and accept them
Back to Ikuto, his arc effectively ends with Mercurymon reaffirming Ikuto's right to exist alongside Ikuto fully realizing that it's humans like Kurata that he has to defend against, Falcomon is able to reach is ultimate form in Yatagaramon. This arc is what solidified Ikuto as one of my favorite non-protagonist characters in the franchise (mimi is still on top don't get it twisted) his journey in breaking out of beliefs and overcoming his doubts on whether if he should exist.
Anyways, after this the gang gets their memories wiped. This doesn't really do much besides provide us with some recap, but they get their memories back and prepare to return to the Digital world to stop Kurata, but on the way they get held up (and beaten) by the three shmucks, Kouki, Nanami and Ivan. These guys serve as rivals to our 3 main characters (sorry Ikuto) and are capable of transforming into Digimon due to being experimented on by Kurata. I'll talk about them more later, but for now, plot!
Showdown: Kurata!
Upon arriving at the Digital world, the gang gets their asses kicked by the three shmucks, and then undergo training with Bancholeomon in order to enhance their broken digivices. This allows them to achive their Mega (or ultimate) digivolutions In ShineGreymon, MirageGaogamon and Rosemon
The mega forms don't really involve much character development on the part of DATS, but this isn't their final forms and they have 20 episodes left of episodes to get through.
Now it's time to talk about the three shmucks, the first one being Nanami. Her immaturity is believing that since she's a genius, she is simply above everybody. She projects her own feelings on to Thomas by assuming that he is only in DATS to serve himself, and she quite literally constrains him while forcing her beliefs on to him. Thomas overcomes this by doing the opposite of what Nanami claims and takes a point-blank attack in order to deal enough damage to Nanami to end the fight. This is the perfect showing of what Nanami lacks as if the roles were reversed, Nanmi would have lost due to prioritizing herself.
On to the second shmuck, Ivan, isn't as interesting as Nanami. His main motivation is to make money and find a girlfriend so he can take care of his siblings, but the immature part of his character is that he lacks the sympathy for the digimon he kills to make money, akin to Nanami, he cares for himself and only himself. But unlike Nanami, Ivan's existence doesn't really do much for Yoshi. The episode wasn't even dedicated to their clash and if anything the parts where they fought were more comedy focused.
The last shmuck is Kouki. His entire thing is that he suffers from extreme bloodlust towards Masaru and he doesn't care what happens. The entire gimmick of this fight is that ShineGreymon can't use any of his attacks because they are in a city and one Glorious Burst would kill thousands, so they effectively have to go the entire fight at 40% of their potential. Thematic wise, we can clearly see that Kouki is immature due to the fact that he is self-centered, but this time it actually contrasts with Masaru in the fact that Masaru's entire "Thing" is to protect others, and that will manifests in the GeoGrey Sword. The fight was pretty cool, but I just wish that Kouki (and the other 2) got to do more in the plot besides just be fodder for the new mega forms. It would be cool if they could stick around and maybe get redeemed, but then again i guess I would also be angry to an extent if they let the Digi serial murderers get off scott free. I would just like it if they got more to do lol.
Immediately after Taking care of Kouki, Kurata manipulates the media and puts DATS in a bad light making them out to be fugitaves. at the same time, Thomas gets called out to his home by his father, who forces him to work with Kurata for the sake of his sickly little sister. Meanwhile, BanchoLeomon arrives from the digital world to teach Masaru about Burst mode, the TRUE final form in this series. While Thomas was planning to double-cross Kurata this entire time, Masaru didnt know that and attempts to kill him by unleashing ShineGreymons Ruin Mode, an evolution triggered by Masarus sheer rage at Thomas in the moment.
Dark digivolutions are nowhere near a new concept to this series. Just like Skullgreymon and Megidramon before it, Ruin mode WAS caused by a moment of weakness from the main character, it wasn't really a case of needing to evolve it just happened unconsciously, and i like that about it. Megidramon and Skullgreymon both happened due to Tai and Takato trying to force an evolution out, Ruin mode is effectively Masaru getting (rightfully) pissed off at Tohma for siding with Digi-genocider. But regardless, it still has it's similarites. Right here Masaru violated Agumons trust by ignoring his voice and raging, which resulted in Agumon reverting to a digiegg, a MUCH harsher punishment compared to what Takato and Tai faced since soon after the dark digivolution ended, they were immediately able to properly evolve to MetalGreymon and Dukemon.
While masaru and Agumon were out of comission, Kurata fuses with Belphemon and begins to wreak havoc. He also shitalks Mercurymon again and thats what pisses Ikuto off enough to the point where Falcomon is able to achieve it's mega evolution in Ravemon. That doesn't really matter much but I already mentioned every other evolution so i guess I should mention this one.
Due to Masaru's powerful digisoul, he is able to resurrect Agumon with his memories in tact, and with the power of 4 mega level digimon, Belphemon is able to get pushed back. However he recovers stronger than ever, forcing Masaru to tap into Bust mode
I love how Masaru is able to attain burst mode by coming to a conclusion that REALLY should have been obvious, but then again, I can sympathize. He's a 14 year old kid being put in a situation where he's forced to be some form of savior figure being unable to go back on his word, and after the Ruin mode stuff, It would definitely be tough for him.
Anyways, after this, Kurata gets sent to Doki Doki Precure, where they deal with him in the exact same way. (I should probably watch that soon)
I don't like yggdrasil The final arc is about dealing with Digi-god itself, yggdrasil, who is really just Kurata 2.0, but for humans instead of Digimon. He believes due to Kuratas actions, the entire human race should die for the safety of everyone else (wow sounds familiar)
Ok i'll be honest, I don't like Yggdrasil as a villain and if it was up to me Kurata would be the final villain. But the interesting bit here is that Yggdrasil is using Masaru's father as his vessel, but once more, I will admit that the execution on this was a little scuffed. For one, Masaru decides that he's gonna punch it out with his father, but in a bit we learn that Yggdrasil isn't actually Masaru's dad, simply a vessel, while Masaru's REAL dad is inside the body of BanchoLeomon, it's a 2 souls within one body type of thing. But either way, the scene where Bancholeomons sacrifices himself does wrap masaru's whole "manly" character thing up with a bow, as he grew up and did the thing that was best in that scenario despite the fact that he REALLY didn't want to.
Conclusion Now before I wrap up this review I want to talk about Thomas one last time and how his final backstory and the lead up to MirageGaogamon BM sold me on his character. up until this point, Thomas was working for the sake of his family name, his grandmother treated him like garbage due to the fact his mom is Japanese, and his father is too much of a pushover to make Thomas feel like he belongs. The only tie he has to that family is his sickly little sister Relena. The thing I like here is that what triggers Thomas burst mode isn't just Relena, but its also his father. Once Thomas finds out that his father actually cares and isn't just doing everything for the sake of the Norstien name makes me feel a little fuzzy inside. Also I don't have much to comment about Ravemon and Rosemon BM since they kinda exist for the sake of existing.
In conclusion, despite its multitude of flaws, I still love Digimon Savers from the bottom of my heart. Its a show that never fails to make me smile with its cast, action and hot blooded ideals.