DISCLAIMER: In this review I'll mostly talk about the main cast and what i like/don't like about them instead of the plot, because the last time I made a review on here it just kinda devolved into a plot summary, but there will be story spoilers in this so if you haven't watched Digimon Frontier I wouldn't recommend reading ahead.
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At a fundamental level, Digimon Frontier is a story about getting over regret and learning from your mistakes so you can live for tomorrow, but It doesn't really use that theme to it's full potential and as a result just falls flat at the end

To elaborate: Every character has their own "regret" they carry into the digital world

Takuya regrets not being a better brother

Koji regrets not being able to get along with his stepmom

Izumi regrets not being able to forgive her classmate

Junpei regrets not being able to make any real connections with his classmates

Tomoki regrets never taking his brothers advice and standing up against his bullies

and Koichi Regrets never reaching out to Koji despite having several chances to.

they went 3/6.

To elaborate on this, I'll talk about the characters In this show I came out liking: Tomoki, Koji and Koichi.

Starting out withj Tomoki, his entire thing was that he was a coward who never spoke up for himself, and yeah while it's basic, they pulled it off damn near perfectly. First off, giving Chackmon abilities that fit support was genius, sure he still has to rely on others but this is digimon so that means friendship is contractually required to be a main theme. Either way Tomoki having to learn how to pull his own weight was great

And then when you get into Blizzarmon, a digimon that just relies on sheer strength to win is once again, genius. While yeah this can be interpreted as "the rage of a kind man" which isn't completely unfounded but I think that's lame.

I like to interpret Blizzarmon as a representation of Tomoki's resolve. In it's debut episode, Tomoki was working his ass off trying to get everyones digivices back, and there would be several opprotunites where he would be fully justified in leaving the Toucamon to die since they WERE the reasons why he's in this situation to begin with, but he helps them anyway despite it screwing him over immediately after. As I said it's a basic message but it works great.

Next, we move on to Koji, and as I write this im coming to the conclusion that his character development was hard carried by the existence of Koichi, who i'll talk about in a bit.

It becomes very easy to see that his entire “lone wolf” gimmick is a facade and once he gets over his trust issues he’s just a normal ass kid, and because of that he was able to win over Koichi, thats great! Now if the characters actually FELT like friends this would be way better. If it wasn’t for Koichi Koji’s entire arc would just be nothing since the only thing that shows off his development Is being the main force that redeems Koichi. Take that way and he just kinda fades into nothingness.

Im going to be blunt with Koichi, He's the best character in the show.

even though Koichi did jack shit after his redemption arc he absolutely stole the show and I hate how much he got shafted because they ran out of money to give him new shit. Koichi starts out as an antagonist named Duskmon, but later it was revealed that he was brainwashed. This was done great since the only way he was able to be manipulated by Cherubimon was by harvesting the part of him who resented his father for abandoning his mother while she practically worked herself to death, and the part of him who resented Koji for living a happy life unaware of her struggles, and on a base level that's great, along with that, his redemption coming from seeing past his (rightful) anger and makes the effort to re-connect with Koji in spite of his fathers actions ties in with the shows main theme of learning from your mistakes and living for a better tomorrow. I will admit that I am showing a lot of bias towards Koichi because his Image song kicks so much ass. It made his backstory hit 20 times harder. Go listen to it right now.

Unfortunately as I mentioned earlier, Koichi barely does anything after this since he (and the rest of the digidestined) need to give up their spirits so Tatsuya and Koji need all of their spirits to go into Kaisergreymon and Mangagarurumon (which i'll touch on those guys later)

Now moving onto the bad

First off im going to talk about Izumi and Junpei in one section because they both suck

Their entire things are that they were never able to make true friends due to their personal flaws, that sounds like it has potential, right? well unfortunately this only comes in HALFWAY THROUGH THE SHOW, and to make it worse? There is NOTHING that could possibly suggest this before we see their flashbacks. Junpei’s entire thing is that he had no real friends since people only wanted to talk to him because he had candy or rare trading cards (he’s pretty much the one kid you only talked to because he has an early birthday so he gets new games first) Good premise right? Unfortunately the only thing that can possibly point to this is that he had an inferiority complex due to getting his spirit last, but this basically means nothing since this NEVER GETS BROUGHT UP AGAIN.

And with Izumi, she never made any friends due to the culture shock she experienced once she moved to Japan and as a result she became shy and wasn’t good at articulating her feelings to others Now once we translate this to how she acts in the show, we see none of it. She is fully fluent in Japanese, and she is extremely outgoing (she’s practically a second Mimi) she even FLIRTS with Takuya sometimes, it’s like they remembered “oh yeah she IS half italian!” So they decided to just rip off Doremi and make her worse Momoko at the last minute (shoutout Momoko)

Last up is Takuya. I have nothing to say about him. Why? because I think he is practically a walking piece of cardboard.

Like yeah he's brave and heroic but that also applies to literally every other Digimon protagonist. Ok sure he has an "arc" where he questions his decision about going to the digital world but he doesn't actually grow as a person. Right now im struggling to find more things to write about him because he's just a nothing character. These forms suck. Not only do they rob every other character of their agency by existing, they also do absolutely nothing for the plot since after Tatsuya and Koji get it, they spend the rest of the show jobbing to Lordknightmon and Dynasmon for over TEN EPISODES. This just exists so they can squeeze a couple bucks out of a slightly different D-scanner.

Digimon frontier is a show with a lot of wasted potential. While I didn't HATE watching it I just wish that they did more with the characters. Izumi and Junpei just have so much wasted potential and it pains me, because their digimon forms are amazing

Also Neemon goated