Did Digimon Frontier Destroy The Franchise? Digimon Frontier Movie Review

Did you know that Digimon Frontier had its own movie? If you're a big enough Digimon fan that you know about this channel, you probably did, but with so much Digimon media out there, not everybody knows about everything. While I knew this movie existed, I had actually never seen it. Until now, that is. And after watching it, then reading about its original Japanese release, its box office performance, how it kinda caused the end of the Toei anime fairs and caused Toei to give up on Digimon for a while, I realized I needed to talk about this movie. So welcome to my review and discussion of Digimon Frontier, Island of Lost Digimon, or Digimon Frontier, Ancient Digimon Revival. To set the table, let me tell you about my general take on Digimon Frontier. I know it's divisive for its choice to make the human kids the Digimon and remove traditional partners, but I kind of liked Frontier, at least the concept. By the time Tamers was wrapping up, all my friends had moved on from Digimon, but I was still tuning in to Frontier and asking for the D-Scanner and Lobomon action figure. Growing up as a Power Rangers kid, I was super down for this weird season that felt like a Digimon meets Power Rangers hybrid, the kids morphing into armored warriors. I was less impressed with the end product, the execution of the 50 episodes we got, but I never objected to the core idea of Frontier. So with that out of the way, let's talk about its film. Released in the summer of 2002, less than halfway through the series run, the Frontier film takes place at some vague point during the main adventure. In that regard, it's more Hurricane Touchdown and less Revenge of Diaboromon, not an epilogue story but a large-scale adventure you can sort of slot into the story we know. The cast of Frontier find themselves in the Digimon equivalent of Mad Max Fury Road. There's a Digimon stampede sprinting through the desert, all the monsters running away from a floating island. Before we can learn anything more about it, the team is absorbed, sucked into the sky. It's reminiscent of the Digimon Adventure 1999 kids being pulled away from summer camp into the digital world. We learn that the island is populated by Digimon, but they're divided into two warring factions. The more humanoid Digimon and the more obviously beast-looking Digimon. They've been fighting for longer than anyone can recall, and what exactly they've been fighting over seems to have been lost to time. All we're told is that all parties worship Ornismon, an ancient guardian revered on the island, and that it's the ancestor of Ancient Garurumon and Ancient Greymon, two Digimon who had not debuted in animation at the time this film premiered. This is all told to the kids through a mural, though it's damaged, so it's clear from the start there's a part of the story missing. Off the bat, the warring between the human and beast Digimon is a strong story choice for Frontier's one and only movie, given the series' interest in exploring that same dynamic. It's not the most original story, but it's kind of the best play. It's a taste test, a pitch of what you can expect from Frontier, and given this film debuted as part of Toei's 2002 summer anime fair, that's kind of what it was, an advertisement for Frontier's 50 episode television series. Back to the film, the Frontier heroes wake on the island in separate groups, with Takuya, JP, and Tommy landing in the care of the human faction, while Koji and Zoe fall under the protection of the beasts. Both parties are well treated by their respective Digimon factions, and when they reunite, they all stubbornly vouch for their new Digimon friends, insisting they're the kind-hearted and peaceful ones. I actually think I like this, it's showing a child's vision of the world and of the conflict. All they know is that the Digimon who saved them are not inherently evil, despite the way the other group of Digimon has portrayed them. The simplicity in which the Frontier kids see the world lets them see a goodness the adult Digimon are incapable of seeing in their enemies. This notion of wisdom in innocence is also emphasized through two young Digimon, Bearmon and Kotemon, who are friends despite belonging to the different factions. The young ones breaking the cycle of hatred is a concept that works for me. There are a couple battle sequences in the film where the human and beast Digimon are at war. In the first of these, Takuya's spirit evolves into the humanoid Agunimon to try and reason with the human Digimon, while Koji uses the beast spirit to become the wolf-like Kendo Garurumon to calm the beasts. I thought this was a clever idea, having the heroes take on forms that would appeal to the respective factions to more easily reason with them. Elsewhere, the other kids, JP, Tommy, and Zoe are working on repairing the damaged mural to better understand the full story of Ornismon. Despite Takuya and Koji's earlier attempts to stop the fighting, the two faction leaders, Darkmon and Hippogryphimon are not backing down. They trigger the largest battle yet, and midway through the war, the kids discover that Darkmon and Hippogryphimon are the same Digimon utilizing slide evolution to shapeshift. They're the singular puppet master for this conflict, provoking both sides into attacking the other, as we discover that conflict, fear, and anger are what will trigger the resurrection of the evil Ornismon. Any notion of a benevolent Ornismon was a story that Darkmon and Hippogryphimon fabricated. The slide evolution twist I think is a perfect story beat for Digimon Frontier in particular, given how important that concept is to this season. With enough fear and anger generated by the conflict, Ornismon is revived, however Ancient Greymon and Ancient Garurumon are also awakened when Kotemon, Bearmon's little buddy, sacrifices his own life and reverts to a Digiegg. We get to witness epic versions of these Ancient Digimon. Comparing these ones to the versions you're used to seeing in key art is like the difference between regular Greymon and the Red Greymon from the first Digimon film. They put the monster in digital monster. Now admittedly, I had forgotten exactly which evolutions Takuya and Koji could access in Frontier, and when these two Ancients appeared, I initially thought they were Takuya and Koji. Spoilers, they are not, which allows Agunimon and Lobomon to fight alongside Ancient Greymon and Ancient Garurumon. I thought this ruled, seeing them fight side by side like the climax of Zero Two where all the Vemon evolutions got to fight together. But unfortunately, as with many of these Digimon films, the battle just ends way too quickly, feeling very anticlimactic. With Ornismon vanished, the human and beast Digimon tell the kids, you saw past our anger and our fear. You saved our lives. We get a nice coexistence, anti-war message, and the movie wraps. It's not my favorite Digimon film, not by a long shot, but similar to Digimon Frontier itself, I liked the idea of the film quite a bit. It was very short, with important battles wrapping up far too quickly for my liking. I felt that we got no meaningful character moments for the core cast of Frontier, and so I was disappointed leaving this film not thinking to myself, you know, I could go for a Frontier rewatch. Instead, I felt completely satiated, thinking, yep, that's Digimon Frontier, I got my fix. So if you want to revisit Frontier without committing to a full series rewatch, maybe check out its 40 minute film. But if you want something that will reignite your passion for Digimon Frontier, I don't think this will do that. It didn't for me, at least. Still, I enjoyed some solid nighttime action sequences, the larger-than-life take on Ancient Garurumon and Ancient Greymon, and personally, I think Darkmon is an S-tier all-timer Digimon design, so it was great seeing that character in a prominent role. I'd have to put it somewhere between a C and a low B, our war game being S-tier, just to provide some context to that scale. But next I want to talk about the real world response to this movie, all the way back in 2002. Digimon fans know that Frontier ended the original run of back-to-back series from Adventure to Zero-Two to Tamers to Frontier. Digimon would see a three-year hiatus until Savers came around in 2006. As for why the three-year break, Frontier unfortunately did not do great compared to past Digimon series. While it was airing, Frontier only cracked Japan's top 10 anime TV charts seven times during its 50-episode run. For comparison, Adventure was in the top 10 43 times, Zero-Two was in there 26 times, and Tamers cracked the top 10 30 times. So the Frontier TV series only charting seven times is not great, but its movie might have been an even bigger failure for Toei. In Japan, Toei ran these spring and summer anime fairs. Twice a year they would bring two or three of their shows to the big screen as mini-movies under one-ticketed screening, and the audience would get to watch back-to-back short films. If you ever saw any of the 90s Dragon Ball Z movies like Dead Zone, World's Strongest, Tree of Might, those were originally part of these Toei anime fairs. So were Digimon films like Our War Game, Revenge of Diaboromon, Runaway Lokomon, and this Digimon Frontier film. The 2002 Summer Anime Fair featured a triple bill of films for Digimon Frontier, Kinnikuman, known to many English speakers as Ultimate Muscle, and Crash Gear Turbo. According to Box Office Mojo's archives, the 2002 Summer Anime Fair only managed to bring in a lousy $470,000 during its opening. For comparison, the 2002 Spring Anime Fair from only a few months earlier brought in According to Anime News Network, for the first time in its history, the Toei Anime Fair was considered a box office failure, and there was never a 2003 Toei Anime Fair. This biannual film tradition died under Agunimon and the gang's watch. Now, to be fair, Digimon Frontier is not solely responsible for the box office bomb. Frontier shared the stage with Kinnikuman and Crash Gear Turbo. Sadly, none of those three had the star power of a Dragon Ball in the 90s or One Piece in the early 2000s. If Oda's still-new Pirate series had become something of a staple at these early 2000s anime fairs, a One Piece film was paired with Our War Game, as well as Revenge of Diaborimon and Digimon Tamer's Runaway Lokumon. But with no One Piece film that summer, and the least popular Digimon season to date headlining the 2002 Anime Fair, Toei's movie fest bombed. Its box office failure is almost certainly why you never got a second Digimon Frontier film, like how Adventure, Zero Two, and Tamers all got two films. We only got those films to fill the content needs of the Toei Anime Fairs, and those anime fairs dried up after 2002. Maybe none of this interested you and you just wanted a film review, but I found all of this fascinating. It was not just the low TV ratings, but the catastrophic failure of the Digimon Frontier film that put Digimon on ice for a solid three years and permanently shut down the Toei Spring and Summer anime fairs. Digimon Savers would arrive in 2006 and reportedly performed far better than Frontier in terms of TV ratings. Savers would even get a very short film ahead of the Pretty Cure movie in December of 2006, but not the headliner treatment that past Digimon films got to enjoy. So there you go, some real world information on the disastrous Digimon Frontier film. Although I found the movie to be perfectly serviceable, Frontier and its film were pretty clearly rejected by fans in its home territory. If you ever wondered why the early Digimon seasons got these cool mini-movies, but later ones like Cross Wars, Atmon, Adventure 2020, and Ghost Game didn't, it's because the Toei Spring and Summer anime fairs presented opportunities for Digimon films to get produced, and those fairs kinda ended with Frontier. Thanks for watching, hope you enjoyed this as much as I did, let me know what you thought about the Digimon Frontier film, the series in general, the original Digimon run from 1999 to 2002 by leaving a comment. Have a great week and I'll see you in the next video.