Digimon Universe: Appli Monsters

What a masterpiece of Digimon serie which the spotlight got overtaken by Digimon Tri. (Tri is a complete dumpster fire)
If I have to use one sentence to describe this serie, it'd be this is a show on surface level catered and aiming toward kids, however have enough insight and theme for adults to fully enjoy and appreciate the show.

It's such a controversy approach because it may end up driving away both side of audience if they didn't give enough patience to sit through the whole show and digest the theme and characters. The show try to go through a deep and dark theme with flamboyant ... kid-vibe presentation. It never tries to be overly dark and edgy, yet it doesn't shy away from discuss about dark and serious topic.

Not to mention this is the first Digimon serie to feature REAL gay relationship (It's not just fanfic or implied gayness like other Digimon series. It has dialogues and interaction demonstrating real affection of 2 boys).

The 5 main protagonists of this series all went through amazing development and chemistry , Each of the casts have amazing backstory and character arcs to flash out their ideal, personality, goal, and affection, and none of them are really left out. You'd end up liking all of them despite the initial controversy.

The pacing of this serie is great too. The only episodes I feel unnecessary / boring/ filler-ish is ep1~4 , before the side characters showed up. The weak start of the serie probably give a bad first impression, thus drive away many audience because most people only have enough patience for as little as 3 episodes for an anime. However the pacing and story, as well as characterization really start to pick up after episode 7, thus becomes a wild ride ever since.

The biggest cons of this show is probably the usage of CGI and OST choice. There are some CG model of later evolution that looks cool, but many of them looks jarring, and color usage / design is out of place compare to the 2D art. However, the action scene is done relatively well despite sometimes the 3D model looks jarring. This CG model mostly look much worse than the hand drawn Digimon in the same show.

The OST choice is strange too. Most of them are forgettable at best, and some of them even sounds annoying. There's only a few good OST near the end of the show.
The OP and ED are both nice though. Compare to any of the previous Digimon series, this has probably the weakest OST soundtrack, especially the evolution OST.

This show is criminally underrated and underwatched because it is bound by the IP "Digimon", and bound of the entitlement of being a "kid show" with its presentation , despite go through intensive and meaningful character arcs for all the main characters, as well as discussing theme better than most 13 episode seasonal anime (13 episodes is just not enough to fully flash out theme most of the time), as well as portraying a better love story than many of those 2 hrs anime movies about a boy meets a girl.

This serie rivals the original Digimon adventure 01 , which none of the later in between series come close to giving me such lasting impact.

at the time I made this review, I've watched up until episode 37, so maybe my opinion will change later, or maybe not, who knows?

Anyway, I hated the beginning of the anime, and this is coming from someone that has watched all of the previous Digimon series, there was just SO MUCH filler, it was basically like watching Yo-Kai Watch, and then I found out that the creator of the Yo-Kai Watch anime wrote Appmon, and at that point my expectations were really low...

then later it got a little better, only a little, when it actually started focusing on Leviathan, and along the way we ... got to see the main characters slowly achieve their dream, and I actually like all of the characters, except for Haru, who's dream is to feel like the "Main Protagonist". Gatchmon's character's okay, he doesn't really have a life except for being the pokedex for this series, but he's okay.

Eri and Dokamon are fun to watch, I just don't like Eri's catch phrase, everything else about her is great. Astra and Musimon are okay, (Musimon's ultimate form is easily one of my fav Digimon) and again, I hate their catch phrase, and I wish he wasn't such an idiot sometimes. Rei and Hackmon are really nice, definitely the only characters I can take seriously.

and as for the actual Digimon, I give the designs a 9/10, I really liked the concept of a "Digimon subspecies", and the fact they all look really small and cartooney in their standard forms remind me of when I played all those pokemon rip-offs on my iPad, and then the super and ultimate forms look really great too, some of them became some of my favorite designs ever!

overall, is Appmon good? kids will definitely like it if they're into action, as for the long time fans? well, I can see why some of them hate it, but I recommend at least giving it a chance.

A quick note: Digimon fan since I was 7 years old... I'm 28 now and I've watched all Digimon media to this point and also played a few Digimon videogames.

Warning to everyone planning to watch this because it's related to Digimon: it isn't. The name is there to create buzz and bring viewers because there's absolutely nothing Digimon in this series. The monsters are mainly based on smartphone apps and I would have no issues with this if the show didn't try to leech off Digimon (or any other series). Oh and what are they called? AppliMonsters. As I said, the only Digimon here ... is in the tittle.

We have a main character that wears goggles like 90% of Digimon stuff but that's all the similarities. Why is there no creativity for character design when it comes to DigiKids?

Another thing is that most episodes (specially in the beginning) feel like this show exists with the sole purpose of parodying Digimon, rather than a story set in the Digiverse: a couple of monsters are basically old Digimon with new names and colours, whether humans can see and/or hear the AppliMonsters is completely random, AppliFusions visually look lazy because usually we can only see one of the monsters' design, ... If this show didn't try to leech off Digimon as a series but came up on its own it would've been way better because some ideas were really cool but the execution is lacking most of the time, specially when it comes to the plot.

There's no solid pace and everything that happens seems to be random. Every several episodes the story moved forward, only to be paused for no good reason at all a few more episodes in. It's like the characters forget what the heck is going on and we get more stupid slice of life stuff. The series is 52 episodes but wrapping the story in 30 would be enough. Another thing about the bad pacing, is how many recaps throughout each episode. I'm not talking about the usual recap in the beginning of each episode or the same AppliFusions every episode. I'm talking about story/character development flashbacks that were shoved down on my laptop screen every 20 minutes. It's too much.

Now, on to characters: I didn't find any particulary annoying (despite Offmon) and the Noreru Norenai Cho Noreru slogan. That thing got old after 3 seconds. I was really disappointed when Eri and Dokamon were introduced because they were fused straight away with Gatchamon, which left me to wonder what was the point of having more main characters if everyone is just going to be cannon fodder for the Goggles-Boy. Fortunally I was proven wrong because throughout the show, every single main character gets to show off in equal amounts of time and the monsters are well-balanced. This was actually the first time that I saw this happen and I'm pleasantly surprised.


Extra things that don't make sense:
1) Hidden bookshelf's switch changes location depending on the episode
2) the NO! joke that happens every episode is a copy of Excel Saga and Nabeshin. A 1-time reference would've been good. Every episode is just ridiculous.
3) SPOILERS: once the kids reach Deep Web World for the first time, Rei leaves with Hackmon to search for his missing brother. This makes no sense whatsoever because everyone is after Leviathan and everyone knows it was Leviathan that kidnapped him. Not to mention that it's unbelievable that no one would offer to search for the little kid as well.
4) for an anime that recaps in the beginning of each episode, what's the logic behind having a full 24 minute episode of only recaps? Honestly, feel free to skip episode 26 because it's just flashbacks.
5) SPOILERS: Drawmon is an enemy from the start (although the kids are unaware) but still decides to warn them of their fate if they die in the Dark Web World. Even if this monster was an ally, there's been so many battles up to that point that it's mighty clear that death means death.
6) Episode 37 is so dragged out with nonsense. Only the first 3 and last 3 minutes are watchable without yawning.
7) SPOILERS: episode 40 - Astra and Musimon know for a fact that Fakemon is a lying, cunning and manipulative creature. However, Astra is still easily tricked.
8) Everytime a new character is introduced of gets AppRealized, their power levels show up. Dokamon has an higher power level than Gatchamon and this doesn't change after their power levels increased. However, Dokamon's punches do less damage than a soft push from Gatchamon. Also, a stronger version of Musimon still got beaten after a single weak bomb attack.
9) Knight's horrible laughter is intentional but it's just cringe
10) Knight's backstory and reasoning for being a villain is one of the most pathetic plot-devices I've ever watched in an Anime
11) SPOILERS: Hajime just got back his human form out of nowhere. I get, the scent of burnt eggs woke him up. And? Where's the transformation????
12) Agumon and WarGreymon are the only "Digimon" that show up. Why "Digimon"? Because in this show, they're regular videogame characters and not Digimon. I appreciate the original kick-ass Digivolution soundtrack but this cameo just makes the entire thing look terrible. If Digimon are no longer Digimon, then how can anyone claim that this series happen in the same Digiverse?
13) The final battle between all the Godly AppliMonsters was the worst final battle I've ever seen. There's no sense of speed or power, no momentum, everything moves so slow and there's nothing spectacular going on.
14) SPOILERS: the whole Yuujin-Haru thing was so uninteresting and cringe
15) the last 2 episodes begin with quotes about how Artificial Intelligence will drive humanity to extinction. This is a very interesting idea to explore but the way that this show explores it is just plain terrible.


I think the soundtrack is flawless and the animation is pretty good for the most part. I just hated every time they used CGI.

All things considered, this show gets a 4/10 from me.