Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning

You have to show your brave heart and watch this!
Is so cool to get to know things you never did think about in the world of Digimon and how the name implies: The Beginning.
The story: 10/10 More dramatic than we had before, but different does not mean bad because it does not use the same formula. It also leaves some questions and is open for another movie in the future.
The music: 10/10 We got new and remastered music for the same songs from Adventure series.
The art: I can't say is the best because we got Broly, but is good enough for a movie to watch ... in theaters.
Evolutions: Remastered of course, and very cool as always, I cant wait the blu-ray release to rewatch all of these.
What is missing: The movie could be a bit more long to add more fights in some way, and the armor evolution that could be added in this extra time.

I grew up with digimon and hold a lot of good memories of those times so it goes without saying that it means a lot to me, now with the last couple of new releases on these years with the ovas of tri or this new movie of digimon 02 we can get to see more about what was about our beloved characters and their life after all these years which for all fan of the franchise was amazing to first galnce but.... sadly just like with tri this movie also is not what we deserved story wise or actually generally speaking in comparision with ... the original ones.

One of the problems here that comes to light very early on and pretty obviously is the overly fast pace of it with an introduction that just feels like tries to skip and go straight to the main dilema without giving a proper room to developt not only to the new character (with resolutions very poor and silly on rui dilemas for example) but the situations that take place also and this stay present along all the movie, i didnt like it and there should be in another format to begin with (series or ovas) to deliver a proper and compelling story.

Not gonna throw spoilers but the plot on this movie is on scope under my eyes huge and on paper sounded good but just due to the aformentioned wasnt handled properly, i mean what is touched here is linked to the origin of ALL (season 1 and 2) the digidestined and yet with all that promesing premise does a very bad job on narrating it.

To mention something about owada rui design wise was kinda generic on my opinion, persona kinda also the same but what make him decent enough as an character was his backstory that was good sure the way how was resolved was lame and shows how little effort was putted on the climax of the movie yet i would even go far to say that still is better than Meiko Mochizuki of tri though wouldnt be a bar really hard to surpass given the standarts of what we are talking about.

The battles are little to null on this movie and even if the plot takes much more relevance on this one neither of these two are decent enough wharever be because is not present at all or because is not handle properly on each respective case.

It tries to pay homage to some degree with introducctions that resemble the older movies, mentions of characters like Willis or events of previous movies like "Digimon Adventure 02: Diablomon no Gyakushuu" or even showing a more young tai and hikari that we could place a little before the first movie "Digimon: The Movie", all these little nuances are hugely appreciate it and gives much more weight to the movie but doesnt hold for the things that sins even if are a good touches.

Sound wise we can hear remix versions of cclasics like target or brave hearts for the ost in general was pretty forgettable leaving aside those more memorable songs.

The ending arise the question of what is gonna be from now on given how ended, because the truth is most things here were very dissapointing, the experience that i had with this movie leaved me cold as fuck and the only way i can see that this can be fixed is releasing this again but like a series with more scenes and overall development.
It wasn't a good digimon movie by any means and i just wished like with tri that the people involved on this installments cared more for the franchise itselft and fans that are awating to get a proper secuel of the same quality of the old ones.
There might be people who are not so demanding and find this movie entertaining or even good but i feel for most of us is not something that i would recommend mucyh more less if you are a avid fan of digimon.

My score and general thoughts aside, please take note of this important TRIGGER WARNING! This movie contains depictions of Extreme Child Abuse. If you are sensitive to seeing rather graphic depictions of small children being severly abused, DO NOT watch this movie! It has some incredibly harrowing and disturbing scenes, and is much darker than any previous entries in this line. It also goes pretty hard on the eldritch horror. For more details on the abuse see the end of the review. (Slightly spoilery, hence I put it at the end.)

Also, if you were looking to see the events of Kizuna be addressed/resolved, you’ll be ... disappointed. For all that it’s marked as a sequel it certainly doesn’t feel like it. No mention of anything that happened, in fact certain lines seem to indicate it didn’t happen at all.
Now that aside, I found this movie incredibly disappointing in many ways. If they'd made this a standalone movie unconnected to any of the series (except perhaps Ghost Game) and focused properly on just Rui and Ukkomon, and their story; maybe this could have been good. As it is, they didn't do justice to either the new (original) story or characters, nor to the existing Digimon Adventure/02 story.
Everything was rushed, and no one involved had the finesse to properly tie together the old and the new, even if they’d had more time.

Both the new and old characters were done a disservice. The resolution to Rui’s story was rather ham-fisted, and the message was muddled, and slightly problematic.
Absolutely zero thought was put into the Zero Two gang beyond surface level aesthetics. They are copy pasted from their younger selves to the point that Miyako still calls Ken by his last name despite them having been comrades and friends for over ten years at this point. Their dialogue and interactions are pretty much unchanged and while we see them at their jobs, none of their dialogue reflects this. Aside from Daisuke cooking ramen, and a few remarks and jokes about it, no dialogue reflects anything new going on in their lives except a throwaway line about Taichi being too busy to talk to his family. (That depressing tidbit is the only verbal glimpse we get into their lives.) No talk about bosses or coworkers, or anecdotes about the kids Hikari works with; plans for the future? Well Daisuke’s making ramen, possibly for a boss we never see. Hmm you wanted to know about Ken or Takeru? Too bad. Is Iori really working at a law firm already? How is that going? Who knows? (For all my gripes with Kizuna at least the characters felt and acted like they were actually older.)
Aside from a couple of cute comments and lines here and there, nothing is added, the status quo is kept. Except you know, the giant bomb blown into the lore part way through the movie. Metaphorically speaking.

Thus we reach the part that annoyed me the most (aside from Miyako calling Ken by his last name, seriously wtf?), about how the Adventure/Zero Two part was handled. It’s clear no one cared about either of the series that came before, not the characters and certainly not the lore. Adventure put a lot of thought into its lore, building it up over several hours’ worth of episodes; and Zero Two had a few interesting tidbits too. The writers of this movie arrogantly decided that their rushed little narrative was more important than respecting any of that. This is one of the largest retcons in the series, and it is poorly thought out, badly executed and just overall offensive to anyone who cared about the story and lore of the original. It’s lazy and disgusting and to top it all off, it can’t even resolve things without creating at least one plot whole within its own narrative.
The fights were boring, the horror was out of place, and there was zero breathing room in between events, overall a mess of a movie. This would have made more sense as a sequel to Digimon 2020 if they absolutely had to tie it to the Adventure line.
In a happier timeline we got a slice of life ova instead.

TLDR:
Rushed in every way.
Zero respect for the characters.
Zero respect for the existing story and lore.
Poorly handles the mature themes it chose to tackle.
Overall a hollow movie, which cannot live up to what came before.
The opening scenes where you get to see the characters living their lives are worth checking out though.

(This movie is still leagues better than Tri at its worst, but at least Tri had some interesting lore at its best. Overall I don’t hate this quite as much as Tri, and Rui is much more interesting than Meiko, but it’s still awful for the majority of its runtime.)

The music was good to average, the animation was decent, the art was a mixed bag, the voice acting was solid. Subs were slightly off at times, but fine overall.

God I wish I never watched this movie beyond the first few moments.

Under the stars is a more detailed but slightly SPOILERY trigger warning:

***************************************************************************
More detailed TRIGGER WARNING:

If you are sensitive to seeing rather graphic depictions of small children being starved, beaten, and left to slowly freeze to death, DO NOT watch this movie!
****************************************************************************