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.
