I can't ask a more direct question than that.
Digimon Hunters is very easily the worst Digimon series, it's pretty much bile. It succeeds in nothing but destroying amazing potential, wasting a good cast of characters, tarnishing a franchise and having a catchy opening song. Never again will I ever be so excited for a series only to end up this disappointed. Let me walk you through this so you don't have to:
Digimon Hunters takes place a year after the ending of Xros Wars. Bugramon is dead, all the Digimon are back in their own world, and Taiki is back to being a baller. All of this changes when Taiki's stupid friend Tagiru gets handed a Digivice by a cryptic old man, and then bam, Tagiru now has ownership of the unruly Gumdramon and is about to face "great danger". Taiki and the newly reformed Yuu get their partners back eventually, and Shoutmon looks like goddamn Ryoma from Getter Robo. The trio run around stopping evil Digimon from kidnapping and possessing people across the city while traveling to DigiQuartz, a post-apocalyptic alternate dimension that's shrouded in mystery. Then a new trio of rival Digimon Hunters appear, and our heroes must both combat and join forces with them under the watchful eye of the old "watchmaker".
And that's the first few episodes. Digimon Hunters probably starts off better than any other series besides Adventure 01, setting up a good cast of new and returning characters, a cool setting and a great premise. After that, nothing fucking happens. All of the Xros Wars cast appears again for very short, worthless cameos, the logistics of the setting crumble as Digimon just sort of run rampant and the public doesn't care, and none of the characters get any significant development whatsoever.
Like, I don't even understand. This was the thought process I had while following this show:
Episodes 1-5: Holy god this will be the best thing since Tamers, it's Xros Wars 02, omgomg the animation, the music, omg
Episode 6-10: Haha alright, this is pretty cool. Yeah. I bet the story will kick in at episode 12 or so.
Episode 11-15: Aha, nothing's happened yet, but there's so much set up...!
Episodes 16-20: What the hell is happening in this series. Why has nothing progressed at all. Why...? Wha..? That doesn't make sense, but okay...
Episode 21-25: Alright, fuck this.
Slowly, the great premise cracks, breaks, shatters, turns to dust, and then you inhale the dust and it tears your lungs up.
Taiki and Yuu are nerfed to hell and back, and are almost never present. Most episodes are just Tagiru and Gumdramon screwing around. Shoutmon's reign as Digimon king is pretty much irrelevant. Damemon's personality is mostly gone and his relationship with Yuu is flat and lifeless.
The old man who was the impetus of the whole plot isn't present for 95% of the show.
None of the enemies in the series are intimidating in the slightest, and more often than not get beaten by the hero Digimons' lowest forms.
The whole "people getting possessed and kidnapped" plot never progresses or gets more threatening. In fact, it just becomes a trivial annoyance after a while.
Akari, Zenjiro, Nene and Kiriha are all but completely non-present. Akari and Zenjiro are foreshadowed to get their own Digivices and partners in the opening, but it doesn't happen until the very end when it doesn't even matter.
The three new main characters, who have really cool Digimon and character designs, get no development. Ever. They're never successful as villains or useful as allies, and there's no reason for them to have ever been in the show at all.
It's miserable. It's garbage. And then it ends at 25 episodes.
Oh wait, I forgot the best part, the whole overarching story to this show involves the previous 5 main characters showing up: Tai, Davis, Takato, Takuya and Masaru. It's foreshowed for literally less than 15 seconds at one point, and then completely dropped, and then they show up near the end. They just... show up. Nothing they do is explained, they're just "there". For no reason. Even though it makes absolutely not even one bit of sense at all on multiple levels. And they're gone. End of show.
There's dropping the ball, and then there's filling the ball with cement and shooting it with a cannon into your own feet. This show is the latter. Fuck it.
