Takuya Kanbara is an average city kid who one day gets a text message from an unknown source instructing him to board a train towards his destiny. Taking up the Call to Adventure, he finds the train in question and is whisked off to the Digital World, which is currently under threat from the malevolent Cherubimon. Cherubimon and his minions are consuming the very building blocks of the Digital World (its "Fractal Code") to increase their own power, and if nothing is done then the entire Digital World will be devoured.All is not lost, however. Takuya and the other "chosen" children who boarded the train inherit the power of the legendary Warrior Ten, allowing them to transform themselves into Digimon. With their new powers, they fight to take back the stolen Fractal Code and restore the fractured Digital World to its former glory.The fourth anime series in the Digimon franchise, following Digimon Tamers, and basically the antithesis of its predecessor. While it does have its share of dramatic, intense, and introspective moments, it is light-hearted, fun and often childish.While not necessarily bad, the series was heavily criticised for basically discarding the Mons concept in favour of a safer, more marketable Henshin Hero gimmick, and suffered in the ratings for it. The lack of popularity forced the Digimon franchise onto hiatus for four years, eventually resurfacing with Digimon Savers.
Accidental Pervert: J.P. in "A Molehill Out of a Mountain". He does the "ladies first" bit, forgetting that Zoe is wearing a skirt. Cue Armor-Piercing Slap.
Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The English dub uses a completely new theme song, and while it's different from the Japanese version, it brings a whole different feel from the rap song that was used for the previous seasons.
BFS: Susanoomon's Ama no Habakiri attack (although he never says it) involves a MASSIVE sword-gun thing appearing in his hands, followed by an equally massive holy energy beam coming out of it, effectively becoming a humongous Lightsaber that does Lucemon Chaos Mode in one swing, and in the final battle, the dragon that protects Lucemon Larva in one swing. Beowolfmon's Beo Sabre should definitely count.
Bishonen Line: deliberately invoked, at least in reverse, with the new evolution system. (Which is immediately spun into a Running Gag for Ranamon.) Takuya and Kouji in particular cross back over the line at Mega/Ultimate level.
Bittersweet Ending: Par for course, though has to be the least bitter ending of the bunch, as the heroes don't have Digimon partners to have torn from them. They still have to leave the Digital World and all their friends there behind, however.
If we count the legendary warrior spirits, then they actually do have Digimon partners. Cue the waterworks.
Bond Villain Stupidity: Ranamon has two great opportunities to attack the kids while they are unable to Spirit Evolve in episodes 15 and 16. Instead, she wastes half her time bragging and the other half of her time being whisked off by her own Beast Spirit's spinning attack.
Book Ends: Though it didn't end up being the last season, Frontier appeared to be for a while. In the last episode, Susanoomon declares "AND SO, IT ENDS!" just before dealing the final blow, which parallels the dub name for the first episode of Digimon Adventure. Furthermore, the last shot of the episode has the caption "The End", rather than "To Be Continued" as it had for all the episodes of the show's US run.
Most of the digimon the Digidestined fight due to Lucemon's corrupting influences/viruses, most notably his direct corruption and mind control over Cherubimon).
Call Back: Like all Digimon runs save Digimon Adventure 02, the series has its own completely unique soundtrack and doesn't reuse from previous series... except for one single instance which falls under this trope. When Patamon is born, they play "Victory ~Theme of Good #2~", a lighthearted track from the Digimon Adventure soundtrack as an obvious callback to Patamon's role back then.
Call to Adventure: Literally. Ophanimon calls the kids on their cellphones.
Channel Hop: Because of the fact that Disney bought out Fox Kids/Saban a year prior, this one ended up airing on ABC Family and in the last season of Disney's weekday/Sunday block on UPN stations, "Disney's One Too" (a spinoff of One Saturday Morning over on ABC), though by this time it had dropped that name. (It likely didn't get onto ABC because Power Rangers was already on there, and it didn't make sense to have both former big Saban franchises on one network.)
Cheaters Never Prosper: ShadowWereGarurumon and Doggymon in episode 18. Unusually, they cheat quite openly and yet never get disqualified for it, but their dirty cheating habits annoy Takuya to the point where he ends up fighting them fist-to-fist on top of the Trailmon in a Traintop Battle.
Cool Train: The Trailmon, or at least some of them, like Buffalo and Worm.
Corrupt Corporate Executive: Snimon in episode 5, who tries to kill Agunimon and his friends because they destroyed part of his factory.
The Corruption: A pervasive dark force emanating from Cherubimon causes otherwise good digimon to become mischievous at best, positively evil at worst.
Cross Counter: Episode 7 has Takuya and Kouji defeat a group of ShadowToyAgumon by making them do this after they've combined into a pair of Humongous Mecha.
Curb-Stomp Battle: The Royal Knights arc can be described as follows: 1) The Royal Knights target an area to absorb its data. 2) The heroes try to stop them. 3) The heroes lose. Badly. 4) Wash, rinse, repeat until Lucemon is freed. The series will Never Live It Down.
Lucemon against EmperorGreymon and MagnaGarurumon, they don't have a chance. Every time Susanoomon shows up however, Lucemon is the one that gets beaten very badly, usually by 1 single attack on each form (the final form has 2 separate Digimon, so two attacks there).
Dead To Begin With: Kouichi. He had an accident while following Kouji down Shibuya Station, which caused only his soul to ever reach the digital world. His body never was there.
Takuya is an obvious Taichi/Tai expy, and his evolutions bear many striking similarities to Greymon, including EmperorGreymon, who is basically a WarGreymon on roids.
Kouji is an expy of Yamato/Matt, and his evolutions likewise resemble Garurumon's (especially Garmmon/KendoGarurumon).
Zoe/ Izumi combines traits of Mimi and Sora together, although her evolutions are only vaguely similar at best.
Tommy/Tomoki is an expy of Takeru/TK, although his evolutions are closer to resembling Gomamon's and Terriermon's.
JP/Junpei is a mix of Koshiro/Izzy and Jo/Joe, or at least sort of. His evolutions are similar to the Kabuterimon line.
Koichi is pretty similar to Ken (making him to only throwback to someone out of the original Adventure) and his evolutions are similar to Leomon.
and finally, Susanoomon is an obvious Omegamon/Omnimon expy.
Failure Hero: All of the heroes are turned into this during the Royal Knights saga.
Faux Action Girl: Zoe. She loses her first fight (compare to the way most Digimon in the franchise are invincible and often break out a multitude of one-shot powers in their debuts, to the point that in Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny message board topics, "he only did that once, in his debut fight" is a nigh-universally accepted argument when saying no, X couldn't beat Y.) and must be saved by a male character, and circumstances don't get much better for her afterwards. The only enemy she defeats by herself his her Arch-Enemy, Dark Action Girl Ranamon, in a Designated Girl Fight and even that's somewhat hard to buy. And of course she's Overshadowed by Awesome by Takuya and Kouji, but then again, isn't everyone?
Forgot I Could Fly: Zoe in "A Molehill Out of a Mountain". She's as scared of falling as any of the others, when she could just turn into Kazemon and fly up.
Similarly, in "The Swiss Family Digimon", Zoe was the only member of the crew who still had her Digivice. Everybody else had their Digivices stolen, and the (non-dangerous) thieves flew to a (non-dangerous) nearby island that's specifically stated to be inaccessible by sea. Rather than just have Zoe fly over to collect the Digivices herself, the crew fusses over trying to find a flying Digimon for a while, then opts to just build a raft.
Forgotten Phlebotinum: In one episode, Takuya learns that being a legendary warrior also gives him the power to basically control/predict the weather which he can use to increase his attack strength. After that one episode, it never comes up again.
Fusion Dance: The Advanced Hybrids are combinations of the Human and Beast spirits, while Susanoomon is the combination of KaiserGreymon, MagnaGarurumon and two or more of the Chosen themselves.
Genre Savvy: J.P. invokes this (via the use of Horror Tropes) to prevent Takuya stupidly running after Kouji, complete with American-esque comic Art Shift.
Goggles Do Nothing: Takuya, this however is averted, as he uses his in a few occasions in the show.
Gone Swimming, D-Tectors Stolen: This befalls almost everyone in episode 14. Zoe is spared, in no small part because she used a separate dressing room.
Gratuitous Foreign Language: Many of the Digimon in this season had names in Gratuitous English, but were changed for the English dub (presumably to preserve their exotic flavor). The most notable instances were Fairymon becoming Kazemon, Wolfmon becoming Lobomon, and Grottomon becoming Grumblemon.
Incendiary Exponent: Agunimon's Salamander Break and Vritramon's Flame Storm.
Inconsistent Dub: Frontier marks the point where Bandai of America simply stopped giving a shit about keeping Digimon consistent. None of the dub supporting material's information about attacks is even remotely consistent with the dub itself for Digimon introduced in Frontier, and even several names are way off!*
most egregiously Cherubimon/Kerpymon, Ranamon/Lanamon, Sakkakumon/Sephirothmon, Crusadermon/LordKnightmon
The dubbed show itself certainly isn't devoid of problems - it had a chronic habit of mismatching attack names with the correct attack, though it at least had the decency to keep names straight. It's also worth noting that the first episode of the dub had "spirit evolution" called "digivolution," which is the only time the series calls it that.
Ironically enough, in Japanese episode 33 Blitzmon says "Lightning Topper" while using "Golden Thunder."
Internal Homage: A number of minor characters are references to Digimon from previous series. Most apparent in a episode in which the heroes visit a school, consisting of the baby-forms of many main character Digimon from previous series, plus a Tsunomon who can evolve to Gabumon. The dub played this up by having most of the homage characters use their previous voice actors - including one who was a Fusion Dance originally. Gallantmon the store owner - originally a non-speaking role - brought back Steve Blum and Brian Beacock to say "Wish we could help" in the simultaneous voice of Guilmon and Takato.
Oddly enough, when a pack of Gomamon made an appearance, the one obvious reference wasn't made: having R. Martin Klein (who voiced Gomamon in Adventure) reprise the role. Klein had already done a large number of roles in Frontier before the episode, notably a Toucanmon in the same episode that sounded exactly like Gomamon.
Kiai: Dear god, Frontier loved it. Everything involved shitloads of yelling, especially later forms of Spirit Evolution (giving the impression that the process was in fact quite painful). It got to the point where so much yelling was required that Michael Reisz (Takuya) point-blank refused to voice EmperorGreymon for fear of permanently damaging his voice; Dave Wittenberg instead filled in there - where, ironically, almost no shouting was involved.
Lighter and Softer: The series certainly wasn't complete sunshine and rainbows and did have very dark and introspective moments (especially around Kouichi), but considering that its immediate predecessor was Digimon Tamers and its successor was Digimon Savers... yeah, this was inevitable.
Love Triangle: Takuya <-> Zoey <- J.P. and Cherubimon -> Ophanimon <-> Seraphimon show up with some regularity in canon, and of course Fanon interprets more as existing.
Lyrical Dissonance: Kouichi's image song is an upbeat, catchy rock song... but it's titled "With Broken Wings" and its lyrics contain things such as "a stray dog without a collar is laughing at me".
Merchandise Driven: Some criticized the series for appearing notably moreso than the previous series. Takuya, Kouji and Kouichi's combined forms, as well as their respective Ancient Digimon, were quite clearly designed as simple amalgamations of their earlier Hybrid forms and thus easily able to be made into toys. Susanoomon, the final hero, was also a visible amalgamation of EmperorGreymon and MagnaGarurumon. Of course, considering Digimon always was based on a toyline to begin with and that the toy necessity otherwise had no effect on the series, the criticism isn't the most valid.
Missed the Call: A group of four kids, including two who bullied Tommy. They were explicitly told to turn around and go home after the real Chosen were picked out of the masses, but instead of going home, they decided to wander the Digital World and an Angemon had to be sent to protect them.
Mistaken for Spies: KaratsukiNumemon, upon hearing that the children are Legendary Warriors in episode 6, confuse them with Grumblemon's lot, and dangle them over a cliff, trying to persuade Grumblemon into returning his hostages in exchange for "his". Naturally, the bad guy totally didn't care if the good guys got thrown off a cliff, and they had to escape on their own to fight him and save... the guys who were dangling them off a cliff a minute ago.
More than Mind Control: Cherubimon->Kouichi, but most notably Lucemon->Cherubimon and many others, directly or indirectly.
Near Villain Victory: They're able to completely destroy the world and its three moons before they're stopped. The world gets better.
New Powers as the Plot Demands: In all fairness, this is a Digimon series and a shounen series. In an amusing case, one episode had Takuya realise he could draw strength from the weather... then never used this ability again.
Although it isn't weather, he later uses heat/fire to make his attacks stronger.
No Export for You: Live in the UK, Malaysia, or Morocco? Raise your hands.
No Social Skills: The Digimon Analyzer says that Datamon is "good with machines, but not so good with people."
One-Winged Angel: The Double Spirit Evolution, a rare example of the heroes undergoing OWA.
Out-of-Clothes Experience: The transformation sequences involve characters' clothing instantly dissolving, though conveniently reappearing upon turning back. We also get Tamers-esque naked spirit scenes once the kids all become Susanoomon near the end.Barbie Doll Anatomy is thankfully in full play.
Out of Focus / Overshadowed by Awesome: Everyone who isn't Takuya and Kouji in the final arc of the series. Even the previously important Kouichi can do nothing but a Heroic Sacrifice that gives them a power-up needed to fight the Big Bad!
The Psycho Rangers: The Dark Legendary Warriors, at least until they're purified and freed of Cherubimon/Lucemon's control, and ultimately end up going on to be instrumental in defeating Lucemon.
Public Domain Soundtrack: In the Frontier movie, Zoey hums a tune by Maurice Ravel in the beginning. This was kept in the dub!
Purely Aesthetic Gender: Tamers's dub established it, but Frontier averts it completely. Different universes allows for different interpretation.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: Takuya and Kouji, who of course are associated with red and blue respectively.
Reset Button: The Digital World gets restored after Susanoomon finishes royally pwning Lucemon Satan Mode (the dragon and the actual Lucemon Larva it's protecting. Also, Kouichi's death (see Dead To Begin With above) also gets reversed when the rest of the Digidestined get sent back to the time when they left, and they hurry to the hospital where Kouichi is dying, before they save him and their digivices turn back into mobile phones.
It's actually part of the Digivices. Returning the data taken by the Monster of the Week and seeing the area restored stops happening really early on, but after their final victory, the entire world gets the treatment.
The Sacred Darkness: The element of darkness theoretically enjoys the same sanctity and importance as the other nine.
Sacrificial Lion: Even if he isn't a Leomon, Kouichi's forms are lions and thus he is still considered to carry on the tradition. In Japan, JagerLowemon's name is KaiserLeomon; while he wasn't in this form when he died, this is typically counted as yet another victim claimed by the Leomon curse. Also, IceLeomon, a Monster of the Week; Agunimon suspected that he was being controlled by Sakkakumon and thus had to destroy him. However, as no digi-egg was left behind, it seems likely that he was not a real Digimon to begin with ( much like the Mercurymon they fought at the end of that arc proved to be, as the real Mercurymon was himself Sakkakumon and had a lot of fight left in him.)
Sailor Earth: Most of the time, they are created to either fill in the roles of the keepers of the remaining four spirits, or give the series more girls so Zoe isn't alone.
Ship Tease: Takuya/Zoe, Kouji/Zoe, and J.P./Zoe all had their moments.
The Smurfette Principle: Zoe is the only girl amongst a squad of guys. Ranamon is her Psycho Ranger counterpart. The other four kids also have only one girl member.
In the Japanese, the character's name is a source of confusion, as the katakana characters can be read as either LordKnightmon or RhodoKnightmon - a pun, since rhodonite is the character's color. In the Savers dub, the character was renamed to LoadKnightmon, apparently at the request of Toei Animation themselves
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Spoiler Opening: The series' second Japanese ending is one of the franchise's most notable examples. It begun playing at the end of the episode revealing Duskmon is a human, and showed Kouichi as a member of the group, his natural Darkness Human and Beast forms AND Takuya and Kouji's new D-Scan designs that weren't introduced for another 8 episodes!
Stock Footage: The spirit evolution sequences, which are reused and almost never edited down; par for the course with Digimon. Another use of Stock Footage also caused continuity problems in the last episode. *
When the children are about to Spirit Evolve together into Susanoomon, all of them raise their D-Tectors, and the screens glow. This was reused footage from an earlier episode. It wouldn't be a problem or even a noticeable issue if it weren't for the fact that the reused footage contained Kouichi's raised D-Tector as well, making the total of raised Digivices into 6 rather than 5, and the fact that Kouichi was "killed off" two episodes ago
. Though one could argue that Kouichi was still with them "in spirit" so to speak.
Several variations of a montage of the four other children contributing their spirits so Kouji and Takuya could Hyper Spirit Evolve was reused for a couple of episodes during the Royal Knights arc.
Transformation Trinket: D-tectors and Spirits, such that when Gigasmon steals the Kazemon and Kumamon spirits, or the Toucanmon steal their D-Tectors, the kids concerned (which at one point is everyone except Izumi) swiftly become The Load to their comrades and worry about it.
Unwitting Pawn: A lot of characters turn out to be this during the Sakkakumon and Cherubimon arc. It's implied during Agnimon's fight with IceLeomon that even the enemies the kids face in Sakkakumon are being controlled or manipulated by Mercuremon.
What Could Have Been: The first character design sketches released in V-Jump showed some of the characters with different color schemes. Additionally, Kouji was originally going to sport long, black slacks instead of the grey capri sweatpants he eventually dons in the show. One of the fanbooks reports that Kouji was originally going to be a female character.
It was once rumored that Lowemon was originally conceived as the combined form of Duskmon and Velgmon, and that Duskmon and Velgmon were originally going to be retained rather than appear as the Spirit of Darkness' "corrupted" forms purified after Duskmon's defeat.
Sakkakumon, known as Sephirotmon in Japan, is shaped like the 10 aspects of God in Judaism, the Sephirot. Fittingly, that's the same number as legendary warrior spirits; and each orb contains one enemy corresponding with one of the ten elements. One of these orbs contains Mercuremon. Yes. Mercuremon exists inside himself.
Lucemon is full of symbolism. Not only is he specifically based on and named for Lucifer, his attack is called "Paradise Lost Punch". Also, he has what looks like a Dharmachakra (Buddhist Wheel Symbol) on his chest in Chaos Mode.
Xanatos Gambit: Mercuremon pulls off an impressive one roughly halfway through the series, during the Sakkakumon arc.
You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Arbormon loses his beast spirit to Wolfmon. According to Duskmon, that makes him useless to the evil legendary warriors. Duskmon then disposes of him, giving the horrified kids a taste of what to expect in the following Wham Episode.
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