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YMMV / Digimon Adventure 02

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  • Accidental Innuendo:
    • Myotismon's line just before he emerges in his true form, where he says that he'll reveal himself, makes it sound like he's about to flash everyone.
    • Earlier on in the series, from Episode 23, Ken talks about the conflict he had with Osamu (his older brother), he says "He didn't have to hit me, I just wanted to play with his toy."
  • Adorkable:
    • Ken displays traits of this once he joins the team as a contrast to his former Kaiser persona; he's incredibly awkward and somewhat socially inept, but it only makes him come off as more of a nice guy.
    • Wormmon's childlike behavior and voice make him incredibly cute and endearing.
    • Yolei is a cute, hyper, absent-minded Cloudcuckoolander, but a smart and loveable Ditzy Genius nonetheless.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • The Love Triangle between Davis, Kari, and T.K. weren't deeply explored outside of Davis' jealousy and envy of T.K. and his giant crush on Kari. While Hikari and Takeru were established to be close, their specific feelings were left untouched, leaving the whole Love Triangle as an Ambiguous Situation. The Dub Text played up the romantic flavors of these relationships, with Kari making quips in Digimon: The Movie about deliberately making Davis jealous and about how much he misses her.
    • In the show's writing, Davis' infamous crush on Kari and envy of T.K. were mostly just Running Gags that fell by the wayside once Davis had Ken to pal around with, but did he actually move on, or did he continue to harbor unstated feelings? (The CD Drama Natsu e no Tobira confirms that Daisuke is carrying some angst over Hikari turning him down for a date and thus still has some interest in her.)
    • The psychology of Ken and the Kaiser/Emperor is a favorite subject of the fanbase. How much of the Kaiser persona is Ken and how much of it is the Dark Spore? Exactly how thorough was Ken's conversion?
    • There's also some for Sam, Ken's late older brother. How much family angst between the two happened was Sam's fault and how much was Ken's? How greatly was the Dark Spore distorting Ken's perceptions and memories?
    • Dagomon is an Ensemble Dark Horse among the Wasted Characters, but has no actual role as a character, leading to much speculation. In fanfic, he frequently figures as a Big Bad waiting for his chance to strike and desires to use Kari for his own purposes (which grew so common that many people forgot that Kari's kidnapping was in reality the plot of his rebellious minions).
    • The show's second Love Triangle, between Tai, Sora, and Matt, has also generated plenty, even among the creative staff. Original head writer Kakudou, who had always intended for Matt and Sora to marry, explicitly rejects any Taichi-Sora romance; other writers and even some of the voice actors, however, seemed to favor Taichi-Sora. The Diablomon movies in particular (which lacked Kakudou's influence) are a hotbed of Taichi-Sora Ship Tease. Also, there's the question of whether Taichi has feelings for Sora, highlighted when Sora brings cookies to Matt's concert; in the dub his romantic feelings are explicit, but in the Japanese original, he only has a wistful look and a comment from Agumon that he's become like an adult, which could be interpreted as gracefully deciding I Want My Beloved to Be Happy.
  • Anti-Climax Boss: BelialVamdemon. He makes one hell of a first impression by horrifically torturing Archnemon then one-shotting Mummymon, on top of being a fan favorite villain from the original Digimon Adventure. Problem is, he is put at a severe disadvantage the two times he is confronted by the kids. Firstly, he decides to fight them in a dimension where their Digimon produce copies of themselves upon evolving, leaving him to face an army of every single evolved form the children had access to at the same time. Then, when he decides to take the fight to the Digital World, the Digidestined find out that he has a Weaksauce Weakness in the form of giving hopes and dreams to the children that had been infected by his dark spores. The final battle can best be summed up like this: Random corrupted child proclaims, "I want to be (profession)!" or related, followed by one of BelialVamdemon's limbs exploding. One could say that Imperialdramon Fighter Mode's Giga Death finishing off what remained of the villain was just overkill at that point.
  • Arc Fatigue: BlackWarGreymon's story arc has gotten flak due to not much being done for him in the way of characterization, as it consists of him destroying one Destiny note  Stone after another while No Selling everything thrown his way by the main characters.
  • Ass Pull:
    • While the Dark Towers served as a handy excuse to prevent the original team from evolving naturally and allowed the show to focus on the new kids and their shiny new Armor evolutions, the Hand Wave keeping them on the sidelines post-Emperor was a blatant Voodoo Shark. To wit, 02 insisted the older kids had somehow surrendered the power of the crests to protect the digital world barrier after the Diablomon incident, which ignores the original Adventure indicating that the power of the crests was actually created by the children themselves and gives no reason as to how the kids could stop generating that power — not to mention the bigger question of "Wasn't the portal to the digital world supposed to be closed forever?" This also raises a lot of questions regarding Ken's Crest of Kindness. Why did he get a crest when none of the others got to keep theirs? Why didn't he ever do anything with it? Since it had already been established that the armor digi-eggs don't have to line up with the crests, wouldn't it have been better for him to get a Digi-Egg of Kindness?
    • During the battle against SkullSatamon, a plot point is made the original Digimon need to devolve and then return to the Digital World because they can't stay in the real world for too long. Not only is this absolutely bollocks, because the original Digimon did stay longer than that in the real world during the previous season, but no explanation whatsoever is given as to why this never happened to the new Digimon who have been living nearly 24/7 outside of the Digital World. It feels like an extremely contrived way to rob the original Digimon of what little spotlight they had left.
  • Audience-Alienating Ending: The Distant Finale was not well-received by the fanbase. For starters, the epilogue came out of nowhere and stated that nearly everyone on earth now has a Digimon of their own. Another issue fans have with the ending is the career choices and pairings that the cast ended up with. One example is Sora ending up with Matt instead of Tai (Despite that the original series and Our War Game seemed to lean towards Tai x Sora more). Speaking of Matt, the ending revealed that he became an astronaut, even though that the series had him being an aspiring rock-star. And lastly, the series ends with several plotlines being left unresolved.
  • Badass Decay:
    • Remember Angemon, who was so powerful in the first season that he didn't start making regular appearances until everyone else had reached the Ultimate level? Well now he exists to get Worfed and DNA Digivolve with Ankylomon, and even when they fight against Digimon he should have a clear-cut advantage over (the Daemon corps) he doesn't fare any better. MagnaAngemon initially avoids this trope at first. He actually puts up a good fight against BlackWarGreymon when no other Digimon up to that point could scratch him, and only lost because BWG managed to cut off his power source. He then gets hit with this trope when he only appears to give his power to Imperialdramon to help fight SkullSatamon even though SkullSatamon is a Digimon that MagnaAngemon should have had no trouble walking all over, especially considering what he's going up against.note 
    • Magnamon. When he first appears in Digimon: The Movie he and his associate Rapidmon can go toe-to-toe with a very powerful Mega. Seraphimon and Magnadramon (two legendary and very powerful Mega Digimon in their own right) appeared just so Davis and Willis could have the Golden Digimentals to golden armor digivolve their Digimon. However, when Magnamon appears in the series he struggles to defeat Chimeramon (who was originally meant to be Mega-level, but later material insists on treating him as only an Ultimate).
    • Omnimon, who wiped out an army of Diaboromon in his first apperance, can't handle a swarm of Kuramon during his appearance in Diaboromon Strikes Back. Not only is Kuramon Diaboromon's weaker, unevolved form, there were fewer Kuramon than there were Diaboromon, the entire scene makes no sense unless you look at it as the writers fumbling to bring out a brand new form. On the other hand, Omnimon made a beeline for Diablomon and succeeded in the goal of dispatching the main threat... only to belatedly realize how Diablomon's new plan actually revolved around the Kuramon.
    • Mummymon. In his debut appearance, he managed to hold his own against all the new Digi-Destined long enough for him and Arukenimon to escape. Later on, he couldn't take down one of them by himself even when he was at a higher level.
    • Arukenimon herself got hit with this. She spends several episodes being built up as the new big threat, is shown having the power to create extremely powerful fake Digimon out of control spires and when she first reveals herself as an Ultimate-level Digimon she puts up a good fight (which you'd expect from an Ultimate level fighting mostly a group of Champion-strength opponents). And then the kids get their second wind and Arukenimon immediately becomes comic relief and stays that way.
  • Base-Breaking Character: Almost every new member of the main cast.
    • Davis was and still is one of the most polarizing members of the new cast. Being a Suspiciously Similar Substitute to Tai and turning the previously unchallenged Takari ship into a Love Triangle (in which he's the underdog) managed to earn him a boatload of attention, positive and negative alike.
    • Yolei - funny or just annoying?
    • Cody - interesting or just boring?
    • Jun, primarily for the crime of taking an interest in Matt and later becoming his Loony Fan.
    • Even the villains aren't safe. Depending on who you ask, Arukenimon and Mummymon are either a pair of hilarious sympathetic villains, or they're two of the most annoying, useless villains this side of Team Rocket.
    • BlackWarGreymon is either a badass and a compelling tragic antagonist, or an overly emo Mewtwo knock-off whose presence wore out its welcome and who needed to dial back on the Wangst.
  • Bizarro Episode: The episode "His Master's Voice" — a Lovecraftian episode in an otherwise non-Cosmic Horror setting.
  • Broken Base:
    • The quality of this series in general. Quite simply, the fanbase cannot absolutely decide how it feels about 02. Near the time it initially aired, it was extremely popular and was considered by some to be an Even Better Sequel to the original, but outcry over the Distant Finale, the fact it was followed by the Cult Classic Digimon Tamers, and general retrospective analysis of its writing quality caused general opinion of it to plummet. Then, in the wake of some of the later series (particularly Digimon Xros Wars: The Young Hunters Who Leapt Through Time, the protagonist of which ended up being often compared to Daisuke), some opinion of it improved to a perception that it wasn't the worst Digimon series out there. Due to the series' divisive status, whether it's any good depends entirely on the person you ask and their own personal opinion on the series.
    • Sora's Girliness Upgrade. Either you see it as a sign of maturity and acceptance with her mother or you dislike it as she becomes flanderized into a generic girly girl and loses her unique Tomboy personality. This applies more to the Western fandom.
    • Angewomon, whose classic Mega form is Holydramon (seen in Hurricane Touchdown and Digimon Rumble Arena), evolves into Ophanimon in Digimon Battle Spirit 1.5 and in the Digimon Adventure PSP game. Fans are split as to whether this change makes Gatomon's evo-line boring, or even how consistent it is. The Ophanimon fans refer to the fact that she and Angewomon are both Angel digimon, while the Holydramon fans mention how the Holy Dragon is coming full-circle (Salamon and Gatomon are both Holy Beast Digimon), and that traditionally, high-ranking angels (Seraphs, Ophans and Cherubs) were strange-looking to human eyes, making it counter-intuitive to exclude Holydramon on that basis. note 
  • Common Knowledge: Dagomon is widely regarded by the fandom as being responsible for Kari's kidnapping to the Dark Ocean, but it was actually the Deep Ones that summoned her and tried to mate with her. Likewise, the idea that he had an Aborted Arc at all.
  • Complete Monster: Myotismon... or rather MaloMyotismon as he is known in this season. See that page for details.
  • Contested Sequel: Probably the best way to describe the series. On the one hand, the writing issues and character issues receive a large amount of flak within the fanbase. On the other hand, it does still have its fair share of fans. If ranking site statistics are to be believed, this series usually places about third or fourth in series' popularity, making it relatively Critic-Proof. As stated in Broken Base, it largely depends on who you ask.
  • Die for Our Ship: And the intense ship wars continue on to this day.
    • If you didn't ship Yolei with Ken, you were expected to hate her. Even worse when she did get him.
    • In their heyday, the Dakari vs. Takari fights were the worst. Generally in fanfics, the character the author didn't prefer would get Ron the Death Eater Treatment.
    • In an odd reverse example, one of the biggest Dakari supporters would write fics where, if Davis didn't get Kari, he would eventually die and T.K. and Kari would be miserable. So the one that's being shipped is the one that's dying for not getting his girl.
    • Back in the early 2000s, Sora won the award for being possibly the biggest Scrappy of all the characters when she and Matt hooked up, as the biggest shipping factions at the time (Tai/Matt, Tai/Sora, and Matt/Mimi) basically ganged up on her.
    • Matt himself got this treatment from angered Tai/Sora fans.
      Get Crest of Friendship. Steal best friend's childhood sweetheart years later.
  • Engaging Chevrons: Transformation Sequence with 9 evolutions for 6 Digimon; going through the digiportal.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Natsu ("Nacchan") from the CD drama Natsu e no Tobira (Door to Summer) has become very popular within the fandom, even more then half of the main cast, and that might be perhaps because of The Woobie status she has as well the interactions she has with Daisuke, who becomes more of a fleshed out and sympathetic character in the CD drama.
  • Epileptic Trees: In the penultimate episode, MaloMyotismon traps the DigiDestined inside a Lotus-Eater Machine which lets them see their greatest desire, but Davis breaks the group out as his greatest desire is to defeat MaloMyotismon once & for all. A common theory amongst those who absolutely hate the events following this is that Davis doesn't break the group free of the illusions, and he's merely seeing his greatest desire & MaloMyotismon has really won, unbeknownst to the viewer.
  • Evil Is Cool:
    • The Digimon Kaiser, to the point some fans actually prefer him over regular Ken.
    • BlackWarGreymon as well, for those who didn't find him overly emo.
    • Arukenimon and Mummymon are incredibly popular in Spain; they often overshadow Digimon Kaiser in the memory of those who watched 02 as children. The great job of Raquel Martín and Rafael Calvo at voicing them has part of the merit.
    • Daemon and his Terrible Trio; not only did they prove to be an effective Knight of Cerebus in contrast to Arukenimon and Mummymon's Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain status and Oikawa's Non-Action Big Bad, with his Corps causing near causalities and Daemon being powerful enough to be needed to be sealed away in order to have him not interfere with the plot due to how powerful he turned out to be. It's to the point that he was seen as a much preferable Final Boss candidate than MaloMyotismon turned out to be.
  • Fandom Rivalry: With Tamers fans. 02 fans consider Tamers to be unfun and wangsty and wish it was a continuation, Tamers fans consider 02 to be insultingly childish and consider it being the end of its continuity to be just desserts.
  • Fanon:
    • If you'd listen to the fans talk, you'd believe Dagomon is a Physical God Eldritch Abomination that could give Apocalymon and Armaggemon a run for their money; there's a certain desire to ignore that ol' Squidface is just an Ultimate/Perfect-level Digimon. The ominous way it was introduced in the already unsettling "His Master's Voice" episode doesn't help and its relationship to the postmodernly popular Cthulhu Mythos don't help.
    • While none of the Digidestined's future children have names, the majority of fans agree that Ken named his first son Osamu/Sam.
  • Fanon Discontinuity:
    • As noted above in Broken Base, this mostly applies to the final battle and the epilogue. But mostly the epilogue. Just TRY to find a fanfic that takes place after Season 2 that doesn't ignore it and the part about everyone getting a Digimon.
    • Those who blatantly dislike 02 even went as far as to deny the entire show's existence (although this is not a popular option in fanfics, at least about the 02 characters).
  • Fan-Disliked Explanation:
    • Fans were not happy with the explanation given for why the old Digimon could no longer reach Ultimate for multiple reasons, especially since it was just a blatant example of the show nerfing the older kids to allow the newer kids to stay relevant. Especially since it only theoretically works if you ignore the Digimon Wonderswan Series.
    • Gennai's commentary on Gatomon's tail ring at the end of the series is an equally blatant excuse for completely forgetting and failing to incorporate it back into the series after she lost it in the first episode.
    • To a lesser extent, the Dark Seeds part of Ken's backstory. A number of fans feel that his story would have been better had Ken simply snapped under a combination of being The Unfavorite in his family, the trauma over his older brother's death and the overall stressful life he was living.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple:
    • While Ken and Miyako wound up married in the finale, most fans shipped Ken with Daisuke instead, since they have very little in-show support other than her having a massive crush on him (only mentioned before she learned his identity) that he never indicated he noticed. The relationship between Ken and Daisuke is much more developed and more intense, being chock full of Ho Yay even when Ken was the Digimon Kaiser. In comparison, Ken has little-to-no meaningful interactions with any of the main cast besides Daisuke, which only reinforces the shipping notions. In fact, on Archive of Our Own the pairing outranks all others from the whole franchise.
    • While Sora/Yamato is canon (and personally favored by the original director of Digimon Adventure), many fans still prefer Taichi/Sora, and you'll be more likely to find fan work and doujinshi for that pairing. Even a few of the Japanese voice actors have stated their preference for Taichi/Sora and expressed surprise that Sora ended up with Yamato instead.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: While 02 is far from being everybody's favourite season in Spain, there is very little of the global Broken Base about the series in that country, with most people there regarding it relatively well. (Though there are reasons to explains this: 02 was brought in on the tail of Adventure and benefitted a lot from the latter's original promotional campaign, to the point that most Spaniards who grew up with Adventure and 02 consider them one and the same by default.) However, this can be more noted in the Evil Is Cool field — while Arukenimon and Mummymon are usually seen as rather mediocre baddies, in Spain they are counted among the most memorable villains of the entire franchise.
  • Ham and Cheese: Bob Papenbrook as Daemon. The man took a villain who originally had no personality to speak of and made him a Disney villain. It's every bit as awesome as it sounds.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • The D-Terminal, the kids' messaging item that comes with their Digivice, looks a lot like the Nintendo DS.
    • Imperialdramon's "Positron Laser" attack. In 2008, scientists actually discover a way to produce antimatter (namely positrons) in large quantities by using a laser.
    • In the dub of the episode where the Dark Spiral was created, Wormmon offered to be the test subject for it and Ken dismissively shot the idea down while quipping about Wormmon turning into some sort of a butterfly. In the game Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory, a Wormmon actually does turn into a butterfly-themed Digimon.
    • During the montage of worldwide Digimon appearances in episode 39, the footage shows monsters appearing at the Nazca Lines. Interesting idea.
    • Ten years later, it's hard to watch the Jogress Evolution scenes with their strong romantic undertones without thinking of Gems fusing.
  • Informed Wrongness: While you can rightfully accuse Davis of rash judgment when the team first discovers Control Spires in "Iron Vegiemon" with his guns-blazing approach, the solution the group instead hits upon is an odd example of Informed Rightness when Matt decides to go with equally rash tactics that rely entirely on The Guards Must Be Crazy. The show takes Matt's side and none of the guards take notice of the fake Dark Rings (which even Patamon thinks is dumb) until the prisoners launch an uprising.
  • Iron Woobie: Ken, for his persistence in knocking down Dark Towers, even while fully expecting the rest of the team to continue hating him, and his concern for the Dark Seed kids, who followed Oikawa of their own volition.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: While other series are quite controversial on their own terms, 02 is (mostly) disliked for being too reliant on Adventure unlike other sequels in the future (though Early-Installment Weirdness might be in effect here) and many wasted and/or badly written plots. The fact that Tamers came right after it didn't help.
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • Oikawa. He's a disturbing bastard, but his life story is so damn sad.
    • It would be easier to sympathize with BlackWarGreymon's existentialist crisis if he weren't so bent on destroying the world for the sake of finding a Worthy Opponent in Azulongmon.
    • Arukenimon and Mummymon, to an extent. Though they constantly make trouble for the digidestined, seeing them humiliated routinely (especially Mummymon) can garner a certain amount of sympathy. Not to mention, when one thinks about it, in their own way, they have a similar existential dilemma to BlackWarGreymon (something he himself pointed out). Lastly their extremely nasty death scene is likely to evoke sympathy even from detractors.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: Even those who don't like the series still loves the Transformation Sequence of XV-mon and Stingmon into Paildramon, especially in the original Japanese version. The synchronization of the Theme Music Power-Up with the two hip-mounted guns firing is so badass as it is awesome!
  • Memetic Mutation: "Original Digimon do not steal", after some fans noticed that Kaiser-Ken's creation of what he insisted was his "original Digimon" was similar to behavior of many people on DeviantArt.
  • Mind Game Ship: The Emperor's iconic Sadistic Choice — which one of Davis' friends will he save from being eaten? This scene is basically responsible for the entire Kaiser/Daisuke fandom.
    Ken: Seeing you squirm is so delicious.
  • Mis-blamed: English dub writers and voice directors Jeff Nimoy and Bob Bucholtz were blamed by several for the added jokes and tone killing dub changes. However, many of these changes were the result of Executive Meddling by Fox Kids and Nimoy and Bucholtz actually left the show near the final arc due to being fed up with the meddling.
  • Narm:
    • Ken's literal Kick the Dog moment, which suffers from a laughable sense of physics.
    • The Big Bad's dub name. "Malo" is the Spanish word for bad. "Myotis" is a genus of bat. The Big Bad's final form is "BadBatmon". It's slightly less Narmy if you look at Malo's original Latin root, Malus, which means wicked or evil when used in context.
    • The fact that he was essentially defeated by having his physical form literally disappearing by the Dark Spore children talking about their hopes and dreams didn't do him any favors.
    • Due to Never Say "Die" being in effect, hearing the characters constantly go on about "destroying" evil Digimon was quite narmy.
    • Fox Kids had a "Digi-Bowl" segment in 2001 in an attempt to crossover with the Super Bowl and had Terry Bradshaw commenting on the show's clips and interacting with Hikari in dubbed-over clips. To say it was cringy is vastly an understatement, and it has to be seen to be believed. Fox Kids would do another Digi-Bowl segment the following year with Digimon Tamers, embarrassingly enough.
  • Narm Charm:
    • While the series does have its' fair share of detractors, due to the various writing issues (as this page will tell you), there are still many who enjoy the series, largely due to maintaining the entertaining dialogue, fun plots, cool Digivolutions, and deep moments the first series was known for.
    • BlackWarGreymon's fight against WarGreymon. It is as awesome as it is unnecessary. It really doesn't make sense for Azulongmon to give Agumon the power to become WarGreymon just to fight BlackWarGreymon, but the fans would not have been satisfied if they did not see the two WarGreymon go at it.
    • The "Digi-Bowl" segment again. If you don't take it too seriously, it has a certain goofy charm to it. It's not everyday you see Terry Bradshaw interacting with Digimon.
  • Nightmare Retardant:
    • Wendigomon's flavor text serves to Double-Subvert this; basically, the spaciotemporal mind screw is Wendigomon's own powers. It was, however, the virus that made it an Eldritch Abomination.
    • Arukenimon's true form is as terrifying as one would expect from a queen of spiders, and she makes a good first impression. However, the reveal also marks the start of her decay into a comic relief villain paired with the goofier Mummymon, which took away a lot of the menace that she had when she was disguised as a mysterious silver-haired lady.
  • One True Threesome: After the shipping wars cooled down (which took at least half a decade), there sprung up a few sub-genres exploring the Love Triangle between Taichi, Sora, and Yamato on the one hand and Takeru, Hikari, and Daisuke on the other.
  • Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading:
    • An episode had Yolei and Mimi growing really close. The implication was supposed to be that Yolei saw Mimi as a Cool Big Sis, but the Big-Lipped Alligator Moment Imagine Spot of them drawn in a flowery shoujo style hugging each other is rather... Yeah.
    • A rather famous example with the Adventure "Love Triangle", a combination of this trope and Depending on the Writer. Hiroyuki Kakudou always intended for Taichi and Sora to be Just Friends, and for Sora to fall in love with Yamato as a way of subverting the cliché that the main boy and girl had to end up with each other, so there was never any Love Triangle originally. This was also the plan for 02 until Our War Game! complicated things. Basically, Mamoru Hosoda was unaware of the intended Official Couple and made a fight hinging on Belligerent Sexual Tension a major plot point in the Our War Game! movie. When Sora began dating Yamato in 02, many people were confused at the sudden change in love interest, even the voice actors. The contrast between the director's vision and the writers' and actors' impression under which they operated resulted in the Relationship Upgrade between Sora and Yamato looked totally random and Strangled by the Red String.
  • Popularity Polynomial: Perception of this series' quality has zig-zagged radically. Initially, it was seen as a strong continuation of the beloved original, only to later be seen as a painful example of Sequelitis and mismanagement of the franchise, and then eventually was seen as an all right sequel you could like openly without earning weird looks. The later state of the franchise and productions that followed had a big role in 02's fluctuating popularity.
  • Retroactive Recognition: Romi Park as Ken/The Digimon Emperor, three years before her breakout role as Edward Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003).
  • Replacement Scrappy:
    • Davis, for being rather abrasive and people finding his crush on Kari annoying, but it also compounds with him being a shameless Suspiciously Similar Substitute of Tai.
    • You will find very few people who prefer Silphymon and Shakkoumon over Angewomon and MagnaAngemon, respectively. Similarly, Pegasusmon is way less liked than Angemon.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
    • Many fans who hated Mimi in the original series warmed up to her more mature, strong-willed personality in this series.
    • Davis being Ken's biggest supporter after the latter's Heel–Face Turn made him win the love of many fans who previously disliked him.
  • Ron the Death Eater:
    • Davis freakin' Motomiya. Back in the day when the Ship Wars were in full swing, you couldn't turn around without seeing some Takari fanfic where he was written either as a jealous psychopath or so stupid it's a wonder he could tie his shoes, never mind be a Digi-Destined.
    • On the other hand, there's an entire genre of fics where the other Digidestined (most frequently Yolei, T.K., and Kari) are derailed into jerks who talk badly about Davis behind his back, thus giving him a reason to leave the group.
    • One well-known shipper would often write stories where Davis becomes embittered by the group's treatment of him, as well as T.K. and Kari seemingly being in a relationship, and ends up leaving the team for good by the end of it unless he either gets Kari, or dies. In other words, combining the two examples above: the Digidestined examples intentionally, and the Davis ones unintentionally.
    • Even Ken and Wormmon of all characters got this treatment on occasion back in the day, with some fanfics portraying them as homicidal.
  • Sacred Cow: It is very rare to find a negative opinion of "His Master's Voice" (or, frankly, anything involving Konaka) in the West mostly due to that conversation being dominated by Lovecraft enthusiasts, Tamers fans, and Takari shippers.
  • The Scrappy: You won't find many people who'll defend Shakkoumon. They mainly cite his strange designnote  and how he looks nothing like Ankylomon or Angemon despite being a fusion of the two as their main reasons for not liking him, often calling him a "teapot", among other things. The fact that he's a replacement of the extremely popular MagnaAngemon as Angemon's new Ultimate form (sort of) did little to win over the fans. This isn't helped by the fact that, unlike Paildramon and Silphymon, there was no plot-related prompt for Shakkoumon to happen, he simply did because Takeru and Iori decided to try.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The first anime was for all intents and purposes a survival story wherin the main characters had to face deep personal challenges to earn their roles whilst surviving the harsh wildness with no idea of how or why they were there to begin with. In contrast, the sequel has the main cast firmly situated in the real world with regular trips to the Digital World only to return home safely by the days end, while also having mentors in the form of the original cast who are fully aware of everything going on. Fans have often compared the sequel's story to "an after-school activity", feeling the new characters have a much easier time by comparison without any of the intrigue the original series had.
  • Shipping: With two significant Love Triangles and Ho Yay beyond that, it runs rampant in the fandom. Just check this page. We could run an entire page based on the couples and issues that went through in the making.
  • Squick: In the original version, the King of the Dark Ocean's minions weren't trying to get Kari to destroy their Evil Overlord. They were trying to bring Kari to them so that they could mate with her. She reacts more or less exactly like you would.
  • Strangled by the Red String: Despite the show's Love Triangle elements, the Official Couples of this season were really more production accidents than intentionally written.
  • Strawman Has a Point: Davis tries to convince the team that Ken has changed and have him on the team. While the other kids (especially T.K.) do feel that he has changed, they felt that it was too soon to trust the person that they have been fighting for months on end. It would've been a better-made point if he hadn't spent so much time talking about the Crest of Kindness, though.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • BlackWarGreymon's overall story and search for purpose is one of the few genuinely interesting plots, but it's also largely unconnected and its resolution is a Senseless Sacrifice.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • In the expanded universe, there are eleven Digimentals, or Armor Digi-Eggs, for the Digidestined to use (out of a technical total of fifteen), making for over sixty Armor Digivolutions accessiblenote . Michi e no Armor Shinka established that the children could, in fact, swap Digimentals (when they do so on accident), and the unique forms can be used in the D-3 toy that was released at the time. In the actual series, the Digidestined only ever use their specific Digimentals, highly likely to slim down the amount of ensuing Transformation Sequences. Later shows take advantage of the extra fifty-something Digimon by having them show up as their own Digimon (that Lynxmon Rika fights in the first episode? Give Tailmon the Digimental of Courage). The Merchandise-Driven elements also likely played a part—Armor Digimon were in part a toy gimmick (the Digimentals were a pile of armor parts that could peg onto a toy of the Digimon) and they only bothered to make toys of the ones that appeared in the show (bar Nefertimon), which also seem to have been the ones designed as toys first. Add to this is the fact the armors faded into irrelevance once natural Digivolution was possible, which many feel was a waste.
    • Ryo, of Wonderswan and Digimon Tamers fame, technically has three games in-between Digimon Adventure and Adventure 02, one of which involves Ken and two of which have him partnered with V-mon, but none of which have any serious lasting impact on the world of 02.note  For some more specific ideas, how does V-mon feel about Daisuke being his second partner after two campaigns with Ryo, and vice versa? What are Wormmon's thoughts on the scenario (only Ken has amnesia, after all)? And even if we know about V-mon and Wormmon, how about Hawkmon and Armadimon? They were sealed in Digimentals like V-mon was; do they have any history with him? note  note 
    • Ken has little to no meaningful interaction with the elder DigiDestined after his Heel–Face Turn despite that he endangered their lives and their partners just as much as he did the younger kids' and has a lot in common with many of them. There's no indication Ken ever learns that Mimi once enslaved a castle full of Digimon, that Tai also once assumed the whole Digital World was just a video game and nothing he did there could matter, or that Yamato also once turned evil, not even when he and Yamato are assigned to go to Mexico together. He's never seen apologizing to Tai for brainwashing his partner or to Joe for torturing Gomamon. The most he gets is a single genius-to-genius conversation with Izzy, and that's only in the English dub (the conversation is basically neutral exposition in the original). The wasted potential for relationship exploration is just endless.
  • Unfortunate Character Design: Endigomon/Wendigomon's face makes him look like something from a Minstrel Show.
  • Unintentional Period Piece: Taking place in 2002, personal computers are expensive commodities that are not ubiquitous in every home, as the new Digidestined require access to their school's computer lab to access the Digital World for a sizeable part of the series, and Yamato/Matt's father balks at being asked to buy one. One might have one in a home office, but they were still a serious investment. As home personal computers got cheaper and more common, it's easy to forget that access to the internet was once more difficult.
  • Unpopular Popular Character: The dubbed version had a lot of funny moments that poked fun at Davis' arrogant personality. Despite what you might think, he was still as much of a Butt-Monkey in the original, though. Despite the jokes made at his expense and the fact that a lot of the other characters don’t take him seriously, he still has a large fan base.
  • Values Dissonance:
    • Sora's 02 Girliness Upgrade is somewhat controversial. For Japanese fans, they openly welcomed it and saw it as a sign of maturity. Western fans were more upset about it and felt that she lost a unique part of her personality. The Western dub played a role in this because of its Alternative Character Interpretation, as the script and Sora's character descriptions played up her Tomboy nature more. Furthermore, another layer to the dissonance is driven by Sora's character arc being about her obligations to her family's business, and her epilogue career choice being intended as a middle ground between her own desires and paying respect to her family's business, something that was lost in translation in the American Dub.
    • Also, Miyako/Yolei, the technician and computer scientist of the team, ending up as a housewife in the epilogue has been criticized in the Western fandom, as it enforces Stay in the Kitchen stereotypes despite her being one of the group's most valuable members. In Japan, however, women are expected to retire from work once they get married to raise children at home.note  In fact, Miyako/Yolei even has an Image Song where she is excited to become a Yamato Nadeshiko and dreams of being a housewife. However, compared to when the show first came out, more women in Japan are eager to continue working after pregnancy, showing that this idealogy in itself is becoming outdated. That being said, it's more implied in the Japanese version that Miyako was on maternity leave due to having her third child, something that would require her to be away from her job for a while until she could get things settled.
  • Vindicated by History: Digimon Adventure tri. also being a Contested Sequel despite, or because of, Pandering to the Base (including a Take That, Scrappy! treatment of 02 that many think went too far) has caused 02, which did the opposite, to be viewed more favorably. Nowadays, it can be said 02 is more divisive than outright disliked. Even the widely reviled Distant Finale epilogue of the series has found more acceptance (if only a little bit) in the wake of Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna and either how polarizing its ending was, or how it helped build further towards said epilogue (And how the epilogue builds towards the film itself) depending on who you ask.
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