I did not think this was possible, I remember watching Frontier as a kid and I remember liking it. But after rewatching it, this season makes Zero Two seem like a masterpiece. As broken, inconsistent, plot-holey and unserious as Zero Two was, it did something right: it kept me watching.
The one word I can describe this season as is: boring. Every episode I watched, I felt like I was wasting my time. Generally, they use the same formula: Takuya and gang arrive to new place, they get involved in the issues of one-shot characters, they find a new spirit, evolve, one-shot character issue is resolved, roll credits, rinse and repeat.
The season barely has a plot that, when the writers are not feeling like writing the formula I just described above, gets all of its info dumped into random exposition-heavy episodes. This makes practically 90% of the episodes worthless. Unless you like watching "let's save this random village of whatever" being retooled over and over again.
The characters are all knockoffs of Adventure's. Takuya is Taichi, Koji is Yamato, Tomoki is Takeru, Izumi is Mimi and Junpei is... Daisuke, I guess? I mean, his only character is that he spends most of the time trying to impress a girl. At least, he's less annoying than Daisuke, I'll give him that.
These characters barely develop or are even given a reason to do the things they do. So, they're called to the Digital World, they almost immediately die, they just so happen to find their spirits and then they decide... "Meh, I guess I'll just do what this random voice on my phone says." For no reason whatsoever. It is never elaborated on why all these character decide to stay on the Digital World, why they are trying to save it, the justification is always "for reasons."
The writing excels in how bad and generic it is. I thought Zero Two was bad, but Frontier is just sad. From the recycled storylines to the way the show handles any character that is not named Takuya or Koji, and even them feel like generic sentai rival dynamic characters.
On top of that, someone on the writing must've hated women, because Izumi has got to be the most pathetic female main character I have ever seen. She gets her ass kicked in her debut episode, one of her special attacks is bumping her butt into her enemies, which does nothing except make them horny and whenever they fight together against an enemy, she's always the first one to be taken down. Worse than that, she'll spend whole episodes on the sidelines, because she gets her spirit stolen.
The villains were just silly and non-threateing. Coupled with the bad writing, because there were many times the kids and the villains could just evolve and easily kick each other's asses, but didn't. Why do they have all these spirit evolutions if they never use them? I lost count of how many times they let themselves be beaten by the enemy simply because they decided to stick to an inferior evolution for no goddamn reason.
Are there good things about Frontier? I guess some of the soundtrack. The opening theme is great. And although many episodes are total filler, it feels good to explore the Digital World, as bland and uncreative as it was in this iteration. Other than that? This season is just insulting to the brains of anyone over the age of 18.
Worse than Zero Two
I did not think this was possible, I remember watching Frontier as a kid and I remember liking it. But after rewatching it, this season makes Zero Two seem like a masterpiece. As broken, inconsistent, plot-holey and unserious as Zero Two was, it did something right: it kept me watching.
The one word I can describe this season as is: boring. Every episode I watched, I felt like I was wasting my time. Generally, they use the same formula: Takuya and gang arrive to new place, they get involved in the issues of one-shot characters, they find a new spirit, evolve, one-shot character issue is resolved, roll credits, rinse and repeat.
The season barely has a plot that, when the writers are not feeling like writing the formula I just described above, gets all of its info dumped into random exposition-heavy episodes. This makes practically 90% of the episodes worthless. Unless you like watching "let's save this random village of whatever" being retooled over and over again.
The characters are all knockoffs of Adventure's. Takuya is Taichi, Koji is Yamato, Tomoki is Takeru, Izumi is Mimi and Junpei is... Daisuke, I guess? I mean, his only character is that he spends most of the time trying to impress a girl. At least, he's less annoying than Daisuke, I'll give him that.
These characters barely develop or are even given a reason to do the things they do. So, they're called to the Digital World, they almost immediately die, they just so happen to find their spirits and then they decide... "Meh, I guess I'll just do what this random voice on my phone says." For no reason whatsoever. It is never elaborated on why all these character decide to stay on the Digital World, why they are trying to save it, the justification is always "for reasons."
The writing excels in how bad and generic it is. I thought Zero Two was bad, but Frontier is just sad. From the recycled storylines to the way the show handles any character that is not named Takuya or Koji, and even them feel like generic sentai rival dynamic characters.
On top of that, someone on the writing must've hated women, because Izumi has got to be the most pathetic female main character I have ever seen. She gets her ass kicked in her debut episode, one of her special attacks is bumping her butt into her enemies, which does nothing except make them horny and whenever they fight together against an enemy, she's always the first one to be taken down. Worse than that, she'll spend whole episodes on the sidelines, because she gets her spirit stolen.
The villains were just silly and non-threateing. Coupled with the bad writing, because there were many times the kids and the villains could just evolve and easily kick each other's asses, but didn't. Why do they have all these spirit evolutions if they never use them? I lost count of how many times they let themselves be beaten by the enemy simply because they decided to stick to an inferior evolution for no goddamn reason.
Are there good things about Frontier? I guess some of the soundtrack. The opening theme is great. And although many episodes are total filler, it feels good to explore the Digital World, as bland and uncreative as it was in this iteration. Other than that? This season is just insulting to the brains of anyone over the age of 18.