Japanese Title: The Dangerous Game! Pinnochimon
The kids, regaining a little hope after defeating their first Dark Master and seeing the sea portion of Spiral Mountain vanish, decide to push on. Mimi, however, stops to make some graves for the Digimon who had died to protect them, and while Taichi believes this to be a reason they have to keep fighting for their sakes, Mimi is unsure. Yamato yells at Taichi, telling him that while he is right and they have to keep fighting, they do need to take the time to remember the ones they've lost.
The kids move on, with Taichi and Yamato wondering if it's okay for things to stay like this and the others worried about the stability of the group. Hikari, however, hears a voice that nobody else does...
Pinnochimon watches over them and, impatient for them to get to his lair, manipulates a strip of ground to move like a conveyor belt so that they'll reach his lair faster. He then thinks about how to kill the kids, including with a gun. He loses track of the kids after they jump onto a tree, and while Taichi insists they should just play right into their hands, the Chosen start to be teleported away one by one. Takeru asks Yamato why Yamato gives him preferential treatment to the other Chosen when they’ve worked as a team, asking if it's because Takeru is weak.
Pinnochimon plays with the Chosen's locations with toys representing them, make them teleport back and forth to each other's locations. Mimi, unable to take it anymore, decides not to get herself involved when the Digimon go off to look for their human partners, and Koushirou stays with her. Pinnochimon decides Takeru, being a child, will be a fun one to pick on, and goes off to retrieve him.
Yamato fusses over Takeru, who lashes that he can take care of himself now, and Pinnochimon arrives and threatens Takeru with Yamato's safety if Takeru won’t "play" with him. Takeru goes with him and Pinnochimon taunts and threatens Takeru with real guns.
As Pinnochimon chases Takeru around, killing two of his own minions whom he believes to be supporting Takeru, Takeru steps on the remote control Pinnochimon had used to control the land, causing the land to bring all of the teleported Chosen back together again. Yamato tells them that Takeru has been taken away, and before the Chosen can get to Pinnochimon, they're stopped by his minion Kiwimon, whom the Digimon take on.
Patamon enters Pinnochimon's house and finds the dolls Pinnochimon had used to teleport them over along with the remote control used to move the land. He decides to tell Takeru about it.
Pinnochimon continues to shoot at Takeru with the gun, but runs out of bullets before he can kill Takeru. While he's reloading, Takeru gets an idea and calls Pinnochimon boring, claiming that he's not having any fun and attributing it to Pinnochimon not having any friends. Pinnochimon is taken aback by this statement and goes off to fetch a "friend" to prove him wrong. While Pinnochimon's distracted fashioning his "friend" from a bunch of scraps, Patamon finds Takeru and leads him to the room with the remote control and dolls; Takeru promptly destroys the remote and the materials used to manipulate the Chosen.
Yamato argues with Taichi, attempting to get the answer to where Takeru is out of Kiwimon while Taichi thinks it's better to defeat Kiwimon first, and as a result his Crest doesn't glow and Gabumon is unable to warp-evolve.
Takeru escapes from Pinnochimon's house and, after Birdramon defeats Kiwimon (to the ire of Yamato, who still wanted his answer to where Takeru was first), Takeru arrives and tells the others he was able to protect himself on his own. Seeing Takeru talk about his accomplishments in Pinnochimon's house and the other Chosen congratulating him, Yamato walks slowly away in anguish, followed by a concerned Gabumon.
After a while, the other Chosen notice Yamato is gone, while Pinnochimon looks at the broken remote and ruminates on how Takeru had called him boring...
Tropes
- Abnormal Ammo: Kiwimon's main form of attack consists of sending out of his mouth tiny versions of himself that explode.
- The Baby of the Bunch: Deconstructed: Takeru wants to be seen as his own person and as a fighter as valuable as everybody else, but Yamato insists on giving him a different treatment despite all the contributions Takeru made for the team up to this episode.
- Big Brother Instinct: Deconstructed: Yamato wants to protect Takeru at all costs, but Takeru feels that this means Yamato sees him as The Load, even after Takeru spend all this time fighting alongside the rest of the team. The realization that Takeru has grown stronger and that doesn't need Yamato's protection anymore by the end of the episode hits him hard.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: Puppetmon doesn't get to kill any of the Chosen Children, not because he didn't have the chance, but because he wanted too much to have someone to play with. This could also be applied to Kiwimon that told Puppetmon he wouldn't have anyone to play withif he killed the Chosen Children right away, when Puppetmon got bored and had already decided to kill all of them.
- Bottomless Magazines: Averted. After wasting two bullets to kill Mushmon and Blossomon and using four bullets against Takeru, Pinnochimon needs to stop playing to go reload his gun.
- Bowdlerise: Pinnochimon having guns is completely edited out of the dub, which includes him killing his servants Mushmon and Blossomon with one.
- Brats with Slingshots: Puppetmon uses a slingshot to knock over Jou's voodoo doll.
- Conveyor Belt o' Doom: When Puppetmon gets tired of waiting for the Chosen Children he makes the forest floor move so they'll get to him faster.
- Evil Is Petty: Puppetmon kills Mushmon and Blossomon because he thinks they lied to him. The thing is, from their point of view, they were telling his master the truth, as they thought Takeru was indeed hidden behind the shelf. Their doom was caused by Takeru knowing better than trusting Mushmon and Blossomon and by Puppetmon not even bothering asking for an explaination. Takeru sees all this happening and is mortified by how quick Puppetmon killed his supposed allies.
- Feathered Fiend: Kiwimon.
- Kill It with Fire: How Kiwimon meets his end, courtesy of Birdramon.
- Manipulative Bastard: Takeru, of all people, provides a sympathetic example. He successfully manipulates Puppetmon by implying he won't believe he has any friends unless he presents him one of them. This makes Puppetmon go search for a "friend" (which is just a puppet Puppetmon built out of stuff he had) and gives Takeru an opening to destroy his map, remote control and surveillance system, take the voodoo dolls with him, and escape his house.
- Plant Person: Mushmon is an anthropomorphic mushroom.
- Took a Level in Badass: Takeru, who is able to escape Puppetmon's deadly games only with his own wits.
