Japanese Title: Save Everyone! Evolve, Tsunomon
While searching for Forest Land, Junpei, Izumi, Bokomon, and Neemon find a Tsunomon who’s running away from an elementary school class taught by a Togemon. As the Togemon takes the Tsunomon back to class, the group follows her to the school, while the kids are surprised that Digimon go to school and Togemon is surprised to see humans.
The young Digimon in the school welcome the humans, and when one of the YukimiBotamon seems to be afraid of Izumi, Tsunomon declares himself to be completely unafraid of the humans, only for the others to ostracize him. The Togemon asks the humans to tell a story about the human world to the class, but when Junpei fails to come up with anything meaningful, Bokomon takes over and tells the young Digimon that someday all of them will grow up and evolve...only for all of the class to run off in boredom, leaving Tsunomon behind.
During break time, Junpei plays with some of the Digimon and invites Tsunomon to play with them, but while Tsunomon initially looks excited, all of the other Digimon run off upon hearing this suggestion. Tsunomon claims that he doesn’t want to play with them anyway and goes off; Izumi berates Junpei for being nosy and Junpei responds that Tsunomon must be lonely, while Izumi suddenly snaps at him for acting like he knows about that kind of thing.
Class resumes with sports time, and the Digimon play soccer. Tsunomon tries to get a Kapurimon to pass the ball to him, but Kapurimon refuses, even going out of his way to ram Tsunomon away from the ball so that he can’t play along with them. Izumi sympathizes with Tsunomon, revealing that she’d lived most of her life in Italy and her family had only returned to Japan a year ago and thus felt excluded from most of her class, not wanting to be left alone but not also not wanting to go out of her way to socialize.
When Togemon feeds the class for lunch, Tsunomon stays out of the activities, and Junpei tries to bribe all of the other Digimon in order to get them to be friends with him. Tsunomon declares that he wouldn’t go that far in order to make friends, and the other Digimon conclude that Tsunomon is different from the rest of them after all. Tsunomon runs off in a huff and Izumi and Junpei run after him, but Tsunomon ends up falling into a river and Izumi tries to fish him out only to fall in herself. To save both of them, Tsunomon suddenly evolves into Gabumon and brings her out of the river.
As Izumi dries up, Tsunomon explains that his ability to evolve is what’s causing the class to ostracize him, since the class had become afraid of him after he’d evolved to fetch a ball from a tree for them. Izumi assures Tsunomon that she’s not afraid of him, and they’re about to return to the school when a thunderstorm strikes up. Tsunomon realizes that if the river overflows, the school could be washed away, and Junpei tells Izumi that they should evolve in order to get to the school quickly, warn everyone, and use their powers to stop the river from overflowing. With that, Izumi and Junpei evolve to Fairymon and Blitzmon, to the shock of Tsunomon.
Fairymon and Blitzmon return Tsunomon to the school, while Togemon’s surprised to see humans evolving. Blitzmon makes a plan to use the rocks that the Digimon used as a soccer goal in order to change the river’s course, and Tsunomon watches as the normally thunder-fearing Junpei completely ignores the raging thunderstorm in order to set the rocks in place. Fairymon uses her wind powers and keeps the waters parted and away from the school, and the crisis is averted until Kapurimon falls off the roof of the school and into the flowing waters. Kapurimon manages to grab onto a tree, but is unable to get back to the rest due to the strong currents.
Blitzmon and Fairymon tell Tsunomon to evolve and help Kapurimon, encouraging him that he can do it. As a log is about to hit Kapurimon, Tsunomon evolves to Gabumon in front of everyone, destroys the log, and takes Kapurimon to safety. Once the thunderstorm ends, the other Digimon apologize to Gabumon for being afraid of him and Kapurimon says that he wants to evolve like Gabumon did.
The Digimon class and Togemon make a large boat that can cross land so that Izumi, Junpei, Bokomon, and Neemon can cross the savannah and find Forest Terminal, and before they leave, the kids ensure that the young Digimon will get along and that Tsunomon won’t be afraid to evolve anymore. Tsunomon says that he wants to be as strong as the Ten Legendary Warriors someday, and Junpei and Izumi manage to shut Bokomon up before he reveals that two of the warriors are right there.
The group of four sets off, and Izumi, inspired by what had happened to Tsunomon, decides she also has a better opinion of Junpei as well. While sailing on the land boat, they see Takuya, Kouji, and Tomoki parachuting down from a giant toy plane and go to meet up with them.
Tropes:
- Eye Catch: Izumi’s and Junpei’s variants are used for this episode.
- Foreshadowing: Junpei attempting to bribe the Digimon class in order to get them to be friends with Tsunomon foreshadow his inner issues with having made friends at home by trying to impress and bribe admirers while simultaneously knowing that this isn’t a very good way to make true friends.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Izumi and her classmates visit a store in Izumi’s flashback, one of the girls holds up a Wormmon toy.
- Ironic Fear: Junpei is afraid of thunder despite having the ability to spirit evolve into the Warrior of Thunder. When Izumi points this out, Junpei retorts that being a human and being a Digimon is different.
- Mythology Gag: All of the students at the Digimon school are lower-evolved forms of major Digimon in earlier seasons: Tsunomon, YukimiBotamon, and Nyaromon are the lower-evolved forms of Gabumon and Tailmonnote (Digimon Adventure), and Yaamon, Jyarimon, Cocomonnote , Kapurimon, and Zerimon are the lower-evolved forms of Impmon, Guilmon, Lopmon, Guardromon, and Terriermon (Digimon Tamers). In fact, in the dub, the same person who voiced Gabumon in Adventure voices the one depicted in this episode.
