YMMV / Digimon Frontier

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Regarding Cherubimon, the reason why he was corrupted by Lucemon is stated to be because he was discontent with Seraphimon and Ophanimon favoring Human-type Digimon and discriminating against Beast-type ones. However, it should be noted that most of his grudge is directed at Seraphimon, being much more lenient with Ophanimon (he caged her instead of simply killing her, spared Seraphimon on her request and even offered her rule the Digital World with him after he would get the Legendary Spirits). In the flashback detailing his fall into the darkness, Cherubimon also appears observing Seraphimon and Ophanimon together with a disdainful expression, seemingly envying their good relationship. With all this, it may be that Cherubimon turned to the dark side because he was in love with Ophanimon and he resented Seraphimon for getting along with her, which made him more susceptible to Lucemon’s corruption. Izumi/Zoe also seems to buy this theory, as she mentions the possibility when Ophanimon tells the Chosen Kids the story.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • There are many interesting fights in Frontier, but Mercurymon's duel with Takuya, although quite artsy and interesting in its own right, ends up unfortunately being a little too one-sided. While he does dominate in the first minutes, ShadowSeraphimon gets utterly humiliated at the moment Takuya unlocks Aldamon, first by failing to make him even flinch and then by being taken down with a single, weak-looking attack, and his next round as Mercurymon ends just as quickly, with more power being spent on the battlefield itself than on him. Fortunately, he later gets a more climatic showdown with the protagonists as Sephirotmon/Sakkakumon.
  • The first Koji vs Duskmon has a lot of build up but as soon as Koji evolves into Beowolfmon, the two downright expel each other.
• Arc Fatigue: Arcs in Frontier tend to drag, as the writers clearly aimed to reduce the Plot Armor to the thinnest and create the most drama with what material they had, only that that they sometimes went just too far, to the point many believe it makes the entire series a borderline Failure Hero show as a result. The Velgemon and Cherubimon arcs are long, but by the time the Royal Knights come around and curbstomp the leads episode after episode without much progress, some fans just put their foot down or skip to the ending.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Izumi/Zoe is probably one of the biggest examples of this in the whole franchise. On the one hand, her fans like her for her and her Digimon forms good looks, having a relatable backstory, her gentle personality and some good Ship Tease moments with Takuya. Her haters on the other hand, dislike her for being the token girl character with Stripperific Digimon forms, the first of which was easily defeated in its own debut episode and the second of which didn't fare much better, along with finding the bizarrely frequent fanservice moments involving her to be Squick-inducing.
  • Takuya and Kouji are probably the most controversial "Goggle-Head and Lone Wolf" duo in the series. With fans being divided on whether they're good characters with good Character Development who are good Foils to each other, or if they're responsible for arguably the biggest case of Spotlight-Stealing Squad and Protagonist Power-Up Privileges in the series, even worse than the original ones. There's a third group who thinks they are good characters, but also dislike that they were such spotlight hoggers from the other characters.
• Broken Base:
  • A sizable contingent of fans considers Frontier to be the franchise's Audience-Alienating Era thanks to a combination of a Genre Shift into an animated Henshin Hero series, the abandonment of the beloved partner Digimon and thus the entire Mons concept, and the fact that it came right after the (now) much-lauded Digimon Tamers. On the other hand, a smaller contingent of fans praises it for taking Digimon back to its Adventure roots while still being its own beast, and at the same time for daring to go in new directions instead of recycling storylines and plot points from Adventure, as Tamers is sometimes accused of doing. The humans getting their hands dirty actually fighting instead of being a walking evolution battery for the enemy to exploit is considered one of the biggest draws of Frontier.
  • Related to the previous, there's diversity on opinions about the show's storytelling. While one side praised it for doing an excellent job at making the villains a credible threat, especially compared to previous seasons, the other side criticizes it because it went clearly overboard at this and had the side effect of spawning potentially endless Filler arcs where the heroes would fail at achieving anything decisive, including Izumi being infamously defeated in her own power-up episode or the "Transcendent" MagnaGarurumon and EmperorGreymon being defeated seven episodes in a row before they were soundly floored by Lucemon and never seen again (the latter which earned their status as free game for ridicule in the Japanese fandom like Digimon Adventure tri., where even Digimon Xros Wars: The Young Hunters Who Leapt Through Time is otherwise considered just So Okay, It's Average at most).
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Lucemon was behind Cherubimon's actions. Given how the series decides to keep mentioning him when revealing some of the backstory, it's no surprise that he plays at least some role.
• Cargo Ship: A portion of the fandom jokingly ships Koichi with stairs.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Grottomon/Grumblemon is an unpleasant, nasty jerk that engages in many acts of bullying and tormenting those weaker than him. In his debut episode, he also delivers a one-sided beatdown to the heroes and ends the fight unschathed. As such, it’s satisfying to see him getting more and more ridiculized in the following episodes where he appears. First (after stealing the Spirits of Izumi/Zoe and Tomoki/Tommy), he gets thrown to a cliff by Koji (as Garummon/KendoGarurumon), second, he’s forced to escape to avoid the wrath of a rampaging Vritramon/BurningGreymon, and after that he not only gets defeated by a Takuya who now controls his Beast Spirit, but loses his Beast Spirit and is forced to flee with the tail beneath his Legs. Finally, after the incident in Seraphimon’s castle, he finally gets destroyed once and for all when Bolgmon/MetalKabuterimon blasts him to oblivion, ending his threat for good.
  • His partner Mercuremon/Mercurymon receives an even more cathartic and humiliating defeat. After killing Seraphimon and showing himself to be a pompous and extremely condescending enemy in his fight against Takuya inside Sephirotmon/Shakkakumon, seeing him lose his cool and be taken by despair as Takuya (as Aldamon) not only defeats him as BlackSeraphimon/ShadowSeraphimon, but finishes him off in an extremely brutal way (he pierces his stomach with a fire-charged Elemental Punch) is delightful. Even better, he gets to be defeated in BOTH Human and Beast Spirits forms, as he gets a similar Villainous Breakdown as Sephirotmon/Shakkakumon when the Chosen Kids combine their attacks to overwhelm him, reducing the usually cunning, scheming Warrior of Steel to a Nervous Wreck.
  • After spending episode after episode being curb-stomped by the Royal Knights and coming very close to defeat them in the previous two confrontations, Takuya and Koji finally soundly defeating them is simply awesome.
• Complete Monster: Lucemon is a Fallen Angel Digimon with a messiah complex. In his own warped, self righteous mind, Lucemon thinks that the Digital World has gone rotten and wants to tear it apart bit by bit, bringing about the loss of much data and the deaths of countless Digimon, all so he can rebuild it in his image. He describes as a utopia where every Digimon that lives is stripped of their free will and free thought with Lucemon as their shepherd. In reality, what he intends to create is a Hell in Digi-world, where all Digimon are slaves and the only one who will be happy is him. To do this, he corrupted Cherubimon and made him the villain for most of the series. He then used his two Royal Knight followers to erase data from the Digital World, and once he was free, he disposed of said followers just to power himself up. He gets even worse when the Digi-egg containing his darker side turns into Satan Mode, a being filled with nothing but darkness and malice. In this form, he attempts to claim the human world as well. He also uses various methods to torture the good guys purely for fun. Lucemon was, in the end, completely insane and never thoughtful of the lives of others: only himself, his pride, and his hatred towards the Digital World's existence that was not up to his standards.
• Continuity Lockout: Anyone who watches this series first will most likely balk at names like EmperorGreymon/KaiserGreymon and MagnaGarurumon, especially in the English dub.
• Creepy Awesome: IceDevimon in the dub. He's a freakish serial killer, with a Christopher Walken impression for a voice. But he's also badass and fun to watch. Duskmon is also pretty creepy, at least in looks, but he stole the show whenever he got in a fight.
• Ending Fatigue: After the death of Cherubimon, the anime's pacing falls apart and the second half is just the main characters losing to the Quirky Miniboss Squad. Again and again and again. For eight episodes straight.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Katsuharu's group is relatively popular because they make for good Fanfic Fuel in fics where they inherit the Legendary Spirits of Earth, Wood, Water and Steel, possibly as they were meant to in the series proper.
• Fanfic Fuel: The unused Fusion Spirit Evolutions for the four other kids as well as the non-existence of Fusion Spirits for the other elements (Wood, Steel, Water, Earth) which allow every fanart and fanfic possibilities. Not to mention the four lost kids the group find in a certain episode (Tommy's bullies) who are often used as teammates with the group with the aforementioned Spirits.
• Fanon:
  • It's a commonly held belief amongst fans that the other group of children Ophanimon tasked an Angemon with protecting — Katsuharu, Teppei, Teruo and Chiaki — were the ones originally intended to wield the Spirits that became the four evil Legendary Warriors. It is all but confirmed that it is the case, most clearly seen in their gender ratio matching up perfectly (three males and one female) and their clothes colors also matching the Digimon (purple, brown, blue and green, with the blue being the female), but it's never outwardly stated and no official word has ever come out about it. Considering how much the series was rushed towards the second half and how many ideas were left on the cutting room floor, it is likely this was going to be a plot point or at least to receive a mention before it got axed.
  • The chanting part of the English dub theme song doesn't have any official lyrics and might even be gibberish, but the fanbase has unanimously interpreted it as "I am the one."
  • While Tommy's brother wasn't named in the original Japanese version, the Japanese fanbase generally uses the name the English dub gave him, Yutaka.
• Faux Symbolism:
  • Mercurymon's "stage opera" against Takuya.
  • Sakkakumon, known as Sephirotmon in Japan, is shaped like the ten aspects of God in Kabbalah, the Sephirot. Fittingly, that's the same number as the Legendary Warrior Spirits; and each orb contains one enemy corresponding with one of the ten elements. One of these orbs contains Mercurymon. Yes. Mercurymon exists inside himself.
  • Lucemon is full of symbolism. Not only is he clearly inspired by Lucifer^note His name derives from the French word for "light", his attack is called "Paradise Lost Punch".
• Genius Bonus:
  • Being esentially a living religious symbol, Sakkakumon might seem to have no thematic connection with metal, but its spheres and cilinders make it look like a structure of metallica atoms.
  • The fight between Korikakumon and Asuramon is framed not only in their respective elements, but also in the inspirations for their forms, that of the Yeti and an asura respectively. In Tibetan Buddhism, asuras are demons, while Yetis are animals, yet animals human enough that some currents consider them capable to actually follow Dharma (an example of this being the famous Pangboche Hand, a relic that supposedly belonged to a Yeti that served Lama Sangwa Dorje), and some of them even act as guardians against demons.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Elemental Powers of the first five Chosen Children? Same as those of the Five-Man Band from the 2012 anime of Smile Pretty Cure!, which are even called the Legendary Warriors, with only the elements of the leader and the lancer being swapped. As if that wasn't enough, one of Smile's villains is a Wolf Man with a color palette mostly in cool colors (just like Wolfmon/Lobomon and Beowulfmon) and often gets paired with the light-elemental heroine in fanart.
  • Tai's voice actor, Joshua Seth, voiced a Wizardmon in one episode. When Seth retired from voice acting in 2005, some of his pursuits included being a comedian, hypnotist, and... magician. Really, he did.
  • During the Burgermon episode, one of Kouji's disastrous creations included squid ink as a secret ingredient. Twelve years later, Burger King Japan would actually give that a try◊ with McDonald's following suit shortly thereafter.◊
  • A good guy forcibly transformed into a bad guy with the color black as a color motif who makes a Heel–Face Turn in a cyber sci-fi setting. Are we taking about Koichi or Rinzler/Tron? Bonus points for Disney producing both TRON: Legacy and the English dub of Frontier.
  • The dub of Frontier made Crusadermon/LordKnightmon a female instead of the Agent Peacock that it is in most canons. Come Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, and we have an actual female Crusadermon serving as an antagonist.
• Ho Yay: Several moments, like its predecessors do, but Episode 41 takes the crown. After Kouji saved Kouichi from LordKnightmon, they started talking very romantically. Complete with the Love Bubbles. Granted, that's just LordKnightmon's imagination, but that scene probably is the most slash-shippy scene in the anime. And yeah, that scene was one of the reason why the Twincest pair is one of the most popular ships in the fandom. Come on, even LordKnightmon ships Koukoucest.
• Hollywood Homely: Calmaramon. From the characters' viewpoint, she's much less attractive than Ranamon and causes her Toucanmon entourage to ditch her. In reality, barring her squidlike bottom half, she's really not that hideous. In fact, she looks like a much more slimmed down version of Ursula. Her EX card◊ in Digimon Collectors even emphasizes that she can be just as cute as Ranamon is. Out-of-universe, the reasoning is just that Calamaramon looks older.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Ironically, despite the general They Changed It, Now It Sucks! reaction to the Henshin Hero concept, many viewers criticize this series for trying too hard to invoke nostalgia for Adventure from other directions, to the point that the characters come off as compressed copies of the original cast. This is only exacerbated by the two lead characters being the Spotlight-Stealing Squad just like their predecessors Taichi and Yamato, with the names for the Transcendent Forms and English names for most of the heroes' Beast Spirits not helping matters. This could be considered a Franchise Original Sin though, as it was also a complaint that was directed towards Tamers.
• It Was His Sled: Duskmon is Koji's twin brother Koichi.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Izumi/Zoe became a fandom Dude Magnet in part because she was the only female main character this time around.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Ostensibly the real leader of the evil Legendary Warriors, Mercurymon is the scheming Warrior of Steel prepared to undermine his own leader Cherubimon and allies for personal gain. Straying to the background to let his comrades do all the grunt work, Mercurymon seizes the chance to defeat Seraphimon in a single, bold Dark Reflection and steal his data for himself. Later, he uses his Beast form Sakkakumon to pit both heroes and villains against one another allowing him to copy their powers even when ShadowSeraphimon is defeated. Enough of a suave snarker to play Ranamon's jealousy to his advantage, Mercurymon was ultimately only undone when the DigiDestined unexpectedly overcame his own Thanatos Gambit. Ever prepared to construct grandiose spectacle and speak in that slick Shakespearean accent, Mercurymon was one of the most competent villains in the anime.
  • Murmukusmon is main antagonist of the movie. Arriving to the Island of Lost Digimon long ago, Murmukusmon obscured an ancient tablet about Ornismon to trick the populace into revering the monster as a benevolent legend. Posing as d'Arcmon and Hippogriffomon, leaders of the Human and Beast Digimon respectively, he strokes constant civil war through powerful rhetoric, convincingly feigned emotion, and appeal to their pain, causing many allies from all sides to revert into Digi-Eggs, and thus excess Digi Code, when defeated. By the time the DigiDestined discover his ruse, Murmukusmon acquires all the code he needed, reveals his deception and the true history, and initiates Ornsimon's revival. Cold and calculating, Murmukusmon played everyone for fools and schemed to conquer the Digital World with his new living superweapon.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Koichi and gravity don't go hand in hand. That, and all of the fall-related puns are usually going down with him.
  • LordKnightmon ships KouKoucest! ^note When Koji saves Koichi from LordKnightmon's grasp, he's amazed by their sibling love while the other children call him a weirdo. This is present in both the original and dub scripts.
  • The Loser Element^note The theme tune for Transcendent Evolution, "The Last Element", is ridiculed by Japanese fans for being a loser's theme because the Transcendent Evolutions of Takuya and Koji have an infamous rep for losing nearly every major confrontation they come across or fighting uphill battles if they win before they get unceremoniously dumped by Lucemon and were never used again. It goes to the point where they are more like oversized Butt Monkeys with their "Transcendence" being more like an Informed Attribute. The only time where this theme is used in a winning battle, it's when Susanoomon fights Lucemon but it's not even the full version unlike with the losing battles.
• Mis-blamed: This series is thought by many people to have been the cause of the Digimon franchise's decline in popularity and the long hiatus until Digimon Data Squad. In reality, the reasons were the end of the virtual pets fad (and thus the base for the Digimon franchise itself), poor merchandising attempts both in Japan and abroad, and in America's case, Disney's apathetic treatment.
• Moral Event Horizon: See here.
• Presumed Flop: The fact that Digimon fell out of fad more or less at the time Frontier ended has caused the popular belief that the series was a complete failure in ratings and sales, but it is not really the case. While Frontier did fail at making enough noise, this was (and sadly still is) the usual for the franchise in Japan after the Digimon Adventure continuity was closed. In reality, it did not do much worse than Digimon Tamers in any field, and still attracted almost twice the ratings later received by Digimon Data Squad, which was the series that finally got the franchise out of its traditional broadcaster Fuji TV.
• Questionable Casting:
  • Occasionally, the dub can get weird with this, likely as an aftereffect of Saban's demise and Disney's treatment of the franchise as a burden. Snimon sounds like Myotismon from Adventure, Cherubimon like Leomon from the same, and a Toucanmon and Mushroomon sound like they're channeling Kazu from Tamers and Davis from Adventure 02, respectively. Then there's Lucemon sounding like Izzy/Koushiro's dub voice.
  • The same is sometimes pondered about casting Marta Sáinz as Izumi in the European Spanish dub. Sáinz was a quite versatile actress who had managed to voice three leading characters in the franchise without them sounding even remotely similar (Sora, Tailmon and Daisuke), but Frontier was the point where she understandably ran out of voices and couldn't avoid Izumi sounding just like a more hyper Sora. It is somewhat fitting, though, given that Izumi inherits several attributes from Sora herself.
• So Okay, It's Average: Probably the most consistent complaint with the series aside from the Henshin Hero turn is that there simply isn't any aspect of the series that stands out as especially high-quality, with many characters and story arcs feeling bland, recycled, underutilized, or all of it, while some arcs and episodes rely too much on subverting the audience's expectations and sheer shock value. At the same time, however, few would call it grievously flawed and terrible, and some have also acknowledged the writers' effort to actually do something different from the franchise's formula even if they failed at getting it right.
• Stock Footage Failure: In the last episode, when the Chosen Children fuse together into Susanooomon, the evolution footage shows Takuya and Koji's first Digivices rather than their later upgraded ones.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Removing the Digimon partners and making the Digidestined more like Power Rangers was the biggest issue many people had with Frontier, which really adds more fuel to the fire of the Broken Base about the quality of the series.
  • A more minor one being the lack of the Digi-Rap as the English opening theme, which was due to the English dub rights changing hands - though admittedly, the new theme is kick-ass.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • All of the other children in general upon Takuya and Kouji reaching their highest forms. After this point, the other children end up just giving up their Spirits so the two could reach those forms and then standing around for most of the rest of the show. All of them had fusion forms, but they never receive them during the show, echoing how the original Digidestined from Digimon Adventure except the two leads never reached their Mega levels (at least until Digimon Adventure tri.). In the previous series, the protagonists that didn't reach Mega were able to at least still fight and thus try to contribute, but here it is not even the case.
  • The spirits themselves qualify. They are not shown to be Empty Shells for the children to simply transform into, but rather unconventional partner Digimon that have to stay in the Digivices due to their fragile state as ghosts. In fact, the Legendary Warriors are actually built up to be important characters, and are frequently featured in Frontier-related content. However, instead of playing the role of Spirit Advisor (no pun intended) for their human partners, the spirts are reduced to silent Plot Coupons, likely to keep it from resembling too much like Biomerge Digivolutions from Tamers, while the Legendary Warriors get relegated to expository purposes and only appear briefly for one episode at the end (and the Non-Serial Movie, where AncientGreymon and AncientGarurumon get to revive for a brief time). This resulted in one of the main criticisms of the show being a Human-Focused Adaptation, even more so than usual.
  • Two episodes focus on four non-Warrior children who had remained in the Digital World since the beginning, with it seeming leading up to them inheriting the spirits of Earth, Wood, Water, and Metal. Instead, however, it ends with them going back home, leaving one to wonder why they were even introduced (or kept in the show, in the case there was an original subplot that got cut).
  • Zoe asked a Gallantmon the whereabouts of the children's Digivices in the Autumn Leaf Fair, and that's the only time where it appears. That's right, a cameo, without any lines, in a series which introduced the concept of the Royal Knights. The American dub tries to fix this a bit in that the Gallantmon speaks in the same manner as in Tamers and even refers to itself in the plural as a definite Shout-Out to Tamers, but that's still not much.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Takuya and Kouji outshone everybody. Yes, the other seasons usually had The Hero and The Lancer gain the highest evolutionary forms, but this series was especially egregious with this. What makes it worse is that the beast and human fusion hybrids for the other Chosen spirits did exist, and putting them in would have been hardly unreasonable. While the usage of Hyper Spirit Evolution would have benched the others anyway but it is all the more reason to give them time to shine before being reduced to cheerleaders for the last quarter of the show.
  • According to a relatively strong theory, the four kids encountered later in the series (Chiaki, Katsuharu, Teppei and Teruo) were intended as candidates for the four spirits used by the villains. However, when the spirits are later reclaimed by the heroes, they are never used again. It is possible that the series' original plans involved the children finally receiving their spirits, which many people would have wanted to see, but it doesn't happen in the final product.
  • The Beast Spirits become Out of Focus for the second half of the series, and don't even appear in the final episodes.
  • The Royal Knights. The group is far larger than the two Lucemon sent out to claim data. Baromon even hints that they were well known, but this is never brought up again.
  • The Digital World's relationship with the Human World, something that was a key point for every other season, is never elaborated on.
  • The conflict between the Human-type and Beast-type Digimon which effectively started the show's plot, according to Cherubimon's backstory, is also never elaborated on aside from the Non-Serial Movie.
• Ugly Cute: While Ranamon's Beast Spirit gives her a more monstrous appearance, many feel that Calmaramon isn't nearly as hideous as the characters make her out to be.
• Values Dissonance: The entire reasoning for Calamaramon being uglier than Ranamon is essentially the Japanese equivalent of the Old Maid concept, usually called "Christmas cake" (that is to say, an unmarried woman over 25 is probably going to stay that way for the rest of her life), with youthful traits being idealized and traditionally mature traits being shunned. Hence, the cutesy, Idol Singer-like water sprite turning into a mature-looking woman with sharper features (well, and a squid for a lower body) causes her fanbase to abandon her for the still-cute-looking hero. This idea is far from universal in Japan, and indeed, later shows would simply treat Calamaramon as attractive if a bit unconventional and weird, but it's very unlikely that a series made outside of it would feature what seems to be a wholehearted endorsement of the concept.
• Woolseyism:
  • A name was needed for Tommy/Tomoki's brother, who was simply called "big brother" in the Japanese version. Instead of pulling a Keenan Crier and making one up out of whole cloth, they chose "Yutaka". Not only is this an actual Japanese name, it's an anagram of Takuya, alluding to the deep friendship between him and Tomoki — Tomoki even calls Takuya "big brother".
  • Some people actually like that LordKnightmon was renamed Crusadermon and made female. While LordKnightmon ties into its evolution line, Crusadermon better expresses its usual Knight Templar nature and is just a really cool name.
  • Zoe is a somewhat common name in Italy.
  • In the original version, Susanooomon only speaks with Takuya's voice. In the dub he speaks with Takuya and Kouji's voice.
  • In Spain, you will get only confused looks if you talk about Dynasmon, but they will instantly recognize him if you call him Dinocumon (or Dinokumon, or Dynokumon, or whatever, as it was never revealed how was it supposed to be written, or why was it changed to begin with given that LordKnightmon got to retain his name, but people seemed to like it).