YMMV / Digimon: The Movie

• Awesome Art: The first story has probably the best animation in the entire film, especially in the fight scene between Greymon and Parrotmon.
• Awesome Music:
  • The soundtrack. It's Late 90s Music Bingo! It may also include the single most appropriate use of "One Week" in any media.
  • Greymon's Digivolution scored to a movie-fide version of the theme song. Say what you want about the rest of the film, but chills will go down the spine of every fan who hears the rising sound of turntables and "Di-Di-Di...Digimon."
  • Len's cover of "Kids in America", during the end credits and after the film on the VHS release.
• Broken Base: Our War Game and Digimon: The Movie use very different songs for Omnimon's debut: the first a One-Woman Wail, the second uses a triumphant sounding orchestral piece that segues into the rock-heavy pop song "Let's Kick It Up". Some Our War Game purists do not at all appreciate the change for taking away from the mystical and awe inspiring element of the transformation, while many others enjoy it for what it is in setting up the climatic action scene.
• Critical Dissonance: Critics didn't like the movie, but, while it didn't make as big a splash as Pokémon: The First Movie did, it still did more than well enough at the box office (earning $16 million on a $5 million budget).
• Continuity Lockout: Oh does it try to be accessible to the uninitiated, but between being three segments from three different points in time (before the start of Adventure, post-Adventure, and in the middle of 02 's first arc), good luck not getting lost if you're not already somewhat familiar with the series. Perhaps Fox was aware of this, because the VHS release of the movie opens with a long featurette giving the gist of Adventure 's plot, characters, and Digimon, along with 02's opening theme.
• Cult Classic: In spite or even because of its flaws, Digimon: The Movie has continued to be a fan favorite years after its initial release, with aspects like its soundtrack, production and writing making it, for better or worse, very memorable.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Tai's mother Yuuko is one of the best remembered parts of the film, showing off a quirky personality unseen in the series proper. Specifically, her strange approach to healthy cooking.
  Izzy: So do I have enough of this stuff?
  Yuuko: Beats me; this is the first time I've used flour to bake a cake.
• Fan Nickname: Late 90's Music: The Movie, for better or for worse. Some fans do prefer the more lively dub soundtrack though.
• Fridge Brilliance: In the series proper it's been implied that despite the lengthy sequence we the viewer see, Digivolution is rather instantaneous in-universe as clutch evolutions have saved the characters' lives. So why WAS Infermon/Diaboromon able to interrupt Digivolution? Because the lag caused by the hundreds of emails Tai and Izzy were receiving was already affecting the Digimon; it slowed their transformation down enough that they could be attacked before it finished!
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • After digivolving from Agumon to Greymon, the Champion-level Digimon shakes off the rubble of a destroyed overpass with a growl. A closer shot reveals that he had shielded Tai and Kari with his grown body to save them from being crushed. While more aggressive and instinctual as Agumon and even fiercer as Greymon, his second digivolution was specifically to save his new friends.
  • Tai's Rousing Speech to a heavily damaged WarGreymon and the following transformation:
    Tai: "Listen... I don't have a whistle to wake you, but I want you to know that you're not alone! Okay? And the mail keeps coming; it won't stop! Kids from all over the world are writing to you; they need your help. You're the only one who can do it! Feel their hope. Feel their strength!"
    WarGreymon (Coughing as his body shudders) I feel them...
  • "Does anybody else but me smell a Digi-Egg?"
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Angela Anaconda cartoon that precedes the feature shows the characters from that show transforming into Digimon to fight in an Imagine Spot. At the time, it was just proof the writers of that show were probably not familiar with Digimon. But if it had been made two years later, it'd have been a pretty good parody of Digimon Frontier, which controversially changed the formula up by introducing the concept of "Spirit Evolution", which allowed humans to become Digimon.
  • When Willis reveals he created Wendigomon, a shocked Davis declares "You can't just create a Digimon out of thin air!". The next Digimon series establishes Digimon as a creation of humans. Even better, the very first episode of Tamers has Davis' Gogglehead successor creating his own Digimon from fan art.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Generally speaking, people only really watch the movie for the first and second segments; the former because it's actually an important part of the core group's backstory and is referenced in the show, the latter simply because it's considered really good. The "Hurricane Touchdown" part of the movie tends to go ignored aside from the appearance of Angemon and Angewomon's Mega forms, plus Magnamon and Rapidmon.
• Magnificent Bastard: On a quest for "the programmer," Diaboromon's mad search and hunger for data earns the attention of Gennai and the DigiDestined. Assaulted as a Keraman by Tai, Izzy, and their Digimon, he tricks the latter two by jumping from Rookie to his Ultimate Form, Infermon, and subsequently overpowers them. Earning his first victory by attacking them mid-transformation, Infermon escapes and covers his tracks by clogging up the dial-up phone lines. When Izzy uses a satellite uplink to continue the pursuit, Diaboromon hijacks the connection to send missiles to Colorado and Japan to put them on the clock. Multiplying himself to hide the real one to kill time, it takes the might of Omnimon to destroy them all. Although Diaboromon resorts to outspeeding them, he's eventually caught and defeated. Returning in the sequel, he orchestrates his revival by tricking the DigiDestined into opening gates for his Kuramon swarms. Diaboromon holds out against his old foe Omnimon in the Digital World, showing how much he learned, before successfully digivolving into Armageddemon in the real world. Boasting a mere two appearances, Diaboromon regardless managed to be one of the DigiDestined's most cunning, adaptable, and dangerous adversaries.
• Memetic Mutation: The Angela Anaconda short causing divorces.^ExplanationBorn from this infamous post on 4chan, where someone related how the notorious Angela Anaconda skit at the start of the movie caused him to think he had been taken to the wrong movie theater, which in turn sparked an argument between his parents that proved to be the final straw in a strained marriage, leaving him blaming it for their divorce. This story regularly turns up on the internet, and it is commonly joked that the short is so bad it destroys relationships.
• Moment of Awesome: WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon bonding to become Omnimon, combined with that music.
• Narm: "Prodigious! A computer virus on the internet!" Yes Izzy, a computer virus being on the internet is something to be excited about.
• Narm Charm:
  • "YOU'VE! GOT! MAAAAIL!"
  • Davis' reaction to Willis' sob story. "Get over it," "OKAY!".
  • The Digi-Rap.
• Padding: The infamous Angela Anaconda short, which is actually a part of the runtime of the movie rather than an independent short.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • The first two parts of the film were directed by Mamoru Hosoda making this film his very first feature film, years before he would direct The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and founding Studio Chizu.
  • In the English dub, the newscaster is voiced by Ralph Garman, who would later become known for his roles on Family Guy.
• Subbing Versus Dubbing:
  • While the first is about the same subbed or dubbed and some people actually prefer the dub of the second part, feeling that it's funnier and has better characterization, the third segment of the American film and the original Japanese film, Huricane Touchdown, have drastically different plots. Some like the more cohesive, singular plot to the original; while others prefer the idea of the virus subplot and more lively soundtrack of the dubbed version.
  • Discotek Media found a way to solve the problem. They got the original English cast to do a dub of the Japanese version in the style of the original dub, potentially meaning that it could have a case of Dueling Dubs with itself!
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • Both this movie's soundtrack and the one for Pokémon: The First Movie serve as nice little late '90s music time capsules, but whereas Pokemon leaned more towards teen pop, Digimon is more on the alternative/pop-rock side, with its originally-composed songs being more in a skate punk style. Case in point: the movie ends with Smash Mouth's famous "All Star".
  • The Angela Anaconda cartoon at the beginning also dates this movie to the same period, as the show has since been mostly forgotten except by Caustic Critic style reviewers.
  • The English dub has a "You've got mail!" reference.
  • Wi-Fi, 5G, and faster internet connections have made surfing the Web and cybersecurity much stronger. Needless to say, Diaboromon might be much easier to conquer in this day and age.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Sora in the "Our War Game" section of the movie. She spends the whole movie feeling sore at Tai for getting her a hairpin as a gift because she thought it meant Tai didn't like the way she does her hair. There is no indication whatsoever that this was truly the case, yet Tai suffers Informed Wrongness for having gotten her that gift, as though the rift between him and Sora is entirely his fault. Sora also doesn't come off well when she lets her personal feelings of anger at Tai get in the way of her possibly helping him and Izzy with their current crisis, even when she's right outside of the Kamiyas' apartment. Granted she doesn't know the severity of the situation, but she still comes across as petty and unreasonable.
• Woolseyism:
  • Considering the nature of the movie, it was downright necessary (and the TV series was already full of this anyway), but Diaboromon takes it to a new level. He had no lines whatsoever in Our War Game. Yes, he was even more of a Flat Character in the original Japanese; say what you will of the continuity snags, but at least in the dub Diaboromon had a clearly-defined goal: to locate/get back at his programmer. He's also more actively malicious than his original Japanese counterpart, targeting Tai and Izzy specifically with a nuke for interfering with his goals rather than it just happening to target their hometown.
  • A smaller one, but in the Japanese version of the Our War Game portion, the part where Izzy reads an email from a kid insulting WarGreymon is very clearly just him reading multiple emails that say such small, barely stinging comments like "You lost again?" or "You almost won, what were you doing?", and Tai attacks Izzy about it despite knowing that he's not the one saying these things. In the dub, Izzy reads one long and fairly cruel email with no indication that his words are coming from someone else, making Tai's outburst a little bit more justified. Even better, we get some legitimate humor from it!
  Izzy: (defensively) I was reading an email from another kid!
  Tai: (extremely and justifiably annoyed) You didn't have to read it so well.
  • The late 90s music may have not stood the test of time and is largely irrelevant to the plot, but a fast-paced, hurried montage in the dub is scored perfectly by "One Week" by the Barenaked Ladies. The song's tone fits extremely well in the sequence.
  • One possible reason they left out the subplot of the original Digidestined getting kidnapped by Kokomon, aside from time constraints, is that in the original Japanese version, they aren't shown being saved.
  • Datedness be damned, Izzy's Pre-Asskicking One-Liner near the end of the Our War Game portion is the most badass use of America Online's old "You've Got Mail" sound ever. It was even kept in for the upcoming re-dub of Our War Game, as shown in the announcement trailer.

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