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Reviews Anime / Digimon Ghost Game

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RebelFalcon [[Music/BlueStahli ULTRANumb]] (Private)
[[Music/BlueStahli ULTRANumb]]
03/31/2023 00:56:54 •••

Better than Young Hunters, but that's a low benchmark.

Ghost Game as a series is... frustrating, to put it lightly. The animation and soundtrack can be genuinely breathtaking, and many of the episodes, when taken as standalones, are fantastic, same for many of the characters said episodes introduce. But the overall "plot" is formulaic beyond belief, and the ending is a rushed mess.

GG is, in many respects, a Spiritual Successor to Young Hunters. A small cast of characters forced to regularly battle Digimon as they have negative effects on the human world, largely being episodic Monster of the Week fare until the final stretch, at which point the plot goes a mile a minute. GG manages to fare better than YH by virtue of having actual consequences between each episode, steady character development for our core cast, making the various Digimon threats feel like actual threats by not holding back on the brutality and danger they pose to humans, and actually teasing the plot from the beginning and giving regular nods to it.

That's not to say it's not without its flaws, many being the same trappings YH fell into. Many of the episodes are just done-in-one's, with the Digimon of that episode not even being Back for the Finale. The plot is slow-dripped to us, with several "developments" just amounting to an appearance of the "Jet-Black Conqueror" showing up for a bit and being cryptic. Hiro's father is completely useless for the majority of the series, and the indirect cause of several of the enemy Digimon. So many characters of the week like Yuto, Riku, Emma, and Kaoru seem like they're being set up to becoming more important and possibly join the main cast, even getting focus episodes of their own, but they go nowhere. And the ending with the introduction of Quantumon, her motives, and revealing the Mysterious Watcher Digimon were a Black-Ops team she had watching GulusGammamon is so cluttered, it's too much at once, and leaves me with more questions than answers.

I want to like GG more than I do, but, while better in some aspects, it just reminds me of some of the worst aspects of YH. Maybe if there's a sequel focusing on this "Endbringer" entity, I'll change my mind about the series overall. I'll give it this though: it made me reevaluate my opinion on and appreciate other entries more, like Frontier, so good job.

Mr-ex777 Since: Apr, 2019
03/24/2023 00:00:00

Meh, Frontier and Tri. are way worse.

At least Ghost Game doesn't go out of its way to insult your intelligence.

Shivader Since: Apr, 2015
03/31/2023 00:00:00

GG is what happened if Bleach ran The Substitute Shinigami arc for 65 episodes and crammed the Soul Society arc into 2 episodes. Gammamon's situation is terrifyingly similar to Ichigo. No srsly, the pieces were right there and I’m surprised no one else noticed. Series about the paranormal? Check. Light and Darkness contrast? Check. The evil half being the true and more potent source of power while the good fake half is weaker? Check. The evil half always being the one who bails out the heroes? Check.

It had so much potential by having memorable Digimon characters that aren't just yes men to their humans and removing the humans' plot armor. They blew it because and I quote, the director thinks kids cannot handle long stories. The showrunner (probably the same person) being burned out from having to direct and plan the whole overall story made things even worse.

TBH, I had no issue with the episodic format as it allowed the characters to show more sides to themselves and make them memorable in a great way. But they really dragged it out which resulted in having way too many loose ends and a very rushed ending that clearly needed at least 4 episodes just to fix the pacing issue alone, let alone the plot.


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