Anime First episode was...actually not half-bad
I went into the first episode with low expectations, and the comments I've read on the site where I watched the episode didn't exactly raise them. After I watched it, I didn't think it was nearly as bad as I was led to believe. I have some issues, but it wasn't too bad of a first episode.
The main character is an introverted, insecure book-worm, something I don't see too much in shonen series, and never saw in a Digimon series prior. He thinks of himself as a side character type of person while his best friend is a main character kind of guy. Athletic, popular, and helps those in need without a second thought. On one hand, it's pretty interesting that they made the main character like this, and it guarantees that he'll go through Character Development. On the other hand, it gets kind of annoying how much it shoves this in the viewers face. The writers were aware how different Haru was from the typical main character of shonen series, and they'll take any possibility available to make the audience aware of this as well. It gets tiring after a little while.
His partner Digimon (or "Appmon" in this series) Gatchmon is based off the search app for phone, and can apparently get a large amount of available information on a person within seconds, which he uses to sum up everything that we know about Haru (and his embarrassing secret of wetting the bed until fourth grade). It was a pretty cool way to show off his power, and really interesting way to demonstrate how the Appmon can work. Both Gatchmon and the Monster of the Week, Messagemon, are based off functions that a smartphone can use, and use it in some form in battle, the former using it to find the weaknesses, and the latter sending out textbubble of what he says as attacks. Shows that it'll focus on the "Digital" part of Digital Monsters a lot more than most series did.
Messagemon's design isn't anything spectacular to me, but it's mischief of sending embarrassing information of people all around the internet was a pretty neat way of it representing the app it's based off. And Haru helping Gatchmon out in the battle against Messagemon even after Gatchmon materialized was really cool for me. And the way Messagemon was defeated was incredibly creative and used the idea of Digimon being based off of apps to the fullest. Gatchmon's speech about Haru not being a simple side-character while he was being bombarded with attacks fell flat to me personally. We can tell it's supposed to be emotional, but they didn't really have any moments where they bonded with each other so I couldn't really get invested.
I'd give the episode a 6.5 out of 10. The actual plot is fairly standard, and the contrast between Haru and the other main Digimon protagonists loses it's charm when the episode lets you know about this every few minutes. Still, it has plenty of interesting concepts, makes use them being based off phone apps incredibly well, and I feel that overall, there's a lot of potential in this series.
Anime Better Than What It Seems
I've finally decided to give this season a chance last month after years of neglecting it. Initially, I hated it... but then it started to grow on me and I forced myself through. I gotta say, I'm pleasantly surprised with it.
It's very easy to hate this season when you watch the first few episodes. The tone is extremely light, even by Digimon standards. The dialogue is embarrasingly silly (Who the hell in real life talks like that? "I'm a totes side-character!"). Catchphrases are overused to the point of being painful to hear. The premise of smartphone apps being Digimon makes this show feel like even more like a ploy to sell toys than it has the right to be. And the CGI certainly doesn't do it any favors.
Initially, my opinion was that this series was a complete waste of time made only to sell toys to little babies. It's only after Episode 10 that the series actually starts fleshing out the plot, its characters and introducing darker elements. And if you can survive until Episode 16, then great, you'll definitely enjoy the rest of the series.
It had an abysmal start, but in the long run, I ended up enjoying watching it, the characters were all fleshed out and enjoyable (even if their catchphrases still annoyed the hell out of me), the plot was really interesting with some great twists, it really tries to break free from the usual Digimon formula and it shows. Haru definitely didn't feel like another Taichi, and Rei definitely didn't feel like another Yamato, nor did they have an absurd amount of focus that made me hate their guts like the 2020 reboot of Adventure is doing right now.
Is it the best season ever? Of course not. But it's definitely one of the better ones, and this is shocking considering the more "traditional" seasons like Zero Two, Frontier, Xros Wars, Tri and Adventure 2020 feel more like soulless cashgrabs to me than Appmon does. I actually found myself crying because of some episodes and especially because of the ending, something the seasons I mentioned above couldn't make me do.
Give it a try, it does feel tiring initially, but after a few episodes, it gradually becomes a whole lot better.