Home Again, Takuya Returns (Digimon Frontier: Episode 22)

(Check out the previous review HERE)

As DarkTrailmon speeds along the tracks into the dark corners of memory, Takuya reflects on how his gung-ho approach to fighting caused his friends to be hurt by Duskmon. At the denouement of the last episode, he was asked if he wanted to return home and replied in the affirmative. Because Digimon (at least at this point in the franchise’s development) does not waste our time or kill our brain cells with recap episodes like many other long-running series, they use novel plot devices like this one to return our protagonists to a certain point where they can subtly reflect on the past without being explicit about what happened.

The first notable instance of this type of novel, subtle recapping was way back in the first series Digimon Adventure 01. Then, in episode 21, Tai is returned home through the forces of the Dark Ocean and his own melancholia regarding his perceived failure as a team leader. But throughout the events of this episode, he realizes that the world he is living within is nothing but a mirage created by the Dark Ocean to lull him into a stupor and prevent him from achieving his goal of saving the Digital World. Likewise, Takuya returns home for much the same reasons and likewise he returns not to his own world but to a replica of that world created by his imagination coupled with the dark powers of mischief used against him previously by Duskmon.

Along the way home, Takuya transforms into the Rookie-level Digimon form of his Legendary Warrior Spirit, which is called Flamemon. The metamorphosis is apparently painful, but necessary as he is constantly tailed by the apparition of Duskmon where ever he goes within this illusory, phantom world of his imagination. Takuya also finds that the world once returned to is nothing as he had imagined it would be. This is so because time moved backwards and he has arrived in the Real World on the same day when he left for the Digital World. Only he is there hours before his initial departure and can now change the outcome of events from that day if he really wishes to do so.

What he notices first is that people can see him and react to him as Flamemon pretty negatively. Second, that he himself, the human Takuya, is still back at home and has not received the message from Ophanimon on his cell phone to go toward the Shibuya Station Underground Terminal. Flamemon-Takuya becomes intensely nostalgic for home and wishes he had remained behind to celebrate his little brother’s birthday with him and to play soccer with his father that weekend as they had planned long ago. He decides to outmaneuver himself and prevent the human Takuya from entering the Trailmon at the station and thereby from ever leaving home in the first place. As this whole exercise is one of memory and not truly one of altering fact and past events, this course of action is extremely dangerous as it is self-defeating (he would not be who he is if he had not entered the Digital World) and thereby potentially a course of action leading only to a complex form of personality-suicide. That is to say, he will not actually prevent himself from having entered the Digital World in the first place, but will instead only destroy his mind or break it so that it too can fall into the clutches of darkness like Duskmon’s has.

During the journey, Flamemon can be seen by average people, which prompts him to hide himself away from sight whenever possible. But this only prompts Duskmon to appear and haunt Flamemon back into action. Flamemon cannot, however, be seen by the human Takuya despite how many times he attempts to appear to himself to prevent his advancement toward the station. He can influence himself by speaking to the human Takuya though and manages to get into his head enough that he almost misses his train.

Another interesting thing that Flamemon sees whilst traveling about his city is the presence of a child who looks identical to Koji and is also on the train a mere rail-car away. Flamemon follows this kid around a bit and finds that he knows Koji’s name as well, despite Koji having no knowledge of having a twin brother or doppelganger. This kid follows Koji to the station, but is too slow to catch up with him on the elevator down toward the Shibuya Station Underground Platform and instead takes the stairs. He falls to the bottom of the steps and hurts himself before calling out Koji’s name in vain. It appears he was unable to make it to the station or the trains that lead one toward the Digital World, but we will later find that this is untrue.

In the end, Takuya reflects on his past with his friends and how his adventures have shaped who he has become thus far. He realizes that without them, he is nothing, that the world has not changed, but he has and that therefore, he must give up his self-defeating quest and urge his human form to make it to the trains after all, which he does no problem. Finally, he faces his worst fears by standing up to Duskmon and destroying his apparition in a blaze of glorious fire attacks that leave Flamemon alone in the Underground Terminal with only himself and the tools he needs to take his fate by the reins.

Flamemon re-enters the DarkTrailmon in the Underground Terminal of his mind and thereby dons his destiny once more. His emaciated form transmogrifies into that of the Legendary Warrior of Fire Agunimon as he makes his way back to the Dark Terminal in the heart of the Dark Continent. And the Agunimon-Takuya who exits that rail car looks more confident, and powerful, then we’ve ever seen him hitherto. In philosophical terms, there is light, which is powerful. But if darkness sublimates and undergirds that light it can consume it and become something as powerful as Duskmon whose light is constantly consumed by darkness. However, the final synthesis is the overcoming of this darkness and a final return to a light so sharpened and refined as to potentially be the strongest piercing tool against the onslaught of darkness. This is the weapon Agunimon has donned by moving through the darkness, and it may just be the weapon that defeats Duskmon.

 

Ciao for now,

The Digidestined Cody

[Continued HERE]