Sockit Takuya (Digimon Frontier: Episode 23)

(Check out my previous review HERE. Or to go back to the beginning of this series click HERE)

I love puns, and dad jokes abound in my own day-to-day repartee, but the title of this particular episode explodes even my brain. A little aside I recently heard from a friend: ‘I just finished work for the week and was looking for a place to cash my check nearby. Found this bank, so I pulled in. Saw it said 24-hour banking, so I immediately left to find someplace else. I didn’t have that kind of time to wait around, ya know?’ This one’s by Steven Wright apparently.

Agunimon returns to the Digital World an immediately feels differently in these surroundings. He has finally realized as a Legendary Warrior who can inhabit and use the Spirits of ancient warrior Digimon that he is more than a mere human being in a video game. No, he is at least partly Digimon himself. What this means is Takuya now has an innate contact point with the Digital World as his homeplace where Digimon like himself are born, live, and die. And he has a new power: being able to sense the change of the seasons and of the weather patterns in this digital landscape. He will later use this power to help his friends out in the battle ahead.

First, Agunimon comes across Bokomon and Neemon who have separated from the others during Agunimon’s short absence. They are being tormented by a Sepikmon and his Spirit Boomerang weapon as the beast wishes to have friends, but also requires his friends to dance with him. As Bokomon is an intellectual averse to dancing and Neemon has two left feet, they both refuse and continue to be berated by the Shaman Armor Digimon. Agunimon arrives and manages to catch the Spirit Boomerang and give Sepikmon a quaint little lesson in friendship by explaining that to be friends he must merely not harm his would-be friends with his weapons. The four bond for a moment and Sepikmon reveals that he knows the whereabouts of their friends, which he can lead them to by throwing his boomerang as if a homing beacon of sorts. They decide to follow the weapon and eventually find the Old Castle grounds where their friends are being held.

There, J.P., Zoe, and Tommy have been chained upon a large ceremonial slab where they are being held against their will by Mercurymon, Ranamon, and a trio of Datamon who are tinkering with the Digidestined’ D-Tectors in an attempt to draw out and steal their Legendary Warrior Spirits. What’s worse, Koji has found his friends in this predicament, but is prevented from interceding on their behalf because he is so widely outnumbered and because the Datamon are protected within a force field that prevents him from nabbing the D-Tectors and adding his friends into the fray of the battle. Calmaramon and Mercurymon are also torturing the apprehended Digidestined by tickling them and making them sneeze with a feather across their noses in the hopes that they will learn either the secret to unleashing and thereby stealing the Spirits, or information regarding the whereabouts of their friends.

When Calmaramon begins to use her dark powers to torture J.P. through physical pain, Koji finally intervenes in the scene and fights Mercurymon and Calmaramon single-handedly. It is during this futile battle that Agunimon arrives on the scene. However, he does not immediately enter the fight and instead senses a change in the weather. A storm is approaching with heavy winds, thunder and lightning, and snow. These elements will help stoke of the flames of his own fire-based attacks, strengthen Kazemon’s vortices of wind, amplify Beetlemon’s electric surges, and snowball the strength of Kumamon’s ice, while not effecting, but not harming Lobomon’s Light-based arsenal. When the storm finally settles in, Agunimon jumps into action and distracts Mercurymon and Calmaramon while Lobomon frees his friends and their D-Tectors, thereby allowing them all to Spirit Evolve into their H Spirit forms and dole out a beating to the two Legendary Warriors of Darkness present at the moment.

Mercurymon and Calmaramon run away to the Old Castle to lick their wounds and complain about the Digidestined’ team’s newfound tactical fighting approach. And the Digidestined meanwhile thank Takuya for returning to help them out in this moment of dire need while forgiving him for leaving them behind while he did. Hell, if he had not left in the first place, this newfound strength of his would have never surfaced in the first place. Takuya reflects on his newfound understanding of himself as truly part-Digimon and tells the others how this realization has helped to unlock previously un-thought of power and skill. Everyone is simultaneously in awe of Takuya’s new headspace as a leader and proud of his growth as a person.

The only really unfortunate part of this episode is that neither Calmaramon nor Mercurymon were defeated fully by the Digidestined while they had the chance. This could be due to the tactical problem they all share regarding their unwillingness to use their much-stronger Beast Spirit forms in lieu of their more agile H Spirits. If they had all Spirit Evolved to their B Spirits, they may have only had to have dealt with one more Legendary Warrior of Darkness (Duskmon) before moving along to tackle the bigger problem of Cherubimon. But hey, all in good time right? Still 27 episodes to go.

Also, earlier I stated that Mercurymon must have a Beast Spirit evolution because of his willingness to rib Ranamon for not having one (this was before she gained her B Spirit). After all, how can one make fun of someone else for not having a particular thing if they too are so indisposed? However, in this episode, Mercurymon was almost in dire straits, in danger of being defeated by the Digidestined. And yet he did not Spirit Evolve into a stronger form that may have helped him. This leads me to believe that he may still not have such a form at this point. But I’ll just have to wait to find out more.

 

Ciao for now,

The Digidestined Cody

[Continued HERE]