By Unless you were a kid growing up in the late 90s, you won’t understand just how bitter the rivalry between Digimon and Pokémon was. Both series were trying their damndest to appeal to kids, and while Pokémon inevitably won the war, Digimon didn’t die. In fact, it’s still going strong, with a new game, Digimon Story: Time Stranger, was released earlier this month, and a new entry in the anime series, Digimon Beatbreak, just debuted as well.
Unlike most of the other entries in the series, there’s a distinct air of maturity with Digimon Beatbreak that’s hard to ignore, and now we know why. According to Nobuhara Takada, the Animation Producer for the series, it’s a series that is meant to appeal to teenagers and young adults. In other words, Beatbreak is “meant to be a Digimon for a new era.”
During the Digimon Beatbreak panel at New York Comic Con, Takada-san went on to detail some of the design philosophies behind the show and how the series couldn’t just constantly call back to Digimon Adventure, even though he admits that’s his favorite entry in the franchise. Back then, our knowledge of the internet was very basic, and because of that, turning it into a Digital World that children can be Isekaid into made sense. But times change, and our knowledge of the internet has grown, thereby making older interpretations of the series feel somewhat dated.
Copyright: Toei Animation
Beatbreak is meant to serve as an evolution of the traditional Digimon formula, but still retain a lot of the key elements that make the series stand out. Takada-san went on to explain that “what’s always at the core of each season is the bond between human and Digimon, [but] Digimon have evolved and transformed thanks to the advancement of technology… It’s no longer Digimon blindly accepting who you are anymore. It’s about humans and Digimon facing problems together as equals.”
One of these new problems will be that, unlike earlier installments, the Digimon aren’t wild monsters. Most earlier installments had our heroes fighting against rogue Digimon to save the day, but Beatbreak established within the first episode that the conflict would be between multiple different teams of humans and Digimon, each attempting to further their own personal goals. How this will play into the series’ long game isn’t clear, but if Digimon Beatbreak is going to deliver a story in the series for older audiences, then sign me up.
Digimon Beatbreak is streaming new on Crunchyroll, with new episodes dropping every Sunday.
