English Dub Review: Digimon Beatbreak Episodes 21-25
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
After the Digimon fighting ring is uncovered to the public, Klay Arslan is removed from the Five Stars and he and Tactics are targeted, forcing Klay to enact his true plan. Tomoro and Glowing Dawn corner him and learn of his tragic origins, forcing both sides to push past their limits. And later, Makoto and Chiropmon meet one of their Cleaner idols!
OUR TAKE
Digimon Beatbreak returns from its inexplicable two week extra delay on top of their usual five week space between releasing batches of dub episodes. And we’re now at the halfway point of the series, if the forty nine episode count turns out to be true! As such, we reach the end of the Tactics Arc that we left on last time, with Raito, Hotaruko, and Granit each gaining agency and bailing on this whole thing after realizing that they’ve become abused child soldiers, along with Granit even getting his Ludomon to Digivolve to TiaLudomon. But he’s not the only one getting a new form, as Klay, who attempts to use any and all stolen E-Pulses he can get, uses that energy to brute force evolve his Proganomon to the first Mega (typically the highest level a Digimon can obtain) in the season, Pyramidmon. But after that’s worn down, Tomoro, the last one standing, musters up all his courage and friendship points to get Gekkomon to become Monarchlizamon, who takes from the MetalGreymon/WarGrowlmon school of design by being a giant robot dinosaur with a metal arm. Gotta appreciate the classics. With that, one of the Five Stars has been defeated with four left to beat in the remaining twenty four episodes, so they better get a move on.
But character development and power ups aren’t the only thing we get in this batch, as we also see more of the mystery behind the Sapotama, the device that all Digimon in this world come from, and how the way they come into being is not a bug, but a feature. Chairman Wong, head of the Five Stars, has apparently been trying to bring about the right Digimon of high enough power, something that brought about the destruction of Klay’s country, hence his desire for revenge against Wong. While we still don’t know what Wong’s goal is and likely won’t for some time, we can piece together how the industry of Cleaners ultimately works for him. Sapotamas become a trendy device that soon becomes integral to society, leading Digimon to inevitably spawn from them. While especially powerful ones are monitored and/or captured, weak and/or inconvenient ones are taken out by Cleaners who need to make a living or lose their own Digimon, meaning everyone is playing to Wong’s tune. Unlike previous Digimon main antagonists that just want to control or destroy all of existence, this may be the first of them to make part of their master plan creating a gig economy.
Oh yeah, and there is a small, less consequential episode at the end that doesn’t really warrant as much analysis and discussion as the other four, but it’s still fun enough on its own. I’d say see you in five weeks for the next five episodes, but who knows if they’ll have delays again. What I can say is that the next five are much lower in stakes than these were, as most of them are standalone filler-ish stories, but it’s also the beginning of the GIFT arc, which still isn’t fully known in the sub at the time of this writing, as well as another Glowing Dawn member getting a new evolution, so that’s always fun. And seeing as we’re at what is probably the halfway point of this series, it’s probably a good time for an evaluation of what we’ve seen so far. Simply put, this is basically the strongest season of this franchise that I’ve seen in many years. It’s certainly better than the 2020 Adventure Remake and even more so than Ghost Game, and having gone back and watched all of Tri and Xros Wars and most of Appmon, it handily blows both of those out of the water as well, so I am plenty eager to see where things are headed as we enter the show’s third quarter.
