English Dub Review: Digimon Beatbreak Episodes 26-30
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
After a couple standalone adventures, Glowing Dawn begins to face a terrorist cell going by GIFT, which claims to act towards the freedom of all Digimon.
OUR TAKE
We’re onto the second half of the series, which also means time for a new arc! Well, most of this batch is part of it at least. The first two episodes are part of the three episode cool down between the arcs, but because these dub episodes release in batches of five, we got the first one at the end of the last batch and the other two here. They’re fun enough stand alone episodes, but not much to talk about on their own, other it’s neat how one shows a Tamer can have two Digimon, and the other is about how the Glowing Dawn Digimon have to team up together when all of their Tamers are possessed. However, the main development here is the beginning of the GIFT Arc, where the terrorist group GIFT starts attacking a bunch of high profile rich people who they believe are harming Digimon. This happens at the same time Tomor and Gekkomon meet a mysterious girl named Miharu who turns out to be the secret leader of GIFT, giving us a sympathetic face to be emotionally invested in so this new villain group isn’t just a bunch of faceless goons, so that’s nice.
After the third episode of this batch shows us the initial encounter with GIFT and a Jokermon with a very clearly Harley Quinn inspired Tamer, the fourth seems like it’s mostly unrelated and centering on Reina. But actually, it’s to also give focus to Rose, the Five Star of Wood and her Lilamon, who will be recurring in the GIFT arc as a side antagonist. While this arc has the Five Stars as a less direct threat with GIFT being the central antagonists, they’re definitely no less present, and Rose will be the one among them most prominent. And she shows herself to be quite cunning and calculating as she blends into the crowd and observes Reina deal with the Myotismon kidnapping fangirls. Yeah, that episode is a ride. Lastly, we get a Makoto and Chiropmon episode where it’s revealed that he has a disabled twin brother who has a lot of resentment! That’s resolved when GIFT attack their rich dad and Chiropmon gains his Ultimate level stage, ScourgeChiropmon. And their dad turns out to be a piece of crap anyway, so the brothers reconcile over that. Also that means Reina, the one of the kids who got their Digimon to Champion first, is now the one getting hers to Ultimate last. Bummer. But we’ll get to that in the next five episode batch of Digimon Beatbreak whenever the hell Crunchyroll deems us worthy of watching it. Once again, the show is on pretty good momentum and this new arc is off to a good start, even if it’s giving me some Team Plasma vibes, and I look forward to talking more about it in the next batch.
