Digimon Ghost Game

Episode 11

This week's episode of Digimon felt a little bit weird – and not in the uncanny or creepy way when the show is at its best. On the surface, the structure for this episode is simple and easy to follow. Ruli and Angoramon are starting to have communication issues around the same time that a new Digimon that seems to share two personalities is fighting with themselves. Other people's lives are jeopardized by the scuffle, while Ruli and Angoramon separate for a little bit for some alone time. Then the two of them come together just in time to put a stop to the rampaging Digimon with a nice little message about trust and communication at the end. It's a bit more of a Hallmark message compared to what we've gotten so far from this series, though it is still a nice message to communicate to kids. In fact, there's even some really well-animated, albeit brief, sakuga and fight choreography in here. However, my biggest problem is that the more I think about it, the more it feels like the individual components that make up this episode just weren't that well thought out despite not a lot of legwork needing to be done to pull things off effectively.

At this point in the series, we have a pretty strong understanding of the dynamics between our three main leads and their Digimon partners. Hiro and Gammamon are basically a big brother looking after a baby-like little brother, while Kiyoshirō and Jellymon are kind of like a weird couple. Ruli and Angoramon are definitely a bit more low-key compared to the other two, but I always assumed that's because they seemed to have the best communication of all the pairings. There wasn't really a lot of conflict with them because they just gave off this impression that everything worked out.

Maybe this episode was trying to communicate the fact that what appears on the surface isn't what's actually going on behind the scenes, but I don't think that's the case since the two having a bit of a falling out is highlighted as a new occurrence in the episode itself. While them encountering communication issues would be interesting and may prompt them to re-evaluate some things about their dynamic that they maybe hadn't considered before, the actual circumstances revolving around them not talking to each other feels really really shallow. Angoramon is just going off to meet with Digimon who don't feel comfortable enough around humans and that's it.

When you compare that minor bit of miscommunication to the really toxic relationship of the episode's Digimon antagonist, it really doesn't match up at all. If anything, I would almost argue that Kiyoshirō and Jellymon should've been the focus of this episode instead, because I think they are much more appropriate parallels to the antagonist. Jellymon is always disappearing and getting the group into trouble while Kiyoshiro just wants to keep the peace. In fact, the digivolution of Jellymon that we got last week might've felt more earned if it happened with them in this scenario here. Instead, it feels like Ruli and Angoramon were forced into that role and there wasn't even a digivolution payoff to make it worth it. I don't mean to rewrite the episode or anything, but something about this just felt mismanaged or not as well thought out as previous episodes, which also feels weird to say as a complaint. Angoramon is the only Digimon partner that hasn't digivolved yet so I know that there will be future episodes that delve more into the emotional core of their dynamic. I just hope that when we get to that point, it'll feel a bit more satisfying than what we got here

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Digimon Ghost Game is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.