Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning

Just finished watching the limited run in US theaters (Nov 9th) in Japanese with English subtitles. I went into the movie without any expectations and really enjoyed it! The movie is VERY story driven which may not be everyone's thing - but as an adult that grew up with the franchise I really enjoyed it. The new character has a very dark backstory, and while it initially comes off as 'dark'/'edgy,' I really enjoyed it as the movie continued/they fleshed out his character more and more. The animation style is modern and high quality - it was great to see the 02 gang older and ... in their different stages of life.

If you enjoy story rich anime and Digimon- I think you will enjoy!

I for the life of me cannot figure out who this film is for. With sweeping retcons which contradict the previous materials and yet characters and a plot which assumes that you have watched up to the most recent content in the Adventure timeline, 02 the Beginning is just a confusing mess when you lay it out. Last Evolution was very clearly for adult superfans and handled it with grace, this very much feels like a solid stand-alone Digimon film which had the 02 cast thrown in slapdash. There's deep cut references yet a total ignorance to major plot points throughout the rest of the ... series. I just don't get why they couldn't have made this a Saviors (Data Squad), Xros Wars, or Ghost Game movie, it would've made infinitely more sense. Even ignoring everything besides 02, Hurricane Touchdown, and Diablomon's Revenge (the 3 materials directly referenced), you're still missing out on screentime for some of the core 02 cast. Iori (Cody) in particular has very little to say throughout the movie and pretty much everyone besides Daisuke (Davis) and Ken are not much better off outside of some fun banter. Last Evolution suffered from this a as well with characters like Jo and Mimi, but it's particularly more noticeable since this film A) advertised itself as the big film for the 02 cast instead of the former which was always advertised as a Taichi focused film and B) the 02 cast in particular is much smaller than the Adventure cast, following 6 characters instead of 8.
As it is it's like a 6/10 and exclusively saved by the excellent psychological horror vibes and 02 cast bantering. But I feel like especially if it was a Ghost Game movie it could've been like an 8/10 or better and required very minimal rewrites.

I went to the movie with some kinda hope after watching the trailer

Pretty soon after the movie started I got disillusioned pretty fast because the movie mostly consisted of building up the backstory for a totally boring new character (poor boy got abused in his childhood, had a rough family background) and waaaaay too much talking for a Digimon movie...

Overall the fight scenes and evolution scenes where animated in a fresh, modern style - yet this is by far not enough when you lack the overall feeling for a Digimon movie because of missing real, extended fights...

Gotta say that this movie lacks nearly everything for ... justifying giving it a positive review - was a real disappointment to me and have to say: Guys,don't waste your time watching this utter disgrace to the Digimon franchise