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This is a review for the entirety of Tri. There are SPOILERS ahead:

Digimon Adventure Tri was ... quite a ride, for better and for worse. A ride that sometimes tried to give us something exciting but more often than not was just satisfied to give us lazy excuses for fanservice and plays with nostalgia to reach into our wallets.

The original Adventure 01 show has quite the dedicated following and it's pretty clear why: It told a story that cared about its own characters which in return made us care. The stakes felt real. The characters themselves felt so real that more than a decade ... later, there are still people talking about and loving these kids and their Digimon. It gave us thrill, excitement and genuine bonds. More importantly, the story itself treated its young audience not as "kids who can't yet handle certain things". It respected us and confronted us with situations that were meant to make us grow: adoption, loss, and much more. Of course, it was made in the first place to boost merchandise sales but there was still genuine intent on delivering a great story working behind it.

That's definitely gone in Tri.

When Tri came around, people got excited: The kids we loved as kids are now graduating from high school just like we are! Taichi's lost and directionless now just like many of us! It's marketed at a more grown up audience. It's even going to be darker!

Now that it's over, did Tri deliver what we were promised back in 2014? A clear no.

Tri often simply did not try. Sometimes (mostly in the first three movies) it actually managed to catch the feeling of the original series but in a more mature context. There were moments that would make everyone who's grown up with these kids fill with joy. Even give them goosebumps, like when everyone shows up to fight at the airport in the first movie and the soundtrack kicks in. When Omnimon appears to fight Alphamon. That bittersweet moment with HerkulesKabuterimon. Even when you first see Taichi's face. The face you haven't seen in such a long time.

There are lots of potentially great moments like this throughout Tri but most of them fall flat on its face due to stiff and clumsy execution.

The biggest problem in Tri is a mix of bad animation and character design and completely apathetic behavior resulting from bad writing. It's not just a matter of many still images throughout the entirety of these movies, it's the awful lack of details in facial expressions, bodies and body language that makes Tri a hard watch and breaks the immersion in the most crucial of moments. The gang's reaction to Taichi's potential death, for example, in the fifth movie was met with blank expressions. To call it shock would clearly be an overstatement, it was mild surprise at best that showed on their faces. Your best friend and leader, who kicked you out of so many situations, is probably dead and you just go "oh". One of your friends from the 02 cast shows up corrupted and evil again and you also only go "oh". I wish I'd be exaggerating but after watching it for the third time last week, with the nostalgia googles worn off, it was impossible to ignore how badly the animation affected what should have been emotional highlights. Even just small things like Taichi barely having a scratch after falling while Nishijima is bleeding everywhere feels ... kinda ... weird. Why not tear Taichi's shirt at the sleeves or something? Put some scratches in his face? Just to show he's been through what he has been through: nearly being crushed by big stones! Certainly adding these few lines wouldn't have been too expensive for Toei... Things like this in design and expression just serve to break the immersion and kill off any sort of danger that the audience could feel. Just imagine a live action movie where the action hero just barely escapes a big explosion after a hard fight but his suit miraculously has no dirt on or holes in it, basically being ready to be taken to a wedding the second the explosion happened. As if it came straight out of the washing machine. But dried. Weird, right? You'd call it badly made.

But its not all the animation departments' fault, the writing itself is clumsy with the characters barely reacting to anything like any sane person in that situation would do. After Ken's surprising reemergence as the Digimon Emperor, the writers did not think it was necessary for the 01 gang to show much of a concern about the recent events. Hikari and Takeru halfheartedly knocking at Ken's door and immediately shrugging it off when nobody answered is bizarre at least. After all this guy saved the world with them. They bonded. In a show where relationships are so important for them to overcome anything life throws at them, this was quite ... unnatural? Unnatural is a good word for anything that happens in Tri after Ken's reveal: Nobody reacting to Maki when she comes up with a D3-Digivice that looked exactly like Ken's, Yamato (the guy who has the crest of friendship) being basically satisfied with a "the 02 kids are probably somewhere and probably fine" from Maki, the 01 gang being all happy telling scary stories to each other while knowing that the world is going to turn to shit if they don't move fast enough to save it, megas one-shoted but minutes later champions resist the same attacks, Hikari going straight to "I won't forgive you" after Taichi's reappearance, et cetera. Hikari's overall trauma about her brother's death was so unnatural, awkward and jarring that it stands as a perfect example about how the writing team had no clue whatsoever about how you get real, tangible emotions across via dialogue, reaction and body language. Now tell me, why should the audience care about the faith of their world and about them if they themselves don't the care the least bit?

The story itself is a busy mess too. It's basically stumbling over ideas that sometimes you can't help but wonder if they had just come up with it moments before production of the next movie. (Also, none of those plotpoints were really resolved, even if a status quo was established at the end.) It feels like an obvious sequelbait and with a new project announced and the mysterious dark Gennai ending its appearance with "Should I use Daemon or Diaborumon next" it's clear that there's more to come. Maki's story also wasn't even finished in this so there's another thread that needs to be solved. And since the 02 kids' Digimon weren't even with them when they were saved, it might even be a stark indicator for how the next thing might be 01 related again. Now, I'm not saying the ideas are bad. Busy, yeah, but not bad. In fact, there are many things still left open that could make for an interesting story if someone who cares writes it. Just give us believable reasons for things like why someone like Yggdrasil decided to destroy the world in the first place because none of that got explained and as a consequence it just ends up feeling like "ah, it's there because we needed a plot. Not a reason to explain anything."

Now there's a lot of criticism in this review and I'm sure many would agree on what's been said here but I'm also sure that there are many who nonetheless enjoyed it. Seeing these guys again felt good and the timing was perfect with many of us being in similar life situations like Taichi or Joe. Or the whole crew in general, since graduating from high school is also the time were people lose touch with each other just like them. When it delivered these things, it felt amazing and it was great to speculate and interact with people who came back together to talk about this new era for Digimon. It did succeed in reuniting many people and to remind us of the reasons why 01 has such a special place in our hearts. Nevermind that sometimes we had to see so much digivolution stock footage (badly drawn even. I mean, Lilymon...aua) that they had to play "Brave Heart" twice or that plot points disappeared and appeared out of nowhere. Nevermind the hypocrisy when Taichi discovered the 02 kids and acted like the original Digi-destined have been desperately searching for them.

The first viewing was and remains special for many Digimon fans (at least up to part 4). Is it perfect? Hell no! Is it complete and utter garbage? Well, for the reasons listed above it saves itself for fans, somehow, even if repeated viewings will make that secondary bittersweet taste in your mouth grow and grow. But yeah for every none fan it's unwatchable. That pains to say.

It's not the Tri that these characters deserved. It's not the Tri we as audience even deserved and far from what we really, really wanted. It's what we've got. Lots of lazy, badly executed stuff and a few bright spots and its those that at least gave us what we wanted: To truly be with this crew again.