Digimon Adventure (Movie)

Digimon Adventure (デジモンアドベンチャー Dejimon Adobenchā) is a short film. It is both the first released anime production and the first film in the Digimon franchise. It is a prequel to the Digimon Adventure television anime series.

Digimon Adventure premiered on March 6, 1999, as part of '99 Spring Toei Anime Fair, alongside ' and '. The first episode of the Adventure television series premiered on Fuji TV the following day.

=Characters=

=Summary=

Framing Device
Yagami Taichi (age 11) reflects on his first encounter with a Digital Monster and how it changed the course of his life.

Act One
It is the spring of 1995. Late one night, electronic devices in the Hikarigaoka area experience a wave of strange glitches. Taichi (age 7 ) awakens to find his sister Yagami Hikari (age 3 ) staring at the family computer. The computer monitor is flashing red with static, and an egg-like shape has appeared on its monitor and caught Hikari's attention. The egg shape—a Digitama—emerges from the computer.

The next morning, Taichi's mother, Yagami Yuuko, awakens him and asks him to look after Hikari while she runs errands. Taichi is convinced that the events from the night before were a strange dream, until he looks into Hikari's bunk and sees that she is holding the Digitama.

At breakfast, Hikari insists on clinging to the Digitama while she is seated at the table. When she reaches for her drink, the Digitama slips out of her lap and rolls itself away from her. Hikari chases the Digitama around the house, while Taichi does not realize what is going on until he almost trips on the Digitama. It rolls back into the siblings' bedroom and, as they watch, hatches into a Botamon.

Botamon immediately attempts to attack Taichi by latching onto his face, then runs and hides under their bed. Taichi attempts to attack it with his goggles, scaring it into blasting him with bubbles. Hikari, instead, strikes a rapport with it through her whistle: when she blows her whistle, Botamon responds by blowing short blasts of bubbles the same number of times. Botamon's bubbles escape their room and begin drifting all around the Hikarigaoka area.

The two find that Botamon has a very large appetite, as Hikari keeps feeding it. Taichi is at a loss as to what it is or what to do with it, and Hikari keeps rejecting his names for it. The phone rings, but when Taichi answers it, the phone experiences a severe malfunction. When he returns to the bedroom, he finds that Botamon has evolved into Koromon.

Hikari takes Miiko's food bowl to give to Koromon. In gratitude, Koromon latches onto Hikari and Taichi's faces. While it is eating the food, Miiko enters and attacks it. Koromon is terrified and attempts to run away, and when Taichi attempts to intervene, Miiko scratches him, then Koromon, before leaving with the food bowl.

Later that evening, when Yuuko comes home, Hikari and Koromon begin talking to each other, to Taichi's surprise. Out of gratitude and as a "sign of friendship," Koromon latches onto both of their faces again.

Act Two
Late that night, another wave of glitches impact electronic devices around Hikarigaoka, and children begin to notice. Hikari wakes Taichi because Koromon appears to be extremely ill. Before their eyes, Koromon evolves again, into an enormous Agumon who shatters their bunk bed with its sheer size.

Meanwhile, Yagami Susumu comes home, drunk and rowdy, but in good spirits. Yuuko, who is totally unaware of anything that is transpiring in the bedroom, tries to prevent him from going in and waking them, while Taichi blocks the door and prevents him from opening it and seeing "Koromon"/Agumon. Susumu is eventually dissuaded and leaves, but when "Koromon" forces its way out the window and destroys it, the sound alerts Yuuko. Before Taichi can do anything, "Koromon" leaps out of the apartment, with Hikari riding it, and crushes a car. Taichi runs out to chase them, against Yuuko's protests.

"Koromon"/Agumon and Hikari explore the Hikarigaoka area. "Koromon," not knowing what it is doing and despite Hikari's protests, causes some damage around the area: it smashes a vending machine, blows up a phone booth, nearly attacks a bus, and attempts to attack some aircraft lights in the sky. Hikari notices that "Koromon" is no longer speaking. Meanwhile, Taichi follows the trail of destruction that "Koromon" leaves behind.

Act Three
Another wave of electronic disturbances hits the area as "Koromon"/Agumon senses that something is coming. A massive Digitama appears in the sky above Hikarigaoka, then splits in half, releasing a Parrotmon, who descends onto a street. "Koromon" attempts to attack it, but its shots miss or fail to harm it. Meanwhile, children gather at their balconies and windows to observe, including Takenouchi Sora, Ishida Yamato, Takaishi Takeru, Kido Jo, Izumi Kōshirō, and Tachikawa Mimi.

Just as Taichi arrives on the scene and rejoins Hikari, Parrotmon retaliates with an electric blast that shatters the bridge above "Koromon"/Agumon, Taichi and Hikari, causing debris from the bridge to rain down on "Koromon." At this moment, another wave of electronic disturbances occurs, disrupting the apartment lights and Jo's phone call. By the time that the dust clears, "Koromon" has evolved again, into Greymon. Taichi is reminded of Koromon's earlier comments about a "sign of friendship."

"Koromon"/Greymon engages Parrotmon in a lengthy, vicious fight. It unleashes a blast of fire that tears off Parrotmon's wing and grapples with it, piercing its lower beak with its horn. During the fight, the two smash cars and street infrastructure all around them. Eventually, Parrotmon throws "Koromon" aside and blasts it with electricity again, knocking it out.

Hikari is distraught, and she and Taichi attempt to rouse "Koromon"/Greymon, with no effect, as Parrotmon stalks closer to them. Hikari tries blowing her whistle for "Koromon" again, but she is unable to make a sound with it, as she is crying and out of breath. Taichi sees this and is inspired, so he snatches the whistle from Hikari, takes a deep breath, and blows it with all his might. The sound of the whistle reverberates all around the Hikarigaoka street and draws the attention of the onlookers, including Takeru and Sora.

In response to the whistle, "Koromon"/Greymon snaps back to life and, at Taichi's command, unleashes another blast of fire that consumes both it and Parrotmon. The two Digimon disappear.

As the sun begins to rise, Hikari, saddened, cries out for "Koromon" over and over, imploring it to come back to her.

=Screenshots=

=Gallery=

Home Media Box Art
=Credits=

Soundtrack
=Production=

Digimon Adventure was the directorial debut of Hosoda Mamoru, who had been working for Toei Animation for several years at that point. Ever since he had commenced at Toei, he had wanted to make films, and Toei's producers granted him an opportunity to do so with both this film and the later Digimon Adventure: Our War Game! However, Toei constrained his film work to short films of a maximum of 40 minutes in length.

The project that eventually became Digimon Adventure began as "Digital Monster", a film concept which was also intended to be a prequel to a then-current concept for an upcoming televised anime series, also titled "Digital Monster"; unlike Digimon Adventure, this concept was intended to be set significantly further in the series' past. The film would have starred a character by the name of Akira—the father of the planned protagonist of the Digital Monster anime, dubbed "Kou" in a step outline (in contrast to a planning document for the series itself from August 1998, which called him "Yūsuke" )—and would have depicted what was billed as "the first encounter between humans and Digital Monsters" in Akira's own childhood. A character named "Hikari" is also present in said step outline, but unlike Yagami Hikari, she has no pre-existing relationship to Akira.

In the story presented in released pages from the step outline, a Botamon Digitama appears out of thin air in front of Akira while he is working on a radio. Botamon/Koromon is immediately friendly and attached to Akira, but after an encounter with a cat, Koromon follows its senses to a nearby electronics repair shop, where he and Akira meet Hikari and her Digimon, Tanemon.

During the development of the film, Toei directed the production crew to take it in the direction of a Digimon-themed giant monster film, in response to other film studios featuring monster films in their spring 1999 lineups.

=Reception= The producers of , which was released on the same day as Digimon Adventure, largely praised the film and noted that they must create films like it.

The Digimon Adventure short film and Digimon Adventure: Our War Game! have been credited with bringing director Hosoda Mamoru to the attention of head producer, who is said to have identified him as a potential successor to  on the basis of his work on the two short films. This led to a brief tenure at Studio Ghibli in which Hosoda was, for a time, attached as the director of , although he departed both the project and the studio over creative differences before its completion.

In light of Hosoda's subsequent high-profile career, the Adventure short film and Our War Game!&mdash;in their original incarnations, independent of the recut versions in Digimon: The Movie&mdash;have attracted a small degree of retrospective critical interest from Western anime and pop culture press. Such retrospectives typically praise Adventure for its charisma and emotional resonance, its representation of the perspectives, emotions, and relationships of children, its atmosphere and visual storytelling, and how these traits set it apart from its origins as a tie-in to a toy franchise. It is also commonly characterized as an early demonstration of Hosoda's directorial style and talents.

In May 2020, in a Digimon Web poll in which users voted on their favorite Digimon films, Digimon Adventure placed fourth, earning 9% of the vote.

=Extra=

Evolutions

 * Digitama → Botamon → Koromon → Agumon → Greymon

In Other Media
Three episodes of the Digimon Adventure television anime series directly address the events of this film:
 * In, the seven Chosen Children (Yagami Hikari is not yet part of the group at the time) return to the scene of the battle in Hikarigaoka four years later, and inadvertently re-enact it when Takenouchi Sora's Garudamon fights a Mammon sent by Vamdemon. They had forgotten the true nature of the events of that night prior to that point, but the familiarity of the sight of the battle jogs their memories and helps them reconstruct their recollections of what actually happened that night. It is established that the media had reported the destruction caused by the fight as a terrorist bombing (this story had displaced what they actually witnessed in their recollections up to this point), and that their families had all moved away from Hikarigaoka afterwards. The battle also has significance to the plot going forward, as the revelation that they all have their presence at it in common provides them with a clue as to the identity of the eighth Chosen Child (who they later discover is Hikari): that they must also have witnessed the battle, and therefore at the time lived in Hikarigaoka.
 * In, during their investigation to identify the eighth Chosen Children, Taichi asks Hikari if she remembers the battle. Unlike the others, she still remembers it perfectly well without needing to have her memory jogged. (Prior to this, in , she had also immediately recognized Taichi's partner Digimon as Koromon when the two briefly returned home; in "Mammon, the Great Clash at Hikarigaoka!", Taichi speculates that her memory of the 1995 incident is how she had been able to do so.)
 * In, it is established that Homeostasis chose the Chosen Children due to the events depicted in this film, and that both "Koromon" and Parrotmon survived the battle and were taken back to the Digital World. It also confirms that Taichi and Hikari were, in fact, directly responsible for causing "Koromon" to evolve at all, which is the reason that Homeostasis chose them. A holographic recreation of the the aftermath of the battle, showing "Koromon" and Parrotmon being taken back to the Digital World, is also shown.

Digimon Adventure: Our War Game! (which was also written and directed by Yoshida Reiko and Hosoda Mamoru) opens with a brief homage to this short film with a non-diegetic shot of a massive Digitama, in the same style as the one that yielded Parrotmon, over the sky of Odaiba while Boléro plays. Once the Digitama hatches, the shot fades to a daytime establishing shot of the same scene, beginning the movie's story.

In Digimon Adventure 02: Vol. 2: Transcendent Evolution!! The Golden Digimentals, when Wallace is telling the story of how he was separated from Chocomon as a child seven years prior, Motomiya Daisuke comments that seven years prior is around the same time that Taichi had his first encounter with a Digimon, in reference to the events of this short film.

Digimon Adventure 02: Diablomon Strikes Back includes two homages to this film. Armagemon hatches from a giant Digitama in the sky, once again of the exact same style as Parrotmon's, which was formed by the fusion of mass numbers of Kuramon. Following the destruction of Armagemon, the shot from this film in which Taichi blows the whistle to awaken "Koromon" is shown as the crowd assembled at Tokyo Bay hears the sound of the whistle.

Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna also includes two overt homages to this film as plot points. It begins with a battle in Tokyo (this time in, not Hikarigaoka) between the adult Chosen Children (including a different Agumon/Greymon) and a Parrotmon who has also appeared suddenly in the Real World. In the climax of the film in Never-Land, Taichi seizes the whistle from Hikari (who has been de-aged to her 8-year-old self from Adventure) and blows it to snap the other Chosen Children out of Menoa Bellucci's influence; during this scene, a recreation of this short film's shot of 7-year-old Taichi blowing the whistle is also shown to highlight the connection.

Home Media Releases
=Edits=

American English

 * Main article: Digimon: The Movie

used the Digimon Adventure short film as Part 1 ("Highton View Terrace, Japan - Eight Years Ago") of Digimon: The Movie.

The extent of the edits and rewrites to the films that comprised The Movie was such that in 2000, before The Movie 's release, the resulting dissimilarity to the original films was used by the as grounds for a legal action against Saban Entertainment. SAG argued that The Movie no longer constituted a "dub" under the terms of their dubbing agreement with Saban due to the "significant" extent of its "revisions, reformatting, additions, deletions and modifications", and on those grounds sought remuneration for the English voice cast (who were members of SAG) commensurate with the greater remuneration owed to performers in non-dub productions but not those in dub productions, namely residuals. The outcome of this action is unknown.


 * As usual for American English dubbed Digimon productions, the original score—which, with the exception of "Butter-Fly" playing over the credits, consists entirely of 's Boléro—is totally replaced in The Movie. Unlike other dubbed productions, The Movie uses licensed pop songs from the US in addition to the usual score from Saban's dubs of the Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02 television series.
 * Notably, in the original version, Boléro forms part of the film's structure: increases in the song's intensity, tempo, volume and number of instruments coincide with Koromon's growth, significant plot beats, action, and upping of stakes in the film. No attempt is made to replicate its effect in The Movie 's score.
 * As usual for contemporary American English Digimon dubs, dialog is generally significantly longer-winded, previously nonexistent jokes are often added, and previously nonexistent dialog is often added over what were originally moments of silence.
 * In the original version, narration is limited to a framing device at the start and end of the film featuring Yagami Taichi at age eleven. In The Movie, consistent with the other parts of it, Kari Kamiya (Yagami Hikari)—specifically, her eleven-year-old self from Adventure 02—provides narration throughout its duration, often irreverent in tone and explaining in detail what is happening or about to happen.
 * As part of Taichi's narration at the start of the original, there is a scene of him at age eleven standing alone in a field. This footage is not repurposed anywhere in The Movie. This scene is interspersed with footage of the "Koromon"/Parrotmon fight scene from later in the film; this usage of it is also cut from The Movie, although this has no bearing on the same footage's subsequent usage in the fight scene itself, later in the film.
 * When Kari introduces this part of The Movie, a title card declaring "Highton View Terrace, Japan - Eight Years Ago" is superimposed on top of its first shot. This is inconsistent with the timeline established in the original films, in which the total time elapsed between the three films that were turned into The Movie has been affirmed on multiple occasions (including by fellow The Movie constituent film Digimon Adventure 02: Vol. 2: Transcendent Evolution!! The Golden Digimentals) to be seven years.
 * Kari's introductory narration at the start of this part covers characters from all three films used to form The Movie. Footage from the films that form the subsequent parts is reused as she introduces said characters, namely Tai (Taichi), T.K. Takaishi (Takaishi Takeru), and Willis (Wallace).
 * In the original version, Hikari's dialog is very limited. Before she and Koromon begin bonding, she only speaks one word, "Egg", once, at the very beginning, and is otherwise non-verbal and communicates only through her whistle; she barely says anything to anyone other than Koromon through the entire film, and even then, her lines tend to be short and infrequent. While The Movie preserves the period in which she is still only communicating by whistle and does not add dialog for her during it, it otherwise rewrites Kari to be significantly more verbose (not counting her 11-year-old self's narration), and an extensive amount of dialog is added for her in the Agumon exploration sequence.
 * A shot of Taichi kneeling on a chair so that he can reach the kitchen counter is cut from The Movie.
 * The Movie adds in Tai brainstorming ideas for what to do with the Digi-Egg (Digitama), including using it as a soccer ball and telling others who ask that "our chicken coop is on a nuclear waste dump!"
 * The Movie cuts 30 seconds from the Digi-Egg chase sequence, including the shot of Taichi almost tripping over it while carrying a chair.
 * Although its footage is mostly unaltered, The Movie radically changes the scene under the Yagami children's bed where Hikari is bonding with Botamon by altering the sound effects. In the original, Hikari initiates by blowing her whistle, and Botamon responds by blowing an equal number of bubble blasts to the number of times Hikari blows the whistle. In The Movie, Botamon initiates by gurgling a bar from the Saban dub "Digimon Theme," and Kari responds by playing the next bar on her whistle; since the footage is unmodified, Botamon is also still blowing bubbles while doing so.
 * During this scene, there is a shot in which Hikari is tickled by the sensation of Botamon's bubble stream blowing in her face. In the original version, this occurs right after the first time that Hikari does two whistle blasts, in the middle of the scene, before the two continue on for further call-and-response whistling/bubble-blowing. In The Movie, this shot is moved to the very end of the scene under the bed, before it cuts to Tai watching, confused.
 * In The Movie, the aftermath of the bubble-blowing interaction is shortened and cuts straight to Kari feeding Botamon. The intervening shots—the bubbles floating around the city, and a B-roll shot of an educational hiragana chart on the bedroom wall—are cut.
 * In the original version, when Taichi answers the phone, there is no voice or speech on the other end of it, only the sounds of it malfunctioning due to Botamon evolving at that moment. In The Movie, Tai is instead subjected to a tirade from Sora Takenouchi (Takenouchi Sora) about how she has just learned from Mimi Tachikawa (Tachikawa Mimi) that it was Tai who recently vomited in her hat without telling her; this tirade is then cut off by the Botamon-induced malfunction. This incident has no basis whatsoever in the original version, and moreover, in Japanese material in general there is no indication that Taichi, Sora and Mimi knew each other at this point in their lives. The Movie later references this incident again in the "Four Years Later" part (Digimon Adventure: Our War Game!), in its heavily rewritten version of Tai's apology email to Sora.
 * The Movie cuts some footage from the fight scene between Koromon and Miko (Miiko), partly to reduce the impact of Miko's violence.
 * The chase sequence is shortened, including cutting the shot of Koromon trying to get behind the toy basket.
 * In the original version, Miiko scratching Taichi is depicted with two shots: an action shot of Miiko's paw rushing at him, and a cut to black where red claw marks are slashed across the screen. In The Movie, it just cuts straight to Tai dropping Miko.
 * In the original version, when Miiko then scratches Koromon, it cuts to the aforementioned red claw mark shot again, which has another set of red claw marks slash across the screen. In The Movie, since the former shot never happened in the original sequence, the two-claw-slash black screen shot is cut and the earlier single-claw-slash shot is inserted in its place.
 * In the original version, Koromon only speaks in its Koromon form, and as Agumon and Greymon, its vocalizations are limited to realistic roars. In The Movie, it also speaks in its Agumon and Greymon forms, although the added dialog for these forms is not significant and, with one exception, is limited to it shouting its technique names.
 * The one exception is that in The Movie, when Tai attempts to address it as "Koromon" after it evolves into Greymon, it replies, "I'm Greymon now." (In the original version, it says nothing in the shot in question and merely eyes Taichi.) Because of this, in The Movie, Tai and Kari adapt to calling it "Greymon" after this point, whereas in the original version, Taichi and Hikari only ever know the Digimon as "Koromon" even after it evolves.
 * Some B-roll shots of electronic malfunctions, and children around the area observing the malfunctions, during Koromon's evolution are cut from The Movie.
 * The character of Yagami Susumu is removed entirely from The Movie. The shots depicting him coming home and attempting to say good night to his children are cut, likely because of his drunkenness, and dialog is amended to present that sequence as if Yagami Yuuko is the only one at risk of coming in and seeing Agumon. (Susumu is still present in the Saban dub of the Adventure television series.)
 * In The Movie, some minor footage is trimmed from Kari and "Koromon"/Agumon's exploration of Highton View Terrace (Hikarigaoka).
 * In the original version, Parrotmon does not speak at all. The Movie adds some minor dialog for it.
 * In the original version, Parrotmon does not announce the name of its lightning attack technique, which is called in other Japanese media. In The Movie, Parrotmon announces the technique as, which is the name of a totally different technique of Parrotmon's, in both Japanese and other English media, that does not involve lightning.
 * The Movie cuts the fight between "Koromon"/Greymon and Parrotmon in multiple places, both for time and to reduce the intensity of the violence.
 * The shot of Greymon's first impacting Parrotmon is trimmed to omit the blast tearing off Parrotmon's wing.
 * Some shots of both Taichi and Hikari spectating, and other children watching from their balconies, are cut.
 * The shot where Greymon's horn shatters Parrotmon's lower beak is cut. No subsequent footage is edited to accommodate for this, so in The Movie, Parrotmon's lower beak suddenly becomes heavily damaged with no explanation.
 * Compared to Taichi's blowing of the whistle in the original, Tai's blowing of the whistle in The Movie is shorter, and some B-roll of a nearby building as the whistle echoes around is omitted.
 * During the fight scene, when the other six future Chosen Children from the Adventure television series make their cameos watching the fight, there is no indication in the original version that any of them know each other, or Taichi or Hikari, at that time (with the obvious exception of the sibling pair of Ishida Yamato and Takeru, who are together in the film). The Movie changes dialog to try and establish pre-existing connections:
 * In the original, Kido Jo does not identify who he is on the phone with in either shot depicting him. In The Movie, Joe's (Jo) dialog in the first shot is rewritten to identify that he is on the phone with Mimi, and in the second shot (in which his phone call is interrupted by "Koromon"/Agumon evolving), his dialog is rewritten to instead identify that he is calling Izzy Izumi (Izumi Kōshirō). (In, Taichi points out that Jo did not know Kōshirō at all at the time; this is also the case in the dubbed version of that episode, except that it is instead Joe who says so directly.)
 * In the original version, when Sora sees Taichi blowing the whistle, she only says "That boy...". In The Movie, her dialog is changed to "Get 'em, Tai..." This is the second time that The Movie has established a prior relationship between Tai and Sora, following the hat vomit phone call.
 * The Movie takes some minor steps to attempt to distinguish this short film's versions of Agumon and Greymon from the more familiar Digimon species seen in the televised Adventure anime and the rest of The Movie.
 * They have different English voice actors: respectively, Michael Sorich and Bob Papenbrook, instead of Tom Fahn and Michael Lindsay. Since neither form speaks in the original version, they never had Japanese voice actors. (Koromon is not affected by this, as it is voiced by the same actor as Tai's partner Koromon in the Adventure series' dub, Brianne Siddall, consistent with how Sakamoto Chika is the Japanese voice of both this film's Koromon and Taichi's partner Koromon in the Adventure series.)
 * In the credits, the roles are labeled "Big Agumon" and "Red Greymon," although neither name is used in dialog.
 * Their attack techniques have slightly different names from what they are usually called in Adventure dubs. Agumon's attack is called, instead of the usual (Japanese: ); and Greymon's is called , instead of the usual  (Japanese: ).
 * The original film's closing credits are cut entirely, in favor of the combined closing credits of The Movie which run after the Transcendent Evolution!! part. The footage that plays in the background of the original credits—which depicts Taichi, age eleven, bonding with the partner Greymon from the Adventure television series—is not repurposed anywhere (The Movie 's credits are played over a black background).

=Additional Information=

=External Links=
 * Digimon Adventure on the '99 Spring Toei Anime Fair official website (Archived by the Internet Archive Wayback Machine)
 * Digimon Adventure on the Toei Animation Production Lineup website
 * on Wikipedia