Digimon Ghost Game

Episode 10

In the past I mentioned being concerned over the fact that the show's less than stellar production could potentially get in the way of the more exuberant and darker ideas it's trying to play with. This episode was far from scary and seemed to instead focus more on the fun quirky aspects of the show. Here we continue to see just how much influence these Digimon seem to hold on the real world as they straight up drag people into a game and try to convert them to sake. I'm not sure if this is indicative of Digimon overall getting more powerful the longer they are in the real world or if these two antagonists in particular were just more powerful comparatively. Granted it's hard to measure the actual strength of these characters in an episode that's revolving around action and fighting when the animation looks this bad. Movement is kept to a minimum, there's an over abundance of speed lines and close-ups meant to simulate movement that just doesn't work. Plus, unlike other episodes that were minimal in terms of animation, there isn't really anything interesting in either the visuals or the directing that help make up for it. It just looks cheap.

And the more I think about it, the more the plot of this episode appears to not really be that different from the racing episode that we just had where the main motivation for the Digimon seems to be revolving around just being the best in a particular field, in this case fighting but at least the outcome is a little bit different. There's not much in the way of lore here or following up on some of the reveals from the last episode but it is nice seeing Kiyoshirō actually man up and refreshing to see Jellymon actually be real for a second when it's clear that not everything is going to be fun and games.

The Digivolution at the end of this episode definitely felt earned but it also felt like, by the end, that's all the episode really had going for it. I have no idea if they will stick to the apparent growth those two had after this episode but if they don't, it'll make the entire climax of this episode feel very cheap and hollow. As it stands for right now, in this specific moment in time, it's not bad but overall it felt like there could've been more things to explore and I hope we will explore more of those things in the next episode.

RATING:

Digimon Ghost Game is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.