Digimon Ghost Game

Episode 14

So after last week's amazing episode, it felt like the possibilities were endless. I knew we weren't going to get an immediate narrative follow-up to the tragic events that transpired, and while this episode does play around with some nice character ideas and features some genuine scares, there are also parts that feel like huge missed opportunities. For one thing, I'm not a big fan of narratives that have the characters just stumble upon a ghost mystery that has apparently been around for a while. It really does feel like the show at some point lost that proactive mystery-solving initiative that was present in the first couple of episodes. Speaking of callbacks, we finally got another potential clue into the mystery surrounding Hiro's father; it's been so barely addressed up until this point that I kinda genuinely forgot about it! But that lead goes nowhere so quickly that I almost feel like the episode would have been better without it. That being said, the actual mystery of the episode was not only genuinely creepy at times, but also led to a very wholesome moment in the end. It seems like the directors and writers were trying to go for some kind of connected throughline between this week's Digimon ghost and Gammamon.

It seems like Gammamon has no memory of what happened in the last episode; he even thought that the Digimon that was literally murdered in front of him is still around. It makes sense that he probably went into shock and doesn't remember anything because of the dark digivolution, and I actually think it's really sweet how the rest of the cast tries to maneuver around explaining to him what that means. Gammamon still isn't much of a character at this point in the show, but he is a child and to be honest, I think this episode does a good job of scratching the surface about discussing things like death to those who might not understand it right away. That's a good lesson for kids even though the animation quality barely did the episode any favors. I actually thought that was going to be the lesson with the ghost Digimon at the end but it does feel like the writers got cold feet at the last minute. As it turns out, this week's Digimon is just accidentally terrorizing people because he wants to play with them the same way that the previous innkeeper used to. I kept thinking that the innkeeper passed away because it isn't until the final moment that it's revealed she left a note explaining that she went to visit family. I don't know why this just felt so retroactive, and the show honestly could've gotten away with having the message be that sometimes people that you care about might one day exit your life, going somewhere else where you can't follow. That's definitely the message that the episode is trying to end on which does make it a good epilogue for what happened last week. I just think that it could've been a lot stronger.

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Digimon Ghost Game is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.