Oh SHIT I'm so sorry! I thought that was a shot of Regulusmon and Siriusmon from the episode, my eyes betrayed me. Let me pin and credit you in the description, I'm so sorry! If I can do anything else let me know!
I think UA-cam decided to delete your other reply for some reason, I appreciate you being okay with it! I try my absolute best to make sure stuff like this doesn't happen, I hope you can take solace that your art is so fantastic I thought it was from the actual episode! Huge apologies again!
100% agree my friend, Ghost Game started so strong and creepy but it never went above Stage 1 (Monster of the Week), painful because Digimon tends to be at it's best once it abandons that chapter.
@@pn2294 Personally, I like that is justified the "monster of the week" format for the *horror* anime. Seriously, the random Digimon they faced were *random Digimon* that caused trouble not as part of the main villain's plan but simply due to being alien.
@pn2294 Define Variety ? As Karn put it out. Its basically this digimon has an horror plot and the gang solve it at the end. Nothing in the series is affected with the digimon being around or impacted. They don't get awareness for this. In other series, if digimon were doing what they did, you would see some kind of human response or normal people learning about digimon. At the least our main characters would get save, but no the series went back to status quo despite saying it had a narrative.
@@Chalicodragon The gang are gradually integrating Digimon into the real world. By the midpoint of the series, Digimon have their own businesses and civilizations within the human world. By the end, there are even unofficial Tamers in their series. It’s like Digimon Survive’s ending in that regard.
@pn2294 You mean the ending where Hiro talks to the United Nations and everyone just accepts digimon despite this series having the most malicious day of the week digimon. The digimon are most of the time hidden from society , with only a few of them interacting with humans. Literally episodes end with the gang telling digimon to hide themselves. What unofficial tamers are you talking about ?
I'm convinced that *something* happened during Ghost Game's hiatus. If you look at the episodes up to that point--while very monster-of-the-week--they are slowly building up to something. Things are changing and progressing. Then the show comes back from that hiatus and all of that momentum stops _immediately_. It's as though they completely scrapped whatever plan was in place for Ghost Game, and then were just spinning their wheels until the end. Ghost Game had the potential to stand with Adventure and Tamers at the top of the franchise, if not even exceed them. The premise and early episodes were really that strong. Now? It's 67 episodes of mostly the same thing. There is no real reason to watch a second episode of Ghost Game, because it's the episode you just watched but with a different Digimon. I can rewatch 52 episodes of Adventure any time, and have multiple times. I can't imagine slogging through all of Ghost Game again.
I never actually realised that. I rewatch adventure 1 & 2 once every year or 2 but even 8 months after finishing ghost game, I have no real desire to rewatch it.
You hit the nail on the head! The problem wasn’t with the episodic format, but rather its execution. The formula got tedious and repetitive over time so the series started declining, especially its second half. Granted, its second half is still better than say, Adventure 02’s or Adventure tri.’s, but that’s because their second halves were convoluted messes whereas Ghost Game’s was the exact opposite: a stagnant plateau. Being better than 02 and tri. are low bars to clear, anyway. And it’s obviously better than Young Hunters because YH is this show on steroids: YH has all the same problems but amplified up to 11 because of its far shorter length. I’d still recommend this mediocre entry over other weaker entries like Frontier or 02, but that’s about it.
Yeah, I felt the same. something changed. I'm convinced it was actually going to be even more episodes than just how much we got. Which is why they were going so slow. But at some point they were told to finish it off. And they didn't have enought time, so they finished off their remaining monster of the week scripts and left the last 3 episodes for the finale.
Something happening in the middle of Digimon anime production? This must be the first one! (Bad sarcasm aside, Toei is infamous for messing up Digimon by being involved and changinf things on the fly)
I think some episodes had to be cut because of the hiatus as Digimon seasons only run for one year before moving onto the next season. Digimon wasn't the only one to suffer this another show of their Precure also had the same issues, it seemed they had some plans for the show but scrapped them and the show was just super slow after that.
I loved the episodic nature of it, and a lot of the story seemed like it'd pay off in interesting ways, so it's a shame the ending stuff felt so rushed. I still really enjoyed Ghost Game despite everything
It made sense. In a dark take on the partner's dark side, Gulus was a viral threat that forced Quantummon to evacuate the Digital World, leading to random Digimon causing problems by just being otherwordly.
Nice job Karn; not just on your Ghost Game analysis, but for pointing out problematic things in fandoms like - the misunderstanding/misuse of the term "episodic" - the fact that something explained (or "has a reason"), doesn't alone justify it as a good idea - the problems with Digimon's overall lack of brand-synergy. All things that need more attention!
Let's not forget fans thinking there will be a follow-up season because of the whole Endbringer thing that will never EVER be touched upon due to Toei/Bandai and the director's incompetence with the whole series. Seriously, with the way Ghost Game ended and how it is now, why do people delude themselves that there will be a second season or a sequel movie?
I think the early part of Ghost Game being episodic was fine. Tamers did that because it was spending time introducing characters and developing them. The real plot didn't come to be until about halfway when the tamers went to the Digital World. Ghost Game teased quite a bit in those early episodes so it made the audience speculate what would happen. That in itself isn't a bad thing as long as there's a payoff that links everything together.
The problem I have with this logic is that story arcs are just extra long episodes. They’re not actually more important. The fact that GG didn’t revolve around a main antagonist meant that each episode was actually more important because none of them could actually be skipped
@@pn2294nah it meant that they could all be skipped because there was no importance to them such as a main story arc. They could have taken like 40 episodes out and been done with it. Just boring filler.
I was expecting a Digital World arc, but not in the last three or so episodes. There were also some villainous Digimon they deserved an arc like Piedmon, Dragomon and Millenniumon.
This is interestingly put. I don't strongly agree or disagree with any thing, it's just a whole lot of "yeah, I can see that, I understand that sentiment". In broad general terms, Digimon either really needs a manga or a consistent series of mainline games if it wants to get out there and get the same kind of shonen treatment other series have. The toys are a respectable begining and they don't have to go away, but I remember as a child being really bummed out every time a game came out and it was mid, and every new show had nothing to do with the previous. I'm not saying "no new characters or settings" I'm just saying every seasons removes stakes by being a fresh start. Ghost Game, Seekers and Survive were all massively hurt by being all disconected and having a disjointed approach of going over seas. You spoke of corporate synnergy, but I think it's more than that. To me it's more akin to a sense of "oh, the new thing in that world" instead of "oh, it's the new world of that thing". Being really specific to Ghost Game now... I don't know how to feel about it. I watched it weekly and to completion. My interest did dwindle, but not in a catastrophic manner. I don't think episode caps and being longer or shorter really affects my enjoyment of the story as long as what is being done justifies its lenght. There are shows that couldn't be saved even if cut in half. PERSONALLY, I think around episode 25 the show should have "dropped" the weekly mystery and jumped straight into the Digiworld that they were teasing for way too long. The show teases a LOT of big baddies like Dagomon, Kuzuhamon, Manticoremon, Cthyllamon that could all be doing the exact same things but in the digimon world to smaller weaker digimon. The show also is the one that comes the closest to be able to show all Demon Lords and it could have been a great midshow plot beat still in the "horror theme". That's why I put the dropped in quotations, I think they could have shifted it a bit to other digimon in a different scenario. The show hurts for not having an extra Tamer, even though it had the opportunity to introduce a Herissmon. After a while I thought they were going to subvert the trope by giving each Tamer a second creature (Espimon, Ryudamon) and at some points we see Tamers giving others to each other's partners. ... But that didn't come through either. But I think the biggest bummer and the only thing I'd really consider a disappointment is the resultion of the conflict with Gulus. The whole thing of a meteor thing in a distant future is so underwhelming and makes everything seem so unjustified (specially considering in just about every media, time in the digiworld is faster than here, so 2000 years here would be like a billion in there), and it actually makes me think what the heck is going on in japan that this is a trend now (Pokémon SwSh had an alien creature coming from space and a power crisis hitting the Earth in the very distant future. Sonic Frontiers has the same "oh no, there's this huge meteor thing slowly coming over and you sped up it's arrival"), idk, I might be overthinking it, but I kinda see a trend of "not really impending space doom slowly approaching" In the end I was never really disappointed by Ghost Game, I was just always curious on why it made the decisions it made. ... And speaking of curious, I've always wondered why Hiro had a scar and Kiyo had a bandaged arm (implied to be some sort of soft cosplay) as such prominent design features and they never panned out as a flashback or character motivation or anything.
Apparently there's rumour that Arctusmon and Promixamon were just made as what if evolutions. Basically the anime staff and the BE Teamm just didn't communicate on it. Its kinda implied with thier "theoretical evolution". I still find it skeptical because the idea that the last Antagonist of Ghost Game was a ultimate still feels narratively off.
This is still one of the weirdest things... like it really feels like they have an OVA in the works where they want to use all these forms as a sort-of Omnimon moment, but it's also weird because they've never REALLY made a series with the intention to book-end it with an OVA before??? So it's just like......... What the crap happened here...???
Digimon Ghost Game felt like the creators had a strong idea for an overarching, serialized narrative, and chose to wait until the last 3 episodes to tell it. I don't mind the idea of a completely episodic monster of the week series, but the show kept sprinkling in little mysteries and subplots that hinted very strongly that it was going to do what most Digimon series do and eventually move into a more serialized format. Almost feels like a J.J Abrams work where the writers introduced questions that they didn't have answers to, but weren't super concerned about coming up with answers until they were just about out of time
@@Karn_EX That is definitely a possibility. My thing is like by Episode 40 out of 67 episodes I would think they would recognize that they should at least try to start addressing the mysteries they set up. Even if they didn't have the budget to make it as spectacular as they wanted with the best animation or the best script writers, you gotta figure that industry professionals would realize that the longer they pushed it off the more difficult it would be to make something even remotely satisfying. Perfection is the enemy of completion as they say
@@ML1399TheyStoleMyName Right, "being episodic is no excuse." Seriously, how many horror themed shows aren't episodic? Feel like there is a reason the genre had so many anthology shows. Karn: "Stop arguing its supposed to be episodic." Frankly did not address the genre.
I'm glad you brought up Gegege no Kitaro because something I haven't heard said a whole lot in western discussion of GG is that the premise is essentially "Japanese ghost stories but instead of Yokai and ghosts it's digimon" and that that premise constructs those episodic weekly releases. For me GG became a bit bitter sweet and disappointing because I feel not only did they take their sweet time with the Gulus plot only to see it cut off early without Arcturusmon or Proximamon I felt almost I had waited for nothing. On reflection though I find myself revisiting episodes like the puppet girl, the dark fire digimon, Icy hell and Fujitsumon episodes because they're genuinely good ghost stories featuring digimon. I hope ghost games dub hits well with kids which I believe it will looking at the success of shows like Goosebumps and Tales from the Crypt in the 2000s
Love this video, thank you so much for referencing my reviews! It wasn't easy and some weeks there simply wasn't much to say, but I am very proud of my coverage of Ghost Game. As proud as someone can be about reviewing a cartoon ;)
Gulus being an alien, who turned himself into a digimon and Created an alternate persona to hide which ended up usurping the body is such an interesting idea that just goes nowhere. So much interesting character building left on the table without any resolution.
I feel that Myotismon, Lilithmon, and Millenniummon have unfinished plots. These three digimon in particular were full-on antagonists, but were never killed, or truly defeated. I kept expecting for any of the three to reappear again as a major antagonist, but that never happened. Especially during the last few episodes before they went to the Digital World, I actually expected for Hiro to take MoonMillenniummon with him since it kinda lingered on a shot of the apocalyptic digimon I also thought we would get a mini-arc of sorts with Pharoahmon thanks to some of the build-up with AncientSphinxmon and Mummymon. That being said, I find it funny that GulusGammamon never got a chance to go to his Mega form lol
@@Bezaliel13so is the show supposed to be episodic or have a main plot? You can’t say one thing and then defend the show by saying something that contradicts your previous claim mate.
Also, they had Dracmon vow revenge on ruli, show up 20 episodes later, and then get unceremoniously deleted by Myotismon. But there's a matadormon that escaped surely we'll finally see an animated version of Granddracmon and...nope. None of the vampires were seen again.
I feel the trio of digidestined worked better with tamers as there were other side digidestined that had partners and I just feel this season was hiro was overused with him having 2 partners
I disagree with Hiro having two partners part. Espimon being Hiro's partner was more like Cutemon being Taiki's digimon. They had moments and developed thier relationship, but it doesn't go anywhere and you can literally take Espimon out of Ghost game. A digidestined having two partners and it being serious focus could be interesting, but Ghost Game did nothing with it. We already know that digimon in Ghost game can connect with their non-partners. Even Espimon's evolution episode feels off since it's so late in the series and it's made into an auxiliary digimon in its own epsiode. Heck, they got Ryduamon to evolve without a partner...why did Espimon need to ?
My problem is the fodder/irrelevant add-ons do nothing of value outside MarineAngemon. Savers handled its add-ons better than Tamers but they also still feel utterly pointless outside the old man. Kinda glad Ghost Game stuck to just Espimon and two fast travel guys (Airdramon and Ginryumon, and I feel the latter should've been a bit more relevant)
@TheDiscoGenre Airdramon was relevant ? I think all of the Ghost game adds on worst though. They didn't really need them. Heck, the characters not having fast travel could have added to the plot and the show could have tried to find ways to get around that. Though I agree with you overall. I think the only sixth rangers that have worked out well in digimon were the ones that were already there from the beginning of the story and had a role established. Such as Kairi and Gatomon, Ken and Wormmon, Impmon, Kouichi, Ikuto and Falcomon, Miuyki and Renamon, and Haru and Gabumon.
@@lucanigro7316 And that's still more relevant than (Hiro)Kazu, Suzie, or BUY WONDERSWANS Ryo sadly. Being a taxi is more relevant is more relevant than anyone who wasn't the Primary Colors or Impmon.
I have not watched the video yet, but here are my thoughts on it and want to see reactions to them. The ghost game had a good setup, but a failed planning and absolutely terrible ending will edit after watch of your video
I loved Ghost Game basically the whole way through. I thought the horror stuff, particularly the body horror, was excellent and I enjoyed the episodic nature of it. The problem I had was with the last 4 or 5 episodes. They felt so rushed and out of nowhere. To me that is way they didn't feel satisfying. Because it was almost like the creative team had no idea the end was coming and had to scramble to tie up all the loose ends.
Pity Karn seemed to have forgotten that it was horror. Seriously, how many horror shows AREN'T episodic? Personally, I like the dark take on the protagonist's dark side. Having Quantumon evacuate the Digital World in response to Gulus and the horror throughout the series being from random Digimon unrelated to Gulus causing horror just from being literally otherworldly. Far better paranoia fuel than the usual "monster of the week" being a servant of the big bad.
@@Bezaliel13I personally think that Karn is correct in his analysis. He did acknowledge the darkness and body horror, but it's more how the show was paced that got under his skin (and mine). Ghost Game is one of those shows that have 1-3 episodes at the beginning that introduce a possible over-arching plot, then have a bunch of unrelated and self-contained episodes it the middle with a bit of teasing, before suddenly swinging back into said plot in the final 5-7 episodes and wrapping it up. The issue is that Ghost Game wasn't very satisfying with this formula. I'm reminded of Katekyou Hitman Reborn!, myself.
@@conspiracypanda1200 So, is that format typical for horror anime? Huh, i just thought of something. How would that work? To elaborate, it was a horror anime that averted the "Sorting Algorithm of Evil," so how would it work if they had fewer episodes with their lower Lv partners? I know that might, *might,* sound like i am questioning on Digivolution across a few dozen episodes, but I mean it might not really have been that scary if they grow too quickly. Horror needs helplessness, you know. Not to mention the plot being about Digimon refugees evacuate to avoid a viral infection contained in the Digital World. Be kind of lame to have that awesome premise of endless, random, and unrelated Digimon causing nightmares from being alien and no way of dealing with all of them in sight... merely to have only a few random Digimon of the Week, like the Infernals from Fire Force.
I don't know if they would be as popular as there were when we were kids but I would love to have tie in figures like we had for adventure and tamers. I loved collecting the figure I saw in the latest episode
Yeah... that pretty much sumarizes how I feel about the whole thing. And it is the same as how I felt about Digimon Hunters back in the day as well. It seems to me they made the exact same mistakes again... aside from the massive episode count. Heck, even my favorite episodes from both were the penultimate episode, where they were finally getting into something before rushing to the finish line in the final one.
I know I treated Ghost game too harshly really fast since I dropped it on like Episode 3, though I loved the spooky vibe they were going for, I felt really weird about the characterization of the protagonist, my favourite part is the development and emotions of the characters, and when the kid sees again his Father who DISAPPEARED WITHOUT A TRACE, and just reacts casually with “where have you been idiot?” I just felt that they were not going to be able to milk emotion out of the story
I loved the start that Ghost Game had, those first dozen episodes felt pretty solid to set up the series. It just fell flat trying to keep the plot relevant and the payoff was disappointing. Especially when considering we had Proximamon teasing us with it's very existence. Overall I just felt like it needed to cook a bit longer in development. Also unironically, if you do live action show characters get partners I will eat that shit up. Barney Stinson would 100% get the Lilithmon line and we all know why.
"Apparently there's rumour that Arctusmon and Promixamon were just made as what if evolutions. Basically the anime staff and the BE Teamm just didn't communicate on it. Its kinda implied with thier 'theoretical evolution'." - Chalicodragon v=QX30f_mkDLQ&lc=UgwXDMSmR4p_carm0sJ4AaABAg
I definitely have similar problems with ghost game tho i definitely did enjoy it. It was the first anime I've watched weekly since I was a kid so I could keep up with the community. Even with the problems ghost game will hold a special place in my heart because this is really the first community online i feel like I fit in
I liked every single episode up until the last three. Even if formulaic, "Digimon doing spooky stuff" can be drastically different just because each Digimon is different and they even added new gimmicks to Digimon so they gave a new spooky flavor. My only problem was that some Digimon needed more than 1 episode to actually build up their horror, and almost all plot hooks got either discarded or rushed, which is bad. So I didn't get tired of it, but the ending is bad and I recognise that.
my main issue with ghost game is what I feel many others have issue with: the promise of something more. it felt like we were getting crumbs of story, little hints of "something bigger" that ultimately added up to very little. from the digitron Digimon being babysitters effectively to the Big Bad being something literally millennia away to gulus just kinda going "okay, let's be chill" it felt like there was so much more going on that just went nowhere had GG left all that out, and just had the fun monster of the week format, I probably would have kept up with it. but it was exhausting to be told "something big's gonna happen, just you wait!" and then having to wait until episode 67 for a quick recap that, at the end of the day, didn't amount to anything. having the villain be something so far away really made me feel like "well, why'd we even bother?"
I know! It was frustrating to wait so long, only to get little tidbits like “Black Tailmon is in contact with Hiero’s Dad” or “Gulus knows more than Gammamon about what is going on in the digital world”. I don’t think they even fully gave an explanation for why some digimon adapt to the human world better than others. Yes I know the “human emotion” blurb was given near the end of the series. But, digimon clearly had emotions of their own, so why would emotions affect digimon with no bonded partners? They should have gone all in either on “all digimon are somewhat dependent on human emotion for strength, even if some are parasitic about obtaining it” or “digimon actually don’t have emotions of their own.”
I love Ghost Game, but man do I have similar thoughts. They could have done so much with Gulus and Hokuto and they just…didn’t. I was also hoping for a sixth ranger. Hell, even that time where Ruri was able to sync with Jellymon. So much potential… And great point about brand synergy! A collective approach would help popularity!
I think ghost game would've worked so much better if it had multiple seasons instead of one long run, there's a reason most anime have become more seasonal as time has gone on, while some series like one piece can work weekly, splitting it into multiple smaller seasons has so much more benefits, smaller seasons with gaps means it overall lasts longer, it gives the studio more time to work on episodes and therefor the series will most likely have higher quality art and animation, having gaps between seasons can also help prevent people like me from getting bored in the middle while also building up hype for the next season, I really hope when we eventually get a new digimon anime it goes for a seasonal approach. I did enjoy the 30 or so episodes I watched of ghost game but after falling behind knowing we were probably only halfway through the series I just never ended up even trying to catch up and still haven't finished it, ghost game personally marked the point where I kinda fell out of digimon, I still love the franchise but there's nothing that personally excites or interests me right now, well apart from Karn's videos of course
But how would that work with the "monster of the week" format. Seriously, the horror came from Digimon clashing with humanity due to being literally otherworldly. Yeah yeah, "Digimon doing spooky things with humans"... in this horror anime from Digimon. *Would each season end with a red herring?*
I think you nailed it saying that Ghost game started promising but never lived up to the full promise of what it could do. The random appearance of Canoweissmon during a Ruli focused episode was the first sign that made me worry about the quality of the story. And it sadly went downhill from there. Another issue I ended up having is that Ghost Game didn't sell me how important the connection between human and digimon was, and for all it's flaws I still feel that Adv: 2020 did a fantastic job of building and showing the value of the connection. I *wanted* ghost game to be good, but all ghost game did for me is making me appreciate Adv: 2020 that much more.
Gotta agree. Ghost Game is far from perfect, and the final ep being one, long exposition dump soured a lot of the 66 eps preceding it. And yet, I still adored its weekly episodes, and how it slowly built up a cast of likable, dynamic characters. Still one of my favs for sure :)
As a Pokémon fan, this show made me give digimon a chance again, I had fun in the beginning, being able to theorize with a friend of mine, but little by little we both fell into apathy as the show was clearly going nowhere, we both knew the only thing keeping us hooked was a “mystery box”, and we also knew that by that point, what was inside was probably unsatisfying. When it ended we had a quick discussion, tearing the show apart, laughing at how ridiculous the ending was, than we never spoke of it again, at least I’m now interested in the franchise, and I’m now catching up with all the animes. But to me the time I invested was a waste of time.
Funny cus Pokemon does the episodic way better, and now with Horizons is doing what Digimon has been doing with a continuous narrative. To great success.
@@JayceCH.I’ve been a fan of Pokémon since I was a kid, but I’ve stopped watching the anime years ago, I’m more a fan of the franchise, I will try to watch the new one when I have the time
Ghost game occupies a special place in my heart, because it's the media that my friends were able to share with me to get into Digimon. It opened my eyes to the idea that digimon was its own entity with its own fascinating ideas...but Survive was the one that really went all in and secured my interest. As much as I love Ghost Game, it is hard to deny that it might not have kept its hooks in me if i hadn't recently played survive, which gave me a strong taste for digimon.
I have mixed feelings about Ghost Game. Coming right after Taichi's show, I don't have high expectations, but first 25 episodes were magnificent. Plot was there and that was Gulus. My main problem with GG is how it ended - ridiculously rushed. Arcturusmon and Proximamon's complete abscence was crime, seriously. In the end, nothing was really solved and that makes GG somehow unfinished. So, in the end, GG was better than Tri or Xros wars, but worse than Appmon. Pucchiemon to Meicrackmon Vicious mode will be one of the weridest evolutions in the whole time of Digimon. 🤣
So I really think this is a fascinating discussion to have. Ghost Game was an interesting series to watch unfold at the start and I think that's mostly because with it being horror themed it lent itself to an aspect that Digimon didn't really explore too much in it's other series. That these are MONSTERS, they're CREATURES, and they have aspects of themselves naturally that occur that isn't done when they're just a foe for the week or something. Like one of the Gulus episodes with Oboromon, in any other season that Digimon would JUST be a villain for the Digidestined to face and be done with it. Here? It wasn't under some big boss or anyone else's command other than what IT and its kind do naturally. Which was very fascinating. But that fascination dies down over time when in the back of your mind there's mysteries being planted. Everything with Gulus I genuinely felt was changed or rushed. He had SUCH a strong start, and like you mentioned the threat of him showing up was massive. The looming threat of Proximamon since we knew what THAT was was so enticing. The whole time I could only think "If this is a DNA Digivolution of Gulus and Gammamon, how does that work when there's only one of them?" Then they split and I got excited, THIS was the moment! This was what was being built to! They're separated! They're two different Digimon now and CAN fuse...but then Gulus just stayed Regulusmon and fought Siriusmon and then we made it to Quantumon and her "friends" that...that's a whole other can of worms. But it just felt like there was more, but they dragged their feet with the "episodic" stuff and never fleshed out the meat that was there. That's just me though. This comment's WAY long but it is something I've discussed with a friend of mine. Wonderful video Karn, hope you and yours have a safe and Happy Halloween.
I absolutely loved the serial nature and the slow burn build...and sorta hated how it completely fumbled the bag in the last section. It explored a lot of digimon lore that was underapproached or not thematically appropriate elsewhere, and i loved Hiro and Gammamon so much.
Eh, they could do a movie at some point. The big bad that Gulus warned about shows up way too early, and Arcturusmon debuts. Ultimately, Hiro would probably DNA Digivolve Arcturusmon and Siriusmon to get Proximamon to put down the big bad once and for all.
The finale of this show coming out on my Birthday was a mood. I really loved the show but even I felt the formula has run it's course and was a slog by the 50s. That final episode was the perfect representation of the franchise. 13 minutes of some of the best animation and choreography of the franchise and 10 mins of the lamest and confusing plot put on paper.
It was a really simple plot. Gulus appeared, was an infectious threat to the Digital World, Quantumon evacuated the place, and random Digimon refugees caused horror from being literally otherworldly.
I completely agree with everything you said. I like to compare Digimon Ghost Game with Digimon Frontier. But whereas I hated Frontier AT FIRST and the GREW to love it more and more as the series went on, with Ghost Game, it was the opposite. I thought it was awesome for those first 20 something episodes but my enthusiasm gradually petered out. Also, THANK YOU for explaining what episodic ACTUALLY MEANS! There are a ton of television shows that I love that are episodic. In fact, my sister and I are currently re-watching Adventure Time. Adventure Time actually has somewhat self-contained episodes that anyone just getting into it can enjoy it, but it also has an overarching narrative! We learn of Ice King’s and Marceline’s back stories for example, how the Lich came to be, etc. It has an overarching narrative AND it is an episodic show. Great video! I agree with everything that you said. And the reason that I stopped liking Ghost Game are for the same reasons you gave.
The dark themes that I thought would grow never did, and most of the episodes didn't develop into stronger elements that connected. I mean Phelesmon I thought was going to come back, but didn't. And honestly wanted their to be a risk at all times. But every issue that occurred were fixed super easily.
If I remember correctly the person whose responsible for the action scene for the show was overworked by the end of the show. That may or may not be the reason why it was sort of rushed
So what I'm getting from this is Ghost Game would have been good had it been more like How I Met Your Mother. Then it would have been LegendWAIT FOR IT...
For me ghost game actually made me angry, when watching I was mainly just sticking around to see Proximamon at the end but when it just ended all I felt and even said out loud was “THATS IT!”
I literally just stopped trying to watch episodes, because the horror aspect doesn't hit , when it resets every episode. Doesn't help when I played Survive and saw how traumatized the digidestined got there and how characters changed due to the horror that happened in the series.
Talking about anime and how it makes a franchise is so accurate. Lately, the thing killing series for me is accessibility. Both digimon 2020 and ghost game took way too long to be dubbed and still nearly impossible to stream with legitimate methods. Now i dont want to watch neither. The vital bracelet de-branding basically killed it as a toy.
Your thoughts mirror mine. I was so disappointed by Ghost Game even though there is so much I enjoy about it. I still haven't finished it despite watching over 40 episodes. Way too much.
I liked Ghost Game a lot. All the kids and partners were great and I really enjoyed tuning in each week and see what horror theme they would use. Do I with the ending was better? Yes. Do I wish it had more plot? Yes. But that's just not the type of show it wanted to be. After 2020 it was just nice to have something decent to watch.
I dunno about Barnie, but Niel Patrick Harris's partner is Agumon Expert due to his breakthrough as Doogie Houser M.D. Then Gawappamon due to his joke roles. Then Blossomon and Bloom Lordmon as his coming out and seriousness of his career.
My biggest gripe about Ghost Game was how much mystery Kiyoshirou had surrounding him that just never went anywhere despite the series making direct note of it at many points.
This show started off fine and then got so much better midway through. But then it all came crashing down right at the end. Why introduce all of that new stuff and then just end it like that!? I was so mad at how this ended.
Happy Sunday Karn EX! I too feel the same way about Ghost Game. I love the characters and designs and the horror aspect of the series. I just wished it had more character development and a better storyline.
My problem with ghost game was a simple one. The show was fun, and was bringing stuff that other shows like it never had the balls to bring up. But it kept picking up plot points, and sticking them to the wall, but never going anywhere with them until the very end, and even then, there were points that still havent been touched even after the show ended. One that bugged me a lot was lilithmon, she left in way that seemed as if she was interested in the "darkness" in gammamon, kinda impling that she would come back... But she never did.
@@Maswartz226yep. Every time a Digimon is seen or product is made and was created by a fan, Toei- Bandai would have to pay up. I mean, look how the comic book industry has changed on royalties. They have in contracts now “if you create a new character, we own it 100%”.
@@usdutchkitty Not exactly. Japan has a whole entire different legal system when it comes down to that. A whole lot of franchises, including Digimon do content like this where fanart is either exhibited, acquired or adapted. The contests more or less go about by acquiring the thing or making participants understand that in the end they are "donating" the designs even if they don't take the first prize. Just about the entirety of the roster of characters in Classic Megaman is like that except for Megaman 1. There are over 30 digimon, including fan favorites like Angemon, Birdramon, Kabuterimon and Cyberdramon, that were developed from contest fanart. Even Pokémon, even though they never use fandesigns, had a bit of a snafu recently by using a fanmade theme/remix and not getting into trouble because it was technically done on something owned by them. "Fan content" in Japan is wildly different legally, and paying up for a fandesign could be as cheap as giving the winner a Vital Bracelet or something.
@@jpcsdutra it depends on the contracts. I mean, KarnEx has talked about how fan made Digimon have never really been seen in media like anime or games so there has to be a legal issue there.
So I was hoping that gulis was gonna be a sort of anime origin for Black-Digimon as they kept appearing after it’s appearances. And with our first look with BlackWargreymon, the more violent demeanour fit well. But I fell flat on that. But I do think know we know about an impending disaster approaching, Ghost Game can definitely have a season 2 to improve on what it lack with this season, gives us a better look on what the protags do with the time and maybe new foes trying to speed up that 2,000 year gap!
I think the length was fine I just wish rather than in the last 3 episodes, Gulus and plot starts to matter with last 20. Also so many digimon peaced out at the end of their episode never to be seen again, even just having them in the background of a shot would be enough.
The series to me, just lacked an overarching villain, they should done something like all the black type digimon working for a main villain, which turns out to be gulusgammamon in the end.
this series its feels its not over yet there are alot still more mystery secret plot about it this story about gammamon he's secret final digi-evolution and what gulusgammamon talking about mysteries endbringer that destroy he's world and what lilithmon create a her army what is her goal is and what will hiro gonna do zeedmillenniummon
Despite the issues the series has, this has still been the most fun I've had with a season of the series since Tamers. Ghost Game absolutely shot up to my number one, I just loved the characters, tone, music, and visuals, just so much that I really did like it once I realized this was going to be a mon of the week show
Personally I feel like Ghost Game did a well enough job at its goal, being an episodic spooky adventure of the week for kids. The characters are fun and likable (despite not learning much of their personal lives) and the animation is phenomenal when it wants to be. However its biggest flaw is that it clearly wants to tell a deeper story and teases the viewer, yet it remains on the same formula. Again, I don't mind the show being strictly episodic, but I think having the last ten or so episodes telling a full narrative (preferably in the digital world) would have been much better than a 10 minute info dump.
I was NOT a fan of how GulusGammamon was justifying his power by killing off a bunch of Digimon like they were nothing. Oh, this Digimon of a higher level and such is killed SO EASILY by GulusGammamon. It damages my suspension of disbelief because it feels like I'm forced to see these older and strong Digimon be subjected to the Worf Effect. Then again, V-Tamers did the same thing, but at least it had an in-universe explanation for why, explaining the power of UlForce, which ties to how Veedramon is a Digimon known from the Ancient Digital World, which to this day is shrouded in mystery. I can't say the same thing with GulusGammamon and feels like his power is made strong for the sake of plot. I even hate how they just write in that Regulusmon is as strong as Megidramon, which I think is total BS. It just feels like this evolution line exists just to force it to be as strong as old fan favorites.
With everything going on, I drew up an original Digivice while Ghost Game was still running (you can check that over on Deviant Art), and I am working out what a Digimon series that could work with it could look like (I'm just working on the characters for the series at the moment, with a nice of Digimon from various parts of the franchise for partners and a few OC Digimon I'm thinking up for the story). Once I get the characters better worked out, I'll probably get to work writing up a summary, and maybe have it show up on a fanfiction story site. Regarding Digimon partners, I think I've got a nice blend to keep things interesting, with a few twists to keep things from getting too predictable when the story does eventually happen.
Another example of books not growing in the modern era without other media the witcher a series of books that while popular in Poland the country of origin it had a niche audience elsewhere until the games especially the Witcher 3 and the Netflix series.
I can see all the criticism, still have not the whole of ghostgame, just because it didn't really catch me from the first few episodes and i dont believe i will ever finish it. I would actually love to see a "Multiverse" Series. Digimon always hat a Multiverse and i always liked that concept in the show and games and since everybody is doing that nowadays anyway, audiences would be used to ist. I imagine a mix of different characters from the different shows and games and expanded media coming toghether and mixing different evolution methods. Davis not having Ken, so ExVeemon is Xrossing with Shoutmon in a mix of X and DNA. Or Takuya combining his Spirit with an Armor Egg, since both are stored digital in devices. Maybe Takato is split from Guilmon and uses a Spirit from one of the Frontiers Kid to become a digimon himself instead of "just" a part of one. You Could also make Ryo the main guy or a main guy, since he has the most experience with Universe-Hopping, maybe continue his story after Tamers, or even make Manga Tai the main protagonist, since he had contact with alterate Universes before. Sorry if i dont use all the correct words for certain Digivolution types and such...
@@Karn_EX the reboot was a mediocre attempt to recreate the original series, Ghost Game was a new and different series that had horror elements a lot, something that makes unique amongst the Digimon series.
22:59 Maann Gegege no Kitaru also hit a breaking point for me halfway through it's run when the big Story Arc villain turned out to be a sad dumpster fetus who just needed a damn hug....it was really unsatisfying...😅😅😅
Honestly I think at least to me the biggest issue was all the filler content. Sure there were certainly some great movements, but the actual plot related stuff seemed so scattered about throughout the whole season. There were also a good number of episodes where it just kinda felt like they were reusing the same plot lines. It was fine watching weekly but I dont think I would ever go back and binge the whole thing. Not to mention the let down towards the end when the plot was finally front and center only miss the mark with all the last minute stuff introduced to the series. Honestly it was okay but definitely not my favorite digimon series by any means. It really did have a lot of potential though.
I jump in and out of the frnachise every few years, and I remember hearing about ghost game at launch, gulusgammamon being something different from the usual chaos evolution, something about meko-something-mon going down the path of "I honestly believe that death and destruction will help my friends and make them happy"rather than just being evil. the big thing is that, just existing near anime and mangas, you get glimpse of the various storylines, but nothing when it came to this. making it episodic really castrated it's potencial
I did watch ghost game all the way through and my thoughts on it are like this. What it did good, it did very good, like the Gulusgammamon scenes and the designs for the characters, the epic evolutions all live in my head rent free. But it's lows were honestly not as bad as Xros wars lows, but were still not really remarkable. It had a lot of potential and interesting story beats, but as we all know didn't exactly pan out the way we hoped. I personally would like to see, or work on a good rewrite that feels similar to ghost game but gives a full story. There's just a lot of ghost game that could've been done better, but that could also be said for a lot of shows.
While taking MASSIVE breaks, I've finished Ghost Game yesterday. I would've also loved to see Regulusmon digivolve. And a DNA-Digivolution of Siriusmon and that Black/Dark Siriusmon would've been badass. And BloomLordmon's Grand Del Sol attack was badass!
I feel like the Ghost Game gang were too forgiving for the most part. There should've been another moment where letting the enemy go was the wrong call. I feel like the people who had a problem with Steven Universe would have a field day with the Ghost Game gang. I kinda want to see the Adventure 2020 kids get sent into the Ghost Game universe and start causing trouble.
22:41 It's actually worse than that, Gegege no Kitaro 2018 aired alongside the 2018 anime Yo-Kai Watch Shadowside, which not only didn't try to hide the Kitaro influence but straight up had Kitaro (albeit not the 2018 version who hadn't debuted yet as the movie came out in December 2017) appear in the movie that served as the pilot for Yo-Kai Watch Shadowside, alongside some of the yokai from the Kiaro franchise. (also confusingly the movie had a modern design for Kitaro but he had silver hair, which the anime adaptations haven't had him have since the 1960s (while the anime was in black and white, I found a colorized version on a magazine cover, his outfit hasn't changed much over the years) when he looked more like a gremlin. Also one of the yokai from the kitaro franchise was the historical yokai Ittan-Momen which Yo-Kai Watch made a modern version of, Ittan-Gomen but there is not a Classic Yo-Kai version of Ittan-Momen, in spite of the Kiaro version appearing in the mobile game Youkai Watch Puni Puni (but not Yo-Kai Watch Wibble Wobble as it was shut down before the dub of the third season of the first anime) and Yo-kai Sangokushi: Kunitori Wars (a Yo-Kai Watch version of Koei's (and now Koei Techmo's ) Romance of the Three Kingdoms series))
Just make seekers an anime Make a cyber slueth anime that combines the two games Or make a sequel to ghost game that follows up on the plot heck at this point id take an anime about the card game Cause the mega level song makuake & its debut in Siriusmon VS kuzuhamon was the biggest thing i remember
I personally enjoyed Ghost Game start to finish, mainly because Gulus and his storyline was the least interesting part about the series to me. The character interactions, the slowly building up digimon society in the human world, the series willing to stretch the standards of human/digimon relations, the episode by episode body horror and mysteries, those were what I enjoyed the most. As for the finale of the show, I feel like the show mislead the audience too much. The series finale was never about saving the digital world, defeating a great enemy, or solving a mystery. It was about two brothers, a human and a digimon, coming together and getting along. Which is very much on brand for a series with so many episodes being solved through talking, but the misdirection was way too extreme.
This show deserved better than what ended up being. I love the characters in this show, they had such a fun dynamic between the three of them. And yeah, it really felt like a whole season of “how would you make this better, viewer?”
I believe the biggest gripe I have, is that the show didn't tie up it's loose ends in a satisfactory way. I was like "OH ... umm that's it?" It was really disappointing, to say the least.
I hated how at some points the show not only baited you with a narrative but straight up lied to your face with really important stuff. The Lilithmon shown in the season was no random lilithmon but one of the seven great demon lords according her ghost game profile, she even said to gulus through gammamon "we'll meet again", to then never appear again, and let's not even talk about hiro keeping moon millenniumon in his pocket forever.
While you do have made good points, I find Digimon Ghost Game disappointing. The first 15 episodes were fine and I'm okay with the episodic start... but... I felt let down on how it went down. BlackAgumon, BlackGargomon and BlackGrowlmon were the most biggest negative option I've had... I was so curious about them and what they'll do... and maybe we'll get the return of BlackWarGreymon and debut of two new dark Mega Digimon... and one year, two months later after BlackAgumon debut... we were given a reason... almost if it was a hand wave... and it was pointless... it was so infuriating and disappointing. And I felt like the main characters never had character development. They were the same at the start and never 'evolved' towards the end like most early Digimon anime does. And you can't help, but feel like Hiro is an uncaring jerk because he knows where his dad is... but, never actually bothered to figure out how to go to the Digital World... and the reunion isn't exactly emotional too... And the Canoweissmon debut episode... wasn't all about Ruli and Angoramon? Why did Hiro and Gammamon stole the spotlight for? And the finale... last three episodes were just rushed garbage... with the info dump leaving more questions than answers... and the final battle... what's the point of giving Jellymon and Angoramon Mega if they are forced to sit on the sidelines as Gammamon does all the work? Adventure 2020 final battle, in my opinion, because EVERY main character was doing something than sit on the sidelines... There's so much things that I found wrong about Ghost Game and pretty much hate that I might as well make it an essay. Ghost Game does have good parts, but it's mostly overshadowed by the letdowns... that is my opinion and I'm sticking with it...
Honestly, I can't disagree with much of what you brought up. My friends and I did a weekly recap podcast for Ghost Game (and 2020 prior), and by the end, we were so burnt out and a bit disappointed. It could've been so much better but dangling/abandoned plot threads and odd pacing kept it from truly shining.
Sorry Karn_EX, 20 eps only really tend to work for Slice of Life style anime. The only reason the original Digimon Adventure got as far as it did was because people wanted to see new evolutions and character development (which wouldn’t be a thing if Toei ended the season at Devimon or Etemon’s demise). As for Ghost Game, I think it’s best to think of it as a prelude to a potential “Tamer’s Union” type season. We Know GulusGammamon was running from some world ending entity that destroyed his home world (that was in the same dimension as Earth) then slipped into the Digital World to escape it. This season implies the Digital World’s multiverse is starting to expand into the real multiverse (possibly like an invading parasite trying to overtake its new host). Maybe this world destroyer is trying to keep the two multiverses from interacting with each other.
Overall I did enjoy Ghost Game, but I feel like it's over arching story had no middle. Which is very odd, it just had lots of teasers. The episodes themselves were great, but I felt like I was left waiting for more bits of information.
The split Digivolution concept for Gammamon, with him having 3 different Champions (and Gulus) fit for different situations, and that concept not mattering anymore when he reached Ultimate was one of the biggest disappointments of this season for me. I liked GG overall, but there were certainly a lot they could have done better.
There was a time, around March 2022, where I actually considered Ghost Game superior to even the original Digimon Adventure. However, as the weeks went on, the plot seemingly going nowhere started to bring down my opinion of the show overall, something the final few episodes did not help with one bit.
Yeah not finishing plot points and having horrible payoffs for the ones they did is what killed the show for me. It would've been fine if they did like even 2 or 3 episodes to flush out a plot point and then move on, basically mini arcs, but it would at least give needed info that would've come together in the end for a better payoff. As the show is its got great characters and I adore the new digimon and anime debuts of older digimon we got. But because the narrative, or lack thereof, was so horribly put together even for a supposedly episodic show, I completely fell off after Gulusgammamon's 2nd appearance and only watched episodes Digiknow gave good reviews. It's nice to hear there will be an English dub for those who enjoyed the show, but I've got no real interest in it. I still haven't seen the dub of 2020 yet because I don't have the software to run the purchasable versions, and so far non of the free sites I use have the entire show yet. They really should've done physical media releases of that show.
Ghost game lost me due to giving me too much tonal whiplash. We would get a few episodes that were darker that I would adore then the next few episodes it was “yeah this nun digimon just wanted to race a bunch of us”. I wish they would have leaned full into the darker horror aspect or just scooby doo it was actually old man Jenkins the whole time. I could have enjoyed either but the constant switching drove me nuts.
You hit the nail on the head here. I wanted to love Ghost Game but it was just lacking. Any elements they built up were just deflated by the end. Maybe there were plan's for a better story but elements were changed due to the hack and it stuffed like 2020 did
Ghost game, while had many neat ideas for the main cast, didn't really do much only because of the monster of the week format not really tying into the over arching main plot. One part I LOVE about this season though is that past monster of the week enemies revisited as friends and helped solve a new problem or few. It was awesome. Definitely think a lack of toys for the series is a huge chunk why it didn't do well sales wise. I don't think I saw a single digivalution figure for any of the digimon from the show. which is a shame cause they have the material to work with it
"It was episodic..." Yeah, so was Secret Saturdays, so was Ben 10, so was Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated, all shows that could have been a nice blue print for Ghost Game. The episodes could be watched seperately (until the few final episodes) but they often feature those small details that hinted at a larger plot afoot (just like Ghost Game) and especially Secret Saturdays and Scooby Doo: MI, worked towards a satisfying finale. If you want to go pure episodic: Martin Mystery would have been a fine blue print for that but (and I say this as a fan of MM) you can't do it for 60 episodes. The thing that killed MM, was lack of ideas in the third season but also the feeling it all didn't matter all that much as there was no real overarching story.
8:23 there is one thing that I think was definitely abandoned and it was whatever the hell was going on with Kiyoshiro’s arm. There were hints that some sort of resolution for his fear of his arm being exposed was coming but then they just didn’t go anywhere with it.
I kinda felt the same way i enjoyed watching most episodes themselves but once they were over that was it, no hype for the next week or anything just a "Well this weeks episode is over, let's see what else is out" I think there were only a few episodes that really left an impact after the ending was over.
I think someone else stated that this was more of an anthology series instead of an episodic series where each episode is basically it's own mystery, and when you approach the show like that it's pretty fun for the most part. I enjoyed seeing what each episode brought each week, but I'd say on average 40% of the episodes were good and 20% were great leaving 40% that were just meh or downright bad. I also think it was pretty obvious that the budget for the episodes determined the quality as you could tell which episodes they were more passionate about making and which ones they were they were just making to fill time. I think the overarching story definitely hampered the quality of the show too as all the teasing that something big was going to happen only for it to be a lackluster payoff just soured a lot of people to what was a pretty decent monster of the week show. I also do think the series left things hanging for a lot of the Digimon of the week and that was frustrating. If they were to make a sequel series, which I think the show left a decent opening for, I'd like them to wrap up some of these Digimon of the week stories instead of leaving them hanging. Though I'd definitely like them to actually focus on a long form story instead of appealing to the "TicTok" generation because while I enjoyed a lot of the episodes the lack of character development for the main cast and knowing things would be resolved by the end of the episode made watching some of the episodes a chore. Thankfully in hindsight if I want to come back to this show I can watch the good episodes instead of the bad ones which will make the experience a little less frustrating than hoping each weekly episode is good. As for the next series I just want them to go back to long form story telling with some monster of the week episodes sprinkled in. I think Ghost Game was a fun experimental show, but they need to go back to what actually works for this series.
Oooh 9:09 my arcturusmon and Siriusmon fanart about what if regulusmon evolved at that moment 😊😂
Oh SHIT I'm so sorry! I thought that was a shot of Regulusmon and Siriusmon from the episode, my eyes betrayed me. Let me pin and credit you in the description, I'm so sorry! If I can do anything else let me know!
I think UA-cam decided to delete your other reply for some reason, I appreciate you being okay with it! I try my absolute best to make sure stuff like this doesn't happen, I hope you can take solace that your art is so fantastic I thought it was from the actual episode! Huge apologies again!
@@Karn_EX thank you I try my best to be good artist ^^, thank you so much I loved seeing my fan art in your video :3, no need to apologize
@@Karn_EX What's the EX in your name for? Exveemon?
Believe in the Gospel of Jesus, Repent~!
@@gekkArt04 No, you ARE a good artist! Stay up!
100% agree my friend, Ghost Game started so strong and creepy but it never went above Stage 1 (Monster of the Week), painful because Digimon tends to be at it's best once it abandons that chapter.
No it doesn’t. Once it gets serialized it tends to just drag out. By contrast, we got a variety of different plots
@@pn2294
Personally, I like that is justified the "monster of the week" format for the *horror* anime. Seriously, the random Digimon they faced were *random Digimon* that caused trouble not as part of the main villain's plan but simply due to being alien.
@pn2294 Define Variety ?
As Karn put it out. Its basically this digimon has an horror plot and the gang solve it at the end.
Nothing in the series is affected with the digimon being around or impacted. They don't get awareness for this.
In other series, if digimon were doing what they did, you would see some kind of human response or normal people learning about digimon. At the least our main characters would get save, but no the series went back to status quo despite saying it had a narrative.
@@Chalicodragon The gang are gradually integrating Digimon into the real world.
By the midpoint of the series, Digimon have their own businesses and civilizations within the human world.
By the end, there are even unofficial Tamers in their series.
It’s like Digimon Survive’s ending in that regard.
@pn2294 You mean the ending where Hiro talks to the United Nations and everyone just accepts digimon despite this series having the most malicious day of the week digimon.
The digimon are most of the time hidden from society , with only a few of them interacting with humans. Literally episodes end with the gang telling digimon to hide themselves.
What unofficial tamers are you talking about ?
One funny thing i want to point out is that, both appmon and ghost game had dedicated Halloween episodes, and they were both the 4th episode
The Japanese death number
Good job even tho i have seen both i didnt make the link
I'm convinced that *something* happened during Ghost Game's hiatus. If you look at the episodes up to that point--while very monster-of-the-week--they are slowly building up to something. Things are changing and progressing. Then the show comes back from that hiatus and all of that momentum stops _immediately_. It's as though they completely scrapped whatever plan was in place for Ghost Game, and then were just spinning their wheels until the end.
Ghost Game had the potential to stand with Adventure and Tamers at the top of the franchise, if not even exceed them. The premise and early episodes were really that strong.
Now? It's 67 episodes of mostly the same thing. There is no real reason to watch a second episode of Ghost Game, because it's the episode you just watched but with a different Digimon. I can rewatch 52 episodes of Adventure any time, and have multiple times. I can't imagine slogging through all of Ghost Game again.
I never actually realised that. I rewatch adventure 1 & 2 once every year or 2 but even 8 months after finishing ghost game, I have no real desire to rewatch it.
You hit the nail on the head! The problem wasn’t with the episodic format, but rather its execution. The formula got tedious and repetitive over time so the series started declining, especially its second half. Granted, its second half is still better than say, Adventure 02’s or Adventure tri.’s, but that’s because their second halves were convoluted messes whereas Ghost Game’s was the exact opposite: a stagnant plateau. Being better than 02 and tri. are low bars to clear, anyway. And it’s obviously better than Young Hunters because YH is this show on steroids: YH has all the same problems but amplified up to 11 because of its far shorter length. I’d still recommend this mediocre entry over other weaker entries like Frontier or 02, but that’s about it.
Yeah, I felt the same. something changed. I'm convinced it was actually going to be even more episodes than just how much we got. Which is why they were going so slow. But at some point they were told to finish it off. And they didn't have enought time, so they finished off their remaining monster of the week scripts and left the last 3 episodes for the finale.
Something happening in the middle of Digimon anime production? This must be the first one!
(Bad sarcasm aside, Toei is infamous for messing up Digimon by being involved and changinf things on the fly)
I think some episodes had to be cut because of the hiatus as Digimon seasons only run for one year before moving onto the next season. Digimon wasn't the only one to suffer this another show of their Precure also had the same issues, it seemed they had some plans for the show but scrapped them and the show was just super slow after that.
I loved the episodic nature of it, and a lot of the story seemed like it'd pay off in interesting ways, so it's a shame the ending stuff felt so rushed. I still really enjoyed Ghost Game despite everything
It made sense. In a dark take on the partner's dark side, Gulus was a viral threat that forced Quantummon to evacuate the Digital World, leading to random Digimon causing problems by just being otherwordly.
Maybe 10 episodes would have been enough but 3 was far to short.
Nice job Karn; not just on your Ghost Game analysis, but for pointing out problematic things in fandoms like
- the misunderstanding/misuse of the term "episodic"
- the fact that something explained (or "has a reason"), doesn't alone justify it as a good idea
- the problems with Digimon's overall lack of brand-synergy.
All things that need more attention!
Let's not forget fans thinking there will be a follow-up season because of the whole Endbringer thing that will never EVER be touched upon due to Toei/Bandai and the director's incompetence with the whole series. Seriously, with the way Ghost Game ended and how it is now, why do people delude themselves that there will be a second season or a sequel movie?
Now I'm just wondering if the new 02 series is bringing back and actually addressing abandoned plot points in the original 02 show.
Crawler. :P
I think the early part of Ghost Game being episodic was fine. Tamers did that because it was spending time introducing characters and developing them. The real plot didn't come to be until about halfway when the tamers went to the Digital World. Ghost Game teased quite a bit in those early episodes so it made the audience speculate what would happen. That in itself isn't a bad thing as long as there's a payoff that links everything together.
Definitely, I think they could have found a way to kinda do both
Tamers actually had no filler nor episodic content tho. Savers kinda did
The problem I have with this logic is that story arcs are just extra long episodes. They’re not actually more important.
The fact that GG didn’t revolve around a main antagonist meant that each episode was actually more important because none of them could actually be skipped
@@pn2294nah it meant that they could all be skipped because there was no importance to them such as a main story arc. They could have taken like 40 episodes out and been done with it. Just boring filler.
I was expecting a Digital World arc, but not in the last three or so episodes. There were also some villainous Digimon they deserved an arc like Piedmon, Dragomon and Millenniumon.
This is interestingly put. I don't strongly agree or disagree with any thing, it's just a whole lot of "yeah, I can see that, I understand that sentiment". In broad general terms, Digimon either really needs a manga or a consistent series of mainline games if it wants to get out there and get the same kind of shonen treatment other series have. The toys are a respectable begining and they don't have to go away, but I remember as a child being really bummed out every time a game came out and it was mid, and every new show had nothing to do with the previous. I'm not saying "no new characters or settings" I'm just saying every seasons removes stakes by being a fresh start. Ghost Game, Seekers and Survive were all massively hurt by being all disconected and having a disjointed approach of going over seas. You spoke of corporate synnergy, but I think it's more than that. To me it's more akin to a sense of "oh, the new thing in that world" instead of "oh, it's the new world of that thing".
Being really specific to Ghost Game now... I don't know how to feel about it. I watched it weekly and to completion. My interest did dwindle, but not in a catastrophic manner. I don't think episode caps and being longer or shorter really affects my enjoyment of the story as long as what is being done justifies its lenght. There are shows that couldn't be saved even if cut in half.
PERSONALLY, I think around episode 25 the show should have "dropped" the weekly mystery and jumped straight into the Digiworld that they were teasing for way too long.
The show teases a LOT of big baddies like Dagomon, Kuzuhamon, Manticoremon, Cthyllamon that could all be doing the exact same things but in the digimon world to smaller weaker digimon. The show also is the one that comes the closest to be able to show all Demon Lords and it could have been a great midshow plot beat still in the "horror theme". That's why I put the dropped in quotations, I think they could have shifted it a bit to other digimon in a different scenario.
The show hurts for not having an extra Tamer, even though it had the opportunity to introduce a Herissmon. After a while I thought they were going to subvert the trope by giving each Tamer a second creature (Espimon, Ryudamon) and at some points we see Tamers giving others to each other's partners. ... But that didn't come through either.
But I think the biggest bummer and the only thing I'd really consider a disappointment is the resultion of the conflict with Gulus. The whole thing of a meteor thing in a distant future is so underwhelming and makes everything seem so unjustified (specially considering in just about every media, time in the digiworld is faster than here, so 2000 years here would be like a billion in there), and it actually makes me think what the heck is going on in japan that this is a trend now (Pokémon SwSh had an alien creature coming from space and a power crisis hitting the Earth in the very distant future. Sonic Frontiers has the same "oh no, there's this huge meteor thing slowly coming over and you sped up it's arrival"), idk, I might be overthinking it, but I kinda see a trend of "not really impending space doom slowly approaching"
In the end I was never really disappointed by Ghost Game, I was just always curious on why it made the decisions it made. ... And speaking of curious, I've always wondered why Hiro had a scar and Kiyo had a bandaged arm (implied to be some sort of soft cosplay) as such prominent design features and they never panned out as a flashback or character motivation or anything.
Apparently there's rumour that Arctusmon and Promixamon were just made as what if evolutions. Basically the anime staff and the BE Teamm just didn't communicate on it. Its kinda implied with thier "theoretical evolution".
I still find it skeptical because the idea that the last Antagonist of Ghost Game was a ultimate still feels narratively off.
This is still one of the weirdest things... like it really feels like they have an OVA in the works where they want to use all these forms as a sort-of Omnimon moment, but it's also weird because they've never REALLY made a series with the intention to book-end it with an OVA before??? So it's just like......... What the crap happened here...???
I'll always love the cast of ghost game but I can't ignore that the series had so much unused potential.
Its just toei/bandai not loving digimon lmao
They definitely dragged things out instead of letting the plot take center stage when it needed to.
Digimon Ghost Game felt like the creators had a strong idea for an overarching, serialized narrative, and chose to wait until the last 3 episodes to tell it. I don't mind the idea of a completely episodic monster of the week series, but the show kept sprinkling in little mysteries and subplots that hinted very strongly that it was going to do what most Digimon series do and eventually move into a more serialized format. Almost feels like a J.J Abrams work where the writers introduced questions that they didn't have answers to, but weren't super concerned about coming up with answers until they were just about out of time
Yeah and maybe ran out of time/budget to fully make it satisfying? idk
@@Karn_EX That is definitely a possibility. My thing is like by Episode 40 out of 67 episodes I would think they would recognize that they should at least try to start addressing the mysteries they set up. Even if they didn't have the budget to make it as spectacular as they wanted with the best animation or the best script writers, you gotta figure that industry professionals would realize that the longer they pushed it off the more difficult it would be to make something even remotely satisfying. Perfection is the enemy of completion as they say
@@Karn_EXnah the so called ending was the most important part of series to begin with
@@pn2294just bugger off you’re only here to argue and say everyone else is wrong so since you’ve got nothing to contribute kindly go away
@@ML1399TheyStoleMyName
Right, "being episodic is no excuse." Seriously, how many horror themed shows aren't episodic? Feel like there is a reason the genre had so many anthology shows.
Karn: "Stop arguing its supposed to be episodic."
Frankly did not address the genre.
I'm glad you brought up Gegege no Kitaro because something I haven't heard said a whole lot in western discussion of GG is that the premise is essentially "Japanese ghost stories but instead of Yokai and ghosts it's digimon" and that that premise constructs those episodic weekly releases. For me GG became a bit bitter sweet and disappointing because I feel not only did they take their sweet time with the Gulus plot only to see it cut off early without Arcturusmon or Proximamon I felt almost I had waited for nothing. On reflection though I find myself revisiting episodes like the puppet girl, the dark fire digimon, Icy hell and Fujitsumon episodes because they're genuinely good ghost stories featuring digimon. I hope ghost games dub hits well with kids which I believe it will looking at the success of shows like Goosebumps and Tales from the Crypt in the 2000s
Love this video, thank you so much for referencing my reviews! It wasn't easy and some weeks there simply wasn't much to say, but I am very proud of my coverage of Ghost Game. As proud as someone can be about reviewing a cartoon ;)
Thank you for fighting the good fight bud!
@@Karn_EXGood fight?
Gulus being an alien, who turned himself into a digimon and Created an alternate persona to hide which ended up usurping the body is such an interesting idea that just goes nowhere. So much interesting character building left on the table without any resolution.
I feel that Myotismon, Lilithmon, and Millenniummon have unfinished plots. These three digimon in particular were full-on antagonists, but were never killed, or truly defeated. I kept expecting for any of the three to reappear again as a major antagonist, but that never happened. Especially during the last few episodes before they went to the Digital World, I actually expected for Hiro to take MoonMillenniummon with him since it kinda lingered on a shot of the apocalyptic digimon
I also thought we would get a mini-arc of sorts with Pharoahmon thanks to some of the build-up with AncientSphinxmon and Mummymon. That being said, I find it funny that GulusGammamon never got a chance to go to his Mega form lol
What about never finishing Phelesmon’s plot thread?
@@leonardofarias8843 Ah right that one too. I kinda forgot about him lol
But none of them had anything to do with the main plot.
@@Bezaliel13so is the show supposed to be episodic or have a main plot? You can’t say one thing and then defend the show by saying something that contradicts your previous claim mate.
Also, they had Dracmon vow revenge on ruli, show up 20 episodes later, and then get unceremoniously deleted by Myotismon. But there's a matadormon that escaped surely we'll finally see an animated version of Granddracmon and...nope. None of the vampires were seen again.
I feel the trio of digidestined worked better with tamers as there were other side digidestined that had partners and I just feel this season was hiro was overused with him having 2 partners
I disagree with Hiro having two partners part. Espimon being Hiro's partner was more like Cutemon being Taiki's digimon.
They had moments and developed thier relationship, but it doesn't go anywhere and you can literally take Espimon out of Ghost game.
A digidestined having two partners and it being serious focus could be interesting, but Ghost Game did nothing with it.
We already know that digimon in Ghost game can connect with their non-partners. Even Espimon's evolution episode feels off since it's so late in the series and it's made into an auxiliary digimon in its own epsiode. Heck, they got Ryduamon to evolve without a partner...why did Espimon need to ?
My problem is the fodder/irrelevant add-ons do nothing of value outside MarineAngemon. Savers handled its add-ons better than Tamers but they also still feel utterly pointless outside the old man. Kinda glad Ghost Game stuck to just Espimon and two fast travel guys (Airdramon and Ginryumon, and I feel the latter should've been a bit more relevant)
@TheDiscoGenre Airdramon was relevant ?
I think all of the Ghost game adds on worst though. They didn't really need them. Heck, the characters not having fast travel could have added to the plot and the show could have tried to find ways to get around that.
Though I agree with you overall. I think the only sixth rangers that have worked out well in digimon were the ones that were already there from the beginning of the story and had a role established.
Such as Kairi and Gatomon, Ken and Wormmon, Impmon, Kouichi, Ikuto and Falcomon, Miuyki and Renamon, and Haru and Gabumon.
@@Chalicodragon airdramon was just used as transportation with somewhat pridefull personality thats his entire character
@@lucanigro7316 And that's still more relevant than (Hiro)Kazu, Suzie, or BUY WONDERSWANS Ryo sadly. Being a taxi is more relevant is more relevant than anyone who wasn't the Primary Colors or Impmon.
HAPPY SPOOKY SUNDAY, NOTIFICATION GAAAAAAAAANG! Really hope you enjoy this one and remember it's JUST my opinion, not objective
I have not watched the video yet, but here are my thoughts on it and want to see reactions to them. The ghost game had a good setup, but a failed planning and absolutely terrible ending will edit after watch of your video
Ladydevimon ... you know what I'm referring to.
I loved Ghost Game basically the whole way through. I thought the horror stuff, particularly the body horror, was excellent and I enjoyed the episodic nature of it. The problem I had was with the last 4 or 5 episodes. They felt so rushed and out of nowhere. To me that is way they didn't feel satisfying. Because it was almost like the creative team had no idea the end was coming and had to scramble to tie up all the loose ends.
Pity Karn seemed to have forgotten that it was horror. Seriously, how many horror shows AREN'T episodic?
Personally, I like the dark take on the protagonist's dark side. Having Quantumon evacuate the Digital World in response to Gulus and the horror throughout the series being from random Digimon unrelated to Gulus causing horror just from being literally otherworldly. Far better paranoia fuel than the usual "monster of the week" being a servant of the big bad.
@@Bezaliel13I personally think that Karn is correct in his analysis. He did acknowledge the darkness and body horror, but it's more how the show was paced that got under his skin (and mine). Ghost Game is one of those shows that have 1-3 episodes at the beginning that introduce a possible over-arching plot, then have a bunch of unrelated and self-contained episodes it the middle with a bit of teasing, before suddenly swinging back into said plot in the final 5-7 episodes and wrapping it up. The issue is that Ghost Game wasn't very satisfying with this formula. I'm reminded of Katekyou Hitman Reborn!, myself.
@@conspiracypanda1200
So, is that format typical for horror anime?
Huh, i just thought of something. How would that work? To elaborate, it was a horror anime that averted the "Sorting Algorithm of Evil," so how would it work if they had fewer episodes with their lower Lv partners? I know that might, *might,* sound like i am questioning on Digivolution across a few dozen episodes, but I mean it might not really have been that scary if they grow too quickly. Horror needs helplessness, you know. Not to mention the plot being about Digimon refugees evacuate to avoid a viral infection contained in the Digital World. Be kind of lame to have that awesome premise of endless, random, and unrelated Digimon causing nightmares from being alien and no way of dealing with all of them in sight... merely to have only a few random Digimon of the Week, like the Infernals from Fire Force.
@@Bezaliel13 You definitely have not watched horror anime if you actually think it is episodic by nature.
@@JayceCH.
I *asked* a *_question._*
I don't know if they would be as popular as there were when we were kids but I would love to have tie in figures like we had for adventure and tamers. I loved collecting the figure I saw in the latest episode
Yeah... that pretty much sumarizes how I feel about the whole thing. And it is the same as how I felt about Digimon Hunters back in the day as well. It seems to me they made the exact same mistakes again... aside from the massive episode count. Heck, even my favorite episodes from both were the penultimate episode, where they were finally getting into something before rushing to the finish line in the final one.
I appreciate the subtle sniper shade.
I know I treated Ghost game too harshly really fast since I dropped it on like Episode 3, though I loved the spooky vibe they were going for, I felt really weird about the characterization of the protagonist, my favourite part is the development and emotions of the characters, and when the kid sees again his Father who DISAPPEARED WITHOUT A TRACE, and just reacts casually with “where have you been idiot?” I just felt that they were not going to be able to milk emotion out of the story
I loved the start that Ghost Game had, those first dozen episodes felt pretty solid to set up the series. It just fell flat trying to keep the plot relevant and the payoff was disappointing. Especially when considering we had Proximamon teasing us with it's very existence. Overall I just felt like it needed to cook a bit longer in development.
Also unironically, if you do live action show characters get partners I will eat that shit up. Barney Stinson would 100% get the Lilithmon line and we all know why.
"Apparently there's rumour that Arctusmon and Promixamon were just made as what if evolutions. Basically the anime staff and the BE Teamm just didn't communicate on it. Its kinda implied with thier 'theoretical evolution'."
- Chalicodragon v=QX30f_mkDLQ&lc=UgwXDMSmR4p_carm0sJ4AaABAg
I definitely have similar problems with ghost game tho i definitely did enjoy it. It was the first anime I've watched weekly since I was a kid so I could keep up with the community. Even with the problems ghost game will hold a special place in my heart because this is really the first community online i feel like I fit in
Totally vibe with that, I think just HAVING an airing anime is such a boon to a community
@@Karn_EX absolutely! Can't wait for the next one!
@Karn_EX omg really!? I thought it'd been like this for a month or so , hadn't noticed it before ig lol
But still excitedly wait for all your videos
I liked every single episode up until the last three. Even if formulaic, "Digimon doing spooky stuff" can be drastically different just because each Digimon is different and they even added new gimmicks to Digimon so they gave a new spooky flavor.
My only problem was that some Digimon needed more than 1 episode to actually build up their horror, and almost all plot hooks got either discarded or rushed, which is bad. So I didn't get tired of it, but the ending is bad and I recognise that.
The black digitron digimon worshipping gulus as a dark god would of been such a cool plot point
my main issue with ghost game is what I feel many others have issue with: the promise of something more. it felt like we were getting crumbs of story, little hints of "something bigger" that ultimately added up to very little. from the digitron Digimon being babysitters effectively to the Big Bad being something literally millennia away to gulus just kinda going "okay, let's be chill" it felt like there was so much more going on that just went nowhere
had GG left all that out, and just had the fun monster of the week format, I probably would have kept up with it. but it was exhausting to be told "something big's gonna happen, just you wait!" and then having to wait until episode 67 for a quick recap that, at the end of the day, didn't amount to anything. having the villain be something so far away really made me feel like "well, why'd we even bother?"
I know! It was frustrating to wait so long, only to get little tidbits like “Black Tailmon is in contact with Hiero’s Dad” or “Gulus knows more than Gammamon about what is going on in the digital world”. I don’t think they even fully gave an explanation for why some digimon adapt to the human world better than others. Yes I know the “human emotion” blurb was given near the end of the series. But, digimon clearly had emotions of their own, so why would emotions affect digimon with no bonded partners? They should have gone all in either on “all digimon are somewhat dependent on human emotion for strength, even if some are parasitic about obtaining it” or “digimon actually don’t have emotions of their own.”
I love Ghost Game, but man do I have similar thoughts. They could have done so much with Gulus and Hokuto and they just…didn’t. I was also hoping for a sixth ranger. Hell, even that time where Ruri was able to sync with Jellymon. So much potential… And great point about brand synergy! A collective approach would help popularity!
Glad to hear that! I hoped this video wouldn't alienate people who like Ghost Game so this is good to hear!
We almost got a "6th ranger" in the episode where hiros friend befriended a pucchiemon.
It was a missed opportunity to make her just leave.
I think ghost game would've worked so much better if it had multiple seasons instead of one long run, there's a reason most anime have become more seasonal as time has gone on, while some series like one piece can work weekly, splitting it into multiple smaller seasons has so much more benefits, smaller seasons with gaps means it overall lasts longer, it gives the studio more time to work on episodes and therefor the series will most likely have higher quality art and animation, having gaps between seasons can also help prevent people like me from getting bored in the middle while also building up hype for the next season, I really hope when we eventually get a new digimon anime it goes for a seasonal approach.
I did enjoy the 30 or so episodes I watched of ghost game but after falling behind knowing we were probably only halfway through the series I just never ended up even trying to catch up and still haven't finished it, ghost game personally marked the point where I kinda fell out of digimon, I still love the franchise but there's nothing that personally excites or interests me right now, well apart from Karn's videos of course
But how would that work with the "monster of the week" format. Seriously, the horror came from Digimon clashing with humanity due to being literally otherworldly. Yeah yeah, "Digimon doing spooky things with humans"... in this horror anime from Digimon. *Would each season end with a red herring?*
I think you nailed it saying that Ghost game started promising but never lived up to the full promise of what it could do. The random appearance of Canoweissmon during a Ruli focused episode was the first sign that made me worry about the quality of the story. And it sadly went downhill from there.
Another issue I ended up having is that Ghost Game didn't sell me how important the connection between human and digimon was, and for all it's flaws I still feel that Adv: 2020 did a fantastic job of building and showing the value of the connection.
I *wanted* ghost game to be good, but all ghost game did for me is making me appreciate Adv: 2020 that much more.
Gotta agree. Ghost Game is far from perfect, and the final ep being one, long exposition dump soured a lot of the 66 eps preceding it. And yet, I still adored its weekly episodes, and how it slowly built up a cast of likable, dynamic characters. Still one of my favs for sure :)
As a Pokémon fan, this show made me give digimon a chance again, I had fun in the beginning, being able to theorize with a friend of mine, but little by little we both fell into apathy as the show was clearly going nowhere, we both knew the only thing keeping us hooked was a “mystery box”, and we also knew that by that point, what was inside was probably unsatisfying.
When it ended we had a quick discussion, tearing the show apart, laughing at how ridiculous the ending was, than we never spoke of it again, at least I’m now interested in the franchise, and I’m now catching up with all the animes. But to me the time I invested was a waste of time.
Funny cus Pokemon does the episodic way better, and now with Horizons is doing what Digimon has been doing with a continuous narrative. To great success.
@@JayceCH.I’ve been a fan of Pokémon since I was a kid, but I’ve stopped watching the anime years ago, I’m more a fan of the franchise, I will try to watch the new one when I have the time
Ghost game occupies a special place in my heart, because it's the media that my friends were able to share with me to get into Digimon. It opened my eyes to the idea that digimon was its own entity with its own fascinating ideas...but Survive was the one that really went all in and secured my interest. As much as I love Ghost Game, it is hard to deny that it might not have kept its hooks in me if i hadn't recently played survive, which gave me a strong taste for digimon.
I have mixed feelings about Ghost Game. Coming right after Taichi's show, I don't have high expectations, but first 25 episodes were magnificent.
Plot was there and that was Gulus. My main problem with GG is how it ended - ridiculously rushed. Arcturusmon and Proximamon's complete abscence was crime, seriously.
In the end, nothing was really solved and that makes GG somehow unfinished.
So, in the end, GG was better than Tri or Xros wars, but worse than Appmon.
Pucchiemon to Meicrackmon Vicious mode will be one of the weridest evolutions in the whole time of Digimon. 🤣
So I really think this is a fascinating discussion to have. Ghost Game was an interesting series to watch unfold at the start and I think that's mostly because with it being horror themed it lent itself to an aspect that Digimon didn't really explore too much in it's other series. That these are MONSTERS, they're CREATURES, and they have aspects of themselves naturally that occur that isn't done when they're just a foe for the week or something. Like one of the Gulus episodes with Oboromon, in any other season that Digimon would JUST be a villain for the Digidestined to face and be done with it. Here? It wasn't under some big boss or anyone else's command other than what IT and its kind do naturally. Which was very fascinating. But that fascination dies down over time when in the back of your mind there's mysteries being planted.
Everything with Gulus I genuinely felt was changed or rushed. He had SUCH a strong start, and like you mentioned the threat of him showing up was massive. The looming threat of Proximamon since we knew what THAT was was so enticing. The whole time I could only think "If this is a DNA Digivolution of Gulus and Gammamon, how does that work when there's only one of them?" Then they split and I got excited, THIS was the moment! This was what was being built to! They're separated! They're two different Digimon now and CAN fuse...but then Gulus just stayed Regulusmon and fought Siriusmon and then we made it to Quantumon and her "friends" that...that's a whole other can of worms. But it just felt like there was more, but they dragged their feet with the "episodic" stuff and never fleshed out the meat that was there. That's just me though. This comment's WAY long but it is something I've discussed with a friend of mine. Wonderful video Karn, hope you and yours have a safe and Happy Halloween.
I absolutely loved the serial nature and the slow burn build...and sorta hated how it completely fumbled the bag in the last section. It explored a lot of digimon lore that was underapproached or not thematically appropriate elsewhere, and i loved Hiro and Gammamon so much.
Oh God I forgot about espimon. He's literally my new scrappy-doo
"Slow burn," no, it just didn't build.
I really wished we got to see at least Arcturusmon, although considering how strong Regulusmon was, perhaps it was for the best of our heroes lol
Eh, they could do a movie at some point. The big bad that Gulus warned about shows up way too early, and Arcturusmon debuts. Ultimately, Hiro would probably DNA Digivolve Arcturusmon and Siriusmon to get Proximamon to put down the big bad once and for all.
Damn, there's a dub on the way? I wish the only the way I got news relating to my interests was on my youtube recommends
The finale of this show coming out on my Birthday was a mood. I really loved the show but even I felt the formula has run it's course and was a slog by the 50s. That final episode was the perfect representation of the franchise. 13 minutes of some of the best animation and choreography of the franchise and 10 mins of the lamest and confusing plot put on paper.
Huge agree!
It was a really simple plot.
Gulus appeared, was an infectious threat to the Digital World, Quantumon evacuated the place, and random Digimon refugees caused horror from being literally otherworldly.
I completely agree with everything you said. I like to compare Digimon Ghost Game with Digimon Frontier. But whereas I hated Frontier AT FIRST and the GREW to love it more and more as the series went on, with Ghost Game, it was the opposite. I thought it was awesome for those first 20 something episodes but my enthusiasm gradually petered out.
Also, THANK YOU for explaining what episodic ACTUALLY MEANS! There are a ton of television shows that I love that are episodic. In fact, my sister and I are currently re-watching Adventure Time. Adventure Time actually has somewhat self-contained episodes that anyone just getting into it can enjoy it, but it also has an overarching narrative! We learn of Ice King’s and Marceline’s back stories for example, how the Lich came to be, etc. It has an overarching narrative AND it is an episodic show.
Great video! I agree with everything that you said. And the reason that I stopped liking Ghost Game are for the same reasons you gave.
The dark themes that I thought would grow never did, and most of the episodes didn't develop into stronger elements that connected. I mean Phelesmon I thought was going to come back, but didn't. And honestly wanted their to be a risk at all times. But every issue that occurred were fixed super easily.
If I remember correctly the person whose responsible for the action scene for the show was overworked by the end of the show. That may or may not be the reason why it was sort of rushed
So what I'm getting from this is Ghost Game would have been good had it been more like How I Met Your Mother. Then it would have been LegendWAIT FOR IT...
-DARY!
Finally someone who understands me hahahahaha
For me ghost game actually made me angry, when watching I was mainly just sticking around to see Proximamon at the end but when it just ended all I felt and even said out loud was “THATS IT!”
I literally just stopped trying to watch episodes, because the horror aspect doesn't hit , when it resets every episode. Doesn't help when I played Survive and saw how traumatized the digidestined got there and how characters changed due to the horror that happened in the series.
Talking about anime and how it makes a franchise is so accurate. Lately, the thing killing series for me is accessibility. Both digimon 2020 and ghost game took way too long to be dubbed and still nearly impossible to stream with legitimate methods. Now i dont want to watch neither. The vital bracelet de-branding basically killed it as a toy.
Your thoughts mirror mine. I was so disappointed by Ghost Game even though there is so much I enjoy about it. I still haven't finished it despite watching over 40 episodes. Way too much.
I liked Ghost Game a lot. All the kids and partners were great and I really enjoyed tuning in each week and see what horror theme they would use.
Do I with the ending was better? Yes. Do I wish it had more plot? Yes. But that's just not the type of show it wanted to be.
After 2020 it was just nice to have something decent to watch.
I dunno about Barnie, but Niel Patrick Harris's partner is Agumon Expert due to his breakthrough as Doogie Houser M.D.
Then Gawappamon due to his joke roles.
Then Blossomon and Bloom Lordmon as his coming out and seriousness of his career.
It had potential but was wasted, and they reuse a lot of digimons from Adventure 2020 for some reason.
What do you mean by reuse? All Digimon series reuse Digimon.
@@pn2294 ye but ghost game and 2020 are so much that it fells weird.
My biggest gripe about Ghost Game was how much mystery Kiyoshirou had surrounding him that just never went anywhere despite the series making direct note of it at many points.
This show started off fine and then got so much better midway through. But then it all came crashing down right at the end. Why introduce all of that new stuff and then just end it like that!? I was so mad at how this ended.
Happy Sunday Karn EX!
I too feel the same way about Ghost Game. I love the characters and designs and the horror aspect of the series.
I just wished it had more character development and a better storyline.
My problem with ghost game was a simple one.
The show was fun, and was bringing stuff that other shows like it never had the balls to bring up.
But it kept picking up plot points, and sticking them to the wall, but never going anywhere with them until the very end, and even then, there were points that still havent been touched even after the show ended.
One that bugged me a lot was lilithmon, she left in way that seemed as if she was interested in the "darkness" in gammamon, kinda impling that she would come back... But she never did.
They need a show based on Fanart! Let fans send in their art(custom or commission), winners get their art on the show!
That would be a legal nightmare.
@@Maswartz226yep. Every time a Digimon is seen or product is made and was created by a fan, Toei- Bandai would have to pay up.
I mean, look how the comic book industry has changed on royalties. They have in contracts now “if you create a new character, we own it 100%”.
@@usdutchkitty Not exactly. Japan has a whole entire different legal system when it comes down to that. A whole lot of franchises, including Digimon do content like this where fanart is either exhibited, acquired or adapted. The contests more or less go about by acquiring the thing or making participants understand that in the end they are "donating" the designs even if they don't take the first prize.
Just about the entirety of the roster of characters in Classic Megaman is like that except for Megaman 1. There are over 30 digimon, including fan favorites like Angemon, Birdramon, Kabuterimon and Cyberdramon, that were developed from contest fanart. Even Pokémon, even though they never use fandesigns, had a bit of a snafu recently by using a fanmade theme/remix and not getting into trouble because it was technically done on something owned by them.
"Fan content" in Japan is wildly different legally, and paying up for a fandesign could be as cheap as giving the winner a Vital Bracelet or something.
That would be such a mess
@@jpcsdutra it depends on the contracts. I mean, KarnEx has talked about how fan made Digimon have never really been seen in media like anime or games so there has to be a legal issue there.
So I was hoping that gulis was gonna be a sort of anime origin for Black-Digimon as they kept appearing after it’s appearances. And with our first look with BlackWargreymon, the more violent demeanour fit well. But I fell flat on that.
But I do think know we know about an impending disaster approaching, Ghost Game can definitely have a season 2 to improve on what it lack with this season, gives us a better look on what the protags do with the time and maybe new foes trying to speed up that 2,000 year gap!
This video nails my problem with Ghost Game.
Wow, glad to hear that!
I think the length was fine I just wish rather than in the last 3 episodes, Gulus and plot starts to matter with last 20. Also so many digimon peaced out at the end of their episode never to be seen again, even just having them in the background of a shot would be enough.
The series to me, just lacked an overarching villain, they should done something like all the black type digimon working for a main villain, which turns out to be gulusgammamon in the end.
And I think a digimon partners for sitcoms like HIMYM, big bang theory, and friends will be awesome
this series its feels its not over yet there are alot still more mystery secret plot about it this story about gammamon he's secret final digi-evolution and what gulusgammamon talking about mysteries endbringer that destroy he's world and what lilithmon create a her army what is her goal is and what will hiro gonna do zeedmillenniummon
Despite the issues the series has, this has still been the most fun I've had with a season of the series since Tamers. Ghost Game absolutely shot up to my number one, I just loved the characters, tone, music, and visuals, just so much that I really did like it once I realized this was going to be a mon of the week show
Personally I feel like Ghost Game did a well enough job at its goal, being an episodic spooky adventure of the week for kids. The characters are fun and likable (despite not learning much of their personal lives) and the animation is phenomenal when it wants to be.
However its biggest flaw is that it clearly wants to tell a deeper story and teases the viewer, yet it remains on the same formula. Again, I don't mind the show being strictly episodic, but I think having the last ten or so episodes telling a full narrative (preferably in the digital world) would have been much better than a 10 minute info dump.
I agree, I'd have had no real issues if it was exclusively episodic with no teases to overarching stuff
I was NOT a fan of how GulusGammamon was justifying his power by killing off a bunch of Digimon like they were nothing. Oh, this Digimon of a higher level and such is killed SO EASILY by GulusGammamon. It damages my suspension of disbelief because it feels like I'm forced to see these older and strong Digimon be subjected to the Worf Effect.
Then again, V-Tamers did the same thing, but at least it had an in-universe explanation for why, explaining the power of UlForce, which ties to how Veedramon is a Digimon known from the Ancient Digital World, which to this day is shrouded in mystery. I can't say the same thing with GulusGammamon and feels like his power is made strong for the sake of plot. I even hate how they just write in that Regulusmon is as strong as Megidramon, which I think is total BS.
It just feels like this evolution line exists just to force it to be as strong as old fan favorites.
With everything going on, I drew up an original Digivice while Ghost Game was still running (you can check that over on Deviant Art), and I am working out what a Digimon series that could work with it could look like (I'm just working on the characters for the series at the moment, with a nice of Digimon from various parts of the franchise for partners and a few OC Digimon I'm thinking up for the story). Once I get the characters better worked out, I'll probably get to work writing up a summary, and maybe have it show up on a fanfiction story site. Regarding Digimon partners, I think I've got a nice blend to keep things interesting, with a few twists to keep things from getting too predictable when the story does eventually happen.
Another example of books not growing in the modern era without other media the witcher a series of books that while popular in Poland the country of origin it had a niche audience elsewhere until the games especially the Witcher 3 and the Netflix series.
Barney's partner would be the etamon line for sure. The whole thing works with him.
It could have been the next Digimon Tamers.
I can see all the criticism, still have not the whole of ghostgame, just because it didn't really catch me from the first few episodes and i dont believe i will ever finish it.
I would actually love to see a "Multiverse" Series. Digimon always hat a Multiverse and i always liked that concept in the show and games and since everybody is doing that nowadays anyway, audiences would be used to ist.
I imagine a mix of different characters from the different shows and games and expanded media coming toghether and mixing different evolution methods.
Davis not having Ken, so ExVeemon is Xrossing with Shoutmon in a mix of X and DNA. Or Takuya combining his Spirit with an Armor Egg, since both are stored digital in devices. Maybe Takato is split from Guilmon and uses a Spirit from one of the Frontiers Kid to become a digimon himself instead of "just" a part of one.
You Could also make Ryo the main guy or a main guy, since he has the most experience with Universe-Hopping, maybe continue his story after Tamers, or even make Manga Tai the main protagonist, since he had contact with alterate Universes before.
Sorry if i dont use all the correct words for certain Digivolution types and such...
Ghost Game was definitely better than the 2020 Adventure remake.
Hard disagree
Controversial lmao
@@Karn_EX the reboot was a mediocre attempt to recreate the original series, Ghost Game was a new and different series that had horror elements a lot, something that makes unique amongst the Digimon series.
22:59 Maann Gegege no Kitaru also hit a breaking point for me halfway through it's run when the big Story Arc villain turned out to be a sad dumpster fetus who just needed a damn hug....it was really unsatisfying...😅😅😅
There is one thing I would have liked to see:
the masquerade "Im a hologram" becomes less valid as the human casualties increase.
Honestly I think at least to me the biggest issue was all the filler content. Sure there were certainly some great movements, but the actual plot related stuff seemed so scattered about throughout the whole season. There were also a good number of episodes where it just kinda felt like they were reusing the same plot lines. It was fine watching weekly but I dont think I would ever go back and binge the whole thing. Not to mention the let down towards the end when the plot was finally front and center only miss the mark with all the last minute stuff introduced to the series. Honestly it was okay but definitely not my favorite digimon series by any means. It really did have a lot of potential though.
I jump in and out of the frnachise every few years, and I remember hearing about ghost game at launch, gulusgammamon being something different from the usual chaos evolution, something about meko-something-mon going down the path of "I honestly believe that death and destruction will help my friends and make them happy"rather than just being evil.
the big thing is that, just existing near anime and mangas, you get glimpse of the various storylines, but nothing when it came to this. making it episodic really castrated it's potencial
I did watch ghost game all the way through and my thoughts on it are like this. What it did good, it did very good, like the Gulusgammamon scenes and the designs for the characters, the epic evolutions all live in my head rent free. But it's lows were honestly not as bad as Xros wars lows, but were still not really remarkable.
It had a lot of potential and interesting story beats, but as we all know didn't exactly pan out the way we hoped.
I personally would like to see, or work on a good rewrite that feels similar to ghost game but gives a full story.
There's just a lot of ghost game that could've been done better, but that could also be said for a lot of shows.
While taking MASSIVE breaks, I've finished Ghost Game yesterday. I would've also loved to see Regulusmon digivolve. And a DNA-Digivolution of Siriusmon and that Black/Dark Siriusmon would've been badass.
And BloomLordmon's Grand Del Sol attack was badass!
I feel like there's so much sequel setup, what's up with Lillithmon, the final villain, etc, but we probably won't get that sequel
I feel like the Ghost Game gang were too forgiving for the most part. There should've been another moment where letting the enemy go was the wrong call. I feel like the people who had a problem with Steven Universe would have a field day with the Ghost Game gang.
I kinda want to see the Adventure 2020 kids get sent into the Ghost Game universe and start causing trouble.
2020 Kids just killing every Digimon without a care in the world.
22:41 It's actually worse than that, Gegege no Kitaro 2018 aired alongside the 2018 anime Yo-Kai Watch Shadowside, which not only didn't try to hide the Kitaro influence but straight up had Kitaro (albeit not the 2018 version who hadn't debuted yet as the movie came out in December 2017) appear in the movie that served as the pilot for Yo-Kai Watch Shadowside, alongside some of the yokai from the Kiaro franchise.
(also confusingly the movie had a modern design for Kitaro but he had silver hair, which the anime adaptations haven't had him have since the 1960s (while the anime was in black and white, I found a colorized version on a magazine cover, his outfit hasn't changed much over the years) when he looked more like a gremlin. Also one of the yokai from the kitaro franchise was the historical yokai Ittan-Momen which Yo-Kai Watch made a modern version of, Ittan-Gomen but there is not a Classic Yo-Kai version of Ittan-Momen, in spite of the Kiaro version appearing in the mobile game Youkai Watch Puni Puni (but not Yo-Kai Watch Wibble Wobble as it was shut down before the dub of the third season of the first anime) and Yo-kai Sangokushi: Kunitori Wars (a Yo-Kai Watch version of Koei's (and now Koei Techmo's ) Romance of the Three Kingdoms series))
Just make seekers an anime
Make a cyber slueth anime that combines the two games
Or make a sequel to ghost game that follows up on the plot heck at this point id take an anime about the card game
Cause the mega level song makuake & its debut in Siriusmon VS kuzuhamon was the biggest thing i remember
I personally enjoyed Ghost Game start to finish, mainly because Gulus and his storyline was the least interesting part about the series to me.
The character interactions, the slowly building up digimon society in the human world, the series willing to stretch the standards of human/digimon relations, the episode by episode body horror and mysteries, those were what I enjoyed the most.
As for the finale of the show, I feel like the show mislead the audience too much. The series finale was never about saving the digital world, defeating a great enemy, or solving a mystery. It was about two brothers, a human and a digimon, coming together and getting along. Which is very much on brand for a series with so many episodes being solved through talking, but the misdirection was way too extreme.
This show deserved better than what ended up being. I love the characters in this show, they had such a fun dynamic between the three of them. And yeah, it really felt like a whole season of “how would you make this better, viewer?”
I believe the biggest gripe I have, is that the show didn't tie up it's loose ends in a satisfactory way. I was like "OH ... umm that's it?" It was really disappointing, to say the least.
I hated how at some points the show not only baited you with a narrative but straight up lied to your face with really important stuff.
The Lilithmon shown in the season was no random lilithmon but one of the seven great demon lords according her ghost game profile, she even said to gulus through gammamon "we'll meet again", to then never appear again, and let's not even talk about hiro keeping moon millenniumon in his pocket forever.
While you do have made good points, I find Digimon Ghost Game disappointing. The first 15 episodes were fine and I'm okay with the episodic start... but... I felt let down on how it went down.
BlackAgumon, BlackGargomon and BlackGrowlmon were the most biggest negative option I've had... I was so curious about them and what they'll do... and maybe we'll get the return of BlackWarGreymon and debut of two new dark Mega Digimon... and one year, two months later after BlackAgumon debut... we were given a reason... almost if it was a hand wave... and it was pointless... it was so infuriating and disappointing.
And I felt like the main characters never had character development. They were the same at the start and never 'evolved' towards the end like most early Digimon anime does. And you can't help, but feel like Hiro is an uncaring jerk because he knows where his dad is... but, never actually bothered to figure out how to go to the Digital World... and the reunion isn't exactly emotional too...
And the Canoweissmon debut episode... wasn't all about Ruli and Angoramon? Why did Hiro and Gammamon stole the spotlight for?
And the finale... last three episodes were just rushed garbage... with the info dump leaving more questions than answers... and the final battle... what's the point of giving Jellymon and Angoramon Mega if they are forced to sit on the sidelines as Gammamon does all the work? Adventure 2020 final battle, in my opinion, because EVERY main character was doing something than sit on the sidelines...
There's so much things that I found wrong about Ghost Game and pretty much hate that I might as well make it an essay. Ghost Game does have good parts, but it's mostly overshadowed by the letdowns... that is my opinion and I'm sticking with it...
Honestly, I can't disagree with much of what you brought up. My friends and I did a weekly recap podcast for Ghost Game (and 2020 prior), and by the end, we were so burnt out and a bit disappointed. It could've been so much better but dangling/abandoned plot threads and odd pacing kept it from truly shining.
Sorry Karn_EX, 20 eps only really tend to work for Slice of Life style anime. The only reason the original Digimon Adventure got as far as it did was because people wanted to see new evolutions and character development (which wouldn’t be a thing if Toei ended the season at Devimon or Etemon’s demise).
As for Ghost Game, I think it’s best to think of it as a prelude to a potential “Tamer’s Union” type season. We Know GulusGammamon was running from some world ending entity that destroyed his home world (that was in the same dimension as Earth) then slipped into the Digital World to escape it. This season implies the Digital World’s multiverse is starting to expand into the real multiverse (possibly like an invading parasite trying to overtake its new host). Maybe this world destroyer is trying to keep the two multiverses from interacting with each other.
Overall I did enjoy Ghost Game, but I feel like it's over arching story had no middle. Which is very odd, it just had lots of teasers. The episodes themselves were great, but I felt like I was left waiting for more bits of information.
The split Digivolution concept for Gammamon, with him having 3 different Champions (and Gulus) fit for different situations, and that concept not mattering anymore when he reached Ultimate was one of the biggest disappointments of this season for me. I liked GG overall, but there were certainly a lot they could have done better.
There was a time, around March 2022, where I actually considered Ghost Game superior to even the original Digimon Adventure. However, as the weeks went on, the plot seemingly going nowhere started to bring down my opinion of the show overall, something the final few episodes did not help with one bit.
Yeah not finishing plot points and having horrible payoffs for the ones they did is what killed the show for me. It would've been fine if they did like even 2 or 3 episodes to flush out a plot point and then move on, basically mini arcs, but it would at least give needed info that would've come together in the end for a better payoff.
As the show is its got great characters and I adore the new digimon and anime debuts of older digimon we got. But because the narrative, or lack thereof, was so horribly put together even for a supposedly episodic show, I completely fell off after Gulusgammamon's 2nd appearance and only watched episodes Digiknow gave good reviews.
It's nice to hear there will be an English dub for those who enjoyed the show, but I've got no real interest in it. I still haven't seen the dub of 2020 yet because I don't have the software to run the purchasable versions, and so far non of the free sites I use have the entire show yet.
They really should've done physical media releases of that show.
Ghost game lost me due to giving me too much tonal whiplash. We would get a few episodes that were darker that I would adore then the next few episodes it was “yeah this nun digimon just wanted to race a bunch of us”. I wish they would have leaned full into the darker horror aspect or just scooby doo it was actually old man Jenkins the whole time. I could have enjoyed either but the constant switching drove me nuts.
You hit the nail on the head here.
I wanted to love Ghost Game but it was just lacking.
Any elements they built up were just deflated by the end.
Maybe there were plan's for a better story but elements were changed due to the hack and it stuffed like 2020 did
I would genuinely watch you give partners to casts from popular sitcoms, bring on the Barney partner video haha
Hahaha thanks!
Hahaha this would be super weird but fun!
With the similar reactions to their finales the comparison to How I Met Your Mother was very appropriate.
Haha and weirdly I didn't hate the HIMYM finale
Ghost game, while had many neat ideas for the main cast, didn't really do much only because of the monster of the week format not really tying into the over arching main plot.
One part I LOVE about this season though is that past monster of the week enemies revisited as friends and helped solve a new problem or few. It was awesome.
Definitely think a lack of toys for the series is a huge chunk why it didn't do well sales wise. I don't think I saw a single digivalution figure for any of the digimon from the show. which is a shame cause they have the material to work with it
"It was episodic..." Yeah, so was Secret Saturdays, so was Ben 10, so was Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated, all shows that could have been a nice blue print for Ghost Game. The episodes could be watched seperately (until the few final episodes) but they often feature those small details that hinted at a larger plot afoot (just like Ghost Game) and especially Secret Saturdays and Scooby Doo: MI, worked towards a satisfying finale. If you want to go pure episodic: Martin Mystery would have been a fine blue print for that but (and I say this as a fan of MM) you can't do it for 60 episodes. The thing that killed MM, was lack of ideas in the third season but also the feeling it all didn't matter all that much as there was no real overarching story.
EXACTLY. Ghost Game defenders completely ignore this fact.
Mystery Incorperated was cringeworthy. And no, Jayce 'Defenders' don't ignore this 'fact'... 🙄
8:23 there is one thing that I think was definitely abandoned and it was whatever the hell was going on with Kiyoshiro’s arm. There were hints that some sort of resolution for his fear of his arm being exposed was coming but then they just didn’t go anywhere with it.
No there wasnt. It was his gimmick of being a chuunibyo. Jesus christ, people believe the weirdest things.
GG is odd. I enjoyed every episode in a vacuum, but it didn’t build to anything.
I kinda felt the same way i enjoyed watching most episodes themselves but once they were over that was it, no hype for the next week or anything just a "Well this weeks episode is over, let's see what else is out"
I think there were only a few episodes that really left an impact after the ending was over.
I think someone else stated that this was more of an anthology series instead of an episodic series where each episode is basically it's own mystery, and when you approach the show like that it's pretty fun for the most part. I enjoyed seeing what each episode brought each week, but I'd say on average 40% of the episodes were good and 20% were great leaving 40% that were just meh or downright bad. I also think it was pretty obvious that the budget for the episodes determined the quality as you could tell which episodes they were more passionate about making and which ones they were they were just making to fill time. I think the overarching story definitely hampered the quality of the show too as all the teasing that something big was going to happen only for it to be a lackluster payoff just soured a lot of people to what was a pretty decent monster of the week show.
I also do think the series left things hanging for a lot of the Digimon of the week and that was frustrating. If they were to make a sequel series, which I think the show left a decent opening for, I'd like them to wrap up some of these Digimon of the week stories instead of leaving them hanging. Though I'd definitely like them to actually focus on a long form story instead of appealing to the "TicTok" generation because while I enjoyed a lot of the episodes the lack of character development for the main cast and knowing things would be resolved by the end of the episode made watching some of the episodes a chore. Thankfully in hindsight if I want to come back to this show I can watch the good episodes instead of the bad ones which will make the experience a little less frustrating than hoping each weekly episode is good.
As for the next series I just want them to go back to long form story telling with some monster of the week episodes sprinkled in. I think Ghost Game was a fun experimental show, but they need to go back to what actually works for this series.