Without question, this is the best of the Digimon television specials; a 40 minute episode featuring some of the most surreal and creative visuals the franchise has seen. Set between the first and second seasons, it chronicles an event (obviously inspired by the Y2K Bug scare of the time) that calls the original team back into action. Though Tai and Izzy are the most prominent ones, it's actually pretty neat to get a glimpse of what became of the kids after the adventures in the series. The conflict itself does not disappoint in terms of sheer scale, actually feeling worthy of a cinematic treatment. It begins rather subdued, but escalates appreciably within the running time, as well as with the enemy's growing power level. Because the foe in question, ultimately named Diaboromon, is able to disable and distort technology, he poses a new challenge to the heroes, forcing them to use to greater ingenuity to catch him (and allowing Izzy to flex more of his technical skills). Speaking of which, the fact that all of Diaboromon's attacks are capable of breaking the mega digimons' armor grants him a scary presence. Of course, the action sequences are the critical points, and they are nothing if not interesting. Despite the limited budget, the animators did a good job of crafting a surreal physical representation of the internet that adds kineticism to the fighting. All of this is occasionally shocking and consistently exciting, culminating in possibly the greatest action sequence in the entire franchise. It may be of interest to some fans that there exists a rather successful anime film called "Summer Wars" that was directed by the same person as "Our War Game", evident because it boasts some eerie similarities to this TV special. I recommend it, partially because it affirms that "Our War Game" should have been stretched out into a full length film. In so doing, the writers would have had the opportunity to expand upon the relationships from the first season. Would it not have been so interesting to get more detail on that subplot between Tai and Sora? Regardless, this TV special to this day remains one of the franchise's best achievements, a project that has received some commendation from even the uninitiated.
Review of Digimon Adventure: Our War Game!
