(Lol whoops, sorry 'bout the sperging.)
So I take it Digimon has faced the same fate as The Simpsons?
I don't know if I would compare Digimon to The Simpsons, to be frank, given how extremely different the two series are. Digimon was created to sell toys, Simpsons was created to sell an idea. One was meant for kids, the other for adults. One exploded in popularity over the other as well as leaving a mark on pop culture. One has been consistently on the air since it first appeared, the other had upwards of three-year breaks between seasons because reception turned out to be poor. Meanwhile, one has had
some success outside of its home country, but it's otherwise struggled and consistently was marketed to different demographics over the years in attempt to be fresh.
I say this as someone who loves Digimon, but it needs to take a rest. It
used to take rests. Whether that's helped contribute to each new season being less and less popular, I'm not sure, but at the very least, unlike with The Simpsons, Digimon has
always tried something new with each new season, and new series of games.
Tri was literally created out of nostalgia because
Adventure is the most popular, the biggest moneymaker of the franchise, but what promised to return to dropped plot-lines (well, to bridge the gap and explain why the DigiDestined chose their futures as shown in the
02 epilogue) while having a
new plot and bring maturity in having the original DigiDestined grow up to better relate to the audience,
Tri turned out to be a hot mess that hardly introduced anything new to the franchise. I don't know the general consensus with Japanese fans, but it made a shit-ton of money over there so I
guess it's well-liked. But outside of Japan, it's a mixed-bag. You got people who like it from beginning to end, others who only like
some of it, and others who despise it. There's
many factors that led to this, anywhere from the characters, to the animation, to the story. Meanwhile, the dub choosing to stick as close to the original script as possible also helped cause rifts with dub fans because of how different it felt to the Saban dub (it's honestly kind of awkward).
Tri was also hinted at to have had a troubled production, as it felt like it being a six-part film series was a last-minute thing. Seriously,
Tri should've just been a TV series and that would've been fine even with the same writing, because at least it wouldn't have taken three long years to complete just to end with a big "Hey, so you don't know who I am as Not-Gennai, but remember Demon? And Diaboromon? Hope you enjoyed the mystery of the missing
02 kids we just conveniently forgot about this whole time! Fuck you, give us money ;D!" It was just exhausting, and to announce a new movie or whatever shortly afterward that
still focuses on the
Adventure kids is just another big "fuck you, give us money" slap to the face because
everyone would rather prefer a new
Tamers over
Adventure, if only to just give it a rest and focus on something else for a while. But
Tamers probably wouldn't benefit any better with a
Tri-esque sequel.
Really, Digimon has been treated as well as Sailor Moon and Saint Seiya at this point, and that's where the bulk of the frustration lies. Yes, Digimon was meant to sell toys and merchandise, but the anime tried to hide this with relatable character development, great storytelling that had a beginning and an end (something not even Pokémon has), and a rich,
rich lore that differed between seasons but it's still implied all seasons are connected in some way or another thanks in part to the quantum sea (it's actually a really interesting, cool idea that doesn't get enough attention--
Tri brought it up at long last, but hardly did anything with it). That's why it's such a special franchise to a lot of people, and
Tri missed the mark for a
lot of people.
(And the less said about the shipping, the better, even though Toei were purposefully fanning the flames the whole time.)
Xros Wars was a disappointment, but I hear
Applimon, which was released just a couple of years ago, is actually a pretty good show once you get past the first several episodes--like always. It's Digimon tradition to start out slow.
