Digimon Adventure S02E27

ExVeemon and Stingmon have DNA digivolved into Paildramon, who begins taking on Okuwamon. The kids rush into Ken’s old base and place the Crest of Kindness in the reactor. This temporarily stops the overload, but it resumes seconds later. Delving further into the base, the DigiDestined find a tree that maintains a portal that links to the Dark Ocean dimension, siphoning power from it. With it about to explode, Paildramon quickly defeats the Control Spire Okuwamon, busts into the base, and destroys the portal.

As their Digimon revert to the Fresh level, Ken obsesses over why their Digimon evolved together (JP) or whether or not he deserves to be the DigiDestined’s friends (dub).

Narrator: Paildramon! XV-mon and Stingmon Jogress Evolve to form this humanoid Dragon Digimon. His special attack is Desperado Blaster.
TK: ExVeemon and Stingmon DNA Digivolved into Paildramon! His Desperado Blaster attack will defeat Okuwamon for sure!

We’ll gloss over how TK knows any of this.

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Like they’ll do in Tamers, the dub has Paildramon’s voice comprised of ExVeemon and Stingmon speaking together, which can make him a little hard to understand at times. In the original, he had both voices, but only used one at a time.

Miyako: Jogress Evolution?
Yolei: How can he possibly win?!

Jeez Yolei, he Digivolved five seconds ago. Give him a minute to get warmed up or something.

Beat Hit continues to play in the original. In the dub, Strange starts to play at the beginning of the fight.

I had to look this one up, actually, because I couldn’t understand what Paildramon was saying. In the dub, he shouts Cable Catcher! when extending the cables from his hands to bind Okuwamon. In the original, it appears this technique doesn’t have a name.

Patamon: If only we could evolve to Perfect like before…
Patamon: Yeah, but does he have to make it look so easy? He’s making us all look like weaklings!

It almost feels like in parts of the season that they’re trying to downplay references to the first Digimon series. I can’t imagine why they’d do that given that this is a sequel, but a lot of references to previous evolutions and ongoing stories gets smashed down in the dub in favor of adding in snarky comments or silly jokes.

It’s a pretty good example of why I consider Zero-Two to be the most heavily censored season. It’s not just the standard violence and whatnot that’s being hidden – it’s the actual tone of the story.

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Daisuke: That’s our Digimon partner!
Davis: We’re working together now, that’s the power of friendship!

There’s a nostalgic humor to be found in how often these “Power of Friendship” moments sneak their way into late 90s/early 2000s anime dubs. Even dub Ken just said, “I guess…” in response like he couldn’t believe Davis said that, either.

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When the kids make a break for the base, the Mysterious Woman orders Okuwamon to go after them. In the original, she knows what they’re planning to do (at least generally) and goes to intercept them. In the dub, she believes they’re fleeing in terror from her (and there’s absolutely nothing about the situation or participants that justifies that weird guess).

The original uses this really jazzy, swing-like music in the battle. It’s weird, but kinda fun.

silence
Ken: There it is! The entrance to the cave!

It’s not so much an entrance as a missing chunk of metal from the side of a ship, and it’s not so much a cave as a destroyed control room, but sure, Ken, let’s go with that.

This image seems to sum up these two characters pretty well, at least in the dub.

There are a lot of silent moments in the original that have extra expository dialogue in the dub. I won’t list them all because it happens a lot in this episode, and it’s mostly the characters just describing what we can already see with our own eyes.

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In the original, the wave of energy the base was giving off is called a “distortion.” In the dub it’s called a “warp,” though exactly where the “warp” leads to is not given.

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Miyako: Yay! It should be fine now, right?
Patamon: I was a little scared because I thought it would explode at any moment.
Takeru: Me too.
Yolei: Alright! Score one for the good guys!
Patamon: That’s all we get? All that work and we only get one point? TK!
TK: You get two.

Original Patamon is pretty childlike still. Dub Patamon is a snark machine. Not a very good one, though.

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When congratulated on stopping the base from exploding, Ken just smiles in the original. In the dub, he still smiles, but gives off a reluctant “Yeah…” from his closed mouth.

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Miyako: No! Wasn’t the Crest of Kindness put back?!
Yolei: Ugh, my hat’s great in the rain, but it doesn’t work on concrete!

Worst helmet ever.

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Iori states that the Crest of Kindness should stopped the reactor from exploding, meaning that the cause of the new explosions is something different, but he stops short of making any guesses. In the dub, Cody directly accuses Ken of hiding something from them, stating that if anyone knows why the base is going to explode, it would have to be him. Then Kari accuses the mysterious woman of being responsible just before she appears on the monitor.

Paildramon’s Esgrima becomes Sting Strike in the dub.

Paildramon: Where are you? Show yourself!
Paildramon: Ollie ollie oxenfree!

Ollie Ollie Oxenfree was a saying kids used back in the pre-Internet days to end a game of hide-and-seek. Even by the time this aired in the US, that was kind of a thing of the past already – most of my contemporaries didn’t know the phrase when we originally watched this as pre-teens.

The Dark Ocean is brought up again, this time tied into that Devimon we met earlier in the season in the whirlpool when Ken was creating Kimeramon. Apparently, there actually is a warp like the dub said! This portal leads to the Dark Ocean world and channels energy from it, which powers the base. The dub actually represents it faithfully, which only further highlights how there was an apparent plan for this plotline that got dropped due to the writers’ room disagreements.

Izzy then states that the warp has “returned to normal,” despite the fact that the portal was blown up by Paildramon. He really does string words together irrespective of their meanings, doesn’t he?

V-Mon’s Fresh level form, Chicomon, becomes Chibomon in the dub.

Ken: Why did our Digimon combine? …why?
Daisuke: What are you talking about? That’s because we’re partners!
Ken: Partners?
Daisuke: Didn’t you feel it? When our Digimon combined, our thoughts and feelings flowed through each of our bodies. Our hearts beating as one… it was an amazing feeling of unity! That’s when I knew we were partners.
Ken: I just don’t feel like I deserve to be friends with any of you… at all.
Davis: That’s a lot of bologna! Look, Ken, you’ve earned our friendship!
Ken: I have?
Davis: Yeah! Sure, you started out all mean and evil, but you decided to change and become one of us! Working hard like that builds the strongest kind of friendship there is. And after all we’ve been through, we’re friends! And I’m absolutely not going to take no for an answer.

To be honest, I’m not sure why this was changed. Usually when the tone shifts like this between the two versions, it’s the dub trying to make things funnier/lighter, since they seemed to be operating under the belief that American children were incredibly fragile. But this change from focusing on the evolution to focusing on whether or not they’re all friends just seems random.

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Daisuke: Wasn’t the feeling of unity enough?
Davis: Hey all of us have made mistakes. Look at Yolei: she makes them all the time!
Yolei (offscreen): Hey!

You kinda deserved that, Yolei.

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Miyako: Well, [Izzy] said there’s something he wants to tell us about Jogress Evolution, and asked us to go to his place tomorrow.
Iori: Tell us what?
Miyako: No idea… I didn’t really ask for details.
Yolei: [Izzy] wants us to meet him tomorrow so he can tell us all about DNA Digivolving.
Davis: Sometimes I wish he weren’t so smart so he wouldn’t have so much to tell us!
Everyone else: DAVIS.
Davis: I’m sorry, but it hurts my brain to hold all that information!

I mean… it technically qualifies as a joke. Even if it’s not funny.

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Pretty big dialogue change here. In the original, Hikari stops walking (causing the rest of the group to stop as well), and they ask whether she or Takeru know anything about Jogress Evolution. This is pretty clearly a reference to Omnimon’s battle in Our War Game. In the dub, Kari just mentions trusting Ken, and Cody doubles down on his disdain for Ken and inability to trust him, which changes the topic entirely. In both cases, Chibomon interrupts (he’s hungry in the original and sleepy in the dub) so the topic doesn’t go any further, but it feels like another example of them trying to downplay continuity in the dub.

It seems that, throughout the dub of this episode, any information regarding Davis’, Ken’s, Veemon’s, and Wormmon’s feelings and synchronicity when they evolved together is censored out of the dub in favor of just general friendship talk or more jokes.

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Trying to sleep, Ken in the original muses how he used to think he and Leafmon were completely alone, leading Leafmon to talk about how great it felt to Jogress Digivolve with XVmon. In the dub, Ken says he was worried he’d lose Leafmon forever when they DNA Digivolved, like the effect was going to be permanent. It’s not an odd thought for Ken to have, but it’s quite different from what he was musing about in the original.

Dub Leafmon then complains that Ken is sleeping on him, when he very clearly is not.

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Koushiro: What does “Jogress” mean? I looked it up, but I couldn’t find any meaning.
Izzy: DNA Digivolution: what is it, and how does it work? I’m now creating a computer program that will explain everything.

Sure you are, Izzy.

The kanji on Izzy’s computer was replaced with a video of ExVeemon and Stingmon DNA Digivolving.

This results in Koushiro explaining the Joint+Progress=Jogress thing, but Izzy says that the “most powerful part” of one Digimon combines with the same from the other, leading one to wonder what happens to the rest of the two Digimon. But I suppose there’s no Law of Conservation of Data.

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Both versions do finally relate Omnimon to DNA Digivolving, but the way it’s presented is different. Koushiro feels like they should have told the new kids sooner than this (why they didn’t isn’t explained), while Izzy fills the additional time by complaining that his new computer program isn’t ready, and that he wanted to show it off and use it to explain the Omnimon stuff. I’m not sure what this computer program actually does, but I’m guessing it doesn’t do any of that.

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Miyako points out that she saw the Omnimon battle take place on the net. In the dub, Yolei doesn’t reference this at all.

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Koushiro: We had defeated Apocalymon, so we though the distortion of the Digital World was gone.
Izzy: We just figured that when we destroyed Apocalymon, the warp was repaired, and that was the end of it.

Did the dubbers think the words “distortion” and “warp” are the same thing?

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Koushiro: In order to fully fix the distortion, we had to release the force that protects the Digital World…
Izzy: [Gennai] had a habit of telling long stories that I’m not sure even he understood…

Izzy, that is literally your entire personality.

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Iori: The force that protects the Digital World?
Hikari: Yeah. We don’t know what it is, but if that force is weakened, the power of darkness in the Digital World increases.
Cody: The powers that protect the Digital World?
Kari: That’s right, Izzy told me this story once! He thinks those powers are the same forces that originally picked us to be the DigiDestined.

Okay, there’s a lot here. First, Kari, you were there when this happened. You’re literally shown in the flashback. Why is this a story that Izzy had to tell you? Second, if you’re just going to say “Izzy thinks this” in the middle of a lecture he’s actually giving, why not let him say it? Third, that last point was true, we’ll find, but it’s an interesting bit of foreshadowing that the original doesn’t do. It’s odd because the dub usually hates foreshadowing things, preferring to put jokes in those spaces instead.

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It’s amazing how much more talking the dub does sometimes, especially with a lot of it not really advancing the plot. During the montage of the kids giving up their Crest powers, Izzy talks through the whole thing with exposition, putting special emphasis on the wave of energy the Crests released, comparing it to a laminated baseball card or a new pack of floppy disks. He also describes the event in a way that’s unnecessary because we’re seeing it as he talks about it. Which I guess makes sense from a meta perspective (he’s describing this to the kids), but it gets monotonous to viewers who can see the flashback with their own eyes. Sometimes less is more.

Additionally, the sequence has much more mystical sound effects in the original, and the music in the background promotes wonder and mystery. The dub uses the standard BGMs with more sci-fi laser-like sound effects instead, but Izzy’s talking so much you wouldn’t hear it on a casual watch anyway.

In both versions, Mr. Izumi points out that giving up their Crest power meant losing the ability to Digivolve past Adult/Champion. But Izzy specifically says it was a “side effect” that they were not prepared for. Of course the original doesn’t do this because A) it would be weird if Gennai didn’t tell them that before they did it, and B) it’s really obvious. You’re giving up your Crest power – you had to at least suspect that you’d lose the ability to hit the Ultimate level even if Gennai didn’t tell you for some reason.

When the flashback shows the Digimon partners losing access to their Perfect/Ultimate forms, the original uses soft music that I think might be derived from some of the songs used in the first series, but I can’t tell for sure. Either way, it was played as a sad moment. In the dub, they start playing Digimon Are The Champions for the sequence. What’s worse is that right after, they then start using the more somber instrumental version of the song they’d been using for those types of scenes for the show’s entire run. It just feels like tone whiplash.

Patamon: But the Crests’ power is in everyone’s hearts, so it’s not lost.
Tailmon: So we still have a chance to evolve again someday.
Patamon: We’re not sad anymore. We know we’ll be able to Digivolve to Ultimate again one day.
Gatomon: Until then, we’ll even use balls of yarn to fight if we have to.

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Takeru: In fact, it’s not like they won’t ever be able to evolve again. We still hope they’ll be able to do it like before someday.
TK: In a way, though, it’s not really a weakness at all! A DNA-digivolved Digimon kinda fights a lot like an Ultimate Digimon!

Takeru’s dialogue displays what Patamon said earlier – the power of their Crests are in their hearts and that power could help them reach Perfect again one day. Takeru keeping hope in his heart is an example of that. But TK seems to imply that all Digimon of a certain level have a particular fighting style or something like that. It doesn’t make sense.

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(Immediately after the previous dialogue)
Iori: I see…
Cody: I never thought of that!

That’s because it’s a dumb idea and you should discard it.

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In the original Koushiro says that Omnimon had ten times the power of their individual components, WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon. It’s interesting as a fan to see this now, because there have been a lot of debates about how much of a jump in power each level is, so getting a number like that, even if it’s approximate, is kind of a cool way to point out just how crazy powerful Omegamon/Omnimon is. The dub doesn’t address that, however.

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Koushiro: This time, though Jogress Evolution… (explanation continues)
Izzy: Ex-CUSE me, but I still haven’t finished my story here!

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Miyako: You mean, since they couldn’t reach Perfect level, they Jogress-Evolved?
Yolei: So can they only DNA Digivolve when there’s a big enough threat?

Yolei’s guess is not only off-topic, but inaccurate. I don’t know why this change occurred.

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Davis: If Gatomon’s willing to fight with a ball of yarn, I am too!

Huh. One of those weird side comments actually paid off. Kudos.

At least in this case, the donuts are actually donuts.

In the original, Koushiro’s mom refers to Tentomon as “Tento-san,” dropping the -mon suffix and replacing it with the standard honorific -san. In the dub, she just calls him “Tento” and TK corrects her saying it’s Tentomon.

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Narrator: Will DNA Digivolving prove powerful enough to defeat Arukenimon and her forces of EVIL?! KEEP WATCHING DIGIMON: DIGITAL MONSTERS TO FIND OUT!

Cool it with the spoilers, Devimon.