'Kokuhaku' Is Still Not the Breakthrough of 'Digimon Adventure tri.'

The third Digimon Adventure tri. movie, Kokuhaku (“Confession” in English), retains the structure and problems of the first two movies.  The narrative is exposition-heavy, the pace is uneven, the interesting parts remain minimal, and there is more emphasis on drama than action.  It makes me wonder if Digimon Adventure tri. will ever blow me away. 

Look, Digimon Adventure tri. still hasn’t lost the narrative momentum in Kokuhaku.  But by being in its half-way point already, I was hoping that I can finally take something that will convince me that Digimon Adventure tri. is a rewarding follow-up to the original Digimon anime.  By not improving upon the storytelling quality of its predecessors, Kokuhaku is unsatisfactory.

It does have some nice emotional moments, stressing once again the remarkable bond between the DigiDestined and their Digimon partners.  I liked how the narrative handled that aspect.  However, there’s this bothersome imbalance of drama and action.  The drama is well-executed, but I would have loved it if it had been more generous with its action.

It also bugged me a bit that the 02 kids and Digimon are still not around (unless this new Digimon Emperor is still actually Ken, which I doubt).  Seriously, they need to appear sometime in the last three movies or I will be heavily disappointed.

Lastly, I expected that the DigiDestined would finally make their return to the Digital World in this movie.  And I was right, they did.  Unfortunately, it happened when the movie was near its end already.  Still, the thought of them starting off in the Digital World in the next installment is slightly exciting.

Kokuhaku is not necessarily boring.  But I think it’s at this point that I’ve began to notice that this “six-part movie” format is not working as well as I wanted to.  The bad pacing is starting to make the watching experience tedious already.  In fact, I’m starting to consider that it might be better if I wait for every movie to get released first, and then watch them all in one go, so it would be easier to see if they do add up well as a whole.  Because, as of now, three movies in, the sum of its parts is not looking good.