Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna

By Shelley Pallis.

More than twenty years after they were transported as children at a summer camp to a Digital World, the so-called DigiDestined are all grown-up. Tai is now a university student, living alone, working hard at school, and working every day, but with his future still undecided. Meanwhile, Matt and others continue to work on Digimon incidents and activities that help people with their partner Digimon. When an unprecedented phenomenon occurs, the DigiDestined discover that when they grow up, their relationship with their partner Digimon will come closer to an end, in Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna.

Oh, I might need to pack a box of tissues for this. It all started so frivolously, when some bright spark at Bandai wondered about the potential of a Tamagotchi fight club, and here we are, multiple serials later, saying goodbye to the gang. Well, a gang – the Digimon franchise is still barrelling along in the form of Digimon Ghost Game on Japanese tellies, but this is liable to be the last time we see the original gang of Tai, Matt et all, unless they show up as cameos in later spin-offs (as, indeed do many other story-arc stars in this film).

“It can be said that a primary characteristic of Digimon Adventure is characters getting older,” producer Yosuke Kinoshita told comicbook.com. “[W]e wanted to thank those who watched and grew up with Digimon since when they were children. We thought characters who ‘grew up’ or reached adulthood would best connect with our fans.”

Last Evolution Kizuna was not the only Toei property to get a 20th anniversary send-off in recent times. At last year’s Scotland Loves Anime, it shared the festival bill with Looking for Magical Doremi, which similarly revisited a franchise two decades old through the eyes of its grown-up fans. In the case of Magical Doremi, it was literally through the fans’ eyes, beginning less as a continuation of the original story than as a celebration of the difference the show had made to three adult women, and turning into a procession of ‘holy-land’ pilgrimages to real-world sites from the series. In the case of Last Evolution Kizuna, the conclusion of this particular iteration of the franchise is very much in-world, a last chance to say goodbye to one specific group of characters and creatures.

“In this film, there are a lot of homages to various scenes and moments from the series as we know it today,” added Kinoshita. “I want fans to watch it with the same excitement as they did with the series 20 years ago. In order to capture that feeling, we watched both the movie and TV series again and again, prompting many discussions with the director and other staff members.”

Inevitably, that gives imparts it with a certain bittersweet turn, one last battle for some old warhorses, and some goodbyes liable to bring a sniffle to even the most hard-hearted Digimon fan. But if you were there at the beginning, there’s no way you can resist being there at the end…

Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna screens in selected UK cinemas on Wednesday 9th March. Book tickets here.