Silly Children and Their Silly Magic Pets (Hurricane Landing)

Digimon Adventure 02:  Digimon Hurricane Landing!!/Transcendent Evolution!! The Golden Digimentals, Hurricane Lading for short, is a movie directed by Shigeyasu Yamauchi. It tells the story of Wallace and the friend that he lost a long time ago.

Some years ago I decide to watch Digimon again for the first, since it as to long since I watched, I was a child and have little memory of anything, when I watched the first series I expected to suck actually, but for my pleasant surprise, Digimon is actually quite good, propaning a small obsession for the time as well. I also watched with the intent of finding something similar to an Adventure Time element in it, something oddly more mature insert into a children's cartoon and that seems to be the basis for most of these first series of the show !! but no better is an example then this weird little movie.

But before I ramble about it, let’s set some context, Digimon adventures was in concept, a show made to sell toys, and Digimon is a clear offshoot of Pokemon, so how do you create a show based on that ? Well from the look of things the creators just had liberty to do whatever with, and they did, setting some ground rules for it’s inner working, the digimons series works more in a multiverse kind of way, having almost every iteration of it happen in its own separate universe. 

Before Hurricane Landing came War Games, that is the ultimate saturday afternoon movie, having our heroes here deal with a version of the bug of the millennium, the movie is fast paced, fun, funny and overall a nice sit down of a watch. Not much later the second series of Digimon started, having a new character at the lead together with an older version of the previous, and shortly a second movie came out as well.

Hurricane Landing starts showing a young boy, Wallace, and his two digimon pals, Chocomon and Gummymon, playing in a flower field, then some unexplained event happens that result in the disappearance of Chocomon. The opening with the main theme of 02 follows, showing out main characters in their daily lives, much similar to how War Games open, the following scene is a confrontation between Digimons, We have Wallace and Gummymon fighting a hulking monster that he believe is Chocomon, and it’s here that the movie start to feel more odd, we have an action scene, but the soundtrack is accompanied by… someone banging on a xylophone ?! okay that’s odd, the general tone of mood is completely different from War Games, being less exciting and more dramatic or at least it’s trying to be.

The movie is kinda of a road trip, happening in America, we have our main characters follow and eventually help out Wallace in his desperate quest to bring back Chocomon to his senses, ignoring the ridiculous of the premise, we have a way more dramatic and slow story then the previous movie with a experimental soundtrack that doesn’t really fit in, It should not work, but it does, Hurricane Landing is not wonderful but I do find it interesting.

It’s visuals are the strong point of it, being way visually stunning at it’s climax where everyone fights off Chocomon corrupted evolutions at the flower field from the begging of the movie, the fight happen in three stages, the first one where the first evolution happen, and the sky turns darker, follow by the second stage where another evolution happens turning the whole scenery into inverted colors, our heroes digimon are brought back to their previous evolutions, and the third stage where the whole scenery turns into a haze of dark and our heroes and their digimons are turn to their infant forms and all hope is lost, but as always an deus ex-machina happens and Wallace and Daisuke Digimon’s are turned into their golden Digimental forms, in this last stand of hope they launch their attack against Chocomon, for a brief moment they think have won before being shallow in the jaws of Chocomon, the creature laughs with all hope of our heroes lost, when first watching this my jaw dropped I couldn't not believe what I was seeing, it’s incredible ballsy to do something like that !! of course everything's not lost, V-Mon and Gummymon awaken inside of Chocomon and see what is the last of his conscious ask them to kill him, and so they do, changing what as a monster to what would be the real Chocomon, for a brief moment before it fades into specks of light. The movie ends showing Wallace and Gummymon running toward what is seen as a digimon egg, presumably Chocomon egg’s.

Hurricane Landing has grit to it for making somewhat of a dark and depressing story and that would dictate how the rest of 02 would be, reminder that this movie release before the show hitted it’s middle arc where we have Ichijouji redemption arc and Black Wargreymon arc and the rest of the story in general taking up a notch and being way more mature in it’s story. The following series would also follow in the exemple and also have a touch more of maturity into as well.

I can say much about the rest of the series, but the Tri. Movies also have that grit to it as well, to be fair the last movie is just the ending of Hurricane Landing without the cool visuals and the bittersweet ending. Ghost Game, the least series launched, did lack that component, being way more of a usual kids cartoon, which is kinda of a shame, the maturity of the Digimon story telling is what set it apart from being just another kids show.