It’s pretty normal for me to have at least one series of Digimon on my watchlist at any given time. I already had Digimon Adventure (and subsequent seasons/movies) and the 2020 reboot on my watchlist when my daughter asked to watch Digimon Frontier (she likes that Zoe has blonde hair like her and that she digivolves into a fairy). When my child asks to watch my favorite show, who am I to argue? However, Frontier doesn’t get the love it deserves among most fans. So I’m here to talk up it’s good points.
First off, many of us who grew up watching the first three seasons of Digimon on Fox Kids also watched Power Rangers on that same channel. I don’t know if that or Super Sentai (the Japanese inspiration for Power Rangers) was influential in the development of Frontier, but that’s basically what it was to me: Digimon + Power Rangers. No Digimon partners, but the Digi-Destined became the Digimon and fought first hand. They even had the classic number of kids on the team (five) and later introduced Koichi as the “sixth ranger”. Plus, on the heels of the Tamers bio-merging, kids becoming Digimon and fighting the bad guys themselves wasn’t too much of a stretch.
I’ll admit that at times it became tedious, but this season made it okay for the Digi-Destined to lose some battles. Whether they were running from the evil Legendary Warriors or racing the Royal Knights, this group couldn’t catch a break at times. Obviously they didn’t lose so badly, because they survived, but not every episode needed a surge of friendship and a chorus of “Hey Digimon” to beat the enemy of the episode. Sometimes it was important to stay a step back and regroup… just like in life.
The previous seasons of Digimon had some intricate history at times, but Digimon Frontier had a unique mythology. Almost right from the start we learned of Lucemon and the Celestial Digimon. As the season went on, the mythos deepened. While Digimon Adventure and Digimon Tamers left the stories open for more lore to develop, Digimon Frontier was the first series to be self-contained. Very few (if any) plot points were left unaddressed. Like Digimon Data Squad after it, this is something I really liked. Even as I’ve tried to dream up any sort of fan fiction to write as a continuation or sequel to Frontier, the ending and the world feels complete to me.
Not unlike the previous Digimon series, this one gets dark if you think too hard about it. Koichi almost died. The human children were constantly in hand-to-hand combat with killers. And the final battle was literally against the Digi-World Satan. Devimon, MaloMyotismon, and the D-Reaper were plenty scary at times, but Digimon Frontier was something else. It’s one of those times that I wonder how this series was made for children.
While I do love this series, I’d be amiss if I didn’t address some weak points of the series. First and foremost: The latter part of the series became very much about Takuya and Koji. After the introduction of EmperorGreymon and MagnaGarurumon, the other four children were pretty much obsolete in every battle. In addition to demoting the four children, the first half of the series progressed rather slowly, traveling to each new destination and taking a long while to get to the first major big bad Cherubimon (by that point in Digimon Adventure, I think the Digi-Destined had already defeated Myotismon). Worse than the story moving slowly, I wish the children had better motivation and backstories… Other than Koji and Koichi, the character development of the Digi-Destined could basically be summarized as “I learned to be a friend” and we never learned why half of them even followed Ophanimon’s message… and Takuya literally ended up in the train station because he was bored… Not a sense of adventure or duty… boredom.
All the same, I still enjoy this series. It deserves more credit than fans give it. However, the fact is that the series obviously didn’t perform well… we didn’t get another Digimon series for a few years. While nothing will ever match up to the nostalgia of the original Digi-Destined at summer camp, give Frontier a try while it’s on Hulu. It’s worth watching once for any Digimon fan. At least check out the theme song--A wonderful pump-up song.
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