I've finished Digimon Tamers, I was one of those people who always wrote off Digimon as an overly edgy ripoff of Pokemon; but I've wanted to give it an honest try and most of the places I looked around online suggested starting with either Tamers or Adventures. Between those, I chose Tamers since the screenshots looked better to me. Overall, it was really good! All 3 "main" characters were excellent, and I felt like the other 4 "supporting" characters still got plenty of time / moments to shine. They all had fleshed out arcs (eg: Rika learning to open up to others, or Jeri (whose name I thought was "Gerry" before looking it up lol) overcoming her depression) and changed significantly over the course of the series. My favorite aspect of the show was Guilmon and Takato's relationship, it was really sweet to watch them interact / grow together; and I wish the show allowed them to spend more time together outside fights. Even with the relatively limited time they spend together on-screen, I was genuinely unnerved when Guilmon digivolved into Megidramon; it fighting with actual intent to kill with that extremely threatening design was incredibly jarring coming from it being essentially harmless to that point. It conveyed how beserek Takato had gone incredibly well, and although I was originally planning on going to sleep after watching that episode since I'd already watched like 8 in a row, but I ended up turning my TV back on and watching 4 more because I just had to make sure they were going to be OK. Which is a sign of great character development. Outside that fight though, I found the rest kinda underwhelming; they were pretty bland and repetitive, even compared to the Pokemon anime (which isn't a particularly high bar); and it felt like every episode had to have a fight shoehorned in even if it didn't benefit the story. I really wish there were some quiet episodes that entirely focused on the relationship between the characters / their families / their Digimon without the monster of the week busting in, because there were very few if any apart from the very start of the show. The whole deva thing was also pretty annoying and ended up being a bit of an anticlimax since the Big Bad Sovereign built up for half the series isn't even defeated by the heros; instead doing a 180 in like 2 episodes and deciding to help the gang defeat the menace of the red blob. The ending was really solid though, incredibly bittersweet for sure, but it was well built up and Henry's dad's actions felt very understandable. I've heard Tamers is the best Digimon series though, which makes me nervous to try the others. But I'll probably end up giving one of them a go after taking a break from it.
