Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details of classification and consumer advice lines for Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning
• a review of Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 27 November 2023.

Overall comments and recommendations

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• themes
• use of violence
• material that may scare or disturb children
• product placement
• sexual references
• nudity and sexual activity
• use of substances
• coarse language
• the movie’s message

A synopsis of the story

A massive Digi-egg hovering over Tokyo Tower causes much confusion and speculation, especially after an electromagnetic transmission delivers a worldwide message about the need for everyone to have friends and everyone to have a Digimon. When a mysterious young man named Lui (voice of AJ Beckles) falls from the Tower in an attempt to contact the egg, Davis (voice of Brian Donovan) and his friends leap into action. They soon discover that Lui is the first ‘DigiDestined’, and that he believes he killed his own Digimon and that he is intimately acquainted with the egg in the sky. In order to figure out the present mystery, Lui finds himself revisiting the past where he begins to see the bigger picture of what happened to him and how his Digimon, Ukkomon (voice of Giselle Fernandez), was trying to help him as best it could. He sees that there had been some terrible miscommunications and misunderstandings and that, even now, Ukkomon was still trying to fulfil its promise to Lui. Lui also discovered that even though Ukkomon’s intentions were good, the resulting actions could be globally catastrophic and, therefore, he would need to depend on others as he never had before. Can the DigiDestined and their Digimons stop Ukkomon before it is too late and will Lui ever find the friends he so desperately wished for?

Child abuse; Neglect; Manipulation; The dangers of miscommunication; Loneliness and Isolation.

There is some violence in this movie, including:

• Lui falls off the Tokyo Tower and looks like he will plummet to his death but he is rescued just in the nick of time.
• There is an electromagnetic blast that knocks characters off their flying Digimon and back down to Earth. However, they arrive in another time, years in the past.
• A mother grabs her child and screams at him that he must not touch anything, or his father will die. She shouts at him and roughly shakes him. The child is seen covered in bruises.
• Three characters are pulled from the past and fall back to Earth, however, they are saved by a Digimon before they impact the ground.
• Lui confesses to killing his Digimon.
• A character punches a table.
• There are battle scenes and footage of people fighting in different parts of the world.
• Lui’s parents collapse and lay unconscious. Ukkomon sends snake-like tentacles into his parents to control them.
• Lui takes a baseball bat to his Digimon device and violently smashes it to pieces, severing the relationship he has with Ukkomon.
• Ukkomon’s giant tentacles fly toward Lui and the Digimons.
• A character is blasted backwards and knocked unconscious by Ukkomon’s tentacles.
• The Digimons join forces to battle Ukkomon, blasting, hitting, and trying to outmanoeuvre the tentacles.
• The Digimons fight Ukkomon: blasting and slicing off its tentacles and shooting it in the face.
• A massive gun delivers a blast, like a comet, right through the middle of Ukkomon’s body, ripping it into pieces and causing it to disintegrate. Even the Digi-eggs begin to disappear.

Material that may scare or disturb children

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children under the age of five, including the following:

• When Lui smashes his Digimon device, it flies up and blasts into his eye. The eye is damaged and bleeding and Ukkomon plucks out its own eye and shoves it into Lui’s eye socket. There is blood everywhere, in addition to the blood oozing out from all around the eye itself, which looks both grotesque and horrifying. Ukkomon has a gaping hole where its large, yellow eye used to be.
• Lui turns against his Ukkomon, telling it that he doesn’t want anything to do with it and that he has never really understood it. Ukkomon begins to melt in grief, blobs of its body dropping to the ground, onto Lui’s face and then disappearing all together. Both of Lui’s parents collapse to the floor and remain face down.
• There is a creepy birthday song being sung as a giant Ukkomon hatches from the egg over Tokyo, the skin of its head peeling back on all sides (like a banana) to reveal countless tentacles that unfurl in every direction. Attached to each tentacle are numerous Digimon eggs, which are destined to be sent all over the world.
• Some combined Digimon characters look violent and menacing and one has red, glowing eyes.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes and scary visual images, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children aged five to eight, including the following:

• A young Lui is shown being abused and neglected by his own mother. She screams at him, grabs him, and shakes him roughly. When he wets himself, she loses her temper and shoves him outside in the freezing winter with nothing but his under shirt on. He is covered in bruises, crying, and shivering with cold, while he whimpers and quietly begs to come inside. As the snow begins to fall around him and his toes turn red from the cold, the small child realises that it is his fourth birthday. The scene is incredibly sad and could be distressing for some children.

• Nothing further noted.

Product placement

• None noted.

Sexual references

There are some sexual references in this movie, including:

• A character says, “What is with all the flirting, you two?”

Nudity and sexual activity

• None noted.

Use of substances

• None noted.

Coarse language

There is some coarse language in this movie, including:

• You meanie.

In a nutshell

Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning is the sequel to Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna and provides a backstory to the first DigiDestined. Dubbed in English and featuring mixed 2D and 3D animations, the film is best suited to teen and mature audiences, and will be most enjoyed by anime and Digimon fans.

The main messages from this movie are that friendships must be cultivated and developed; that true friendship is indestructible; that we are all connected in ways we cannot even imagine; and that it’s not the devices that connect us but rather the heart-to-heart conversations that do.

Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with their children include:

• Loyalty
• Compassion
• Friendship
• Courage
• Happiness.

This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children attitudes and behaviours, and their real-life consequences, such as:

• Failing to communicate or understand others.
• Creating chaos even though you have the best of intentions.
• Controlling others and taking their free will to make someone else happy.
• Abusing, shaming, hurting and neglecting those you are meant to love.