Digital Monster X-Evolution

Digital Monster X-Evolution: 13 Royal Knights
Also Known As: X-Evolution, Digimon Movie 8
Genre: Action/Adventure
Format: 1 Movie
Allegiance: Toei Animation
Director: Hiroyuki Kakudou
Vintage: 2005
Intelligence Agency Report by: Drake
Due to an increase in the population of the Digital World, Yggdrasil, the caretaker of the Digital World, has developed an infectious virus named Project Ark to terminate all of the Digimon and create a new world with a manageable population. However as time passed, digimon began exhibiting the X-Antibody, a antivirus to combat Project Ark. These monsters with the antivirus became known as the X-Digimon. Amidst all this chaos is a young Digimon known as DORUmon, who holds the key to the Digital World’s salvation. Can DORUmon come to terms with his past in time to save the world or is all lost?

Field Agent Report by: Drake
Plot
Characters
Impact
Visual
Audio
7.00
7.25
7.00
7.75
8.00
Overall 7.50
(not an average)

Around the end of 2004, word reached me of a new Digimon movie coming in a few months. I was not overly interested in seeing the movie, but after seeing a few screen shots, especially those with Omegamon, Dukemon and Wargreymon (three figures I immensely enjoyed in the Digimon seasons), my interest in the series came back as I anticipated the release of Digital Monsters: X-Evolution. I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw.

From the moment the movie began playing I knew the animations team had really put a lot of effort in making the first pure cgi Digimon movie. The detail given to the background scenery is extremely realistic and plain out beautiful. However, the same can’t be said for the character designs of most of the Digimon. I was very disappointed in this area of the movie. I mean, for crying out loud, most of them looked as if they had been created by preschoolers playing with their Legos. Some designs came out quite decent, though, like the Royal Knights and DORUmon. The musical composition to X-Evolution was not half bad either, and once again helped flesh out some of the emotions that the scenes tried to convey.

I’ll admit that it took me two viewings to fully grasp the story itself. It wasn’t that it was too complex, but it was vague and left the viewer to do a lot of guesswork on some elements of the plot since the movie didn’t have the support of a full length series. It had to build the full story in roughly an hour and a half. Once the main thrust of the plot is within the viewer’s grasp, the movie is really interesting. This is greatly helped by a good cast of characters, even if more than half of them were never given a lot of screen time or depth. However for those given enough depth, we do empathize with their sorrows and joys.

Overall, the movie was decent, and although it does lack in character design and in the vagueness of its plot, it makes up lost points with very beautiful animation. If you do plan to watch this movie, I strongly suggest a second or maybe even third viewing to catch all of its finer details.