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Digimon Ghost Game: Media Review
5 Plays9 minutes ago
Welcome to Gather Them Podcast! In this episode, host Jerome dives deep into Digimon Ghost Game, exploring how this beloved childhood franchise evolved into something unexpectedly dark and thought-provoking.
From spine-chilling horror elements to compelling themes around AI, technology, and digital dependency, this season pushes boundaries while maintaining the core Digimon spirit. Jerome discusses the show's incredible music (Monster Disco!), innovative character designs, emotional voice acting, and the unsettling way it mirrors our current relationship with technology and generative AI.
Released during the 2021 pandemic, Ghost Game explores isolation, digital ghosts, and the blurred lines between the digital and human worlds. While the ending left something to be desired, the journey is worth every haunting moment.
Plus: A sneak peek at what's coming with Digimon BEATBREAK!
New episodes every Wednesday featuring media reviews, books, movies, TV shows, and music.
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Transcript
Introduction to Media Content
00:00:08
Speaker
hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Gather Them Podcast. I'm your host Jerome, and I guess this isn't just any regular episode. These episodes that come out on Wednesday are going to be specifically tailored to media content.
00:00:24
Speaker
Any books, any movies, any TV shows, any music. Anything that I found interesting during the week or that I've been reviewing or listening to.
Digimon's Surprising Horror Elements
00:00:37
Speaker
Specifically, though, I do want to talk about one of my favorite children's shows. And you probably remember it from the 90s. You know, those cute, adorable digital monsters.
00:00:49
Speaker
I loved Digimon as a child. And something I didn't think I'd have access to as I am now adult. But something else I did not think that Digimon would do if it had still kept going was give us a horror element, a show that was very much into the original theme work of what Digimon at the core is all about, the digital world and the human world being two separate and entities.
00:01:23
Speaker
But i didn't think that they would use elements such as horror, AI, technology. And though I was disappointed with the ending, was actually really worth the watch.
00:01:41
Speaker
And I'm going to get into that. Let's go. So I think I'm going to start at the top. Something that really stood out to me was the music. The music was amazing throughout the show.
00:01:53
Speaker
A tip I did learn, though, was that if you are watching a show like Digimon, to pay attention to characters like Gammon if you are learning Japanese because the sentence structures tend to be shorter and the way Japanese works, well,
00:02:12
Speaker
Let's just say most languages outside of English make more sense. But I thought the themes are really catchy. i thought that it really mirrored how the episodes were going to turn out.
00:02:28
Speaker
I didn't think initially that the episodes were going to have such a heavy horror element. And I guess in the sense of It's a children's show, but I'm an adult and I'm a little freaked out.
00:02:44
Speaker
I don't know, the show has a sense of running chills through your body, especially with the outro music. Monster Disco was such a jam on this show, especially as they rotated the show's outros. So they weren't consistently the same, which I find in Digimon to be a bit boring.
00:03:06
Speaker
Honestly, I'm not a fan of the outros staying the same or the music for that point. Getting spooked and I guess the joy of hearing it by the end of the episode just left chills down my spine.
Emotional Dynamics and Character Design
00:03:24
Speaker
Something else I was captivated by, and I think that captivates me each season, is the way each Digimon partners show up for their, well, partners.
00:03:36
Speaker
The design is often pretty innovative and different. I don't always like the design of the characters, This show was a show that had really great emotional depth.
00:03:49
Speaker
The range of emotions on this show from how close the Digimon were to their partners to how their bonds were really showcasing true connection. And you did feel for these characters when things started to go awry.
00:04:06
Speaker
I think the voice acting was amazing. i think that the narrator, Naoto Tanaka, I hope I'm saying his name correctly. Oh my gosh. He's an a like phenomenal narrator. Love him down.
00:04:22
Speaker
I found it interesting that each Digimon had their own quirks. I was particularly interested in Jellymon and the way she showed up in the season. i didn't know how to really digest her. I felt like Jellymon was a Digimon that was very demanding, you know, I will say that she was always there for them. I will give her that. She had a very cool character design as well. Jellyfish design all throughout. I love the mega evolutions for all characters. I love a Foreman very much giving, like in Foreman showing up in a deep sea diver suit. I think that was like really
00:05:05
Speaker
Or that being the character design being like the thing that was actually really cool to watch. I was really taken aback by Gammon having three champion forms.
00:05:19
Speaker
It kind of felt like this is what I maybe would have expected to see and a video game, but not on TV.
00:05:30
Speaker
I still love to see it. it is It just didn't make sense to me. I don't know if it made sense to you guys. If it did, let me know in the comments. I really am interested because I didn't really look into the show too much as I was watching because I wanted to make sure i could form my own idea of the show.
00:05:49
Speaker
So for me, I was like, right, I'm try to watch this. Yep. So I was doing a sub. So, you know, there was stuff I was missing. Ghost Gammon was pretty intense.
00:06:00
Speaker
That one out of the four, I guess it's four because he ended up staying within Gammon. So I don't know. You had to have watched the show. Spoiler, this came out like a few years ago. It just left me a little confused. I don't know what that was about.
00:06:16
Speaker
It left me with more questions about Gammon and how Ghost Gammon formed together. i need to go back and watch the beginning again because Digimon's a very long
Pacing, Episodic Storytelling, and Horror
00:06:29
Speaker
show. It's a commitment.
00:06:31
Speaker
And you have to remember that the beginning of this show, you're not giving much of anything. You're just kind of given, you're going to watch a bunch of episodic, torturous moments where the villain of the week is in some way torturing a child. But by the end, it'll get resolved, essentially.
00:06:52
Speaker
Speaking of which, I thought it was very interesting choice to have the episodic episodes be a choice, then the serialized. Eventually, it just kind of got to the point where I was like, well...
00:07:06
Speaker
Why are these Digimon coming into the world? Why are they, you know, coming in more frequently as the season goes on? The Digimon are creating more and more havoc and more damage throughout the city. It started to feel a little like, well, where is this going?
00:07:27
Speaker
I think the monster of the approach worked. I'll say why at the end. But i did want some more long-term investment as I started to get bored throughout the series bit.
00:07:39
Speaker
Some of the
AI Themes and Real-World Parallels
00:07:40
Speaker
episodes left me a little scarred, I'm not going to lie. one episode in particular, Clown, was an episode that featured Piedmon I saw ah season one, Digimon Adventure.
00:07:57
Speaker
both menacing, but this one menacing to the point of killing kids for sport by any means necessary, essentially, and using other menacing Digimon, including one that looks like Satan, to kill kids. It was very interesting, which is why, again, I was like, who is this show for?
00:08:20
Speaker
ah Is this show for me? Is it for a child? Is it for... who Yet, through those episodes, it felt refreshing and experimental.
00:08:32
Speaker
It kept me glued. I watched from beginning to end and stuck with the season. The one thing I did leave disappointed with was the ending. The ending was absolutely anticlimactic.
00:08:49
Speaker
The show overall had a weird pacing. There were times where we were getting snippets of information. There were red herrings. There were times where we thought that, again, evil Digimon like Lilithmon were showing up. These are Digimon that you think would have some larger scheme or play, especially when they would threaten to come back.
00:09:13
Speaker
By episode 60, I kind of felt like, well, am I ever going to see these Digimon again? and spoiler alert, you don't. Another part of the show that I found to be very compelling was the themes of AI and AI holograms showing up throughout the show.
00:09:30
Speaker
The exploration of holograms to me felt like an early precursor or early backstory. idea around generative AI or because of how misunderstood, feared and manipulated these Digimon become.
00:09:46
Speaker
It seems kind of like that way with generative AI in our current present day, you know, 2026, where people are start, you know, have made videos and have made content on platforms like Sora or Nano Banana, to name a few.
00:10:08
Speaker
And this content gets spread around and used for misinformation, which ultimately impacts the individual and or public perception around AI and what its usefulness is to society.
00:10:26
Speaker
It's kind of that way with Digimon and we ultimately get to see how these Digimon then begin to feel othered and how the world becomes even more aggressive towards them. And I don't know if that is in any way a precursor or a telling of what's, you know, to come, like a prediction, you know, we never know what's going to happen. But I just find it very interesting that it starts to question these concepts around safety, trust, reality.
00:10:57
Speaker
a lot of times the Digimon are saying that they're security bots. A lot of times are security holograms. A lot of times they're saying that they are there to help with like just some task or making up, the humans are making up some lie or excuse or reason why they're there. And everyone's just supposed to go along and trust it because these holograms just pop up, even though it's known that they're,
00:11:26
Speaker
threatening some of these digimon are really great at covering their cases i think that they do a really great job at hiding in plain sight and that makes the season even more insidious creepy and it just leaves you feeling with violated in some ways i think about the episode with their friend that comes, I believe it was from America, and this Digimon, Aizmon, ends up possessing their body and a bunch of eyes formulate around their skin and how they're just touching and it just is so visceral and nasty and eh.
00:12:15
Speaker
And the way in which they're trying to remove the eyes, but the eyes don't come off, it starts to feel like there are these moments where the supernatural becomes the techno kind of paranormal or, you know, and technology becomes this like thing that, know,
00:12:37
Speaker
we try to embrace, but there's still an underlying fear of what it can do. Humans are just misunderstanding the use of Digimon, which is that they're just Digimon. They're not tools or objects. They're actually living, but on a digital plane.
00:12:58
Speaker
I also found it interesting that this season aired in 2021, which just so happened to be during the global coronavirus or COVID pandemic.
00:13:11
Speaker
I can't imagine what it would have been like watching this at this time because people were very much isolated. So again, children, you know, doing work from home.
00:13:24
Speaker
and parents doing work from home or just wanting to get out and spending more time together. Those things were happening, but that's the time also when people had more access to social media, more access to streaming, more access to things that kept them busy during isolation and the fear in which that this show creates it's just very unsettling for the time.
00:13:56
Speaker
i mean, the themes of disconnection, isolation, digital ghosts, the idea that like data can become corrupt and misshapen and used against you.
00:14:11
Speaker
These things were things that started to become more of an issue during the pandemic with the rise of access to the internet due to remote capabilities. We all had to go remote.
00:14:27
Speaker
This season aired during a time of global lockdown and digital dependency, i go back to say because like in Digimon, everything kind of goes back to normal where the worlds become separate.
00:14:40
Speaker
It almost feels like an illusion of like, did that really happen? Especially after each episode leaves you with that feeling of, did that really happen? Did I really go through that? Am I actually the person that is here to tell the tale, especially when there are episodes where characters don't even remember how they got there, who these Digimon were, don't even know what Digimon completely have erased memories.
Evolution of Themes and Personal Reflection
00:15:08
Speaker
It was a pretty traumatic season to watch. I wonder if it left us to maybe contemplate if this merge between technology and humanity is part of what shaped the emotional tone of the show.
00:15:30
Speaker
it kind of felt like the Digimon became dependent on the humans for that connection. at least it seemed that way in the end when they meet Quantumon, who explains that they're pretty much doing all of this or have sent Digimon to the digital world to get information the humans emotions, which I thought was a very cheap way to kind of end the show.
00:15:59
Speaker
And it also makes me kind of raise my 10 hat theories as to whether or not the show is trying to say something about the world in which we live in.
00:16:12
Speaker
I will say I left the show feeling seen in these stories of horror, technology, emotional intimacy between the Digimon and even among the...
00:16:24
Speaker
friend group. I left feeling like the friend group really did depend on each other in a healthy way. I didn't think that for the most part, I think that the character development could have been better. i feel like Senpai pretty much stayed the same throughout the show.
00:16:46
Speaker
Kiro was pretty much afraid of like everything. I thought that would get better. Sometimes I get hopeful. There were episodes where he did shine, and I think that that was great. But I wonder if it also spoke to how grounded in reality this show actually is. When you think about it, you always always wonder, well, what is it that I'm actually afraid of?
00:17:09
Speaker
There's always something that leaves you... spooked when you're all alone with your thoughts and there's no one else around. You know, the I'm not afraid of anything.
00:17:24
Speaker
But I felt like this show really touched on a range of fears, including what happens when technology does go unchecked.
00:17:36
Speaker
Something I really relate to is the way in which the Digimon franchise has evolved alongside my own identity. As I watch old episodes, I tend to have moments of nostalgia mixed with happiness that I still have access to viewing the content.
00:17:55
Speaker
But what I realized is that each season provides a different way to engage us in the way in which technology shows up in our world and how we understand it alongside the ways in which our own fears, emotions, and desires can also either guide us, cloud our judgment, or lead us on the path to humanitarian destruction.
00:18:28
Speaker
It's always not so much the Digimon alone, and that's what's always been... somewhat the scary part, but it's how in each iteration, the Digimon become either more menacing, or they become less cuddly in some way.
00:18:52
Speaker
It almost mirrors life and identity in some ways, in the ways in which we go through seasons. And I don't know, every time I watch Digimon, it kind of brings back those memories of feeling understood or connected to in some way.
00:19:09
Speaker
What I am looking ahead to talking about more is Digimon Breakbeat.
Future Themes and Listener Engagement
00:19:14
Speaker
It's a new season that is now out, and I'm not exactly sure if it's going to have the same amount of episodes as Ghost Game, but what I am interested in is whether or not the story will continue to have a serialized plot. So far, the episodes have connected in some way, but I am curious as to whether or not the series will pull through the characters are still growing on me i will say that for sure thanks for listening and listen tune in every wednesday i'll be here talking about a different show or media i think i really want this to be a space for fluid exploration and i thank you for coming on this journey with me especially if you're interested if you like this podcast episode
00:20:05
Speaker
Please let me know in the comments. And I hope to talk to everyone again soon. Well, on that note, I'm out of here. Take care. And don't forget to share me your thoughts on what you thought of Ghost Game or did you interpret something differently than I did? Let me know.
00:20:23
Speaker
I'll talk to everyone soon.