By Brandon T. McClure
It’s October of 2000, and legions of Digimon fans have just sat down to watch Digimon: The Movie. The movie begins with a short film from the, then, popular series Angela Anaconda, before going through three eras of Digimon. What wasn’t widely known at the time, but is now, is that Digimon: The Movie is made up of three short films called Digimon Adventure (a prequel film), Digimon Adventure: Our War Game, and Digimon Adventure 02: Hurricane Touchdown. Up until now, there has been no legal way to watch the original three films in the United States. But that’s about to change.
Discotek Media is an American entertainment company that focuses on licensing and distributing classic Japanese anime films and TV shows. They began in 2005 and will often “rescue” shows and films when they’re abandoned by the likes of Funimation (I guess Crunchyroll now) or Viz Media. The main goal for them is to make available and in the highest possible quality, these shows and movies. Recently, they released the original first season of Digimon: Digital Monsters on Blu-ray. It had initially only been available on DVD, but Discotek remastered the series for high definition, complete with the classic English voice recordings. A second release with the original Japanese language (titled Digimon: Adventure) track is on the way. But they’ve been working hard on a surprise for fans.
At the anime convention Otakon, Discotek Media announced that they would release Digimon The Movies Collection 1 on Bluray. This collection will have a remastered version of the classic Digimon: The Movie but without the Angela Anaconda short film (No significant loss there, honestly). But the most exciting news was that the collection will feature the original uncut versions of the three short films that made up the theatrically released film. They will include not only the original Japanese language track but also a brand new dubbing featuring many of the returning actors who voiced these classic characters.
Like many anime in the late 90s and early 00s, Digimon’s English dub is notorious for its changes from the original. Much of these changes were to make the series more palatable to American kids but in many cases, the show ended up losing its emotional weight. These dubbing issues followed into the movie. Digimon: The Movie took previously unconnected stories and connected them while also adding more humorous dialogue. While the three films will have a new American language track, the goal for the translators was to keep the weight and intention of the films intact while also maintaining some nostalgic elements that long-time fans will appreciate.
One of the major selling points of the new dub is that many of the original English voice cast is returning. Some of them had already returned for Digimon Adventure Tri and will return again to provide new dialogue for these three films like Joshua Seth and Mona Marshall, who play Tai and Izzy respectively. Jill Miller and Michael Reisz, who did not return in the reunion films as Kari and Matt will also be returning. This is especially notable for Michael Reisz who had retired a number of years ago. Discotek said that “anyone who we could find & could come back is here." Sadly, in some cases, the voice actor had passed away, such as the voices for Joe and Mimi, Philece Sampler, and Michael Lindsay. These roles were recast with new actors “based on energy & giving a voice & vibe that fits what you heard almost 25 years ago."
Digimon The Movies Collection 1 will hopefully not be the only Digimon film collection Discotek puts out. The very fact that it has the label “1” indicates that they want to do more. There are certainly more Digimon films that fans would be excited to see. Digimon Adventure 02: Revenge of Diaboromon aired as a TV special in 2005 and was the last to be set in the Digimon Adventure era before the Digimon Adventure Tri films and can be found online since it was dubbed with some of the original English voice cast. It’s likely Discotek has this film as well as others from the other Digimon eras and could release them in future collections. That is most certainly the hope when it comes to fans of these classic Digimon shows since being able to own all four films would be a dream come true.
Between this release, Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning (the next feature film) and the reboot Digimon Adventure 2020 is finally streaming on Hulu with an English dub. It’s a pretty good time to be a Digimon fan. American fans of the franchise love nostalgia and being reminded of the show and characters they first watched on Fox Kids all those years ago. Getting the opportunity to finally see the original three films that makeup Digimon: The Movie is a fun way to play off the nostalgia and deliver something new for those fans.