In the Pokémon anime, Ash is ten years old. Eternally. But in the Digimon anime, the human characters are getting older.
The upcoming Digimon movie, which marks the franchise’s 20th anniversary, stars a 22-year-old Taichi (“Tai”) and Yamato (“Matt”).
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When the anime started, both characters were boys and now, years later, they’re adults.
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The fact that the characters age gives greater depth to the anime, moving out of an abstract timeline closer to reality.
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DISCUSSION
And yet, Adventure Tri sucked, while the much more juvenile Digimon AppMon was far more enjoyable.
I’m not expecting much for this upcoming movie, since I assume they’re using the same writers as Tri.
But the real reason why they’re aging up the characters is very simple. Bandai has oturight admitted they don’t know how to market Digimon to kids anymore, so they’re more or less exclusively targeting those that watched Adventure back in the late 90's/early 2000's and played the original games.