Mamoru Hosoda takes forty minutes and makes it feel like a full feature through pure direction and movement. The animation doesn't just serve the action, it IS the action, every frame modulating between explosive spectacle and quiet precision in ways that reward watching it twice. A virus consuming data across Japan is the setup, but the real film is two kids sending their partners into cyberspace and trusting them to survive.

Set after the Adventure series ends, the film begins when a new Digimon Egg turns up on the internet and works its way into nearly every computer system in Japan. When it hatches, the creature proves to be a new kind of Digimon, a Virus type. It survives by feeding on data from the systems it enters, and it keeps evolving as it consumes more, causing havoc across Japan. Taichi and Koushiro decide it has to be stopped. They send their partners Agumon and Tentomon through the internet to fight it. The situation soon escalates: the Virus gains control of systems such as the American military's, and the digital threat risks spilling into the real world. Yamato and Takeru are called in to help as the group tries to halt what has already begun.