This is the season that stops being a toy commercial about twenty minutes in and never goes back. Chiaki J. Konaka wrote it, and it shows: Takato literally doodles Guilmon into existence, then loses control of his own rage and warps him into Megidramon, and the show treats that as horror rather than a power-up. Leomon's death doesn't get a tidy grief montage, it breaks Juri, and the D-Reaper arc spends its back half on a depressed kid the heroes cannot punch their way to. Impmon's fall and clawback as Beelzemon is the best redemption arc the franchise ever wrote, and Yamaki flicking that lighter while trying to delete every Digimon in Japan is a villain with an actual argument. Ruki, Jenrya and Takato disagree about what these creatures even are, and the show refuses to name a winner. The 2001 animation shows its age. The goodbye at the end doesn't.

Three kids discover that the digital creatures from their trading card game are suddenly real. Takato, Ruki, and Lee each bonded with their own Digimon, but they couldn't be more different in how they think these beings should be treated. Their conflicting philosophies create friction, yet when mysterious Digimon start appearing throughout Japan, they have to set their differences aside and fight the intruders together. Complicating matters is Yamaki, head of a secret organization called Hypnos, who is working to wipe out every Digimon on his own terms. Takato's partner is Guilmon, a creature he designed himself that hatched into a living being, and he soon learns that raising a real Digimon takes far more care than he imagined. Across 51 episodes, action, adventure and drama meet in a sci-fi fantasy where the kids must protect both the human world and the Digital World.