This is my first "review" on MAL, and I will be blunt here. Take some of my thoughts with grain of salt, because the review is less organized, than I'd like it to be.
Before you leave, I won't bash Savers, because it "ruined my childhood anime". I went in hopeful for a change of setting.
There will be some spoilers.
Digimon Savers is the first full length Digimon series since Digimon Frontier in 2002-3. I've seen quite a few people praise it for "saving Digimon" and being more "mature", than it's predecessors. For starters, it has more aggression and main cast aging from mid teens to early twenties (with some variables), so it must be more mature. Right? Well.. no. It's not. I dare say it's even more childish than Frontier was.
But would that be a bad thing on it's own? No. Definitely not. Seeing the first few episodes, I actually thought it would become a silly shounen adventure by the end.
It didn't.
It was actually aimed at a more "mature" audience, unlike the series prior and for that reason, after the initial few episodes went down, it turned into a "serious business" show.
It didn't hit the mark.
(I won't give points. Since everyone rates differently, I find them generally less useful than they're shown to be. What a 5 means to one person can be very different to what it means for another. I will give impressions instead.)
Story:
The story is about a cardboard cutout shounen manga protagonist saving the world with his fists. (Take this at face value.) Everything else is just a semi-bland mesh of spices.
I don't dislike simple stories. Simple stories can be great. However even the simplest of stories need something entertaining going for them. This story you can experience by reading almost any shounen manga or by watching almost any shounen anime in a much more entertaining manner. The only thing different here are the Digimon as a choice for Monster of the Week monsters. You can predict most of it by looking at the first 15 episodes. Or watching every 4th one. Doesn't make a lick of difference. Considering all this, the story could have been charming if it was somewhat played for laughs. It wasn't. The plot takes itself extremely seriously and given it's subject matter it's completely laughable. Except I cried.
What if it had a nice set of characters?
About that...
Characters:
The main cast is a mess, but there are some unpolished gems. Too bad next to nothing is expanded on any of the characters except the main four and 1 or 2 others.
The main four are:
Masaru doesn't grow even a little bit as a character. He is depicted and is supposed to be accepted as an idealistic view on a "MAN". This is demonstrated though him beating up others (including Digimon) and through this they start to respect him, because he "talked to them with his fists" and "that's the way a man does things". He is like this until literally the last frame and is presented extremely seriously. I hoped that he would grow out of this personality or do something productive with it, like all other digimon protags, but he didn't. The other saving option would have been that the story and he himself turns purposely corny. This doesn't happen either. He is a worthless character in every sense of the word.
Tohma has a little bit more growth as a person than Masaru, but it's still filled with overdone clichés and exaggerated, meaningless drama. He is mostly only there to be the rival trope for the self-insert protag.
Yoshino is there, because "cool older sister" trope. That's it. She has no character arc. No, that one episode doesn't count.
Ikuto has by far the most well made character arc, but sadly, as many a reviewer said before me: No matter how much you polish a turd, it won't become a piece of gold. He is a little shithead through the first ~20 episodes he's featured in. After that he becomes completely docile until the end. He has two agendas. The first one: HUMAN=EVIL, next one HUMAN+DIGIMON=GOOD. He's supposed to represent the "humans' potential to live alongside digimon peacefully" and "HUMAN EVOLUTION" ((within the context of the Digimon shows: growing up)). (In contrast, in all other Digimon series before this, all characters had this happen to them very naturally and mostly without being constantly hammered through the "retarded viewer's" skull.)
Some of the others:
The partner digimon are cute but that's it. They have basic personalities. Agumon is always hungry and is the same as Masaru. Gaomon is a butler. Lalamon is... well.. sometimes a straight man to Yoshino I guess? Falcomon is mostly a mirror to Ikuto. Kamemon had some potential, but he is mostly just there, saying and doing nothing. Sometimes he fights alongside Yushima. The two PawnChessmon are purely for support, same for their tamers. Kudamon and Satsuma combo is fun to listen to sometimes, but they're filling the bare minimum roles of "a father to his men"-type boss characters.
There is one supporting character who's constantly mentioned through the entire series. He's Masaru's dad. He is the same as Masaru and nothing is really done with him other than constant praise by everyone. He's basically a "means to an end" character. He's mainly used to justify happenings in the story.
The enemy characters were explained with:
"He's a cackling evil scientist, kill him." and "He's an emotionless algorithm, kill him."
The first one has a long and drawn-out buildup, basically shoving a shitton of "kick the dog" moments to show how he's evil because he's evil. The other antagonist on the other hand comes out of nowhere and blames the entire humanity for one man's actions and decides in his infinite wisdom to kill everyone. His followers obey him without any questions or showing any character until the last two episodes.
The characters I enjoyed seeing were few and far between, but here they are in no particular order: Mercurimon, Craniummon, Satsuma, Kudamon, Yushima.
I also love hearing that voice actor from the mouth of Dukemon (even though at first it was a bit jarring to hear Tamers Guilmon's voice back from Savers Dukemon).
Art:
Mediocre, but I won't fault Toei. Making Saturday morning stuff with limited time (and lack of direction and probably a lack of faith from the higher-ups) is definitely not easy. Especially in the mid 2000s, making a promo, monster of the week show for Digimon. At least the battles were spectacular and a lot better than the first two and the fourth series' battles and most CGI wasn't bad. (Except for the MachGaogamon evolution. Every time the frame-rate drops form 24 to 3, a little bit of my soul evaporates.)
Sound:
One of the better points. The openings are nice and energetic, the endings are calming (though not sure how fitting they are for this kind of presentation). The Evolution song is one that I really like. It's the perfect song to just shout loud. I love it. The other OST is not bad, but I can't hum any of it after watching the whole series. It's just there. Sometimes I remember it fitting the atmosphere, but most of the time I can't recall any of it. The voice acting cast is good enough, though Yoshino's voice actress sounds extremely uninterested half the time.
Enjoyment:
Poor. I enjoyed how they showed us the characters in the first couple of episodes and I remember thinking "Huh, this is vastly different from before, but so far I like it! I wonder how they'll make them likeable or what story will go around them!"
If you've read this far, you already know the answer to those questions.
Overall:
I did not enjoy Digimon Savers. It was a copy-paste of the first volume of any shounen manga story about school gang-fighting and how that's honorable. Add some Digimon and that's it. The characters don't change, which was one of the cornerstones of the previous four Digimon series. The story is by the numbers and even like this, it's taken bloody seriously. Last but not least, the show treats the viewers like morons.
I can't find a single reason to watch this anime over basically any other shounen of similar length or indeed any Digimon series that aired before it. If you honestly enjoyed it or can take the piss out of it, I'm happy for you. Sadly I couldn't.
