Digimon Data Squad S01E11

Thomas requests leave to go abroad to investigate a theory regarding the increased appearance of Digimon throughout the human world.

When Agumon eats all of Miki and Megumi’s steamed buns, Marcus must replace them or die at Miki’s hands. Being friends with Connor, the son of the owner of the city’s most popular bakery, Marcus figures it will be easy to get the dessert and get back in DATS’ good graces. But he finds Connor’s father being bullied by a couple of thugs he owes money to. After dispatching them, he finds the shop is closed because Connor’s mother had been in the hospital, and the bills had eaten away at their financial stability.

Old Man Shitori suddenly takes up gambling, betting on horses with astounding accuracy. He makes enough to buy a brand new sports car, and throws money around like it’s nothing. Suspicious, Marcus checks out a shrine he’s been spending a lot of time in front of. They discover that it’s actually four Digimon: a Vilemon and three DemiDevimon. Vilemon had been feeding off Shitori’s greed and anger, and the DemiDevimon were manipulating the sporting events to make all of Shitori’s bets come true.

Upon being discovered, Vilemon grows to massive size and starts trashing the bakery. GeoGreymon is dispatched and manages to defeat Vilemon and the DemiDevimon. With the spell broken, Shitori reopens his bakery with his son, who had long dreamed of learning how to make the famous desserts.

After the mission, Thomas returns to DATS, confirming Marcus’ hypothesis that Digimon feed off human emotions, but stating that it runs much deeper than that. The episode ends with Thomas recommending to Sampson that he declare a state of emergency.

In the original, Yoshino muses about whether or not Tohma could be laid back, even on vacation. In the dub, Yoshi clarifies to Marcus that Thomas’ “vacation” is actually an investigation.

In a surprising twist (even more surprising than the fact that almost every line of the opening scene is directly congruous with the original), the dub doesn’t try to change manjuu to something else. Instead, Yoshi takes the time to clarify that they’re steamed sweet buns.

What? N-no… no, Brock, you’re not needed this time. Shoo!

Agumon: The follower’s failures are his Aniki’s failures. Aniki will take responsibility for me!
Agumon: The sins of the employee are the sins of the boss! You hear that, Boss? You’re gonna have to take responsibility!

That’s not how that idiom goes, but a B- for effort, Agumon.

Shiratori’s, also called The Shiratori Retreat, is localized as Shitori’s Bakery.

Shiratori means “White Bird.”

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Seriously, someone needs to open up a signage shop. The demand must be huge! Seriously, people are hanging blank papers in their windows!

The mafia in the show must be losing their touch if a single Judo throw from a 14 year old kid is enough to send them running in terror.

The owner’s son Koichiro becomes Connor in the dub.

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The dub explicitly mentions that Connor’s dad borrowed money from the thugs to pay for his wife’s medical bills. This isn’t the case in the original, presumably because Japan has universal healthcare.

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Agumon inside the Digivice iC: We can’t go back until we get Japan’s best manjuu, Aniki!
Koichiro: Huh?
Masaru: AAHH! Nothing! Just… thinking aloud!
Agumon inside the Data Link Digivice: Look Boss, we can’t go back to DATS without that manjuu!
Connor: Huh?
Marcus: That’s my… ringtone!

Masaru/Marcus, you are so delightfully dumb. XD

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Evilmon: Need money…
Vilemon: Need money? Just listen to your new master, and everything will be fine!

The dub continues the trend of upping the IQ of the invading Digimon so they act more on their own will, and less in repetition of the words of humans.

Finding myself singing (well, humming) the Japanese theme sometimes. Still not a huge fan, but it’s grown on me a little.

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Miki and Megumi are really impatient in both versions which doesn’t make sense. They both know (or at least think) the line for the manjuu goes around the block, and Masaru/Marcus never said he could skip the line to anyone but Agumon.

As you may or may not know, people in Japan tend to address each other by their last names if they’re not overly close. As such, we learn that Miki’s last name is Kurosaki, as Yoshino refers to her as Kurosaki-san during their conversation at DATS HQ. Since English adaptive dubs don’t tend to bring this trend over (it would probably just confuse kids), we don’t learn her last name in the English version.

Yoshino: Kurosaki-san, don’t be so bitter.
Miki: Did I hear something?
Yoshino: Oh, nothing! Since I’m a little worried, I’ll go patrolling in Sector C!
Yoshi: It’s best to stay off the sweets anyway.
Miki: YOU THINK I’M FAT?!
Yoshi: You know?!!!! I think I’ll go check out Sector C-9!

XD

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In the original, Koichiro is worried his father is leaving to gamble again, indicating that the money they lost in the wake of his wife’s illness was to a gambling addiction. Since they changed it to medical bills in the dub, Connor’s worried he’s giving their money for that month’s bills to those thugs that were shaking him down earlier. But not wanting him to do that doesn’t make much sense, as Connor was worried about losing the shop to said thugs earlier.

Connor then speculates that maybe his father is buying flowers for his mom when he visits her in the hospital next.

JEEZ Yoshino, you’re just visiting a manjuu shop! There’s no need to slam the brakes and screech your way into a parking spot! It’s all auditory, so you don’t see her do it, but the tires definitely screech to a halt in both versions.

Seriously, hire the butler dude. He’s a WAY better driver.

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Yoshi’s demand that Marcus take her to a drive-through bakery is hilariously delivered by her Voiceover Artist Colleen.

Professor Stimson goes unnamed in the dub, though he gains a goofy German-esque accent.

Yoshino: Why did we have to come to the race track?
Masaru: I’ll explain later. We need to find Old Man Shiritori!
Yoshino: Find him? In this crowd?!
Yoshi: I know you want to find your friend’s dad, but why would he come to the track?
Marcus: Because this is where we found Old Man Shitori’s car parked.
Yoshi: Oh, I see.

YOU WERE DRIVING! Dumbass.

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Narrator: PicoDevimon. A mischievous Child-level Digimon who plays evil tricks. For its special attack, it throws its syringes, Pico Darts.
Miki: DemiDevimon. An evil little batlike Digimon that specializes in cheating. He unleashes a blazing Demi Dart to wreak havok on his target.

They don’t blaze.

I guess the dubbers said, “Screw it, just remake the entire ticket.”

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Lalamon can’t pinpoint the Digimon signal because there are too many People around.

USELESS.

When Masaru says he has to keep his promise, Agumon cheers him on. When Marcus says his word is his bond, Agumon laughs at him for sounding like Thomas. Which he didn’t.

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In the original, the group is significantly more suspicious that Lalamon made an error at the stadium regarding the presence of a Digimon signal. In the dub, they all try to justify it and act like Lalamon isn’t a complete screwup.

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In the original, Evilmon, who the father refers to as a god of good fortune, gives him the numbers to bet on at the track. In the dub, the father is making guesses, and the DemiDevimon make note of those guesses and make them come true.

As much as I’ve praised the music in this season, using the same song from the carnival scene for the gambling montage was a misstep. In the original, the music, while not particularly melodic, was very ominous and dark.

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HAHA! Good luck censoring all that Japanese stuff when it’s overlaid with other Japanese stuff, dub!

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The montage and some of Marcus’ dialogue makes the timeline weird. I’m scratching my head because he’s gambled a lot and the store is still closed. So unless he bet on all those horse races, lotteries, soccer games, etc. in a single day, it would appear many days have passed. Both Masaru and Marcus claimed they wouldn’t return to DATS until they had the manjuu, so how long is Sampson letting him stay on this impromptu extended vacation?

Koichiro laments that his father is spending all his time at the race track, and doing so means he has to give up his dream of taking over the manjuu shop one day. Connor instead says that even though the thugs and the hospital bills have been paid off, his father is still spending all his time at the racetrack, making no mention of his dreams of taking over the shop.

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The dub continues to omit any mention of “The God of Good Fortune.” The father simply says he won the new car due to his winnings.

At least they’re keeping the yen and not turning them into Digi-Dollars.

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Koichiro: Please stop gambling already!
Connor: Let’s save it in case Mom gets sick again!

The dub is working really hard to hammer it into your head that his mother is very much alive.

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Masaru: Dad, huh? [grasps dog tag]
Marcus: I don’t really know my dad. [grasps dog tag]

He’s been gone for a while, but you’re old enough to remember him, Marcus.

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Various religious references are removed from the dub with the exception of one use of the word “worship.” Otherwise the god stuff, as well as the fact that Connor’s father is praying in that room that the dub calls a “garage,” is omitted.

The closest we get is when he calls the statue his “master.”

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Masaru: Did this thing talk?
Marcus: Hey, wait! Statues don’t sweat!

That’s the first time I’ve seen a show actually acknowledge the cartoonish sweat drops.

He’s so EVIL. Too EVIL for the kids. Let’s reverse the letters, they’ll never know the difference.

Actually, Evilmon would be a pretty boring name.

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Narrator: Evilmon. An Adult-level Digimon that likes to torture others. His special attack is Nightmare Shock. Those who are hit with it will have a nightmare they’ll never wake up from.
Marcus: Vilemon! He feeds off people’s anger and greed until they’re completely under his control! He makes his targets think they have special powers, so their greed keeps feeding their hunger forever!

Marcus… have you been studying the DATS manual?

This is off-topic, but the above description made me think of something. There are a lot of Pokédex entries that say that various Pokémon can melt boulders, split the world in half, kidnap children and transport them to a lifeless void… and it’s always so dumb to me because the tone Pokémon tends to set with its games and anime is too lighthearted to support those ideas.

Now Digimon tells me that Evilmon can make people fall into an infinite nightmare? I can believe that because Digimon actually takes itself seriously. Even in the dub, people and Digimon have died in the large scale battles and wars fought with and because of them.

Rant over. Back to the episode.

The dub was doing so well.

In the original, Miki mentions that Evilmon has a sleep mode, which the group speculates is how it managed to evade detection by their systems for so long. This concept is completely removed from the dub, replaced by Sampson saying that Vilemon is too powerful for Marcus to defeat, and that Yoshino needs to be sent in.

Yes, Yoshino. The one who was completely taken out by a single Flymon. Yoshino, who can’t drive to save her life. Yoshino, whose only focus episode so far is her falling in love with Yuri Lowenthal and failing to retrieve a damning photo from a reporter.

Truly, she will save us all.

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In the original, the father shouts that all he cares about is the money, and he doesn’t give a damn if the manjuu shop is destroyed. Then the PicoDevimon explain that the money they gave him, the destruction of the shop, and everything else they’ve done is directly in line with the man’s wishes, so if he doesn’t like it, he only has his own greed and selfishness to blame.

All of this is left out of the dub, so there’s no reason given why the DemiDevimon and Vilemon suddenly start wrecking the store. The explanation in the original is replaced with the DemiDevimon telling Vilemon to put Marcus under his spell, since he looks dumb enough to be easy to control.

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Marcus calls Vilemon “Fang Face.” Either it’s a random insult, or it’s a callback to a cartoon that’s even older than I am.

Evilmon’s Nightmare Shock is localized as How About a Daily Dose of This?!

Ultimately, it’s the father’s own personal greed that led to this situation, as Evilmon was feeding off it and creating a vicious cycle. The dub, conversely, repeatedly says that it was a spell, even having him return to his old self after Vilemon is defeated, when it takes longer in the original.