This is MJ.
I'm an author.
I'm an artist.
I'm a Digimon Analyzer.
Join me as I talk about Digimon Liberator Chapter Zero.
You know what it's called?
Episode Zero.
That's what they call it officially.
So I'll have to change that in my notes or something, maybe.
Anyway, so this one's called Welcome to Lacuna.
And interesting.
I want to just... I've got over here on my screen the back of the page or the description
of the show.
So here we go.
It feels like a show, but it's not.
So here's the description of the story.
Here we go.
Shoto Kazuma, a boy who has never been able to win at card games because of his habit
of giving up on things easily, enters the immersive world of Digimon Liberator through
the invitation of his second or his childhood friend, Arisa Kinosaki.
The game allows players to engage in highly realistic card battles.
At first, Shoto is hesitant towards it, but through his engrossing encounters with the
Digimon there, he becomes a fan of the game.
This is a story about Digimon and the world.
What does that mean?
I don't know.
Does that have you hooked?
I'm not sure.
Honestly, probably what hooked me is the visuals, because there's some great key visuals, I
think is what they call them here.
And it's interesting.
At the end of the chapter... I mean, so I'm looking at it, but I'm going to talk about
it as if you want one.
There we go.
So I didn't make any notes on this because I read it.
It's pretty short.
It's a great forward-ish maybe.
So I'm just going to go through and check things out and talk about it.
So the very top image of it is fantastic.
There's just a great visual feel to it.
I mean, it doesn't really feel like Digimon yet.
As far as what they're... I mean, certain elements of it do feel like Digimon.
It's a visual medium and it doesn't quite look like any of the anime, which is fine.
They're doing their own thing, I guess.
And it works for me.
It looks pretty cool.
It's interesting that this guy never wins at card games, but he watches people play.
But I guess I've quit games before and then watched the Let's Play of it, so that's kind
of interesting.
I'll be super honest, I'm a little bit disappointed that the off-model-ness, the sketchiness of
the drawings is excessive, I would say.
But I care about the story more than anything and I am intrigued by the story and interested
by it.
But the slight lack of the visuals isn't really a big deal to me.
So anyway, I do find it weird though that he's never... He has a deck, but he never
wins and he never tries.
But Arisa is into it, so I don't know if she's a good player or not, but whatever.
So we see this very enigmatic, just like flips of a battle and it's over and he's all upset.
And that's interesting.
It's weird that he's not a huge winner, but that gives him room for growth, which is good,
which is really good.
And sorry, I think that's interesting.
I like his character design, that's good.
I like Arisa's character design too.
They go well together.
It's a cool look.
It's a cool look, that's my point.
And overall, I'm pleased with them.
But some of the other visuals in this are a little bit weird, but that's okay.
It's okay.
So just the level of technology in this world is kind of interesting.
And I don't know, I wonder are we going to spend all this time in Lacuna and they're
never going to come out of it?
Are they getting pulled into the game?
Do they come out of it or not?
I don't know.
We'll have to see in future installments, but I'm just going to kind of quickly go.
I find it hilarious that at this competition, they have a guy in a giant Agumon suit giving
out the trophy to the guy who won, whose name is Zenith.
He calls himself Zenith.
And anyway, that's kind of interesting.
And then the lady who's interviewing him is in like Gijinka, do people know what that
is anymore?
She's in like Gijinka Gatomon or Tailmon or whatever they call her cosplay.
And her microphone she's using looks very much like the Digivice from Fusion.
I don't know what that one's called.
Cross Loader or something like that maybe.
I think it's a Cross Loader.
Anyway, and it's Cross Wars.
This is what I'm really talking about.
So let me see if I can look like Digivice.
Do I use Cross Wars?
Looks like when I put up Cross Wars, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bandai Namco.
Yep, Cross Wars Loader.
Yeah, that's almost like, I'm pretty sure the microphone is meant to look like that.
So that's cool.
Like people who love Digimon and I haven't watched Cross Wars.
I watched the first episode or two of the dub that Neo Savan did and it was horrible.
Anyway, so Mikey.
Anyway, so yeah, not cool on that end, but like it's cool.
Like obviously, like whoever the artist is here, he probably put that in on his own and
it's like he's clearly a big Digimon.
Could be a lady.
I don't know what the artist is.
Sorry.
I don't think that Digimon Card Game, the company that's putting this out, like they're
obscuring some of who's working on it, but I'm sure if I looked hard enough, I'd be able
to find who it is.
But I don't know any webtoons authors.
I don't know what Jemonga called today, so I couldn't really tell you who it is or anything
about them.
But I find it interesting that Shoto is 19 years old.
That's a pretty old protagonist for Digimon.
We haven't had a lot of that.
Yes, Digimon savers, but I didn't see it, so I don't know anything about it.
Gosh, leave me alone.
I can't say.
This is a dumb detail.
I'm not trying to nitpick this because I do like it overall.
He's got an incoming call notification on his phone and it says ARI.
It looks like an S. I don't know if he's pretending he doesn't know that it's a resa on the phone.
It's like, oh, it's just you.
What do you mean just you?
Or a response.
I don't know.
It's a cute, fun interaction, but is he messing around with her?
What's going on?
Apparently she's 17, so they've been childhood friends for I don't know how long, and she's
two years younger than them.
The families know each other because usually, from my experience, kids are segregated in
school by their ages, and therefore they're separated from each other and they don't really
interact.
So why is he hanging out with her?
But I still think it's cool.
He's 19, she's 17.
She's more into Digimon than he is maybe.
I'm just noticing a book on her thing, Health and Medicines, and then some sort of dictionary
or something like that up in her room.
But I don't know.
They both look like they're affluent, nerdy, gamer, streamer type people with nice, cute
computer setups and things like that.
So it's kind of interesting.
Or at least her stuff looks a lot nicer than his, which I'm not sure we're going to get
a view of in chapter one, or part one of episode zero.
But anyway, it's interesting that...
I don't know.
He's kind of like...
It's funny.
He says he's not really into Digimon Liberator Rover, but he's got a magazine on it.
And it looks like he already has it there because you can see his toes in the picture.
So it's in his room, but then somehow he's not into it.
And then she drags him off to go there.
So it's funny.
There's him all there.
There's nobody else there.
And they're getting to this pod or whatever, this translation, another life engine pod
thing with a...
It looks like the thing from Dual Monsters, the offseason filler arc Dual Monsters where
they go into the game world that Kaiba made.
It looks very much like that.
And it feels like that.
And it's pretty cool.
They have to put the Digimon cards in there to activate it.
And of course it reads the deck and then whatever happens happens.
And other than seeing the visuals and him telling us that, oh, this is how he got into
this game that changed the course of my life or whatever, we don't really know what else
is going on.
So it's a very mysterious beginning.
So there's a lot of...
I'm a writer, like I say.
So what you want to do at the beginning of the story is hook people.
And one of the ways you hook people is by presenting a silent question.
So the question is never stated in the narrative.
But in reading you say, well, what happened?
Where are they?
Are they sucked into the game world?
Are they stuck there?
I love too that as he's entering it, it looks like he's falling into it, which is reminiscent
of the opening of...
It's a little bit in the Japanese opening.
I think for some reason...
Well, hold on.
I haven't looked at the original, original Japanese opening for Digimon Adventure, but
2020, it just shows TIE falling into the world of Tomb of Nelver.
And in the Digimon dub that I had from when I was a kid, it's all seven of the kids falling
through the sky or through the ocean or whatever into the digital world.
And we get something very similar here with him.
And then he lands, he screams and screams until he finally lands, you know, football.
And it looks like it was going to hurt him, but it apparently didn't.
And then he and Arisa are there.
And it's weird how the cards are in front of them.
And I don't understand how this whole card thing is going to work.
I had Digimon cards, collectible or TCG cards as a kid, and I kept them for a long time
just because they were so cool.
I love the artwork, but like I never played it.
I didn't have anybody play with it.
And I don't know how they're going to show the card game being played in this manga or
webtoon or whatever.
But it should be interesting.
Like I don't know, like her weird...
Her Digimon looks really weird.
And it's like kind of ugly in the videos.
And I don't understand what's going on with it.
I think it's her Digimon, this like mole one with these crazy paws and like a little construction
hat on.
It's kind of cute, but you know, cute in the ugly Digimon kind of way.
And it's funny because she's like all into the game, Arisa is, and she's trying to get
this guy to get excited about it.
And I don't know, he's like kind of clueless about what's going on.
But you know, he gets a cute little parrot, looks like Parrot Digimon or bird.
I think it's Parrotmon, but it's a little cute bird.
Pretty adorable.
And like, I don't know where they're going to go from here.
I'm like, did you all them with the cards?
There's this peak at the end, all these different characters in different settings.
Like it looks like people like, like scientist lady running stuff, a game designer maybe,
like who's like drawing the characters.
And then the two like, you know, top players are there.
And then there's some mysterious lady with like a chain around her neck.
Like I have no idea what's going on, but it does pique my interest.
And I'm interested on taking the path to a brand new story, as it says at the end here.
And I don't know, like this glimpse of the digital world that I can't even remember the
guy's name.
Arisa I know.
And this guy is, what's his name?
I don't know if it's a good thing that I remember the girl's name more than I remember the guy's
name.
Probably not so much.
Shoto, Shoto Kazama.
I remember that right before I found the page that it was on.
So yeah, like, I don't know.
Shoto, like, she's enthusiastic because she's knowledgeable and he's non-enthusiastic and
he's not very knowledgeable.
I don't really like that kind of character for protagonist to hero, but then again, I
don't really know what this journey is going to be like for them.
And if the two of them are on it together and there are these kind of opposites that
can propel each other forward, that I do like.
So we'll see where it goes.
But that's it for Welcome to Lacuna.
Just my thoughts on it, I can't really review it.
I kind of tried to critique the art.
There wasn't much story there, but, and yet it still has me hooked and intrigued.
Maybe because of the visuals, I'm not sure.
Sorry.
That didn't quite work with Digimon Seekers, which I thought was a failure.
For me, it was a failure of a project because I quit it because I just, it couldn't hold
my interest.
I tried and tried and tried.
Couldn't hold my interest.
This on the other hand, I delayed it, delayed getting back into it and covering it for a
while because two things, one, I'm too busy trying to write and publish my own books about
magical bugs, battling monsters.
And the other thing is I knew that the release schedule was kind of going to be funny and
like it wasn't going to come out super fast, like once a week or anything like that.
And yeah, they're up to how many issues now?
They started back in April and they're up to, just finished the other day, the 25th,
up to 19 issues that are out and they're all half issues at a time.
So there's a story going on at once.
And the good thing is I skimmed the episodes and episode four is one, two parts.
Oh, it shows three, three, two, two.
Okay.
Episode four, hold on.
That doesn't make sense.
Right here.
Okay.
Part one of episode four is three parts.
Part two of episode four is two parts.
So it's five parts total for episode four.
I'll have to see what that means.
And then let me go look back real quick at episode one.
Episode one, digital gate open is one, two, three, four parts.
And they were all released on the same day, April 26th.
Let's see.
Episode two is one, two parts were released on May 16th.
But episode two continues with a part two on May 30th.
There's one, two parts of that.
Yeah.
So like the release schedule is a little bit weird.
They release chunks on a single day and those go together.
And I don't know how much of like a complete story those tell, but because then it continues
in a week or so later, week, two weeks, whatever later and tells more story.
So yeah, the release is kind of weird.
So I thought I've got time.
I don't need to jump on this right away.
And now I have the time now.
Diaboday is here and I wanted to get this stuff out in celebration of it.
And as a start to my journey on covering Digimon some more again.
And that's it.
So that's all I have to say.
On this for now.
Until next time, take care.
Be well.
I hope you enjoyed that.
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This is MJ signing out.
This has been a Story Over Everything production.