I just finished reading the book on my Kindle yesterday, and now that I’ve collected my thoughts and emotions, it’s time for my Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna Spoilerless Review.

Quick disclaimer before I begin: I read this in Japanese and not in English, obviously, so my understanding of the book only goes as far as my understanding of the Japanese language.

My Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna Spoilerless Review

While Kizuna does a better job of telling the same “but being adults is scary” story than Tri and manages to make it more emotional and meaningful, it would have had made a bigger impact if Tri never came out. Which honestly just makes Digimon Adventure Tri the gift that keeps on giving.

While we’re talking about Tri, a lot of people were wondering if I’d like it more or less than Tri, so I made this Tweet yesterday which ranks each part of Tri compared to Kizuna.

About as good as Reuinon and Loss (marginally better than Loss, but marginally worse than Reuinion). Not as good as Determination or Confession (by a long shot), but better than Coexistence and Future.

The ending and overall threat falls flat and loses any meaning because, in general, we know what happens in the future due to the 02 epilogue, making the entire journey fairly meaningless.

My main take away was ultimately “Well, it’s good to know every writer for anything Digimon Adventure related only have about two or three unique ideas collectively.” A lot of the elements don’t seem to just be references to previous Digimon Adventure movies, but stale retellings of the same elements.

Overall, the story in Kizuna feels fairly lackluster and uninspired because there’s nothing that happens that hasn’t happened in any of the Adventure movies before.

Is it worth reading? Sure, if you like Digimon and want more from the Adventure kids. I found myself getting a little emotional towards the end, honestly, even if it’s likely that these emotions were more caused by nostalgia as opposed to good story telling.

Will I watch the movie? Yeah sure, when it’s available to watch where I am in Australia, so I might as well. I just hope that it’s better than my understanding of the book.

I’ll write a full blown spoiler-ific review with which of these story elements are reused and what parts I wasn’t too fond of. I’ll also go into more detail about my feelings for the book in general in the next week or so, but I thought I’d post this Kizuna spoilerless review first to accompany my review on Good Reads.

I gave this book 2 stars on Good Reads, but I was almost tempted to give it 3 stars because it DID make me emotional and there were parts I liked. Oh how I wish I could give half stars on GoodReads.

As I said, I’ll see the movie when it comes out, but I just really hope that my lack of enjoyment is simply due to a language barrier with my only-decent Japanese and not due to the story being rubbish.

I’m sure the voice actors and soundtrack for the movie will be incredible and emotional and the animation style will be beautiful, however, the book was fairly lackluster without these visual or audio elements.

You can buy the book on Amazon Japan for Kindle here.

Have you read the book or seen the movie? What’s your own take on the story? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

I’m sorry that I stopped writing Kizuna Countdown/Leadup to Kizuna posts, by the way, life got in the way a little bit, but here’s my Kizuna spoilerless review instead, I guess.

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