Hiroyuki Kakudou, director of Digimon Adventure and Adventure 02, has a little part on his website where he’d commented on the individual Digimon Frontier episodes he directed.
(This Week’s Digimon | This Week’s Digimon 02 | This Week’s Digimon Tamers | This Week’s Digimon Frontier)
Episode 7: “A Town Floating in the Sky! The ToyAgumon Toy Country”
Screenplay: Reiko Yoshida
Director: Hiroyuki Kakudou
Or to be more specific, most of the ones that come out are ToyAgumon Black.
I think there are around 300 (or more) types of Digimon by now,
but the fact it ends in a kanji1 instead of an “n” is really quite unusual.
Episode 13: “Awaken, Seraphimon! The Secret of the Ten Warriors”
Screenplay: Reiko Yoshida
Director: Hiroyuki Kakudou
Whoa, no way, Seraphimon’s turn has come around!
This isn’t the one that appeared in Adventure, so be careful (haha).
Another one that isn’t the one from Adventure is Wizarmon,
although it’s a different-colored one appearing this time called Sorcerymon
(but the regular Wizarmon has appeared in Frontier before).
He’s a fairly similar character to the Wizarmon from the Adventure era,
something like that.
But the enemy is also strong.
So look forward to it.
Episode 20: “The Mysterious Warrior Lurking in the Darkness, Duskmon!”
Screenplay: Yoshimi Narita
Director: Hiroyuki Kakudou
The setting of the Continent of Darkness has finally come into play,
and one of the five evil warriors, Duskmon, makes his appearance,
and even has lines to speak.
But this time Arbormon, or should I say Petaldramon, goes on a rampage-maki2.
Episode 25: “Tomoki’s Lonely Battle, Asuramon’s Trap”
Screenplay: Yoshimi Narita
Director: Hiroyuki Kakudou
There haven’t been a lot of one-on-one action scenes in Frontier,
so this time we have Chackmon-Asuramon and Wolfmon-Karatenmon, a double feature.
The screenplay writer, Narita-san, devoted quite a bit of time to planning.
Although Wolfmon’s eye beams are already in the series setup,
it’s quite surprising that it hasn’t been used up until now.
By the way, although this pillar of fire was also used in the main story, it was made in 3D.
Without looking too realistic or like CG, with a sort of painterly style,
it looked like copper. How did it work out?
Episode 33: “The New Warrior of Darkness! Löwemon & KaiserLeomon”
Screenplay: Hiro Masaki
Director: Hiroyuki Kakudou
So now Kouji’s older twin brother Kouichi openly joins the team.
I don’t know why we used German for these brothers’ attacks,
but when you hear it out loud it sounds pretty cool.
“Licht Angriff!” “Schwarz König!”
But because I never learned German, I have no idea what it means.
The Digimon series has been broadcast a lot overseas,
but I wonder if it’s been changed in Germany.
Well, it’s something they can do as they like.
Appendix
rihito – Licht – light
angurifu – Angriff – attack
shubarutsu – schwarz – black
keenihhi – Konig – king
so I’ve been told.
Episode 40: “The Chosen Ones? The Boys Who Control Angemon”
Screenplay: Akatsuki Yamatoya
Director: Hiroyuki Kakudou
At the time of screenwriting, the title of this episode was “Tomoki, Become a Man”.
Nobody’s actually controlling Angemon (wry laugh).
Somehow, I keep ending up doing Tomoki episodes.
The combination of screenplay and director is unusual, as this is my first time working with Yamatoya-kun.
I haven’t used Angemon in a header image since episode 33 of the first series, huh.
Angemon was in front of a glowing backlight there, but this time Angemon’s not in the light.
But for his replacement voice, the voice actor is Hika…
No, I don’t mean Hikari’s voice, who’s playing Patamon right now3.
Episode 48: “Light and Darkness Become One! Kouichi’s Last Wish”
Screenplay: Yoshimi Narita
Director: Hiroyuki Kakudou
I began publishing on this site in around July of 1999.
I posted with the intention of advertising so that a lot of people could get just a little taste of the morning children’s program Digimon Adventure.
Just around a little before MetalGreymon’s first evolution.
Since it’s for publicity, I actually wanted to make the site before the program started,
but initially I was too busy and didn’t have time.
We didn’t get enough budget for the evolution scene stock footage,
so we had to come up with something that would require fewer drawings,
so we could only make them rotate,
and I had to make all the other CG myself.
Once we reached the first stage with Angemon’s evolution,
we got more budget to do MetalGreymon’s full-CG evolution,
and since the CG department was made for me I finally had some free time.
I subsequently started putting up images on the left section of this site starting with episode 30,
and kept it that way for 19 episodes. Even though I haven’t been maintaining it properly (haha).
Back then, I didn’t think these notices would continue for more than three years.
Tamers and Frontier’s D-Reaper and Digital World,
and DigiEggs and Spirits, were all done by the CG department.
However, with every episode, as far as certain special things went, we didn’t have the budget, so I made those myself.
For this episode, there’s some of Susanoomon’s effects,
and Lucemon Falldown Mode’s special attack “Dead or Alive”.
This is the end of Kakudou’s supervision in the Digimon series,
but because there’s still the concerts and the drama CDs,
I somehow feel like it hasn’t ended yet.
Oh, by the way, by the time I got to directing this episode, Lucemon’s child form,
MagnaGarurumon, and KaiserGreymon
never actually ended up in any episodes I worked on.
Translator's notes
- As in, it ends in “black” (黒). [↩]
- Bokomon has a verbal tic of ending his sentences with “-hara” or “-maki“, likely because of his waistband (haramaki), so Kakudou is reproducing it here. [↩]
- The name of the actor playing Angemon in this episode is Hikaru Midorikawa, with Hikaru (光) meaning “light”. 光 is also read hikari, which thus leads into Director Kakudou saying that it’s not the same as Adventure’s Hikari (her voice actress, Kae Araki, voices Patamon in Frontier). [↩]