While Tai searches his house for his old phonebook and listens to reports of unusual cases of anemia rising throughout the city, Gatomon observes the chaos of the Kamiya household from afar. Perched atop a nearby apartment building, she watches Kari and muses, “Every time I see her, I get this strange sensation.” Unable to attack Kari as Myotismon commanded, Gatomon begins to wonder why. She’s frustrated by her gut-level reaction to Kari playing with her pet cat, Meko. Does Gatomon secretly wish to trade places with Meko as Kari’s feline friend? The clues point to yes, but Gatomon remains uncertain.
Gatomon’s past is a blur, blocked by years of pain and suffering under Myotismon, who found her as a rookie-level Digimon, Salamon. She yearns to uncover her past and believes Kari might hold the key.
In a nearby forest, Wizardmon tracks down the crow that captured the Digivice. He scares the crow away from its nest and recovers the device just as DemiDevimon appears, asking what he has. Wizardmon, pretending to be a drunkard since his trip to the human world, pulls out a bottle of beer and pretends he snuck away to drink. He gives the beer to DemiDevimon to keep him quiet about his apparent affliction from Myotismon. Wizardmon then returns to his friend Gatomon, who once saved his life years ago, and gives her the Digivice, proclaiming his loyalty to her instead of Myotismon. He believes she is the eighth Digimon, and during their conversation, her memories begin to return little by little.
As an in-training Digimon, Nyaromon, she waited for years for Kari to arrive in the Digital World, but to no avail. She then traversed the Digital World for years as Salamon in search of Kari but found Myotismon instead, who tortured her into obedience and forgetfulness. Her mission became a blank, and she projected all her old intense motivation into working for him. But now, she has found Kari!
Wizardmon and Gatomon fly and jump, respectively, to Kari’s balcony and introduce themselves. The eighth child is finally found, and the team seems to have circumvented Myotismon. However, when Gatomon and Wizardmon infiltrate his lair to find Kari’s crest and tag, Myotismon appears. He discovers their rebellion, defeats Wizardmon (but crucially does not yet destroy him), and captures Gatomon to bring back to his lair for more punishment.
The episode is pretty straightforward but has a few minor flaws. First, Gatomon spends a long time recounting her past, not just through a memory sequence, but actively narrating it while no one else is around to hear except us (who aren’t in the episode). She monologues about her past for several minutes in the episode’s opening scenes, displaying either a bit of insanity (understandable, given the torture she endured under Myotismon) or more likely, the writers got a bit lazy and decided to tell us the backstory instead of showing it. Another issue is the situation where Myotismon has Kari’s crest and tag. Surely the tag would have been housed with the other eight Digimon’s tags in the undersea cave guarded by Drimogemon? And if he had access to all the tags, why didn’t he take them all to stop the Digidestined before they could even defeat Etemon? This situation does answer one speculative question: anyone can find crests as long as they have the tag.
Finally, the ending is a cliffhanger, and we’ve had a few too many of those lately. Where’s the closure? Nonetheless, it’s been a fun ride so far, and I don’t intend to step off the train before reaching the station. So expect more Digimon essays in the future!
