Digimon Legend Celebrates 20th Anniversary with New Sketch

It’s a pretty big year for the Digimon franchise as not only did it just officially turn 21 as of this month, but it celebrated its landmark 20th Anniversary with a huge new slate of projects that including a brand new feature film, a rebooted anime series, new video games, and even an updated version of the card game in Japan. It’s an exciting time to be a fan of the franchise, so it must be even more exciting for those even closer to the franchise like the staff that helped bring the original anime series to life. In fact, one of those legendary staff members offered up a fun celebration of the anniversary.

Kenji Watanabe, who serves as the chief designer for many of the fan favorite monsters we have today, commemorated the anniversary in a fun sketch spotted by @JP_Excelsior on Twitter. In the special 20th Anniversary Memorial Story Project booklet, Watanabe’s sketch features the original 8 Digimon partners in fancy dress as the celebrate the upcoming debut of the 20th Anniversary film, Digimon Adventure Last Evolution Kizuna.

It won’t be long before we get eyes on Last Evolution Kizuna as the film already opened in Japan last February. Fathom Events will be bringing the film to United States theaters on March 25th, and it’s set up to end the original story that began with the first Digimon Adventure anime series. After this film brings that original story to an end, however, things will be starting over from the very beginning with a brand new TV series featuring younger versions of the eight original DigiDestined children.

This new Digimon Adventure anime is set to premiere in April along with the rest of the Spring 2020 anime season, but there has yet to be a confirmation of an English language release as of this writing. English translated promotional materials seem to imply that we’ll get to see it, but streaming or release details are still not available as of this writing.

How do you feel about the Digimon franchise 20 years later? Are you excited for the new Last Evolution Kizuna film? What about the new Digimon Adventure reboot series? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or talk to me directly about all things anime and other cool things @Valdezology on Twitter!