Free Web NovelChapter 238: Chapter 205: Digital Monster Great Adventure
"Nani mo wow-wow-wow-wow—"
"Kono sora ni..."
Zog hummed a garbled version of "Butter-Fly" as he organized the necessary materials for the first season of the *Digital Monster* anime.
Everyone sang the theme song with made-up lyrics like that when they were kids. No one was in a position to laugh at anyone else.
So, the lyrics didn’t need to be a perfect replica; as long as the general meaning was there, it would be fine.
It was basically about becoming a butterfly and chasing your dreams. He could just hand that concept to a professional lyricist to expand into lyrics in the common tongue.
Zog’s team could handle the rest of the soundtrack for *Digital Monster Adventure*, but two songs absolutely had to use the original score.
The first was the opening theme, "Butter-Fly." The title itself wasn’t widely known; it was the kind of song where you’d be stumped if you just heard the name, but the moment it started playing, you’d go, "Oh, it’s *this* song!"
It was the essential background music for all the iconic scenes in the first *Digital Monster* anime and its movies.
The other, of course, was "Brave Heart," the dedicated evolution theme. The moment Zog heard it, he felt like spinning around.
In the next second, with a flash of white light, Zog Beast would Mega Evolve into... War—Zog—Beast—!
Then he’d gain the ability, Dragon Beast Slayer. ’As long as I reckon you’re a Dragon Beast, I’ll have an advantage against you!’
For some reason, whenever he imagined the evolution sequence, the pronunciation of the name would unconsciously drift into the Taiwanese dub version.
With the two main theme songs decided, the next step was the primary Digital Monster designs.
During the initial project proposal, he had only finalized the main cast’s Digital Monsters and their evolution lines, not the villains or important supporting characters.
Zog sketched out these Digital Monsters from memory.
First came the most memorable villains: the Dark Four Heavenly Kings—Steel Sea Dragon Beast, Puppet Beast, Mechanical Evil Dragon Beast, and Joker Emperor.
Although the four were a group, their power levels always felt completely mismatched. Joker Emperor was clearly overpowered, and the sense of dread from the other three couldn’t even compare.
Joker Emperor was so well-crafted that even though Zog remembered the entire plot clearly, he still subconsciously considered him the final boss.
’As for the actual final boss, Apocalypse Beast... who’s that? Doesn’t ring a bell.’
Then there were the two early-to-mid-game villains, Demon Beast and Vampire Demon Beast. Oh, and he couldn’t forget the comic relief, Ape Beast.
He hadn’t noticed until he started organizing it all. ’Why are there so many poop-related Elements in *Digital Monster*? Is it some weird fetish of the director or producer?’
Once the main villains were decided, the plot outline fell into place. After all, the story of *Digital Monster Adventure* wasn’t complicated; it was just a tale of fighting monsters and leveling up.
However, its depiction of the children’s growth and its well-developed supporting characters made the anime far better to watch than a generic, lifeless level-up story.
Speaking of supporting characters, the important ones had to be faithfully recreated: Lion Beast, Fairy Beast, and Wizard Beast.
Oh, God. Zog couldn’t wait to see all the kids gathered in front of their Magic Vision Devices, full of anticipation, laughing and chatting as they waited for the weekly episode of *Digital Monster Adventure*—only to end up a crying mess after watching the Wizard Beast episode.
Finally, there were the character designs for the main group. He still needed to give them localized names.
There was the super-charismatic male lead, Day, and the classic awkward and angsty second male lead, Matt. The name Matt really didn’t sound anything like Da He, but since Da He was canonically of Gaulish descent, he actually did have the name Matt...
He had thought organizing the *Digital Monster* plot would be a quick job, but it ended up taking almost the entire day to write down everything he needed.
Zog wasn’t too worried about the animation. If worse came to worst, he could delay the release to ensure quality. The only problem right now was the gameplay on the Digital Monster Machine.
The pet-raising and interactive elements were easy enough to implement; the difficult part was the battle system.
Zog wanted to make player-versus-player battles have high replayability and for fights against wild Digital Monsters to be challenging.
He planned to add a lot of wild Digital Monster battles to the Tyrannosaurus Machine. Winning these fights would grant resources for raising monsters, along with a chance for a Digital Egg to drop.
Battles could be triggered not only at random times but also through specific bosses tied to the purchase of other games.
And for the most innovative feature, special enemies could be triggered at specific geographic locations.
’Okay, so it’s not that innovative. I stole it from that number-one IP mobile game.’
It wouldn’t be as advanced, though; you couldn’t just trigger them anywhere on a 1:1 map of the real world.
The best the Zog Group could do was to place trigger sources at a few fixed locations, like the Group’s stores in various cities. They could also negotiate with other business groups who wanted to collaborate in the future.
They could occasionally swap the trigger points and run events.
’For the players here, it’ll definitely be novel enough.’
But the prerequisite for all of this was making the battle gameplay fun.
Unfortunately, this was a blind spot in Zog’s knowledge. Turn-based combat was never his forte, and he hadn’t played many such games.
When he played Pocket Monster games, he was just a casual player with zero interest in studying all the stats.
He hadn’t been a numbers-focused game designer back then, either.
As for *Digital Monster’s* own games... the less said about those, the better.
The task of designing the battle system’s gameplay and stats was handed over to Uffie’s team. They had experience with game balance from their work on tower defense, making them the most qualified people for the job, aside from the team maintaining the auto-battler game.
Unfortunately, the proposals submitted so far didn’t quite hit the mark. They had plenty of depth in terms of pure numbers but lacked richness in mechanics and didn’t align well with the anime’s world.
They were barely satisfactory. If no better plan came along, he could still use them.
But as the core product meant to link all of Zog’s major entertainment properties, he naturally hoped for a more polished final result.
Zog stretched. He’d been a bit too diligent today. ’Maybe I should take a vacation after this busy period.’
’Traveling is out. I’ve basically visited all the famous spots on this Continent.’
’A real vacation means completely vegging out at home.’
He yawned and got up to walk around. Sitting for too long was bad for you. Although he didn’t know if it affected a Dragon’s body, getting some exercise couldn’t hurt.
’I’m getting old. It’s time to start focusing on my health.’
KNOCK KNOCK. A knock sounded at the door.
"Come in."
It was Elsa. "Boss, the demo reels from both teams have arrived."
"Oh, have they? Let’s see them."
’I’ve already been working for so long today, might as well get everything done in one go.’
To choose one of the two teams to produce the *Digital Monster* anime, Zog had asked each to create two demo scenes to test their skills.
The specified content for the demos was a battle between Tyrannosaurus Beast and Garuru Beast, and a dramatic scene showing the children’s panic upon first arriving in the Digital World.
If they could handle these two types of scenes well, producing the entire anime should be no problem.
As for why Tyrannosaurus Beast and Garuru Beast were fighting, there was no reason. The villainous Digital Monsters hadn’t been designed yet, so he had no choice but to have the two main characters’ partners fight each other.
The important thing was how well the fight scene was made. Who was fighting whom wasn’t crucial.
The first reel to play was the short film from Sapphire Art, a studio from the Royal City.
Neither segment was long, only about a minute each.
He finished watching them quickly.
They were serviceable. Nothing special, but nothing wrong either.
The battle content didn’t add any extra lore for the two Digital Monsters; it was just a simple beastly brawl. It looked like they had referenced the animals that existed in this world.
’Basically human-eye motion capture.’
The resulting effect was very smooth, and the pacing was good.
In the end, Tyrannosaurus Beast stood on the right side of the screen and used Super Flame, while Garuru Beast used Demonic Fox Flame. They had a beam struggle to conclude the scene.
The one on the left lost.
The dramatic scene was also solid. Each child’s expression was vivid, and the character designs, which Sapphire Art had created themselves, were not particularly outstanding but were easily distinguishable from one another.
’All in all, a positive review. The perfect contractor.’
Next up was Joseph Animation’s work.
"Er..."
It left Zog completely baffled.
Just as a contractor hates a client with too many strange ideas, a client also hates a contractor like this.
Not reading the client’s requirements carefully was just as infuriating as the client saying, "Let’s just go with the first version."
In Joseph Animation’s demo, even the art style of the Digital Monsters had been changed. It was a bloody and brutal Tyrannosaurus Beast versus a sinister and vicious Garuru Beast.
They fought until blood splattered everywhere and severed limbs littered the ground. In the end, both monsters were mutually destroyed, dying tragic deaths on the spot.
It scared Elsa so much that she covered her eyes, unable to watch. She hadn’t even had this reaction to the zombies in *Holy Mountain Journey*.
’This is bad. *Digital Monster* has turned into a cult film.’
Zog didn’t even want to watch the second demo. He was ready to eliminate them on the spot.
"Is it over?" Elsa asked, her eyes still covered.
"It’s over."
"Then... there’s also a supplementary document from Joseph Animation."
"A supplementary document? I don’t really want to see it. Why don’t you take a look? If it’s useless, just toss it."
Zog said with some disdain. He believed that any animation that needed a supplementary document was a failure in visual storytelling.
That might be a bit of an absolute statement, but he was certain that any anime requiring extra explanation was doomed to be a commercial failure.
People watched for entertainment, not to conduct academic research.
Elsa carefully opened the document, worried it might contain more shocking illustrations that would jump out and scare her.
However, when she opened it, she saw it was densely packed with text.
"Um, it’s about their concepts for the *Digital Monster* worldview and monster designs. There’s a lot."
"What do you mean? Are they looking down on me? Do they think I don’t have my own world-building for *Digital Monster*?"
Zog had no desire to know what kind of world they had designed. He would bet money it was also in a style completely unsuitable for children.
"There are also additions to the Digital Monsters’ combat moves."
"Oh?" Zog’s ears twitched. That, at least, was understandable. He had indeed designed few moves for the Digital Monsters; to make them memorable in the anime, they usually only had one or two signature attacks.
That was fine for an animation, but it was inadequate for a battle-focused game.
"And... the appendices back here are, um, for specific Digital Monster levels, stats, move damage, and attribute settings that determine battle outcomes. He says he made a comprehensive numerical system to make the battles more logical."
"Huh? Let me see that."
Zog was stunned. ’They’re an animation studio that moonlights in game balance design?’
He took a look and was blown away. He read it carefully for half an hour. It even included detailed battle simulations.
"Seriously, if he has this kind of talent, why is he making animation?"
