WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Season 1, Episode 4 of Digimon Adventure (2020), "Birdramon Soars!" now streaming on Crunchyroll.
Following a two-month hiatus, Digimon's reboot series has returned, picking back up where the anime stopped in April with its fourth episode. Somewhat fortuitously, "Birdramon Soars!" actually makes a lot more sense as a late June release as it contains more than one reference to a classic summer blockbuster or two.
Having survived a battle against a new viral Digimon and, in the process, skirting nuclear disaster in the real world thanks to the arrival of Omnimon, Tai and Matt return to their world. Tai heads off to summer camp, as planned, but the third episode ended with Tai pulled once more into the Digital World. Unlike the strange wasteland that he found himself in the first two episodes, the landscape Tai arrives in this time is that of a lush, tropical jungle.
In Episode 4, as the DigiDestined kid gazes out at the scenery before him, we pan over flying Digimon in the sky, smaller creatures bouncing along the grass and, in front of a sparkling lake, a Brachiosaurus Digimon majestically standing tall. All this, along with Tai's wonderment at this strange and ancient-looking world, untouched by human hands, is strikingly similar to the now-iconic scene from Jurassic Park in which Sam Neil's Dr. Alan Grant is brought to tears by his first glimpse at the resurrected dinos on Isla Nublar. Released in June 1993, the Steven Spielberg film was a summertime box office smash and reignited a cultural fascination with the extinct beasts.
But the references don't end there. Rather than Matt, Tai is partnered with another of the original DigiDestined crew, Sora, in this episode, who also meets her Digital partner, Biyomon. After consulting with Izzy via Digivice, the two humans, along with Biyomon and Agumon, travel further inland toward a mysterious, shining pyramid on the horizon. Their journey soon requires them to take to the water at the bottom of a ravine and, while drifting downstream on a makeshift raft, a shadowy creature stalks them from below.
Having been primed by the aforementioned Jurassic Park homage, the unmistakable shape of a large, fishy predator swimming up from the water's depths to swallow its unsuspecting prey makes it easy to think of Spielberg's other great monster movie, Jaws. Released in June 1975, the prototype of the shark horror subgenre is also viewed as the original summer blockbuster.
When the Digimon leaps from water -- revealing itself to Coelamon, the Ancient Fish Digimon -- the comparison sort of ends. However, the bumpy bassline of the score still has more than a passing resemblance to John Williams' famous Jaws theme.
It's hard to tell if these allusions are deliberate or incidental, but either way, they only strengthen Digimon Adventure's inherent summer vibes.