The Power of Sincerity

A few years ago, Brad did a blog post about what Matt’s Crest of Friendship meant to him. After finishing Digimon Adventure Tri again last year, I wanted to write something about Mimi’s Crest of Sincerity.

While Tri didn’t sit well with many fans, I loved it. Especially the first few movies. The second movie in particular gave us wonderful character development stories about Joe and Mimi. 

Recently moved back to Japan from the United States, Mimi takes on the responsibility of creating a café for their school festival. She’s forward about what she wanted: Daters, an American restaurant she’d been to and an obvious reference to real-world Hooters (but the PG version). Their new friend Meiko was impressed by Mimi’s confidence. In response, we get a powerful line from Mimi. Both the original and the dub are striking so I’ve included them both:

“Honestly I don’t like holding myself back for the sake of others. Being quiet in front of people means you’re just complaining later.” (Original Japanese Sub)

“No point in bottling it all up and worrying what others will think. Staying quiet in public just means feeling frustrated in private later.” (American English Dub)

This impulsivity is a recurring theme throughout the movie, continually getting her into trouble. Her fellow Digi-Destined Izzy calls her ego-centric for jumping into the battle instead of waiting for help. Her classmates call her a narcissist in the dub. The original sub uses the word “Jikochu”, self-centered and annoying. 

In a world where we praise authenticity in how we act and how we live, it’s easy to get caught up in ourselves and be jikochu. We can forget, like Mimi, to consider others’ feelings. Even well-meaning authenticity doesn’t just give us license to say whatever we want just because it pops into our minds. It’s a learning curve of how to express ourselves authentically and appropriately. 

Later on, as Joe deals with his own character development, he’s able to trigger his Crest of Reliability (a post for another time) to the extent that Gomamon reaches his mega level Vikemon. His growth inspires Mimi, who jokingly calls him jikochu. He responds, “You’re fine that way too, I guess.” This line basically gives Mimi permission to be herself, flaws and all, rocketing Palmon to mega level as well. 

So maybe authenticity (or sincerity) has more to do with how we see ourselves than how we actually live?