Japanese Title: Tohma's Day Off, Exploding BomberNanimon
When Tohma shows up to DATS headquarters, he finds Masaru and Agumon acting suspiciously polite. Tohma, naturally, is immediately suspicious and asks to know what’s going on.
After a bit more prodding, Masaru spills it: he has to take a makeup exam at school, and he’ll be forced to repeat the year if he doesn’t attend. What he wants, however, isn’t tutoring: the day of the test is Chika’s birthday, and he wants someone to take care of her in his place. Yoshino offers, but Masaru says that he needs some kind of male or father figure for her.
Tohma agrees to check out Masaru’s family after hearing Masaru use the word “family”. Sayuri and Chika immediately take a liking to him, and Tohma in turn finds himself charmed by Sayuri and compelled to do his best for Chika. Chika requests to meet Tohma’s partner, and Tohma Realizes Gaomon; Sayuri manages to convince the two to stay for dinner. While dining, Tohma catches sight of the Daimon family photo, seeing how close they are as a family; he departs the table quickly, saying that he’s not used to this kind of atmosphere, but thanking Sayuri for the meal and promising Masaru that he’ll take care of Chika well.
That night, Tohma makes a schedule for a particularly lavish birthday celebration for Chika befitting his noble status. Declaring it perfect, he names it “The Magnificent Birthday Plan”.
Tohma arrives the next day in elegant fashion to pick up Chika, and while Masaru is a little unnerved by Tohma’s sudden enthusiasm for the birthday, he’s happy to leave Chika in his care. However, Tohma’s plan immediately starts to unravel when Chika tells him that she has something else she wants to do, and while he has the driver take her there, he wonders what to do in order to get back on his calculated plan.
Tohma’s driver is forced to stop when Chika accidentally directs him to a place where he can’t keep driving, and Chika says that they can just walk from there. The place where Chika wanted to go ends up being a humble game arcade, where she has him try to get a plushie she wants from a UFO catcher game. He ends up getting the wrong one, and on top of that Chika starts to beat him at the other arcade games while Tohma realizes that she really is, after all, the sister of Masaru.
Tohma tries to bring things back on track and take her to a French restaurant when Chika says that she’s hungry, but Chika instead suggests a place she likes, a rather simple monjayaki
place. Tohma isn’t used to this kind of food, but finds it delicious; he runs into trouble when the place turns out to only accept cash, and Sayuri ends up paying for the meal.
Chika’s next request is to see fireworks, so Tohma takes her to an amusement park where there will be a fireworks show at night. They enjoy themselves at the park attractions in the meantime, and they go on a Ferris wheel at night to look at the view. The sight of Chika with her mother brings back sudden memories of a young Tohma with his own mother, and Tohma realizes that he hasn’t had this kind of fun in a long time.
The peace is suddenly interrupted when explosions from far off begin, not as a part of the fireworks show but as a result of a Digimon attack from a BomberNanimonnote . Determined to still make this the perfect birthday for Chika, Tohma Realizes Gaomon and directs DATS to close off and evacuate the area. Satsuma tells Tohma to wait for backup, but Tohma, declaring that It's Personal, evolves Gaomon to Gaogamon and prepares to fight.
BomberNanimon responds with a threat of detonating a ton of bombs at once, and Tohma realizes that he can kill two birds with one stone by having Gaogamon chuck BomberNanimon in the air, which would create large explosions in the sky akin to the fireworks Chika wants. Tohma gives the order and Gaogamon follows, creating the desired effect and allowing Chika to see the fireworks – just in time for Masaru to finish his exams in school.
Tohma apologizes for not having been able to show Chika and Sayuri the fireworks, but Sayuri assures him that they’d seen them and that they know he was the ones responsible for them. Chika thanks him and honors him with a kiss on the cheek, and when Tohma suggests the French restaurant again for dinner, Sayuri instead just offers him to come to the Daimon house for dinner again.
Chika gets to have a celebration at home with cake, with Masaru and Yoshino also in attendance. Masaru apologizes for not being able to spend Chika’s special day with her, but Chika says that she had a lot of fun with Tohma. As Masaru and Agumon fight over the last fried egg, Tohma slyly snatches it away.
Tropes
- Bowdlerise: Because of Disney’s concerns that the episode would be too similar to the September 11, 2001 terrorism incident, they had the dubbing team turn BomberNanimon into the abovementioned Citramon, who, rather than throwing bombs, squirts out some kind of green juice (it’s also a Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo reference).
- Cephalothorax: BomberNanimon, due to being a Nanimon variant.
- Foreshadowing: Tohma’s interest in Masaru and his family? It comes from his much, much deeper-rooted issues with his own.
- Large Ham: Masaru's teacher and BomberNanimon.
- Plant Person: BomberNanimon gets changed to a walking, talking orange in the dub.
- Plot-Based Photograph Obfuscation: In the photo of the Daimon family, a glare of light conveniently hides the face of Masaru’s father.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Masaru takes one look at the questions on his makeup test and weakly declares, "I'm gonna fail real bad."
- Throw Down the Bomblet: How BomberNanimon attacks. In the dub they're some kind of green fruit that acts more like a green flashbang.
