Digimon Story: Time Stranger Prelude

Just two ordinary siblings living their lives in Tokyo — Inori Misono and her younger brother Yuta don't see it coming when things start getting weird. Strange phenomena hit the city, Digimon start showing up where they shouldn't be, and Yuta ends up right in the middle of it. This single-episode ONA from Toei Animation serves as a prelude to the upcoming Digimon Story: Time Stranger game, and it does a surprisingly good job of pulling you into its world in a short runtime. The animation is clean and polished, the kind of quality you'd expect from Toei when they're actually trying, and the whole thing is set to the theme song 'wherever you are,' which gives it this nice emotional throughline even as things escalate. There's a Digimon called Deputymon involved in whatever's going down, and the short leaves you with more questions than answers — clearly by design. If you grew up with Digimon Adventure and want to see the franchise doing something fresh with new characters, this is a solid entry point. It has some of that Sword Art Online energy too, where the digital and real worlds are colliding in ways that feel genuinely threatening. It's only one episode, so the time commitment is basically nothing. Worth checking out if you're curious about where the Digimon franchise is headed in 2025, or if you just want a quick hit of action-fantasy with siblings caught up in something way bigger than them.