The short is only four minutes long but Digimon fans have mocked it endlessly, calling it an “abomination.” Angela Anaconda’s art style stands in sharp contrast to Digimon’s anime roots and it just seemed like a strange inclusion. Why include a short from a comedy series on the action-adventure Digimon movie?
And no, contrary to popular internet rumor, the Angela Anaconda short was not the cause of a divorce. That’s been debunked with in-depth analysis by YouTuber TheDigiKnow. However, in the short, the film Angela accidentally attended is L’Amour Fou, which can be seen advertised on the theater’s marquee. That film is about a troubled marriage so perhaps the Angela Anaconda divorce joke was a deep cut reference to this fact? Or it’s just people on the internet being people on the internet.
No matter how much they loathed it, Digimon fans couldn’t escape Angela Anaconda. The 2001 DVD release, the only way to officially watch the movie for over 20 years, had the Angela Anaconda short not as a bonus feature but as part of the official film. You couldn’t watch Digimon: The Movie without at least skipping past Angela Anaconda.
The legacy of this short is so infamous that when Blu-ray publisher Discotek announced a new release of Digimon: The Movie last year, they specifically noted that, “there is no short before Digimon: The Movie.” Even though Discotek did attempt to include it but “hit a wall,” Justin Sevakis, who worked on the new Blu-ray, made it clear the general sentiment of Digimon fans hadn’t changed.
“No Angela Anaconda, she hath been banished.”
The hate for the short continues to be immense and a big part of that is still the question of why it was included in the first place. Even Jeff Nimoy, voice-director and co-writer of Digimon: The Movie, found himself in a similar place to Angela in the short when he attended the premiere and was surprised at its inclusion. As he explained to Digimon podcast With the Will,
