His Master's Voice

Kari begins having strange visions of another world - a world separate from the real world and the digital world - and things soon escalate when she completely vanishes.

thumb|225px|left|Episode recap for His Master's Voice.

Synopsis
This episode starts with Kari having nightmares. After getting scared by T.K. accidentally making her jump, they run into school. As they run in, Gatomon confides in Patamon about Kari’s bad dreams, and how Kari refuses to talk about them.

In class, T.K. mulls over Kari’s silence. Meanwhile, Kari is mulling over her dream. As she does, she realises that the classroom is beginning to fade and a thick fog envelopes her. When the classroom disappears entirely, she finds she is in ankle-deep water. Back in the classroom, T.K. sees Kari seem to fuzz over, as if she was on a T.V. with bad reception. ‘Kari!’ he cries, standing up. The entire class looks round and stares at him, including Kari, whose outline is back to normal. Then they turn to look at Kari. Suddenly, Kari closes her eyes and falls to the side in a faint. A friend catches her. The teacher sends her to the nurse’s office. As she walked to the nurse’s office, Kari convinced herself she had fallen asleep and dreamt the water and the fog. She sees a vision of her younger self. She begins to hear water dripping. She turns to see a shadow of a digimon with glowing red eyes. She screams.

At the end of class, T.K. runs to the nurse to find Kari, but is told she isn’t there. Confused he runs to check the girl’s bathroom, library, staircase and the gate to the digital world. Suddenly, he sees her sitting outside. He runs outside to talk to her. She tells him what happened, and how she’s scared the digimon are going to take her to ‘their world’. In his worry for Kari, T.K. tells her he cared too much about her to let her go without a fight. Kari stares at him in astonishment. Embarrassed, T.K. stutters an excuse and runs off.

After school, Kari walks out alone, and stares at the beach across the road. As she crosses, Gatomon spots her from her tree, and jumps down to the pavement. Suddenly, Kari’s outline begins to fuzz again. A lorry goes past, and when it’s gone, so has Kari, leaving only her bag.

In the computer room, Cody, Davis, Upamon, Demiveemon, Poromon and Patamon are watching Yolei upgrade the  D-3s. T.K. walks in. Patamon asks him what the matter is. Gatomon bursts in and tells them that ‘Kari’s disappeared’.

Kari opens her eyes, and finds herself at a beach. There’s a lighthouse nearby, however, the colour of the whole place is very subdued, and the lighthouse is emitting black light.

T.K. tells the others that she might not be in the Digital World. Davis says he must have hit his head, and Yolei complains she can’t find Kari in the Digital World. Cody loses his temper and shouts at them to stop talking. He says they mustn’t go into the Digital World blindly, and should wait until they pinpointed Kari’s location. T.K. repeats that she’s not in the digi-world, and runs out to the beach to find her. Patamon and Gatomon follow. T.K. says he should have realised she needed help. He then realises Kari must be in a different dimension.

Kari is exploring, and notices a cave. She wonders if it’s the way back home, and goes in. She calls in the cave, and realises it’s a tunnel. As she goes deeper in she hears hoarse voices calling her name. She sees shadows like the one she saw earlier. They ask her to help them. Kari notices the creatures look ill, and asks if they’re digimon. They reply that they’re Scubamon. They say they don’t know how they got to the tunnel, that they were ‘serving our undersea master’, and then suddenly were in the tunnel. Kari then sees Dark Spirals on the Scubamons’ arms, and realised the Digimon Emperor had something to do with this. The Scubamon tells her they had summoned her to help them because her trait of light allowed her to free them. She reaches forward, and grabs a Scubamon’s arm. A purple light shines from the spiral, and the tunnel begins to collapse. They all run out. An Airdramon is circling ahead, and a Scubamon says it serves the Digimon Emperor. It attacks. Kari begins to despair.

Patamon, Gatomon and T.K. are on the beach, shouting Kari’s name. Suddenly, a purple light appears, and they see Kari in the middle of it calling T.K.’s name. The three jump into the light, and are transported to the strange dimension. Seeing Airdramon, Patamon digivolves to Pegasusmon. Gatomon is unable to digivolve – Kari’s d-terminal was in her bag, which is back in the real world. Gatomon realises that there’s a Control Spire in the lighthouse, and tells Pegasusmon. Pegasusmon destroys the control spire, and Gatomon digivolves to Angewomon. Pegasusmon and Angewomon easily defeat Airdramon. Angewomon then destroys the dark spirals on the Scubamons’ arms. Their bodies begin to pulsate and shift. They stand up, a completely different shape. They reach forward for Kari, and tell her she could be their queen. Angewomon scares them back into the ocean with a warning shot. As they retreat, they tell Kari they had thought she would help them revolt against their undersea Master, but they had clearly been wrong. They said to beware of their Master, who would come for her. Kari, Angewomon, T.K. and Pegasusmon then re-enter the purple light back to the real world. Kari asks T.K. what he had meant that morning when he’d said he cared for her, and he once again stammers out an excuse. She then tells him she cares for him too, and they both chuckle.

The large silhouette of Dragomon rises from the Dark Ocean. It is a clearly the Scubamons’ Undersea Master, and it growls menacingly.

Quotes
"You're gonna quit? Give up? Just like that? Look Kari, I care too much about you to let anyone take you without a fight!"
 * —T.K., to Kari during the school break.

"Ah, what the heck. I got nine lives."
 * —Gatomon making a snap decision to follow T.K. and Patamon through the portal to the Dark Ocean.

"Hey, T.K., remember this morning when you said you really cared for me? What did you mean by that?" "Huh? Oh well, you know, it was just... stuff." "Well, you know what? I care for you too."
 * —Kari and T.K., after escaping the Dark Ocean.

Animation errors

 * Gatomon's tail ring can be seen during digivolution, even though she lost it. This is a result of using the same digivolution sequence from the first series.

Dubbing changes

 * T.K.'s response to Kari during the school break is different in each version. In the English dub, T.K. tells Kari that he cares too much to let her be taken away, whilst in the original episode, T.K. is simply angry at Kari for relying too much on her brother Tai.
 * Near the end of the original episode, the mysterious creatures wanted to mate with Kari in order to create more powerful descendants to combat their new god. In the English dub, this is replaced by simply wanting her as their Queen.

Digimon references

 * Later on, in the episode Genesis of Evil, it's revealed that Ken Ichijouji also traveled to the Dark Ocean, before he became the Digimon Emperor.

Real-world references

 * This episode is named after the painting by Francis Barraud, His Master's Voice, made famous as a trademark in the music business.
 * In the opening title, a column of DigiCode appears displaying the following:


 * This translates to "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" (フングルイ ムグルウナフ クトゥルウ ルルイエ ウガフナグル フタグン), an occult phrase from H. P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu which means "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming". Later, when Hikari is alone, she walks past a sign that reads "Innsmouth" (インスマウス), a fictional town in Cthulhu Mythos.


 * The true forms of the so-called Scubamon are based on the Deep Ones of H.P. Lovecraft literature.

Miscellaneous trivia

 * Kari announces the episode title in the Japanese episode.
 * This is the first episode in the series to feature a digivolution to the Ultimate level. There won't be another normal digivolution of this kind until the episode Destiny in Doubt.
 * Despite the ominous appearance of Dragomon at the end of the episode, his storyline was never developed.