as for digimon imo the biggest problem with the later seasons is that it's sort of confused as to whether it wants to be a monster anime or a mecha anime..? the part with the humans fusing with their digimon - i dunno, i thought was extremely weird, i didn't see what it added to the story at all, and i really wish they left it out D:
digimon's always pleasantly surprised me in terms of character development, but this one was even better than the previous two haha - rika had a lovely arc, takato got some huge development, henry's character was well rounded and had some nice depth. i thought takato's friends becoming tamers was completely unexpected, haha it was nice how not only were they not "random friends dropped and never heard from again after ep 2", they even got some development of their own!
plotwise, i loved how they weren't a group at first but eventually all learnt to work together, the transition to that and the juri-takato stuff was excellently paced
on the other hand, some stretches of them exploring the digital world got pretty slow - to think they only got to the digiworld halfway through the show! the villains also didn't really do anything for me, idk i didn't even really get the conflict of the first half..? the shady evil technology-wielding adult humans we'd see in brief shots seemed to be built up as the villains, but they never got around to doing anything, and then by the subsequent arcs they became the good guys.. ?!??!
i liked the ending v much though - i might be reading too much into it lol, but i loved the idea that, while the kids can be optimistic and idealistic and believe they can change their future and etc etc, at the end of the day it's the adults that have to make the hard decisions