What was the original target age for the Digimon series?
After a three-year hiatus, a fifth Digimon series began airing on April 2, 2006. Like Frontier, Savers has no connection with the previous installments, and also marks a new start for the Digimon franchise, with a drastic change in character designs and story-line, in order to reach a broader audience. The story focuses on the challenges faced by the members of D.A.T.S. ("Digital Accident Tactics Squad"), an organization created to conceal the existence of the Digital World and Digimon from the rest of mankind, and secretly solve any Digimon-related incidents occurring on Earth. Later the D.A.T.S. is dragged into a massive conflict between Earth and the Digital World, triggered by an ambitious human scientist named Akihiro Kurata, determined to make use of the Digimon for his own personal gains. The English version was dubbed by Studiopolis and it premiered on the Jetix block on Toon Disney on October 1, 2007. Digivolution in Data Squad requires the human partner's DNA ("Digital Natural Ability" in the English version and "Digisoul" in the Japanese version) to activate, a strong empathy with their Digimon and a will to succeed. 'Digimon Savers' also introduces a new form of digivolving called Burst Mode which is essentially the level above Mega (previously the strongest form a digimon could take). Like previously in Tamers, this plot takes on a dark tone throughout the story and the anime was aimed, originally in Japan, at an older audience consisting of late teens and people in their early twenties from ages 16 to 21. Because of that, along with the designs, the anime being heavily edited and localized for western US audiences like past series, and the English dub being aimed mostly toward younger audiences of children aged 6 to 10 and having a lower TV-Y7-FV rating just like past dubs, Studiopolis dubbed the anime on Jetix with far more edits, changes, censorship, and cut footage. This included giving the Japanese characters full Americanized names and American surnames as well as applying far more Americanization (Marcus Damon as opposed to the Japanese Daimon Masaru), cultural streamlining and more edits to their version similar to the changes 4Kids often made (such as removal of Japanese text for the purpose of cultural streamlining). Despite all that, the setting of the country was still in Japan and the characters were Japanese in the dub. This series was the first to show any Japanese cultural concepts that were unfamiliar with American audiences (such as the manju), which were left unedited and used in the English dub. Also despite the heavy censorship and the English dub aimed at young children, some of the Digimon's attacks named after real weapons such as RizeGreymon's Trident Revolver are not edited and used in the English dub. Well Go USA released it on DVD instead of Disney. The North American English dub was televised on Jetix in the U.S. and on the Family Channel in Canada.