Experience Tumblr Like Never Before
I think if there was ever a follow up to Survive it'd probably be an 02 and/or Tamer's inspired sequel, and I do have thoughts about that, but I honestly think Frontier getting the Survive treatment would be coolest. I mean already Frontier is probably the anime most like Adventure outside of Adventure's reboot, so I think it would work really well for similar reasons as Survive. But it's got enough going that it'd be distinct too.
Survive deals with the horror in having another life form, a life form with the potential for incredible amounts of strength tied to you and your sense of identity. The horror of a group of children being spirited away to another world in the name of saving it (as sacrifices).
But with Frontier, the horror in asking what kind of kids, or for what reason kids would choose to follow a message and end up in another world. The horror in becoming something else.
Survive has 10 main characters, there are 10 legendary warriors.
Three Archangels and Lucemon instead of Four Holy Beasts and Fanglongmon
Instead of Haru and Miyuki a Strabimon (or Flamemon) who is later revealed to be a former human kid is found already in the Digital World
Instead of echoes of the human world the kids find chunks of land getting rearranged or just straight up missing
MagnaGarurumon and KaiserGreymon instead of Boltboutamon and Plutomon for route dependent evolutions and dependent on which kids survive to the end.
Susanoomon if all survive to the end/true ending
Karma/affinity levels determining attribute of characters (not how variable attribute usually works by tbh why not)
One route kids stay in digital world as digimon in another they leave the digital world forever in another they stay digimon but go home?
Light and Darkness can still be twins but like maybe codependent prior to being separated in the digital world. Like Strabimon is met by the group immediately and Duskmon is trying to hunt the kids down, but Strabimon weirdly won't let them hurt Duskmon?
Protag would be Flamemon(or equivalent) when they go back home in Takuya parallel and maybe have to fight human units without hurting them in the Ch 8 parallel
Character who dies because they'd rather die than become a Digimon.
Speaking of which what happens when these kids die?
Character who refuses to become human again because they never want to be weak again.
Character who loses themself to their beast form, maybe hurting themselves or someone else
If we want to include the concept of fractal code, the idea of the kids having parts of their code stolen/ changed/added to, affecting memories, physical traits, tastes, and skillsets.
Character conflicts leading to physical fighting in their Digimon forms
Being able to eat the strange foods in the digital world that would normally definitely be inedible
I think there's a lot of room for drama in what decisions lead the kids to end up in this world
Obviously one of the kids can be dragged their by their bullies so we have some bullies on the same team as their victim.
One kid went because they take any excuse not to go home so figured might as well check this out
Or another kid who desperately need money and were under the assumption this was a meet up for one of their jobs
Water can be the victim of toxic beauty standards/show industry/an idol
I think the fact the gender balance isn't as much of a problem as people might think as I think a lot of the Spirits are actually gender neutral looking enough to be female. I could see Darkness, Ice and/or Wood especially. (See Survive and Plutomon or Cyber Sleuth Alphamon for example).