DIGIMON

"Digimon...?"

Ah, I see you have stumbled into this little earth I've been digging a little further from the central clearing of this digital forest! You've clearly inferred this is a page about Digimon, one of my most beloved and long-enduring pieces of comfort media. If you wanted to hear me, the bugfox custodian of this (rather appropriately, given the topic) digital forest make excited noises that are then converted into text about their love of Digimon, you're in the right place!

So, what is Digimon exactly?

Digimon is a (depending on whom you ask) modestly popular Japanese media franchise, originating as a series of virtual pets (that is still going to this day!) that then splintered off into a multitude of animated media, manga and video games. Created by an individual named Akiyoshi Hongo (who doesn't actually exist-I'll get into that later), it originated in 1997 as a sister-line to the very popular Tamagotchi virtual pet toys. Whereas Tamagotchi (a franchise I am to this day still very fond of too, mind!) placed a lot of emphasis on cutesy, often extremely charming creature designs, Digimon had not only a great sense of visual coherency but also a distinct edge to its creatures. If you don't know what I mean exactly, take a look at a this small sample of handpicked Digimon species:

(From left to right from the upper row: MetalGarurumon, Devimon, Cyberdramon and Snimon. Image credit to Bandai and the Digimon Reference Book, sourced from Wikimon.)

...Need I say more?

Anyway, the name "Digimon", as you may have likely inferred already, is a portmanteau of "digital" and "monster", and the premise of Digimon was a reflection of this when it first released in 1997; the eponymous entities were first depicted as living computer viruses that appeared in the form of monsters. This was rather pertinent, given that in the latter half of the 1990s, personal home computers and the internet had started to become a lot more accessible in many parts of the world. Nonetheless, this prospect was still quite unfamiliar territory for many people at the time, given that computers were expensive and as such seen as more of a luxury to the average household for many. I do personally rather enjoy this concept, that the international information superhighway was a new frontier that not only brought a truly unprecedented and rapid access to information and connectivity across the world, but within resided a realm in many ways both like our own world and so alien at once, inhabited by ethereal beings...Digital Monsters.

Isn't Digimon just an attempt to cash in on the success of Pokemon?

Now, I can postulate that unless you're a fellow critter like me who has an intense autistic hyperfixation on critters both real and imagined (and you may well be, if you're here in this digital forest!), you may be raising an eyebrow like a character from the promotional material of a mainstream CG-animated movie. "But isn't Digimon just a rip-off of the more successful Pokemon, you silly bugfox?" you ask, brow furrowed and index digit pointing at me (I'm too busy playing with a Patamon plush to notice though).

Well, you could argue that there are a number of parallels, perhaps most evidently the fact both Pokemon and Digimon are focused around a premise involving magical monstrous animals and entities that usually undergo some form of dramatic transformation, usually dubbed as some form of "evolution"; though in both cases it is often closer to holometabolous insect metamorphosis than actual evolution or speciation. You could list certain comparisons or differences for some time, but that's not what I'm here to do-especially as both Digimon and Pokemon are two pieces of media that were and still very much are extremely important special interests to me, even as an adult bugfox (though I will say that apart from Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Pokemon otherwise died and, like The Simpsons did past season 8, became a zombie in my eyes once Generation 6 began, but I digress...)

What Digimon means to me

I have been been intensely hyperfocused on monster-collecting (though I prefer the less popular term "pet monster") media since I was a tiny critter, but something about Digimon has resonated with me for such a long time and it thus remains one of my dearest hyperfixations. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of things I am critical of with Digimon as a franchise. For example, despite the English dub of the original Digimon Adventure anime from 1999 being magical to me as a preteen, rewatching it (or attempting to, anyway) as an adult was insufferable. Or the fact that in recent years, a number of the newer monsters, namely the Mega-level Digimon especially, are sadly at best often painfully dull neon-coloured armoured humanoids or at worst, weird uncomfortable "sexy" human designs that outright put me off all modern Digimon media entirely; I don't think I need to elaborate about why this bores, unsettles and disgusts me all in variable measure.

The early eras of Digimon from the late 90s and early 2000s, however? Golden. I cannot get enough of the media from this era that I can get my hands on. The PlayStation title Digimon World, released from early 1999 to the early 2000s depending on the region, is to this day not just my favourite piece of Digimon media, but one of my all-time cherised pieces of comfort media or art. This leads me to the next point of discussion...

What Digimon World is, and what it means to me

Digimon World is a PlayStation title first released in Japan in January 1999 (with the international versions being released between 2000-2001) and is an RPG-virtual pet hybrid game with open-world exploration elements. The premise entails a young human being transported to the Digital World, finding themself in an area known as File Island after they are called upon by a mysterious Digimon known as Jijimon. Together with their beloved Digimon companion, the player must explore File Island and save the Digimon that lost their memories and left their homes at the once-prosperous File City, looking after their Digimon companion (through feeding, taking them to the toilet and training them, much akin to the actual Digimon virtual pets) and battling adversaries along the way.

I first played Digimon World as a tiny bugfox, almost 20 years ago as of writing. There is a certain resonance that struck me when I first played the game back then, one that I can genuinely say had never left me (and I am sincerely glad it remained). It's difficult to articulate this in words, and I feel (as with many of these feelings one has when they feel they resonate deeply with a piece of art or media) that attempting to do so would in some cases detract from the points I'm trying to illustrate. Nonetheless, I'm going to endeavour to sing my stridulated love song for Digimon World here.

Foremost, I feel that there is what I perceive to be a sense of thematic cohesiveness in the game (irrespective of whether it was completely intentional or not), which I feel is a gradual change from the environments and indeed the Digimon themselves as they become increasingly less organic, and more mechanised and machine-like as the game goes on. For instance, many of the earlier game locations are naturalistic landscapes akin to those in this world, albeit with some endearing details such as plug sockets in the ground, cables and wires running along the landscape and even "naked" patches of ground with circuitboards peeking from below. It illustrates that File Island and perhaps even the broader Digital World is indeed much like our own, but never lets the player comfortably assume this when they inevitably come across these little environmental details.

As the game progresses, the player and their Digimon companion will travel to various locations across File Island, which do start to contain fixtures such as houses or buildings, even if only singular or otherwise very sparse instances (such as with Frigimon's igloo house in Freezeland). Towards the later points in the game, whole settlements established by Digimon are visited, such as the (in my view at least) eerie and mildly unsettling Toy Town, a small village made of colourful plastic and inhabited by toy-themed Digimon such as ToyAgumon and Monzaemon. Arguably the most notable of these settlements is Factorial Town, an area inaccessible until the later game. It is a heavily-industrialised town inhabited primarily by Machine-type Digimon such as Guardromon¹ and, perhaps quite appropriately given all other inhabitants are robot or cyborg Digimon, the metallic poop Digimon PlatinumSukamon².

(This is all a WIP, and will be updated in due course.)

References and appendix

Footnotes

¹An interesting piece of trivia about Guardromon with regard to Digimon World is that they are the only Champion-level Digimon (obtainable or otherwise, Guardromon being the latter) in the entire game that is Machine-type. All of the other Machine-type Digimon in the game are Ultimate-level.

²Given that PlatinumSukamons are found in Factorial Town and are one of two Filth-type Digimon that are standard, renweable wild encounters (the other being Geremon, also found in certain areas of Factorial Town or on the path to Trash Mountain), they're found in one of the only places you can teach the Filth-type Digimon Numemon and Sukamon (and indeed Nanimon and Etemon, too) new techniques from battling them.

References

Still collating these, WIP.