
Anyway, while the D-3 Virtual Pet series are divided between the Jogress pairs (Version 1 has either Veemon or Wormmon; Version 2 has Hawkmon or Tailmon; Version 3 has Patamon or Armadimon), I think we'll mix things up and cover all of the two newcomers in 02, which means Hawkmon today and Armadimon next week, before going into talking about the Patamon and Tailmon Armours while also covering other main characters in 02.
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Pururumon
Pururumon here is the Baby I of the line and what an adorable little baby bird-blob it is! You can just imagine this thing blobbing about with its two adorable little stumpy hands and its cute little eyes and beak. Apparently its body is made out of silicon? Pururumon doesn't quite have much in lieu of personality or unique lore beyond "hey, this thing is a baby Hawkmon", but it's easily one of the more adorable Baby I's. Look at this little jelly bird baby! I dunno. I like this little blob a lot more than I thought I would. I'm not sure if Pururumon ever actually appeared on-screen in 02 or not, actually. Still, a very charming little blob-bird-baby.









Poromon











Hawkmon

Like Veemon and Wormmon, apparently Hawkmon is the descendant of some ancient, mythical species of Digimon that is able to do Armour Evolution, something that isn't really followed up anywhere unless it's Imperialdramon, GranKuwagamon and Valkyrimon that are menat to be these ancient mythical species-es. Outside of 02, Hawkmon's made brief cameos in Frontier and Xros Wars, and like most partner Digimon is a near-universal fixture in most video games. Anyway, Hawkmon’s a neat design – I just don’t really have any strong feelings about him.










Aquilamon
Hawkmon’s natural Adult evolution is Aquilamon, a giant bird with curved bull-horns. Sort of boring, honestly, and considering in the anime Hawkmon didn’t become Aquilamon until around the halfway point, I’ve always found Aquilamon to be a bit of a step down from the wackier Holsmon and Shurimon. Aquilamon’s not a bad design, but she’s definitely one I do kind of find underwhelming, especially compared to other giant bird Digimon out there. Still, Aquilamon does a great job at preserving Hawkmon's features as he goes from a hawk-baby into an actual giant roc. Hawkmon's head-feather is even retained, jutting out of Aquilamon's back!In addition to being Miyako’s partner in 02, a different Biyomon partnered with Masaru’s little sister would evolve into Aquilamon in Savers, and thanks to the different rules of that universe, that particular Aquilamon rampaged like a feral monster and had to be put down. Aquilamon’s pretty neat, and a giant monster bird is inherently pretty cool, even if Aquilamon doesn't do enough to make it feel distinct.










Silphymon

I do
like the little details of him actually having a radar sensor built into his
weird head-visor, although I’ve honestly wished that they went with Harpymon
below for the fusion between Tailmon and Aquilamon which really made far more
sense as a cat/bird humanoid combination. I dunno. I just can’t muster much
enthusiasm for this thing, I’m afraid. Outside of 02, some Silphymon was part of a group of angelic Digimon that protected the Sand Zone. I suppose that's what Silphymon is meant to be, then -- an angel that just has a lot of bird features and dresses up with pilot headgear for some reason.










Valkyrimon (a.k.a. Valkyriemon)

Valkyrimon is one of the few Digimon that actually has a lot of fun little chunks of mythology worked into her lore (the only one before this that we’ve covered is Zudomon’s Mjolnir Hammer, I think), with the little golden bird being called Freyr after the Norse goddess, and her sword is called Fenrir after the Nordic giant wolf. She’s the one responsible, apparently, for the reincarnation of fallen heroes and reverting them into Digitama, and Valkyrimon’s bio is really the only thing that explains why all the good Digimon in Adventure canon ends up being reborn at some point in the future, while all the bad ones stay dead. Cool, but from a design standpoint I've always found this dude-lady quite boring.










Holsmon (a.k.a. Halsemon/Horusmon)

Other than that unfortunate bit, Holsmon actually is a pretty interesting bird monster, with a leonine body with four talons, and a mean-looking beak, with the front half of her body covered by the pieces of the Digimental of Love’s armour that sort of spread out and act like jet wings. The anime certainly had Holsmon do a lot of cool things with her eye beams (called the Wdjat Gaze, I think?) and her ability to just straight-up transform into a tornado. Holsmon’s neat.










Shurimon

Also, throw in that badass-looking face, and some genuinely fun episodes starring Shurimon in the anime, which really play up the whole “ninjas use leaves and wind to hide” trope, and Shurimon is easily one of my favourite Armour evolutions. Easily the best ninja Digimon out there, although granted his only real competition is a chubby onion with limbs.
In Xros Wars, a different Shurimon with black ninja clothes and autumn-coloured leaves is an antagonist in the Edo-themed Shinobi Zone, a neat variant and one of the few times where a previous protagonist Digimon is used as an antagonist. We'll cover a lot of the Xros Wars variants when we get there, because interestingly a lot of the new variations and species introduced in Xros Wars tended to be straight-up ignored by Bandai.










Peacockmon
We'll go through the bird-themed armours first, I guess. Peacockmon here doesn’t actually look like a peacock – we already have one of those with Deramon! Peacockmon’s bio even notes how anything that can evolve into Deramon can sometimes tap into the Digimental of Miracles and turn into Peacockmon. Peacockmon is just sort of a machine bird-robot born out of Hawkmon fusing with the Digimental of Miracles, a.k.a. the plot device one. It’s one of the few Miracle evolutions to not be golden, although Peacockmon at least looks somewhat majestic. I do like its “laser-shaped wings”, and I guess it’s a neat little cyborg option for Hawkmon, but I’ve always been sort of indifferent about this one. Throw in a fair bit of flutter and a genuinely off-putting leg proportions, and I'm afraid I really can't say much good things about Peacockmon.









Harpymon
Harpymon here, I’ve always thought, felt like a far more interesting and appropriate combination of cat and bird features and is probably a better fit as either a pre-evolution of Silphymon or as an outright replacement. And honsestly, having Hawkmon evolve into Harpymon isn't that far of a stretch, and I can totally see Silphymon being a fusion of Harpymon and Tailmon? I dunno -- personal tastes, I guess. It is appropriate, I guess, that Hawkmon achieves the Harpymon form by using the Digimental of Light, i.e. the digimental associated with Tailmon herself. A different sort of fusion, yeah? Harpymon doesn’t really have much in common with mythological harpies outside of the design, which is basically a woman with bird wings instead of arms and talons instead of legs. Apparently Harpymon is a bit of a thief, known as “the Snatcher” due to how it loves to steal data from databases.Harpymon’s another one that’s been used as villains-of-the-week, as a particularly fun one in Tamers that led to some internal conflict in Renamon's mind, I think. Harpymon then showed up briefly among other quasi-angelic Digimon in Xros Wars' Heaven Zone, and then as a less-memorable one during Hunters where she disrupts a concert or something, I dunno.










Toucanmon (a.k.a. Tocanmon)

Toucanmon’s made appearances in Frontier, I think, as part of a tiresome “Izumi vs Ranamon” idol popularity fandom nonsense, as well as brief cameos in Savers and Xros Wars. A fun little flightless bird! He and Kiwimon should hang out.










Allomon

Anyway, Allomon is just an allosaurus with random Native American feathers strapped onto him, but I do like the idea of a bird and a theropodal dinosaur being connected. I just don’t really think Allomon’s design really feels like it follows logically from Hawkmon. Allomon has since apparently proven popular enough to be assigned as alternate, non-Armour evolution to many other evolution lines, even evolving from the likes of Agumon and Guilmon. Oh, also, unintentional as it’s likely to be, we do get a feathered dinosaur long, long before it became common scientific consensus that dinosaurs are more likely to have feathers than just scales.
Interestingly, despite most Courage Armours being a fiery beast, Allomon doesn’t actually incorporate any fiery elements into its design, and its primary attack is instead a wind blast. So I guess it’s Agumon’s dinosaur-y-ness that gets translated to Hawkmon? Ultimately it's a pretty pleasing design, but it's also kind of just a dinosaur.










Linkmon (a.k.a. Rinkmon)











Flybeemon

Flybeemon shows up as an early villain-of-the-week in Tamers, and as a cameo in the bug-themed zone of Xros Wars. It’s pretty neat for a bug monster even if it doesn’t look quite as cool as the Kuwagamon and Kabuterimon aesthetic... I think what bugs me (heh) the most is just how many unnecessary details are crammed into Flybeemon that detract away and clutter him up, like the random rabbit ears, or the neon-blue Intelligence symbol... I dunno. Part of me really wants to like Flybeemon, but he doesn't quite endear himself to me as most bugs do.










Orcamon











Moosemon

I don’t think Moosemon has ever appeared in any of the anime series, although I’m pretty sure that he’s sort of became the unofficial Adult-stage for whatever evolutionary line you theorize leads to AncientMegatheriumon. Anyway, a pretty neat design even if it doesn't have much to do with Hawkmon. Don't mind this one.










Lampmon
So the D3, as mentioned before, has a bunch of extra new Digimon as enemies. While most of them are old Digimon, there are a couple of new ones that debuted there. Lampmon here is an Ultimate-level Digimon, and is, well, an archetypal Arabian genie coming out of a magical lamp. It's... it's basically it, really. It's a genie in a lamp, and there's really not much in lieu of creativity that they did with it. I suppose I should commend that it's done in a Western cartoon style, but it also makes Lampmon pretty jarring. Apparently Lampmon is super-powerful and is able to grant giant palaces made out of gold and silver with his reality-warping powers, but being stuck in a lamp corrupted him or something? I dunno. I do like that the actual magical lamp also has a face. Lampmon's kind of one of those things that I'm utterly indifferent towards, honestly. I don't think I have strong enough opinions to say that I hate him, but I definitely don't like him. Most of the time I forget he exists, and looking at his scant video game appearances, apparently Bandai does too.









Ebemon
Ebemon (pronounced Ibamon, and his name is a reference to the acronym EBE) is the Ultimate-level evolution of Vademon, and it's a pretty appropriate evolution for Vademon. I do appreciate Vademon's sheer weirdness as an organic alien, but Ebemon's pretty cool too! He's basically a robotic version of Vademon, but with a lot of flourishes thrown in that reference a lot of common cartoon alien tropes. The oblong brain-head with the wires coming out of it, buggy eyes, multiple tentacle arms ending in super-sterile medical equipment... hell, we even get a nice nod to Vademon's own octopus tentacles in Ebemon's lower body being made up of metallic tentacles!
According to his bio, Ebemon was apparently a cyborg artificially created from a captured Vademon in, pretty explicitly, Area 51. Apparently it isn't clear whether these Americans (only noted to be 'a certain country' in the actual bio) used actual alien technology, or just the fantastic superpowers from the digital world. Anyway, America's apparently planning to invade the digital world with their studies on Digimon, if Ebemon's profile is anything to go by. Also, if you think Ebemon's not quite powerful enough to be an Ultimate-level, apparently that gun on his right hand is called the Planet Destroyer, and it does what you think a gun called the Planet Destroyer does. Ebemon never appeared in any of the earlier anime, although finally made an appearance in Xros Wars as a general of the Bagra Army that acted as a villain-of-the-week, using his alien technology to put chips into people's brains and control them. Ebemon's not a design I particularly love, but I definitely appreciate his existence.










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