Digimon Reviews, Episode 49: Meicoomon and Friends [Tri]

This batch of Digimon actually do have something associated with them in the form of a series of movies. While it isn't quite the sequel everyone hoped it would, it's still worth checking out for any fan of the original two series. It was Tri that ended up revitalizing my love for the franchise (as... controversial as the movies themselves ended up becoming), and while these reviews have really hammered home how much my tastes hadn't gone on with the times, it's still fun to do these.

This review will cover Meicoomon's line, Hackmon's line, as well as a bunch of other associated lines with the Adventure cast that debuted in the 'anniversary' Digital Pets released to tie in with the Tri movies. 

To spread out the Tri love a bit, I've swapped Hackmon's line (which were originally reviewed here) with the game tie-in Herissmon line from the next episode. It breaks up the monotomy of very flat video game lines in the next couple of episodes! 

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Meicoomon

• Alternate Names: N/A
• Stage: Adult
• Type: Unknown
• Attribute: Unknown

Re-introducing a character to a decades-old franchise and trying to make it feel like part of a pre-existing set is... it's a bit hard, actually, especially since the original partner Digimon already had a cat among them in Tailmon. Meicoomon does tend to feel like it does borrow its design aesthetic from the later seasons' aesthetic design, with a bunch of accessories that look just sort of impractical, and having a slightly 'off' set of proportions when placed next to the chunkier Gabumon and Agumon, but... but I do think that she looks pretty decent, honestly, even if I'm never a particularly large cat person. Meicoomon, like Tailmon, is an Adult-level instead of a Child-level, and... and she's a cute cat. Without spoiling too much about Tri, Meicoomon manages to simultaneously look innocent and cute while also hiding an uncontrollable power, which is honestly pretty accurate to any given cat out there. Not the biggest fan of those weird-ass scarf-things that pop out of the back of Meicoomon's neck.

I don't really have a whole ton to say about Meicoomon. I enjoyed her movies, but ultimately as a design she just falls straight under 'm'eh' for me. A solid design still fits somewhere between 5-6 in my scale, though.

Meicoomon does get a Baby II and Child form in flashbacks, but the baby is basically Nyaromon with slightly different colours, and likewise the Child is Plotmon with slightly different colours. The official material hasn't given us official artwork or names yet, and until proven otherwise I'll assume they're just 'alternate colours' of Nyaromon and Plotmon. It does add to her comparison to Tailmon, as a cat-themed Adult that joins the Adventures team late!

 6/10.

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Meicrackmon

• Alternate Names: Maycrackmon (alternate spelling)
• Stage: Perfect
• Type: Beast Man
• Attribute: Vaccine

The Perfect evolution of Meicoomon, there are actually two variants of this Digimon's evolution line, because they just can't stand to embrace the "token evil teammate" trope, and released the totally pure-and-good-and-angelic regular forms in the tie-in games to the movies. Regular Meicrackmon has a cool scorpion tail, but ultimately just looks a 'furry Meicoomon'.

• Alternate Names: Meicrackmon: Vicious Mode
• Stage: Perfect
• Type: Unknown
• Attribute: Unknown

Vicious Mode Meicrackmon, though, looks... slightly better, with a tail that's burning with black flame, and those weird scarf-things looking far more practical as something akin to combat tentacles. Vicious Mode Meicrackmon is also the one that had a pretty memorable fighting scene in the movies, which is neat. Her personality in the official bios is basically that she behaves like a cat, and has powerful 'cursed claws' that extend from her arm.

Anyway, I've never really been a huge fan of more humanoid furry people, especially one that's as derivative of its previous form and lacking of any real identity. It's clearly meant to appeal to a certain demographic, and I see a lot of people who really do like Meicrackmon. It's cool, but that's not my thing. Needless to say, though, still a lot more pleasant and actually feels like a Digimon compared to most of the things from the previous page. 

 5/10.

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Rasielmon

• Alternate Names: N/A
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: Ophan
• Attribute: Vaccine

The supposedly 'pure' evolution to the pure Meicrackmon, Rasielmon is... she's a pretty generic cat humanoid. I do love the gigantic claws on her arms, and the hilariously fun winter cloak she has going on. She's not as bad a design as some of the Olympos nonsense, and feel more in line with the humanoid Digimon I don't dislike. She's also apparently an angel, and the angelic wing details are sort of lost in the clutter of her design. I really don't have much to say about Rasielmon. She's a far, far more boring version of the next Digimon, the 'corrupted' version we actually see in the movie. Honestly, I think they designed Raguelmon first, and went "oh crap, people will be demanding to know what Meicoomon's pure evolutions are!" and sort of worked backwards from there. Which, okay, sure,  this does look like a 'good' version of Meicrackmon, but also looks kind of a bit more cluttered.

 3/10.

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Raguelmon

• Alternate Names: N/A
• Stage: Perfect
• Type: Unknown
• Attribute: Unknown

Raguelmon is the one we saw in the Tri movies (and looked pretty badass there) and for a fallen angel cat-woman lady, Raguelmon actually looks pretty badass. Those purple Wolverine claws hovering above her arm gauntlets, those awesome gray angel wings, the tail tapering off into purple flames... Honestly, I really have nothing against Rasielmon and regular Meicrackmon, but they are just so, so plain and boring when compared to Raguelmon here. She's not my favourite design, but I definitely do like what they're going for. Raguelmon's role in the movies are honestly limited to a brief scene where she evolves into this form, clearly out of control, before fusing with another 'fallen angel' Digimon to form something far, far cooler than silly old Rasielmon.

Raguelmon's Bandai profile is even pretty awesome, giving a neat little backstory about how she is the assigned angel Digimon that mercy-kills any angel Digimon that's about to fall, and as a result is hated by all other angels. This rejection caused Raguelmon to eventually become the nihilistic monster that everyone thought she would be, ending up as a merciless, indiscriminate destroyer. Pretty cool!

 7/10.

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Ofanimon: Falldown Mode

• Alternate Names: Ophanimon: Falldown Mode
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: Fallen Angel
• Attribute: Vaccine

Let's briefly talk about this form! So good old Tailmon ends up going through a 'dark evolution' when her partner Hikari was filled with negative emotions after her brother apparently died (he didn't), causing, for the first time, a non-main-character partner Digimon to undergo a dark evolution. And I absolutely love that Tailmon ends up being able to get both Holydramon and Ophanimon as alternate final forms in canon, considering how much the fandom tended to argue between whether Holydramon (who is introduced earlier and the original intention of the line) or Ophanimon (introduced waaaay later but is a humanoid angel, so far more popular due to some arbitrary desire by the fandom to force Patamon and Tailmon's evolutions to both become angels) should be the final form. Turns out that the show-makers actually chose Holydramon as the proper, pure, default final form, as they should, while Ophanimon gets a sick, new 'fallen angel' evil form to serve as Tailmon's dark evolution. Which is a neat compromise, and the fact that Ophanimon gets to be the imperfect evolution is honestly pretty damn hilarious. 

And honestly? It's a far, far superior design to Ophanimon, a design I always criticized for being pretty fucking boring compared to Magnadramon. Ophanimon Falldown Mode is a simple alteration of several things -- the wings, the face, and changing the armour to look less like a slutty medieval cosplay and more like the armour of someone who can kick your ass... that mass of flames and green... hair scythe floating behind Ophanimon Falldown Mode is a bit too much, perhaps. It's her Flame Hell-Scythe, but it doesn't really look like it. Definitely do like how she ends up looking eventually. I had initially brushed this aside as "eh, evil Ophanimon, neat, whatever", but I remembered actually being "huh, this is preeeetty damn cool" while watching it on screen. Falldown Mode's bio notes that this is an Ophanimon consumed by madness after suppressing her own emotions, kids, keeping all your emotions bottled up is not healthy!

I don't always like angel Digimon, and that's one of the most overdone tropes in the franchise, but the Tri movies doesn't just give me one, but TWO badass evil angel Digimon. And y'know what? 2018 made me really like Ophanimon, which isn't something I thought I'd be saying. 

 7/10.

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Ordinemon

• Alternate Names: N/A
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: Fallen Angel
• Attribute: Virus

So what do you get when you fuse together two fallen angels, Ophanimon Falldown Mode and Raguelmon? This. This monstrosity is what you get, and the fusion of the two into Ordinemon is a genuinely horrifying moment in Tri. Say what you want about the eventual quality of the movie series as a whole, some of the individual scenes are genuinely amazing. Ordinemon isn't just another evil angel either, instead being designed to look pretty damn monstrous. 

The main appeal of this is obviously the two gigantic wing-pillars that look more like the massive, bushy legs of a strange creature, while the supposed main body hangs seemingly limply from where the wings attach to her. And said main body is pretty fucked up too, with limbs tapering off into DNA-like braids, a face that looks like it belongs in a horror movie, eyes replaced by a crap-ton of random tendrils, and a naked body that's clearly meant to be more disturbing than titillating. It definitely has some D-Reaper vibes, albeit less cartoonish and more horrifying, and I genuinely do like how they manage to turn out a pretty cool angelic abomination creature for the final boss of Tri, something that's certainly far more imposing than just another pretty strongkt humanoid.


Sure, the way Ordinemon was eventually brought down is... is sort of debatable on whether it's narratively good, but we're here to discuss the actual designs, not the plot, yeah? Ordinemon's profile notes that this combination of fucked-up emotions causes her massive wings to continue spreading miasma that will consume the world and return everything into nothingness so it can restart over. We don't actually get a whole ton of her abilities in the movies themselves beyond generic kaiju-smashy-smash thing, but what an interesting looking spooky creature!

 9/10 for spooks.

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Mastemon

• Alternate Names: N/A
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: Angel
• Attribute: Vaccine

I mostly remember this to be the speculated Ultimate form of Meicoomon, because she showed up in one of the anniversary Digivices to tie in with the Tri movies, but turns out we got the pretty fantastic Ordinemon! Mastemon is, interestingly enough, the Jogress fusion version of Angewomon and LadyDevimon, forming a pretty neat half-angelic, half-demonic Ultimate form, and basically becomes like a leader that forces peace between the angel and fallen angel tribes. It's not my favourite design and we kind of already seen this sort of aesthetic with Lucemon before, but it's... it's okay. As far as humanoid Digimon go, we've seen much worse.

 4/10.

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Omegamon: Merciful Mode

• Alternate Names: Omnimon: Merciful Mode
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: Holy Knight
• Attribute: Vaccine

At some point I just wished they would give poor Omegamon a rest, although this particular variation is... are at least somewhat better than just a straight-up repaint. Omegamon: Merciful Mode is the all-white repaint, and the 'final form' of Omegamon that he achieves in Tri, merging with the powers of the other Ultimate forms of the partner Digimon in order to have enough power to mercy-kill the out-of-control Ordinemon. S'cool for that role, although the bent wings and white body just sort of made me shrug in the same way that Imperialdramon Paladin Mode made me shrug. 

 3/10.

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BlitzGreymon

• Alternate Names: N/A
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: Cyborg
• Attribute: Virus

I have a feeling that the Digimon design team just get tired of being told to design an alternate -Greymon and -Garurumon final forms for every other video game that show up. There's the original versions, the black repaints, the X-Antibody versions, the Ancient ones from Frontier, Victory and Zeed, and probably like a couple more I can't think up of right now. BlitzGreymon here is actually not bad, probably because it explicitly tries to look different. It's a pretty decent robot-man Gundam ripoff, which is pretty common in Digimon, but those pair of massive gatling-gun arms do look col, and those dinosaur-face wings (are those wings?) do look neat. More than anything, BlitzGreymon genuinely feels like a variant of WarGreymon, instead of just "WarGreymon drawn differently with a couple of extra accessories". You can see that this dude has a similar body layour, with the awkward wings and arm-mounted weapons, but the different colouration and being themed after guns instead of arm-blades is definitely fun, if admittedly obvious, way to make him have a unique feel.

BlitzGreymon appears as a brief alternate evolution in an episode of Adventure: 2020 for that incarnation's Agumon. It... really didn't do much other than look cool for one episode, and I really wished they had done something more to spotlight it. 

 4/10.

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CresGarurumon

• Alternate Names: N/A
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: Beast Knight
• Attribute: Data

The Garurumon variant is... the exact wrong way to do this, I think. Sure, it's distinct and pretty damn unrecognizable from MetalGarurumon, instead being a generic bipedal werewolf-warrior with a massive glaive and like a couple too many accessories latched on to it. It got all of the problems that MagnaGarurumon or MachGaogamon have, but without any of their charm. Its profile is also just a list of the names of its weapons and armour and crap, which means absolutely nothing when it doesn't really tell me about what CresGarurumon itself is. The design and artwork isn't that awesome either. It's not the worst thing in the world, but utterly forgettable to me. I get that BlitzGreymon and CresGarurumon are kind of swapping the 'mecha vs. warrior' side of WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon, but Cres felt like it got the short end of the stick. 

I didn't really care for CresGarurumon, but likewise it also shows up in a better, more focused alternate-Ultimate evolution for Adventure 2020's Gabumon where it was revealed that a CresGarurumon and a Zanbamon's spirits are haunting a location for an endless, eternal battle. 

 1/10.

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The Other Omegamons
We'll cover all the Omegamons (which were originally scattered across various reviews covering the late 2010's, and list them all here at the bottom. In addition, of course, to Omegamon: Merciful Mode above.)

• Alternate Names: Omegamon Alter-S
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: Holy Knight
• Attribute: Virus

So BlitzGreymon and CresGarurumon have their own Omegamon variant, which is basically Omegamon with a black cape and having the two new heads of his new formative Digimon. It is net that the Garurumon head's holding the sword and the Greymon head's the gun. It's... all right.

Alter-S shows up for a brief power-up cameo in Adventure: 2020's final episode, which... is a nice bone to the fans, but a bit strange since BlitzGreymon and CresGarurumon appeared an episode each, and wasn't treated with any particular fanfare compared to the other forms. 

• Alternate Names: Omegamon Alter-S
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: Holy Knight
• Attribute: Virus

"Alter-B" is "Alter-S", but black and evil with creepy eepy aura.

• Alternate Names: Omegamon Zwart
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: Holy Knight
• Attribute: Vaccine

"Zwart" is the most boring, just being a straight-up black repaint.

• Alternate Names: Omegamon Zwart Defeat
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: Holy Knight
• Attribute: Virus

I actually appreciate "Zwart-D" or "Zwart Defeat" actually taking their time to alter the looks of Omegamon. Zwart-D's artwork really makes Omegamon look tattered, like some sort of desiccated mummy, and I do like those thin, skeletal feet and the cloud of miasma around those raggedy capes. 

 2/10 for all.

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Pusumon

• Alternate Names: N/A
• Stage: Baby I
• Type: Slime
• Attribute: None

We're going off of Tri for a bit... this is a cute hedgehog! And a hedgehog child mode! And a hedgehog slime-ball with Pabumon's little pacifier thing! An evolutionary line created as the mascots of a mobile game called Digimon: ReArise, I... I actually don't mind them. Pusurimon is a fluffy hamster buds. 

 4/10.

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Pusumon

• Alternate Names: N/A
• Stage: Baby II
• Type: Lesser
• Attribute: None

Pusumon is a hairy fluffy buds. He's neat. 

I don't have much to say here. It's a hedgehog friend. 

 4/10.

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Herissmon

• Alternate Names: Erismon
• Stage: Child
• Type: Mammal
• Attribute: Data

Herissmon (sometimes "Erismon") looks more like a knockoff Digimon made by cheap Chinese companies trying to catch a quick buck, but I still can see him being a mascot for a Digimon manga or whatever. Not my favourite design, but they're all pretty decent. I don't have anything much to really say here, they're clearly designed with Herissmon first and the other two to tie to him. This line is basically the exclusive evolution line for the Digimon ReArise video game. It's... it's an all right mascot, all things considered. 

It's really not my type of mammal, but it's not unpleasant-looking. It feels too... 'committee-designed', I feel? After ReArise shut down, Herissmon found itself showing up in Ghost Game, cameod in the 02 movie, and showed up in a bunch of manga. Good job, Herissmon! 

 4/10.

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Filmon

• Alternate Names: N/A
• Stage: Adult
• Type: Beast Man
• Attribute: Data

Herissmon evolves into a predictable fur-man creature, and by this point we've seen so many of them that look cooler, better, more beastly, more organic, and even more humanoid. Filmon and SteFilmon are just there. They're humanized furry hedgehog-lion things with very generic "something something super-powerful digizoid" bios. I find them utterly bland and boring. Filmon's proportions just look weird (how do those elbows work?). 

 1/10.

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Stiffilmon

• Alternate Names: Stefilmon (EN dub)
• Stage: Perfect
• Type: Beast Man
• Attribute: Data

SteFilmon is a bit better but also it's the type of design I don't particularly care for. I do like the random cowboy shoes it has, though.

 1/10.

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Rasenmon

• Alternate Names: N/A
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: Beast Man
• Attribute: Data

Herissmon's Ultimate form is Rasenmon, which... is, again, the sort of anime knight-person with a lot of random details slapped on to it. And I know, I know, I've been harping on that sort of design like a broken record, but there are a lot of these designs, y'know? The default Rasenmon has swapped its massive amount of hedgehog spikes for a bunch of giant drills that jut out of his back, which... okay, that does give him something that's somewhat unique compared to its two pre-evolutions. Rasenmon is noted to be able to absorb the powers from his allies' emotions, which would be something special if all other Digimon don't already do that.

• Alternate Names: Rasenmon: Fury Mode
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: Bewitching Beast
• Attribute: Data

A lot more interesting, though, is Rasenmon: Fury Mode which is presumably how you originally obtain Rasenmon in the game based on how the profiles are worded. And, as usual, the monstrous form is the far more interesting one, with gigantic claws and gigantic tails that lash all around. It's basically yet another Nine-Tailed Fox reference, but it's a pretty cool monster and I do like that a lot of the details on Rasenmon: Fury Mode do translate into equivalent details on the regular Rasenmon, like the gigantic golden claws (that become upside-down gauntlets in regular Rasenmon) or the tails that turn into drill-bits. Individually, I don't think they would be all that impressive, but as a duo of alternate forms, they do bring enough to the table to get a pretty neutral 5/10 rating.

 5/10.

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