We're still covering the Digimon introduced in 1997, and this time we're reviewing the Digimon line from the "Ver 2" of the original Digimon Virtual Pet. Yes, while this particular Virtual Pet highlights Gabumon's evolution line, I'm actually somewhat surprised that we're introducing a bunch of other adult-stage digimon that would be associated with other chosen-children partners. Three of them, in fact! For the sake of making the evolution progression a bit more comprehensive, from here on out I'll group all of the evolutionary stages of a partner Digimon as they appear in the anime together in a single article.So for all of you keeping track at home, the Adult-stage digimon that should otherwise debut here are Kabuterimon, Birdramon and Angemon; while I pulled WereGarurumon, MetalGarurumon, WarGreymon and Omegamon from 1999 to talk about here. I mean, I guess it's best to sort these reviews by how the general public view these characters as opposed to 'what V-Pet they debuted in', yeah? Most other Digimon will still be sorted by the order of the year they debut in, though.
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Punimon
We'll start off this discussion with another Baby I stage, although I probably won't have a lot to talk about these baby stages. I like that they exist, and Punimon really looks like a little blob of goop that could easily be the starting enemy in an RPG game. There's not really much for me to talk about other than that. Like Botamon, it's squishy, cute, and shoots out acidic bubbles. I do like the contrast to Botamon, where Punimon is a lot more jelly-like and has far more intense-looking eyes than Botamon's creepier peepers. Punimon's cute, but I don't really have much to say beyond that. I guess I'll be rating Punimon a below-average score, which is basically shorthand for "definitely don't dislike, but I can't think of much that I like". It's a cute slime, I guess.
4/10.
Tsunomon (a.k.a. Tunomon)
Tsunomon (sometimes romanized as Tunomon?) is the evolution of Punimon, and thanks to the Digimon Adventure anime, has basically been treated as the default Baby II stage of Gabumon, one of the main characters. In the original V-Pet and most video games, it is also associated with Elecmon, which we'll cover after we go through Gabumon's entire evolutionary line. I do like the detail that apparently one of the Punimon feeler-antenna blobs have hardened into a big-ass horn, while the rest of its body is this cute fuzzy orange blob with the sassiest-looking eyes that you'll ever find on a baby furblob. And while Tsunomon did look like one of the more badass babies (especially compared to the other six that we first meet in the anime), it's interesting that its Child-stage, Gabumon, is probably the most reserved of the cast. Anyway, I don't mind Tsunomon. Always found his design cool and the single horn to translate nicely into Gabumon. 7/10.Gabumon
Gabumon is a design that I've always thought to be a bit too complex as a kid, but that was because I didn't quite 'get' it. You see, Gabumon isn't just a weird humanoid dog-thing, no. That Garurumon-like blue fur pelt is merely a cloak it wears over its real head and over its shoulders, whereas the real Gabumon is a yellow reptilian creature that's far more similar to a less-dinosaurian Agumon. And that makes Gabumon so much more interesting to me! Sure, we probably don't need that huge mass of weird blue-pink tattoo on its stomach, but I really do love the little yellow fists hiding inside the 'sleeves' of its Garurumon-skin hoodie, and the horn sticking out of its forehead. The profiles note that Gabumon apparently got their cloak not by some morbid way, but by gathering the stray data that Garurumons leave behind and fashions the hoodie out of it. Based on the profile, Gabumon is apparently timid when the fur cloak is off, but is super-duper confident when he wears the cloak. That's adorable! You don't need to pretend to be a wolf, Gabumon. You're a fire-shooting lizard!Take a look here for one of the rare images of a Gabumon without the cloak, looking absolutely doofy. Gabumon actually does take off his cloak one time in the anime, but it's done off-screen to keep up the mystique or something. Hell, Gabumon's name apparently is based on the "Gabu Kashira", a Japanese puppet whose face changes from a timid maiden to a horned fiend with the pull of a string, which is neat!
In the Adventures anime, Gabumon is partnered with the secondary lead of the cast, Ishida Yamato ("Matt" in the English dub), the archetypal 'aloof rival-slash-best-friend' and secondary leader of the group, who has a best-friends-that-keep-arguing mentality with Taichi. Gabumon is probably one of the best Digimon partners in the entire thing due to how utterly subdued and stable he is, just wanting to chill and listen to his partner's harmonica and not really bothering with a lot of the conflicts that plague the group in their darker times... but also putting his foot down in the most gentle way ever. As a child, I've found Gabumon to be nothing more than just 'that cool wolf dude who doesn't say much', but as an adult that rewatched Adventure last year, I'm genuinely impressed with how much subtle work went into Gabumon's interactions to Yamato and how much this chill, emotionally-stable dude manages to temper a lot of Yamato's more rash and ego-driven decisions. Hell, one could argue that Yamato himself reflects a lot of Gabumon's profile -- he's really afraid about a lot of things, mostly losing his young kid brother to this whole inter-dimensional war, but tries his best to project the aura of a badass... sometimes to the detriment of his own emotional psyche.
Anyway, enough about Yamato! We'll talk about the humans if/when we do a proper review series of Digimon Adventures. Gabumon's pretty damn rad. I like this dude a lot.
9/10, in no small part because of the anime.
Garurumon
In the original V-Pet, Gabumon can evolve into Kabuterimon, Angemon, Yukidarumon, Vegiemon or Garurumon. For those more uninitiated with Digimon, that is a giant hornet-man, a straight-up angel, a snowman, a blob of vines and a wolf. However, thanks to Digimon Adventure and, y'know, Gabumon already wearing Garurumon's pelt, Gabumon's default evolution nowadays is Garurumon. Who is, well, a snow wolf that shoots out blue fox-fires. Apparently Garurumon's fur is as hard as mithril, and those weird wing-like extensions on Garurumon's back are sharp and will freeze anything it cuts? It tends to be associated with icy areas in Digimon games where you can travel around, and being a doggo, it's super-loyal to a trainer it recognizes.Garurumon's a pretty damn cool wolf. Perhaps a criticism I have is that the design looks so damn busy at times with so many random fur-spikes, and those feet are pretty huge, but Garurumon's more organic appearance and the fact that the whole thing doesn't have a lot of colours makes the whole thing work. I don't have a lot to say about Garurumon -- it's a badass ice-breathing wolf, it's one of the main characters in the anime. I like him a lot. He's the more obvious sleek, 'cool' Adult-stage, and definitely fits Yamato a lot.
8/10.WereGarurumon
In the original V-Pet, however, Garurumon's default evolution is actually SkullGreymon (which we'll cover below), something that... doesn't actually make a lot of sense, considering one is a wolf and the other is a dinosaur lich. Thanks to Garurumon being shot into the spotlight in the anime, 1999's spooky-themed "Nightmare Soldiers" Pendulum V-Pet introduced a proper Perfect stage for Garurumon, WereGarurumon here. So Garurumon ends up standing up on his hind-legs, goes to the same goth-punk shop that Devimon shops in, and comes out with a bunch of funky articles of clothing. I do think it works a lot less on WereGarurumon than on Devimon,though I do appreciate how feral WereGarurumon looks even though it's supposed to be humanoid. The asymmetry on WereGarurumon also works well, with the spikes on one kneepad, the skull sticker on the other, bandages on one leg, the chest leather strap and only one arm being covered with that whole black leather getup. That golden spiky knuckle duster is pretty mean-looking, too.WereGarurumon, incidentally, is how little-me first learned about werewolves for the first time. I'm not quite sure just why as a child I knew about vampires, demons and ghosts, but not werewolves until I watched Digimon. But hey, there you go. WereGarurumon is a straight-up brawler, with its main attacks tending to be fast kicks and punches, although the anime tends to have him shoot out crescent-shaped energy beams from his kicks anyway, presumably so that it's easier to animate. Anyway, I don't really have a lot to talk about WereGarurumon either. He's cool, but I've always found him a lot more underwhelming compared to the other Perfect-stage main characters.
6/10.
MetalGarurumon
MetalGarurumon here is the first "Ultimate" (Mega for those who prefer the English dub, because they already used the word 'Ultimate' for the Japanese's Perfect stage) stage that we'll be covering now. And Ultimate is such a fun level, because while the Ultimate level is added to the Digimon franchise in 1999, no other subsequent additions really added anything to surpass the Ultimate level, and even Ultimate Digimon that become stronger or fuse with each other are all awkwardly shoehorned into the same Ultimate level with handwaves of it being a mode change or simply evolving from Ultimate to Ultimate? At least until Xros Wars did away with all the Digimon levels, anyway, but we'll burn that bridge when we get there.MetalGarurumon here is introduced in 1999 as part of the Pendulum V-Pets, specifically the robot-themed "Metal Empire" version of the V-Pet. But the anime, of course, associates MetalGarurumon as Gabumon's Ultimate-level evolution, and that's what MetalGarurumon has became in all of its subsequent appearances in the franchise. I do like MetalGarurumon, and the way that these Ultimate forms were achieved in the anime was pretty badass -- only Gabumon and Agumon were able to achieve Ultimate forms in the entirety of Adventure, making these two particularly potent final weapons that the cast are able to use.
MetalGarurumon ends up coming back to being on all fours, which might be the reason why I find WereGarurumon a bit odd? Digimon evolution tends to be a lot more drastic than, say, Pokemon evolution tends to be, though, so eh. MetalGarurumon's pretty damn cool! It's a cyborg wolf, and I really do like all the details on him. From the shoulder-mounted missile pods, the hard-light wings, the blade-tail... I think my favourite part of MetalGarurumon is just how many attacks it had in the anime. In addition to its freezing-blast attack (Cocytus Breath, referencing the Greek river of the Underworld), MetalGarurumon apparently carries the arsenal of a third-world country on its person, because any part of his metal plates can just open and shoot out missiles. Missiles that tended to be shown to freeze rather than blow limbs off, but still damn cool nonetheless.
Anyway, nostalgia might make me think that MetalGarurumon is a lot cooler than he is, but I do like wolves and I do like robots a lot, so MetalGarurumon is pretty damn cool to me, and honestly probably my favourite Ultimate-level Digimon for a long while.
10/10.Omegamon (a.k.a. Omnimon)
Omegamon (called Omnimon in the English dub) is an Ultimate-level Digimon that was created by the fusion (or "Jogress") of WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon. Yes, it still counts as an Ultimate-level! Omegamon debuted in one of the Digimon Adventure movies, 1999's "Our War Game", which sort of acted as a mini-sequel to the Adventure anime before the 02 anime came along. "Our War Game" is also one of the few movies to be canon to the series, as Omegamon would make a lot of appearances in 02 and Tri, the sequel series to Adventure. Omegamon is also a character that would show up a LOT in other series, having shown up as a major supporting character in different mangas, and as part of the "Royal Knights" in several video games and anime series. We'll talk about the Royal Knights later when they actually become relevant.That said, though, when I first watched "Our War Game" as a kid, while the fact that an evolution beyond WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon felt pretty damn awesome... I wasn't as enamoured with Omegamon's design as the rest of my friends. It's honestly kind of a strange feeling. I found Omegamon to be pretty damn badass, don't get me wrong. The sheer concept of fusion and the amount of ass-kicking Omegamon showed off in his few appearances during the Adventure/02 era was pretty damn boss. And I guess taken on its own, Omegamon's main body isn't the worst... but at the same time, it's such a huge departure from MetalGarurumon and WarGreymon's aesthetic that I'm genuinely somewhat taken aback.
I mean, sure, having WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon's heads as robotic arms was pretty damn cool, and I do love that WarGreymon's wing-shield became Omegamon's shoulder guard. And Omegamon's attacks involves him either creating a big-ass cannon out of the MetalGarurumon mouth or a big-ass runesword from the WarGreymon mouth. Those are pretty appropriate. But take away the anime badassery, and Omegamon himself is honestly a bit of a generic humanoid knight.. I really, really want to love Omegamon, and I do -- but from a visual perspective I just don't really like him all that much. As badass as Omegamon is, I do feel that there's something that's lost in transition. And that really leads to a conundrum -- the Digimon franchise is so steeped in the fictional appearances (at least for me), and Omegamon's badassery in his many appearances tend to offset my genuine apathy for his design. I dunno. I guess he gets a 8/10 for lore reasons, and barely a 3/10 for design? I can work with that, I suppose, giving an average out of my feelings for characters like this as, well, a character and as a monster design.
8/10, mostly due to fictional appearances.Elecmon
Elecmon is the other possible Child stage in the second V-Pet, and the poor thing has been neglected almost as badly as poor Betamon... although Elecmon at least managed to show up in the first handful of episodes as an antagonist of the week, where it's established as the guardian of the "Village of Beginnings", a nursery town where the eggs of the Digimon are created by the digital world, and Elecmon would guard over the baby-stage Digimon until they become strong enough to leave.Poor Elecmon is actually a pretty decent design for a Child-level Digimon when you think about it. It's a fun little mammalian thing that's not quite canine or lupine. I guess it's sort of a weird rabbit-frog thing? It's red-and-blue colour scheme is also very striking, and it has nine tails (probably inspired by the Japanese Kitsune like so many multi-tailed beasts in Japanese-originated fiction?). For whatever reason, Elecmon can shoot out lightning bolts, something that I wouldn't associate this red-blue mammal with.
And while I'll always remember Elecmon thanks to his role in Digimon Adventures, it's one of the Digimon who doesn't even get a 'default' evolution in subsequent material (although Leomon seems to be the most common possible evolution for him, there's really not a lot of similarities between the two), and looking at its wiki pages, apparently over the many, many video games that Elecmon has starred in, it could evolve to no less than thirty different Adult-stage Digimon.
7/10.Yukidarumon (a.k.a. Frigimon)
There is definitely something about Yukidarumon (romanized as Frigimon in the English dub, one of the few original Digimon that had a straight-up name change) that I found lacking. Maybe it's the fact that it's pretty boring? It's just a snowman with a simple, mouthless face and chubby limbs. It shoots icy punches. It's kind of like Meramon as a simple elemental humanoid, except this one's a snowman instead of a naked fire dude. But there's one thing that I really do remember fondly about Yukidarumon, and that's because the very first episode of Digimon Adventure I watched featured Yukidarumon as a (temporary) antagonist. Yukidarumon's pretty neat, I suppose, and its simple, cuter look actually ends up allowing to distinguish it from a lot of the other more obviously-cool or gross-cool monsters in this series. Yukidarumon would continue to appear in a lot of the subsequent series as monsters-of-the-week and background filler. In Digimon Savers, one of them even adopted a human child, Ikuto, before being killed like all anime parents are wont to be.Anyway, while in the original V-Pet Yukidarumon evolves from either Elecmon or Gabumon, nowadays Yukidarumon tends to be associated with a variety of snow-themed Child-stages like YukiAgumon, Penguinmon and SnowGoblinmon. Ultimately, while I do like Yukidarumon, I kind of feel that they could've definitely done a lot more with him. Solid design, though. No shame about that.
6/10.
Whamon
In the profiles, Whamon lives in the "Net Ocean" portion of the digital world, and is one of the largest creatures in existence. Its eyes have apparently degenerated, but from the artwork, that's not the only thing that has degenerated -- look at Whamon's literal entire body! It would've been so easy to just make this a monster whale and add some spikes, but no. They decided to make Whamon absolutely nightmarish, turning the bulk of its body into a decaying, veiny blue mass, while the upper half is covered in a weird chitinous eyeless thing. And look at its fangs! There's just something unsettling about those huge chunky teeth on the lower jaw when I know with full certainty larger whales aren't supposed to have gums, tooth or an upper fang of spiky barbs.
I absolutely love the sheer unsettling monstrousness of Whamon, and not even the anime's model shies away from portraying Whamon's uncanny appearance up. However, in the anime, Whamon has been portrayed as one of the most gentle and helpful recurring characters. Initially showing up as a villain-of-the-week that straight-up swallowed the entire cast, the Chosen Children then freed Whamon from the black gear controlling him. In the final arc of the Adventure series, Whamon would return and act as team transport while they battled against the mighty MetalSeadramon and his legion of watery minions, and even pulled off a goddamn heroic sacrifice as he dies. Whamon would make subsequent appearances in most other Digimon series, although these tended to be cameos or ally-of-the-week.
8/10.MetalMamemon
Now we're talking! One of the available Perfect-stages in this batch is MetalMamemon, who I've always thought to be so much cooler looking and badass compared to the original Mamemon. While it does lose the unsettling factor of Mamemon's extremely simple face, I think the metal helmet more than makes up for it. I really do like how one hand is a big-ass metal cannon (called the Psychoblaster, apparently), and the other arm is a normal human-like arm with Wolverine claws. Unfortunately, poor MetalMamemon fares as poorly as his non-metallic sibling as far as anime portrayals go. The Mamemon squad are some of the most constant recurring species in the video games, but its only notable appearances in multiple series of anime is as a very minor antagonist in 02. MetalMamemon is also the first "variant" Digimon, I suppose. Both Mamemon and MetalMamemon are Perfect-level, but MetalMamemon's profile makes it clear that MetalMamemon has 'evolved further in strength'. Such is the world of Digimon, really. Anyway, despite his lack of appearances, I've always liked MetalMamemon more than I should. 9/10.Vegimon (a.k.a. Vegiemon)
Hey, it's Vegiemon! (Yeah, it's pronounced similarly, but apparently the official Bandai spelling is the far more awkward "Vegimon") I'm genuinely surprised to find out what Vegiemon is supposed to be the "crap" Adult-stage for this particular V-Pet. Unlike Numemon and Sukamon, though, Vegiemon would eventually outgrow his association as being a shit-slinging undesirable monster, probably because, well, it actually looks somewhat badass for a "weed" monster. While Vegiemon will never be treated as badass as your Garurumons and your Kabuterimons, it's never treated as quite a joke as Numemon or Sukamon.Vegiemon's profile describes it not as an undesirable weed, anyway, but as an insectivorous plant with a wide, fanged mouth, and while it's weak, it's apparently does have a niche in whatever passes for an ecological system in the digimon world. Anyway, I do like Vegiemon a fair bit. From its weird fanged mouth to its squinty-red eyes to the surprisingly colourful crown of red/blue petals, to the two whip arms... I think my favourite piece of detail is how its rotund stomach-body is actually a lot of densely-packed vines. In the anime, Vegiemon was the antagonist of one episode in Adventure when he ran a diner (no really) and ended up basically forcing two of the Chosen Children into forced servitude, acting like the biggest dickwad senior waiter that a plant-bulb monster can. They would continue showing up as cameos in many subsequent series, but tended to be background filler or just enemy fodder. I don't mind Vegiemon. He's neat.
6/10.Vademon
Just like how Numemon can evolve into Monzaemon in the original V-Pet, so can Vegiemon! The 'secret' evolution to Vegiemon is the strange brain-tentacle-squid-alien Vademon, taking its name from the English word "invader". It's a genuinely surprising because while a slug and a teddy bear suit is a bit far-fetched, a fat weed monster evolving into an alien? Huh. I've never been the biggest fan of Vademon, although I've always found brain monsters charming, so Vademon's got that going on for him, anyway. It's definitely a bizarre-looking motherfucker, with huge eyes that are a bit too far apart, a stretched face, unreasonably muscular biceps, that gross-looking brain and the squiddy tentacles. I also love the chunky, 80's B-movie space gun and the random metallic wires that connect his exposed brain to the head. The only real link between Vegiemon and Vademon in their profiles is how Vademon is apparently "shaped like something from space" but is rumoured to have sprouted from a seed. So I guess the concept is that Vademon is a plant-man masquerading as a space-man? Oh, and Vademon tends to be portrayed as pretty dang powerful in most of his appearances, especially for a non-partner, non-main-villain Perfect Digimon.Most of Vademon's appearances tended to portray him straight as an alien-themed character, anyway -- some older games on the Playstation even had Vademon fly around in a goddamn little UFO because they can't animate the squid tentacles! In the original Adventure, Vademon was the subject of one of the more disturbing episodes (for me, anyway) where he's portrayed as this eccentric collector of knowledge and all sorts of trinkets and baubles. The problem? One of the kids, resident geek Koushiro, fell into his pocket dimension, and Vademon basically convinces him to basically stay until he gives up his heart by tempting the boy with all the knowledge he'd ever want.
In the original V-Pets, Vademon's attack is the "Demon's Blown Kiss" (the far-more-puntastic Unidentified Flying Kiss in the dub) because the V-Pets reuse attack animations, and being an equivalent to Monzaemon means that Vademon's attack has him shooting out hearts. This has the unfortunate side effect of making Vademon extra-creepy, and I think the anime even had some cheap gay jokes thrown around with Vademon's portrayal? Nowadays Vademon tends to resort to using his, y'know, big-ass alien gun to shoot people. Vademon's... more unsettlingly weird than conventionally creepy or cool, but I guess that's part of his charm.
6/10.
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