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Nyokimon
Biyomon's Baby-I form is, bizarrely enough, a little seedling. And Nyokimon was introduced in 1999 (every other Digimon I've been reviewing were introduced in 1998) with the second generation of virtual pets in the "Wind Guardians" Pendulum series, a series centered on nature-based Digimon. So I guess poor Biyomon just couldn't catch a break and had to share her baby stages with plant-people wherever she goes? Eh, whatever. Nyokimon and Pyokomon are associated permanently to Biyomon thanks to the anime, so we're stuck with that. Other than the bizarreness of the whole 'seed sprouts into a pink bird' deal, of course. But it isn't Nyokimon's fault! Anyway, Nyokimon is a pleasant little design for a Baby I, with the fun translucent shell and a little sproutling on her head. I do like that the Digimon profile and artstyle both acknowledge Nyokimon as a variant of Botamon, communicated very well with the black fuzzy consistency and yellow glowing eyes. Apparently it's this Botamon genes that allows Nyokimon to have the potential to turn into dragons? Okay then, even if Nyokimon's default evolutions are more avian than draconic. Overall, though, I always found Nyokimon kinda forgettable (as in I'd actually forget what the stage before Pyokomon was), though her design's pretty neat.
6/10.Pyokomon (a.k.a. Yokomon/Pyocomon)
Pyokomon (the official romanization of the Japanese bit can't agree on Pyoco/Yoko/Pyoko so I'll use the one I'm the most familiar with) here is the Baby-II stage for Biyomon, and continues with Nyokimon's whole deal of being a plant. Pyokomon is perhaps one of the more complex Baby-II stages, with that whole blooming flower going on, her head being a fun little onion bulb, those cross-shaped eye markings and a bunch of... weird octopus-like tentacle things on her bottom? As a kid I always thought that Pyokomon suited Palmon a lot more thanks to both of them having a flower on their heads, but it's not like Tanemon made any more sense to turn into a goddamn bird. Pyokomon, like Nyokimon, was introduced in 1999, a full year after Biyomon. I like Pyokomon! She's pretty cute. In Adventures, there was a whole village of Pyokomons as a bunch of recurring characters, sort of showing that even the partner Digimon aren't unique species. It's been more than 20 years and my brain has sort of handwaved it away pretty hard, but it is very weird that this adorable flower onion ends up turning into a bird.
7/10.Piyomon (a.k.a. Biyomon)
Biyomon (the official translation flip back and forth between Biyomon and Piyomon and I'll be using the two practically interchangeably) was the partner of the main female lead in Adventure, resident tomboy Takenouchi Sora and best buddies with the two main male leads, Yamato and Taichi. Sora's story is perhaps one of the more interesting ones among Digimon Adventures's cast, where she starts off as such a huge, huge tomboy and is absolutely confused when she discovers that her associated emotion is Love (for those keeping track for our previous characters, Taichi's is Courage, Yamato's is Friendship, Takeru's is Hope and Mimi's is Purity). And Sora? Sora does clearly care for her friends and treats them like family, but she came from a huge conflicted household who wants her to be prim-and-proper like most Japanese girls tend to be pigeonholed into by society. And as Sora matures throughout the course of Adventure she actually ends up discovering that a good chunk of her tomboyness was the cause of acting out, and ends up in a much healthier relationship with her mother and her friends, maintaining a neat balance between all her interests without forcing herself to be what she's not.You notice that with Biyomon I start off with her human partner instead of Biyomon herself, becuase, well... Biyomon's sort of just there as kind of an accessory for Sora to bounce off dialogue to. All the Digimon partners are, to some extent, but I've always felt that Biyomon was the one that felt the most lacking as far as a defined personality goes. She flip-flops between being mature and stable like the Gabumons and Tentomons of the group, or to prissy and volatile depending on the episode's requirements. She's just kind of there, sort of the jack-of-all-trades depending on what the episode currently needed. She's extremely likable, don't get me wrong, just not quite as memorable as the rest of the main Digimon cast to me. She is one of the few Digimon to get a genuinely neat little character arc in Tri, though, in a series where a good chunk of the partners got reduced screentime. (Also, dang, Sora's original Adventure hat really looks dumb, yeah?)
While Biyomon is one of the main characters in Digimon Adventure (and like most of the cast of Adventure, had a supporting role in 02), a different Biyomon became a recurring character in Digimon Savers which led to one of the genuinely most emotionally upsetting deaths where our heroes are forced to mercy-kill her.
From a design standpoint, Biyomon is... neat? She's a pink tweety bird with blue highlights, with, interestingly enough, wings that have transformed into long-clawed hands. Which still doesn't hinder her ability to fly, at least in the anime, but while back in the day she's just a weirdly-armed bird, Biyomon does kind of fit a chubbier, stylized version of modern-day dinosaurs who we do think are feathered. She just has a beak. Unintentional, I'm sure, but I do like it. I'm not quite sure why she has a metal ring on her leg as a kid, but apparently it's meant to represent those little messenger pigeon tags?
The original Virtual Pet that Biyomon debuted in only had Kokatorimon as Biyomon's possible avian evolution, but her profile straight-up states how she dreads becoming specifically Kokatorimon, which can't fly, and she really wants to become Birdramon. Anyone who knows who Biyomon is will very likely know that she turns into Birdramon... but back in the original Virtual Pets, there was no way to get Biyomon to turn into Birdramon! Why you got to be so mean, Bandai? Anyway, I've never been the biggest lover of less predatory birds, especially if my Pokemon reviews are anything to go by, but Biyomon's personality is sweet enough she gets an extra mark.
7/10. +1 for personality.Birdramon
Birdramon, though, doesn't need to get any extra points because she's clearly the uncontested coolest Adult-stage evolution among the original seven Adults in the first season of Digimon Adventure. And yes, that includes Kabuterimon and Greymon, because as much as I love insects and dinosaurs, I've always found Birdramon extremely visually appealing. She manages to look like an insanely majestic beast while still keeping a sense of monstrousness thanks to her uniquely mean-looking face. Designs tended to either go one way or the other -- make a character look glorious and majestic, or make them monstrous and horrifying. And there's not a lot of designs that manages to strike a neat balance between the two. Not Birdramon, though! It's a giant phoenix made out of entirely flames (like Meramon, her profile notes that she's created from the Firewall) and another pretty large Adult-stage, too, with Sora able to stand on one of her toes to ride her.The anime does tone down a fair bit of the stylization that the official Bandai art uses, and even with the rather simple animation of the flames that make up Birdramon (although they kept the a consistent two-tone shading for Birdramon, which is always pleasant) she always looks pretty damn impressive. And the updated animators for Tri gave Birdramon some great scenes as well with an updated characcter model. Oh, and instead of merely breathing fire, with a flap of her wing Birdramon straight-up goes all Sodom and Gomorrah on her opponents, raining down swarms of meteors down on her enemy.
Honestly, I'm not sure why Birdramon's weird-ass toothy rake mouth appeals so much on me, and neither does it, on theory, make real sense on an avian monster, but it honestly works pretty dang well in making Birdramon go from a simple and honestly pretty common monster trope and make her far, far more impressive than, say, Pokemon's resident fire-bird Moltres. I guess Birdramon might be an Archaeopteryx or Dimetrodon of sorts? Add the fact that Birdramon manages to do this with minimal embellishment or accessories (other than the monster-beak and fire body, the only real thing of note is her horn-like plumage), and it's actually pretty impressive they got a pretty cool looking monster out of it.
As I've mentioned before, though, Birdramon wasn't associated with Biyomon initially, and was actually one of Gabumon's possible evolutions. Of course, that's not the case now thanks to the anime, so Biyomon can rest easy that in most of her media appearances she evolves into what her profile says she really wants to. Birdramon also, I guess, counts as a -dramon, but no one ever really acknowledges that.
9/10. Garudamon
Birdamon evolves into the slightly-less exciting Garudamon, introduced in 1999 in the "Wind Guardians" version of the virtual pet. Garudamon's design doesn't quite appeal to me much as a kid, but I actually do appreciate a lot of things about her -- the fact that she turns humanoid is an unfortunate black mark in my books, but she does turn into a burly, mean-looking bird-woman. And a very, very rare case that either a female Digimon or a bird-human design is allowed to look pretty dang buff and bulky. Most other bird-people in fantasy tend to look frail and thin and lithe, and Garudamon subverting that is a neat bit of design.She's based on the mythological Hindu-Buddhist deity Garuda, which is depicted as either a kite (the bird, not the toy) or a humanoid with bird wings and talons. Garudamon adds an angry-looking bird head (with teeth for some reason) to that formula. Ultimately, though, I don't really like the sheer amounts of details they worked into Garudamon, from the many tribal markings on her arms, head-helmet, thighs and talons to her rather elaborate hairdo. It's a badass bird-man, but I'll easily acknowledge that it's just not my type of aesthetic. Garudamon looks pretty damn badass and does kick a lot of ass in the Adventures anime, though. Outside of Adventure, Garudamon is apparently a defender of good and is good buddies with Leomon. One thing I do appreciate about Garudamon, though? Unlike WereGarurumon, WarGreymon, Lilimon and a lot of other monstrous Digimon that revert back to a tiny, humanoid form, Garudamon remains a titanic bird-woman when evolved, and she's big enough to quite literally carry the entire cast and their Child-level partners on her two hands during her very first appearance.
6/10. Hououmon (a.k.a. Phoenixmon)
Debuting in the same Pendulum toy that Garudamon showed up in is Hououmon (Phoenixmon in English, because Hou'ou/Ho-oh just straight up means phoenix). While Biyomon never achieved this form in Adventure or 02, it's sort of assumed by mass consensus that Hououmon here is Garudamon's default Ultimate stage. And when every member of the cast managed to get to Ultimate level in Tri, Biyomon, of course, got Hououmon as her ultimate form.
Hououmon's a bit of a messier design in my opinion, especially compared to Birdramon. Part of it is due to the cluttered original Bandai art that has both pairs of wings angled awkwardly, of course. The Tri model have Hououmon's two pairs of wings splayed out like a butterfly's, which I think is a far better look. Oh, and she shines brightly in a sparkly golden aura aand looks pretty dang majestic. But I do think that there's a bit too much going on on Hououmon, from the metal head to the random purple feathers on her back and neck, to the four wings, to the multiple whip-like tails in addition to her more normal bird tail. It does still play into Birdramon's majestic-but-monstrous motif, though, and it's a design that I can get behind.
Although Hououmon's profile notes about how she's the absolute god of all bird Digimon, how she has two holy rings on her talons and she is the absolute ultimate form of all bird Digimon, with unfathomable power and the ability to purify evil with a flap of her wings... in practice Hououmon tends to be portrayed in the actual stories (a Hououmon shows up in Tamers too as a minor recurring ally) as just another plain ol' Ultimate. Especially when more and more powerful god-beasts and god-like creatures are introduced down the line. Eh. She's still pretty cool, if only in motion.
7/10. Kokatorimon (a.k.a. Cockatorimon)
The original adult stage evolution that made any real sense for Biyomon in her original V-Pet was this dude, Kokatorimon (very rarely spelled as "Cockatorimon"), a monster based on the mythological cockatrice. The mythological cockatrice tended to be displayed as a two-legged dragon/serpent with a chicken's head, but most popular portrayals tended to display cockatrices as just scary chickens with a Medusa glare. And Kokatorimon is no different. He's just a big-ass angry chicken! An angry, angry chicken with some glorious plumage! With a disturbingly human set of gums and teeth inside that beak. Love the upper jaw having a human set of teeth while the lower jaw just has some sharp black fangs on the tip. Yeah, that's pretty a disturbing bit of detail to throw into what would otherwise be a pretty boring monster. More modern artwork ends up going the straight-up nightmarish route with depicting Kokatorimon. (Kokatorimon's anime model went for a goofier set of proportions, though)Kokatorimon has apparently been adapted for life on land, hence a larger body than his wings and powerful legs, but he's always jealous of all the Birdramons and Aquilamons and other birds of the Digimon world. Like most depictions of cockatrices, Kokatorimon attacks by petrifying and turning his opponents into stone. While perhaps not the most exciting Digimon design, Kokatorimon still manages to look unique while remaining relatively simple. Kokatorimon's also appeared in a surprisingly large amount of anime series, being one of Etemon's minions in Adventure, the very first villain-of-the-week in Savers and as background characters in both Frontier and Xros Wars. Anyway, while a bit overshadowed by so many others, I do appreciate good ol' chickenface here.
6/10. Kuwagamon
Aw hell yes Kuwagamon! Anyone that has read any of my "Gotta Review 'Em All" series would know of my love for arthropods of all kinds, being immensely fascinated with them as a child... and that fascination was built up in no small part by Pokemon and Digimon. So it's a given that I really end up loving this giant bug monster. Kuwagamon is particularly special to me, though, due to the fact that he's the very first enemy Digimon to be seen in Adventure, being the antagonist for the first episode and would show up a couple more times in the series. Gloriously, the animation staff for Digimon Tri decided that the nostalgia factor was enough and brought Kuwagamon in to star in half of a movie. And while Kuwagamon himself has only ever appeared in animated format in Adventure, 02 and Tri, he has many, many siblings and variations that do show up to menace different heroes.
Originally introduced as a possible evolution of both Biyomon and Palmon and evolving into Piccolomon, later series obviously introduced far, far more appropriate Child and Perfect levels for Kuwagamon to evolve in and out of. Tentomon held down this slot as Kabuterimon's default Child version until they introduced Kokuwamon later on, whereas Kabuterimon's default evolution is, of course, Okuwamon.
Kuwagamon here is based on the stag beetle, a very popular animal in Japan for bug-collecting children, and has been featured in many, many Japanese anime. Kamen Rider, Zoids, Time Bokan, Pokemon, Digimon... lots of Japanese shows feature the stag beetle and rhinoceros beetle as characters or monsters of some sort. And it's this beetle-fighting pastime in Japan that ended up spawning the 'mons genre in the first place. So. Anyway, Kuwagamon's design is pretty damn great, and sets the tone of a lot of precedent for the early insectoid Digimon. Kuwagamon is gigantic, towering, with a vaguely humanoid body shape but still having the right amount of six limbs. Giant claws, giant wings... and the signature insect face found in many Digimon. A complete lack of eyes and a monstrous set of decidedly non-insectoid fangs. In Kuwagamon it's just a normal pair of fangs, but we'll see other variations of this look down the line. It's a very striking look, though, perhaps meant to evocate the similar eyeless-fanged look of Alien's Xenomorph, but still does manage to look pretty damn unique with Kuwagamon's stylish markings on his eyeless face, as well as, of course, his two giant stag beetle pinccers.
Kuwagamon is portrayed as the rival to the (vaguely) rhinoceros-beetle-based Kabuterimon, and the two of them will fight each other to the death whenever they meet, referencing the stag/rhinoceros beetle rivalry often seen in Japanese media. Surprisingly, though, we don't actually get a proper fight between the two of them in the anime until 2016's Tri, with the only meeting of Kuwagamon and Kabuterimon in Adventure ending up in a non-conflict. Anyway... Kuwagamon might be portrayed most of the time as a snarling, roaring mindless beast of an animal, but I do like the design of Digimon's insect monsters a whole lot.
10/10. (Is it a surprise? No?)Megadramon
If you told me to pick a favourite Digimon that's not a main character, Megadramon is going to be my instant go-to answer. Just look at this badass motherfucker! As a kid I really, really loved robots. And I really, really loved dinosaurs (dragons, dinosaurs, eh). So I immediately fell in love with Megadramon when I first saw him in Digimon Adventure. And honestly, Megadramon didn't really had much to do. He was part of a long montage of Mugendramon's many, many (and I do mean many) robot minions, but the scene where a little aircraft hangar opens and Megadramon and his recoloured cousin Gigadramon flew out stuck with me a lot as a kid. I mean, sure, Mugendramon and WarGreymon and all the others had the big roles and were super-badass, but Megadramon is that sort of monster that really stuck with me. You know how sometimes you really end up loving a minor character without really much reason? Megadramon is that for me.And I suppose a good chunk of it came from Megadramon kind of looking like MetalGreymon. The mainly orange body, metallic cyborg parts, tattered purple wings? But where MetalGreymon was a big dinosaur, Megadramon was serpentine, and I found his rather mermaid-esque body plan to be appealing. The snake-like lower body tapering off as he flies around is pretty badass, and so are Megadramon's very cool-looking tripartine claw-arms. Which apparently shoots out one of those flesh-missiles that MetalGreymon and Andromon has. Megadramon's little flesh-missile buddy gives you a thumbs-up, though! Megadramon's profile notes that he was artificially remodeled similar to a lot of the other cyborg Digimon introduced early on. Apparently in Megadramon's case, this includes some badass skull tattoos on his nipples. You do you, Megadramon!
Megadramon's attack is even pretty damn cool, called the "Genocide Attack". If you think this is hyperbole, though, the reason Megadramon and Gigadramon were unleashed in the Adventures anime was to quite literally napalm entire sections of a city our heroes are hiding in, blowing them up like an airstrike in a way that will never find its way into a Saturday morning cartoon post-9/11. Plus, Megadramon just looks pretty damn threatening, noted to be the strongest and most wicked among those in the Perfect level. It also behaves like a virus, able to tear through and straight-up reformat any computer it travels in.
Megadramon was so cool that he shows up as a minor antagonists our heroes fight in 02 and especially Tamers (where one gets an episode to himself), was part of the bad guys' army in Xros Wars and was apparently the partner of the previous generation of Chosen Children in Tri. Most memorably, I beat Digimon World with a Megadramon that I raised and created purely by accident, which just truly solidifies my love for this draconic cyborg.
Sadly, though, while Megadramon is clearly cousins with Gigadramon, we're never treated to a proper evolution or pre-evolution for Megadramon. The original V-Pet had Monochromon, Leomon and Coelamon, none of which bear any sort of real resemblance to Megadramon. While there have been a lot of other possible pre-evolutions for Megadramon over the years, newer PSP games have resorted to Airdramon as Megadramon's default Adult-stage, which... makes a fair bit of sense, actually, as the only flying serpent-dragon Digimon to get cyborgized. Megadramon's default evolution have likewise been variable depending on the game -- including evolving into things that are neither dragon nor robot at times -- but the big bad badass one that makes the most sense is Mugendramon, who we'll cover in due time.
10/10. Nanimon
Yeah, apparently Nanimon is based on the mascot character of Digimon's fellow virtual-pet franchise Tamagotchi, "Oyajitchi", a caricature of an oyajii, a middle-aged man. But where Oyajitchi is honestly pretty cute and gonky to not look gross and more ha-ha funny, Nanimon just looks... horrifyingly disgusting. Part of it is the sheer uncanny valley involved in the very human-like design of Nanimon, but honestly... what the fuck? There are some designs where ugliness works to enhance the design. Trash-based or sludge-based monsters like your Raremons and your Numemons do need to be ugly. Monsters based on actually ugly real-life beings like Coelamon end up looking monstrous thanks to their ugliness. Nanimon? Nanimon just looks flat-out unpleasant.
And honestly, Nanimon's the only one out of the "bad" evolutions that look flat-out like a punishment. Vegiemon and Numemon merely look weak but still kinda charming, Raremon's actually kinda badass and Sukamon has way more charm than this guy. How horrible did you have to raise your Biyomon that it morphs from a cute fire-spitting pink bird into some guy's dad with grotesque muscles and armpit hair? Who throws his shit at other people? It's not as funny as when it's a middle-aged mutant man throwing crap instead of a goofy shitmonster. Easily the worst Digimon design not just of the early years, but honestly easily worse than anything Digimon comes up with after this. "What the fuck" is, indeed, the right choice of words for this sorry being. 0/10. Digitamamon
Digitamamon (digitama meaning digi-egg, of course, the stage before Baby-I) is a pretty damn cool design that thankfully retains none of the sheer ugliness of Nanimon. Digitamamon is a very simple design -- a cracked egg showing the creature within only as two glowing eyes in a void of darkness, with two green reptilian feet poking out. Apparently the connection between Nanimon and Digitamamon is that they're both Tamagotchi references, but a reference to the broken Tamagotchi egg is certainly a far cooler and pleasant-looking monster than a drunken middle-aged man mascot. To tie into this, apparently to evolve into Digitamamon, you access 'data from another dimension'?
I do love the original profile of Digitamamon noting that it's the "apex" of all Digimon evolution (this was written before Ultimate levels were a thing, of course) and the "beginning of end of all Digimon". It's an interesting notion that the most powerful stage of all Digimon evolution ends up returning back to the very first stage -- an egg. And Digitamamon's an adorable egg monster! Those eyes in the darkness look equal parts adorable and at the same time horrifying if the Digitamamon in question is hostile and not a buddy. And we actually have official artwork of what Digitamamon looks under that egg shell... and apparently "glowing eyes within a black void" is quite literally Digitamamon's true form. I mean, sure, it apparently has a screaming spectral mouth and shadowy hands alongside the glowing eyes, but it's pretty damn neat that apparently the ominous darkness within Digitamamon is literal.
While originally the default evolution of Nanimon, subsequent games have sort of made Digitamamon into the default "anything can turn into this" Perfect evolution (with Digimon World 3 having nearly every Adult-stage be apparently able to turn into Digitamamon). Newer, modern games tended to make Digitamamon the default evolution of Ogremon of all things, and at least a game allows the change of a digi-tama immediately hatching into Digitamamon. Digitamamon would eventually get a default Ultimate evolution called Devitamamon, which we'll cover later, but it's neat that even with the addition of a further Ultimate level, you can still have your Digimon still remain an egg monster. Overall, a pretty simple but fun little design!
8/10. 
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