Digimon Reviews, Episode 6: Gizamon, Gazimon and A Bunch of Monsters!

We take a break from going through one of the Chosen Children's partner Digimon every episode because we're going through a chronological order, and this is the fifth version of the original Digital  Monster Virtual Pets (we are still in 1998, after all, a full set of virtual pets before the anime was even a thing) -- and it was one where none of the Digimon featured ended up being one of the show's mascot by way of the anime. It's understandable, though, since Digital Monsters Version 5 is clearly meant to be the "bad boy" one, and all its designs were a fair bit more monstrous and villainous-looking than the ones before it. I originally wanted to squeeze in either Tentomon or Gomamon here, or to split up the Digimon here into different partner-Digimon articles... but decided not to. I apparently have enough to talk about these guys.

So yeah, let's go through these monsters!
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Zurumon

Zurumon here is a Digimon that I keep forgetting exists, mainly because he very rarely appears in anything. Some Digimon games straight-up omit Baby I forms entirely, and those that don't tended to just include the ones featured in the anime. Unfortunately, Zurumon never shows up in anything despite being one of the five original Babies. Poor Zurumon! He's kind of a simple design, though, just being a blob of slime with the meanest-looking and most mischievous-looking of the babies. Zurumon is apparently born out of a computer virus and "a hacker's evil desires", because anime rules. It does have a very expressive face, though, and apparently it's poisonous that even larger Digimon steer away from it. While individually it's honestly kind of boring, I do like how it sort of sets up the stage for what we're into for the rest of this V-Pet.

 6/10. 

Pagumon

Zurumon's evolved stage, Pagumon, was a bit more prolific in the anime, tending to be portrayed as groups of shit-talking douchebags that bully other Babies and an oddity among the normally-nice-and-innocent Baby-level Digimon. So while the Chosen Children have mainly battled evil Digimon that are Adult-level previously, when they encountered a village full of Pagumon they ended up dropping their guard, very nearly getting killed by these shifty fuckers if Agumon wasn't racist careful. A group of Pagumon were also recurring antagonists in Digimon Frontier, even evolving straight into a Raremon to fight the protagonists of that series, and a bunch of them continued to play the part of ungrateful civilians throughout the series' run. Pagumon is described by having ear-arms that it can move skillfully like humans... but uses them to perform rude gestures like pulling its eyelid down or slapping its butt. Presumably it also learns to flip the bird, too. I've never really liked this dude a whole lot, though, despite its personality. Eh.

 6/10. 

Gazimon

Pagumon's most direct evolution is Gazimon, and the two were introduced side-by-side in the Adventures anime, with a trio of Gazimon being the bosses of the Pagumon village, and in turn, these three Gazimon basically act like the Lion King hyenas to Etemon. It's a definitely fun-looking design, with the Gazimon looking like some sort of feral dog or weasel monster that can either walk on two legs or on all fours with its knuckles dragging on the ground. It's got a very mean-looking expression on it too that just looks mischievous, and those hand claws do look like like they can gouge out someone's intestines. Gazimon also has ears that seem to neatly evolve from Pagumon's own ear-arms, as well as a bunch of leather belts on its tail just because.

Gazimon is apparently "rare" among mammalian Digimon for standing on two legs, a fact that, twenty years and a couple hundred designs later, I can safely say that is definitely not the case. And while Gazimon's claws look mean as hell, apparently they attack mainly with their poisonous breath, and use the claws to... dig pitfalls? Eh. Anyway, as the requisite "evil" or jackass Child-level Digimon, and a humanoid mammal to boot,  Gazimon's definitely a popular design among the fandom. I'm actually genuinely surprised that Digimon Adventures resisted introducing a brooding-loner type of character paired with a Gazimon in its original anime run (that sort of archetype would show up in Tamers, Frontier, Savers and Xros Wars). Gazimon would show up in a lot of video games as well. A very solid design!

 9/10. 

Gizamon

The other option for Pagumon is Gizamon, who as a kid I really wondered why they gave the bipedal clawed fox-rabbit and the weird toad-dinosaur very similar names. Apparently "gazigazi" is the onomatopoeia for chewing down, and "gizagiza" meant jagged? Eh. As you can imagine, I always get the two mixed up, and had to proofread through these two sections a couple of times. I've always thought of Gizamon here as Betamon's bigger, burlier cousin-twice-removed. Whereas Betamon would go to the library and speak like a character out of an 80's cartoon, Gizamon is the one that skateboards with the older kids and grows out his hair and drinks beer and comes home after 10 p.m. because he's such a bad boy. There's no real connection between the two in official Digimon media, but as a kid I've always thought the two were connected somehow, kind of like, oh, your Tyrannomons and DarkTyrannomons. Part of it is definitely because Gizamon's anime model got rid of a lot of the Bandai artwork's veins and turned all that hair into far less hair-like, so Gizamon looked a lot more like a toad to me.

Anyway, despite his clearly toad-like leg layout and those webbed (albeit metal) feet, Gizamon is stated to be an aquatic mammal, although it apparently lives like an amphibian -- swimming in the water and hopping on land. The hair, the mean-looking fangs and those set of blade-like spinal blades are really cool looking, and, very interestingly, Gizamon's main attack, Spiral Edge, involves him curling around Sonic-style into a literal ball with his spikes jutting out. Gizamon's biggest appearance was coming out of the Tokyo river en masse like a swarm of ravenous piranha who's suddenly learned how to walk on land, which was always a pretty cool mental image as a kid. Since then Gizamon's shown up in a lot of other Digimon anime series, but tended to be kept in minor, non-speaking roles. And honestly? I think I found out a newfound appreciation for Gizamon beyond him just being "mean furry Betamon". He's not suddenly my favourite Digimon or anything, but I started this review thinking I'd give him a low rating. Good on you, Gizamon.

 6/10. 

DarkTyrannomon

DarkTyrannomon here is Tyrannomon's punk-ass counterpart. And while sooner or later we'll bump into the huge wall of video game recolours, the ones introduced early on tended to actually try to make things different. In DarkTyrannomon's case it's not just turning his colours black -- the frayed spinal plates, the longer, burlier arms that reach the ground, those punk-ass goth belts all around his arms, and the orc-teeth on his lower jaw all are minor enough that DarkTyrannomon is still clearly a derivative of Tyrannomon. Just darker. I really do love the hunched-over posture DarkTyrannomon has thanks to his larger arms, because that change really ends up making for a more sinister and battle-ready than Tyrannomon. Even the anime model, which ops to make DarkTyrannomon a lot less feral-looking, still looks a lot less friendlier than regular Tyrannomon.

Which is why I've always found DarkTyrannomon so much more interesting than Tyrannomon, actually. It's perhaps a bit unfair to poor old Tyrannomon, but them's the breaks. I've always found it interesting that in the Digimon world, even a creature like DarkTyrannomon that's explicitly stated to be so much stronger than regular Tyrannomon was still considered the same level. DarkTyrannomon was introduced in the anime as one of Vamdemon's minions, having a grand old time playing Godzilla as he rampages in Odaiba. Other DarkTyrannomon would become minor antagonists in 02, Tamers and Fusion.

 8/10. 

Cyclomon (a.k.a. Cyclonemon)

As a kid, apparently the dub team didn't get that Cyclomon was based on the mythological Cyclops, and gave him the dub name "Cyclonemon". Silly dub! Not that poor Cyclomon has ever really shown up in any anime, making the distinction of being one of two Digimon from the virtual pets (along with Ex-Tyrannomon below) to never appear in any anime series. Not even as a cameo or a minor role! You'd think that Cyclomon would be a decent villain-of-the-week to bat around, but nope! The only time I've ever really seen him is in the V-Tamer manga as an early villain that was beaten down pretty unmemorably, and... Digimon World 3? He's definitely one of the more forgettable monsters, honestly, and definitely one of those that was a wee bit too grotesque and ugly to be unmemorable.

Perhaps it's part of his design, because Cyclomon is just this huge, naked yellow lizard-man without any real distinguishing features. His whole "Cyclops" deal is a neat subversion of normal Cyclops tropes, though, because instead of being a giant with one eye in the center, Cyclomon's just straight-up blind on the right side of his face, with the only eye it has being the one on the left side of its Greymon-esque helmet. Which is why his right arm is so fuckin' huge, by the way -- he apparently trained it up so much to cover his blind side, and it mutated into a giant red-clawed pillar. Apparently Cyclomon used to be a dragon warrior, but his eye was destroyed by Leomon and now he becomes a vengeful monster? Eh. I don't need an interesting media appearance to love a Digimon (although as you probably note, that helps a lot) but Cyclomon is already a pretty bleh design in my books, and in my head he's always "uglier Golemon".

 3/10. 

Devidramon

Hey it's Devidramon! The concept on this thing is honestly quite simple -- Devimon, but more beastly. And I think they managed to do it pretty well! Initially introduced in the anime hiding as gargoyles before unleashed by Vamdemon upon our heroes, I've always thought of Devidramon as being pretty dang neat. It's neat how he's basically the Devimon design (suit?) transplanted into a crouching dragon-like gargoyle... and I love dragons, so Devidramon was definitely an instant hit with me. Devidramon is surprisingly not Devimon's pre-evolution or Perfect-level evolution, but rather just a beastlier Adult-level counterpart... that's consistently portrayed as being weaker. Devimon apparently summoned the Devidramons into existence? It's also a -dramon, for what it counts. I love his four red eyes and four tattered wings, and his gaunt, long arms always looked striking to me -- it brings Devidramon enough into uncanny valley territory where he doesn't look quite right for a dragon, and more like some horrendously deformed human.

Basically a lot of what I like about Devimon is retained here, swapping out some of Devimon's huge amount of gothic accessories for draconic features. And you know what? It works pretty well! Its bulb-like tail can also apparently open up into a maw-like pincer, always a welcome feature in monsters. Devidramon, in addition to becoming a villain-of-the-week in Adventure (and, interestingly enough, ones that actually manage to win in an episode before being beaten in the next) also appeared as one of the earlier villains in Tamers, and were generic bad-guy-minions in 02 and Xros Wars.

 10/10. 

Tuskmon

While I am a sucker for the original Bandai artwork that make the Digimon fairly more monstrous, Tuskmon's Bandai art just sort of makes him look like his head and arms are kind of malproportioned. Been hitting the gym a bit too much, huh, Tuskmon? I much prefer his anime model, seen here, which basically gives Tuskmon a proper theropodal body plan and then adds the details. And... Tuskmon isn't a bad design at all, if somewhat simplistic -- it's just a dinosaur with extra-large muscles and those two long tusks from his shoulders that really don't look like they can actually gore whoever Tuskmon is charging at due to his big-ass head. Tuskmon is apparently known as the "Panzer Digimon" because it charges at the enemy and is super-destructive. And it's horns actually grow back? Tuskmon's Bandai profile take special care to note that he tattoos his kills onto that skull on his shoulder, with each star apparently symbolizing 100 kills. Yeah, unless he goes around stomping Koromon villages, I genuinely have a hard time believing that.

Tuskmon is used as a villain of the week twice in Adventure and 02, but never headlined an episode on its own -- in 02 Tuskmon was the Digimon Kaiser's steed and I don't think ever actually fought, whereas in Adventure is sort of shows up in a tag team with fellow kind-of-ignored adult stage Snimon. I kind of like Tuskmon for the simple fact that he's a dinosaur monster and I do like the wacky tattoo, but at the same time I barely remember he exists most of the time. 

 5/10. 

Deltamon

Deltamon here is kinda cool, yeah? He's this weird shark-headed dinosaur monsters with two tails and arms that end in giant dragon skulls. Well, his left hand ends in a skull, and the right one ends in a tapering crocodilian robot head. Apparently Deltamon started off life as three Digimon (neither of Deltamon's heads resemble any pre-existing Digimon) which got fused together when a computer got hit by lightning. And it's reasonably cool, I suppose, and "Deltamon" just sounds a fair bit more impressive than, oh, I dunno, Tuskmon up there. Its design is fancy enough that I genuinely thought that it was a Perfect-level when I first saw it in the 02 anime. I mean, it does kind of follow the "modified monster" look that MetalGreymon and MetalTyrannomon and many other Perfect-level Digimon has, right? But Deltamon's just kind of a pretty ignored Adult-level Digimon. Apparently it would've been a lot more powerful if it heads learned to cooperate?

I never minded Deltamon and always found him pretty cool. He ended up being a villain of the week in the early episodes of 02, and I remembered him quite distinctly as one that I kind of found pretty cool. Unfortunately I really don't have really all that much to say about Deltamon, though, and I know I'll have a lot to say about the next two... so let's cover the ongoing theme for Digital Monsters Version 5, yeah? The fandom noticed that in addition to the whole "bad boys" theme, the original sprites of the Adult stages available in this version -- DarkTyrannomon, Cyclomon, Devidramon, Tuskmon, Flymon, Deltamon and Raremon -- taken as a set, match up with a fair amount of Godzilla and his supporting enemies. DarkTyrannomon is Godzilla; Flymon is Mothra; Raremon is Hedorah; Cyclomon is Gigan; Devidramon is Destroyah; Tuskmon is Spacegodzilla... and Deltamon, of course, is the three-headed Ghidorah. I'm unfamiliar with a significant portion of Godzilla's lore, but the brief look-up of what they look like kind of makes sense? It's a neat bit of trivia, in either case. 

 6/10. 

Flymon

So Flymon here is definitely intended to be an Adult-stage evolution to Kunemon (who, as I mentioned before, didn't have any proper bug-themed evolution when he was first introduced), and ends up being Kunemon's default evolution from then on. Flymon's pretty cool, and I do appreciate just how... derivative, I guess is the word, compared to the more standardized designs of Kabuterimon and Kuwagamon. And Flymon's a pretty great design! I really love the head, with it remaining still eyeless (although Flymon retains Kunemon's thunderbolt face markings) and its mouth is this wickedly horrifying four-pronged beak. Not as big of a fan of the weird ring of flowers on Flymon's neck, but I suppose it's to show that bees are fluffy or something? I'm a big fan of how his legs are arranged, though, with Flymon having two particularly large legs with toes, while the other two pairs of legs are pretty mean-looking curved daggers. Oh, being a wasp-bee monster, Flymon, of course, has a mean-ass stinger on its abdomen. Which it shoots out like a missile!

I think my favourite aspect of Flymon's design is its wings, which is weirdly tattered in the same way that MetalGreymon or Megadramon's wings are, but Flymon, apparently, has some Yu-Gi-Oh creepy-looking eyes on his wings. While doubtless trying to homage how some real-life moths and butterflies have fake eye-spots, this is certainly a pretty dang cool way to adapt them. Anyway, while Flymon isn't my favourite Digimon (it's not the fault of Flymon that so many other buggy Digimon look so much cooler!) he's definitely a great-looking design! The anime staff clearly agree, because Flymon's been a villain-of-the-week for Adventure, 02, Savers and Xros Wars. Anyway, I like this bugger! He's cool.

 9/10. 

Raremon

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't think that Raremon is counted as one of the "undesirables" in the same vein that Numemon and Sukamon are, for the simple reason that holy shit Raremon was pretty dang scary in the anime. And honestly? His design isn't even that bad. Sure, it's ugly, but it's ugly in the "holy fuck this scary undead zombie cyborg goop creature is going to kill everything I know and love" and not "ew, a poop". Raremon here is honestly pretty damn cool, and I've always liked it ever since he first showed up in the Digimon Adventure anime. He was one of the earliest adversaries that Vamdemon sent out to terrorize Tokyo in search of the fabled eight Chosen Child, and the way the scenes involving Raremon were shot in a pretty gloriously horrifying way as Raremon just lurches out of a river and straight-up rampages and destroys an entire club. Oh, and Raremon's like the size of a small kaiju. So yeah, significantly scarier and more badass than a turd. Raremon's subsequent battle with one of our protagonists was also quite prolonged and surprisingly brutal as Raremon tries to straight-up drown poor Kabuterimon. Since then, Raremon's been featured as villains-of-the-week in both Frontier and Xros Wars.

Raremon is pretty damn badass, too, because it's not just a pile of sludge. No, Raremon is an undead Digimon whose muscles have all rotted away, and tried to extend its life with mechanical augmentations in the same way as the likes of Andromon, Megadramon and MetalGreymon... but instead of becoming a badass cyborg monster, the rest of Raremon's tissues just broke down and decomposed, but thanks to the machines it will not die. It's less of a pile of toxic sludge like Pokemon's Muk, but really more of a decomposing corpse who's so far into its destruction that it's just this huge, amorphous blob. And apaprently it smells so bad that all Child-level Digimon will just straight-up run away.

Andjeez, just look at the sheer creep factor in Raremon's design! Those giant metal claws, the Whamon-esque metal teeth, a bit of exposed ribcage and a bunch of random tubes on its back... but it's easily Raremon's eyes that are the most striking feature -- a bunch of metal plates bolted hap-hazardly onto Raremon's face, with the disturbingly mismatched googly-eyeballs peeking out from within? Anyway, a pretty damn cool undead cyborg goop creature. I like this one a fair bit, actually, due to how bizarre it is.

 10/10. 

MetalTyrannomon

I've always forgotten about poor MetalTyrannomon here, one of the possible Perfect-level evolutions for this Virtual Pet. Nowadays MetalTyrannomon is nearly exclusively portrayed as the Perfect evolution of Tyrannomon and DarkTyrannomon, though. He's surprisingly appeared way, way more than I thought he would in various video games. While on a first glance MetalTyrannomon is just a fully-roboticized version of Tyrannomon, he's actually still a cyborg! All those white parts are his skin, which you can see a bit more clearly in his anime character model. Poor MetalTyrannomon never really got to do much anywhere, though -- he was briefly seen in an episode of Tamers to showcase wild Digimon evolving, briefly seen in Xros Wars as crowd fillers, and in Hunters as one of the early enemies. I do really like the detail in his profile that describes MetalTyrannomon to be modeled for ground assault use to be a counterpart to the anti-air Megadramon, though! And I always liked how MetalTyrannomon's arms have different functions, like a true anime robot -- his right arm shoots out Giga Destroyers and his left arm, displayed in his Bandai artwork, shoots out protective spheres.

I've always felt MetalTyrannomon's design sort of tries a bit too hard to just pile in a lot of details, and the design is a lot less cohesive and more cluttered than the other cyborg Digimon... and the cleaner anime models make MetalTyrannomon look far less  impressive when you realize that it's just an albino Tyrannomon with honestly pretty minimalistic cybernetic replacement. It's still okay, I suppose, but honestly kind of underwhelming compared to many of the other robot/cyborg Digimon we've seen and we'll see down the line. Or maybe reviewing MetalTyrannomon between Raremon and Nanomon -- two far cooler usages of the cyborg augmentation trope -- ends up hurting how it is? I dunno. 

 7/10. 

Nanomon (a.k.a. Datamon)

Oh, hey, it's Nanomon! Nanomon here was renamed Datamon in the dub because... I dunno, kids are too dumb to know what "nano" means? It's bizarre what names they decide to change and what names they decide to keep, honestly. Still, Nanomon's a pretty damn cool design, though, basically playing on the "brain in a jar" trope... except it's not a brain in a jar, but rather a bunch of circuits in a jar! It's a brain-in-a-jar, but for robots! How charming is that? I've always loved his bizarre face with one fully robotic eye and one of those disturbingly organic eyes that cyborg Digimon really loves. His arms are gloriously comical initially, with chubby fingers, but gets nightmarish when the fingers actually open up to reveal all the tiny, horrifying-looking needle wires. And I've always loved his four weird crablike legs. Nanomon's backstory in the Bandai profile was that it's actually originally a docile Vaccine-type that was used for nano-medicine, but he was corrupted and nearly destroyed by an attack by a powerful Virus Digimon (Etemon in the Adventure anime) and causes Nanomon to go berserk and just go around reconfiguring data in anything he comes by, even if the computers he meets are perfectly functional.

Nanomon is also one of those "tiny-but-powerful" Perfect-level Digimon in the vein of Mamemon and Giromon, but it's definitely great that while they went back to robots, they decided to actually come up with a pretty damn cool one here. Nanomon's got a pretty damn memorable appearance in Digimon Adventure, too, ending up as a true wild card when the Chosen Children are battling Etemon. Imprisoned by Etemon and forced to maintain his Dark Network (a literal network of surveillance cables running throughout the digital world), Nanomon jumped at the chance to help the Chosen Children, like many oppressed and enslaved bad-guy allies are wont to... and then proceeded to betray them and kidnap Sora because Nanomon just wants to exact his vengeance on Etemon with his own hands. It was pretty creepy, and Nanomon ended up trying to straight-up drag Etemon to his death when he caused a localized black hole by infecting the Dark Network. In Frontier, a different Nanomon was a recurring ally that runs an electronics store, which I thought was pretty hilarious.

Overall, one of the better designs in early Digimon, gloriously combining a lot of monster tropes into a pretty dang unique design.

 8/10. 

ExTyrannomon

ExTyrannomon (sometimes parsed Ex-Tyrannomon) is easily one of the most ignored Digimon from the original five V-Pets, without a single anime appearance, and, unlike Cyclomon, only appeared as a cameo in a single manga instead of being an actual character. Poor ExTyrannomon! I did know him as a kid, though, having a single TCG of him. He's the 'secret' Perfect-level evolution for Raremon in this Virtual Pet, playing up the same "ugly goop creature hides inside a monster suit" deal that Monzaemon and Etemon had... but ExTyrannomon is so much more obviously just something wearing a suit because of those adorable glowing eyes inside ExTyrannomon's mouth. D'aww, look at how happy he is! Look at those chubby arms and legs and that fat stitched-up belly and those two Jawa glowing eyes! I actually like ExTyrannomon a lot, actually, now that I've looked at him a bit more. He's just so goddamn charming, and it's nice to know that at least for some Raremon, there's a hapyp ending that allows them to look pretty adorable. And apparently, the Raremon's been converted to a body-less Gastly-esque black shadow in the vein of Digitamamon if these trading cards are anything to go by. It's a fun, simple narrative that I think ends up being particularly sweet considering how monstrously horrible Raremon was, that ExTyrannomon ended up being a big lovable huggable pink dinosaur.

Some games actually had Tyrannomon and Raremon fuse into this thing, which I thought was actually quite neat. So yeah, ExTyrannomon, you're pretty damn adorable and while you never actually had a proper fictional appearance, I actually really like you now!

 9/10. 

This is it for the original series of Virtual Pets. Next up we're going to tackle the Pendulum series of Virtual Pets, where the last remaining main characters are initially introduced.