It's late 1998, and the second generation of the Digital Monster Virtual Pets have hit the stores in Japan! while there isn't an anime yet, these Pendulum games introduced several aspects that would later be treated as massive power-ups by the anime -- the Ultimate (Mega in the dub) level, a level beyond mere Perfects, as well as "Jogress". Jogress is basically just fusing Digimon together, and several Perfect and Ultimate Digimon are only available to get after doing a Jogress evolution of specific Digimon with specific attributes.Also, more interestingly for me, is that the Pendulum games actually took the time to divide up their creatures depending on a running theme, so we've got Nature Spirits (bugs and dinosaurs), Deep Savers (aquatic monsters), Nightmare Soldiers (spooks and ghosts), Wind Guardians (birds and plants) and Metal Empire (ROBOTS) instead of the original Virtual Pets, which just sort of did whatever with the possible evolution lines.
The Pendulum games and Digimon World will be the last piece of Digimon media to be developed prior to the glorious anime. Which, for all the goodness that it did in making Digimon well-known all over the world, also kind of sadly began a trend towards more stylized and humanoid designs (although it's not all the anime's fault, since a lot of humanoid designs debuted in the Pendulum games as well) with a distinct change in the art style come the Zero Two series. Anyway, this time around we'll be covering the first game in the Pendulum games, "Nature Spirits", which, coincidentally enough, features not one, but two of the remaining seven protagonists! As it was with Biyomon and Palmon, though, we'll split this into two parts because of length problems.
Since this will be a shorter review, though, it's going to be one where I do two of these in a single week!
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Babumon (a.k.a. Pabumon, a.k.a. Bubbmon)
This adorable little buddy here is called Babumon (later translated into Bubbmon, but I've been calling him Babumon for years so), or Pabumon in English. It's honestly the same B/P sound confusion that we did with B/Piyomon a while back. Anyway, while I tend to not have much to say about these babies, Babumon is a personal favourite of mine! It's a little slime that's sprouting bubbles into the air and it's even suckling on a little pacifier! D'aww, Babumon's adorable! Apparently Babumon's ability to multiply its bubbles infinitely was initially used (by who?) for computer virus development, but the experiments were "fortunately never implemented" because Babumon's life force is too weak. Yay, someone cares enough to now kill these little jelly blobs for experimentation! That's a fun little backstory for Babumon. Anyway, we've had a whole lot of Baby Digimon that basically only attack with nothing but spitting acidic bubbles, so it's neat that we have a Digimon made entirely out of bubbles. I've always found Babumon to be especially adorable.
9/10.
Motimon (a.k.a. Mochimon)
Motimon (the Japanese Bandai group alternates between Motimon and Mochimon) here is the Baby-II stage for Babumon, and I think the second Digimon we meet in the Adventure anime after Koromon. He's pretty adorable, although there's really not much that really makes him stand out compared to the other babies. It's just a cute little blob with two arms, and apparently it can balloon up its body, which was the reason it's named after mochi. Interestingly, Motimon is stated to easily be the smartest among the babies in the Digimon world, causing people to speculate that it's born out of a dictionary application in a computer? It's definitely appropriate, then, that Motimon finds his way to Izumi Koushiro ("Izzy" in the dub), the Chosen Children's resident computer geek and all-around knowledgeable dude, whose associated emotion was, of course, Knowledge.
7/10.
7/10. Tentomon
The blob of mochi then evolves, pretty surprisingly, into Tentomon (after tentoumushi, the Japanese term for a ladybug), a straight-up ladybug monster! In the Adventures anime, Tentomon speaks with a funny Kansai accent, and the dub also gives him a pretty endearing voice as well. But that's not just what I like about Tentomon! He's a pretty cool-looking ladybug monster, and while he stands upright, he still has a lot of buggy features that makes his insectoid heritage unmistakable. He has the same quasi-reptilian leg that Kuwagamon, Kabuterimon and Flymon has, but interestingly enough his uppermost pair of arms are little stabby needles and his middle pair of arms are shaped like little robotic graspers. Oh, and his wings are anatomically accurate to real beetles, too, a nice little detail. His face, however, is perhaps the coolest feature for good old Tentomon here, with straight-up compound eyes that make Tentomon somewhat friendlier than Digimmon's eyeless-faceless Alien-esque artstyle given to a lot of their early bugs, but still unmistakeably insectoid in some way. Also absolutely like his opens-sideways mouth, extremely stylized from an actual beetle's mouth. Comparing Tentomon to some insectoid Digimon designed much later (Flybeemon, Honeybeemon, Bolgmon...) it's actually pretty damn cool to have a bug monster look equal parts friendly and alien.
In Adventure, Tentomon is definitely one of the funner Digimon partners, although a good part of it is his relationship with the very studious-but-socially-inept Koushiro. Tentomon ends up being kind of a beleaguered parental figure at times, trying to sometimes shake Koushiro out of his insane desire for knowledge and kind of make friends without trying to convert Koushiro into an extrovert. Rewatching Adventure recently, while Koushiro's emotionally stunted growth is later revealed to be his confusion as to why his parents (who really love him) won't tell him that he's actually adopted, these days Koushiro ends up feeling like he's somewhere on the autism spectrum. Koushiro was always heroic and a steadfast ally to anyone despite being distracted by video games and all that jazz, though Tentomon, of course, was always a stalwart companion through it all. Always loved how Koushiro ends up being a better friend to his companions, but never has to change who he is to be accepted in turn. Sort of like the inverse to Mimi, actually, the ultra-extrovert who has the exact opposite problem that Koushiro has.Anyway, Tentomon's a pretty dang cool ladybug creature, and a surprising one that ends up being both creepy and cute at the same time. Like a majority of other bugs in the Digimon world, Tentomon's able to generate electricity from his wings. Overall, a pretty cool Child-stage bug, and definitely a lot cooler and more interesting than poor Kunemon.
9/10. Kabuterimon
But no, good happy old Tentomon evolves into this monstrous Adult-stage -- who, by the way, shares Kuwagamon's size as a monster the size of a truck -- and gloriously expands into this scary-ass monstrosity... and still retains the same personality he has. Sure, he's a bit more serious and more action hero than kooky sidekick, but all of the main characters also have a similar maturation into a fighter when they evolve.
Interestingly, though, Bandai's original profile apparently intended Kabuterimon to be as mindless and monstrous as Kuwagamon, noting that Kabuterimon has a personality that is the epitome of an insect's, and "has no intelligence or anything resembling it", with its only goals being the destruction of its prey -- it's just that it's a Vaccine-attribute creature, so it hounds Virus-type creatures instead. Also, where Kuwagamon is a battle-happy close-combat fighter, Kabuterimon is a far more defensive being with heavy armour and prefers to destroy its enemy with its electrical blast attacks. While it would be interesting to see the otherwise intelligent Tentomon evolve into a mindless creature driven by instinct, I'm actually glad that the Adventure anime chose to instead have Kabuterimon retain his intelligence even in this monstrous form.
And even if he didn't... well, Kabuterimon's pretty damn badass, isn't he? He draws his name from the kabutomushi, the Japanese term for the rhinoceros beetle, rivals to kuwagatamushi, the stag beetle, in Japanese popular culture. Interestingly, though, Kabuterimon's head's appearance seems to take more from the European rhinoceros beetle (Oryctes nasicornis) with its more rhinoceros-esque look instead of the Japanese rhinoceros beetle and its far more distinctive horns that serve as the basis of AtlurKabuterimon below. Anyway, Kabuterimon's a damn badass beetle monster, and easily my favourite insect monster design in Digimon.
10/10. AtlurKabuterimon (a.k.a. MegaKabuterimon)
AtlurKabuterimon (or the more tongue-friendly MegaKabuterimon in English) is Kabuterimon's Perfect-level evolution, and while I think I prefer Kabuterimon's more scrawny design, there is a lot to love about AtlurKabuterimon as well. AtlurKabuterimon draws his 'Atlur' epithet from a corruption of "Atlas", referencing the Atlas beetle, Chalosoma atlas. Ironically C. atlas, features a three-pronged horn that doesn't actually fit AtlurKabuterimon, who instead draws his appearance from the far more prominent Allomyrina dichotoma, the Japanese Rhinoceros beetle.AtlurKabuterimon's look has always been pretty cool. It has a design far more beetle-like compared to Kabuterimon, with its domed outer wings covering its back and the Japanese rhinoceros beetle's prominent horn... but you can definitely see the more monstrous parts of AtlurKabuterimon's design. Especially prominent in its blue version are the disturbingly non-insectoid shoulder muscles, as well as the weird set of ribcage and pelvic bones on its torso and abdomen. Pretty neat, and it helps to set AtlurKabuterimon apart from being just Kabuterimon with a different beetle head.
AtlurKabuterimon was originally introduced in the Pendulum games as the blue variant, but when it came to import him into the anime, they instead recoloured AtlurKabuterimon's main body into red (though interestingly left the tips of his hands blue). I guess that's so that AtlurKabuterimon doesn't look too much like Kabuterimon? The red version of AtlurKabuterimon definitely look more striking, in any case, especially with the addition of a third colour into the mix. The franchise has since treated the two as sub-specieses of each other, but the red one can apparently fly faster. It's a neat, quaint distinction that will sadly kind of cease to be added into these profiles when we get to the huge, huge glut of whatevermon (Black) that video games and trading cards will introduce down the line.
9/10. HerakleKabuterimon (a.k.a. HerculesKabuterimon)
Obviously, a rhinoceros beetle has to evolve into a mighty Hercules beetle (Dynastes hercules), one of the largest and most impressive beetles in the world and often heralded in Japanese media as the 'boss' of most beetles. Thanks to how Japanese consonants work, though, the way the pronounce his name in Japan is HerakleKabuterimon... which is just a smite less awkward that Atlur above. HerakleKabuterimon is basically everything Kabuterimon and AtlurKabuterimon are, just golden with a different set of horns and... and, I'm not going to lie, a somewhat messy art that's not helped by the fact that he's almost entirely a single colour. Thankfully, when HerakleKabuterimon does finally appear in the anime, they decided to employ some shading to make his character models a lot more palatable and less messy. I do have to note, though, that HerakleKabuterimon's head does add some extra horns and doesn't quite replicate the Hercules beetle's look accurately. The Bandai profile actually gives some explanation about this, though, because HerakleKabuterimon was formed out of data from both Kuwagamon and Kabuterimon species -- and indeed, in the original Pendulum toys, you had to fuse the Perfect-stage AtlurKabuterimon and Okuwamon to get this dude!
Like most of the other partner Digimon, Tentomon never achieved his Ultimate stage in the original Adventure anime, but HerakleKabuterimon was definitely intended to be the ultimate stage of Kabuterimon from the original Pendulum games, and this was incorporated to basically every video game out there. I used this dude a fair bit in Digimon World, World 2 and Dusk. HerakleKabuterimon finally makes his first-ever animated debut in Digimon Tri, the newly released sequel to Adventure/02, where good old Tentomon finally achieves this form which led to one of the most tear-jerking scenes in the history of Digimon, regardless of what I feel about the quality of Tri's pacing. Anyway, a pretty dang awesome finish to inarguably the most consistent evolution for Adventure's main eight characters, although I still kind of prefer its two pre-evolutions over it.
7/10. Okuwamon
And I get where they're going with Okuwamon, I really do -- it's meant to be a baleful transformation and one that shows just how much more savage Okuwamon is compared to the more "knightly" AtlurKabuterimon, but it kind of feels like they don't actually change enough, and what they did change ended up nowhere being as impressive as its other bug ilk. Or maybe it's just that Okuwamon has way too many dull grey on its body that sort of blurs his design together into a mass of limbs and wings? Okuwamon's cool by virtue of being a giant bug monster, but definitely on the bottom row of the totem pole as far as designs go.
6/10. Otamamon
The Pendulum games had three possible Child-level stages that you could obtain, and one of the three in the "Nature Spirits" Pendulum is good old Otamamon here. We'll cover the third in the next episode. Otamamon is a pretty fun little take on a tadpole. The look is pretty obvious -- it's basically just a tadpole with feet, a stage most tadpoles go through before fully becoming an adult frog. And certainly a far more anatomically-neat take on a tadpole compared to Pokemon's Poliwag. Also quite interestingly, similar to The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Digimon has decided to tie in a tadpole's resemblance to a musical note, as well as a frog's love to 'sing', to build up a musical motif for this entire evolutionary line. Otamamon's musical connections aren't quite obvious, but its profile does note just how much it loves to climb from the sea to land to sing and practice its voice. Otamamon's special attack isn't some sort of bubble or water gun attack either, but rather lulling its opponent to sleep.
Otamamon on its own never actually really appealed to me as much as its Adult stage, although I've always sort of thought that Otamamon and Gekomon came together as a set thanks to their anime portrayal, where our heroes meet an entire village filled with nothing but Otamamon and Gekomon. The village reappears in 02, a different Gekomon village shows up in Tamers, and Otamamon remained popular enough to gain cameos in Frontier, Savers and Xros Wars. Also included here is Otamamon (Red), who would be introduced around two or three years later in a trading card or a trading-card-based video game, which is an Otamamon who lives in hot springs and attacks with hot springs. Digimon has a really weird habit of introducing recoloured versions of their monsters, and sometimes just having them be a sub-species with a little bracket after the name, or to invent the recolour as a brand-new species. Red Otamamon has never really appeared elsewhere. I'll try to shave off as many of these recoloured Digimon with their 'main' counterpart, unless they actually give me something to talk about.Overall, Otamamon's neat, but I've always found it somewhat just kind of there, especially compared to Gekomon below.
6/10. Gekomon
Gekomon here is an Adult-stage, and was apparently the 'undesirable' Adult-stage in the Pendulum games, despite it clearly being meant as Otamamon's evolution. It's a pretty rad design, though, just this completely ccrazy-looking frog with very gangle limbs and an exaggerated face... and you can just see the craziness in Gekomon's face. Throw in those neat mismatched eyeballs and swirly pupils, the gigantic tuba that curls around its neck, and the fact that his prehensile froggy tongue ends in three trumpet holes, and Gekomon's actually a pretty distinctive looking frog monster! And despite its bizarre appearance, Gekomon's actually got a pleasant tune, and was born from music-composing softwares.Gekomon's definitely a bizarre design that has grown to me over time, and the anime really loves using Gekomon. There's an entire Gekomon village in Adventure, 02 and Tamers, as noted, and the video game Digimon World has a Gekomon swamp as well. Gekomon has also been seen as civilians in Frontier, Savers and Xros Wars... with a particularly hilarious sequence in Savers where instead of rampaging when they manifested into the real world, a bunch of Gekomon just decided to ride around on a roller coaster.
Gekomon is actually one of the few times where the attempt to emulate 'crazy American cartoons' end up actually being charming instead of just weirdly out-of-place (see: Dogmon, and the Yu-Gi-Oh Toon Monsters). It's a pretty neat design, honestly, and it's just a shame that poor Gekomon ends up being relegated as civilians most of the time.
8/10. TonosamaGekomon (a.k.a. ShogunGekomon)
Unfortunately, Gekomon's Perfect stage is this dude, TonosamaGekomon. Tono-sama is apparently the form of address you make to a Daimyo in feudal Japan, but it's a goddamn mouthful to say and the dub made the smart decision to rename him ShogunGekomon, after shogun -- the rank for military lord in that time. It's way less annoying to type and actually rolls off the tongue quite nicely, so I'll make an exception and call him ShogunGekomon in this review. And... and ShogunGekomon has always kind of been unlikable to me. It's just this big fat frog that sort of saps all the charm and energy that Gekomon has, with the mismatched pupils being just bizarrely out of place in such an ugly design... and ShogunGekomon sort of has a lot going on that just doesn't mesh well as a design. The green neck-ring, the rotund body, the random tapes on his belly button, the mustache, plus whatever that weird purple hair-brush is meant to be... at least ShogunGekomon keeps the musical motif with two trombones jutting out of his shoulders, but he's honestly not a good design in my books.
I'm not familiar enough with tropes about daimyos to know if this is meant to be a caricature of them or whatever, but it's certainly not a pleasant-looking design in my book. In the Adventure anime, ShogunGekomon was an antagonist and the lazy lord of the Gekomon's palace-town that spends most of his time sleeping, and ends up being an antagonist when he eventually wakes up. He was apparently killed offscreen when the Dark Masters rose to power, but either survived or a different ShogunGekomon rose to power by the time we get to 02. 02's ShogunGekomon was a nicer dude that ended up turning evil thanks to the Digimon Kaiser anyway, serving as a villain-of-the-week. Overall, though? Definitely not a Digimon I like, and one of the few I actually flat-out dislike.
2/10.
We're going to cover a bunch of 'miscellaneous' Digimon that didn't debut in the virtual pet, but in various Wonderswan and Sega Saturn games that were released in 1998 and 1999 and didn't quite ever made it outside of Japan. Unlike Digimon World, which introduced enough Digimon for me to make a separate article out of it, I'm going to divide up these into thematically-appropriate places while talking about the Pendulum-series V-Pets. For this particular article, we're going to cover a bunch of other bug-themed monsters!
Gokimon is a cockroach! He borrows his name from gokiburi, the Japanese word for cockroach, and is known as Roachmon in the West. And as a big lover of all things insectoid, you'd think that I would like Gokimon... but I just kind of don't? This Adult-level Digimon is basically "just a cockroach, but also a monster", and it does that quite well, I suppose. Instead of going for the cooler looking monster bug-beasts that Kabuterimon, Kuwagamon, Flymon and Snimon go for, Gokimon instead has a cartoon-like face with a mouth full of mismatched teeth, as well as limbs that end in sucker-tipped fingers. It's got skull tattoos on its dilapidated wings and shoulders, too... and I really kind of want to appreciate Gokimon for what it is, but I just kind of can't. It's just kind of too ugly and honestly feels quite minimal-effort.
Add that to their sole animated appearance in 02 being pretty dang annoying, more of a stopgap that ran for way, way too long and took up an entire episode with the Gokimon brothers bickering than anything, and they really didn't endear myself at all to me. There's definitely some charm to Gokimon's original look, but remember how I said up there about Gekomon adapting the wacky Looney Tunes American cartoon style well? Gokimon is one that I argue ended up looking just kind of bleh in my opinion. I don't think I hate Gokimon that much, but it's just so underwhelming to me.
3/10.
Next up... Tailmon and the rest of the "Nature Spirits" Pendulum!
Snimon
Snimon sort of falls into that category where it's a pretty neat standalone Adult-stage monster that never really got much attention from the franchise. Unlike the likes of Cyclomon, though, Snimon at least ended up being deemed cool enough to be minor villain-of-the-week enemies in Adventure, 02 and Xros Wars, as well as being a major villain of one episode in Frontier where a Snimon led a group of Goblimon to enslave a bunch of poor Kokuwamon. And Snimon's pretty cool, although I guess they didn't want to focus on too many insectoid monsters? Snimon follows a lot of the same design patterns as the Kuwagamon/Kabuterimon/Kunemon families, with that fun eyeless head that has markings on them, the monstrous jaw... but since he's based on a praying mantis, Snimon instead gets two metallic scythes as his arms (and two adorable organic scythes halfway down his chest). I've always thought that Snimon communicated the bug-centaur look a lot better than Okuwamon, too, with two pairs of the reptile-insect legs ending right in front of his still insectoid abdomen.
Interestingly, despite Snimon's fictional portrayal as villainous bug monsters, it is a Vaccine type and its profile notes that it was created specifically as a Virus hunter, although that same profile notes that it's basically the Digital World's version of the Punisher, being relentless and remorseless and doesn't care if it hurts other Digimon in pursuit of its prey. It's definitely a neat little backstory for poor, underappreciated Snimon, who just gets lumped into games as a possible alternate evolution to a lot of things that don't really make proper sense. Oh well, at least Snimon's cool-looking.
8/10.
Snimon sort of falls into that category where it's a pretty neat standalone Adult-stage monster that never really got much attention from the franchise. Unlike the likes of Cyclomon, though, Snimon at least ended up being deemed cool enough to be minor villain-of-the-week enemies in Adventure, 02 and Xros Wars, as well as being a major villain of one episode in Frontier where a Snimon led a group of Goblimon to enslave a bunch of poor Kokuwamon. And Snimon's pretty cool, although I guess they didn't want to focus on too many insectoid monsters? Snimon follows a lot of the same design patterns as the Kuwagamon/Kabuterimon/Kunemon families, with that fun eyeless head that has markings on them, the monstrous jaw... but since he's based on a praying mantis, Snimon instead gets two metallic scythes as his arms (and two adorable organic scythes halfway down his chest). I've always thought that Snimon communicated the bug-centaur look a lot better than Okuwamon, too, with two pairs of the reptile-insect legs ending right in front of his still insectoid abdomen.
Interestingly, despite Snimon's fictional portrayal as villainous bug monsters, it is a Vaccine type and its profile notes that it was created specifically as a Virus hunter, although that same profile notes that it's basically the Digital World's version of the Punisher, being relentless and remorseless and doesn't care if it hurts other Digimon in pursuit of its prey. It's definitely a neat little backstory for poor, underappreciated Snimon, who just gets lumped into games as a possible alternate evolution to a lot of things that don't really make proper sense. Oh well, at least Snimon's cool-looking.
8/10. Gokimon (a.k.a. Roachmon)
Gokimon is a cockroach! He borrows his name from gokiburi, the Japanese word for cockroach, and is known as Roachmon in the West. And as a big lover of all things insectoid, you'd think that I would like Gokimon... but I just kind of don't? This Adult-level Digimon is basically "just a cockroach, but also a monster", and it does that quite well, I suppose. Instead of going for the cooler looking monster bug-beasts that Kabuterimon, Kuwagamon, Flymon and Snimon go for, Gokimon instead has a cartoon-like face with a mouth full of mismatched teeth, as well as limbs that end in sucker-tipped fingers. It's got skull tattoos on its dilapidated wings and shoulders, too... and I really kind of want to appreciate Gokimon for what it is, but I just kind of can't. It's just kind of too ugly and honestly feels quite minimal-effort.
Add that to their sole animated appearance in 02 being pretty dang annoying, more of a stopgap that ran for way, way too long and took up an entire episode with the Gokimon brothers bickering than anything, and they really didn't endear myself at all to me. There's definitely some charm to Gokimon's original look, but remember how I said up there about Gekomon adapting the wacky Looney Tunes American cartoon style well? Gokimon is one that I argue ended up looking just kind of bleh in my opinion. I don't think I hate Gokimon that much, but it's just so underwhelming to me.
3/10. Next up... Tailmon and the rest of the "Nature Spirits" Pendulum!
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