Anyway, this time around, we're finally going into one of the main protagonist Digimon of Tamers, which is Lee Jianliang (Henry Wong in the dub) and his buddy Terriermon! And, just like Lopmon in my previous entry, both Lopmon and Terriermon debuted in the 02 serial movie Hurricane Touchdown before being promoted into main characters in Tamers.
See, the whole story of Digimon Tamers is a bit of a departure from Adventure/02 that just has our kids stumble into a different Digital World that operated on fantasy rules and stuff. In Tamers, things take a slightly more sci-fi tune to it. There's no greater power that chose the children to become saviours of the world. And instead, it's the mysterious manifestation of the Digimon into the real world (as opposed to the other way around) which ends up throwing these kids into the whole world-saving mess. Throw in a shady real-world organization of humans that, well, are technically just trying to save the world against what they perceive to be monsters, as well as a Digimon organization who take 'saving our world from humans' a bit too far, and the kids are thrown into a far more hectic and mature world than the Adventure kids.
Oh, and the Digimon franchise is pre-established in the real world as a series of card games and video games, which is honestly a way for the anime to promote a trading card game and have our heroes go CARD SLASH every other action scene. It's this bit that kind of hurt the first half of Tamers somewhat, although thankfully as the series went on this obnoxious bit of merchandising was dropped.
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Zerimon
The Baby I for this one is Zerimon, named after jelly to contrast Cocomon's chocolate. It's all right? It's whole deal is basically the same with Cocomon, being twins born out of a single egg with the one big difference between them being their colour and their horn. I... I don't have much to say about this one, if we're being honest. It's just green Cocomon. And Cocomon's a brown Zerimon. None of these are particularly bad looking, but I really just am at a loss at what to say here.
4/10.Gummymon
Gummymon is, well, Chocomon. But green and with a single horn. again, it's pretty neat, I guess? I genuinely don't have anything to say here to say that I haven't said for Chocomon. So instead, let's talk about their partner, Lee.
Among the three main protagonists Takato, Ruki and Lee, Lee's probably the most... level-headed and mature of the trio, but this is also explored to be potentially as damaging as the others. Takato, the 'gogglehead', is portrayed as naive and emotionally-driven, wanting the best of both worlds in having a buddy-buddy Digimon and also be an action hero. Ruki, at least initially, is cold-hearted, and views Digimon as only as tools to battle and become stronger and is basically the most badass character ever. Lee is a lot more mature than Takato, a lot more intelligent, and... and this also means that he's scared shitless of sending his partner Terriermon into battle. Lee ends up embodying just how pacifism and refusing to battle can be just as bad as Ruki's own bloodthirstiness. Apparently Lee's pacifism stems from the fact that he accidentally injured someone when training in martial arts? Oh, and Lee's a half-Chinese, half-Japanese character, which is neat considering a good chunk of Tamers' mythology and enemies are based on Chinese myths... something that ends up being clue to the fact that Lee's father is more involved in the Digital World than it lets on, being part of the organization that created it in the first place. (Oh, and Lee's little sister is adorable and ends up being partnered with Lopmon, as we discussed before.)His partner Terriermon, meanwhile, ends up being a pretty fun and easily the most carefree of the main Digimon in the show. While being nice about it and indulging his partner most of the time, Terriermon is also still a Digimon and sometimes just kind of wants to help out and throw down, you know? The thing is, when Terriermon evolves, he goes straight-up crazy and becomes the Digimon equivalent of a giggling lunatic with a gun.
5/10.Terriermon
Anyway, since I've snuck in a lot of talk regarding the protagonist human in Gummymon, let's talk about Terriermon! Again, it's very tempting to just call this a white-and-green Lopmon and call it a day (or vice versa, considering Terriermon tended to be seen as the default). But I really do like this bugger, and a huge chunk of why comes from the anime. Terriermon is noted to be as battle-hungry as any Digimon, but at the same time he's also chill and relaxed, and for the most part content to hang around with Lee even if that means being treated as a stuffed doll by Lee's little sister. However, because of a near-death experience early on in their friendship, Lee ends up being super-duper afraid of using Terriermon to fight, acting as the Digimon Tamer version of a helicopter parent, leading to a pretty interesting conflict between Lee and Terriermon when around halfway through the first arc Terriermon end up having enough and telling Lee that, no, he's not a battle-hungry musclehead, but he's also not going to sit idly by especially when innocents are getting hurt. I think that's why I really appreciate Tamers so much -- it's the series that really tries to develop the Digimon as distinct characters as opposed to extensions or foils of the children. Also, Terriermon's got a fun little catchphrase -- moumantai, a Cantonese phrase that means "no problem", which I thought was adorable. Surprisingly, considering how horrible the English dub is at censoring oriental culture (in addition to the general onigiri = donut nonsense, Japanese words are apparently ccalled "digi-code" in the dub) Terriermon managed to carry this catchphrase through.Like Lopmon, Terriermon attacks by spinning its big-ass bunny ears around like a helicopter, turning himself into a little tornado, and then shooting out super-heated air. It's also apparently got a 'combo move' with Lopmon, but I'm not sure I've ever seen it in Tamers considering that the Terriermon and the Lopmon there aren't actually twins. Anyway, Terriermon's cute, and I don't mind him. I think I wouldn't have given him this high of a ranking if not for Tamers making him pretty adorable, though -- he looks like he's designed as a plushy toy first and a monster second!
9/10, fully because of the Tamers anime.Gargomon (a.k.a. Galgomon)
Gargomon here competes with the name "Gargomon" with the Digimon known as Gargoylemon in English. The thing is, the gargoyle Digimon is technically Gaagomon in the Japanese katakana, with how the word "gargoyle" tending to be pronounced with a silent R. Meanwhile, this dude here is called Garugomon in the Japanese katakana, with a heavy emphasis on the RU sound. Plus, it's called "Gargomon" practically everywhere in both English and Japanese media, so even if they've decided to go for "Galgomon" now, it just feels unnatural to me to write that.Anyway, Gargomon here is the Adult-stage evolution of Terriermon, and it's... it's bizarre all right! I've never quite realized just how utterly weird of a concept Gargomon is. He's now a fat bunny with a head that's practically connected to his torso, with jeans, clawed feet and a belt across his chest. Oh, and he's got two gigantic gatling guns as lower arms, ending with metallic claws! It's a different take on the cyborgification process of older Digimon, but does end up giving us a pretty charmingly chunky Digimon. Again, it's interesting how wildly different the Adult-stages of Lopmon and Terriermon ended up being. One ends up being this crazy gatling gun bunny with jeans, and the other becomes a reality-warping wendigo (or a wushu artist, I suppose).
In the anime, during Gargomon's first couple of outings he's completely batshit crazy, just reveling in the power of his "Gatling Arm" and shooting bullets haphazardly and being pretty out of control. Not in the beastly way that SkullGreymon or Growmon does where they regress into beasts, which is I think what makes Gargomon so unsettling. He's clearly coherent and happy and jolly, he just has absolutely no self-control. Eventually, though, Terriermon ends up getting far more emotional control over his Gargomon form. I don't really mind Gargomon, but I also recognize his design as being kind of the messiest out of the non-baby forms of Terriermon's line.
7/10.Rapidmon
The Perfect-stage for the Terriermon line is clearly one of those that are designed with a transforming toy in mind, because Gargomon's gatling guns end up on Rapidman's shoulders, pointing sideways in a way that's honestly entirely bizarrely impractical... but it's not quite as bad as the kibble on, say, Paildramon or Imperialdramon. Rapidmon's a pretty interesting design, being a bit more robotic than Gargomon, lalthough the proportions have always felt... really weird. I do like the very thin spine-like segment of flesh that connects Rapidmon's spherical pelvis and his streamlined chest, but the way his feet are suddenly huge and end in little Santa's elf boots have always struck me as odd. The rest of Rapidmon's cool, though, with his lower arms being entirely mechanical and ending in cannons (with little vestigial fingers!) and the upper arms looking disturbingly like fleshy limbs in a suit. It's a pretty unconventional design that actually bridges the far more organic Terriermon and Gargomon into the straight-up Gundam robot that is SaintGargomon pretty damn well.I think Rapidmon might be my favourite in this evolution line? That might just be me really liking robots, though, and Rapidmon is such an unconventional anime robot while still looking pretty chunky and cute. The anatomy of this thing is just so bizarrely ridiculous I can't help but like it. Rapidmon's bio notes how he's super-fast and uses his big-ass ears as radar. And like any good robot, Rapidmon's got Optimus-Prime-style faceplates that it can close to protect his face. Also, apparently the shape of his body is meant to evocate a shaved poodle? S'weird, but okay. In addition to shooting people a lot with his cannons, Rapidmon can create a weird big triangle that "disassembles the enemy's data".
9/10.Rapidmon Armor
3/10.SaintGargomon (a.k.a. MegaGargomon/SaintGalgomon)
And anyway, SaintGargomon (MegaGargomon in the dub) is pretty badass. He's a big fucking robot! While the other human/Digimon combined Ultimates Dukemon and Sakuyamon are the size of a tall adult, not so for SaintGargomon, who's as big as your average Gundam. He's basically entirely mechanical, too, although some parts of his design still look like they're derived from organics. I really like SaintGargomon's face -- it's basically the same face that Terriermon has, but created entirely out of artificial metal plates. The lower arms still has the same gatling guns that regular Gargomon has, and I do like the sheer ridiculousness of having two gigantic cylinders with :-< cute faces painted onto them. The Bandai artwork doesn't make it too clear, but those wings are actually SaintGargomon's ears, jutting out from the sides of his head Rapidmon-style. Not the biggest fan of the random skirt and weird beads that make up his belt, though -- I've always felt like those clash something fierce with the killer robot bunny aesthetic.SaintGargomon is described by his bio as being the heat-based counterpart to MetalGarurumon, and if the anime is anything to go by, he has a fuck-ton of flip-out missiles and lasers and whatnot. I guess Lee Jianliang subscribes into the "speak softly but carry a huge hammer" mentality, except in this case the hammer is a giant building-sized bunny robot carrying a small country's worth of military explosives. Also, in a neat little acknowledgement of a Digimon changing forms and altering its fighting capabilities, SaintGargomon is often noted as being far, far more durable and destructive than Rapidmon, but way slower.
7/10.Impmon
So I decided to cover one of the Tamers supporting cast with each page of these Digimon Reviews, and Impmon drew the short straw this time around. And Impmon is... probably one of my favourite characters from the entire franchise. See, each of the human/Digimon partnership -- at least early on -- ended up being a huge contrasting argument over how to properly raise your sentient digital monster pet. And while Guilmon, Renamon and Terriermon had the fortune to at least end up with a bunch of children that are mature enough to at least attempt to be a proper Tamer, poor Impmon here ended up partnered with a pair of literal four-year-old kids, Ai and Makoto, who treated Impmon like a toy. And four-year-olds are selfish little fucks who basically pull on Impmon like a little doll to be fought over. Impmon ended up running away from his supposed Tamers, and ends up just being this jackass wild card that causes trouble and treated by the main humans and Digimons as kind of a pest -- but not one that even the bloodthirsty Renamon considered to be worth fighting. Out of the two ''partnerless" Digimon that roamed around Shinjuku, Impmon was one that detested humans.
And then things escalated when the Perfect-level Deva showed up and began fucking shit up, giving trouble to even the Digimon that are able to evolve into Adult and Perfect level. And Impmon? Poor, poor Impmon was dismissed by one such Deva, Indramon, who mocked him for having the stench of humans. He ended up trying to fight Indramon all on his own and, of course, failing and very damn well nearly getting himself killed in a scene that's not played for comedy whatsoever. After this near-death, a different Deva, Caturamon, ended up picking Impmon up and playing the devil -- Impmon would achieve power, but in exchange, he has to destroy the Tamers, something that he was reluctant... but POWER!
Anyway, we'll continue Impmon's story below, but I really don't like Impmon's design all that much. His personality in the anime really makes up for it, but I've always kind of found his appearance to be... m'eh? The Tamers anime model makes the proportion look a lot more stylized than the official Bandai art, with bigger ears, a bigger, more angular head and bigger feet, but I've never really liked him. Not quite sure why he has a little yellow smiley face tattooed onto his chest, either. Overall, great character, but always a design that I've found lacking.
9/10.Beelzebumon (a.k.a. Beelzemon)
Anyway, Impmon was given the power to evolve into an Ultimate-level Digimon by Zhuqiaomon, into the mighty demon man Beelzebumon. Censored as Beelzemon in the dub, which... isn't much of a censoring, huh? And after knocking around the Perfect-level Digimon of the Tamers, he ends up being a straight-up murderer, killing Juri's partner Leomon in dramatic fashion. Oh, and this isn't a world like Adventure where all the dead Digimon are just reborn as eggs. Beelzebumon straight up murders and absorbs the data that Leomon is comprised of. This would absolutely break Juri and turn her so emotionally fragile that she ends up being corrupted and taken over by the true villains of the show, the D-Reaper, while main character Takato was so overcome by anger and sadness that his partner dark-evolved into Megidramon. Beelzebumon would eventually be defeated, and abandoned by everyone, ended up just walking around in confusion until he fell and reverted back into Impmon. And yet the Tamers still assisted him, leaving him super-confused and ashamed.
This culminates when everyone returns back to the real world, where after another conversation with his buddy Renamon, Impmon ended up seeking out his human partners, making peace with them, and then evolving back into Beelzebumon under his own power to right his wrongs and save Juri from the D-Reaper. It's a classic story of redemption, but one done so goddamned well that I can't really make fun of it. Hell, even Beelzebumon's "upgrade" into his "Beelzebumon: Blast Mode" was done pretty well -- even if on paper it sounds silly, where Impmon carries around the toy gun that his four-year-old partners gave him and that transforms into a big honking demon cannon-shotgun. Beelzebumon would eventually redeem himself by almost saving Juri and nearly damn well dying for his efforts in a pretty badass moment where he channels the powers of Leomon that he absorbed.
(A different Beelzebumon is a recurring character in Xros Wars, but Wikimon classifies that as a different species, so we won't talk about him here)
It's a pretty damn awesome story, honestly, and as the Ultimate-level evolution of a little imp Digimon, I suppose a badass demon man clad in leather and basically being a non-skull-faced version of the Ghost Rider is pretty badass. I do like that he walks around with two shotguns, has a tail, has random cable-tendrils on his shoulders and has random spikes on his boots. In his "Blast Mode", Beelzebumon sprouts fallen angel wings and his right hand is now a giant cannon. A good chunk of why I like Beelzebumon is the sheer badassery and well-done execution of the story given to him in the anime, something that makes me forgive what's an otherwise "dude in a leather jacket" design. Though, let's be fair, it's a pretty damn badass looking dude in a leather jacket.
Also, Beelzebumon has a motorbike called "Behemoth", named after the monster from Hebrew myths and often adapted into a demon in religious works. His shotguns are called Berenjena, named after the eggplant. No, really.
Beelzebumon would later be retconned as one of the Seven Great Demon Lords, a group that really never operated together other than in the backstory of Digimon Savers and in video games. Considering most of the Demon Lords tended to be straight-up antagonists and Beelzebumon tends to be portrayed as an anti-villain at worst, this is a fact of him that I keep forgetting. He apparently symbolizes the sin of gluttony? I mean, I guess he ate Leomon's data, but that really feels more like a combination of envy and pride to me.Anyway, a badass character. I don't think I would've liked Beelzebumon without the anime personality attached to him, but honestly, even without that he's still a pretty badass dude in a leather jacket.
9/10. + 666 for all of the anime. Kiimon & Yaamon
Kiimon and Yaamon here are Impmon's Baby I and II stages, respectively, and have so far only been seen in artbooks and a very, very brief cameo in Impmon's flashbacks. Again, at around the time of 02 and Tamers they designed backwards from the Child stage to make the Baby I and II stages extremely similar to the more marketable and iconic Child Stage... but in this case, both of them just look kind of generic. Yaamon's just Impmon's disembodied head with a tan, while Kiimon's just a head. I get that they're trying to make these look recognizable, but god damn if these look pretty lazy. Honestly, at this point, why not just use Pagumon or something?
In most games, Impmon tends to have other sorts of 'devilish' Babies like Pagumon, Kuramon or Cupimon associated with him instead because it's not worth the data space in these games to include these two.
2/10. Orochimon
The Perfect-level Orochimon here was technically listed in the Digimon Wiki as 'debuting' in some fanmade submission all the way back in 1998 or something (Tamers debuted in 2001), but as far as I can tell, the first appearance of this dude is in the Tamers anime. What a funky monster to make out of what could've been another Orochi monster, though! The mythical Yamata-no-Orochi is a cool enough concept -- a giant multi-headed snake (sometimes serpentine dragon) -- to work on its own, but Orochimon takes that extra step and gave every single head a unique look. Most of them, anyway. I do like the fact that the one silver head right next to the central black head is basically a metal version of his 'real' head. Most interestingly, only Orochimon's central black head looks like it's organic, whereas all of the others look mechanical -- and they all look different! I really like this design. Orochimon's bio notes how seven out of the eight heads on Orochimon are actually dummies, and only the black head is the real one. Also love the little rattlesnake tail on the end of its otherwise unremarkable tail-body, which apparently can transform into a sword called Ame no Murakamo, a name that's based on one of Japan's famous national treasures.And you'd think such a mighty snake would otherwise attack with, I dunno, poison blasts or something, right? Nope! Orochimon is such a drunkard (a reference to the mythical Orochi actually being defeated in a tale by getting it piss drunk) that his main attack is to unleash "Sake Breath", which does exactly what it says it does -- makes the enemies drunk!
Orochimon's a pretty neat snake monster, and was pretty memorable in the anime as well. An Orochimon took over a village of Gekomon in the Digital World, prompting our heroes to try and beat it up... but this time around it's the B-team that has to do it. With the aid of a friendly Andromon (who eventually became partnered with Hirokazu, a member of the supporting cast), they ended up getting Orochimon drunk to distract him. A different, far less hammy Orochimon was a minion in Xros Wars that got fused with a MadLeomon. In Digimon Adventure Tri, it's revealed that one of the previous generation of Chosen Children was partnered with an Orochimon who would eventually evolve to become Xuanwumon, one of the Four Holy Beasts. Anyway, a pretty interesting and fun snake monster.
8/10, because orochiBlackGargomon, BlackRapidmon, BlackSaintGargomon
-sigh- Black repaints.
These exist, I guess. Black and silver and red aren't a bad look, but you could probably tell that I'm absolutely burnt out on black repaints. BlackGargomon and BlackRapidmon at least adds a splotch of brown into their colour schemes, and BlackGargomon found a different set of jeans. BlackGargomon sort of has the little backstory where it's a Gargomon that's adapted to stealthy ambush missions? Those big-ass gatling guns can't be stealthy, though.
Anyway. EH. I've seen far worse black repaints, at least, and at least the black versions of Gargomon and Rapidmon try.
These exist, I guess. Black and silver and red aren't a bad look, but you could probably tell that I'm absolutely burnt out on black repaints. BlackGargomon and BlackRapidmon at least adds a splotch of brown into their colour schemes, and BlackGargomon found a different set of jeans. BlackGargomon sort of has the little backstory where it's a Gargomon that's adapted to stealthy ambush missions? Those big-ass gatling guns can't be stealthy, though.
Anyway. EH. I've seen far worse black repaints, at least, and at least the black versions of Gargomon and Rapidmon try.
3/10. Not doing that much this time around, I'm sorry -- real life's been super busy, and I didn't really get to check up on what appropriate miscellaneous Digimon are appropriate to include in these articles. So expect a very anime-centric couple of articles as we cover the cast of the anime, then a bit of a 'catch-up' one covering all the ersatz ones introduced in video games, trading cards and virtual pets.
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