This is definitely me saving the best for last, because Makino Ruki (in the dub changed to Rika Nonaka), my favourite character out of the three main characters in Digimon Tamers. Ruki is the inambiguous resident badass of the group, the cold-hearted battler partnered with another cold-hearted Digimon, Renamon, who is initially introduced on the far end of the "are Digimons supposed to fight or just be pets" argument. In essence, she sort of fills the aloof, jackass rival trope that tended to be filled by a black-haired handsome boy in these sort of shows. I'm not going to gush about female representation too much, but how often is the most badass character in a Japanese anime a girl? And she unambiguously held onto that position until Ryo shows up, but Ryo's whole deal is that he's better than everyone, so.And the thing is, Tamers is a show that truly challenges their main characters' world views. Takato learned to take responsibility and not goof around. Lee learned that sometimes not wanting to have your bunny-children hurt doesn't mean shutting them in a room and being an extreme helicopter parent. You can damn well bet that Ruki, of course, learns the value of friendship and compassion(tm).
But instead of going the obvious way and have her look at the Anime Main Character Who Is Always Right(tm), Ruki actually goes through a huge chunk of her character development without any aid from Takato and Lee, but rather with her own partner, Renamon. Sure, Takato and Lee do influence her even contemplating a different sort of way to be a tamer, but most of Ruki's own character flaws and eventual developments ended up being tied to Renamon and not the other human characters. She basically goes from a merciless fighter who only wants to murder every Digimon in her path and make Renamon so much more stronger, and refuses to be criticized for anything to eventually discovering that, hey, beneath all that tough-girl bluster there is a part of her that cares for Renamon and vice versa. And while she's clearly more fight-oriented than the rest of the crew, and the one that's around to slap some sense to Takato and Lee when they need it, seeing her journey of mellowing out is definitely one of the highlight of early Tamers.
Most interestingly, we learn later on that Ruki comes from one of the few broken homes in Tamers, although it's honestly unfair to really call it broken when it's kind of functional. Conflicted, I guess? Coming from a Japanese society, there's still a huge stigma against single parents, but Ruki comes from a doubly-stigmatized family. Her mother was pregnant at the relatively young age of 18 and ends up being divorced when Ruki is young. And, yes, Ruki lives in a literal mansion, but you can see how between a non-existent father, a very traditional grandmother (she thinks Renamon's just an ancestral guardian spirit) and a smothering mother who's not that much older than her and really wants her to be girly-girly... it's got the same shades of the unfortunate "girl rebels to be a tomboy" character arc that Sora had in Adventures, but while Ruki definitely mellows out, she never does so at the expense of her ability and desire to be a fighter.Interestingly, one of the closest friendships that Ruki developed was with the other girl on the team, Katou Juri (Jeri in the dub). Juri's technically part of the main cast, introduced as one of the 'muggles' alongside the rest of the supporting cast in Takato's school and community. Initially, she is just the cute girl that Takato has a crush on, and has a character quirk of continually speaking to her little dog sock-puppet. Oh, these wacky anime characters and their wacky character quirks! But this is Tamers, and Tamers plays human drama straight, so Juri ends up being one of the more interesting characters in the show. We later learn that she comes from a broken family herself, where her father isn't abusive at all (the final arc has a scene where Juri's father drives a truck and tries to single-handedly fight the D-Reapers to get his daughter back), but a father with a dead spouse and a young child and doesn't really know how to deal with Juri, ending up being a cold and strict father to her. It's a different sort of broken family, and one that I don't think we see a lot of -- most of the time they tend to just be straight-up assholes and there's that.
Juri is the first of the secondary cast to be partnered with another Digimon, a Leomon. And if you've read any of my previous entries regarding Tamers, you'll know what happened to Leomon. He gets brutally murdered and absorbed by Beelzebumon, and basically everything that Juri's been building up to ends up crashing down all around her when her partner dies. She's also the one to stop Dukemon from killing Beelzebumon, with the reasoning that she doesn't want anyone else to die for her. Note this self-blaming mentality, it'll be important later.
She becomes straight-up catatonic and depressed throughout the rest of the series, though, and ends up being captured and used as a host body by the D-Reaper, the final boss of the series and an eldritch abomination, and rescuing Juri while defeating the D-Reaper becomes the end-goal of our heroes. And then Tamers gets really dark, with the D-Reaper 'feeding' on Juri's emotions (it's still an anime, after all) and creating twisted abominations to fight our heroes based on that, while simultaneously trying to goad Juri to straight-up attempt to kill herself at one point to stop others from being hurt because of her. Holy shit, a ten-year old contemplating suicide? Yeah. Thankfully and due to some aid from Culumon and Beelzebumon, Juri ends up accepting and discarding all of her self-loathing and acknowledges that, yes, she is worth something and wants to be saved.
Since we've included the character models for all of the other Tamers, let's talk about these two briefly. These are Kenta and Hirokazu, the two tagalong buddies who are definitely just there to be goobers and goofballs. They don't really get much screentime and are more annoying than anything, but grow to be somewhat competent down the line, especially when they get Digimon partners -- Hirokazu is partnered with Guardromon and Kenta is partnered with a MarineAngemon, both older Digimon that we've covered before. They kind of function as more of a "regular kids to make the story more relatable to the audience". They're... they're all right. They're a trope that I kind of wish wasn't implemented, but Tamers at least kept their presence to a minimum and doesn't try to push their obnoxiousness too much, unlike the follow-up series Frontier does with Bokomon and Neamon. These two exist. I forget which is which half the time, and I find even Ryo and Xiaochun more interesting than this two.Whoo, that's a long entry! The next couple of entries aren't going to talk about any more of these humans, though, and I don't think I'll ever have this much to talk about the cast of Frontier, Savers, Xros Wars or Hunters. Now let's talk about the Digimans!
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Relemon
First up is Renamon's Baby I form, Relemon. I think compared to the other baby forms, I find Renamon's the cutest. Look at Relemon! She's just a pleasant, happy little blob with a fox tail. She's just so happy, and not at all cool, calm, collected and ready to murder everyone in her path. The entire Renamon evolutionary line is based on the mythological fox yokai Kitsune, and Relemon is noted to be able to cast illusions to make her look like anything that's of her approximate size.
6/10. Pokomon
Relemon then evolves into Pokomon, which is basically the same thing with Relemon, but with ears and little stubby legs. I'm really impressed at how changing the eyes between Relemon and Pokomon really makes the two Baby forms distinct from each other, comparing it to the pretty samey Jyarimon/Gigimon and Zerimon/Gummymon. Pokomon is hilarious built up to be this mysterious, epic Digimon that very few tamers can even find... unless you have her favourite food, tofu. In which she'll show up without asking. Pokomon's also noted to have the ability to transform into a rock that shoots out poison -- a reference to the Sesshoseki, the "Killing Stone" that is supposed to be the transformed corpse of a demon fox that will kill anyone who touches it. 5/10. Renamon
I'm 100% sure that I wouldn't like Renamon's design all that much if she hasn't been such a goddamn trooper in the Tamers cartoon. From a design standpoint she's pretty basic for a fox-lady, just being a yellow fox-person standing on two legs, with some wacky Digimon fashion accessories in those purple arm-guards. It's not an unpleasant design, but it's not the style of monster that I'm particularly fond of. I do appreciate (google image search notwithstanding) that the official Bandai artwork for Renamon keeps her as un-sexualized as possible for a humanoid female Digimon, especially considering just how horribly sexualized other girl-Digimon are. And Renamon is... she's sadly became notorious for being Furry Bait, which is a huge, huge shame since I mostly remember her actually pretty decent character from the anime. Plus, the anime actually streamlines her design a lot more, to allow the animators a far easier time to animate her action scenes when her arms and legs are more proportioned. Renamon's personality in the anime is pretty interesting, being described by more than one person as having a mentality similar to a samurai or a retainer. She respects strength, and Ruki's the strongest human Tamer around, and she wants to become more powerful, so despite Renamon not being the most supportive of all of Ruki's decisions, she'll always go with them, right or wrong.
Renamon, simultaneously, has also shown to be the most independent of the main partner Digimon. She's never going to betray Ruki, but she has the most individual scenes out of the main trio of Guilmon and Terriermon. She ends up having a fair amount of scenes talking to Impmon and eventually influencing his own side change. She has a couple of scenes where she discusses matters with the human-hating Devas, and she's got a fair amount of scenes sassing off to Ruki without disobeying her. In addition to general kung fu fighting, Renamon's shown to be able to cast illusions although Tamers didn't really make much use of this, preferring to instead have Renamon battle with 'Koyousetsu'. While translated as 'Diamond Storm' in the dub because of how the animators animated it, Renamon's actually launching sharpened leaves at the opponent, another reference to the kitsune legend. The animators just made them be entirely glowing white.
Anyway, a pretty badass-looking fox-person. Not my favourite visual design, but definitely one of my favourite characters.
7/10, mostly due to the anime.Kyubimon
Kyubimon's pretty badass, with blue flames all around her legs and the tips of her tails, and she has the full ability to control these flames, a reference to a different Japanese yokai, the Onibi, basically Japan's version of will-o-wisps. Her big attack, Koenryuu, basically combines all of her flames into a big-ass blue dragon to completely incinerate her foes. In attition to that, Kyubimon's got those Taoist yin-yang symbols all over her as well as having those huge temple bells as a neck ornament. Kyubimon's a pretty solid and badass design, honestly, being complex enough to not be "just a fox with nine tales", but not cluttered enough to be annoying. Easily my favourite stage in this evolution line. It is noted that only the most powerful of Renamons can actually evolve into Kyubimon... which is probably the only justification for the gigantic amount of repaints down below. I do think that Kyubimon doesn't necessarily do anything particularly exciting or inventive with the concept of the nine-tailed demon fox, which is definitely a huge shame considering how creative older Digimon had been with their inspiration, but she looks so pleasant I can't not like her.
8/10. Taomon
Kyubimon's Perfect form, Taomon, sadly isn't more lupine. And I get that the whole myth about the kitsune is about a fox demon that can alternate between a fox and a person. But I dunno. I don't really find a fox person dressed up as a Taoist priest to be all that appealing. All things considered Taomon isn't that bad, with a very stern face, and I really love how the anime depicts Taomon having these long sleeves with her hands hidden, and she just pulls out a giant brush out of it to paint runes in the air to cast her magic. And that's when she doesn't just shoot out paper talismans that transform into exploding Shikigami. Taomon is, of course, based on the belief of Onmyodo, and that's... interesting? I won't get into detail about the dissertation of a religion here, but I've always been bizarrely conflicted as to using a religion as the basis for a fox-humanoid priest... although I suppose it's no different from all the HolyAngemons and Seraphimons out there. We're just drawing from a different religion this time around.Taomon's decent I guess, just utterly not my aesthetic at all. Not my favourite stage out of Renamon's line, but one that kind of fits in the theme of mythical demon foxes and general Japanese culture. I think a different Taomon also made a brief appearance in Frontier as a supporting character, too.
4/10. Sakuyamon
Sakuyamon's basically the biggest Onmyodou magic-user of all, even better than Taomon and able to summon other God-Beasts to do her will. In particular, she apparently carries four pipes that contain four kuda-gitsune on her belt, a reference to a fox/weasel spirit that are small enough to fit inside a pipe and sometimes used by psychics and medium as something equivalent to the Western understanding of familiars. Her method of attacking is to summon these four fox spirits (they all have different elements too) and use them as like little minions.
Anyway, neat concept, but not my favourite visual design by a far margin. I just don't really have much to say here. Tamers is around the time that the designs start to get way more dominantly humanoid and honestly quite samey, which is for better or for worse depending on your preference. I still largely give a huge chunk of the Tamers cast kind of a pass due to their very memorable anime appearances stirring happy feelings within me, but I'm sort of sorry (but not really) that subsequent humanized Digimon won't fare much better if they don't have anything particularly memorable that they did. And sometimes not even then, because, shit, Sakuyamon is a character I like and I'm barely giving her 3 points, debating really hard with myself if I should give her 1 or 2.
3/10. Dobermon
Oh, hey, a hellhound! Dobermon's a pretty neat-looking hellhound, too, looking positively gaunt, with the sleek doberman face having those Digimon tendril-horns tapering off of its head. I also love the extra sickle-blades jutting out of the back of his legs, as well as the too-large spiky neck-chain, and whatever those red... eyes? Digi-Cores? Whatever those red things that are peeking out of his musculature are. Dobermon's a neat little Adult-mode that is described by his bio as being similar to Snimon, an aggressive, almost mindless Vaccine-type that hunts down Virus-types heedless of collateral damage, with the interesting added backstory of Dobermon himself being a former Virus type that was converted into a Vaccine.
In Tamers, Dobermon acted as a messenger for the Four Holy Beasts, materializing in the real world during the final arc alongside with the ghost/copy/whatever-the-hell-she-is of Alice McCoy, the daughter of one of the designers of the Digital World. It's a weird situation that lasted an episode or two that was never really explained, but Dobermon ended up sacrificing himself to give Takato, Ruki, Lee and Ryo the ability to do Ultimate-level evolutions with their Digimon in the real world. It's... it's a bit of a weird plot point that I confess I've never really understood that much.
Dobermon is a neat little design, nonetheless, making brief cameos as antagonists and background characters in Frontier, Xros Wars and Hunters. I also love the fact that Dobermon's actually not the size of a dog, but actually the size of a small horse. A very pleasant-looking creature for a dog from hell.
8/10. Cerberumon
Cerberumon here was introduced as the Perfect-level default evolution of Dobermon in the D-Ark virtual pet, but didn't make an anime appearance until Digimon Frontier where he was the very first evil Digimon-of-the-week defeated by Takuya. As you'd expect, Cerberumon here is based on the mythological Cerberus, although instead of being a three-headed dog, Cerberumon instead is just a dog with two dog-head-esque armour chunks covering his shoulders. The extra heads function more as extra sensory organs to detect incoming attacks from blind spots. Also he has Wolverine claws on all four of his limbs. It's not quite a clean design as Dobermon, but it does look more visually intimidating and impressive, truly like something that's going to rip you apart to shreds. Someone apparently really likes Wolverine when designing Cerberumon, by the way, because in addition to the Wolverine claws, he also has instantly-regenerating skin any time he gets damaged.Cerberumon has been used several times in Xros Wars and Savers as minor antagonists, and rightly so -- this design definitely screams 'villain'! Anyway, a pretty neat design. Not my favourite, but not bad either.
6/10. Anubimon (a.k.a. Anubismon)
I completely missed out on the fact that Anubimon here was meant to be the Ultimate-level stage evolution for the Dobermon line, introduced alongside them in the original D-Ark virtual pets. Huh! It's very interesting that they decided to take the theme of Dobermon being a generic hellhound, Cerberumon being based on the Greco-Roman Cerberus, and Anubismon being based on the Egyptian death god Anubis as lupine death gods and combine them together. Anubimon here is... is neat, I suppose? He's basically what you expect from an Anubis-themed Digimon, with the jackal head. Interestingly, he doesn't look super Egyptian, with two angel wings strapped onto him and having that weird long lock of hair. He's not unpleasant looking and looks more monstrous than Sakuyamon, but I keep forgetting he exists.Anubimon's profile is neat, though, noting that Anubimon actually does serve as a judge for the dead to enter the Dark Area, sorting them depending on their evilness or goodness. Maybe the existence of these Anubimon was why the dead bad guys never get reincarnated in the Adventure continuity? Ironic that Anubimon made his debut alongside an anime series that's the only one to avert instant-reincarnation, though. Anubimon's attack apparently straight up summons Ammit, the lion/hippo/crocodile hybrid beast that would devour a sinner's soul during Anubis's judgement in real Egyptian mythology. Anubimon would make his anime debut in Xros Wars, but as generic generals of the Bagra Army division led by Gravimon and doesn't have any of the Egyptian-mythology connections that his profile states he has.
5/10. Click under the break to see Dogmon, the Paomon family, the Mephismon familyand a bunch of Renamon repaints. I'm trying to make the size of these articles manageable in order to make things a lot easier for anyone who's just scrolling.
Dogmon (a.k.a. Doggymon)
Dogmon here is an Adult-level Digimon without any real default evolutions or pre-evolutions. Dogmon's meant to be another one of those to be based on Western animation's wacky-looking style (explicitly noted to be born out of data of American cartoons), but I don't think Dogmon here ever got quite as charming as Gekomon or Yu-Gi-Oh's Toon World. Dogmon's just... kinda there. I do like that his profile actually gives him cartoon physics powers, allowing Dogmon to 'expand and contract like rubber' to absorb every attack. I bet his face turns black in response to bombs exploding in its face, too.Unsurprisingly, Dogmon isn't the most popular Digimon out there, and has insanely little video game appearances. He shows up for a single episode of Tamers chasing Culumon around and being kind of a dick, but the biggest Dogmon appearance would be in Frontier in a Wacky Races parody episode, where a Dogmon and a BlackWereGarurumon teams up to try and sabotage the heroes in a train race episode. Overall, though, not a particularly memorable one for me.
3/10. Paomon
The entire Paomon line didn't actually appear in the Tamers anime, although the Child-stage Labramon and Adult-stage Siesamon ends up being the stars of the first Digimon Tamers movie, "The Adventurers' Battle", where their whole backstory is that they're created as part of an artificial "digital pet" project by humans, making Paomon, Xiaomon and Labramon unable to evolve past the Child stage (a limitation which is immediately broken at the climax of the first real story that starred them, naturally). And while I kinda appreciated the attempted "meta" joke with a digital monster being designed as a virtual pet that gained sentience... I kinda wished they did something more with the concept, if not visually then in its lore?Anyway, the Baby I stage Paomon is apparently a cute widdle dumpling with dog ears. He's cute! There's really not much to say about him other than the fact that both Paomon and Xiamon have names based on Chinese names. In Paomon's case, it's based on Baozi, a type of Chinese meat bun.
4/10. Xiaomon
Xiamon is probably supposed to be a baby dog, but ends up looking more like a very awkward-looking sheep. While Paomon's cute and Labramon's a neat dog, Xiaomon's always look bizarrely awkward for me, like they designed the stages before and after it and went 'crap, how do we connect these two?' and sketched Xiaomon and shrugged. Not a big fan of this one. It looks too awkward, and doesn't really have any unique lore of its own, just basically repeating Paomon's profile about being an artificial Digimon and such. 2/10. Labramon
Labramon here is a Child-stage, and he's a good little doggy! A far more doggy dog than our only other dog Child-level Digimon at this period in time, Plotmon. It does also make Labramon a bit more boring, though, since other than the bushy tail and the Digimon-style drawn claws, Labramon is... kind of just a dog. I like dogs, but Labramon's kind of a boring dog Digimon. Labramon's noted to be the 'final form of artificial Digimon' despite being a Child-level. Yeah right, this is Digimon. That's not going to happen. Anyway, Labramon is a dog, and in the Tamers movie is basically heavily implied to be the suddenly-sentient-and-also-digital reincarnation of the movie-only character's dead pet dog's ghost. Or something? It's confusing. Eh. Labramon's a Digimon that is surprisingly ignored a fair bit in video games and anime alike, only showing up in TCG's throughout the years after his original debut in Tamers. He's not a bad dog, but... definitely on the boring side. 4/10. Siesamon (a.k.a. Shiisamon/Seasarmon)
Oh, man, the alternate names of this dude! Siesamon here is based on the Shisa, the Japanese version of the Chinese Guardian Dogs, incorporated into architecture as symbols of guardians to ward off evil spirits. Due to the slightly different katakana used for Siesamon's name, he has been called Siesamon, Seasarmon, Shiisamon and various others through the years. And Siesamon is... well, he's basically what you'd expect a lion-dog hybrid to look like. Siesamon is the evolution of Labramon in the Tamers movie, and also appeared in the V-Pets of that era. He's just an Adult-level, and apparently his original default Perfect-level evolution is also Cerberumon? Subsequent Virtual Pets ended up playing up on his 'holy beast' deal, allowing Siesamon to evolve into Perfect-level Digimon like HolyAngemon and LadyDevimon of all things. Personally, I've always felt that the dog Deva Caturamon is the most appropriate candidate for Siesamon to evolve into.Anyway, Shisa is a cool enough mythological beast to be incorporated as a Digimon design. He doesn't really do enough with the design to look particularly cool. It's neat, but not super-memorable.
5/10. Mephismon (a.k.a. Mephistomon)
In a rare bit of reverse-censorship, the English dub actually made Mephismon's name far more evident, calling him "Mephistomon" in the dub. This dude's name, of course, borrows from Mephitopheles, the devil in the legend of Dr. Faustus. Anyway, the Perfect-level Mephismon is used as a villain in the D-Ark Virtual Pets, as well as the main antagonist in "The Adventurers' Battle" movie, noted as being born out of the data of a dead Apocalymon. Mephismon here actually foregoes the snarling demon-man of most popular media and uses an older trope of using a ram's head to represent a devil-man. The result is... well, not that impressive. Especially when seen from the front like this artwork. Part of it is because of the bizarre poofy clown shoulders and striped arms and bulky lower arms that Mephismon has, too, which kind of ruins the whole inhumantly-gaunt-demon deal. Plus, the anime gave Mephismon's goat-head such a sad smile that I genuinely can't take him seriously. Maybe they were going for more of a satyr/faun look when they originally designed Mephismon? Mephismon's special skill is apparently called 'Black Sabbath', where anyone who hears the festival it plays will die shortly after. Jeez, a little metal isn't going to kill you!Anyway, I appreciate the effort of trying to make a different-looking devil Digimon design, but Mephismon ends up being a huge miss for me.
3/10. Gulfmon
Mephismon's default Ultimate evolution is this dude, Gulfmon, who is... I'm not sure what it's meant to be. A skeletal centaur with way too large of a lower body, huge bird wings, and weird claws that are shaped like flowers? And he's got a far more intimidating ram-skull deal going on? It's hard to see in this official art, but those things on the side of his two legs are meant to be ram's horns, and that silver thing on his crotch is a second mouth. Click here and here for a better look at Gulfmon's unfortunately-placed secondary mouth. Not sure why they called this dude the decidedly underwhelming name of 'Gulfmon' either. In any case, Gulfmon is a pretty neat looking weird bestial demon, in spite of his phallic dick-mouth that's meant to be a gateway to hell itself.Gulfmon is noted by his bio to be so mighty that he can rip souls out of their owners with his "Black Requiem" song from his secondary maw, and that it can "destroy the world in seven days". But Gulfmon sort of falls pretty short nowadays with so many other Ultimate-level Demon Lords that are way, way higher on the Digimon-hell totem pole than poor old Gulfmon. Still, a pretty interesting design that I never really gave a proper look to -- Gulfmon's not a bad-looking demon beast thing, really, sort of like what a more Greek-inspired Pit Lord from Warcraft would look like. I don't especially like this thing, but I don't mind him either.
6/10. Youkomon
4/10. Doumon
Doumon here is the evolution of Youkomon and the repaint of Taomon. It's described to be a more evil version of Taomon that specializes in 'death curses and assassinations'. Not much to say about Doumon that I didn't say about Youkomon since they're basically similar palettes, but Doumon foregoes the orange and green and goes for a far more boring 'just make everything black and white' with her clothes. Eh. I'm indifferent about this one.
3/10. Kuzuhamon
2/10. Sakuyamon: Miko Mode
This form of Sakuyamon never actually made it into the anime, only existing on trading card games, and I'm glad. She's just so boring, just a straight-up shrine maiden wearing a fox mask. There is absolutely no attempt at creativity being made here, and I suspect this is done just for a fetish thing more than anything. Pass.
0/10. Silver Foxes
Good lord how many fox repaints are there
These are totally different! These are silver instead of purple! Kyubimon (Silver) and Taomon (Silver) basically just swaps out the yellow for silver. In Taomon's case, it's absolutely boring. In Kyubimon's case, the artist actually went extremely hog-wild with drawing those fiery demons jutting out of her tail. You get a point for effort, although I find these to be pretty boring compared to the purple variants and to regular Kyubimon. At least they didn't just do a simple black repaint, though, and the colour schemes for these Vaccine-attribute variants are not unpleasant. Oh well, time to move to a bunch of Tamers-era supporting characters!
1/10. Whew, that's a longer article than I expected! By this point we've covered basically all the main protagonists in Digimon Tamers as well as a bunch of movie characters and minor antagonists. We have one more Tamers-related post to do, and that's the Devas (and a bunch of ersatz Digimon), which I'm saving for last!
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