Digimon Reviews, Episode 37: Lalamon, Falcomon and Friends

Next up we're continuing with the main cast of Digimon Savers (or Data Squad for Western audience). This time around we're going to discuss the remaining two main protagonist of Savers, Yoshino and Ikuto. They're... they're  not the most interesting characters, I have to be honest. Fujieda Yoshino (just Yoshi in the dub) is a character that thankfully doesn't repeat Frontier's portrayal of its token female main character, and Yoshino tends to get relatively equal billing as a legitimate fighter, but she's not much of a character -- although, granted, Savers isn't the best show to go for characterization. She's... she's mostly competent and professional, and sometimes goes flustered in the way most anime females are basically obligated to do. Yoshino does have inarguably the best Digimon partner in the entire Savers series, though, one of the few to actually have a personality -- Lalamon is such a sarcastic-but-oh-so-cute little flower buddy.

Ikuto (Keenan Crier, of all things, in the dub) has an interesting backstory -- he was a human child who was thrown into the digital world and found himself basically raised by a Digimon in a none-too-subtle Tarzan analogy. He hangs out with Mercurymon and a lot of the Digimon cast, before eventually joining up with the good guys and fighting the mutual enemies of both sides. Ikuto's got a very interesting backstory, but I don't really think the show does much with him after exploring said backstory.

Again, apologies for the large amount of "Reviewing Monsters" articles recently -- I'm pretty swamped IRL at the moment, and this is a series of articles that I kind of have ready as a buffer to have regular posts. 
________________________________

Budmon

I tend to be dismissive about most of the newer babies, but I really do like Budmon! Sure, she's a blob with a leaf-tail and random thorns, but she does manage to embody the whole plant baby thing really well without just looking like "Lalamon, but simpler". I'm pretty sure that Budmon only appeared in Savers one time, but eh, she's cute enough. Not much to say here, Budmon's neat and cute enough. I like her.

 6/10.

Lalamon

The first time I laid eyes on Digimon Savers was a random episode near the end of the series where the final villain of the series is invading the real world. It was a long while since I stopped watching Digimon regularly -- I sort of outgrew the series and wasn't interested at the time of Frontier -- and I was genuinely surprised to see that we've got a new Digimon series of all things after the franchise has basically been near-dead for several years. I loved the newer, sleeker animation, but was solely disappointed when I saw the protagonists. Agumon wasn't new and had these dumb arm-bands, Falcomon was just a reskinnned Hawkmon with clothes, and Gaomon looks dumb. But then this little spinning plant shows up... and right then and there I kind of really, really ended up liking Lalamon a lot. She's a tiny, little blob-pixie plant that hovers around and is small enough to perch on her partner's shoulder, and that's pretty neat! Lalamon manages to look plant-like and communicate the fact that she's a plant creature, without looking too much like any specific plant. Having a little hovering leaf-helicopter feature is also a great addition, and the pink and green colour scheme definitely manages to make her look pretty adorable.

But best of all? It's her face. It's that .o. face that she has, and it is just so appropriate for a cute little plant fairy creature. There's just something so, so charming about Lalamon's dot face!

And then you throw in her actual personality in the series, where she actually manages to serve the purpose of what made the original Digimon Adventure so interesting -- that the partners are, in some way, meant to 'play off' their partner's negative and positive emotions, like some sort of spirit counselor or fairy godparent or whatever. The Digimons in Digimon Saver tended to be portrayed as, well, partners and fighters, and none of them really got any real development or personality beyond "yeah, they're buddies with each other!" Lalamon is different -- she's snarky, she's a bit of an ass, and she plays off the serious-but-well-meaning Yoshino.

Plus, when she's not shooting seeds at enemies, Lalamon apparently knows sausage-fu. Anyway, Lalamon's pretty neat and charming, one of the few post-Tamers main characters that I really, unabashedly love instead of going "okay, this is kinda neat."

 10/10.

Sunflowmon

Lalamon's Adult-level evolution, Sunflowmon, is... isn't that amazing, I'm afraid. Sunflowmon is huge, towering around the size of GeoGreymon and the like, but there's almost a running joke in the series, whether it's intentional or not, that Sunflowmon is utterly useless as anything other than transport. She's awkward, huge, generally confused about her surroundings and is portrayed as inept. And I'm genuinely baffled, because whether it's her smaller form Lalamon or her evolved forms Lilamon and Rosemon, the character's never really been portrayed as useless. I guess that's the whole point of her character, I guess? I dunno.

Sunflowmon is... she's not a design I'm a terribly big fan of, honestly, and her bumbling incompetence just doesn't do her much favours. The flower face looks a wee bit too bland (although like Tokomon, she hides a massive maw of fangs that get used way too little in the anime), and the one-tone generic long-chunky-armed body just feels... I dunno. The whole thing just looks bland. It's hilarious in how awkward-looking it is, but I really wished that they had made it look less like a weird dude-in-a-suit, y'know what I mean? This looks like a cheap minimal-effort monster in a tokusatsu show.

 4/10.

Lilamon

Lalamon's Perfect-level evolution, Lilamon, is... she's not a design I like. It's like they really want to do a perfect-level humanoid plant fairy similar to Lilymon, but didn't want to make her look too similar, and ended up in a pretty awkward-looking attempt of "shit, let's not try to rip this off too much, but we have to make it look similar!" I do love the fact that Lilamon's arms and legs all end up in blossoming flowers, and despite the general awkward look that she has in her official art, Lilamon does have some really decent action scenes and looks a whole lot better in motion. The combination of these little flower-limbs and her somewhat contorted body makes her look more like a fairy made out of plants, instead of just your average Tinkerbell style fairy that has flower clothes. That makes a monster design so much interesting -- not that there's no place in a fantasy world for regular fairies (I like Lilymon!) but this little extra design to make her different in concept is a neat way to make her still appeal to... to whoever it's supposed to appeal to, while also filling a different niche. 

I am, however, a big fan of Lilamon's profile, who notes that despite her friendly appearance, Lilamon "governs over death and rebirth" with the aid of her toxic leaves. Pro-tip: real lilac flowers aren't toxic, it's actually an old wives' tale. That's a pretty neat little detail in an otherwise pretty m'eh profile.

 7/10.

Rosemon: Burst Mode

Lalamon's Ultimate evolution is the same Rosemon that Palmon never evolved into in the anime, and I'm actually pretty pleasantly surprised that after all the GeoGreymon nonsense they decided to bring back an old classic never seen in a Digimon anime as basically one of the main characters of Savers. And Rosemon manages to act as a pretty badass fighter! She's not portrayed as much weaker than MirageGaogamon or Ravmon, and I do like that! Unfortunately, though, the animation staff, taking advantage of laxer censors, ends up really sexualizing Rosemon, basically animating her boobs and having them bounce around more than a hyperactive toddler on a trampoline. I'm not above the occasional bit of fanservice every now and then, but I did think that they overdid it sometimes for Rosemon.

Anyway, like ShineGreymon and MirageGaogamon, Rosemon gets a "Burst Mode", which basically swaps her red-and-green colour scheme for a white-pink-and-black one. I don't think there's anything visually different about her design, although she gets different-shaped beam attacks in Burst Mode form, like manipulating those pink orbs. It's a decent enough repaint, I suppose, although I prefer original Rosemon.

 6/10.

Falcomon II

We covered the original Falcomon a while back, and when the production staff for Savers decided to use Falcomon as one of the main characters, they ended up revamping him significantly, And it's... it's for the better. I tend to balk at randomly slapping human accessories on monsters wily-nily (like Gaomon or Bearmon), but comparing Falcomon II with the original Falcomon, this ninja bird is so, so much memorable than off-colours feral Falcomon. Falcomon II isn't like a novel concept, but it's at least done relatively well. He's a fun little ninja owl wearing a ninja shirt, and the black, grey and red colour scheme works relatively well. Falcomon's bio notes that this is a subspecies of the original Falcomon, whose wings have developed enough to allow it free flight, and is kind of obsessed with being a ninja -- whether it be flying like a kite or throwing shuriken feathers. The Falcomon character in the anime is... I'm legitimately not sure if he has much of a personality beyond being Ikuto's more mature babysitter, but I did remember liking the pairing. Ikuto and Falcomon go through a pretty basic and predictable story arc for a wild boy that is exposed to the fact that the world isn't black-and-white, and that he is a child of both worlds, but it's handled relatively well. The design of Falcomon's neat. I don't mind him. 

 7/10.

Peckmon

The champion level for New Falcomon swaps around from Diatrymon into Peckmon, changing from a Gastronis into a more child-friendly ostrich or emu of sorts, and dressed in... ninja gear. Of course. While the ninja gear is a inoffensive on Falcomon and blends in with the design well, I do think that Peckmon does overboard. We've got the shirt, leg guards, a huge scarf, head-bands... I dunno. Throw in the fact that Peckmon's actual wings and tail are bright orange and yellow, and the end result becomes kind of a messy design. It's not one that I'm particularly in love with, honestly. Not much to say here.

 4/10.

Yatagaramon II

The Perfect-level evolution for Falcomon... borrows from the original Falcomon once more, giving us Yatagaramon II here, and it's basically the same thing with the original Yatagaramon, only with the colours and metal accessories swapped out a bit. Maybe there's more changes, but... eh. The lore and general 'cool, mystical dark giant bird' feel is still intact. Yatagaramon's pretty damn cool, and even it's the expected sort of "super-edgy black-and-purple bird monster that looks evil but is actually misunderstood" trope, Yatagaramon manages to still look pretty damn cool, and has some really badass scenes in the anime on the brief couple of scenes that he's allowed to shine. I dunno -- I just really like the look of this thing.

 7/10.

Ravmon (a.k.a. Ravemon), also Burst Mode

It's honestly expected at this point for any given evolutionary line to just turn into humanoid in the Ultimate level. And that's kind of something that I definitely don't like about Digimon -- but have grown to accept as a quirk of the series. In Falcomon's case, the final form is Ravmon (Ravemon in English), who is a humanoid bird-man ninja with a giant sword, talon claws and wings as under-arm blades. It's... it's pretty decent, actually, as far as these cool humanoid Ultimates go. If I ever go through the effort of rating all the humanoid Digimon, Ravmon is one that's just straight-up cool in a classic sense. Oh, and this official artwork isn't particularly good at showcasing it, but Ravmon's wings are actually slightly different -- one is black, and one is silver.

Ravmon's backstory has kind of a typical "fallen angel" backstory for it, noting that Ravmon once served a God Man Digimon that was once a silver-coloured servitor, but was dyed black when said God Man was angry at him. Thus it became this super-edgy dark-but-not-evil sort of character that goes around as a ninja assassin, using its black-coloured wing to hide himself and the white-coloured wing to stab the enemy. Yeah, it's definitely the sort of backstory that's tailor-made to be marketable. Not my thing, but it is still a pretty cool ninja birdman assassin.

Like the rest of the Ultimates for the main characters, Ravmon has a Burst MOde ultimate, which just swaps around blacks, whites and purples. I genuinely don't have much to say about this form.

 5/10.

Chapmon

One of the final main characters in the show is Yushima Hiroshi (Homer Yushima in the dub), who basically acts as the kooky "obfuscating senility" old man mentor of the cast. He's a pretty cool character, I guess, and I do remember him fondly. Initially introduced as a quirky old man who gave Masaru his Digivice, it turns out that he's one of the founder of DATS, and has been retired for some time. He's got his own partner and a full evolutionary line, too. The Baby II here, Chapmon, is honestly kind of a basic baby kappa with a blobby lower body. It's not a particularly bad design, but it's not super-memorable either. Chapmon never really appears outside of virtual pet video games, I think, and... I dunno. I do find it pretty forgettable, if inoffensive.

 5/10.

Kamemon

Kamemon's design isn't super revolutionary. He's a humanoid turtle with a hard-hat that covers the upper half of his face. (Despite what this image shows, for nearly the entirety of the series Kamemon's eyes are covered) And he's sort of just this chill figure in the background that hangs out with the two Chessmons and goes around carrying trays with tea for everyone. I do find that ti's a fun little plot twist thing where Kamemon was initially introduced among a bunch of background Digimon and spent nearly 20 episodes just as this background character, before the fact that he doesn't actually have an assigned human partner ends up actually being a major plot point.

Kamemon's design is something I've never paid much attention to, initially dismissing him as another "let's put a random human accessory on a Digimon" silliness, but apparently he's based on a computer mouse! His shell is actually similar to the shape of a mouse, and that weird little bellybutton is supposed to be a trackball, which is pretty neat! And I've never noticed that his tail is a frayed wire before this. I honestly really wished that they had another way to showcase Kamemon's eyeless visage (maybe a secondary turtle shell?) instead of slapping that gaudy blue helmet on him. Anyway.... he's neat-o, and I like the weird computer mouse angle.

 6/10.

Gawappamon (a.k.a. Gwappamon)

As you can probably expect from Chapmon, the evolutionary line is going to be a kappa-based evolutionary line that sort of incorporates cyborg turtles for some reason. And Gawappamon... Gawappamon is just this huge soup of wacky ideas. He's a turtle, he's a kappa, he's still a cyborg, he's a... plush toy? And for whatever reason, Kamemon evolves from a mouse into a music player, turning him into a DJ-ing kappa turtle with a CD in place of the kappa's head pearl. And weird sausage-like "dreadlocks" in place of a kappa's head-crown thing. It's.... it's an awkward design, honestly, and one that looks utterly ridiculous, but I do feel like this is the right sort of ridiculous. Gawappamon's attacks in the anime even involves him DJ-ing the CD's on his head and launching them at the enemy.

Anyway, I'm not sure if Gawappamon's name is meant to be a pun of some sort, but eh. I dunno. I really want to give this bizarre hodgepodge of a design poor marks,  but I do think that he is just the right sort of ridiculousness and charming to not be hateable.

 6/10.

Shawujinmon

Gawappamon manages to evolve into Perfect level during the final stages of the Savers storyline, into Shawujinmon, based on the character Sha Wujing from the Chinese legend Journey to the West. Sha Wujing would be the second and final member of Sun Wukong's enemies that join him and his master in, well, journeying to the West. In Japanese culture, due to Sha Wujing's description as a river demon of sorts, Sha Wujing tended to be portrayed with semi-Kappa-esque features. Like the mythological Sha Wujing, Shawujinmon is noted to be 'banished from heaven', and that it's now some sort of a monk that guards the nine prayer beads on his necklace -- and the destruction of said beads will transform Shawujinmon "into a terrifying Digimon", which is an extrapolation of the necklace made of skulls that the mythological Sha Wujing has. While originally Sha Wujing is depicted with a simple staff, most portrayal of him has evolved into his staff having a crescent-like fork on one end and a broad blade on the end. For Shawujinmon, and the only real tie to the 'cyborg' theme of the Kamemon line, is that the latter end has been transformed into a gatling gun.

Anyway, it's... it's an unoffensive design, and I do like the fact that they did give Shawujinmon a pretty interesting duck-billed face. I do feel like gun-staff aside, though, Shawujinmon is a bizarrely weird fit in an evolutionary line that has otherwise been pretty exclusively cyborg amphibians, and such a weird anomaly between Gawappamon and JumboGamemon. Although I suppose the 'sealed monster' in Shawujinmon's beads might just be the giant mecha-turtle-Godzilla monster, instead of a demon? I'm all up for that. Shawujinmon himself mostly earns a "eh, this doesn't bother me" shrug from me, but not the most impressive.

 5/10.

JumboGamemon

Savers' Kamemon sadly never actually evolves into Ultimate form, which is a shame. JumboGamemon here only appears in video games, and I do like him! He's a pretty refreshing break from all the humanoid action figure Ultimates we've been seeing ad nauseum, and is a gigantic turtle monster with guns for arms, guns for a nose, and a stance that makes it look like it should probably star in a Godzilla movie or something. I do love the description in its bio, too, that notes that it "added beam cannons to its entire body until its shell was compromised". That same bio then goes on to describe how JumboGamemon can retract its legs and then fly around by shooting high-pressure water out of it, which is such a ridiculously fun image in my head. Anyway, nothing much to say here -- JumboGamemon is a cyborg kaiju, and such a different looking cyborg kaiju than all the ones we already have. From his colours to his charming over-abundancce of weapons, to the turtle motif, I really do like this design a fair bit. It's also such, such a neat little break from all the humanoid final evolutions that sometimes we get one that's just a fucking giant Godzilla enemy.

 8/10.

Gizmon, Gizmon AT & Gizmon XT

So one of the main antagonists of Digimon Savers is this dude Akihiro Kurata, who is part of the original DATS team that explored the digital world alongside Masaru's father and Satsuma Rentarou (DATS's current leader, who we'll cover next part), and he's... he's a fucked up racist and a mad scientist, and he's basically the reason for basically all the bad shit that happens in Digimon Savers, causing the war between humans and Digimons, and eventually unleashing Belphemon in order to dominate both the real world and the Digital world. Oh, and he later modifies a gruop of mercenaries into human-Digimon hybrids, which really just shows how much of Kurata's insanity and goals hinges on his own hypocrisy.

For a good chunk of the series, though, Kurata fights with an army of artificial Digimon called Gizmon (gizmo, get it?) which are basically treated as these soulless enemies able to permanently 'delete' Digimon and taking them out of the cycle of reincarnation. The original Gizmon here is pretty damn cool, with a nice, sinister purple body, a cyclops-like single eye, sharp claws and creepy wire-tentacles. It definitely looks like something that would be a mass-produced enemy in any given setting. It's admittedly a lot cooler in this official artwork than it was in the anime series where it's drawn a lot more simply, but hey, the design is still neat as this spider-octopus flying head.

Turns out that the 'basic' Gizmon up above is just the prototype, and a newer model is later introduced, the Gizmon: AT. The AT model initially looks basically like Proto Gizmon, but with the spider claws swapped for a pair of straight, plank-like shield-arms that can unfurl into these segmented tendril things. Most databooks classify the Proto-Gizmon as a "Child" level Digimon, and the AT model as the "Adult" level, but that really doesn't really say anything considering they're artificial and they're basically as powerful as they need to be.

The AT version would later show up as Gizmon: XT, where the parts have been re-arranged into a spindly humanoid form. And I tend to groan when an interesting design loses what made it unique in favour of just being another generic humanoid form, but Gizmon: XT is anything but generic! His arms and legs are so inhuman, with his arms being long, flat and ending in tapered tape-like fingers, his legs are spindly wires with 'joints' of huge mechanical chunks, and you can still see the parts of him that used to be Gizmon and Gizmon: AT. Hell, despite apparently being 'equivalent' to a Perfect level, Gizmon: XT's most notable appearance was when one shows up to murder the fuck out of Mercurymon, one of the few guardians of the digital world that's still willing to listen to reason, as well as Ikuto's adopted father.

Anyway, the Gizmons are pretty dang awesome. They definitely serve amazingly well as these faceless, transforming robot enemies with no soul. Good stuff!

 10/10.

ElDoradimon (a.k.a. Eldradimon)

As you can probably imagine, with so many years without a new Digimon anime, as well as the obligation to introduce some classic species, Savers is actually very light in introducing any new Digimon variants as guest stars or enemies of the week, preferring to limit its new Digimon cast to the main partners. But ElDoradimon is one of the few exceptions. The focus of a huge amount of the series is our heroes's attempt to befriend a huge community of Digimon living on top of ElDoradimon (named, of course, after the mythical city of El Dorado). And ElDoradimon is basically just this giant castle-turtle! The concept is simple and ElDoradimon admittedly is more plot device and a walking setting than a character, but I've always really loved the oriental themes of having a gigantic turtle carry a settlement on its back.

Obviously, ElDoradimon is an Ultimmate-level, and I do like the fact that its arms and head, when retracted, just looks like part of the structure of the castle-on-a-mountain. Not a bad concept for a creature, even if it does overlap a little with the earlier Xuan'wumon. I do feel that it's different enough to give a pass, though, especially when half of the Ultimate level is made up of identikit power rangers or devilmen. ElDoradimon's a great setting for that arc of the series to take place on, and when he inevitably gets blown up it is a legitimately sad moment that the anime team actually does well.

 6/10.

Lotusmon (a.k.a. Rotosmon/Lotosmon)

Bizarrely translated in English dubs as "Rotosmon" or "Lotosmon", Lotusmon here is an Ultimate-level plant fairy Digimon. She's just sort of a standalone creature with no pre-evolution line (games tended to use Lilamon, Lilimon or Blossomon as her pre-evolution) and is randomly included among the other Bio-Digimon that Kurata created. Oh-kaaay?

Lotusmon's honestly is another one that feels like she's... she's just a lady, you know? A lady with a pretty neat (if fanservicey) fashion style, but I dunno. She just feels like a wizard or priest character in a cheap mobile RPG game or something, y'know? And beyond being that, the only real lotus part of her is the upper part of her head, which... admittedly, it a cool way to incorporate that to make sure you understand that this is a plant woman. And looking at the gallery of artwork on Digimon wikis, people really sexualize her and her staff. Anyway, Lotusmon isn't objectively a bad-looking design, because other than a smidgen of fanservice aside she's fine, but there's just so little here that appeals to me as a monster. She's... she's neat, but we've seen a fair bit of fanservice lady Digimon and at some point they sort of blur together. Was she a rejected Ultimate evolution for Lalamon before they went and pulled Rosemon out of retirement, but then they decided to make Lotusmon real anyway? I dunno.

 5/10.

The Bio-Hybrids

Since we have already talked about Kurata and Lotusmon, around halfway across the Kurata arc he decides that the Gizmons aren't really performing well due to them being soulless robots with no initiative, so he ends up recruiting three mercenaries -- Ivan, Kouki and Nanami -- to be his own operatives. And he has modified them to transform into Digimon, complete with evolutions! I'm not sure if this was a knowing riff to the concept in Frontier, but actually having characters and faces attached to the villains instead of faceless Gizmons and the offscreen villain Kurata definitely does help with making the villains feel a lot more interesting. 

Other than Lotusmon, all of the Bio-Hybrids are pre-existing Digimon I've talked about earlier, but with slight colour changes. We'll breeze through them.

This is Masaru's "rival", Kouki, who transforms into BioThunderbirdmon and later on BioDarkdramon. They're basically slightly colour-swapped versions of the original designs. Note that all the 'armor' versions have a huge sci-fi syringe stuck onto their head, which is... kinda ugly,  but at least it's part of the story lore. Not much to say here, although it's worth noting that BioDarkdramon here is the only reason why I remotely remember Darkdramon.

This is Ivan, Yoshino's "rival" and obvious foreigner. It's a bit unfortunate that his personality basically boils down to "creep on Yoshino", but at least we do get all of those un-utilized dinosaur Digimon some love, with Ivan evolving into BioStegomon and BioSpinomon (no 'proper' artwork of BioSpinomon exist outside of screenshots, apparently). The random head-colour-changing for both designs really make them look worse, though.

And this is Nanami, gothic girl and one that transforms into BioCoatlmon and BioLotusmon. Note that, again, the only real differences are minimal. Hell, Lotusmon and BioLotusmon just basically swap the colour of their hats. Interestingly, Savers didn't fall into the trope of having the two token girls fight each other, and Nanami fights Touma. And there are some... surprisingly sexual scenes when BioLotusmon actually attacks Touma and tries to... well, basically seduce him?

Overall, I do like the idea of human mercenaries mutated into Digimon and all that, but I'm not quite sure why they didn't just use the Armor Digimon as-is and has to go through the roundabout way of introducing brand-new Bio-species. Eh. 

 3/10.

BanchoLeomon: Burst Mode

It's basically BanchoLeomon showcasing that Burst Mode is a thing. I don't think this honestly qualifies as an actual new form, because it's just BanchoLeomon with an aura, and with his hair in a rough approximation of Super Saiyan. I'll just include it here for completion's sake, but it's clearly not meant to be a proper "separate" form.

 1/10.