Digimon Reviews, Episode 39: Falcomon and Friends

Parts of this article were originally published in Digimon Reviews, Part 37, and Digimon Reviews, Part 34. Trying too hard to merge everything together in a single article for the latter really led to that particular part of the review to be triple the length of all the other Digimon reviews, and I also felt odd compressing all the Savers partner Digimon into single articles. 

So I took the chance to split off the original Falcomon line (originally debuting in 2005's Pendulum X, and would have debuted alongside Funbeemon, Commandramon and the others) and the 2006 anime incarnation of Falcomon, which was heavily retooled for the anime, and merge them together here. We're going to talk about the 'original' Falcomon before the 'anime version' of Falcomon here.

Mercurymon, due to its role in Savers, have also moved from 34 to here. And just to round things up, I've moved VictoryGreymon and ZeedGarurumon here from the also full episode 39. 

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Puwamon

• Alternate Names: N/A
• Stage: Baby I
• Type: Slime
• Attribute: None

Kicking off the 'Nature Genome' Virtual pet, we've got a baby that will evolve into the usual combination of plants and birds that Digimon's virtual pets really like to associate. And thus we start off with Puwamon, which has a cute little owl head! It's almost hard to see the 'beak' that just blends into the black chevron-eyebrows thing. I do like that the body's fur makes it look like both a fuzzy round bird, but also a fuzzy seed or fruit. 

I like that! That makes it a much more unique entity that still believably evolves into the Falcomon line, but also fits with the other plants that Puwamon and Pinamon evolves to. It's a cute little owl-orb guy. 

Puwamon makes an appearance in the Savers anime not as Falcomon's baby form (none of the new partners, to my memory, ever devolve into their Baby levels) but instead hatching from an egg and evolving into a Piyomon briefly partnered with Masaru's sister, Chika. A couple of Puwamon also serve as recurring minor characters in Adventure 2020. 

 6/10.

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Pinamon

• Alternate Names: N/A
• Stage: Baby II
• Type: Chick
• Attribute: None

Pinamon's still a little blob-bird, but with enough differences from Puwamon! I appreciate that. I like the two little feather-tails on little tendrils, and the fuzz forming not-quite wings. Look at its cute little feet and adorably large eyes, while it's trying so hard to look serious with those angry anime eyebrows! I can just imagine this little baby bird just running around angrily pecking everything in its wake. 

Pinamon is described in its profile as having a resting bitch face stoic face, and one can only really tell the mood of a Pinamon by observing how it runs. Interestingly, Pinamon is able to generate static electricity, which I suppose ties into the eventual lightning powers that some of Falcomon's evolutions have? 

Pinamon's original debut interestingly has a rather diverse selection of evolutions. There is Falcomon, of course, but Pinamon was originally associated with Mushmon, Goblimon, Swimmon, Gotsumon and Terriermon... it really does feel like they just lobbed everything and the kitchen sink at this guy! 

 7/10.

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Falcomon

• Alternate Names: N/A
• Stage: Child
• Type: Bird
• Attribute: Vaccine

"Wait, this isn't Falcomon!" Well, you're half-correct. See, when the original Falcomon debuted in 2005's Accel Genome virtual pets, this was the official artwork and design. Sort of like an off-brand Hawkmon with vaguely owl-shaped eyes and a pretty bland green-and-gray colour scheme. And yes, I know the name is "Falcomon", but this dude's clearly based on an owl, isn't he?

Fast-forward a year to 2006, where they decided to use Falcomon as one of the main partner Digimon of Digimon Savers (Data Squad for dub viewers), and they decided to completely overhaul Falcomon, giving him a more proportioned and marketable body shape, a black-and-purple colour scheme and a clear ninja theme. And while I tend to like the more beastly and natural-looking Digimon a bit better, I kind of have to admit that original Falcomon here is kind of lackluster and pretty dang boring. Honestly feels like a minimal effort Hawkmon ripoff, which doesn't do OG Falcomon any favours. It already has so much going against it even before the anime team redesigned it into one that has a gimmick. 

Original flavour Falcomon, at least, would find some attention in the relatively new Digimon Survive as one of the partner Digimon of the cast there, finally bringing Falcomon into some semblance of a spotlight. Good for you, Falcomon!

 3/10.
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Diatrymon

• Alternate Names: N/A
• Stage: Adult
• Type: Ancient Bird
• Attribute: Vaccine

So while I think Falcomon's transformation from the original virtual pet version to the anime version is ultimately for the better, I am glad that they didn't decide to revamp Diatrymon, instead making up an entirely new Adult-level evolution for Falcomon II, the ninja-ostrich Peckmon who we'll cover in due time. Instead, original Falcomon's default Adult-stage evolution is the very monstrous ancient monster-bird Diatrymon, taking his name from Diatryma, the genus name for a prehistoric, predatory monster-bird that are commonly portrayed in media as this giant apex predator "horror birds". Though nowadays Diatryma (or Gastronis, because taxonomy is complicated) is theorized to actually behave like, well, modern-day ostriches and probably aren't as horrifying as predators as popular media make them out to be. Diatrymon isn't worried about any of the real-world science debates, though, and is happy to embody the armoured giant flightless monster-bird tropes.

Still, Diatrymon is honestly pretty damn badass, being this monster bird with a jagged mouth and mean-looking claws and armour plates. I kind of wonder why they decided to give him the clashing colours of orange and green is a good idea, though. Anyway, while Diatrymon hasn't appeared anywhere outside of video games, I definitely do appreciate that this monster bird's existence, even if I really do think it would look better with other colours.

 6/10.

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Yatagaramon

• Alternate Names: Crowmon (EN dub)
• Stage: Perfect
• Type: Bewitching Bird
• Attribute: Vaccine

The Perfect-level evolution for Diatrymon is Yatagaramon, based on the Yatagarasu, a mythological three-legged crow from Japanese mythology that represents the intervention of heaven in mortal affairs. Like Falcomon, Yatagaramon would be redesigned (although not quite as much as Falcomon) in the Savers anime. The original Yatagaramon is a pretty simple design, though. It knows its mythological basis of a three-legged crow, made it into a Birdramon-style giant bird, and then adds a bunch of Deva-style oriental armour to it. All in all I kind of prefer the newer Yatagaramon, although the original version here isn't honestly all that bad. Yatagaramon's profile notes about how it's sort of like a guide to the spirits of the dead, although more of a good guide than a sinister one. Yatagaramon's original profile isn't super interesting, just noting that it's this dark-but-good angelic crow that has really, really powerful data-disassembling powers. We'll talk about the other Yatagaramon when we reach Savers, so I'll keep this short. Pretty cool giant crow.

 6/10.
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Valdurmon

• Alternate Names: Varodurumon (EN dub)
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: Holy Bird
• Attribute: Vaccine

Valdurmon is... well, it's not an unplasant design, this giant, six-winged holy bird that shines with a rainbow-like aura, but it honestly feels and looks like a more boring version of Hououmon or Zhuqiaomon, y'know? Like, a six-winged god bird isn't uncool, but it's not that impressive after a while. Valdurmon isn't based on any specific mythology despite the Nordic sounding name, his profile is an utterly generic "hey this Ultimate Digimon is powerful" spiel, and his design doesn't make him any more interesting than, say, Ornismon or whoever. Like, sure, it's glowing with that fiery rainbow power, but take that away and you get a pretty boring six-winged bird. Yatagaramon, even with the glowing stuff gone, still has his pretty badass golden armour pieces. Like, I kind of feel like I'm being a bit unfair to Valdurmon here, but at the same time as much as I sigh in disdain at Savers!Falcomon's Ultimate form being another humanoid, Ravmon at least looks a lot less boring than Valdurmon.

Anyway, Valdurmon here is one of the component pieces of UltimateChaosmon up there, and I guess he contributes a bird claw and a wing? Valdurmon made its first major appearance in Adventure 2020 as the unexpected spokesperson for an ancient group of angel Digimon, and I like that a bird-dragon was chosen as the representative. 

 6/10.

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Falcomon II

• Alternate Names: Falcomon (2006 Anime Version)
• Stage: Child
• Type: Bird
• Attribute: Vaccine

We covered the original Falcomon a while back above, 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.

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Peckmon

• Alternate Names: N/A
• Stage: Adult
• Type: Bird
• Attribute: Vaccine

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.

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Yatagaramon II

• Alternate Names: Crowmon (EN dub), Yatagaramon (2006 Anime Ver)
• Stage: Child
• Type: Bewitching Bird
• Attribute: Vaccine

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.

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Ravmon

• Alternate Names: Ravemon (EN dub)
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: Cyborg
• Attribute: Vaccine

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.

• Alternate Names: Ravmon Burst Mode, Ravemon Burst Mode
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: Cyborg
• Attribute: Vaccine

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 Ravmon: Burst Mode ultimate, which just swaps around blacks, whites and purples. I genuinely don't have much to say about this form.

 5/10.
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Mercurymon

• Alternate Names: Merukimon (EN dub)
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: God Man
• Attribute / Subgroup: Virus / Olympos XII

Mercurymon here is the only member of the Olympos XII to really get any sort of characterization, being a huge character in the Digimon Savers anime. See, Mercurymon in the anime is treated as this sort of tribal leader among the Digimon of the digital world, and is kind of a huge racist towards mankind (not without good reason, too, considering how the human Kurata's been killing Digimon left and right), but at the same time he ended up adopting an orphaned human boy, one of the main characters in Savers. It's interesting to see this little bit of depth to this character that flip-flops between being an antagonist and a protagonist before being made into a martyr after being convinced of the errors of his ways... but was brutally slain by the artificial Digimon led by Kurata, and explicitly had his reincarnated Digi-Egg destroyed so he can never reincarnate. Savers was kind of brutal like that. Anyway, I do have enough respect of Mercurymon as a character to not dismiss him for his design outright.

That said... wow, what a horrible design, huh? The Olympos XII is meant to homage the Greco-Roman gods, and while I realize that they can't just have everyone be posing godly musclemen, Mercury is the god of messengers, as well as thieves, commerce and trickery. So for whatever reason, they decided to portray him as this bizarre Conan the Barbarian knockoff that covers his body with beast pelts and a skinned Garurumon face, and fights with weird bone-daggers, and the profile notes that this guy is a wandering shaman. 

...it's a really weird design to take. There was some theories that the original Mercurymon and Minervamon were designed to embody the qualities of their respective mythological inspiration while looking visually like the opposite. Or that they can embody their great qualities (speed and wisdom respectively) after overcoming their lack of it? It would be an interesting concept, but as Neptunemon shows above, practically the rest of the Olympos XII just play the trope of adapting Greek gods straight. 

And even then...? Even with the cute idea that Mercurymon is a 'Mercury' that doesn't look like the traditional mythological 'Mercury'? I still really don't like his design. 

 3/10. Points given are only for Savers role.

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(Mercurymon is also the basis of headaches for the English dub team. Both the Roman god and the metal are called "mercury" in English, but the Frontier villain themed after the metal is actually called Merukyuremon, after the French pronounciation of the word "mercury", whereas this Olympos XII god-man Mercurymon is called Merukurimon after the English word "mercury". Since Frontier came out years earlier, the English dub team is sort of forced to call this dude "Merukimon" to avoid confusion with Mercuremon (dubbed into Mercurymon). Languages! Names!)

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VictoryGreymon

• Alternate Names: N/A
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: Dragon Man
• Attribute: Vaccine

Jumping around slightly, we're covering some Digimon released in the Twins Virtual Pet, and highlighted as the final forms of the Agumon and Gaomon in Digimon Next. 

...it's just WarGreymon, but with his wings being angled differently, his head-spikes changed, and he's holding a big three-bladed claymore. The lack of Wolverine gauntlets really does make him significantly a lot less cooler. The storyline has the Agumon and Gaomon be special 'Arbitrators' that are selected to be super-special-awesome. Okay. 

And... eh. I'm counting him as a WarGreymon variant, and in that regard I feel that while they did try to change and give him a different silhouette, it goes worse in all aspects. Sorry. 

 0/10.
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Z'dGarurumon

• Alternate Names: ZeedGarurumon
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: Cyborg
• Attribute: Data

ZeedGarurumon, I like a bit better because its differences make it a bit more distinct instead of just weird. The style of the cannons are a bit different, like it's from a different mecha anime style. The addition of teal is... neat. And ZeedGarurumon's got a big Megatron cannon on its back. That's something. It's a nicer looking change than VictoryGreymon above. 

Both their profiles are extremely bland, too, the type that just talks up their power and their digizoids and their ultra destructive weaponry, which is never anywhere as interesting as they think it is. There's an art to describing super-powerful abilities without making them sound samey. 

What's a Z'd? What's a Zeed? I don't know. I'm just happy (and a bit surprised) that these two never got a dedicated Omegamon form.

They didn't, did they? I just double checked. As of 2026, they didn't. 

 3/10.

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Ogudomon

• Alternate Names: N/A
• Stage: Ultimate
• Type: Avatar
• Attribute / Subgroup: Virus / Seven Great Demon Lords

Ogudomon here is... he's interesting! He is introduced as the 'super demon lord' with seven legs, seven tiny eyes around a central maw, and is the "embodiment of the digital world's sins", and acts as some sort of a master for the Seven Great Demon Lords. I do kind of like his wacky design, from the seven-legged spiderlike body, to the weird central starfish-like mouth with a core, to the weird swords embedded in his knees and the weird, alien-like lizard mouth that jut out from the top of his spider-like body... It's an interesting design, for sure. Ogudomon is also noted to have "the power to atone all sins", whatever it means, and that it can basically counterattack anyone who attacks Ogudomon with the slightest trace of sin? Or something? Ogudomon is supposedly inspired by the Gnostic Ogdoad, but it's a tenuous connection at best.

As this weird master of the Seven Demon Lords (or the fused form of them, in some games), Ogudomon tends to be the main antagonist in many random spinoff games, like Digimon Collectors and some arcade games. I personally kind of find this underwhelming in the same way that Apocalymon is kind of underwhelming. A weird, non-humanoid primal evil that is 'beyond' all the members of a pre-existing set of super-evil villains is interesting, but Ogudomon has no real personality or backstory, and a randomly powerful enemy that exists just to be a randomly powerful enemy. I do feel like they really could've done a lot better in giving us Ogudomon's backstory, or to tie it in with the Seven Sins, but eh, at least it's design is weirdly cool. I am not a fan of the handwave-y backstory, but definitely a fan of the design.

 6/10.
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