Digimon Reviews, Episode 47: Meicoomon and Friends

This batch of Digimon actually do have something associated with them in the form of a series of movies. While it isn't quite the sequel everyone hoped it would, it's still worth checking out for any fan of the original two series. It was Tri that ended up revitalizing my love for the franchise (as... controversial as the movies themselves ended up becoming), and while these reviews have really hammered home how much my tastes hadn't gone on with the times, it's still fun to do these.

Also included here is part of the Digimon released in the 2017-2018 era, where a bunch of them were released as part of a new set of Digital Pets. 

I do want to finish with the Digimon released up to 2020 at the very least, before going back and fixing the formatting problems with a lot of the earlier Digimon articles and make them a lot less... grumpy, I guess? My opinion still mostly stand for a lot of the Digimon, and I don't think my tastes have changed all that much, but re-reading what I wrote for the digital TCG Digimon article I published last month (most of which was written in 2019) I could really stand to be a lot less rude even when I don't like something.  

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Meicoomon's pre-Adult forms:

Going pretty quickly through things... these two didn't even get named. They're pretty lazy orange tiger repaints of Tailmon's Baby II and Child forms, and... and while still pleasant-looking, aren't particularly creative. The Baby with her tiger tail is pretty neat looking, but they're still repaints that apparently don't even rate their name. Hell, apparently some video-games forego these two entirely and just slap Meicoomon as Plotmon's alternate evolution. Lazy, but appropriate.

 4/10.

Meicoomon

Re-introducing a character to a decades-old franchise and trying to make it feel like part of a pre-existing set is... it's a bit hard, actually, especially since the original partner Digimon already had a cat among them in Tailmon. Meicoomon does tend to feel like it does borrow its design aesthetic from the later seasons' aesthetic design, with a bunch of accessories that look just sort of impractical, and having a slightly 'off' set of proportions when placed next to the chunkier Gabumon and Agumon, but... but I do think that she looks pretty decent, honestly, even if I'm never a particularly large cat person. Meicoomon, like Tailmon, is an Adult-level instead of a Child-level, and... and she's a cute cat. Without spoiling too much about Tri, Meicoomon manages to simultaneously look innocent and cute while also hiding an uncontrollable power, which is honestly pretty accurate to any given cat out there. Not the biggest fan of those weird-ass scarf-things that pop out of the back of Meicoomon's neck.

I don't really have a whole ton to say about Meicoomon. I enjoyed her movies, but ultimately as a design she just falls straight under 'm'eh' for me. A solid design still fits somewhere between 5-6 in my scale, though.

 6/10.

Meicrackmon (and Vicious Mode)

The Perfect evolution of Meicoomon, there are actually two variants of this Digimon's evolution line, because they just can't stand to embrace the "token evil teammate" trope, and released the totally pure-and-good-and-angelic regular forms in the tie-in games to the movies. Regular Meicrackmon has a cool scorpion tail, but ultimately just looks like someone's perverted Rule 34 version of Meicoomon. Vicious Mode Meicrackmon, though, looks... slightly better, with a tail that's burning with black flame, and those weird scarf-things looking far more practical as something akin to combat tentacles. Vicious Mode Meicrackmon is also the one that had a pretty memorable fighting scene in the movies, which is neat. Her personality in the official bios is basically that she behaves like a cat, and has powerful 'cursed claws' that extend from her arm.

Anyway, I've never really been a huge fan of more humanoid furry people, especially one that's as derivative of its previous form and lacking of any real identity. It's clearly meant to appeal to a certain demographic, and I see a lot of people who really do like Meicrackmon. It's cool, but that's not my thing. Needless to say, though, still a lot more pleasant and actually feels like a Digimon compared to most of the things from the previous page. 

 5/10.

Rasielmon

The supposedly 'pure' evolution to the pure Meicrackmon, Rasielmon is... she's a pretty generic cat humanoid. I do love the gigantic claws on her arms, and the hilariously fun winter cloak she has going on. She's not as bad a design as some of the Olympos nonsense, and feel more in line with the humanoid Digimon I don't dislike. She's also apparently an angel, and the angelic wing details are sort of lost in the clutter of her design. I really don't have much to say about Rasielmon. She's a far, far more boring version of the next Digimon, the 'corrupted' version we actually see in the movie. Honestly, I think they designed Raguelmon first, and went "oh crap, people will be demanding to know what Meicoomon's pure evolutions are!" and sort of worked backwards from there. Which, okay, sure,  this does look like a 'good' version of Meicrackmon, but also looks kind of a bit more cluttered.

 3/10.

Raguelmon

Raguelmon is the one we saw in the Tri movies (and looked pretty badass there) and for a fallen angel cat-woman lady, Raguelmon actually looks pretty badass. Those purple Wolverine claws hovering above her arm gauntlets, those awesome gray angel wings, the tail tapering off into purple flames... Honestly, I really have nothing against Rasielmon and regular Meicrackmon, but they are just so, so plain and boring when compared to Raguelmon here. She's not my favourite design, but I definitely do like what they're going for. Raguelmon's role in the movies are honestly limited to a brief scene where she evolves into this form, clearly out of control, before fusing with another 'fallen angel' Digimon to form something far, far cooler than silly old Rasielmon.

Raguelmon's Bandai profile is even pretty awesome, giving a neat little backstory about how she is the assigned angel Digimon that mercy-kills any angel Digimon that's about to fall, and as a result is hated by all other angels. This rejection caused Raguelmon to eventually become the nihilistic monster that everyone thought she would be, ending up as a merciless, indiscriminate destroyer. Pretty cool!

 7/10.

Ophanimon: Falldown Mode

Let's briefly talk about this form! So good old Tailmon ends up going through a 'dark evolution' when her partner Hikari was filled with negative emotions after her brother apparently died (he didn't), causing, for the first time, a non-main-character partner Digimon to undergo a dark evolution. And I absolutely love that Tailmon ends up being able to get both Holydramon and Ophanimon as alternate final forms in canon, considering how much the fandom tended to argue between whether Holydramon (who is introduced earlier and the original intention of the line) or Ophanimon (introduced waaaay later but is a humanoid angel, so far more popular due to some arbitrary desire by the fandom to force Patamon and Tailmon's evolutions to both become angels) should be the final form. Turns out that the show-makers actually chose Holydramon as the proper, pure, default final form, as they should, while Ophanimon gets a sick, new 'fallen angel' evil form to serve as Tailmon's dark evolution. Which is a neat compromise, and the fact that Ophanimon gets to be the imperfect evolution is honestly pretty damn hilarious. 

And honestly? It's a far, far superior design to Ophanimon, a design I always criticized for being pretty fucking boring compared to Magnadramon. Ophanimon Falldown Mode is a simple alteration of several things -- the wings, the face, and changing the armour to look less like a slutty medieval cosplay and more like the armour of someone who can kick your ass... that mass of flames and green... hair scythe floating behind Ophanimon Falldown Mode is a bit too much, perhaps. It's her Flame Hell-Scythe, but it doesn't really look like it. Definitely do like how she ends up looking eventually. I had initially brushed this aside as "eh, evil Ophanimon, neat, whatever", but I remembered actually being "huh, this is preeeetty damn cool" while watching it on screen. Falldown Mode's bio notes that this is an Ophanimon consumed by madness after suppressing her own emotions, kids, keeping all your emotions bottled up is not healthy!

I don't always like angel Digimon, and that's one of the most overdone tropes in the franchise, but the Tri movies doesn't just give me one, but TWO badass evil angel Digimon. And y'know what? 2018 made me really like Ophanimon, which isn't something I thought I'd be saying. 

 7/10.

Ordinemon

So what do you get when you fuse together two fallen angels, Ophanimon Falldown Mode and Raguelmon? This. This monstrosity is what you get, and the fusion of the two into Ordinemon is a genuinely horrifying moment in Tri. Say what you want about the eventual quality of the movie series as a whole, some of the individual scenes are genuinely amazing. Ordinemon isn't just another evil angel either, instead being designed to look pretty damn mosntrous. The main appeal of this is obviously the two gigantic wing-pillars that look more like the massive, bushy legs of a strange creature, while the supposed main body hangs seemingly limply from where the wings attach to her. And said main body is pretty fucked up too, with limbs tapering off into DNA-like braids, a face that looks like it belongs in a horror movie, eyes replaced by a crap-ton of random tendrils, and a naked body that's clearly meant to be more disturbing than titillating. It definitely has some D-Reaper vibes, albeit less cartoonish and more horrifying, and I genuinely do like how they manage to turn out a pretty cool angelic abomination creature for the final boss of Tri, something that's certainly far more imposing than just another pretty strongkt humanoid.

Sure, the way Ordinemon was eventually brought down is... is sort of debatable on whether it's narratively good, but we're here to discuss the actual designs, not the plot, yeah? Ordinemon's profile notes that this combination of fucked-up emotions causes her massive wings to continue spreading miasma that will consume the world and return everything into nothingness so it can restart over. We don't actually get a whole ton of her abilities in the movies themselves beyond generic kaiju-smashy-smash thing, but what an interesting looking spooky creature!

 9/10 for spooks.

Hackmon

One of the main recurring characters (well, less recurring character and more "deliverer of mysterious messages") is Hackmon here, who would later be revealed to be the Child form of one of the Royal Knights, who, if you forgot, are the thirteen or so knights that zealously guard the peace of the digital world and are basically like Templar Knights or something. Hackmon is... he's cool, I guess? The cape is a bit too much and I'd probably like him better without it, but the design of this ambiguous creature that's equal parts wolf, dinosaur and armour actually makes Hackmon look pretty unique, like he truly is some sort of bizarre digital monster instead of a simple animal association. His Bandai bio is pretty drab and just mentions his training and none-too subtly notes that it's going to become a Royal Knight, but eh, I can appreciate the design.

 6/10.

BaoHackmon & SaviorHackmon

Not a big fan of these two forms, and I actually found out that I really don't have much to say about them individually. The Adult form of Hackmon, BaoHackmon, is... is basically Hackmon, but angrier, scarier and with a more bipedal-monster look. SaviorHackmon, the Perfect form, is the same, but more knightly and humanoid instead of draconic. I'm not sure how I feel about Digimon whose evolutionary changes are sort of telegraphed and look more like a gradual change. On one hand, I do like that it actually makes the change look more gradual and more like real evolution... on the other hand, just making it "bigger and another step to Jesmon" is a lot different than, say, changing Greymon into MetalGreymon or changing Terriermon into Gargomon. BaoHackmon is all right, I guess, but it and SaviorHackmon just fall into a soup of "yeah, these are intermediary forms we didn't realyl put too much thought into designing". They also clearly didn't put too much thought into his bio, just re-stating Hackmon's mission statement and all sorts of random over-powered powers it can do. Like, I legitimately can't find anything to talk about these two. They sure are cool sword knight dragons, but they really feel like we're just putting some obligatory steps between Hackmon and Jesmon. 

 4/10.

Jesmon (and Jesmon-X)

And here's the final Ultimate form, Jesmon. You'll probably want to take a look at his Toei movie model to really understand what they're going for. It's a cluttered mess, but it's a design that works a bit better in motion, with a anime knight with swords for arms and legs, and a tail with a blade attached to it. Oh, and it summons those orange... little friends or whatever those are, and command them to do battle. Jesmon does always feel a bit too cluttered for his own good, but at least it has something relatively unique going on for it. Its profile is a huge mass of "look at this overpowered, godlike being" nonsense that make me roll my eyes, but as a design... it's all right. Our of the Royal Knights that actually show up in the Tri movies (Jesmon, Alphamon, Omegamon) he's easily my least favourite, but he's a somewhat solid design, I suppose.

On the rightmost picture is Jesmon's X-Antibody form, released around this time as well.. I'm sure someone likes this out there, but it just looks so like it's basically the same thing. I do like that Jesmon's little buddies have transformed into creepy looking teeth monsters, though. That's my favourite part of this alternate design.

 5/10.

Omegamon: Merciful Mode

At some point I just wished they would give poor Omegamon a rest, although this particular variation is... are at least somewhat better than just a straight-up repaint. Omegamon: Merciful Mode is the all-white repaint, and the 'final form' of Omegamon that he achieves in Tri, merging with the powers of the other Ultimate forms of the partner Digimon in order to have enough power to mercy-kill the out-of-control Ordinemon. S'cool for that role, although the bent wings and white body just sort of made me shrug in the same way that Imperialdramon Paladin Mode made me shrug. 

 3/10.

Mastemon

I mostly remember this to be the speculated Ultimate form of Meicoomon, because she showed up in one of the anniversary Digivices to tie in with the Tri movies, but turns out we got the pretty fantastic Ordinemon! Mastemon is, interestingly enough, the Jogress fusion version of Angewomon and LadyDevimon, forming a pretty neat half-angelic, half-demonic Ultimate form, and basically becomes like a leader that forces peace between the angel and fallen angel tribes. It's not my favourite design and we kind of already seen this sort of aesthetic with Lucemon before, but it's... it's okay. As far as humanoid Digimon go, we've seen much worse.

 4/10.

Rafflesimon

We surprisingly got an alternate Ultimate-level option for Palmon (and by extension, most plant Digimon). Were the Bandai designers just not comfortable that Palmon and Lalamon had the same Ultimate-level final evolution? Rosemon's a neat design, but Rafflesimon is also all right, basically being similar to Rosemon if she was designed after a ball dancer as opposed to a skin-tight dominatrix. Rafflesimon's all right, I guess. I don't really like her at all, even if I do enjoy the fact that she's a variant of Rosemon. The dress has some funky psychedelic patterns going on, although I'm definitely disappointed that other than the colours and maybe the spikes, we don't actually get anything resembling the real-life rafflesia flower. I do like the little detail that she enraptures people with sight, while driving them away with stench. And despite being an Ultimate-level, apparently it has a short lifespan? It's... it's all right. At this point I'm honestly just indifferent to yet another "just a lady". Rafflesimon has a hell of a nice dress, though.  

 4/10.

Gankoomon

The final member of the Royal Knights to be revealed, and he is easily the most freaking boring one. Gankoomon here fills a slot I didn't even realize was empty and waiting to be filled among the Royal Knights, and.... He's just an anime dude in some fancy armour, and... I don't know. He's got that weird JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Stand coming off of him, but both the Stand and Gankoomon himself just looks so... boring? He looks like a rejected villain-of-the-week from Yu-Gi-Oh, let's put it that way. I realize I haven't been the biggest fan of the Royal Knights, but I've always found them to be pretty cool Not Gankoomon, though. Is that meant to be the point? Everyone else is a cool spiky armoured anime knight, and Gankoomon is just some dude with a JJBA Stand? His official profile is just straight-up a headache to read, and he's basically just Hackmon's mentor. I appreciate the JJBA-esque aesthetic, but not enough to really care for this one.

 1/10.

Gundramon

Speaking of Yu-Gi-Oh... Holy shit, it's Barrel Dragon from Yu-Gi-Oh! But with like, seventeen more revolvers and handguns all over him. Ultimate-level monster Gundramon isn't the first mechanical dinosaur/dragon dude we've seen in Digimon by a long shot, but just how insanely ridiculous this thing is, with guns as wings, guns as hands, guns as shoulder-weapons, guns as tails, Gundramon is such a stupidly over-the-top design that I actually do like it. Apparently Gundramon is the third member of the Three Musketeers alongside Magnakidmon and BeelStarmon, and I find it absolutely hilarious that the two cowboy-themed humanoid Digimon's partner is this thing that makes a Yu-Gi-Oh monster look tame in comparison. Also, it's buddies with Mugendramon, and all of its attacks are German. 

 8/10.

RustTyrannomon

Speaking of robot dinosaur-dragons... I do like that MetalTyrannomon finally gets a proper final form instead of just piggybacking as Mugendramon all the time, but RustTyrannomon is... it's a bit too cluttered? I don't dislike it, and maybe it's the art style's fault more than the actual design, but it did take me a while to really realize the pose they're going for. RustTyrannomon is interesting, though, and despite being rusted, it apparently can also spread this rust to other Digimon around him. Not my favourite design, but... but it's neat? A robot dinosaur's always going to be neat, though, and RustTyrannomon just doesn't quite measure up compared to all the other robot T-rexes in Digimon. Still not bad, though.

  6/10.

Aegisdramon

Oh, hey, speaking of mechanical dragons, we have another one in Aegisdramon. He's gold, and he's got gun-arms, and he's got wings, and he's got both a huge scuba tank and a boat on its top! This is honestly a design trying to do waaaay too much. Either one of these things or maybe a couple of them would've made Aegisdramon be a bit more memorable. A robot dragon with gun arms and a ship on his back? Neat! A robot dragon with gun arms and a scuba tank? Nice! Scuba ship dragon? Okay, it's Hangyomon's cyborg big brother! Instead, though, Aegisdramon just feels like a messy clusterfuck. I do like the detail that it's apparently the fusion of a Plesiomon and a Seadramon-species, but if I wanted a complex robot Seadramon that still looks coherent, I'd go for Gigaseadramon from the X-Antibody series. This one's just kind of messy.

 3/10.

Vorvomon & Lavorvomon

Vorvomon here is a Child-level and done as a tie-in to a new Digivice. There are two or three entire lines, but the other two fit together well as a set, so we'll cover them in the next article. It's a cute enough baby Deathwing, I suppose, a little dragon wyvern chick with body entirely made out of black ore, and apparently it can flap up for a couple of seconds, but gets tired easily. I really don't have a whole ton to say here, but I do acknowledge that the Vorvomon evolutionary line is probably the favourite thing of these post-Tri Digimon. Granted, a good chunk of what makes them feel special is that they're doing a pretty interesting but simple theme with coal? Eh. It's all right, I guess. I like him.

Lavorvomon is... it's Vorvomon, but bigger. A bunch of those cool "claws made of yellow molten slag" thing going on, and some fun details with little mini-volcanoes on his back. It's the Adult stage, and I do get the feeling that instead of just a small dragon with a furnace in his body, when it actually became a fully-fledged dragon, Lavorvomon is straight-up just made of magma inside. I do like the detail that apparently because it's so heavy (being a magma creature and all) it just crawls around like an angry flightless bat, because it's a poor flier. The art style does make it feel like it is a generic dragon enemy from [Insert Generic Japanese Mobile Game], but that might just be me nitpicking. Lavorvomon is a pretty cool volcano-inspired dragon. It doesn't quite feel as interestingly wacky and has that grungy Digimon feel as something like Shellmon or Kuwagamon or Megadramon or anything, but it's still a pretty neat dragon. 

 7/10.

Lavogaritamon & Volcanicdramon

Holy shit, that name, I had so many typos here. Lavogaritamon is... it's basically what you expect from a Perfect level of this line? It kind of interesting that after the rather wild jump in a lot of the more traditional Digimon lines, the Vorvomon line actually progresses from just being a small lava dragon to a big lava dragon. What is this logical progression, Pokemon? Bah! All jokes aside, It's still a cool-looking dragon, and those are cool, but at this point it's starting to just feel same, just bigger. I do miss the days when a Digimon evolution line involves a little smiling seed creature transforms into a flower-goblin with vine-fingers transforms into a boxing cactus transforms into a plant fairy. All of Vorvomon's forms honestly look pretty cool, like, very very cool, but they also don't leave much for me to talk about.

The final Ultimate form of the line, Volcanicdramon is what you expect from a giant, volcanic slag-themed wyvern. Again, it's pretty much the previous forms, but bigger. Like, you can't go wrong with a giant black dragon with molten/burning wings, and... you don't go wrong with Volcanicdramon and his pre-evos. You also don't really get much out of them. Fire dragons in general are always just sort of cool regardless of how you do it up, so this isn't particularly super creative to me? I like him slightly less than his previous forms, but that's not a knock on him. 

 6/10.

Sirenmon

A bunch of randoms introduced here and there now around the time of Tri's release. Perfect-level Sirenmon is based on the mythological siren, and I do like how it merges the 'bird' and 'fish' parts of the different versions of the legend. It's a weird little bird thing with huge light-blue wings and little bird feet, wearing a bunch of musician apparel. Not my favourite design, and honestly it's a design that I'm completely indifferent about. It is admittedly refreshing to see something that's not a robot god or an angel, though.

  4/10.

Hudiemon

Oh, hey, look, a cosplayer. Hudiemon borrows her name from hu die, the Chinese word for 'butterfly', and admittedly I don't think we ever had a butterfly Digimon before, but this is honestly a pretty boring fairy. She looks like a Fairymon variant, I guess? The only remotely interesting thing I can say about this one is that she's an evolution from good old Wormmon, which is a totally random Child-stage to assign Hudiemon to... It's like, I'm not sure, she looks more like an extra from a tokusatsu show than an actual Digimon. She's not an unpleasant design, but I don't really care for her. She's got cool butterfly goggles, though.

 2/10.

Guardromon (Gold)

Just out of pedantry's sake, we're including him! We have a Guardromon variant, and he's gold! Because apparently we need more extra machine Digimon. Make some new ones, lazy game designers! As much as I do like good old Guardromon getting some love, I kinda wished this was like a proper subspecies like GoldGuardromon or GildedGuardromon with its unique lore, instead of just a Guardromon that just happens to have a different colour.

 4/10.