Digimon Reviews, Episode 49: Algomon, Pulsemon and Friends

So, while a lot of my previous Digimon reviews have been sitting as drafts in this blog for literally years (I think I wrote a bulk of them in 2018-ish when Tri galvanized me to write about Digimon, but everything post-Xros-Wars just ended up draining me of energy) and I genuinely didn't realize that we had a huge resurgence as Digimon Adventure was rebooted in 2020! A lot of the cast are the same, albeit retooled, and a lot of the protagonist Digimon are apparently the same... but of course, with any new series, we get a lot of brand-new Digimon! And a lot of older Digimon that perhaps haven't seen much of a showcase outside of video games and manga apparently show up in this anime, too.

Huge disclaimer, I haven't watched a single episode of Adventure 2020, and I think I'll wait until the series is finished before watching it. No idea if I'll ever cover this the blog either... maybe as a 'seasonal' review or something. And so there's going to be that huge disclaimer that I genuinely don't know much about any of the show itself, and everything I say here is basically going to be taken from the fan-wiki. 

(I'm not sure if I would also review monsters from Appmon -- there's a lot of them, but since I did the D-Reapers, maybe at some point in the future? Like the Hearthstone articles and Pokemon reviews, though, I do want to go back and revise/revisit a lot of my older Digimon writing and edit some of them -- the formatting and scores in particular are something I do want to revamp. We'll see.)

As with most of the newer Digimon reviews, I'll be talking about brand-new designs first, and stick 'new super alternate forms' after a break.

This is the last 'Digimon Reviews' article I'll be doing for a while, and it's been a huge blast! I'm not sure what I'll do next.

Algomon (Baby I)

I'm not quite sure whether the many, many Algomons are actually part of the new anime or not (the Wiki I look at don't really elaborate on the degree of the appearances of the Digimon) but, huh, talk about obscure! Algomon, if you guys don't remember, is the villains of the Digimon Savers movie, and a pretty creepy plant monster Digimon. I actually like Algomon quite a bit, but for the most part post-02 movie antagonists tended to never really be brought up again anywhere. Algomon was kinda cool -- the Perfect form is just kind of just a kimono-wearing dude initially, but later on we get the revelation that Algomon is a plant monster with hundreds of eyeballs at the end of his vines. That's neat. And it's certainly surprising not only to see a revised version of Algomon, but an entire evolutionary line!

All of the Algomon stages are just called 'Algomon', which is, I think, a homage to one of the first unnatural Digimons to debut in fiction, Arkadimon from V-Tamers, another personal favourite who never really gets much love outside of its debut series. The Baby I stage of Algomon is a pretty cute one, still looking pretty much like a 'slime', but also looking pretty uniquely bizarre. It's this green teardrop with a huge eyeball-like design that feels more at home in a Yu-Gi-Oh monster. I do like that these new artwork also show the Digimon from another angle, showing that Algomon Baby I has a cute stretchy little pseudopod-like appendage or something. Apparently, these stages of Algomon converge and blanket places with high-capacity data leaks. Pretty cool, as far as slime Digimon go, and I feel like the Algomons really feel like they would belong among the art-styles of 90's more monstrous Digimon as well as the more refined artwork of modern Digimon. 

 9/10.

Algomon (Baby II)

The Baby II form is 100% a homage to Kuramon, the baby form of good ol' Diaboromon. The general silhouette is pretty similar, but there are a bunch of things that set Algomon's Baby II form apart -- the ears seem to look more like weird snail eyestalks, the eyeball design is a bit more intricate, and it's got two little spoon-like jagged arms poking out of its sides. The artwork also shows that these arms can sprout spiky-fingertip things, and there's a pretty cool starfish mouth underneath his bottom! A pretty cool design, and just like Kuramon before it, this form of Algomon also basically swarm around locations of data leaks. Not a whole ton to say here that I haven't said for the Baby I form, but I most certainly like this one!

 9/10.

Algomon (Child)

This is the Child form of Algomon, and unlike the more insectoid-based Keramon line, Algomon is decidedly plant-based, in a way. And... and it's still got its weird ear/eyestalk masses growing like horns, but the Chlid form of Algomon does look a bit more like a sentient plant monster, doesn't it? Again, it's still got its very prominent Yu-Gi-Oh eye design, but I'm a huge fan of how the central body is this purple sphere with an eye, while the rest of its body are wire-vines. The 'legs' are a mass of vines arranged like a octopus legs, and the 'arms' are just giant balls of vines wrapped together. Again, I don't really have much to say other than to note that this looks just so... different. It looks like a genuine digital monster, and not just an 'obligatory animal we turn into a monster' or just a small anime person in a suit. I definitely really, really like this one. 

 9/10.

Algomon (Adult)

And this is the final new Algomon form, before we get to the two Perfect and Ultimate forms that was introduced back in Savers. And Adult Algomon sort of acts as the connecting bridge. It's... it's most certainly not a perfect progression, but Digimon have always had this huge jump from being somewhat monstrous to more humanoid at either the Perfect or Ultimate stage, so we can let it slide. I do like how the perfect sphere with a single cute eye have basically mutated into multiple smaller, more menacing eyes and zipper-mouths centralized around a 'tongue' made up of red wire-vines. It's still got those snail eyestalk horns arranged into 'ears', it's got two creepy metal cyborg-hands, and there's a veritable mass of wire-vines below it. 

Presumably, the idea is that when Algomon Adult evolves into Algomon Perfect, the purple parts sort of 'bloom' apart like a flower and form into the clothes around the more humanoid form of Algomon. Algomon Perfect does look very humanoid, but all the vines make a return in Algomon's Ultimate form. Honestly, I actually do like this a fair bit. It's very rare that we ever get the Digimon design team going back and designing pre-evolutions for Perfect and Ultimate Digimon, usually they're a bit obsessed at designing more mega-super-duper-ultimate-jogress-xros-up forms of existing designs, so this is certainly very welcome!

 8/10.

Morphomon

Morphomon is a Digimon featured in the final Digimon Adventures movie, Last Evolution: Kizuna, which... could have been a poignant movie but ended up ignoring most of the things in Tri, then spends half its runtime just twiddling its thumbs about a mystery involving two brand-new characters that was stretched too long than it should've been, a random excuse plot with absolutely no connection to the original series, and a rather nonsensical depressing ending that could have been poignant about growing up and separation, but was absolutely not built up well at all in the movie. 

Morphomon is a cute little friend with butterfly wings, though. It's blue, like the Morpho butterfly, and it sure is probably a nod to the fact that the Adventures theme song is, well, 'Butterfly'. It's a little pixie with butterfly wings as sleeves, a full set of wings as ears, and some antennae. It's all right, and I like the subversion of having the wings grow from the ears, but kind of an otherwise m'eh design. 

 3/10.

Eosmon (Adult, Perfect & Ultimate)

Taking over the movie as another series of mechanical, artificial Digimon are the three Eosmon. Who also have the same names in all three forms. Mild spoilers, but they are all attempts to create an artificial version of Morphomon, and they all have wings made up of hexagons as a theme. We've seen these before like the Gizmon in Savers. 

These are all right designs, I suppose -- they seem pretty obviously supposed to be 'artificial Digimon. I honestly don't really care for the adult and ultimate forms. The adult form is cute enough as a 'robotic' Morphomon but otherwise doesn't really look like a nice robot figure without that context. Ultimate Morphomon is the result of a Tamers/Frontier style fusion with her human partner, and she becomes a central humanoid figure with a huge bee abdomen, a skirt of butterfly wings and a lot of rainbow butterfly wings. It's a CGI design in the movie and I really didn't care about it. That leaves us with Eosmon Perfect, who actually pretty cool, and is the one most featured in the movie. I like the weird hexagon-tentacle arms, and the wings look the coolest there. 

 3/10.

Agumon: Yuki no Kizuna / Gabumon: Yujo no Kizuna

Through some... random unexplained screaming nonsense, Agumon and Gabumon get brand-new Ultimate forms after Omegamon gets destroyed, and I... honestly would have preferred a new Omegamon form at this point? For a moment in that movie I thought we were going to do a Tamers/Frontier human/digimon fusion, which wouldn't be breaking new ground for the franchise but would be neat in the Adventures canon. It would be even an interesting twist instead of the soulless gut-punch that the movie's ending gave us. 

But the final form designs are so... so bland. They are both muscle-men with random bits and bobs from Greymon and Garurumon given to them respectively. The official artwork makes them look a bit cooler with effects, but they do look quite bland and boring in the anime, just big muscle-men with a couple of accessories that launch huge explody things. Man, if it isn't clear at this point, I really didn't care about the Kizuna movie, and that was why it took so long to even watch it. 

I like the wings on the Gabumon form, although I also feel like this is something that one of the Gaogamons or Lobomon forms did a lot better. I had given them slightly higher ranks originally before the movie, but seeing how they were executed there, and not really caring for how the movie handled the ending of the original Adventures canon, I can't get excited about these guys. 

 1/10.

Eyesmon

This is an Adult-level? Really? It looks so much more badass than what I would expect from an Adult-level! Maybe it's Full Metal Alchemist that really made me think that giant amorphous jagged swirls of shadow with eyeballs are creepy and scary. Eyesmon is basically like Pride from that series, except arrange din a more... lupine (?) form? I love it. It's so creepy, just a mass of jagged eyes that takes the form of a spectral fox-dog-demon-ghost thing. The designers clearly like Eyesmon, because the bio notes that those eyes basically represent the data it collects, and depending on how much data it stores, it can even match the power of a Perfect-level. Cool!

The picture on the right is "Eyesmon: Scatter Mode", also identified as an Adult-level, and apparently Eyesmon can scatter itself into these smaller, simpler wraiths to run around and collect data before converging back into the main body. It's honestly not an original trope to Eyesmon, but it looks cool, and I'm certainly a fan of this one. 

 8/10.

Nidhoggmon

Eyesmon evolves into Orochimon, apparently? Which doesn't really have much to do aesthetically with Eyesmon, but then it apparently further-evolves into this Ultimate-level Digimon! Nidhoggmon, named after the dragon Nidhoggr of Norse mythology. This is its Ultimate form and... and it's pretty cool! I can kinda see a somewhat Ultraman or Godzilla enemy-esque vibe to this guy, with its creepy, stretched-out head with tiny beady eyes, glowing alien crystal wings, and a body that's just a mass of undulating, tapering... vines? Vessels? Those glowing yellow parts of its serpentine body are, presumably, its equivalent to eyes. 

It's not my favourite design on this page, but it's most certainly a cool looking alien kaiju monster. The idea is that Nidhoggmon is basically just constantly consuming and destroying things, and is slowly overheating and at a danger of blowing itself up. Okay, Burning Godzilla. 

 6/10.

Negamon

Negamon is a strange Baby-II stage that would lead to the final villain of the Digimon Adventure 2020 series, being a tiny sphere made up of these malleable metal layers that can unfurl out to become octopus-like tentacles. In the center of its body is an eyeball that resembles good old Keramon.

Negamon (from 'negative') lives quietly in the jet-black darkness and constantly awaits death, and preys upon Digimon and causes them to 'prey on themselves' with its Downer Eye attack, causing them to lose their emotions, fall into darkness and corrode themselves from the inside out. It... it causes suicidal depression in its foes, because it's made up of negative data? That's a bit super-edgy, but overall I do like the general design of this creepy Baby-II Digimon. 

 7/10.

Abbadomon

The final villain of Digimon Adventures 2020 is the Ultimate-level Abbadomon (evolving from Negamon), taking over the place of its predecessor Apocalymon in the original Digimon Adventures. It follows the Pride from Full Metal Alchemist 'mass of tendril shadows with eyes' vibe. At this point in time I haven't watched Digimon Adventures 2020 and my feelings might change, but it sure is a giant grinning chompy mouth with a mass of tentacles. It seems quite connected to Eyesmon and Nidhoggmon, at least visually. 

The concept is relatively nice, with Abbadomon being a being that 'eats' everything, even good and evil, and is just a force of nature that wants to destroy everything back to blank data. It's like a full hard drive reformat, I guess! 

Just like Apocalymon, Abbadomon has a 'Abaddomon Core' within it, a humanoid that's also covered head to toe in eyes and grinning smiles. I do like the fact that its 'suit collar' and 'head' are unzipped chompy mouths as well, and there's yet another obvious parallel to Omegamon with one arm ending in a lance and another in a cannon. I think it's safe at this point that I've ceased to have anything meaningful to say about these knight-man Ultimate-level Digimon, but I do quite like Abaddomon's design all things considered. 

Again... I haven't watched 2020 so this review may be changed and I might have a better or worse opinion of the final villain depending on how interesting it is. From the artwork and the reference book bio, it's a serviceable 'end of season boss' enemy. 

 6/10.

HeavyLeomon

What is it with making Leomon evolutions into cyborgs? We've got GrappuLeomon, LoaderLeomon and probably a couple others I'm not thinking of? HeavyLeomon is an Ultimate-level and, I guess, the 'natural' evolution of GrappuLeomon? Who I mostly remember from Dawn/Dusk? We already have a bunch of more well-known Ultimate-level Leomon evolutions that are a fair bit more prominent. SaberLeomon, BanchoLeomon, even Marsmon if we're being technical. But okay, sure. This guy does look like he probably belongs in some huge mecha show, like an exaggerated Gridman mecha or something. It sure is a lion-themed robot. I don't have much to say here, I did get excited for Baluchimon and the Sunarizamon/Gogmamon combo filling up evolutionary lines, so someone out there that really likes GrappuLeomon probably appreciates this guy.

 3/10.

Mitamamon

An Ultimatel-level Digimon that's based on the Uka-no-Mitama, a Japanese deity, Mitamamon here looks... it looks like a pretty neat godly-beast Digimon. It's what Tylinmon/Qirinmon would evolve into if they kept the Asian theme instead of randomly becoming Sleipmon, I suppose. It sure does look like a bigger, more fancier looking Kudamon, a long fox spirit that rides on flaming wheels. The bio seems to describe Mitamamon as basically lacking physical form and being essentially a ghostly apparition and symbolism of the four elements? And that it escorts souls and stuff? Okay. It looks neat, at least. 

 5/10.

LovelyAngemon

An Ultimate-mode Angemon? It, uh... it's like a Sailor Moon, I guess? I like that she's apparently a well-known close combat specialist and she's cheerful while she beats her enemies up. She's less of an angelic Digimon and more of a design that befits more of a human character, if we're being honest. And... again, I don't think I minded as much when it was like Frontier where we had humans getting armour and turning into Digimon. But this is apparently an evolution of Angewomon that looks even less like an angel. Eh? The 2020-2021 batch has so many designs that I feel fit the Digimon mould so well compared to the deluge of dragon-men, robot-dragon-men and anime-waifus that having those be the minority is honestly kind of a surprise this time around. 

 2/10.

RareRaremon

Thanks to the commenter Chalicothere who made me aware that I actually missed a bunch of extra Digimon, and one of them is this gloriously disgusting RareRaremon! As I've been seeing all throughout this page, 2020 and 2021 is pretty good at trying to supplement a lot of classic one-off Digimon with new evolutions or pre-evolutions. RareRaremon here is the Perfect evolution of Raremon... and it's pretty interesting that this still looks like an evolution of Raremon despite not really having too much in common. This guy is not even the same colour! RareRaremon's lower body is just a mass of green globs with a bunch of hands, teeth and cyborg eyes poking out of various parts. You go up the body a bit and you get a bunch of blobby giant mouths that also look like they serve as arms of sort? It's like a Gibbering Mouther, one of my favourite D&D monsters!

And then you get the 'main' head, which is, yes, let's get it out of the way -- it does look a bit phallic. The black part is just filled with metal plates, with a big central toothy grin, but also a bunch of other little eyes and mouths dotted all over the metal part. Again, makes sense since the original Raremon always had some cyborg parts on it! I do have to applaud that for a 'mass of many features amalgamated into one' monster, we actually have a 'face' of sorts for the audience to hone into, which is the central big mouth and the eyeball on the lower jaw. I love that there's also a vague Tokusatsu-monster vibe to this thing's silhouette, you could totally see this being played with a suit actor within as RareRaremon goes off to fight Godzilla or Ultraman or a Sentai mecha. 

The lore of RareRaremon is also sufficiently grisly, noting that the body of RareRaremon constantly breaks down and reconstitutes itself, and the eyes and mouths on its body keep emerging and decaying. Such a nasty depiction of the evolution of a monster whose whole concept was being the nasty 'zombie' of decayed, flawed data. As you'd expect, it survives by consuming other Digimon and digesting their data, but it's just a stopgap. The noxious smoke it emits is apparently so foul and terrifying that even Ultimate-level Digimon avoid it. Pretty cool!

 9/10.

Potamon

Not particularly going in any order here, Potamon here is an Adult-level Digimon who is created from the 'data of all kinds of fries', and its existence solely revolves around that. It wants to spread the good news of how delicious potatoes are, and it will attack enemies with its 'Bashed Potato', essentially to force the critics to apologize and accept how tasty food is. Design-wise it's honestly kind of forgettable, the sort of Digimon that would be a vendor NPC in a Digimon World game. Sure, it's got potato hair? But the lore of someone who goes around yelling 'have you heard of our lord and saviour French Fries'? That's kinda cute. Apparently it's rivals with a Digimon I remember from Frontier, Burgamon. Neat!

 4/10.

Hiyarimon

Okay, this one is pretty cute. Hiyarimon ('hiyari' means 'chilly') evolves from YukimiBotamon and it's just a cute little chibi dinosaur made up of snow, but his snout and claws are made out of ice. It's meant to be the canon Baby 2 form of Bulucomon, the ice dinosaur-dragon we reviewed a couple pages ago. And honestly? Hiyarimon is pretty cute! Not a huge fan of the Cubchoo-style snot bubble, though it's kind of a running theme among many Japanese character designs to denote immaturity. 

 5/10.

FrosVelgrmon

It's interesting that this is presented to us as a variant of Velgrmon, who, to those who might need a refresher, was the beast evolution of the warrior of darkness in Frontier. And beyond being a giant bird, there's... really not much in common? FrosVelgrmon is a very fancy Ultimate-level Digimon, though! It's a giant peacock with a pretty fancy tail, two pairs of wings, and a very cool ice mask as its upper face. FrosVelgrmon's lore is not the most creative, admittedly, just being a mystical being that lives in snowy mountains and rescues worthy travelers... though it will also personally execute anyone who's evil. 

Kind of interesting in that, at the time of writing, its evolutions have nothing to do with Velgrmon, and FrosVelgrmon instead evolves from the ice-themed Perfects Crescemon, Daipenmon or Panjyamon. Out of the three, hilariously, Daipenmon is probably the most appropriate (and hilarious), being an ice-themed avian Digimon. 

 8/10.

Frozomon

Wait, this is not a variant of Locomon? It looks just like Locomon! Just themed as an icebreaker train. Do icebreaker trains exist in real life? I know icebreaker ships do, but regardless, it's a pretty cool robot Digimon. Missile pods on its sides, two hands (one of which ending with a red-hot blade), and a bunch of armaments on the front end... No, wait, he's not a train, he's an ice-clearing tank, huh? The smokestack behind threw me off. It basically goes around rescuing people. Not the most memorable thing on this page, but still a very solid design. 

 5/10.

KoDokugumon [Child]

AAAAAAA look at this cute bebe spider! Dokugumon is one of the more forgotten Adult-level Digimon that I've always had a love for (one of my very first Digimon episodes was the Dokugumon episode). Dokugumon has a bunch of little baby helpers, the KoDokugumons, which act as his minions. The original KoDokugumon is basically just Dokugumon stripped of details. And then they made this guy to bridge the 'Baby' and 'Adult' stages. I love him! I love his multiple eyes, I love that the lines in-between the two central eyeballs resemble a cat-smile.  I love the metallic mandible, and, most of all, I love the giant gloves with the cute little skulls on it. 

Honestly, it's just a smaller Dokugumon, but I really like it. I also like that it stands as its own unique design as compared to the original Baby KoDokugumon. I love the little description that this KoDokugumon has to wear poison gloves because it's not strong enough to produce proper venom of its own. A cutie!

 8/10.

Dokimon & Bibimon

I think we're almost done! We just get a last batch of around a dozen Digimon that evolves from these two guys, Dokimon and Bibimon, from the Vital Bracelet V-pet. These two are neat, I suppose, though they kinda feel a bit similar to Filmon's Baby forms. Dokimon apparently vibrates a lot and Bibimon is all about static electricity. Not much to write home about, at this point I really don't have much left to talk about Baby stages. 

 3/10.

Pulsemon

And here's Pulsemon, the Child-level. It's... it's kind of like a electric-themed Veemon, I guess? The colours are nice, the yellows and bright greens and stuff. Not a huge fan of the boots, but he does look like he probably would be a decent 'main character' partner Digimon like Shoutmon or Veemon. Not the biggest fan of him, but he's not terrible? The colours are all right. Pulsemon apparently is born out of data from hospitals and gyms, which is kind of a bizarre combination of themes for an electric-based gremlin. Inoffensive, I think.

 4/10.

Bulkmon & Runnermon

Bulkmon seems to be the default Adult evolution for Pulsemon, because it's basically the same design, but as a scary musclebound lizardman. It's the Greymon to Pulsemon's Agumon, basically. Again, it's a'ight. I don't particularly care too much, but it's kind of interesting because Bulkmon here is basically the evolution of Pulsemon after getting the 'data of a body composition monitor'. It's swole because it got data from gym equipment! It's the 'strength' evolution, apparently. Okay, sure.

An alternate Adult evolution is Runnermon, who's basically a white wolf-tiger creature with Pulsemon's gloves and a helmet. Okay, so these guys are like Armor evolutions, then? Runnermon is sort of like the Raidramon? Runnermon evolves from data from a treadmill, and can run really fast. It's kind of neat. Again, these designs individually don't do much for me, but there's enough of an interesting concept with the next couple of designs that these two get elevated a bit for being part of a set. 

 4/10.

Exermon & Namakemon

Two more possible Adult evolutions for Pulsemon are these guys. Exermon is... it's a yoga ant! It doesn't really look anything like Pulsemon other than sharing its colour scheme and eyes, I guess, but it's a yoga ant man! Okay, sure. Apparently it practices martial arts based on mollusk movement. And he's not floating, he's actually balancing himself on the tip of his stinger. He sure is an ant-man, but... but I find that I really don't care all that much? I'm not sure why. It's more interesting than the previous two, but even in Digimon I've seen much more interesting bug monsters.

Namakemon, on the other hand, is... interesting? It's the Numemon/Sukamon equivalent of this evolution line, the puppet Digimon that is a useless Adult-level that is lazy, useless in battle and throws poop around. Okay, it's a weird sloth puppet? I do like the claws, and how that one lower leg has the claw pierce out of a sock, as if Namakemon so doesn't give a shit about exercise like the rest of its evolutionary line. He's pretty charming, though I'm not sure why a sloth has Joker hairstyle. Okay, sure. 

 5/10.

Boutmon & Tempomon

Pulsemon has four possible Adults, and those Adults have six possible Perfects they can turn into. And... if you can't tell, I don't particularly care for these two. Boutmon is a martial artist, and seems to be the 'basic' evolution. He sure is a karate robot.

Tempomon is a lot cooler by virtue of having a Penmon hoodie, and that we only see two glowing eyes. And he's doing a cool pose. He's enhanced by dance music data and dance-fights. Okay, sure, again, there's a whole slew of sports themes for the Pulseman line. 

 3/10.

Pistmon & Divemon

At least not all of them are boring! Pistmon is about cycling, and what a hilarious design he is! I love how the upper humanoid body (which looks like some sort of Evangelion, or that might just be me misremembering a meme) just tapers off into some sort of mermaid-centaur thing connected to the bicycle. And the bicycle wheels are just powered with magnets or electricity or something. It's also identified explicitly as a plant. Okay, I guess the lower 'mermaid' body is like a flower? And the wheels are thorns? Very interesting design. Still kind of bizarre, but in a good way. 

Divemon is just a hammerhead shark fish-person. Which... which is interesting enough for me, honestly. It's just the dynamic pose and me just liking sharks. Not much to say, it sure is a shark-man who swims, and he looks pretty friendly. 

 6/10.

Shootmon & Climbmon

Again, I do appreciate that at least the Perfect forms are allowed to look a bit more creative. Pistmon and Divemon are all right, but these two are probably my favourites out of the rather long Pulsemon line. Which is to say... they're never going to be my favourite Digimon, but they're all right! Shootmon brings strong Mamemon vibes to the whole thing, with that grin, those springy legs and apparently it just carries around a big fuck-off cannon that shoots all sorts of sports balls at the enemy. You know what? That's kinda funny. I like it. Not sure why these guys are all Perfect-form, but okay.

It's not quite as one-to-one, but Climbmon shares Exermon's insectoid theme. He's a much cooler insect robot monster, with two of his arms ending in giant scythes, a second pair holding oversized kunai, and... and he's got a fun bright pink like suspenders or soemthing. All the others are based on sports which makes sense for Pulsemon being born out of gym data. I guess the gym also gives ninja training, because Climbmon, despite his name, looks more like a ninja insect parody than rock-climbing. These are a'ight. 

 7/10.

Kazuchimon & Shivamon

We've got four Ultimates out of six Perfects. Kaduchimon is, again, feels like the most basic of the four, being essentially Pulsemon but bigger, with armour and lightning blades. It sure is a giant zappy Gundam, and the bio is a pretty boring one talking about how it's a war god. Not my kinda thing. Shivamon is another Ultimate, and I think the one associated with the 'insect' evolutions (Exermon and Climbmon), but it's basically just a robot person doing yoga on top of a lotus. It sure is a 'Shiva' Digimon. I don't particularly care too much for it. They're drawn well, I guess. 

 2/10.

Achilesmon & Shroudmon

Yeah, I really don't care for any of these guys. Achillesmon at least follows through with the sports theme, though it's basically just a robotic version of a Greek athlete, with particularly exaggerated Hermes boot-wings. I honestly can't say anything here other than 'the art's nice'. 

And our final Ultimamte is Shroudmon, who's... I guess he's the epitome of... evil sports? Or some shit? Bloodlust and fighting, I guess. It's a pretty all right demon design, I like that the central spine is just a massive gout of fire, and the artwork for his gauntlets with the chains are cool. It's the coolest out of the four Pulsemon ultimates by default, I guess. Again, I honestly find it hard to really say anything about these Ultimate-levels. It's cool that they're trying something new, though, and I really didn't mean to sound so down and jerky about them. 

 3/10.

Omedamon

Honestly, as far as the obligatory Omegamon variant, this one isn't bad? I mean, it's still basically a white-coloured Ultraman knight person with a giant cannon on one hand and a giant sword on the other. Oh, they swapped colours and elements, and there's like, uh... chibi Megaman-looking heads on the shoulders? The appearance is apparently because this is a crossover design with Medabots, and is a combination of two characters from that franchise who fuse Omegamon-style. It's probably pretty cool to someone out there who likes both franchises. I am mostly indifferent, it's a pretty all right robot-warrior design, but we've got lots of those in Digimon. 

 5/10.

DarkMaildramon

??? Okay? Maildramon gets a black repaint? We haven't gotten a black repaint in a while. I do like that they gave DarkMaildramon some tattered wings, at least. It's a pretty cool-looking dark knight dinosaur dragon monster, I guess. The bio is basically a reverse-unicorn situation, where DarkMaildramon will only allow evil Knightmon to ride them. So... SkullKnightmon? 

 3/10.

MetalGreymon: Alterous Mode

I mean, didn't we already have a MetalGreymon with a big fuck-off railgun in RizeGreymon? This is just regular MetalGreymon, and I've always liked MetalGreymon's proportions. This is just MetalGreymon with a big 'Alterous' cannon. Sure, it looks cool I guess.

 3/10.

WereGarurumon: Sagittarius Mode

WereGarurumon looks a bit more different, but it's basically just regular WereGarurumon with a jetpack. It's a neat-looking Gundam jetpack that has cool glowing blue wings and shoots lasers. I guess this actually works as a middle ground that explains why WereGarurumon goes from 'badass punk werewolf' to a robotic cyborg wolf? He finds a jetpack at some point? Sure. I guess it's just a way for them to toss in new forms... but it's just WereGarurumon with an accessory. 

 3/10.

Explicitly excluded are several Digimon -- Aequcedramon, Pyontomon, Madomon, Rurimon and Ganvivormon -- that were designed as a create-your-own Digimon competition who received 'official' art, but otherwise feel irrelevant unless they do show up in the anime at some point.