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otakween · 3 months

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Digimon Tamers: Brave Tamer - Final Thoughts

Phew! If you're wondering why I've been quiet for a bit, it's because this game took me 3 weeks to beat. It was kind of grueling at times. It definitely assumes that you played the previous 3 (or 4 if Anode and Cathode count for 2) games and does NOT baby you at the start. It definitely wasn't my favorite game in the series, but the fact that it did away with the terrible old Jogress system earned it a lot of points in my book. There are still some Wonderswan games to play, but I think that's really it for Ryo games! Thank goodness :)

Notes:

Major downgrade from D1 Tamers visually! D1 was so colorful and exploring the world was actually interesting. Brave Tamer follows the Digimon World 2 strat of making every single dungeon pretty much identical and the hub world is bland as heck as well. You don't even need to travel to get to the dungeons you just walk up to the same hole every time. Lame.

Thank God this game lets digimon level up and evolve normally. It basically follows the Pokemon style of evolution. In previous games there were bullshit level caps unless you jogressed a zillion times. This game still has that dumb mechanic where your digimon devolves into a baby. I get that that happens in the show, but it felt pretty silly in the game. They get back to normal pretty quickly after a few battles.

Digimon recruitment is limited to borrowing digimon from digidestined from the various anime series. What an awkward concept. Ryo comes out of nowhere to save the day and then each partner digimon is like "See ya partner, I'm ditching you for Ryo!" I'm just imagining the characters that are left partner-less facing certain doom after Ryo leaves lol. Maybe it's one of those situations where they're only gone for a few minutes due to dimension hopping.

The card slash system (based on the Tamers universe of course) was interesting, but kind of annoying to figure out. After I got a handful of strong cards I couldn't be arsed to keep trying new jogress combos.

Speaking of taking the lazy route, I didn't use the majority of the digimon I recruited once LOL. It's more efficient to just stick with the same digimon for the whole game unless you want to spend a lot of time grinding, so that's what I did. I ended up with only mega-level digimon at the end which is frustrating because MegaloGrowmon and Taomon were at level 30! (They upgrade to mega at 31).

The bosses were strangely easy in this game (except for one that took me like 5 tries). What made it hard were the frickin' labyrinthine dungeons (the last one is TIMED! Evil). I have a terrible sense of direction IRL and in video games so the dungeons in this game were torture for me. You have to traverse up to 5 floors and sometimes there are so many dead ends and roadblocks that it takes what feels like an eternity. Also, there are random battles every 2 seconds that increase the suffering. In the later game I planned my route ahead of time by figuring out where the boss was on YouTube and mapping backwards from there. Here's a screenshot of me and my map in MS Paint:

(By the way, I always play Wonderswan games in windowed mode or else they look wonky. This time, that really came in handy).

I had to use multiple guides to figure out some of this game because the most popular walkthrough wasn't very good. It barely gives you any instructions on getting through dungeons, which was what I really needed.

Most scandalous part of this game was when Millenniummon called Ryo his lover (koibito)? Whaaaaa...?

I didn't realize that this game is a prequel to Tamers so I kinda did things out of order, whoops! I didn't realize that Cyberdramon was supposed to be the outcome of a Monodramon/Millenniummon jogress. Makes me want to rewatch some bits of the anime...

There was so much dramatic build up for the final battle and then it was so easy? I didn't even need to use the 10 low-level healing items I stocked up on. Oh well, guess I was well prepared.

Of course there's a post-game where you can scan all the digimon you missed, but that just seems silly. They're not partners in this game, they're cards. If I can't a raise a digimon I don't really see the appeal in collecting them all. (I mean I guess I wouldn't see the appeal in raising them all either, but the cards seem like even more of a waste of time).

The Wonderswan games have always been my fave digimon games but this one felt simultaneously half-assed and overly complicated. I'd give it like a 5 or 6 out of 10. Let's call it a 5.5.

#Digimon Tamers: Brave Tamer #wonderswan #oswan #digimon #Ryo Akiyama #Digimon Tamers

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405mon · 1 year

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Card Slash, Ryo! (Digimon Tamers) Back with another Digimon fanart. This time it's Ryo Akiyama, with a slightly updated outfit from the Digital World! As usual, done in Clip Studio.

#digimon #digimon tamers #wonderswan #ryo #ryo akiyama #fanart #405mon

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threadmonster · 1 year

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I could make a whole presentation on why Digimon Tri is just a big retcon official fanfiction. Shout out to whoever put in the egg timer joke tho.

#{the digimon tag}#digimon #digimon tri #i watched this as it aired so i couldn't follow it at all #so now i'm watching the dub and frankly it's weird for several reasons #i think the worst thing they did was do the reboot and wipe the digimon's memories #when rewind to the very first episode when they were expecting the Digidestined #and treating it like 02 didn't happen but then be like ken? yeah we know ken #02 deserves more than it got #and i'm mad that the mysterious kid in the upcoming movie isn't Ryo #i forget what the old game is called but i think it's for the wonderswan #my friend read a whole account of the game when we were younger #which he does appear a could of times in the Adventure series so come on guys #i haven't watched tue new adventure series yet so no one say anything but one of the things i care most about #is if it could lead to a 02 reboot as well but i doubt it #i wanna relive getting my friend into digimon :'l it was a really good time

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izzyizumi · 2 years

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Some Digimon 'Fan' @ Me: So you like DIGIMON???? Me: YES, and--- That Same 'Fan': But WHAT (specific) {series} / {game} / {piece of media} / {continuing media} --- Me: ... Yes

#digimon adventures #digimon frontier #digimon xros wars #digimon vpets #wonderswan ryo #izzyizumi posts #izzyizumi chat posts #ghostgame #(As usual I cannot add blogrules to chat posts but I Do Have Them)#(Please regard them if you choose to interact on this)#(I Am Making This Post Abt Myself but I Do Have My Favs)#(I recognize not everyone shares the same favs)#(but it'd be cool if people could like ... stop doing this)#(In General You Know)#(Those Types ' so you like DIGIMON ???? ' ' WHAT series THOUGH ')#(Me ' Theyre in my descrip--- ')#(Them ' I cant read suddenly ')#(Like in general can people Stop doing this Yes Pls OK Thanks!!!)#adv 02

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skydigiblogs · 19 days

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honestly thought i would have a lot more to say about adventure 02 but like

i just finished episode 50 and the jist of my thoughts really are "yeah this is better than i remembered it being"

overall, an extremely ambitious follow up to digimon adventure, balancing a lot of plot points and an attempt at having a more cohesive storyline than "bad guy of the arc but suddenly it's apocalymon." in 02, most of the bad guys lead from one to another, in a way that seems much more intentionally thought-out than everything up until the dark master's arc in 01. even the one-off antagonists (dark ocean and demon's crew) played into the larger narrative, and weren't necessarily treated as one-offs so much as chances to expand the scope of the lore and use it to the narrative's benefit.

(although i do think it's a bit sad we never saw follow up on demon going "oh, you all are going to regret sending me to dagomon's ocean SOOOOO much")

also a lot of lore. so much lore. 01 introduced the fact that homeostasis has a bunch of agents that look like gennai, but a2 kept suggesting they're all copies (put a pin in that for my tri rewatch, much as i am loathe to rewatch that one). there wasn't any elaboration, but it is an interesting idea, and unfortunately i understand why it was kind of hastily noted and dismissed (the world tour arc had a lot to get to).

also the dimensional makeup of the digimon franchise got a lot more fascinating in 02. in 01 gennai mentioned that the gate could lead to all kinds of different places, but 02 actually takes that a step further in the lore, showing us the dark ocean and the dimension of dreams (even mentioning that the latter is pulled from by the digital world).

but it does maintain some of the problems i had with the original adventure in that i do wish more of the kids got to see their mega forms. :/

(i know tamers fixes that somewhat, then frontiers backpedals, but. you can't get me to rewatch frontiers lmao.)

furthermore, it does kind of suck that we're still left to wonder about ken's adventures in the digital world. we see ryo and millenniumon in his flashbacks to the adventures, but for audience members who missed out entirely on the wonderswan games, it makes it so we have to trust wormmon's word that ken was a kind person in the past. it's shown to an effective degree in the show, especially with his flashbacks to his childhood after the chimeramon arc.

it also makes narrative sense that they didn't feel the need to go over a story that's already happened, because that likely would have taken too long for 02, which already had so much going on. but maaaaaan. i do not want to play the wonderswan games, frfr (though i know there are fan translations out there for 'em).

i do love ken's arc though, as frustrating as him struggling with self-doubt is to watch. i'm glad the writers didn't make it seem too easy for him to forgive himself, because that's hard even if you weren't the vessel for like. All That Shit. i'm giving this boy a weighted blanket and hot tea.

tl;dr: compared to the oftentimes fever-dream like qualities of 01, 02 feels a lot more narratively focused in its story, and i think that really works to its favor. not a flawless season, but none of the digimon seasons are. a successful sequel to 01, much more so than i remembered from my last rewatch of the dub in 2020.

#sky talks #digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #“i don't have much to say about 02” //proceeds to write a mini essay//#don't mind me lmao #if this is rambly and unfocused it is because i am dealing with the triple threat of spoony issues today #watching digimon is how i get through my flare ups nskdjfnksjdnfds

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digi-lov · 1 year

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Today releases the EX-03 Draconic Roar Set! And it contains this nice Agumon card!

Agumon EX3-027 by Takase from EX-03 Theme Booster Draconic Roar

This is a reference to the Ryo WonderSwan Games Anode/Cathode Tamer. In this game Ryo is teaming up with Taichi's Agumon. It's referencing the scene when Agumon shows up on Ryo's computer. You can see Ryo's desk just like in the games, and the chair has his bag hanging over it too.

While being not very known in the West, due to the WonderSwan, and by extension its games, never having been released outside of Asia, this would be a very recognizable reference for (older) Japanese fans, as the games were very popular.

Might be worth noting that Agumon doesn't actually jump out of the computer in the games.

#digimon #digimon card game #digimon tcg #digimon references #Digimon Anode Cathode Tamer #anode tamer #cathode tamer #Ryo Akiyama #Agumon #DigiCa #DigiSafe #digimon card #color: yellow #type: vaccine #trait: reptile #num: 02

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firedragon1321 · 6 months

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Missing Digidestined Theory

Hi and welcome to my humble abode. Tonight at 4 am, I'm going to (try) to make sense of some Digimon shit. Namely the number of Digidestined in Adventure's world, and how that correlates to a certain statement from the producers. This is entirely headcanon, possibly AU, and also made at 4-6 am. It also contains spoilers for the new 02 movie. There is a brief mention of child death. And it ends with complaints about the timeline and epilogue.

EDIT: This is no longer solid for several reasons, mainly conflicting information in 02 the Beginning, the presentation of clear AU as a theory, and the use of a ship blog as a source. On the first, I had not seen the movie yet (and now have doubts that Lui was really "the first", but that's a theory that basically ends in "Daigo/Maki's group were still first"). On the latter two points, I really should know better, and I apologize.

I have closed notifications due to some rude behavior, so I won't see any updates on this. However, I also deleted the original edit mentioning that since it itself was rude. There's really no reason to leave this up, except I like the idea generally and for archival purposes. If you still wish to read it, it is stored below. Just get ready for 40 year old Lui, lol.

I'll hook you with this- there weren't five Digidestined globally in Maki's time. There were eight.

This goes off a statement from one of the producers. You can read it all here.

Basically, the number of Digidestined worldwide would double. This ensures everyone would have a Digimon partner by 2027 (aka, the epilogue).

Doing the math- the number would exceed the global population (approximately 8 billion people) in 2020 (becoming 16,777,216 to be precise- 2019 cuts it close with 8,388,608, but the math is not wrong either way).

The exact statement says this "doubling" occurred from the Parrotmon incident forward. I personally believe that's BS because Willis exists. He receives Gummymon and Kokomon around the same time that the original Botamon spawns. There's also Meiko, Ken, and Ryo (depending on how you interpret the WonderSwan games). Meaning the number of Digidestined is higher than 8, and possibly already doubling.

Let's assume Lui is the first Digidestined. He seems to be around his early 20s (or ages really well- maybe it's Maybelline). Then Daigo and Maki's team came after him. Then Adventure team and so-on.

This all rides around this comment, as there are no official ages for Daigo, Maki, or Lui and we need them. User SharpeBB from With the Will points out the following, which I used as it's the only logical explanation I can find.

So based on this theory- assuming they were 11/12 when they were chosen, and Maki's age in the flashback is as SharpeBB claims, the original Digidestined would have set out on their mission in 1987 (using the age of 9 as a baseline for reasons I will explain later and computing in Maki's age of 21).

I assume for this theory that Maki was a Digidestined for at least two years prior to losing Tapirmon (referring to the flashback involving the Harmonious Ones). My tri. knowledge is a bit rusty. But since that flashback occurs in the Digital World, I'll have to assume she met Tapirmon in the real world, there was time fuckery similar to Adventure, adults were looking for the members of that team in the Real World, or any combination of the three.

So- 27 (Maki's age) minus 9 (assumed age when first she became a Digidestined) is 18. 18 years before tri. in 2005 was 1987.

There are five of these "original kids"- Daigo, Maki, and three unnamed ones. But you may notice that five is not an even number, nor a multiple of two. The lowest number of Digidestined that must exist globally at that time is eight. This doesn't mean for Maki's team specifically- they could be in another country, like the numerous American Digidestined.

So going backwards- there would be four Digidestined (globally) in 1986, two in 1985, and one (Lui) in 1984.

Incidentally, Lui was born on a leap year...which 1972 is. Using the baseline of 12 years (based on the above image), he would be 40 in 02 the Beginning. Let's just say he ages well.

So I bet you're tired of BS- let's get to the meat and potatoes. How many Digidestined really exist by the time of Adventure? Well, with 12 years between 1987 (original Digidestined) and 1999...the answer is 32,768.

Remember that not all Digidestined go to the Digital World. Some of this number might have died (we can't rule out "accidents" in the Digital World entirely, nor death via other means). Others might have stayed in the Real World and never went to the Digital World. Still others might have let their inner child- and partner- die (see Kizuna). But given the time gap between Daigo/Maki's team and 1999 alone, I don't think all 32,000+ of them were twiddling their thumbs.

There's more threats out there that we don't know about. There's more dead kids than we can fathom. And worse still, this only accelerates the amount of time until everyone has a Digimon. It would exceed the global population in 2009 with 16,777,216- that same number from the start- three years before 02 the Beginning.

Yet we can see that this is not the case. Ukkomon's MO is to give everyone a Digimon partner, which the world is not ready for. Recall that the production team claims the worldwide doubling occurred starting with Tai's team. Including those eight and the four outliers I mentioned, everyone would have a Digimon by 2019 (with an estimated 12,582,912 partnerships- this exceeds the global population). In 2012, this number is merely 98,304. Which makes sense for the Ukkomon plot.

So I wasted your time. Except...

I still feel this math doesn't account for things like Daigo/Maki's team and Lui. The producer's math states there are 64 Digidestined globally by 2002. But this cannot be the case as how do the Digidestined from before- or even kids like Willis- factor in? Like, they fit numerically, but how did they find their partners? Why were they chosen? Especially those before 1999, if it all connects to the Botamon in Japan? Also- assuming Lui is as young as he looks (i.e.- around Davis's age) makes Maki older than him...which makes no sense, given the average age someone becomes a Digidestined and her own assumed age.

It makes more sense for Lui to look really good for forty than the entire timeline does if we assume that the doubling began in 1999.

And this is because of two issues. One is "left hand not talking to right hand" throughout the Adventure timeline. There's simply no communication between departments (especially for the WonderSwan games, the canonicity of which is flaky even in my own personal timeline). This has resulted in other plot holes throughout Adventure canon.

Another is a hardcore determination to keep the epilogue canon, despite conflicting elements from tri. on forward. The link at the very beginning attempts to explain the epilogue, yet includes some absolutely bonkers explanations for things like why Matt became an astronaut (basically, there's extraterrestrial threats made in response to digivolution, and the Dark Masters are implied to be one of them, despite actually being linked to Apocalymon- is he also an alien???).

There was supposed to be a season 3 that would have evened out a lot of this (I'm afraid I forgot the link- if someone has it, let me know so I can add it). But we never got it, so the epilogue will never make logical sense. Almost all attempts to canonize it cause batshit lore to enter the chat, or it simply does not mesh with batshit lore from tri. onwards.

Both of these elements cause massive plot holes that make the 1999 doubling pace simply not work. So I'll play with this AU/headcanon some more. Besides, I personally find the idea of Digidestined hiding for decades interesting...

Thanks for surviving to the end!

Edit

Fixed a calculation to include Meiko (forgot her by accident.).

#digimon #theory #headcanon #epilogue complaints #this is not really sound as a theory #but canon makes less sense #digimon adventure #mention of child death #disproven by 02 the beginning #disproven theory #archive

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antirepurp · 5 months

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reminiscing about digimon tamers for a moment and specifically ryo's inclusion in it. it's such a double-edged thing because for the people who played the wonderswan games that must've been the coolest shit ever but when i watched tamers he was just. such a nonsensical character for the most part? because he ends up coming from nowhere and is suddenly just as important as the cast we've followed from the very beginning, and even gets involved in the final showdown and given a similar set of abilities as the protagonists. i know he does a lot of wild shit in the wonderswan games because he'd the player character and you need to make the player feel important in the grand scheme of things, but it just doesn't translate well when you take that concept into an anime. idk maybe if the wonderswan games got localized and were available to a wider audience he would've gone over a lot better in tamers? maybe i'll look into emulating those and look for a translated version and then like ryo better afterwards

#soda offers you a can #tamers kinda feels like it has more funky shit going on than a lot of other season tbf?#mostly ryo and alice tho. ryo's whole development happens in games and alice just kinda appears once bc of a contest thing #like on base level it's cool they were included? but they kinda. don't work as well if you lack the context behind them #which waters them down a Lot imo

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broken-clover · 9 days

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oh? Don't like Tamers? It ain't my favorite either but usually people like it, any particular reason? Or is it like me with 02, just a general dislike you can't place?

Huh, amazed to realize I haven't actually aired my grievances with it on here before. Peculiar.

So this is absolutely going to turn into a long post, apologies in advance, but the ultimate thesis of fundamental issues I have with Tamers is that it sets out to be a dark deconstruction of a 'Mons series but does very little that's interesting or compelling with it.

(Full disclosure, most of what I have seen of Tamer is the dub version. I have seen a few portions of it in its original Japanese, but not all of it. Due to that, it is entirely possible that some of my issues with the season are better addressed there- however, I have also been told that Tamers was the most faithful dub done thusfar with very little changes made)

I'll try to format into bullets for the sake of cleanliness

-First and foremost, one of the main differentiating factors in Tamers compared to prior seasons is supposedly that Digimon do die when defeated as opposed to being reborn. That's supposed to be a lot of what makes this season 'dark' but I can't help but find it flawed. Characters dying was already pretty important to the first two seasons, even when it came to the Digimon themselves- heck, Wizardmon by himself was one of the most impactful losses in the series overall, and he was never reborn due to having died in the human world. It's hard to feel like this is such an abrupt change to the status quo when it was present in the first season. Not to the same severity, sure, but it feels like far less of a brazen change.

-(Even without straight-up permadeath, the other seasons were still able to have plenty of threats and terrible fates! Even if they would come back later, characters dying was still something treated with weight and sorrow instead of being brushed off. I know it's heavily opinionated, but just having 'and then a character dies' as the end-all be-all bad end starts to feel dull and uninteresting after long enough. I feel like a similar example to this is with the dub version of Yu-Gi-Oh! Shadow Realm jokes aside, it at least offered something a little different as opposed to the more liberal use of killing in the source material. Limitation breeds creativity.)

-In general, I'm just not a huge fan of Konaka's style. That's much more of a personal thing than an actual issue. I think he tends to rely more on atmosphere and dark motifs rather than substance. It feels sort of like his style is an actual example of the mentality that 'Evangelion and Madoka Magica are just edgy deconstructions for the sake of being edgy' that is still alive today, despite the fact that both examples use that deconstruction to say something and make a point.

-(I feel that his work tends to lack a similar sense of substance in Tamers. It's also very hard to not bring up his increasing fixation on conspiracy theories and rallying against 'political correctness' and 'cancel culture' over the last decade or so. While I know those don't overtly tie into Tamers, in hindsight it's easy to see some of those themes in a slighter sense, and in general it just sours a lot of his work in hindsight)

-Explicitly making the first two seasons fictional in-universe made little sense to me. While I don't have an issue with that fundamentally, it's that it completely borks up the timeline when Ryo gets introduced later and how any of that is supposed to work just never gets explained or clarified

-Actually yeah on that note lemme skip ahead and talk about Ryo. I know sixth ranger-types that get added later are common to this series but in my opinion he's easily one of the worst implemented. He might've been neat as a cameo, but he instead ends up being a main character for the last leg of the series. He's a canon foreigner from the Wonderswan games, which only so many people would have been familiar with, but neither his presence in Tamers nor the plot of the Wonderswan titles are given much explanation to get newcomers up to speed on who he is or what his relevance is. He's just kinda here

-He also doesn't really do much to make up for his late introduction and lack of explanation. Really it mostly feels like his main role is to be good at everything, especially in regard to being the one guy that's better at the card game than Rika. While I know a lot of her character development was about learning humility, a lot of that had already been done by the time he showed up, and it feels like an underhanded way of making her appear weaker.

-The cards. I think it could've been a half-decent series gimmick, I mean Xros Wars did something similar and kept it consistent, but that consistency was lacking in Tamers and led it to feel half-baked. The cards served a purpose in a few instances, mostly for evolution, but the modification aspect feels poorly integrated and isn't really used much in the latter half of the season

-The Digital World isn't majorly developed in the story. Which sucks, because I really liked the approach they took to it! It was distinctly different from the Adventure series', being more alien and unsettling. We get information on how it was formed, but I felt it lacked a lot of punch given that we see so little of it.

-The whole arc with the Devas just kinda...stops. We get 90% of the way through and follow them into the Digital World to confront their master (or at least one of them) and then the fight just gets cut off. If we were just gonna be able to have a peaceful resolution and collaboration with Zhuqiaomon anyway why did we go to the trouble of building him up as an antagonist and slaughtering several of his minions. Are none of the Devas especially bothered that several of their underlings just died? Are we going to analyze any implications of their deaths instead of just brushing them off?

-I do love Calumon, I thought his antics were cute, but fundamentally his main purpose was to be a plot trinket.

-Kazu and Kenta were mostly useless to the plot and didn't have much character development, there wasn't much bonding between them and their partners, MarineAngemon was pretty overpowered and it's not explained why a side character is the only one to have a Mega-level as their default partner.

-There are twice as many secondary characters as main characters and almost none of them get much character development. Many times while watching I would think to myself 'why are you even here'

-I think Jeri's arc was interesting in theory, but implemented a little oddly. I felt like her main purpose in the series was to have bad things happen to her and there was a point partway through the D-Reaper arc where it started to feel excessive. I don't understand the point of psychologically tormenting a 10/12 year old for several episodes straight to the point where they try to kill themselves on-screen. She was simultaneously very important to the final arc of the series but does very little of her own volition aside from being a prisoner in need to rescue.

And don't get me wrong, there are things I think the season does very well! I liked Impmon's arc, I like the smaller primary cast allowing for more interpersonal moments and a closer bond between tamers and partners, while also giving the 'Mons themselves a lot more fleshed out personalities compared to the past two seasons (in particular both Rika and Renamon were highlights in term of character development by themselves and with each other), I like the heavier use of computer motifs, and I'm not wholly opposed to the darker tone it tried to go for.

But I think a decent amount of my dislike comes from the sheer amount of praise this season gets. I'd be fine accepting it as a flawed yet ambitious offering that offers plenty of its own original flair, but I constantly see people call it the 'best season by far' pretty much entirely because of its darker themes. I feel it tends to get overhyped for its 'grittiness' despite not implementing it all that well or feeling like it does much meaningful with that darker tone aside from using it for shock value. To me Tamers symbolizes a lot of the internet's tendency to go 'darker = more adult = inherently better than something more 'childish'' so that tends to sour my view of it quite a bit. I just wish its flaws were looked at more often, because I feel fans tend to be a lot more critical of the other seasons and Tamers doesn't get that kind of scrutiny

#suicide tw #oookay that did get long my bad #I am unnecessarily opinionated again whoopsie #I've just seen way too many condescending Tamers fans over the years #I'm sure plenty of them are perfectly lovely #but just let me enjoy 02 and frontier in peace I know they're jank as hell #I'm not here for fucking mozart I'm watching Digimon #ask #digimon #digimon tamers

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shihalyfie · 2 years

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Maybe you can explain to me - what's the deal with Ryo Akiyama? He has his WonderSwan games, he cameos in Our War Game, then in 02, then pops up in Tamers as a semi-major character, and supposedly it's the same Ryo in *everything*? Even though his personality isn't even consistent between depictions? I can understand if it's different versions of the same person, but... Could there be a weird production reason for this or something?

You know what? I've got some free time (something I don't have a lot of lately) between work and playing Survive, so what the hell, why not: it's time for a completely Akiyama Ryou-centric meta!

Who is Akiyama Ryou? Why is he so popular among Japanese Digimon fans? Why does he pop up in Adventure, 02, Tamers, and V-Tamer with almost mutually exclusive and contradictory portrayals? What happened here? Obviously, he’s canon to both 02 and Tamers, but how does that even make sense? Well, a lot of this has to do with the complicated history of Ryou in real life, in terms of the history of his games and what development notes for the anime have indicated about planning regarding Ryou. And unfortunately, a lot of Ryou’s meta-history is often misleadingly reported or even outright smothered in misinformation in English-speaking circles, making the issue even more confusing.

The tl;dr is that almost everything messy about this is extremely likely to be Bandai’s fault.

So what are the “WonderSwan games”?

As you are probably likely to know already, Ryou originates from a series of Digimon games for the WonderSwan, Bandai’s handheld console that never left Asia but did have a pretty decent following in Japan (at least until it got wrecked by the Game Boy Advance).

Now, here’s the part I’m going to deliver in a way that probably sounds really cold, but please understand that understanding this context is really important to understanding what went on with Ryou here: while many Digimon games have fans who are Digimon fans (and they are no less valid for it), most of them are actually awful games by general video game standards. The writing is usually low-effort at best, and if anime canon characters from Adventure or whatnot appear in it, they’ll be horribly out of character with flanderized or just really off characterizations (even Re:Digitize, generally agreed to be one of the better games, is not immune to this). And this was especially the case back then, when the games Bandai was churning out were basically the equivalent of the kind of bargain bin game churned out to cash in on marketing value more than they were actually any good as video games. There are exceptions, but they’re few and far between, and that was especially the case back in the day when Bandai was obviously much better of a toy company than a game company. It’s only very recently, like “last decade” recently, that Digimon games have actually started putting any real effort into nuanced writing, and that’s probably mostly because of a certain former Tekken producer named Habu Kazumasa becoming a hardcore diehard Digimon fan who started actually pushing for better writing.

The WonderSwan games, which also are equally as guilty of completely destroying the anime characters’ canon characterization and generally being very bare bones, might have been completely tossed into the ether and remembered in history as more low-effort licensing cash-ins if not for Akiyama Ryou and Millenniummon and his whole entire surrounding saga. Not because the games were the pinnacle of the world’s greatest writing, and not because they really integrated all that well with anime canon (in fact, play the games or watch a Let’s Play and you’ll see timeline and characterization contradictions all over the place to degrees that make the anime’s awkward handling of the issue look masterful in comparison). But I think the best way to describe this is similar to how many people feel about the original Pokémon games for the Game Boy. The games themselves are riddled with bugs and sloppy programming to embarrassing degrees, and the writing is stilted, barely present, and at times borderline surreal...but at the same time the concept of it all was so strong that it captivated an entire generation with so little and kickstarted one of the world’s most profitable franchises. Those games actually didn’t have a lot of substance in themselves, but the concept was strong, and the gaps were just big enough for imaginative kids to fill in the blanks with their own creative ideas.

That’s basically also what went on here with Akiyama Ryou. Advertised as “the ninth Chosen Child” and featuring a post-Adventure side story where Ryou is called to save Taichi and his friends and teams up with and fights against familiar faces, eventually fighting the embodiment of a Y2K bug who eventually becomes his eternal rival, even if they didn’t really have much to it when actually put into practice on the WonderSwan (and to be fair, it was handheld hardware from the late nineties, it’s not like it probably could have particularly detailed writing), it’s just a lot of interesting concepts that make a kid inspired to fill in the details of what’s going on with Ryou’s adventures, especially since it’s (apparently) canon to the anime as well. You can’t deny there’s appeal in the idea of a Tamer who’s sent around to do odd, unusual jobs with “borrowed” partners and fighting against the embodiment of Y2K.

Thus, Ryou became a popular character, and in very much the same way Pokémon fans latch on to the idea of Red as the world’s most badass Trainer despite the fact we don’t know a single thing about him except the fact he apparently doesn’t talk much, many a Japanese Digimon fan became very attached to Ryou and the tale of how he became a “legendary Tamer”.

The many attempts to get Ryou into the anime

Digimon is what’s known as a “media mix”, meaning it’s a franchise that’s fundamentally planned as a multimedia outlet from the get-go. Ultimately, it’s more Bandai’s IP than Toei’s, which means that if they veto any idea the anime staff has, the anime staff can’t go with it, and if they demand something get put in the anime, the anime staff has to go along with it.

As I said earlier, Ryou’s games are far from the only games to have glaring contradictions with the anime, and since Ryou’s games are more about him than they are the Adventure or Tamers characters, that probably puts them in a better position than games that are ostensibly supposed to be anime tie-ins but aren’t great about it (trying to think too hard about how Digital Card Arena makes sense with the rest of 02 will make your head hurt). However, since Ryou was a popular character, Bandai and Toei started entering in talks to make Ryou relevant to the anime, too. The thing is, though, with the games already off the rails in regards to consistency with the anime in the first place, that basically left the anime staff at a complete loss as to how. Interviews with the anime staff on the matter have all graciously stated that this kind of thing is probably just inevitable when you have a media mix, and, putting Bandai’s known history of being completely unhelpful about this issue in every way imaginable aside, this is probably true to at least some extent (as long as two branches of a media mix are being planned simultaneously, it’s very unlikely they’ll be perfectly consistent with each other).

As a result, the anime staff started making repeated attempts to find a way to fit Ryou in the plot somehow, but the problem is that the games themselves didn’t really give them a lot to work with, and Ryou didn’t even have much of what you could call a characterization in said games (again, it’s all in the realm of where you’re supposed to be filling in the blanks imagining what he’s like). The first known appearance is Ryou (in Turkey, for some reason) sending an email to Taichi and Koushirou in the Diablomon fight in Our War Game! (This was probably just intended as a “cute reference” at the time, but starts posing problems for Tag Tamers later; see below.)

After that, the staff started discussing making Ryou the central character of the summer 02 movie, presumably because the “self-contained” nature of a movie would allow for them to explore Ryou without interfering with the main series too much, and it would have also given them the opportunity to expand on his relation to Ken’s backstory -- but the plotline of the movie ended up rejected for being too depressing for a summer movie, we ended up getting Hurricane Touchdown instead, and Ryou ended up only getting his short 02 cameos in episodes 23 and 43. (Amusingly, if the original plan for the movie with Ryou had gone through, Ryou would have likely been Terriermon’s partner instead of Wallace.)

It does seem that, as part of planning, the anime staff and Bandai had firmly agreed that Ken’s backstory would be related to a game tie-in, so that part was non-negotiable even if the movie with Ryou was scrapped. In fact, in real life, the game in question, Tag Tamers, was released right before 02 episode 21 aired -- meaning audiences would get a taste of the knowledge that Ken was, indeed, originally a good-natured and kind young child who fell victim to dark forces before it was formally revealed in the anime. So when the relevant scene in 02 episode 23 aired, the kids could point at the screen and go “I remember that!!”, and they’d have extra information about Millenniummon’s role in Ken’s downfall to work with as the plot went on. As you can imagine, very fun for the kids.

However, if you look into it closely, despite it apparently being important for Ken’s backstory, Tag Tamers...doesn’t make sense with the anime, and despite what a lot of people like to claim about it being “necessary” to understand what was going on with Ken, it actually makes it even more confusing:

According to the game, Ken and Ryou were sucked into the Digital World after witnessing the Diablomon incident together, but this contradicts Ryou’s depiction in Our War Game!, Ken getting depicted as going in and out of the Digital World alone in the 02 episode 23 flashback, and Ken’s statement that his encounter with Digimon was in August 2000 (long after the Diablomon incident in March 2000!) in 02 episode 33.

Ken is characterized in ways that would make the emotional backdrop of his backstory in 02 completely fall apart. The game has him recognized as as “boy genius” even at that point in time (the fact that Osamu was and Ken wasn’t is vital to backstory), his room is full of toys and sports equipment when Ken and Osamu’s room conspicuously lacking anything that allowed them to be “normal kids” informs their characters, Wormmon doesn’t even call Ken “Ken-chan” despite that being vital to their relationship...

Ken is a year older in the game than he was during his initial Digital World trip in the 02 episode 23 flashback, and considering Ken coming back to the real world alone and clearly not gravely ill is a major plot point, him making only one trip to the Digital World doesn’t quite make sense.

The epilogue of the game depicts Ken clearly remembering Millenniummon when declaring himself the Digimon Kaiser, but that would open up a huge can of worms regarding the Kaiser’s depiction in 02.

One game later, in D-1 Tamers, the young Ken has an almost naively chipper attitude towards Ryou apparently vanishing off the face of the planet, and he tells Gennai to “cheer up” because Ryou will definitely come back, in such an insensitive manner that a Japanese Let’s Player called the game’s Ken “irresponsible”.

To be blunt about it, it seems the only information Bandai and Toei had in common was that Ken was a good kid in the past who met Wormmon in the Digital World and fell into darkness after a piece of Millenniummon lodged into him, and everything else is contradictory!

Ryou in Tamers

Nevertheless, Ryou didn’t really show up in 02, so there was still a stake on Bandai’s part (and by extension, on the part of anime producer Seki Hiromi, whose job description also involved representing Bandai’s wishes for the anime staff) to actually get him in the anime this time, so when things rolled around to Tamers the attempt was made again. The problem was, Tamers was not in the same universe in Adventure, and so far, Ryou had only appeared in games that were (ostensibly) in the Adventure universe.

The full details of the story behind how Ryou ended up the way he was portrayed in Tamers came from a blog post by Konaka from 2021 (which I will not be linking here for various reasons, but savvy people can probably find the post themselves). The events went as follows:

Seki decided to have Ryou appear in the Digital World arc, feeling it would be best to have him in the Digital World due to Tamers being, in her words, "a meta-Adventure" (basically, she felt the Digital World arc would be a better place to put a meta element like Ryou rather than one of the real world parts of the story)

Konaka agreed to it at first, knowing he was working with a media mix franchise and this came with the territory (and Ryou’s presence in Tamers was determined before he even joined the staff), but later learned about what the games entailed and realized this risked having to connect with the Adventure universe when the whole point was that they weren’t the same universe

Konaka decided to avoid the topic of bringing in his history with Ken since that would (rather understandably) make things overcomplicated

...so basically, the decision on how to address Ryou’s presence in the Tamers universe on the part of the anime staff was just to not deal with it at all.

According to Konaka, while Ryou’s Tamers characterization isn’t necessarily meant to contradict the WonderSwan games, he still focused on making Ryou a character more for Tamers than anything else. Ryou’s status as a “legendary Tamer” is obviously a wink and a nod to the games (and, of course, a way to appease all the fans who would murder if Ryou were portrayed as anything less, kind of like how Pokémon fans would also murder if you insinuate that Red is anything less than the world’s coolest badass), but it also comes from Konaka himself -- he was apparently inspired by the character of Tuttle from the movie Brazil, in that he showed up in the Digital World before them and was a super awesome senior who showed everyone up by being badass. As for Ryou’s characterization, Konaka let Yoshimura Genki (the writer for his first episode) basically handle his entire characterization, which was also heavily inspired by his voice actor Kanemaru Junichi having a similar “refreshing” personality. The part about his antagonistic relationship with Ruki apparently came from simple logical inference that if he were an accomplished Tamer, he must have met Ruki at some point, and they probably wouldn’t get along, and so on and so forth.

So as you can see, the Tamers writing staff really wrote Ryou as a Tamers character more than they did a character from the WonderSwan games, but they also deliberately left enough doors open so they wouldn’t incur a direct contradiction. And, again, you can tell that Bandai never really gave them a Ryou characterization to work with in the first place -- it’s apparent Ryou would have had different characterization if he’d been in the 02 summer movie as originally planned, or not voiced by Kanemaru.

True to form, Bandai’s next two games sort of seemed to explain how Ryou jumped universes; D-1 Tamers depicts Ryou getting recruited into a fake tournament by the (uncharacteristically jerkass-like) Adventure kids and set to fight against Millenniummon again, which blows them through the multiverse. One game later, in Brave Tamer, an amnesiac Ryou engages in a battle with Millenniummon across the multiverse (including the Tamers universe) and even partners up with a Monodramon, who forces a Jogress between himself and Millenniummon to end the battle once and for all, the idea being that he’ll counter Millenniummon’s endless hate for his rival Ryou with his own love for Ryou, resulting in an egg that we’re probably supposed to assume will eventually hatch into Tamers!Cyberdramon. (Contrary to popular English-speaking fandom rumor, there is no indication Millenniummon was ever Ryou’s partner besides in this way.) So that explains everything, right?

...Not really.

Brave Tamer ends in a cliffhanger of sorts. It doesn’t explain whether Ryou ever gets his memories back. It doesn’t explain where Ryou goes after that. It definitely does not explain how this is supposed to lead up to Ryou having a dad in Fukuoka or a multiple-year career in the Digimon card game, nor the fact that the backstory for Ryou and Cyberdramon in Message in the Packet doesn’t match the above at all...I mean, it’s probably theoretically possible to come with an explanation, but it will definitely make your head hurt. And then to make things worse, in 2002 V-Tamer had a crossover chapter with Ryou, and his personality is in stark contradiction with the Tamers version (in that he’s portrayed as an argumentative hot-blooded protagonist type), probably because, again, the games never actually gave Ryou a characterization, and Yabuno and Izawa were probably just using their own interpretation of what he must have been like in the games.

So are all of these versions of Ryou the same character?

The official stance is technically yes, but...

In an (extremely infamous) interview from 2002, Seki confirmed that 02 and Tamers Ryou are indeed intended to be taken as the same character. The thing is, almost everyone on the Japanese end, and by that I mean including Adventure/02 and Tamers staff, has called bullshit on this, or has at least been really shocked that this is apparently supposed to be the case (for example, Kakudou himself saying in 2003 that he was still shocked about that). The Japanese wiki article for Ryou on Pixiv immediately follows Seki’s statement up with the observation that this doesn’t make sense. However, vague wording from staff since then has also hinted at the real reason Seki said this: because she has to represent Bandai’s wishes for the anime staff (and vice versa), she probably had no other choice, because Bandai made D-1 Tamers and Brave Tamer under the obvious premise they’re supposed to be the same character, so she has to deliver their viewpoint regardless of how much sense that makes or not. (Otherwise, she’d be basically telling the public that the games are wrong, and Bandai would obviously not be happy with that.) In the aforementioned 2021 blog post, Konaka admitted that his choice to dodge the topic of Ken in the course of Ryou’s Tamers portrayal probably contributed to forcing Seki to give that very forced explanation.

Although the Japanese fanbase still likes Ryou and the games, most people on that end generally don’t really treat them as the same character, and the aforementioned Pixiv wiki’s suggestion is that you treat them like different timeline possibilities of the same character akin to Ultraman’s “parallel isotopes”. Ryou is still clearly canon to 02, and canon to Tamers, and nobody disputes that, but the part that's more uncertain is whether the events of the WonderSwan games themselves are canon to Adventure/02/Tamers or whether it's more of a "broad strokes" thing (or in other words, something mostly resembling what happened in the games is canon to Adventure, 02, and Tamers, but it can’t be precisely the same way with the exact same presentation because there would be massive logical contradictions).

Pixiv’s stance is that Ryou’s background in the games is “somewhat parallel” to 02 (a shorthand way of saying “treat it as if it’s canon AU, but something close to its events did happen in the original timeline”), and for the most part I generally feel like I’ve seen people approach Tamers!Ryou somewhat differently than they do the original WonderSwan Ryou. Personally, I’ve already written about the arbitrariness of “canon” in Digimon, how official stance has always been “everything is canon regardless of how much sense that makes”, and how individual fans will have to decide their own stances on each issue for themselves. The WonderSwan games are only the first in a long line of things that make Digimon fold on itself in terms of canon, so the best thing to do is just accept that Bandai and Toei probably aren’t interested in making any more clear statements on the matter, and figure it out for yourself.

#digimon #akiyama ryou #ryo akiyama #digimon adventure 02 #digimon tamers #demonoflight #shiha's ask box #shihameta #digimon multi series talk

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koushirouizumi · 2 years

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ME: Good morning to Ryo Akiyama and Ryo Akiyama oNLY

#ryo akiyama #akiyama ryo #ryou akiyama #akiyama ryou #02 ryo #02!ryo #tamers ryo #wonderswan ryo #anode tamer #cathode tamer #d1 tamers #tag tamers #ryo positivity #goodmorning digicharas #(Its A Meme OK)#(Disclaimer I Very Much Prefer 'Ryo' I am Only Using These Tags For Organization)#(Please DO NOT Try To Convince Me To Change This)#(Please Just Let Me Appreciate This Character)#(Who Shares J.P.N V.A and near exact voice tone with S O N I C)#(Because Jun'ichi Kanemaru Is Wonderful And I Will Hear Nothing Otherwise bYE)#(This has Been a rYO AKIYAMA Positive Post)#(And also because I'm extremely tired seeing people put hateful things in his tags)#(Just stop!!! S T O P)#(PLEASE use ANY Other TAG)#(I WILL NOT rb things dismissing him and sidelining his roles and I Will Not Promote Them Ever)#(That Includes for Any rYO)#(Also tags my own inspirations tags because)#repeat ryo #ryo inspiration

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otakween · 1 year

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Digimon Anode/Cathode Tamer: Veedramon Edition - 5 hours in

Another long-ass title I have to type out. Also, another name that only sounds cool to Japanese people, but to English speakers it's just like "wtf am I looking at?"

Anyway! I started playing the Wonderswan Digimon game! I think this game was an attempt to use the Pokémon model of having two versions of pretty much the same games with a different variety of mons in each. (Only ever seen Pokémon and Yokai Watch do that). I honestly can't remember which version I selected, but I'm only going to do one of them. Judging by the walkthrough I'm using, it seems like this will be a short one. That's already a plus in my book. I'm enjoying myself so far.

Notes:

-First impressions of this game were very much a mixed bag. On the one hand, I really like the art/graphics, but I was very frustrated to not be told wtf was going on, like with Digimon World 1. I did end up picking things up pretty quickly, but I don't think a newer kid's game would ever be this vague. Also, the music is very annoying and repetitive.

-I didn't expect poor Ryo to get so ripped off! Gennai calls him a "chosen child," but then is immediately like "here, have this hand-me-down digivice and Agumon." Lame! I get they're trying to tie it into the anime, but they still could have given Ryo his own stuff. Oh well, maybe that changes later.

-Plot-wise we have a similar issue to Digimon Adventure 02, why can't the OG kids just help? -big shrug-

-I groaned when Gennai welcomed me to the digital world lol. Hate that dude.

-Now that I've gotten used to the battle system I'm having a lot of fun. I haven't played a ton of tactical RPGs (I briefly played but didn't finish Disgaea) so seeing that that was the play style made me a little nervous.

-Already some improvements over Digimon World 2 (even though this game is older): taming digimon is less painful, when you lose in a dungeon you can just try again instead of getting a game over screen, very easy to fast forward through things and the battles aren't as painfully slow, and I haven't hit any annoying storage limits (yet). Earning money, skills, and stat increases come pretty quickly so grinding is satisfying too.

-There's a lot of extra stuff in this game I'll probably just ignore. It seems they wanted this game to be very social, but I don't have anyone to play with, so I obviously won't be exploring the multiplayer features. No clue what the analyzer does.

-I'm 4 dungeons in and there are only 13 of them. It's still kinda tricky for me to predict how long this game will be though because I'm assuming future dungeons might take many tries.

-Sooo this game was officially released in English by Bandai Asia, but I don't think the US ever got the Wonderswan, so I guess it was for English speakers in the East only. Weirdly I was watching an anime the other day and they suddenly mentioned the handheld. I was like "what are the odds!?" (Anime is Haiyoru! Nyaruani: Remember My Lovecraft-sensei. It's really bad, don't watch it lol)

#digimon anode cathode tamer #wonderswan #digimon #not 100% sure how to tag this game lol #video games #gaming

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izzyizumi · 1 year

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{cap by Me} / @izzyizumi (Please ASK before Using)

"It matched wits with the {Chosen Child} {Koushiro[u] Izumi} on several occasions"...

When your Fav gets mentioned randomly or not! in a new Journal official entry in relation to specifically Mugendramon, because Adv Eps 48~49 totally weren't all about this encounter.

"The demand for Mugendramon resulted in subsequent roles"... (That Too.)

(No but seriously this is a cool name-drop, glad to see Koushiro['s wits] got {canonically} recognized {again}!)

#izumi koushirou #adventure mugendramon #adventure koushiro #koushiro vs mugendramon #mugendramon arc #c: mugendramon #mugendramon refs #koushiro refs #koushiro tls #adv koushiro tls #adv koushiro refs #wonderswan refs #wonderswan tls #wonderswan ryo #(Love how they're totally not acknowledging Wonderswan verse anymore either Except When They Do---)#(That Is Sarcasm FYI)#02 ryo #(No but genuinely I actually wasn't expecting to see Koushiros name included so I'm glad Koushiro was acknowledged it made me happy)#izzyizumi posts #izzyizumi no rb #izzyizumi no rb posts #(This is more for organizing on my blog since I like to compile Koushiro reference and translations That Are Not Just Interviews Things)#(Because More Than The Interviews Matter When We're Discussing This Series Actually Thank)#(but Yeah So This Dropped Today)#next order spoilers #(in case)#(I haven't been able to buy it myself but will use spoiler tag where I can when referring to it if at all)

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voidfell · 4 months

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Ryo is actually not as amnesiac as he claims to be. Sure, when he first arrived in the Tamers universe, he had his memories wiped by ENIAC, and he just kind of had to live with not knowing. Except trauma like that, bonds like the one between DigiDestined and their destined partner don't just go away. Being drawn to the Digimon card game didn't help, and he eventually did remember the events of the three Wonderswan Games, which only caused him to really just freak the fuck out. He ran away from home in a total panic and ended up in the Digital World, where Cyberdramon was drawn to him in that way that partner and digimon are always drawn together. Ryo doesn't let Monodramon evolve further then Cyberdramon when he can help it. Due to the nature of their forced Jogress evolution, which fused Monodramon and Milenniummon together, the closer Monodramon evolves to Milenniummon, the less control he has (this is why Cyberdramon is so. . . Like That.) Honestly given the way Ryo hopped universes I'm 90% sure that the parents he's living with are copies ala Gennai. Which doesn't help his feeling out of place and sometimes just massively disassociating. He's also prone to just like, bouts of going completely mute, as that's a canonical trauma response from his games. Sometimes he just can't words.

#✧˖*°࿐ Ryo Akiyama About // i’ll make my OWN FUTURE. won’t leave it to FATE.#✧˖*°࿐ OOC // ROAD WORK ahead? uh i sure HOPE so.

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agumonger · 1 year

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Digimon 02 survey results!!

The people have spoken!! A few days ago, I started a survey on Tumblr in order to figure out what people would want from a hypothetical sequel to 02 beyond the upcoming movie, and the results are pretty interesting. Let's go through them!

I will also link the previous Twitter results from a year ago, although Twitter has a limit of four options per poll, which slightly skews the results.

And thank you so much to @digimonpolls for the amazing support!

1. Which elements of Digimon 02 would you want to see return?

The Dark Ocean was the clear winner in this poll, with 51% of the votes! The second place, with a respectable 30%, was for the Digimentals/Armor digivolution. Oddly enough, only a 6% voted for Dark Seeds to return.

Twitter winner: Dark Ocean, 50%; Armor, 30%

I voted: Dark Ocean

2. Which supporting characters would you like to see in a potential 02 sequel?

With a 34%, Wallace and his twin Digimon, Gummymon and Chocomon were chosen for a return! Every other option on the poll had relatively similar percentages, from 8% to 16%. The "World Tour Chosen", "Ryo" and "new Chosen" were the three most popular options after Wallace, with 16%, 15% and 15% respectively, in a near triple draw. This poll also had the highest amount of votes, since it was shared with Shiha and Ni. (Thank you!)

Twitter winner: Near perfect 26% draw between Ryo, Wallace and other kids

I voted: Wallace

3. Which antagonist would you want to see in the plot of a potential sequel?

Demon was the winner this time, with a decent 29% among nine options in total! Dagomon got the second place (21%), although it started out leading the poll, and was in a draw with Demon until the last day. Zeed/Moon/Millenniumon (16%) and Diaboromon (10%) were the next options. No one voted for "No antagonist". Villains! Who doesn't love em.

Twitter winner: Demon, 39,5%

I voted: haha guess what. psst it's Demon

4. In case we have new digivolutions for the 02 cast, which ones would you prefer?

Solo evolution lines (no Jogress) was the leading option with a staggering 62%!! It seems like many of us want to see the 02 cast thrive individually as well as they do in pairs. Swapped Jogress and further evolutions for Jogress, both common options for speculation and custom art videos, were tied with 14% each. New Armors got no votes, although someone voted "Other". Leaving no comment. User rawrbox suggested the idea of combines Digimental, another popular option that I, sadly, forgot to include. My apologies.

Twitter winner: Solo evolution lines, 53,7%

I voted: Solo evolution lines

5. How would you like the story to be handled, in terms of genre or overall tone? In which aspects do you want more focus?

Extremely interestingly, this might be the most revealing poll of the survey. It's a near-perfect TRIPLE DRAW between psychological exploration, lore and worldbuilding, and daily life, with 29%, 29% and 31% respectively. They were tied exactly in 30% for a while as well. Action adventure, often the presumed "main interest" of Digimon, got 11%. The "Other" option, as well as romance, also commonly cited as one of the main interests of 02 fans (shipping Takari, Daiken or Kenyako for example) got an astounding, astonishing... 0%. I am speechless.

Twitter winner: Action adventure, 46,3%; psychological exploration, 41,1% (no lore option)

I voted: Lore and worldbuilding. I guess that undoes the draw if you don't count my own vote :0

6. Which contexts or narrative environments should the hypothetical sequel address?

Although only 02-specific things was the winning option with 25% of the votes, it should be noted that pretty much every other option got a certain amount of votes. "Only 02" started out as the clear winner from the beginning, with tri. as the second place, but eventually tri. was surpassed by Adventure and the Wonderswan games, with 21% and 18%. So, it should be safe to say that the answer is a bit of everything but keeping a strong focus on 02 itself, to some extent, although every person will have different opinions on which things should and should not go on the "palette".

Twitter winner: Only 02, 34,5% with close percentages of all other options

I voted: V-Tamer! Please read V-Tamer. It's great

7. Which format/medium would you prefer for this hypothetical 02 sequel?

A decisive 67% prefers the classic anime season, with episodes. I included this question because I've seen many people who are tired of the Adventure or 02 related content, and I figured many would prefer to have one or two movies instead of a full season, but it seems I was wrong, at least in this audience. OVAs or movies got 25%. And once again, CD Drama got 0%.

Twitter winner: Anime season, 58,9%; OVAs or movies, 34,7%

I voted: Anime season

Despite being one year apart and held in two different social media and two different languages, it's very interesting that both surveys have received similar results. While it is true that a bunch of people probably participated in both (I was only able to vote this time, not on Twitter, although my votes don't change the results significantly), it seems like there is a certain amount of consistency between such different voting groups, which leads me to believe this study might have some validity in regards to what the Western side of the fandom (at least, the part of it that is active on social media) would want from a new 02 sequel after The Beginning.

Another thing of note is that the Twitter poll was conducted before we barely knew anything about 02 The Beginning, and the results are still more or less the same, with slight variations.

Thank you for your input, this was a lot of fun! 🦖

#digimon 02 survey #digimon 02 #digimon #long post #and yes i'll take this into account if/when i make the 02 fanfic :3 but it won't necessarily be dictated by the poll's results #i just agree with many of them!

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