A Grown-up’s Guide to Digimon

What is Digimon?

Digimon is an animated series for children that is produced in Japan. It airs in the United States on the Fox network as a part of its FoxKids division of children’s programming. In this series Japanese children and their digital monster friends fight evil.

What are digimon?

Digimon are digital monsters made of computer data rather than flesh and blood. As they mature, they digivolve into more powerful forms and take new names. Although they are treated like pets, they are capable of intelligent speech. Each of the children bonds with a particular digimon partner, taking care of it, and the digimon partner uses some of its child’s energy to fight its battles. In return the digimon partners fight to protect their children from evil digimon.

How is Digimon different from Pokemon?

Both shows are system-oriented phenomena. Each features a large number of creatures who can be organized and memorized in systematic ways and so can be manipulated through various kinds of gaming environments. Both shows feature fighting monsters that work with children and which can evolve to more powerful forms. However, there are differences between the two shows.

Digimon seems to be aimed at an audience two or three years older than the Pokemon audience, addressing more serious themes and using a more complex narrative structure. Pokemon is picaresque, with Ash and his friends traveling around from adventure to adventure, with each adventure following a certain formula. Digimon is structured more like a novel, with each season containing long story arcs that advance the fight against evil. Although the majority of episodes of both shows feature some sort of fight between their resident monsters, the Pokemon fights are in the form of sporting matches, while the world is at stake in the Digimon battles.

Pokemon is a comedy, whereas Digimon can be tragic, and the themes are also more sophisticated in the latter show. The problems facing the Pokemon children are seldom more serious than their own rivalries, whereas the Digimon children face a number of serious family issues, from adoption to divorce to the death of a parent or a sibling.

How are digimon different from pokemon?

Pokemon are essentially fighting pets, and their trainers will collect a number of them to use in appropriate circumstances. Over time, a pokemon will gain experience and power and evolve to a more powerful form. The bond between a digimon and a child is monogamous, so to speak, with one child bonding to one digimon through the digivice. The bond allows the digimon to evolve to a more powerful form in response to a threat, particularly a threat to the child from a more powerful digimon opponent. Unlike pokemon, however, the digimon’s evolved form isn’t permanent. The more powerful form takes much of the digimon’s energy to maintain, and a digimon will be drained to a less powerful form after a hard-fought battle. Some digimon may even be destroyed, returning in the form of a digi-egg which the child nurtures until it regains its strength. Digimon never really die, however; they are only reconfigured.

Digimon can also vary the forms of their digivolution to fight more effectively through various devices belonging to their child partners. These devices represent qualities of personality or character about which the child must learn lessons before the digimon can digivolve. Such qualities include reliability, hope, friendship, love, and knowledge among others, and such lessons often contribute to improved relationships with their families when they return home to the “real world.”

What are the digi-destined?

The digi-destined are children who bond with digimon to save both the digital world and “real world” from evil. When the series begins, the digi-destined are seven children from around Tokyo, and an eighth child joins them later. In the second season, which is set three to four years later, all but the two youngest of the first group are in high school, and three new youngsters join the group. By the end of the second season, however, the circle of digi-destined is expanded beyond Japan to include children from all over the world, including Michael and Willis in the United States.

What are the digimon tamers?

Digimon Tamers is the name of a spin-off series that is broadcast in the United States as Digimon 03 (or Season 3). The tamers are children who have played the card game or computer game and discovered that digimon can become real. They bond with a digimon and take care of it. In the US version, at least, these children have been watching the first two seasons on television and purchasing the merchandise. Since these children have a different relationship to their digimon and the digital world, I refer to them as tamers and the children from the first two seasons as the digi-destined.

Where is Digimon set?

The primary settings of Digimon are Tokyo, Japan and the digital world, an alternate world accessed through computers. During the movie and the second season, the “real world” setting is expanded to include the United States, France, Mexico, Australia, Hong Kong, India, China and Russia, during the “world tour” arc. It is on this occasion that the Japanese digi-destined meet the other digi-destined from around the world.

What is the difference between the three seasons of Digimon that have aired and are being rerun on FoxKids?

Season 1 and 2 take place in the same continuity, with the second season occurring three to four years later. The third season takes place in a different continuity, one in which the children have watched Season 1 and Season 2 as a television show and played with the accompanying games and toys. In Japan, the third season is actually considered a separate program called Digimon Tamers. In the United States, FoxKids chose to consider it part of the same series but to play up the idea that the new children are discovering that the show and its games are real rather than fictional.

What are the differences between the Japanese and American versions of Digimon?

The American show is a dubbed and edited version of the Japanese show. According to fan comparisons, the editing of Digimon is not as severe as it is with other imported anime, but representations of guns, for instance, have been edited. The primary complaint about Digimon’s dub is that many of the children’s names have been changed to English versions, while secondary complaints concern music changes and the insertion of bad puns and other jokes into the script to cover scenes that would otherwise be silent.

Many American networks view the primary audience for animation as young boys, and so elements that might appeal to girls or to older audiences are edited. This narrow audience can mean that some Japanese shows that air on American television are heavily edited. Cardcaptors, for instance, is based on Cardcaptor Sakura, a show for young Japanese girls. When brought to the United States, the first several episodes that focused only on Sakura were dropped, as being too feminine to attract young boys. Episodes that did air were edited to change certain relationships between characters and to play up the action. Similar changes were made to Escaflowne, which is really designed for a teen audience rather than a child audience.

Unlike Cardcaptors/Cardcaptor Sakura and Escaflowne, however, the only versions of Digimon and Pokemon legally available in the United States are the dubbed, edited versions, a situation that angers many anime fans. It is possible to get tapes of Japanese Digimon broadcasts (without subtitles) through anime fandom networks, but it is not easy. In fact, the prospect of the edited Cardcaptors so angered anime fans that its U.S. distributor was pressured to release the Japanese version of the series on DVD to satisfy them.

What toys and other merchandise are associated with Digimon?

Digimon toys include the toy that started it all—the digital pet in the form of a digivice—but also action figures, card games, costumes, walkie-talkies, school supplies, plushies, video games, bedding, and much, much more.

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