Digimon, 20 Years Later

The late-90’s were a time of technological advances. The internet was quickly becoming democratized, with its initial pay-per-use model developing into something more easily-available. The movie industry was adopting computer-generated imagery, allowing for possibilities and avenues not previously possible. Even video games, still in their relative infancy, were transitioning to the third-dimension, allowing for new possibilities. The late-90’s, essentially, were exciting, and little me was happy to play along.

Perhaps the craze that best-exemplified this was the emergence of the Digimon franchise. Beginning life as male-centric Tamagotchis, it quickly became popular enough to receive a feature film, with a TV show following shortly afterward. Said show would initially see four iterations over four years-Digimon Adventure, Digimon Zero-Two, Digimon Tamers and Digimon Frontier-with their titles dropped in the West in favour of a four season show called Digimon: Digital Monsters. Marketed and treated as a direct competitor to Pokémon, it’d quickly gain a cult-following with slightly older kids. Said kids would slowly taper-off in the years that followed, culminating in low ratings, but the early years would give it the “Sonic”-like edge to Pokémon’s “Mario”.

Digimon: Digital Monsters, or its first season, follows 7 Japanese kids during a fateful snowstorm at Summer camp. They’re slated to head home, but that plan’s derailed when they receive digital devices, are swallowed by the sky and land in a Narnia-meets-Wonderland realm called “The Digital World”. It’s here that they meet their Digimon companions, all of them taking heads in their basic forms, and find out that they were destined to save this world from evil. As the show progresses, the kids learn about The Digital World, bond with their Digimon and reconcile their own experiences. And all of this in 54 episodes.

What made Digimon: Digital Monsters unique was its kid characters. Narrative marketing had many variants of the everyman hero leading the pack, but here we had multiple heroes. Each one was also distinct in personality, and while said personality was basic, it was enough for the audience to connect with them and pick favourites. The kids’ insecurities also were addressed in character-arcs, allowing for real problems that anyone could relate to. In short, the show was unafraid to “let its hair down”.

I think this is why the show was so appealing, especially to me. As I’ve stated before, my childhood was unpleasant. Seeing a show tackle divorce, adoption and inferiority complexes, and all maturely, was a welcome education for my ignorant, sheltered mind. I cherished each and every opportunity presented.

The show was also unafraid to shake up the formula. After spending its first two story-arcs in The Digital World, it threw a curveball and had the shenanigans come to Japan. These episodes are considered some of the show’s best, as we saw how people reacted to these creatures ala the Godzilla films. When that was over, the Digidestined, now a group of 8, travelled back to The Digital World for a darker, final arc.

Being intensely popular, it made sense that more entries would follow. The first of these, the aforementioned Digimon Zero-Two, took place in the same continuity as its predecessor, except three years later. The next iteration, Digimon Tamers, would be penned by Cthulhu fanatic Chiaki J. Konaka, being disturbing while it was grounded, while Digimon Frontier would be where show would end. Despite coming close to teenage-hood by that point, I still stuck with Digimon: Digital Monsters. It was my hope at sanity in a world I deemed cruel and unkind, and it let me feel like I mattered. It didn’t bother me that the English releases of these shows were hammy and heavily-censored, either, as it was clear everyone involved in production cared.

That’s not to say the shows were perfect. Aside from most iterations never properly addressing death, they were written with story arcs that routinely felt retconned. This allowed for many contradictions and unanswered questions. The villains, at least early on, were also shallow and uninteresting, with one not even making sense. And the production value was pretty low, with lots of reused animations and character model inconsistencies.

Digimon Tamers, while the admitted high-point, also had tonal and plotting issues that bug me as an adult. This particular entry was the most-grounded, but with that came drastic breaks in logic. The retconning of its arcs was equally-offset by the show being slower and more atmospheric, making its inconsistencies much more noticeable. And it suffered tonal whiplash, changing from light and campy to dark and serious in a heartbeat. This ignores that it coincided with 9/11, making much of its subject matter, while interesting, feel too real.

But I loved these shows anyway. Even now, as an adult, I admire how daring and ambitious Digimon: Digital Monsters was in its writing. It (mostly) holds up, too, which is something I can’t say about many shows based on toys. So while it’s not winning awards, I still recommend giving the franchise a try. It truly captured The Information Age better than most shows, and, like The Matrix, is a perfect snapshot of late-90’s nostalgia.

That, and Digimon Tamers was something special. I’m not kidding, it was!