digital monsters
bweh
nostalgia factor
the 2000s
It's kinda crazy to me that everyone knew about Digimon when I was kid in the 2000s, now it's just one of those "oh yeah, I heard of that once" things that has long since been phased out of popularity. Like, I feel everyone knows that Digimon exists to some extent, maybe they can recognise Agumon, but that's about the extent of it. And to be honest, I was also guilty of this until fairly recent -- I literally fuckin forgot Digimon existed until September 2024, in which I then proceeded to spiral down a deep, dark hole.
So, I was a huge fan of monster raising/creature collecting things when I was a young lad back in the early 2000s. HUGE. I was of course super into Pokemon and that was my main thing, but unlike a lot of kids I somehow never developed the true hardcore brand loyalty and I was open to other franchises. Over time I ended up becoming familiar with other ones like Digimon and Monster Rancher, and because my dad thought Digimon was cool too (way moreso than Pokemon) I ended up being around it way more than anything else.
Anyway, my main exposure to it was probably the following:
Sadly I don't think any of the AMVs I truly loved are still up, but the ones that I most notably remember were 1) a Culumon AMV to the Lazy Town cake song, and 2) a Beelzemon AMV to U Can't Touch This. I was obsessed with these and it's a genuine loss to society...
I had a friend in elementary school whose favourite series was Frontier, and we were always going to toe-to-toe on what series or Digimon were the best. Notably I remember he had Takuya's D-Scanner, and like the genius children we were we would go around trying to scan random crap such as... grass at recess, with the 1000 IQ underlying thought of "well, grass is a line right?" (For context, the D-Scanner gimmick was that you could scan barcodes for stuff). Sometimes I wonder if that guy is still around, and if he still likes stuff like Digimon at all. Weird shit to reiminisce about.
present day, present time
Late 2024, sometime in September I think, I saw a random post on my Tumblr dashboard that reminded me of the existence of Digimon. This inspired me to start looking up random stuff I remembered, and I decided to watch Digimon X-Evolution, a full CGI movie from 2005 that has always eluded me as a child bc I was too dumb and inexperienced to know how to torrent movies (I was too busy installing random .exes on our family computer).
X-Evolution is actually a weird as fuck, and I'm glad I watched it as an adult bc I barely understood it as an adult and absolutely would not have understood shit as a child. It's fine, it was kinda all over the place but I wasn't bored. The CGI is kinda jank and ugly, but does work for the "digital world" they're going for, especially at the end. If anything, I think it felt too fast and there wasn't really any time spent on developing the plot coherently.
However, I felt complete finally getting to watch it after over 15 years, as Dorumon has always been one of my favourite lines (with the Death-X designs being especially cool, yeah I'm edgy), but I never got to experience the bizarre media it actually came from before.
This then reignited a long deep-seated passion within, and I've been on a strange Digimon media binge ever since.
Favs ='w'=
Obligatory Lucemon section
So I don't know when it happened or why. I can't explain it.
I've always loved the Satan Mode design, I thought it was a sick as fuck top tier dragon as a kid and I still think it's a sick as fuck top tier dragon as an adult. I love this thing. I am impartial to child Luce, and I actually used to dislike Falldown Mode bc I thought it was lame that the coolest fucking dragon in the world evolved from literally just a guy. Why couldn't there have been more dragons??
Satan Mode / Falldown Mode
Now my life has been flipped on its head. If Lucemon Falldown Mode has a million fans, I'm one of them. If Lucemon Falldown Mode has 5 fans, I'm one of them. If Lucemon Falldown Mode has 1 fan, that one is me. If Lucemon Falldown Mode has no fans, I'm no longer alive. If the world is against Lucemon Falldown Mode, I'm against the entire world. Til my last breath, I'll support Lucemon Falldown Mode.
If you know me personally, you probably know about my raw, unhinged obsession with FM already. If you don't know me personally: I have a raw, unhinged obession with FM. I will choose to leave it at that for now and save my rambling for another page...
Other mons
Hilariously, the ones that I like the most have not really changed since I was a kid (with the exception of Jesmon/Hackmon, since it just didn't exist back then). In addition to Lucemon, here's some of my other favs:
Dorumon / Doruguremon / Death-X-Dorugoramon / Jesmon
Games
Digimon has a lot of games, and especially a lot of very mid or even bad games. So here is the list of ones I intend to (re)play:
* means it's something I played when I was younger but intend to revisit!
Digimon World DS
I was obsessed with this game as a kid. As an adult, it fuckin sucks.
The maps are atrocious, the writing is terrible (not that I expected much from a kid's game in the first place), and the selection of Digimon available is just... weird and so limited. It also features the Savers mons on the title screen but literally none of them have their full evo lines, they cut off at Perfect level??
I was only able to make it through this nightmare thanks to the continued existence of GameFAQs, of which I am grateful to still exist. The only reason I was able to make it through the game was thanks to this beautiful piece of 2006 history by catprog:
So I am immortalising it here 20 years later in case I ever need it again and GameFAQs ceases to exist. FUCK THE PACKET SWAMP DUDE. I beat this game when I was a kid and I have no goddamned idea how.
I actually cleared this in about 10 hours straight? I somehow got reeeeally sucked into this game on a long weekend that I had off one day, so I just stayed up all night playing until I couldn't anymore. Admittedly I did end up using cheats to boost EXP and shit, but it was for the best bc I just don't have time for games like I used to.
5.5/10
Digimon World Dusk
Mechanically this is almost identical to World DS, except this one is actually wayyyy better and more polished. It fixes almost every issue I had with World DS... except for the maps, which are still atrocious. It is what it is, I guess.
If you're going to play this yourself I honestly recommend Dawn for a better experience, as the initial map for Dusk is a fucking sewer puzzle maze, and it SUCKS. Dawn has a completely different initial map that isn't the fucking shitty ass sewer. Seriously, skip it, your life will be better for it.
Anyway, since I actually beat this already as a kid and it has some of my fav mons available, I decided to do something different for my replay and I decided to get a bit cheeky, and using the power of fucking around with ROMs and cheats on my 3DS + trading with my original cartridge on my DS Lite, I just gave myself Lucemon FM from the start of the game lmao. My personal trade-off for this was that I would not use any other Digimon until it became not viable/possible to continue like that, and it was actually pretty fun and it was nice solo adventuring with him... your Digimon actually follow you around on the map, so it was pretty nice ='w'=
I actually have not yet completed my replay yet, I got stuck on another shitty swamp level that sadly did not have a goated GameFAQs map available, so I got pissed off and gave up after spending like 2 hours wandering in circles. I will finish this... eventually.
Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth
I became aware of Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth once it hit Steam, and I received it as a random Steam gift from an old Twitter mutual of mine back in 2020 (thanks Viva!!). I played it for a few hours, made a rough mental plan of what mons I wanted, started grinding, and then as with every game I played, I stopped playing it.