Monday, July 21, 2014

Meandering Mondays: Through the Ages: Digimon Part 1

Hello again people of the internet after reading the latest Weekly W I decided to spend a few weeks talking about Digimon. Most people on the internet have heard of Digimon but it wasn't ever as popular as Pok'emon.  So I've decided to spend a bit of time explaining the various version of the series, so let's get started




I believe this is the original Digimon Product
To start off with the biggest misconception about Digimin, that it is a knockoff of Pok'emon.  This isn't true for several reasons, the biggest of which is that Digimon predates Pok'emon by just over a year.  Also neither started off as an anime, Pok'emon started off as a video game and Digimon was originally a Tomogachi type digital pet. 


With that necessary statement out of the way on to the general premise of Digimon.  Digimon are animal like things that populate the Digital World, an Earth like dimension. 
Digimon are all capable of human speech and possess intelligence in a similar capacity to humans.  They also each possess various attacks which they use to fight amongst each other.  The third major feature of Digimon is their ability to Digivolve which is basically a temporary change into a more powerful form, which possess different attacks and abilities.  This change requires energy however and if a Digimon is weakened it will revert to it's previous form.  There are 6 stages; Baby, In-Training, Rookie, Champion, Ultimate, and Mega.  These stages are sequential and cannot be skipped.  The process of Digivolving while often complexly animated appears to be almost instantaneous.  Several series include alternate methods of Digivolution but they are not possible for all Digimon and normally have prerequisites of some kind. 
In-Training to Mega Stages of a single Digimon

The Digital World appears to be a massive earth like dimension but everything is composed of data instead of matter and all of the life forms are Digimon.  The exact nature of the Digital World changes from series to series, in some it is a separate dimension that can connect to earth and in others it seems to be a part of the internet.  The world itself is also very varied with different sections representing many earth biomes including forests, oceans, as well as cities.  Order seems to be enforced by raw power with strong Digimon either ruling over or protecting weaker Digimon in their vicinity. 

Next week I'll talk about the various anime of the franchise and introduce their most important element, humans.  Each series in the franchise involves contact between a group of humans with Digimon either with the humans entering the digital world or the Digimon crossing over into the real world. this initial contact is central to the plot of the series and is a key part of the franchise. 

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