Digimon: Digital Monsters

5 years ago, I'm watching a commercial break during the original Pokemon. All of a sudden, I see an interesting commercial: a new anime show named "Digimon." "Hmmm.." I think to myself. "Probably some half-baked rip-off of Pokemon. Oh well. I guess I might as well watch it anyway." To my surprise and utter delight, what I watched a week later was by no means some Pokemon clone as I had anticipated. I had found myself wrapped up in an original masterpiece that had me immediately hooked. That first season of Digimon had me engaged from the opening segment of the first episode to the last scene of the final episode in a complex web of character building, good and evil and an occasional hinted romance. Though the next 3 installments were also great, they have not surpassed the glory of season 1. Though the series is indefinitely canceled, you can still catch re-runs on Jetix or through tapes. But I must warn you: You WILL Be hooked.

Animation Score (10/10) Overall Score (10/10) Recommended

wow this is very......... interesting I've imaged a whole different story on these comments well people have a lot of courage spitting out their inner thoughts about digimon.. Anyways about digimon at first I thought it was very boring and almost took every animated character to redesigned into a new one or it just ran out of ideas and couldn't think of a better way then instead they added a bunch of crap and made it horrifying. But I always thought Pokemon was #1, not until I went to my best friends house that's when she said Matt was cute, I was in shock, I thought she was crazy, so I decided to check out these lame wannabes digimon and see why she liked so much, afterwards I look through the show a couple of times, and thought the Digi-vovling was GAY, but after that I realized that the story was pretty good, even though the:

Characters animated kinda sucked (need a little more artistic emotions to the body) Scripts (HORRIBLE) (the voice of the english version is so bad, they couldn't think of another way to speak) MON (they couldn't think of anything, and they put MON?) Digi-vovling, Digi-Evolution, and Spirited Evolving (What the heck is that, it takes up the whole show just by EVOLVING)

I've heard alot about these things and I've realized what it's really about, but you have got to reach inside the story not because of it's characters (names, look, and act), it's the purpose of what they are doing..... (ummm interesting, I sounding like my teacher.....) and accomplishing something ( besides getting a whole bunch of badges or whatever...) But anime is for entertainment for little kids not for a judgemental purpose, but If u think pokemon or digimon is that bad, let me see u do a better job at making characters up,( lets c if u can beat 12 years of drawing...that's how long it took me to accomplish) well that's it....

Digimon: Digital Monsters is an English translated version of Digimon: Adventure, it's your typical imported Japanese anime from the late 90's about monsters and children. Critics have criticized it as being a pseudo version of Pokemon, Digimon however is far from being a rip-off it shares common aspects with more popular Pokemon such as children befriending the monsters, the monster evolve, the monsters battle etc. Unlike the lighthearted Pokemon however, Digimon is more of a classic tale of good and evil it's plot is completely different from that of Pokemon. I have seen other anime that follow what I call the Pokemon formula, Digimon is not one of them.

The Pokemon formula: A character aims to be great at something, goes on a quest, wins things, monsters come out of stuff to battle (cards, toys, balls, etc), usually involves some kind of monster tournament. Beyblade, Yu-Gi-Oh, Bakugan, and others follow this formula more than Digimon. If anything Digimon has more in common with science fiction anime's or Saturday morning American cartoons about action and adventure, than it does with the other monster anime.

The characters are not your typical one dimensional anime characters, all of the characters seem to have very distinctive personality's with interesting back stories that keep the viewer interested. Even some of the villains and Digimon themselves. The anime is a lighthearted tale of good and evil, with some mature themes mixed in such as losing your parents and death, the anime also teaches kids about teamwork, friendship, and the importance of working together. The anime has great plots and sub plots that are not to complex for children to follow, but are very well written and interesting.

The English version of Digimon is filled with cheesy puns and comedy to keep kids laughing, and a score composed of cheesy 90's early 00's pop rock to catch their ear. The English version also has some of the more intense scenes removed from the original Japanese version making it more appropriate for kids, without parents having to worry about Digimon being a bad influence on children or to dodge controversial Japanese anime stereotypes. For the older audience who may enjoy anime, the original Japanese version of Digimon Adventure, features a much more serious script (the dialog at times is usually completely different), a beautifully composed score made up of orchestra, electric synths, J- Rock and J-Pop, and features much more as a lot was cut out of the English dub to make it more suitable for western children and western audiences.

Digimon Adventure and Zero Two are some of the coolest animes that i've seen. And to be sure, I've seen alot. From Evangelion to DBZ, I've seen anime in just about every spectrum of human thought; however, digimon remains in my top 3. There are many reasons for this and I'd like to give some now without bashing pokemon or other animes that people like to compare Digimon to.

First, Character Development and Interactions is basically what half of digimon is all about. In the first season, half the problems the kids get into are because of their own mistakes and problems; however, they always stand together when needed. At first the kids are amazed with the new world they find known as the Digital World. They go through many battles and defeat Devimon. At this point they realize that not everything in this world is so great and the loss of Angemon weakens everyone's spirits. They then have to go and fight on Server(i love the continent names haha) and it is there they defeat Etemon after a long struggle. After Tai leaves everyone goes their separate ways and its here we first see how the characters really are when they are alone. Matt who was thought of as this lone shark of sorts shows that he really is a team player when he helps Joe out for that long period of time. The second part of this idea is that there are approximately 16 different people in the first season to get to know. This is because of the 8 Digidestined children and their digimon. They have different ideas about everything so everyone that watches this show can find some character they relate to.

Then, there are the incredible action sequences throughout the season. There are always new enemies after old enemies have been dealt with; showing that it is the duty of everyone to stop evil...even if it can't be destroyed completely. There were many memorable battles that i'll rewind to and watch these days 3 years down the road from the first time i saw it. I mean the first time u see Angemon, to the whole Myotismon arc, to the first time we see Mega Digimon go at it....this series is jam-packed with great battles.

The great thing about Digimon is that it deals with all the problems that youth go through in their teen years without being overly-gushing with emotion. Like we see the great happiness that arrises when the children finally defeat Myotismon; however, just a couple of minutes later they are up against the Dark Masters with no hope of winning. This causes utter distress in the kids and their group breaks down. We see Matt and Sora deal with Depression and Mimi with Greed. We see TK grow up in episode 52 and with his revolution evolution Magnaangemon is born. Everyone is shown to have their own fears and strengths and this true diversity just makes this show great.

Basically Zero Two just expands upon the first season with new characters while keeping our heroes as mentors to the new basically. It is a great season, full of action and emotion.

Together these two seasons were utterly amazing, spanning 104 episodes and spawning 4 movies and numerous video games...both Japanese and American. Also the card game is ever successful, so it is no wonder why so many people like this great series. From "And so it begins" to "A million points of Light" Digimon is truly an action-packed ride.

I watched a couple of episodes of Digimon near its beginning and dismissed as derivative rubbish. Then, a few months later and rather bored, I turned it on again. I couldn't believe it. This supposed kids' cartoon had one of the most dramatic, engaging, even shocking story arcs I've seen. This programme deals with love and loyalty, life and death, fear and self-doubt. The 'Digi-destined' children fight with their parents, who have trouble understanding the sacrifices their children have to make. One child finds out he's adopted. Characters sacrifice their lives to save others. The children get scared, and doubt their own ability to save the world as they are destined to do. If this had slightly better animation, and was billed as adult animé, no-one would question it once. So much more than just a kids' show.