A Primer on the Digimon Franchise

''Note: I've updated this post since it was first published. I've added information on Digimon Xros Wars, which hadn't been announced when I first wrote this post.''

Okay, first things first: why am I bothering with this?

To answer that, a bit of personal history. I first encountered Digimon when I was working in a church club for a bunch of tween boys. This was during the first height of the Pokemon craze, and there were quite a lot of kids' shows on TV. I decided to watch at least a few episodes of all the shows out there at the time, so I could at least have a reasonable reply when a boy insisted that Pokemon was the best show.

So I watched Pokemon, and Power Rangers, and inevitably Digimon. And Digimon surprised me. It went deeper than most kids' shows. It was no serial experiments lain, certainly, but it tackled things  I never expected to see in a TV series aimed at pre-teens.

Digimon Adventure (Season 1)
[http://www.otakunovideo.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Digimon-season-1-300x225.jpg|300x225px|Digimon season 1]

This was the first show, and it set the mold for future ones. I've heard that the franchise was initiated by a spunky older woman working at Toei Animation, who looked at all the other popular, long-running kids' anime series on the market and asked, "We're Toei. Why don't we have one of those?"

Basic concept: Half a dozen pre-teens are transported to "the digital world," which is in crisis, as an evil Digimon (digital monster) is taking over. Each kid is bonded to one of the non-evil Digimon, using a "Digivice." The kid's emotions, channeled through the connected Digivice, give the monster extra power during fights, particularly allowing them to "digivolve" into more powerful incarnations.

(Yes, the show makes excessive use of the digi- prefix.)

To add even more Joseph Campbell into the mix, the kids are "Digidestined," foretold many years ago to come to the digital world and save it. Each kid gets a crest (an amulet, really), which symbolizes the trait most important to that kid (courage, friendship, love, etc.).

You may be yawning already. Bear with me, as here's where the show caught my attention.

Note that each crest symbolizes the trait most important to that kid. That doesn't mean it's a trait that the kid most exemplifies. For example: the most distant, prickly kid gets the crest of Friendship. Why? Because he has the hardest time making friends, so friendship is particularly important to him.

This opens up the show to explore each of these traits on a more complex level than most kids' shows. The girl with the crest of Love believes that her mother never loved her. The boy with the crest of Courage steps in where angels fear to tread, at one point pushing his companion far too hard, and at another nearly killing (permanently!) one of the other kids. And when he realizes this, at the next crucial moment he seizes up.

In a kids' show.

The Digivice connection was also mined for drama. Any strong emotion kicked off the Digivice, including negative ones. When one of the boys realized that the Digimon got stronger through eating and fighting, he pushed his Digimon to eat and fight as much as possible. Not out of malice, but out of logic (and not thinking about the consequences to his companion). His Digimon evolved into a creature of rage that destroyed indiscriminately.

Note that the boy in question wasn't channeling obvious negative emotions; he wasn't filled with anger or fear. He was doing this out of raw competitiveness, and lack of empathy.

The story goes in fairly expected directions, until about two-thirds through, when the evil Digimon invade the real world. Massive destruction ensues. People die. It's a legitimate, big ending.

The show also drops unexpected character moments, like the girl worrying about her parents' love for her, and another boy relating to her everything he had to deal with when his parents divorced. Again, in a kids' show.

Digimon 02 (Season 2)
[http://www.otakunovideo.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Digimon-season-2-294x300.jpg|294x300px|Digimon season 2]

The next season could easily have been a re-hash of the first.

Instead, they set it several years later. The Digi-destined are needed again, but this time, some of the kids are too old. They have to step back and give over the reigns to new kids. Completely. Some of our favorite heroes can't be heroic now. How many kids' shows do that?

The show has a delightful surprise in its villains. The first villain is the self-appointed "Digimon Emperor," who is enslaving Digimon right and left, and generally acting like the digital world is his sandbox. Meanwhile, the show occasionally cuts to a shy, quiet boy who spends all his time in his bedroom. Turns out he's the Digimon Emperor. He's a DigiDestined who never had any friends, so he entered the digital world alone. He does think it's his sandbox.

Moreover, once he realizes what he's doing, he feels tremendous guilt about it. He's welcomed into the team to deal with the next villain, and he spends the rest of the show struggling to redeem himself.

One other neat moment: Digimon (good and evil) start cropping up all over the world. The kids must now travel to China, America, Russia, etc., team up with any good-aligned Digimon and kids there, and generally organize things. This leads to an awesome moment when a Japanese boy and an American boy fend off skyscraper-sized Digimon in New York City, while flying on the back of a griffin, at which point the Japanese kids taps the other on the shoulder, grins, puts out a hand, and says, "Konnichiwa!" The American grins back and replies, "Nice to meet you!" as they fly off. It's just a beautifully-written moment.

Digimon Tamers (Season 3)
[http://www.otakunovideo.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Digimon-Tamers-213x300.jpg|213x300px|Digimon Tamers]

What do you do after you've spawned a successful franchise, introduced new characters, and finished with an epic, world-spanning conflict?

You bring in the writer of serial experiments lain.

That's right; Chiaki J. Konaka was hired as chief scenario writer for season 3. He came in with a number of firm beliefs about children's entertainment, as documented on his website (in English, even!). He approached this as a serious opportunity to say important things to kids.

Konaka brought a darker and more realistic tone to the show. A government conspiracy experiments with technology that can create physical versions of digital creatures. An old academic research project filled with competitive AIs is used as a test bed. Thus, digital creatures manifest in the real world, some of them friendly and some not.

Konaka further established the series' realism by setting it in a specific suburb of Tokyo. The backgrounds and buildings are all drawings of real places. I remember my shock upon seeing several tourist's photos of Japan and recognizing the building that housed the government conspiracy in Digimon Tamers.

But more importantly, Konaka came straight to Tamers from serial experiments lain, and his head was still full of the topics he'd raised in that show. So, as he put it, if lain raised a set of questions about human relationships, Tamers provided his answers to those questions.

For example, one of the girls (Jeri in the English version; Juri in Japanese) desperately wants to be a Digi-destined, going so far as to insist that one of the random Digimon that appears is "hers." He goes along with it, then in combat, he dies. Permanently.

This drives Jeri into catatonic depression. Again, we have a kids' show where one of the girls is so depressed she curls up into a ball for nearly ten episodes. More importantly, this sets up Konaka's depiction of depression, and how to deal with it. (Hint: it comes through relationship.)

Digimon Frontier (Season 4)
[http://www.otakunovideo.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/digimon_frontier1-150x150.jpg|150x150px|Digimon Frontier]

At this point, my interest in the franchise waned. I watched the first episode of Digimon Frontier, and was dismayed to discover that the writers made (to my mind) a serious mistake.

In Frontier, the kids fuse with their Digimon right at the start, beginning in episode one. The kids are now, essentially, standard shonen action heroes; their Digimon are just methods for powering up. I completely lost interest, though it looks like the show had some impressive character moments.

Digimon Savers / Data Squad (Season 5)
[http://www.otakunovideo.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/digimon_data_squad-150x150.jpg|150x150px|Digimon Data Squad]

Season 5 attempted to appeal to an older audience. The primary characters are in their mid-teens, and there's a much smaller primary cast: mainly an adventurous teen boy and a cute, tsundere girl. Whom, of course, are ordered to live together, which results in all sorts of Wacky Misunderstandings. I watched a few episodes, and the show felt exactly like a shonen action series. It lost its charm and innocence; the characters fit all the standard stereotypes without being interesting within them.

The franchise then lay fallow for a few years, as Toei tried to figure out what to do with it.

Digimon Xros Wars
[http://www.otakunovideo.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/24495-210x300.jpg|126x180px|Digimon Xros Wars]

It's as though the creators of Digimon looked at their franchise and said, "You know what Digimon needs more of? Giant robots."

This series was designed to appeal to a younger crowd of 6- to 10-year-olds. The Digimon can now combine to form larger Digimon. So, yeah, it's basically Vehicle Voltron.

I've only seen a few episodes of this, but from what I've seen, their changes went in absolutely the right direction. The show is fun and adventurous, reserving drama as spice.

Heck, the director was an assistant director on My Neighbor Totoro. So he knows his kids' anime.