• They/Them

Black, Autistic, Queer, and Tired. Mostly into bad puns. Adult. Alleged comics critic? #1 Black Cyclops Truther



corey
@corey

Okay this is barely below the surface on the digimon iceberg, but if you're aware of the past fifteenish years of discourse this is the the wildest fucking "official¹" evolution line you'll ever see in your life, holy shit.

This is violent.

¹) This is used in the currently Chinese-exclusive (but still canon to the franchise) mobile game Digimon New Century


corey
@corey

Unlike Pokémon, evolution in Digimon is a pretty fluid thing. While there are definitely lines that were designed as a coherent themed family, species A will not always evolve into species B. A big trend in the fandom has always been creating and justifying your own evolution lines, and more often than not, the primary justification is "vibes." Specific "canon" lines are typically reserved for characters primarily featured in the anime, but even those are far from sacred.

That being said, even those characters who feature heavily in the show aren't always designed as part of a full, cohesive line! In the earliest Digimon stuff, the lifespan of any given monster only went up to Level 5 ("Perfect" in the original, "Ultimate" in the dub) but Level 6 ("Ultimate" in the original, "Mega" in the dub) was introduced pretty quickly. While these days, we go up to Level 7 (...we're not even getting into any of the various contradictory names here), most people tend to think of a "full" line as being Levels 1 through 6. The first group of protagonists in the show were designed before Level 6 was introduced, and while there were L6es that thematically fit some of those mons, only two of them were featured in the original show. Everything else was, to some extent, up for debate.

Sure, you wouldn't typically see people saying that HerculesKabuterimon wasn't a logical endpoint for Tentomon, but stuff got messier when you looked at stuff like Patamon or Gatomon, whose earliest assumed Megas were "thematically inappropriate" dragons¹. But, weirdly enough, considering the context of this particular clusterfuck, everyone largely agreed on Gomamon's final form in 1999.

Gomamon, for those who aren't aware, was a little seal dude who turns into a big fuzzy walrus narwhal thing (Ikkakumon) , and finally, in the show, Zudomon - a less fuzzy walrus thing wearing a turtle shell and wielding a giant hammer, with attacks named after both Vulcan and Thor.

Focusing more on the aquatic theme than anything else, it was commonly accepted that Plesiomon (the big thing on the left of the image in the last post) was the end of Gomamon's line. Yeah, it was a dinosaur, but it had a lot of similarities to Gomamon, in color, patterns, and, if you squinted, general shape. It all made sense, no one had any real objections, and everything was good!

And then the second season dropped. We'll get to that once my break hits.


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