I thought very long and very hard about which anime I wanted to cover this week. And for a good part of the day, I figured it was going to be about something very near and dear to my heart: Pokemon. (Guess who just found out they're giving away Mythics this year oh god what this is a great time to be alive.)
Yet, as much as I love Pokemon, and as much as I will always say only wonderful things about the show (go see my April Fools' from last year!), I realize that it was really Digimon that affected me more - at least in terms of the anime.
Why is that? Well, it's kind of a long story, so settle in.
It's no small secret that Pokemon was a goddamned phenomenon. It took the entire world by storm, and evolved, quite literally, the craze that was started by the Tamagotchi. So of course, there would be other franchises that would attempt the same thing, but very differently. While Pokemon hit us in our childhood feels, with promises of adventures and befriending monsters to raise, Digimon took the Tamagotchi aspect and truly ran with it.
Let's just get one thing out of the way right the hell now: The story is kind of a mess. Yet, I still find myself getting excited with the concepts they play with. They've taken a rather insane concept of the 'digital' world becoming mixed with ours, and embraced it in a very serious manner. Which was really the thing I loved most about the show: It always respected the viewer's intelligence, and wasn't afraid to pull punches or cover some really, really dark topics.
Let me just remind you: This is a kid's show. It always was a kid's show, but it never let the fact that it was meant for a younger audience get in the way of telling the best damned story they could. This really came into full view during the third season, Tamers, when it began to deal with things like animal abuse.
I'm not even joking about this. The primary antagonist for most of the series tended to have some serious anger issues, and more often than not, took it out on his Digimon, Wormmon. Poor guy, but he always took it in stride. Like with many dogs, he never gave up on his master, and truly embodied the virtue of unconditional love.
It's kind of a theme that runs throughout the Tamers series, and it raises some very interesting questions about what kinds of rights digital beings should be allowed to have. Yet it doesn't really shove that into the viewer's face - it lingers there in the background, and is always there, even if it isn't screaming for your attention.
Where Pokemon is essentially a series of sanctioned animal battles, Digimon is purely about survival. Well, until Tamers, but that's a bit different, and also tries to tie in too many goddamned real-world products in an effort to shamelessly promote merchandise for you to buy. Which, to be fair, is the worst part about the show - something that's easily overshadowed however when you pay attention to the characters and their arcs. Which is easily the best part about this show.
The series always touches on themes of a digital world, one which is just as alive as ours, and how it interacts with us in our daily lives. It lets us ask questions about the value of a digital life, or what even is life to begin with. It forces us to consider some very deep, philosphical quandaries, and tries to play the insanity of the concept relatively straight.
Nowhere is this more plain than in the recently-released Digimon Tri, which is f***ing fantastic. I could not have hoped for Tri to be any better than it was. The original crew has grown up, things have changed, and so have they. The way they think, the way they react to things, and yet there's something deeply disturbing going on in the background and I f***ing love it.
Remember: This was, and arguably still is, a show for kids. It's grown up a bit, but it is still a show for a young audience. Sure, the original audience was the 10-13 crowd, and now with Tri it seems to be targeting more of the 12-16 crowd, but the heart and soul is still there. It's always been there.
Well, excepting Season 4. F**k that show seriously. Actually, let's address why that was so bad. Remember the stuff about Tamers dealing with themes of abuse? Yeah, well at the end, things got so incredibly dark that parents in Japan started to bitch about it. So they needed to change direction because they'd manage to enrage the adults who cared nothing about the show in the first place. It ended so poorly that I almost refuse to admit there was ever anything beyond Tamers.
But before you say, "but you just like things that are incredibly dark!", let me stop you. Because yes, you are right, I do tend to like super dark shit, but that's not why I loved Digimon back then. I loved it because it wasn't afraid to confront these things head-on. It did not try to avoid them, it outright embraced them because these are things that we will encounter in our lives, and that it's possible to go through all of this stuff and still manage to come out the other side a decent person.
That whole thing about Wormmon? He was entirely useless for the entire show. He couldn't evolve, had basically zero attack power, and was literally the weakest Digimon in existence. You'd expect him to have a crowning moment of badass, right?
Well, he doesn't. Instead, he gets used to teach one of the most important lessons to one of the cruelest people, and it changes him forever as a result. It's enough to make him wake up, and realize just what a horrible little shit he's been, and all for nothing. If you don't get choked up by that, then you my friend are a heartless abomination, because it's damn near soul-destroying.
Digimon is almost the complete opposite of Pokemon in every possible way. Pokemon has enough merch to choke a rhino, and doesn't promote that shit in its own show. Digimon on the other hand has so many ham-fisted attempts to shove stuff in your face that it's almost laughable. Pokemon doesn't bother pretending it has anything to do with the real world, while Digimon is firmly rooted within it. Pokemon's episodes, with the exception of a very few, can be watched in a vacuum - you can miss a few here and there and it won't matter, because whatever problems show up will be resolved by the end - Status quo is god there. With Digimon, however, you don't want to miss a single one, because they're all part of the same narrative.
They say you shouldn't try to compare Digimon and Pokemon, and they're right. They may be cut from the same cloth, but in the end they are wholly different shows - complete opposites of one another. It's a case of comparing apples to oranges - both grow from a tree, but they're totally different fruits in the end.
So the reason why I always loved Digimon, summed up in a single sentence?
It never insulted my intelligence, and in fact embraced it. Which is a rare thing for a children's show to do.
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