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Living in Chile we actually had access to anime via the local networks, for the longest time we didn't need cable.

Digimon was kind of a game changer on that regard. Along side Pokemon and, later, Card Captor Sakura, it was one of the first anime to be broadcasted by cable first and public signal second.

This caused a "spoiler war" of sorts between kids on the late 90 and early 00's and more anime were to follow. Right now, we don't have anime anymore in the public signal, and CA output has been very mediocre, almost non existent. The generation that followed mine discovered anime thorugh the internet, and yes, illegal streams.

On Digimon itslef, it was probably the first anime that made me feel a sense of dread. Devimon creeped the heel out of me, and the first time I saw Myotismon was on the episode he killed two of his subordinates and I couldn't seelp afterwards. I had never been through that before.

But in the same vein as Madoka, I was always brought back to it. Being a bullied girl myself, it was very inspiring to see children of my age standing up to this kind of threat (I was in fith grade), the bad guys were like my bullies, trying to scare me to death before destroing me. The parts in were the protagonists were feeling down were the hardest to watch, specially because they were being hard on themselves, as I tend to be to this day, and so to see that struggle was very personal.

Anyway, in the meantime enjoy Arsenal player Alexis Sanchez singing the dubbed version of the OP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBgvphFVTO8

*wipes tear from eye* Yes exactly. As a fellow "minority" enjoyer of both Digimon & Pokémon I appreciate your breakdown. My enjoyment of Pokemon now pales to my continued love & adoration of the characters & themes in Digimon. Beyond just the Adventure & Adventure 02 seasons the other series of Digimon also worked to weave more complex stories & deal with the lives of both children & adults. I'm looking forward to Tri and sharing that love with fellow fans online & maybe even seeing new fans enter the fold for us older fans to be mentors to. <3

In my opinion, Pokemon had the better games, and Digimon had the better TV series.

I first watched Digimon in the dub version, but after moving back to my home country Germany and watching Digimon there (which is based of the Japanese version), I really started to enjoy the series. There's just so much to it.

So I did watch the first few seasons on 4Kids TV. I don't remember any of the character writing or development now years later. Reading this, I now REALLY want to revisit the series to see if it does hold up. I completely agree with the description of Pokemon being an eternal vacation. If you are younger than 13, I can totally see why that would the greatest thing ever. I really want to see if the character writing holds up, and I can't wait to see the new movies.

Last edited by Dingmao on Fri Nov 13, 2015 12:06 pm; edited 2 times in total

I was introduced to anime by my cousin, who liked Pokémon. I watched a few episodes, but then I saw a commercial for Digimon and I decided to watch it to see what it was about. I fell in love immediately with the show when I heard Brave Heart. It was the first Japanese song I heard and I found it so awesome and wonderful right from the guitar riff! I watched every episode religiously waiting for the song to play and for the digimons to kick their enemies' asses!

I was one of those nerdlings who loved Izzy. I identified myself with him because he was intelligent and intelligence is something I value. I liked him also because he could uncover the inner workings of the Digital World with his computer knowledge and thus help his non computer savvy friends.

Digimon is something that I will hold dearly for years to come. :'-)

(BTW, that's the Fuji TV building.)

P.S.: The first MP3 I ever downloaded was One Vision, the Matrix Evolution theme song. At that time, with dial-up Internet, a crappy 486 computer and being pretty new to the Web, I was marveled I could do such a thing!

I first got hooked on Digimon because of one episode: the one known in English as "Home Away From Home." There was something about it that differed from every other ep in the series, in look and feel. I was not all that surprised, years later, to learn that it had been directed by a young Mamoru Hosoda.

Just as important was Tai's flashback to the way he treated his kid sister, a nice grayscale study made shocking when, at the hospital, his cheek is a bright pink from when his mother had (offscreen) slapped him for what he had done. It was actually a shock to see.

Once that ep hooked me in, it was easy to let the rest of the series implant itself to me, especially the characters and their relationships, even if the rendering into English sometimes made hash of things.

The series only seemed to get better by the third season. The Digidestined were fewer but just as memorable, and I confess to being one of the legion who think Renamon is one of the greatest digimon of all time. The fact that Jeri moved from background character to the hub of the action in the final act was excellent writing; major props to Chiaki J. Konaka, head writer for the season.

As a HUGE Digimon fan, I was stoked to see this article. It sums up why I generally prefer Digimon to Pokemon (the latter has no character development or a real sense of danger. )

As a kid, Digimon was my favorite show, and when the DVDS recently came out, I was stoked to discover I still loved it

One thing though to the author: if you haven't seen seasons 3-6, you should. They're all good in their own right; in fact, season 3 is my favorite.

Those were nice times when I could watch anime on TV. CardCaptor Sakura, DBZ, and then Digimon and Pokemon. These last two were amazing in my childhood, but one finished in a good moment and the other one didn't. That is why I think Digimon Adventure > the hundred seasons of Pokemon that came after the Johto arc.

And I sincerely can't watch any of those without the Spanish DUB, that's why I'm afraid it won't be the same experience watching the new Digimon OVAs subbed. Hopefully, those dubbing companies will bring the OVAs to Latin America with a nice dub, just like in the older times.

The last time I watched Digimon was maybe 10 years ago, that's why I don't remember much of what made Digimon Adventure a more solid story and not just a kids show. But I do remember how much I hated Myotismon and Piedmon, and how much I scream and cried of happiness when Patamon and Gatomon digievolved to kick their freaking asses. I do remember how scary was Skullgreymon, how tense Matt and Tai's fights were, and how epic WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon looked when fighting.

AAH, Digimon was beautiful, and I need to look for the episodes to watch it again, cry and scream again, feel like a child again.

Digimon certainly gets a lot more sexy with what some of the Digimon evolve into, like Angewomon or Rosemon. I can only imagine that if the show was starting now, we'd be getting doujins and fanart like crazy. Maybe they did in 1999 but none of it was preserved digitally...

After watching Digimon, I could immediately feel how sort of trapped Pokemon was in its structure and what the show even allowed characters to do or say, whereas Digimon had all aspects of exploration and story arcs where Pokemon was trapped to being mostly episodic. Also, most of the monster designs in Pokemon were just never as cool as Digimon's, like I love MetalSeadramon and most of the other mechanical looking ones.

Great article, Hope. It brought back many fond memories. Though my inner purist bristles seeing names like "Ash Ketchum" used unironically in an ANN article, it makes sense for a piece rooted in 90s nostalgia. And yet, all these years later, Digimon still holds up, even with Saban's awful "jokes" crammed in. Smile

Dingmao wrote:

(BTW, that's the Fuji TV building.)

Noted and fixed! Typed the wrong TV station. Embarassed

I was also one of those rarer kids that watched both series. Pokemon was king, of course, but I liked Digimon a lot too. But I gave up on Digimon when they started morphing with the kids, that ruined it for me. Pokemon I didn't give up on until college, a bit into the Battle Frontier, since a) it was getting old, and b) I didn't have cable anymore xD

I recently bought season 1 and 2 of digimon, and rewatching season 1 was a trip. Season 1, for the most part, I remembered most of. It's definitely a completely different wacth as an adult than as a child. I think that might be the thing Digimon does better than Pokemon. It can appeal to a wider age range. When I tried to rewatch Pokemon a while back, it was harder to get through since the plot is a bit lacking in depth. I still need to watch Digimon s2, which I remember pretty much none of (at that point as a kid I think I was only catching the occasional episode, so everything is really fuzzy). Can't wait to watch it though to be ready for tri :3

This was the first cartoon I ever saw with a serialized story. I think that was the major factor in the anime boom of the '90s. Kids were inundated in a sea of episodic comedies, and as great as Rugrats and the like were, stuff like Digimon, Dragon Ball Z, and other Toonami fair were offering something that couldn't be replicated, and really hasn't even in the wake of imitators like Avatar and Teen Titans. The very idea I had to tune in next week to find out what happens fascinated me. Obviously anime did not invent serialization, but to be blunt about it, it was childrens' programming that didn't assume children couldn't pay attention for longer than 30 minutes.

And to continue on that note, obviously the evolution of these Adventure characters over 100 episodes and four films was a great treat. The fourth movie, Diablomon Strikes Back, isn't a storytelling masterpiece, but I very much like and endorse what it represented: a refusal to hit the reset button or ignore past material. All twelve of the Chosen Children, new and old, are working together and Tachi and Yamato have more or less returned to their status as captains(you could argue Taichi never really gave it up). And in that evolution, you have Koushiro, who, if Taichi and Yamato are the captains, is firmly the lieutenant of the group. He's the coordinator of plans in both Movie 4 and Our War Game, and he spends the most time with the new children in Zero Two. Compare his role in those movies to his beginning; this small introverted nerd who ignored people in search of answers and knowledge to a focused driving force in keeping everyone safe in crises. This role arguably creeps up on Koushiro as early as the Dark Masters arc when everyone separates and he and Taichi are stuck dealing with Mugendramon. I'm also a fan of the reinforced friendship between Koushiro and Taichi. It's established early on that the two of them and Sora were fairly close friends before August 1st, 1999, and were in the soccer club together. Little touches like that bring the world alive and make the characters feel real.

EDIT: I guess to comment on the Pokémon thing: one distinct instance I remember is that Adventure Zero Two debuted its first two episodes on Fox Kids the same day and time as the Pokémon Orange Islands episode where Charizard gets frozen by a Poliwrath on Kids WB!. I watched the Pokémon episode, then switched over to Zero Two's second episode. I don't regret this decision, as Zero Two's first episode, even with the full context of the Japanese version, is not great.

As a kid I always liked Digimon more, though it's weak existence in the past decade or so made me turn more to Pokemon nostalgia in my adulthood. But I basically have Digimon to thank for my love of anime. It wasn't the first anime I saw, but it was the first fandom I really participated in. I scoured the internet daily looking for spoilers from the Japanese version of 02, then wasted countless hours on fanfiction (and as ashamed as I am to admit it, shipping wars). I downloaded RAW episodes of Tamers before it aired here and the first two episodes of Frontier were my first fansubs. And while America didn't really get to experience it, there were SO MANY CDS. I fell in love with Digimon's music and thought the character themes were the coolest things I had ever heard. I even started translating lyrics so I could try to make sense of some of the songs that Megchan didn't translate.

I'm sure I would still be an anime fan even if I hadn't been a big Digimon fan, but I certainly wouldn't have gotten into the same aspects of fandom that I did.

I'll make this short. This article hit me right in the feels. I literally began tearing up each sentence. Crying or Very sad

Digimon to me will always have more emotion than Pokemon. I cried my eyes out by the end of each season.
Season 1. The kids had to leave, not knowing if they will ever see their Digi-pals again.
Season 2. The main cast became adults and had children of their own.
Season 3. The Digimon were forced leave with a hint that they might return.

Tri is gonna be awesome, like most Digimon seasons before it. Smile

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