Digimon (Japanese: デジモン, Hepburn: Dejimon, branded as Digimon: Digital Monsters, stylized as DIGIMON), short for “Digital Monsters” (デジタルモンスター Dejitaru Monsutā), is a Japanese media franchise, which encompasses virtual pet toys, anime, manga, video games, films, and a trading card game. The franchise focuses on the eponymous creatures that inhabit a “Digital World”, which is a parallel universe that originated from Earth’s various communication networks.

The franchise was created in 1997 as a series of digital pets, and it was intended as the masculine counterpart to Tamagotchi. The creatures were first designed to look cute and iconic even on the devices’ small screens. Later developments had them created with a harder-edged style, which was influenced by American comics. The franchise gained momentum with an early video game, Digimon World, originally released in Japan in January 1999. Several anime series and films have been released; the video game series has expanded into genres, such as role-playing, racing, fighting, and MMORPGs.

Digimon Adventure (1999 TV series)

Digimon Adventure (Japanese: デジモンアドベンチャー, Hepburn: Dejimon Adobenchā), also known as Digimon: Digital Monsters Season 1 in English-speaking territories, is a 1999 Japanese anime television series produced by Toei Animation in cooperation with WiZ, Bandai and Fuji Television. It is the first anime series in the Digimon media franchise, based on the Digital Monster virtual pet released in 1997.

Digimon Adventure began production 1.5 months after the film of the same name was being produced, and it began broadcast in Japan a day after the film’s theatrical release on March 7, 1999, airing until its conclusion on March 26, 2000. It was then followed up with the 2000 film Digimon Adventure: Our War Game!. Both films were adapted and released in North America as Digimon: The Movie on October 6, 2000.

With the success of Digimon Adventure, a sequel television series, Digimon Adventure 02, was broadcast from 2000 to 2001. For the series’ 15th anniversary, a six-part film series titled Digimon Adventure tri. was released between 2015 and 2018, and a final film titled Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna was released in 2020. In 2020, the series was reboot and released under the title Digimon Adventure.

Animated series

On March 6, 1999, the franchise was given an anime as the first of the Digimon movies aired in theaters in Japan. On March 7, 1999 they began airing a television counterpart titled Digimon Adventure. 6 further series would follow, but so far not all of them have their own tie-in movies, and the series was dubbed for release in western markets in the fall of the same year. The show spawned card games, with Hyper Colosseum in Japan and later Digi-Battle in America, and more video games. The animated series is easily the best-known segment of the Digimon universe and responsible for the majority of its popularity.

“Digimon” are “Digital Monsters”. According to the stories, they are inhabitants of the “Digital World”, a manifestation of Earth’s communication network. The stories tell of a group of mostly pre-teens, the “Chosen Children” (DigiDestined in the English version), who accompany special Digimon born to defend their world (and ours) from various evil forces. To help them surmount the most difficult obstacles found within both realms, the Digimon have the ability to evolve (Digivolve). In this process, the Digimon change appearance and become much stronger, often changing in personality as well. The group of children who come in contact with the Digital World changes from season to season.

As of 2012, there have been six series — Digimon Adventure, Digimon Adventure 02, Digimon Tamers, Digimon Frontier, Digimon Savers, and Digimon Xros Wars. As is obvious from their titles, the first two seasons take place in the same fictional universe, but the third, fourth, and fifth each occupy their own unique world (in the case of Digimon Tamers, the Adventure universe is referred to as a television and commercial enterprise). In addition, each series has spawned assorted feature films. Digimon still shows popularity, as new card series, video games, and movies are still being produced and released: new card series include Eternal Courage, Hybrid Warriors, Generations, and Operation X; the video game, Digimon Rumble Arena 2; and the previously unreleased movies Revenge of Diaboromon, Runaway Locomon, Battle of Adventurers, and Island of Lost Digimon. In Japan, Digital Monster X-Evolution, the eighth TV movie, was released, and on December 23, 2005 at Jump Festa 2006, the fifth series, Digimon Savers was announced for Japan to begin airing after a three year hiatus of the show.

Digimon is produced by Toei Animation and Bandai of Japan. The first five series were broadcast in Japan by Fuji Television, and Xros Wars by TV Asahi.

Conception and creation

The Digimon franchise began as a series of virtual pets created by WiZ and Bandai, intended as a masculine counterpart to the more female-oriented Tamagotchi pets. It was released in June 1997 with the name Digimon, short for Digital Monster. This device shows to players a virtual pet composed entirely of data and designed to play and fight. In February 1998, the DigiMon fighting game, compatible with Windows 95 and developed by Rapture Technologies, Inc., was announced. The one-shot manga C’mon Digimon, designed by Tenya Yabuno, was published in the Japanese magazine V-Jump by Shueisha in 1997.

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    • LocalOaf [they/them, ze/hir]@hexbear.net
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      2 months ago

      cuddle

      I’m still in “yay autumn” mode but the seasonal affective disorder is coming on and winter always kicks my ass

      I live far enough north that in the dead of winter, when it’s grey and rainy and dreary and light out for like 5 hours I get The Big Gloom

      omori-miserable

        • LocalOaf [they/them, ze/hir]@hexbear.net
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          2 months ago

          I do love a cozy coat and a warm cup of tea on a cold day. comfy

          Bleak weather makes some music sound better to me too

          I should probably get a light therapy lamp before the days start getting really gloomy here though

          • rtstragedy [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
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            2 months ago

            Bleak weather makes some music sound better to me too

            Totally. I’ve listened to the Frostpunk OST a bunch in the past week, haha. (it was raining yesterday, so even better)

            I take Vitamin D3 which is supposed to help, but still some days are tough until I get used to it.

                • LocalOaf [they/them, ze/hir]@hexbear.net
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                  2 months ago

                  Sorry for the late reply, had some shit come up yes-honey-left

                  Post-metal

                  For a fan of shoegaze and ambient stuff wanting to get into post-metal I’d probably recommend starting out with Russian Circles’ Station and Empros, Pelican’s City of Echoes and What We All Come To Need. They’re all instrumental and pretty orchestral in composition, but played with the instruments of a metal band and do a lot of lush layering of riffs with walls of ambient guitar, swells and crescendos that’d appeal to a shoegaze fan, but with the driving rhythm sections that give a good overview to the genre.

                  *shels’s Plains of the Purple Buffalo and Isis’s Panopticon are some of my other favorites. They have some vocals, but are used more as an additional layer to the sound and theming than traditional songwriting verses and choruses.

                  Post-punk

                  Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures is pretty much the post-punk album in the kind of way that Nirvana’s Nevermind is the grunge album to most people. I’d probably start there, if you don’t enjoy it at all, you probably won’t like the genre as a whole. Have a Nice Life’s Deathconsciousness and The Unnatural World, and Amesouers’ self titled are probably my favorites of the genre.

                  Blackgaze (also post-black metal, blackened shoegaze, and “Cascadian black metal” are all used fairly interchangeably with some slight differences depending on who you ask)

                  If you don’t like screamed vocals, you’re gonna bounce off the whole genre probably.

                  Alcest’s whole discography pretty much besides their early straight up black metal stuff, Lantlôs’s Agape and Melting Sun, Deafheaven’s Roads to Judah, Sunbather and New Bermuda, Falls of Rauros’s The Light that Dwells in Rotten Wood, Panopticon’s Kentucky and Roads to the North and Wolves in the Throne Room’s Two Hunters and Black Cascade are all great. Éscailles de Lune by Alcest and "Sunbather* by Deafheaven are probably the biggest albums in the genre approaching broader popularity and are good places to dive in. “Dream House” by Deafheaven from Sunbather is like the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” of the genre lol

                  Hope you find something in that you like stalin-heart

    • CocteauChameleons [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      2 months ago

      Rather that than it being 80 and humid like it is rn. And then its going to be 90 today and humid and sun out as well when the hurricane stops. I stopped caring about going outside during the day early August n still dont feel like