Digimon
| Fandom | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Digimon |
| Abbreviation(s): | |
| Creator: | Bandai |
| Date(s): | 1997 – ongoing |
| Medium: | manga, anime, video games,card game |
| Country of Origin: | Japan |
| External Links: | The Digimon Wiki |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Originally a hand-held video game pet, the Digimon franchise has grown to include nine seasons of an animated television show, eighteen movies, comics, a card game, and over fifty video games. Generally the plots follow a group of children who partner with monsters to fight the forces of evil.
The original canon, Adventure, was spread over the first two seasons of the anime, and the six-part series Digimon Adventure Tri that coincided with the 15th year anniversary of the show's original release. This canon was rebooted in 2020.
In addition to Adventure, the other series' all established their own canons; Tamers, Frontier, Data Squad, Fusion, App Monsters, and Ghost game. While there are some crossovers between the series (in Tamers' Canon, Adventure is an in-universe card game, and Fusion sees characters from differing seasons cameo), these are generally seen as separate.
Adventure canon
Characters
Season 01
- Yagami Taichi
- Takenouchi Sora
- Izumi Koushiro
- Kido Jyou
- Ishida Yamato
- Takaishi Takeru
- Tachikawa Mimi
- Yagami Hikari
Season 02
Tri
Fandom
The first season of Digimon coincided with the spread of the personal use of the Internet. More than twenty years later, fans still celebrate the Odaiba Memorial Day on August 1st, publishing new content or participating in varied activities throughout the globe. Character and relationship shrines appeared on GeoCities and Angelfire, and stories were uploaded to FanFiction.Net.
Major websites
While small shrines were popular, there were a number of large sites that dominated the Digimon fandom. LELOLA.net was started in 1997 with coverage of a few of the anime being broadcasted in North America at that time, namely Digimon, Card Captor Sakura, and Yu-Gi-Oh!. Creator Pan-chan maintained the site for 11 years, closing it in 2008. It remains available online as an archive.
LELOLA hosted massive collection of Digimon icons. These weren't created by LELOLA's staff (most likely have been lifted from Japanese fansites) and were in turn taken for use on other Digimon sites. The icons, particularly the small, blinking heads of the human characters, were a staple of fan shrines. They were occasionally edited to make original characters or personalize a character for that site (such as Goth TK).
Another large and popular site, and an affiliate of LELOLA, was The Digimon Experience. It provided fans with screenshots from the show, which other sites used, often without removing the watermark located in the right corner.
Smaller character and pairing shrines were also created by fans of the show. Unfortunately, when GeoCities closed, many of these sites were lost.
Ships
Adventure Ships
The first two seasons of Digimon in particular had fandom activity revolving around ships. Characters were often paired into slash couples, due to the pairing off that took place in the show. Generally, portmanteaus are the preferred method for naming ships.
Well, here it is: one of the major things that makes Digimon different from every other anime series in existence: the widespread use of Coupling Terms. Also known as Shipping Names, Couple Names, and Pairing Designations.These, for anyone who DIDN'T know, are those strange words which combine two parts of the names of two characters and throw 'em together to get a quick word which means: "I am a word that is short for a pairing between so-and-so & so-and-so..." Examples include: Taito, Mimato, Taiora, Mizzy, Jyoura, Daikeru, and many, MANY more...
Now, this isn't something that just simultaneously popped into the heads of every digimon fan everywhere all at the same time through mass hypnosis by spork-wielding aliens... Nope, there is actually some truth behind all this madness. In the Japanese fan community, anime pairings are sometimes referred to in this manner. HOWEVER, in the Jap system, these words were only used for YAOI AND YURI PAIRINGS! Yaoi (Male-Male relationship) and Yuri (Female-Female relationship) pairings are quite common in the Jap world of anime. So, you might see these words floating around on banners and pictures of characters all over the place on Japanese fansites... Well, apparently, SOMEONE did, because the words Taito, Jyoushirou, Daikeru, and Kouchi began popping up on AMERICAN fansites pretty quickly. Now, I'm not sure who started it, it may have been a number of people at once, but the fact remains that these words were not explained thoroughly to the mainly American-entertainment-only fans of Digimon. Thus, the Coupling Titles were brought forth unto Digimon fanstuffs...[1]
Popular ships included:
- Taito or Yamachi - A slash pairing of Yagami Taichi and Ishida Yamato
- Sorato - A het pairing of Yamato and Takenouchi Sora
- Taiora - A het pairing of Taichi and Sora
- Takari - A het pairings of Takaishi Takeru and Yagami Hikari
- Daiken or Kensuke - A slash pairing of Motomiya Daisuke and Ichijouji Ken
The ending of 02 was heavily divisive among fandom due to the canon ships, particularly Sorato sinking both Taiora and the fan-preferred Taito. The pairing of Miyako/Ken was also despised, as it broke up Dakien and to many fans came out of nowhere, despite Miyako visibly having a crush on Ken.
Tamers Ships
As the show had a much smaller main cast than the previous canon, the number of available ships was also much smaller. The most common pairings were as follows:
- Rika/Takato - The most popular ship, a het pairing between two of the three main tamers
- Rika/Ryo - An opposing ship, pairing Rika with a tamer she met in the digital world
- Henry/Takato - the most common slash pairing, again focusing on two members of the main trio
- Jeri/Takato - another het pairing. can work in tandem with Rika/Ryo, for those opposed to Rika/Takato
- Henry/Rika - het pairing, the least common coupling between the main three
- Kenta/Kazu - Slash pairing, mostly uncontested
- Jeri/Rika - One of the most popular Femslash pairings in the Digimon fandom
- Rika/Renamon - Also a common femslash pairing, one of the more popular human/digimon pairings
Frontier Ships
- Junpei/Izumi - A het pairing of Shibayama Junpei and Orimoto Izumi
Gen Relationships
Online Resources
- The Digimon Wiki
- Megchan's Digimon Sekai - A popular information site in the early 2000s that now exists in an archived form.
- Digimon Spirit
- Meimi's Guide to Digimon Fusion Names (June 2001)
Livejournal Communities
- Digimon Fanatics - Created in 2001 and still active.
Fanfiction
Podcasts
- Podigious! - Started in early 2014 and still running.
Mailing Lists
- Digimon-DE "Digimon DE". Archived from the original on 2003-12-20. Description: "Welcome to the world of Digimon. With this mailing list everyone can share pictures from Digimon and give there comments about it."
- Daisukeken "Daisukeken". Archived from the original on 2003-10-06. Description: "This is a mailing list dedicated to Ken Ichijouji and Daisuke Motomiya of Digimon 02. That's Davis Motomiya if you only watch the dub, however. Fanfiction and discusson are welcomed and encouraged. There is no list archive any more. If anything NC-17/lemon/X rated is posted here, I ask that it be clearly marked as such in the disclaimer so people will know if they wish to read it or not. This is a yaoi/shounen-ai/same-gender romance list, so please no one flame. This means you."