KuwabaraTheMan
Banned
On June 26th, 1997, Bandai released the Digital Monster pet, the first in their line of a new sister series to the Tamagotchi focused around raising monsters and battling them with your friends. Created primarily by Volcano Ota (who remained involved with the franchise until a few years ago) and artist Kenji Watanabe (who remains the main Digimon artist to this day), the original Virtual Pet had a total of 14 Digimon that could be raised by the player (Botamon, Koromon, Agumon, Betamon, Greymon, Tyaranomon, Devimon, Meramon, Airdramon, Seadramon, Numemon, MetalGreymon (the original blue virus type one, not that orange one you're thinking of), Mamemon and Monzaemon). These humble beginnings would lead, over the next few years, to a massive series spanning almost every medium imaginable.
In 1998, the very first Digimon video game was released, Digital Monster ver. S for the Sega Saturn. The first manga series, V-Tamer, began shortly afterwards, and would run for 5 years. The original anime began in March of 1999, with the first movie premiering the day before, and the series continued from there. There would be four straight years of Digimon anime aired through 2003, and although the series took a rest on TV after that, it would never be gone for more than a few years.
Today, Digimon is a massive cross media franchise including eight different TV anime (including the currently running and very good Digimon Universe: Appli Monsters), nine movies, a currently running OVA series, more than 50 video games across 16 different platforms, seven different card games, numerous manga, more than 50 Virtual pets and Digivices, and much more beyond that.
While once the number of Digimon was quite small, today there are roughly 1300 Digimon from numerous different eras of the series. Perhaps more than anything else, the series has shown the tremendous capacity to evolve (pun definitely intended) itself. Some of this has been out of necessity as the series has faded from the view from time to time, but some of it has been even during times of strength. The same franchise has produced the original V-Pets, V-Tamer, Digimon World 1, Adventure, Frontier, the Project X series, Xros Wars, Cyber Sleuth and Appmon, and somehow it has always managed to maintain the absolute essence of what it means to be Digimon. The ideas behind Digimon, the digital world, and all of the associated concepts remain as thrilling today as they were 20 years ago.
In about 7 hours, Bandai will be hosting a livestream for the 20th anniversary. They'll be showing off the new 20th anniversary V-Pet that officially launches today (although some people in Japan have had them for a couple of days), show off some more footage from Hacker's Memory, and probably more besides that. With Appmon about to enter its final act coming off a string of really strong episodes, the V-Pet line coming back, Hacker's Memory looking amazing, and lots more stuff being teased, it's possible that there's never been a better time to be a Digimon fan.
So let's all share our memories of this great series that has changed so much over the years, and our hopes for what we'd like to see from Digimon in the future.
And any fans who weren't aware of it, feel free to drop in the Community Thread if you want to. We don't bite.
