Digimon (Franchise History)

==Introduction==
Well it's been a long time since I wrote a blog here. In the last few weeks when I got more active around here I was writing about Digimon and then stopped for a while after finishing Hackers Memory because I would have to transfer the PS4 files to my Laptop and only then be able to continue the blog but soon then I ended up traveling for a long time and because I was away from home I could not write. Recently new Digimon franchise projects have been announced (like the Digimon Frontier CD Drama and the new game Digimon Survive) and I came back to feel like writing about Digimon.
The theme of this blog has to do with the development of the Digimon franchise over time. As you may know the Digimon franchise has already had many products created by several people, unlike other franchises that fall into "Canonical Universe" and "Expanded Universe" the Digimon franchise is not simple so because those who have power over the franchise are companies who do not care about the idea of "canonical" and there is no one who can be said to be "father of Digimon" since many people worked to give life to this franchise.
One curious point about Digimon is that every person who works in the franchise may be their vision of what is "Digimon" and many of them take their works as being a way of showing what they think, than actually creating a single large cohesive universe. This leads to the great confusion that many people have about the canon in the Digimon franchise. There is no single official explanation of what exactly is valid in the Digimon franchise, the only manifestations about "validity" are vague statements such as "we want the person accompanying the franchise to draw their own conclusions, there is not a single interpretation about what has in the works ".
This type of thinking about the development of franchises is usually very common (another franchise that works with this is Sonic The Hedgehog), however for what is established in this Wikia the definition of canon needs to be more direct and Digimon have a "anything is valid "without an explanation is something that many may find unfair. The usefulness of this blog is, then, to explain how the Digimon franchise developed and thus establish how one works the development of its history.
But of course this is to give you an excuse to post this here, another reason for me to realize this post is to show how the development of the Digimon franchise had several ideas which led to the creation of this rich universe that I love so much to follow and so , I would like more people to know about this. But of course if I did not do this by saying it could be used to clarify the "canon of Digimon" hardly anyone would pay attention to what I am saying. So yeah, you can say that I'm a bad guy 0v0
==Sources==
I warn you from now that this blog will use many interviews given by the producers of the Digimon franchise, official sites created by the production team or even tweets where the producers answered something. Here is a list of these sources:
*Digimon 20th Anniversary Artbook Kenji Watanabe Special Interview;
*Digimon Production Secrets 4 Tenya Yabuno Interview;
*Digimon Production Secrets 1 Kenji Watanabe Interviewed by Producer Habu;
*"Digivolving Spirits" Commercialization Commemorative Special Dialogue! Digimon Creator's Talk Kakudou x Kenji Watanabe × Volcano Ota;
*Interview with Watanabe Kenji and As'maria;
*Kakudou talks about The New Digimon Project;
*Kakudou Hiroyuki Tweets about Digimon Adventure;
*Kakudou Hiroyuki Livetweeting about Digimon Adventure;
*Hiroyuki Kakudou’s “This Week’s Digimon”;
*Hiroyuki Kakudou’s “This Week’s Digimon 02”
*DiGiFES interview with Kenji Watanabe;
*Full-Text Interview with Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth’s Producer and Director;
*Direct Interview with Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth’s Character Designer Suzuhito Yasuda;
*Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth’s Sub-Quests, Kouji Watanabe’s Fusion of Digital and Occult;
*Direct Interview with Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth’s Eater Designer Ito Oogure;
*Interview with Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth’s Sound Producers Masafumi Takada and Jun Fukuda;
*AnimeNewsNetwork INTERVIEW: DIGIMON STORY: CYBER SLEUTH'S KAZUMASA HABU;
*Gematsu interview with Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth producer Kazumasa Habu at NYCC 2015;
*Push Square Interview: We Talk Everything Digital with the Producer of Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth;
*Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Interview – Talking Accessibility, Cross-Save and Localization;
*Gamereactor Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Kazamasa Habu Interview;
*Gematsu interview with Digimon World: Next Order producer Kazumasa Habu at NYCC 2016;
*AnimeNewsNetwork Digimon World: Next Order's Kazumasa Habu;
*Digimon Producer Speaks on Its Western Resurgence, Next Order Changes, and What’s In Store;
*Famitsu interview with Habu about Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Hackers Memory;
*Interview about Digimon World ReDigitize Decode;
*Digimon Staff Q and A Livestream;
*4Gamer Interview with Habu;
*SPECIAL TALK! with Hiromi Seki & Hiroyuki Kakudou;
*SPECIAL INTERVIEW! with Hiroyuki Kakudou;
*SPECIAL TALK! with Satoru Nishizono;
*Digimon Adventure Novel Afterwords;
*MAMORU HOSODA DIGIMON INTERVIEW;
*digimontamers resources;
*Digimon Tamers Update;
*Digimon Adventure 15th Anniversary Special Project Digivice Developer Interview Part 1;
*Appmon Staff Interview from Animedia.
As you can see there are many interviews and many of them are only in Japanese, many of these interviews have already been translated by others like Onkei, Kazarinn, NohAcro and Garm. Without these translations, it would be much harder to make this blog. I will use their translation as the basis for most of this text (I do not say the whole text because there are interviews already in English and other interviews that have not yet been translated).
In addition some of the things I will use come from Tweets' responses made by Kakudou, you can check their origin here.
==Digital Monster: The Beginning==
Digimon was originally a franchise created by the company known as WiZ CO., Ltd., A company established in September 1986 that is currently part of Bandai Namco Holdings Inc. (BNHD) also known as Bandai Namco Group. Its function was to plan, design, develop and manufacture character-based products always following its motto of creating that can make someone have fun, or as it is officially defined "遊 び 心" (Playfulness). Throughout its history it develops franchises like Mushi Shinobi, Tamagotchi, Primo Puel, and of course Digimon.
In its beginning the company was defined as being very small, with only a small number of 4/5 people that really stood out. Anyway, the WiZ team did a lot of different jobs, but it took almost 10 years since the company was founded (1986) for it to make the first Tamagotchi and thus start developing the story we know.
At the time of 1996/1997, WiZ was working for Bandai in a toy division manufacturing the Tamagotchis, which were a great success, these virtual animals were very focused on "cuteness" and seemed to be focused on a female target audience. However the division that WiZ worked was focused on boys' toys and so a "Tamagotchi" for boys would be made and would focus on the idea of friends doing battles with each other.
The initial project would be called Otokotchi (おとこっち), which would serve to link the new product to the Tamagotchi franchise, but linked to boys. Tamagotchi uses the words "Tamago" (たまご - meaning Egg) and U/Wotchi (ウォッチ - meaning Watch). the new product would keep the final "tchi", but the first letters would be changed to refer to "Otoko" (男) meaning "Boy", thus being the perfect definition of a Tamagotchi for boys. In the future the name was changed to Capsule Zaurus (カプセルザウルス), and this originated from the game created by Bandai for NES known as "Pocket Zaurus: Ju Ouken no Nazo". However the idea of monsters in Capsules would be similar to those of other companies (maybe a reference to the development of Pokémon?) And the project had to change again. Then the idea of "beings that exist in data form" arose and with that Digital Monster, or simply Digimon, began to be developed.
As I said before, WiZ in the past had about 4 great members, and this became about 5 with the arrival of Kenji Watanabe as a designer. These "5" people (who also worked with Tamagotchi) were the ones who developed Digimon in a group known as "Digital Monster Series Planning & Development Team" (デジタルモンスターシリーズ企画開発) and it is where we had people like Kenji Watanabe and Oota Kensuke.
::Habu: I see. At that time, in how many teams did you work?
::Watanabe: People working on "Tamagotchi" were also working on "Digimon", but in all there were about 3 projects. In Tamagotchi I worked with the Sprites / Dots, but in Digimon I decided to carry out the design mainly because I wasn't good doing the Sprites/Dots. At that time I asked people in the games department to do the Sprites / Dots.
::Habu: So there were about 5 people on the Digimon development team?
::Watanabe: That's about the number of people, specifically.
::::Source
The development of Digimon as beings that exist in a virtual world through data was the initial establishment of what the Digimon were. They would be computer viruses that spread through the internet, something very simple and without much complexity.
The appearance of the Digimon was more defined through "I want this." This was something that helped him in creative freedom because he was developing the Digimon and only then would his 16x16 Sprite be decided. With immense creative freedom Kenji Watanabe began to develop the Digimon, this would later change in the next releases of the franchise.
The first Digimon created by Kenji Watanabe were Tyrannomon and Agumon being they a request of the team who wanted character that looked like dinosaurs.
::Please tell us about the very first Digimon you drew.
::Watanabe: That would be Tyranomon and Agumon. Since our initial idea was to be able to take ‘dinosaurs’ for a stroll, I used that idea as a base to design these two. That’s why they ended up on the package illustration as well. I often get asked “Why is Tyranomon on the cover?”, but that’s just because it’s the most normal-looking (laughs). I didn’t want to place the coolest, most important Digimon on the package illustration. Tyranomon is, in a way, part of the normal evolutionary line; if you raised your Digimon well you’d get Greymon, while you’d get Numemon in the opposite case. The way the evolution lines split up is based on the Tamagotchi, but I wanted Digimon to portray the extremes even further, which made me design them how I did.
Having been created as a "Tamagotchi" for boys there was still a great influence of the cute style of the characters. This together with the idea of relating the colors of the characters to their type of power made the drawings look similar to those of another franchise from another company, so Watanabe had to look for another source of inspiration. What helped in this development were the Western Comics (Mainly Spwam), which gave the idea of trying to make Digimon look cool and strong in the eyes of children. This was unified with the "Cute" style of the Tamagotchis and with that Digimon would have a unique fusion of "cool", "strong" and "cute". Another production that influenced the work of Watanabe was "The Dark Cyrstal" being this more noticed in the creation of the character Tokomon. In addition Watanabe would still be inspired by Japanese productions like Shin Megami Tensei and Saint Seiya, being an inspiration to the idea of Digimon based on mythological beings from Data that were collected. Watanabe also claims that he used other producers who were popular at the time as inspiration.
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As you noted, I did not say much about a in-universe story. This happens because there really was not a world to be explored, because there was no way to create it. The Digimon franchise existed practically only on LCD toys with a screen of max 16x16 Pixels, how to create a great world using it? Well, you can't. The WiZ team had no way of creating a well-crafted storyline, all it could do was produce books that told how to play Digimon, who are the Digimon, and for those who did not buy the books it would be possible to know a bit about Digimon through the site, Digimon Channel.
::Watanabe: the contrary, I and the other folks and WiZ don't really have the avenue to do something like that. We don't really have a platform for us to express a certain world-view, so we have no choice but to rely on the games and anime series for that. While we can say "this is the world we want to portray, so please stick to the established setting", it's hard to actually stick to it. We can't put a lot of information into LCD games, so it is hard for [LCD games] to step out of the 'toy' territory to become an actual media platform.
::Habu: However, because of how little information can be included [in the LCD toys], it leaves a lot of room for ambiguity, so wouldn't you think that [the world portrayed in LCD toys] also expands according to the consumers' imagination?
::Watanabe: That's our intention. We set the base for the characters, and establish the relationships between them. There have been [characters] that were more neglected, but there's always the possibility that they might be picked up one day.
::::Source
The original Digimon toy, known as Digital Monster, would have 5 versions in the format of LCD toys created by WiZ (a sixth version was created by Bandai Asia, but without the involvement of WiZ) and more than 20 books were released with tips, Digimon profiles, explanation of how the product works and more. In some of these books there existed a set of comic books that were used to create a history that facilitated the explanation of as it was Digimon. It was not exactly a world-building, but only Humans who played with the Digital Monster and sought to be the best (or as it is defined in the title of the book, the Digimon King). As you may have noticed from the picture on the right, these stories were not drawn by Kenji Watanabe but by the designer Tenya Yabuno, who in addition to drawing these stories also drew other artworks for the manuals.
It is worth noting that shortly after the release of the fifth version of Digital Monster a game for SEGA Saturn was released, known as "Digital Monster Ver.S: Digimon Tamers" this game has introduced in a more accessible way a story about Hackers, Digimon Researchers and the group of People who trained the Digimon finally earned a name, Tamers. Anyway, not even people like Kenji Watanabe remember more about the development of the game (Watanabe at most remembers people asking him to draw a character) and apparently no data from the era of game development remained basically "Digital Monster Ver.S: Digimon Tamers" that almost nothing more is known about its development, even the first Digital Monster also had their lost data and currently artworks of the time and the own memory of the producers is the The only thing left to know how it all was.
In late 1998 and early 1999 the Digimon franchise was going to go through a major overhaul, finally the WiZ team would set a worldview for the franchise beyond the few profiles that existed at the time. This is the beginning of the Pendulum Age.
==Digital Monster Pendulum: The Beginning of the World View of Digimon==
As you may have noticed at first Digimon did not have a well-developed story. The only thing established is that they were computer virus that existed in a cyberspace and they can evolve in superior forms. One day they were discovered by human scientists and they eventually became popular with people who trained them and these people were called Tamers. There were Hackers and Scientists in this story, but it was very basic. After the series Digital Monster in 1998 immediately a new series was planned, this one would be called "Digital Monster: Pendulum" or simply Pendulum. It was in this development that the WiZ team decided to define what the "Digimon World" would be.
If you are going to read the old profiles of Digital Monster, you will not have a real world-building in them. Places like File Island, Dark Area, Firewall and others that would become crucial parts of some of the original Digmon (Like Devimon and Meramon) simply did not exist.In Digimon Pendulum the world we know would finally gain a more recognizable form. As it was in the old Digital Monster WiZ had no way to create a very developed world in V-Pets and the profiles of the characters was still the best way to create this world, they could be accessed in the Digimon Pendulum Gallery on the official website of the franchise, the Digimon Channel.
One of the main additions to the Digimon Lore was the existence of two locations, File Island and Folder Continent. The Digimon Pendulum had several improvements over the first toy, in addition to more Digimon they also had more evolutions, a new evolutionary level (Ultimate), it would be possible to merge Digimon and the existing Digimon were reformulated. One thing that was noticed was, the new Digimon became much stronger than the old ones. It was still possible to conduct battles between the old Digital Monster and the Pendulum, and almost always a Digimon coming from the Digimon Pendulum wins. To solve this problem, it was said that two Digimon existed, the File Island natives and the Folder Continent natives, and the Folder Continent natives were so strong that the File Island natives did not even compare to the Folder natives. Other concepts that were created at the time of Pendulum are: Net Ocean, Dark Area (Also known as Dark Side) and Fire Wall.
One of the reasons for this was a request from V Jump / Weekly Shonen Jump for Digimon to have a big world, since the articles that would be made for the Digimon Pendulum would have to have a larger content than the ones they had for the old Digital Monster . The world then would develop according to the wishes of the publishers and it was with the Digimon World game for PlayStation that the world became even bigger.
::Habu: How was the worldview created? Before the anime, you did the game "Digimon World" (Released in 1999 for the PlayStation). Did you use it to develop the worldview?
::Watanabe: "Digimon World" began to develop when we talked about wanting to play a game. In "Digimon" at that time, although it did not have a great developing worldview, there was vaguely something that we could consider a setting. Then, with the consultation of producers of home games of that time, we decided to create a "File Island" that would be the setting of history. Just as the LCD Toys were being made, as we were doing the Digimon Pendulum, we developed it using the setting we created so far.
::::Source
The importance of Pendulum to the Digimon franchise was precisely to try to start developing a story, but ... how useful is that? ell, even at the time of the initial development of Digimon, when nothing was actually established (ie in the Digital Monster era in 1997), the same person who was responsible for some artworks in the Digital Monster manuals, Tenya Yabuno, was also developing a one-shot of Digimon that would be serialised in Akamaru Jump (A seasonal edition of Weekly Shōnen Jump) with help of his friend Hiroshi Izawa. As nothing in Digimon had actually been established and there was a little contact between Yabuno and the WiZ team (remember that internet communication was still not very common so they could not simply communicate via email) and after some initial conversations, the result would only be checked when the one-shot was published. C'mon Digimon was very similar to the other stories that Yabuno drawn in the manuals, it was basically a human world where Digimon was a popular game and humans trained Digimon in tournaments. Of course, C'mon Digimon had a much higher sentimental dose than the other stories, which makes this one-shot more unique compared to the early Digimon era, where there was almost no concept ever defined. That's why C'mon Digimon is defined as a totally separate work, but his concept of using a world where Digimon was actually a toy in the Human World can be seen as a basis for many things in the future of the franchise. Anyway, both Hiroshi and Yabuno would become very important persons for the development of Digimon in the future.
Digimon in its early days did not have a real vision of a great future out of LCD toys because there was a story to be told. There was the idea of one day turning into a manga or an animation, according to Watanabe he even went to Shueisha. From that came the manga that until today is considered by some fans as one of the best stories of the franchise, Digimon Adventure V-Tamer 01.
::Watanabe:There was a story of trying to make an animation, and there was also one of trying to make a manga. I remember going to Shueisha.
::::Source
===Digimon Advenuture V-Tamer 01: Expand the Pendulum===
Between the development of C'mon Digimon and V-Tamer both Izawa and Yabuno worked on another manga before that (I believe it to be this), but as soon as the production of the other manga finished it started the development of V-Tamer.
Even with Digimon World establishing a worldview to be worked on, it was still something small. Izawa, Yabuno and the editors met two or three times a month thinking about how to develop a story since there was little to be told. In the initial plans it was proposed to work with the same Digimon World setting using File Island, anyway with the release of Digimon Pendulum and with it a new continent to be exploited, the scenario changed to Folder Continent while File Island only would be mentioned a few times. V-Tamer would develop from the same world idea created in Digimon World, where Digimon actually existed in another world and became popular among humans through the V-Pets. In fact the characters of the manga were people like others in our world who had fun with the Digimon, it is worth remembering that this was something that was common among the producers of WiZ. As they had no idea that a vast world would be created with manga and anime, they simply seek to create something fun. The manga would be very faithful to the little that was until then, the beginning of the manga itself was a reference the difference between the Digital Monster (File Island) and the Pendulum (Folder Continent) then who read the manga, could see many relations with the LCD toys.
::Yabuno: The start of this franchise is really quite chaotic (laughs).
::Watanabe: We might be the creators, but we did play our products as we worked on them. We just wanted to create a fun product; we didn’t even imagine it would get turned into an anime or a manga series. Not only did we include the Tamagotchi’s Oyajitchi in Digimon as Nanimon, we also modeled Mojyamon after our former department lead, Hongo-san; even the Special Move 'Hang On Death’ was named to sound similar to the phrase “Hongo desu” [meaning “This is Hongo”.] (laughs).
::Habu: I would like to ask more about the story, but back then, Digimon’s worlbuilding had not been that well-developed yet, had it?
::Watanabe: We did have the setting used for the Playstation game Digimon World, but to put it in other words, that was the most complete sense of a 'world’ we had in Digimon at the time.
::Habu: So how did you go about your worldbuilding, with so little to go on?
::Yabuno: I would meet up with the editors and Izawa-san about 2-3 times a month, where we would put our heads together to brainstorm for ideas. The manga’s story would take inspiration from the ideas we brainstormed, but visuals-wise, we tried to model it after File Island, from the games. I was still young back then and wasn’t that experienced in the ways of the world, so I still remember combing through my experiences to find inspiration and ideas I could use.
::::Digimon Production Secrets 4 Tenya Yabuno Interview.
In addition to creating a new concepts (Like Overwrite, Super Ultimate, etc.) many new Digimon have also been created. This includes the whole line of V-Dramon, Holy Angemon, Arkadiamon, Demon and several other Digimon that until today only exist in the manga. This is due to the fact that besides the world of Digimon being small until then, also had a small amount of Digimon that could be availed in the development of the history, so Izawa and Yabuno had total freedom to create new Digimon. It was also thanks to Holy Angemon that the idea of main evolutionary lines was used, since until then this was not a concept that was part of the original V-Pets.
::Watanabe: The V-dramon line is Yabuno-san’s original creation. Yabuno-san’s V-dramon was so cute, I felt that I had to create something even cuter for Digimon Adventure 02, which led me to create V-mon.
::Watanabe: Yabuno-san has designed other Digimon as well. I was the one who designed Angemon, but Yabuno-san designed Holyangemon, Angemon’s evolution.
::Yabuno: That’s right, I did Holyangemon too. Watanabe: We discussed about it with each other while working on the design.
::Habu: Oh right, Holyangemon debuted in the manga first.
::Yabuno: There weren’t that many Digimon back then, especially at the very beginning, so I ws actually given a fair bit of freedom to create new Digimon.
::Watanabe: During the initial stages, there weren’t a lot of 'orthodox’ evolution patterns like Angemon to Holyangemon.
::Habu: Yabuno-san, was it you who created Demon too?
::Yabuno: The design was done by me, yes; when Izawa-san and I were discussing about creating a final boss, we settled on the name 'Demon’ for its straightforwardness.
::::Source.
The manga would continue to be made until the year 2003, and we have not even started talking about animes. It took me a while to start talking about the animation, because a lot of things would change with what would become Digimon Adventure.
===Pendulum: Digimon Adventure===
At the beginning of the development of Digimon, there was no kind of project for creating an anime. This was actually a surprise to the WiZ team, since Digimon did not have a built-in world to do an anime, so producing such an anime was something unexpected.
::Watanabe: It was selling normally from the beginning, I was working with V-Jump and Weekly Jump. So development generally gave the impression that it was more complicated than Tamagotchi. Well, it may have been because Tamagotchi had been a super hit, but I thought the implementation of the media was going well. However, I was hearing that the figures were not selling well. I wonder if it was more receptive play with the Digital Monster than with the figures. As in Tamagotchi the content of the game was also interesting, I wondered if the characters were that they were not well accepted. So I thought Digimon would not be able to sell well, even if we removed the figures.
::Habu: Did that change when Digimon was animated?
::Watanabe: That's right. But as it didn't have a story at the time, I was surprised when I heard that they wanted to make an animation.
::::Source
Hiromi Seiki is believed to be the first to be consulted and then she went to talk to Hiroyuki Kakudou. The only thing defined so far was that it was going to be an animation for the Digital Monster electronic toy. Few things were defined at that time, but File Island was already a well-known scene because of the Digimon World and then it was decided that it would serve as the setting for the beginning of the anime. The anime's function would be to further expand the world created in Digimon World and Digimon Pendulum, because of the focus on the File Island in the beginning the anime would be called "Digimon Island Drift Record" (『デジモン島漂流記』) or “Digimon Island Adventure Story” (『デジモン島冒険記』). It is easy to notice the use of the Digimon World scenarios within Digimon Adventure, the File Island scenario was completely removed from Digimon World itself and several episodes served as a way to explore these scenarios.
::Hiroyuki Kakudou I believe it was in August 1998 that the idea was brought to me for the first time. Around then, the only decision made about it was that we wanted to make an anime based on the electronic game.
::Hiromi Seki I was consulted at a coffee shop in Shinjuku, where I was told about the project and asked whether or not I would be able to handle it. The only thing that was decided within the company at that point was that Digimon was to be animated. In the original game, monsters are the only characters that show up in it, so I had to check to make sure it would be all right to produce human characters too and for the Digimon to speak words. Although I don’t remember if that was before or after I’d met Kakudou-san…
::Hiroyuki Kakudou: I think the idea that there would be human characters was what I heard first. But it was still vague at this time whether the show’s basic factor of one human/one Digimon that you see now would come about. Around the latter part of August, we started thinking about all kinds of settings and establishments. Because File Island already existed in the game, we decided on that spot as our first stage. We pretty much started the whole process off by saying “Okay, this File Island place is where everything will begin,” and we had absolutely no idea on what sort of story to develop from there. When I look back at it now, though, it appears as if we had planned everything from the start. (laughs)
::::Source
Although I first started talking about Digimon Adventure V-Tamer 01, it should be known that all the first products of the brand "Digimon Adventure" began to be produced at the same time. Yabuno and Izawa would be responsible for the manga, Kakudou would be responsible for the anime and would still have a movie that would be produced by someone else, Mamoru Hosada. The main character Taichi had his name decided by Toei, while the appearance was chosen by the Yabuno. Although Taichi had a design by Toei, as he would be the same character in both anime and manga, and the manga was already in planning longer than the anime (and would also be the first to be released) the design of Yabuno was chosen, besides that the original design of the Toei would be something considered weak in relation to the one designed by the Yabuno.
::Yabuno: Nakatsuru-san (Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru, an animator and character designer for Digimon Adventure) had done up image boards beforehand, but since the manga would begin serialisation first, he decided to use the character I’d designed out of respect for that fact.
::Watanabe: From what I remember, the protagonist design they were considering for the anime at that time felt a bit 'weak’ image-wise. There was some discussion that since the manga would begin first, why not consult Yabuno-san about the design?
::::Source.
Now I'm going to start talking when it all started to take a different direction. Kakudou was on hiatus from his work with Toei when Hiromi Seiki called him to produce a new anime. Kakudou accepted the proposal because he wanted to innovate. A new series of Ultraman was being made and it would aim to bring new ideas through a genre that had not been used until then, Kakudou wanted to do the same through an animation. And he was lucky, since Digimon did not have a plot defined by then, and although the main Digimon were chosen based on the toys, the human characters would be completely original. Kakudou then saw the opportunity to undertake his own project. He asked Bandai for total creative freedom in the story in exchange for the anime's production being turned to the publicity of the toys that Bandai would make, seeing the opportunity to make money Bandai clearly accepted. Kakudou took advantage of this to ask permission that the Digimon could regress to previous forms, this would facilitate the production of the anime since in time the Digimon would be getting more and more detailed and to draw the anime would be more difficult with the Digimon always being in its highest form. Although people like Volcano Ota disagreed with that (Actually, Ota today says he does not remember complaining about the proposal) because of Bandai, that was accepted. I believe that this was accepted because Bandai saw the possibility of making toys exploiting this characteristic, this actually happened and these toys are coming back for sale these days, and it seems that all people like them.
It was defined that in history there would be seven humans and after that, a new human would join the team. The story of the characters would be based on their name, Kakudou had discovered a program that predicted the future of characters based on their names, so the names should be presented to Hiromi who would analyze their luck and after that would be defined if the character would be accepted or not.
The film on the other hand, did not begin with an idea of what would be done. At first it had only been defined that there would be a movie and an animation after the movie, but it was never defined that there would be a relation between the two. In addition the V-Jump entered the project as shown above and with that the three projects were placed as one, so the Taichi character would be used in all three. In the film also was created the character Hikari, she caught the attention of the producers of the anime for having been developed in a very cute way and so it was decided after she would be the eighth child.
But if on the one hand Hosada did not have a base to develop the story, on the other hand Kakudou used all his creativity to change much of what was known of Digimon until now. The innovation of anime in comparison to games would be the source of evolution, Kakudou wondered the use of the term "Evolution" within the franchise, because it did not resemble what evolution was in his conception. So, Kakudou decided to create a new idea of what evolution would be, he explained this in a series of tweets that you can see here. Basically, Kakudou began to think that the best solution would be to relate "Evolution" to something non-physical, and so the appeal of Digimon Adventure would be that the key to evolution would be the development of its human partners. Basically Kakudou imagined that the Digimon would be the soul of their partners and as the partners matured mentally, their souls would mature and thus evolve.
This is very symbolic, is not it? Well actually Kakudou could simply say "Imagine that and because of that this thing happens" and basically use the cliché that power of friendship is the key to victory, but Kakudou went beyond that. Kakudou imagined that if the Digimon were the soul of the partners, and the evolution of humans would depend on the Digimon then the evolution of humans would be in their souls. So Kakudou decided to introduce Platonic concepts within the franchise, where the quest for the evolution of the Digimon resembled humans losing their physical form and becoming purely souls going into a higher world. It was then that Kakudou happened to see Digimon in a completely different way from everything that had been created until then. Digimon in its beginning did not have a well-developed scenario, but something that was defined at the time was "A Digimon is created when you attach a wireframe model and a texture to a computer virus program”. Simple does not it? But for Kakudou the Digimon were not really that. For Kakudou the Digimon were actually spiritual beings. Basically according to Kakudou the "Digimon" were called "Digimon" because they were being seen through digital devices. However the "Digimon" already existed much longer, in older times and were seen as Youkais or even deities. "Digimon" would be just the representation of what these spiritual beings were to people using the modern knowledge they had. So for Kakudou the "Digital World" was not really a "Computer World" as the WiZ profiles said, but in fact it was "Idea" another world where Concepts and Souls existed before the Physical World existed. The reason we saw such souls and concepts as Digimon was just what our vision allowed us to see with our development until then. This is something very different from what was defined before, Digimon quit being a franchise of beings living on computers, to be a franchise based on philosophy, psychology and this allowed any other subject could be addressed in it. Kakudou planned three acts for "Digimon Adventure". The first that developed as "Digimon Adventure" was the meeting of humans and the Digimon. Then in "Digimon Adventure 02" we would see a new adventure where problems began to develop between humans and digimon as a result of the first encounter. The third act would be when humans and digimon solved these differences, evolved together and with that they would face another enemy (Neither human or Digimon) that threatened that. However this has not happened, so let's start talking about why this did not happen.
===Pendulum: One World, or Many Worlds?===
As you have seen so far, Digimon has finally created a more meaningful world. WiZ never imagined that such big things would be made of a brand that had not had a story. Everything in Digimon developed so far was done through a union, WiZ had created the brand, but everything the producers created was included in this world. In fact Bandai did not seem to care much for consistency, Digimon was able to succeed until then without having to explain why the manga and anime were different, and both were seen as developments of the Bandai products. This was because ... it was not thought to be a different world. In fact WiZ has created Digimon, but only a single world. Manga and anime were seen only as different visions of the same world, there was no difference between one and the other. What one used the other could use and the WiZ took advantage of it using what the two products developed, after all she could not do something of the type by itself. Of course, the story of "A world but with different views" was something that did not convince the fans, it was then that a Crossover was performed between the manga "Digimon Adventure V-Tamer 01" and "Digimon Adventure 02" and it was decided say that both stories were different worlds. Not only that, but there were many other worlds and it would be that way because it facilitated the development of history.
With anime and manga being different worlds then there were no more confusions about this story, however that was different when that involved what Bandai produced directly. It was undeniable at the time that the Digimon anime was an unexpected success, and it reflected well on the sales of the Digivices. In this situation several products were produced by Bandai taking advantage of the success of the anime, including games. Several games started to have the setting of the anime like base, for example the games of Wonderswan carried out by Ryo Akiyama. But it was not only that, Bandai arranged a way to put the anime in every way possible in the products, even a Card Battle for Playstation had an excuse to put the characters of the anime in it, it was said that they were the same characters of the anime, but there was no consistent way for these games to be part of the anime universe. The same goes for the Digimon films that were produced, as the team was different from the anime team, the movies did not exactly follow the scenario that Kakudou projected for the Digimon Adventure anime. However, Bandai forced Kakudou to connect the anime with the other products. So Kakudou had to include links between the anime and the movies, in addition to even referencing the games (in this case, the presence of the character Ryo). The easiest case was that of the first movie, as the anime had not yet been fully planned it was possible to include the elements of the movie in the anime, however the same could not be said about Our War Game, Golden Digimental or the Digimon games. To this day Kakudou does not answer questions about these other products because he has no idea how he could include them in a way consistent with the anime Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02. This is why Kakudou gave up the idea of creating Digimon Adventure “03”, it was not possible to maintain the coherence of the anime with Bandai insisting for Kakudou to create a relation between the anime and the extra materials (The games and movies makes references to the anime, but often this was ignored in the anime because it was impossible to include these products in a coherent way); so Kakudou decided that the best idea would be to finish the "Digimon Adventure" project with 02 trying to unite 02 with ideas coming from the other project.
::And Akiyama Ryo may have traveled to the digital world by obtaining Digivice in 1999. Did he become a surplus now?
::Kakudou: I do not know about Wallace or Ryo Akiyama at all.
::::Source
::Jippy::Does Sora not have a birthday in Our War Game?
::Kakudou: I’ll only answer things unrelated to the movie.
::::Source
::Jippy:If Sorato was planned from the start of Digimon Adventure, why was there Taiora in Our War Game?
::Kakudou:I had nothing to do with that movie.
::::Source
::::Note: Some translations point out that Kakudou meant that "I do not care about the movie" or "Movies do not matter to me"
Other products were produced on Digimon Adventure that were easier to place in the universe, for example the Drama CDs that often had Kakudou as a production member. With the end of the anime in 02, Kakudou had no way to use most of his ideas. Anyway it's good to remember that Kakudou now had much more knowledge of what could be done with Digimon than at the beginning of Digimon Aventure and he could not let that go. Kakudou then began writing a new project, the Novel of Digimon Adventure. Kakudou asked for the help of Hiro Masaki, who had worked as a scriptwriter for Digimon Adventure, to explain several points that could not be put into the animation. Novel would have a different story progression from that of the anime, although the main points are the same. Reading the novel was necessary to understand various anime scenes that could not be explained in it. If the Digimon Pendulum manuals are a lost jewel of the Golden Age of the Digimon V-Pets, then the Novel of Digimon Adventure is the lost jewel of the time of the anime of Digimon Adventure. I personally love every part of Novel and if I had the opportunity to buy the third novel, I would buy it without any doubts.
With the end of Kakudou's projects, the new concepts of what were Digimon began to be ignored with the passage of time. In the new season that would begin, we would discover how it really should have been a first anime for Digimon.
Oops, I was forgetting. Digimon Adventure V-Tamer was walking with his own story developing what had been created by Izawa and Yabuno, as the anime was succeeding that made them both think they could let the manga develop for a long time. In fact V-Tamer lasted until 2003, but so far there will be no great importance in mentioning V-Tamer so often.
==Digimon Tamers==
Digimon Tamers is a very rich work of content, and just as I just mentioned the most important points of the Adventure production to continue the blog proposal, I will do the same here. Digimon Tamers sought to rescue the essence of Digimon prior to the project Digimon Adventure, Konaka decided that the Digimon should be rethought for the new anime since the characterization of Digimon as it was in the previous series, could be something negative if it was continued. So in Digimon Tamers Konaka decided to rescue the concept of Digimon coming from the beginning of Digimon, where the Digimon were just computer programs that should exist only on the internet.
Also based on the concepts coming from outside the two previous animes, in Digimon Tamers the "Digimon" should already be known, as in Digimon World, V-Tamer, Digital Monster, Pendulum and the other products of the franchise the Digimon would be part of a franchise and were known to several people. However the Digimon really existed and it was not just fiction.
Konaka also did not like how the Evolution was treated in the previous anime, being something that happened at any moment as an “ace-up-the-sleeve” to solving a problem. To solve this problem the Evolution should be something deeper, as a mechanism to still make things interesting Konaka devised a Power Up system using the Digimon Card Game
Konaka also decided that it would work as the Digimon were created. In previous Digimon products, which Konaka would use as the basis for Tamers (ie anything other than the Digimon Adventure anime), it was explained that the Digimon lived on the Internet, however their origin was a mystery. Konaka then decided to create a story of origin for the Digimon where they were in fact a human creation, thus the first work to really define the Digimon as the creation of humans.
As you can see Konaka is developing an anime completely opposite to Digimon Adventure, this follows even in the idealization of the Digital World. Konaka decided to present Digital World as the network itself, but not exactly the network as we know it, but something like a world beyond that network. That would be basically the only thing that relates Digimon Tamers and Digimon Adventure in lore construction, the network as we know it would be a means to transmit information between the Real World and the Digital World.
Digimon Tamers proved to be a completely different series from the previous two animations, but at the same time it was very true to what existed before the animes. In fact Digimon Tamers would fit more like a Digimon anime in its beginning, than Digimon Adventure and even Kakudou admits it.
However, even though it was planned to be a series totally apart from what already existed, Digimon Tamers would also have its problems of consistency with the other products of the franchise. And among them is of course the paradox boy of the Digimon franchise, Ryo Akiyama. The character was already too complicated, he appeared in all the media of Digimon and there was always contradiction between them, anyway before Konaka even entered the Digimon Tamers team it was already decided that Ryo would appear in the anime.
What's the problem ? Well I'm still going to leave it to explain this further, but there is one very strange thing about the Digimon developers, many do not seem to care about what other people do. That is, if somebody did something with some character in some media, it is capable that the people responsible for other media do not know that it happened. Ryo's first appearance on Digimon Tamers was in episode 28 which aired on October 14, 2001. Ryo's last appearance before that was in "Digimon Adventure 02: D1 Tamers", the game ends with Ryo where he was thrown beyond the space-time by Millenniumon. The official explanation of why Ryo went to the world of Digimon Tamers is that after that Ryo ended up in the world of Digimon Tamers without his memory ... However a few months later was released the game "Digimon Tamers: Brave Tamer" that takes place just after the D1 Tamers event, making the entire development of Digimon Tamers as incoherent. Some say that Brave Tamer himself corrected this, but not even in Brave Tamer is actually told that Ryo ended up going to the world of Digimon Tamers (The biggest link is that Guilmon said he felt he would see Ryo), only theorizes that this happened, but never really is said. And yet, even in 2002 after Brave Tamer was released, it was still said that Ryo went to the world of Digimon Tamers because of the Tamers D-1 explosion ... Not even Digimon Tamers was safe from the inconsistencies caused by Ryo.
And the problems are not over yet. Ryo's games are the most troublesome because in fact there was an effort to show that the same character appeared in all Digimon media, but there were still other games that were created using the Digimon Tamers characters that still create a story that apparently was ignored in the anime, such as the Digimon Medley game. The problems were not just in the games. Digimon Adventure was able to maintain a coherence between the animes and films because a lot of the movies happened at a time very distant of the anime (Except of Golden Digimentals), but the same does not happen with Digimon Tamers: The Adventurers' Battle that takes place in the vacations of the characters, but those moments were completely timed in the anime and there is no room for the movie to occur.This time Hiromi Seiki suggested that Konaka did not do this, but he thought he should try to link the movies and anime as much as possible, but unfortunately he can only do it with one movie.
Unfortunately the same can not be done for the other film. Digimon Tamers ended with the Tamers saying goodbye to their Digimon partners, at the end of the anime is left a clifhanger that could show that they have reunited. Why this interpretation? The second Digimon Tamers movie brings all the characters with the Ultimate form released, Crimsom Mode is now available, Beelzemon appears as an ally in addition to being told that the movie takes place 6 months after the events of the battle against D-Reaper. The problem ? It was released a CD Drama made by Konaka himself telling that the Digimon and Tamers were not reunited and even a year later, the most they could do is send a message to the Digimon without knowing if they would actually receive the message. The "Digimon Tamers: The Runaway Digimon Express" was aired on March 2, 2001, the last episode to appear at this time was the 46 that featured the character Justimon.Just as Ryo appeared in Digimon Tamers based on a lack of knowledge of what would occur in Digimon Brave Tamer, "Digimon Tamers: The Runaway Digimon Express" was produced without the production team knowing what would happen at the end of the anime. Although anime producer Tetsuharu Nakamura and screenwriter Hiro Masaki were also writers for the anime, Konaka's lack of involvement (which he admits was not consulted while the film was being developed) led to major inconsistencies between the film and the anime.
Officially the CD Drama determines that although they are incoherent, there would be no problem in considering the film as occurring after the Drama CD ... But Drama CD takes place 1 year after the end of Tamers and the film takes place 6 months after that end. .. Well this is just the excuse given to everything happen to be in the same world. Konaka on the other hand says that for him, considering the film and CD Drama as being two parallel worlds is consistent idea.
After the end of Digimon Tamers a new series would be created, initially it would be thought to do something that also had connection with the beginning of the franchise as well as Digimon Tamers, but with the development of the new series the result was something completely new.
==Digimon Frontier==
===An Abandoned Beginning===
The initial project was from a story where humans merged with Digimon and would participate in a one-on-one battle at a “Battle Stadium”. Some people believe that this more competition-oriented story might be closer to the original Digimon concept coming from the V-Pets. Anyway, this prototype was almost all abandoned. The idea of fusion between humans and digimon was kept giving rise to the "Hybrid", in addition some Digimon were modified to gain a new form that fit in the new setting that is, Digimon Frontier.
===It should be a new beginning...===
The exact idea behind the idea behind Digimon Frontier is unknown, and the lore of this period is better known than its time of development. We can only say that Digimon Frontier could be an attempt to maintain success with the plans of the old Digimon seasons. Regarding the Lore, the idea of Royal Knights was developed (which began by being introduced to Digimon Tamers in advertisements made by Bandai and Toei, but this was done without Konaka's consent, and so this subject was never really addressed in Digimon Tamers ), the Digimon angels were more developed and the Angel Hierarchy determined the existence of the Three Great Angels. On top of that the Dark Area concept, introduced vaguely into Digital Monster Ver.5 and expanded into Digimon Pendulum, has been further expanded. Also a whole new setting about "Warrior Ten" and "Lucemon" was created.
Digimon's multiple media were once again explored. Since the Digimon Adventure 02 the original V-Pets of the WiZ were abandoned to be toy versions of the Digivices of the anime (The last Digimon Pendulum ended up being the Digimon Pendulum ZERO Virus Busters that was very based on Digimon Adventure for having like main attraction the evolution of the Digimon until the formation of Omegamon). So during ADV02 and Tamers the Virtual Pets were D-3 and D-Ark. In fact in Digimon Frontier there was still a toy version of the D-Scanner, but this time a new series of Digimon Pendulum was created, Digimon Pendulum Progress. The two V-Pets brought characters that were getting a special focus on the anime, something that had already become common since Digimon Adventure.
Just like the era of Digimon Adventure to Digimon Tamers there were games that would be in the era of Digimon Frontier, the game was not part of the series "Tamer/Tamers" with the starring of Ryo, and neither was a game that had the participation of the characters of the anime as were in the previous games (Like Digimon Medley), was actually a prequel to the Digimon Frontier story. Digimon D-Project tells the story of the first human summoned by Ofanimon to fight Cherubimon, this human had the mission to protect the Spirits of the Legendary Warriors, fight the Cherubimon that was trying to absorb the Digital World and to save the Four Holy Beast that ended up being controlled for Cherubimon. However different from the "Tamer" series, D-Project was a failure. And what could become a new series of games that would try to resurrect the format of V-Pet of the games of Digimon linking the anime to this, it has become but one more failure.
Now in the manga world Digimon V-Tamer was still being serialized, there was a crossover with Takuya just as there was with Daisuke, also using the idea of alternate universes to explain the interaction of the characters. Despite this, a project for a Digimon Frontier manga sequence was planned. This was known as "Digimon Legendary Skies," however, because of copyright problems with Toei Animation because of the Digimon Frontier characters (there was a plan for the Digimon Frontier characters to appear in the manga), the original plot of the manga ended up having to be rewritten several times until the project ended up being canceled entirely. This was not just an attempt by Bandai's Asian division, Bandai's North American division also attempted to create a sequel to the Digimon Frontier, known as the Digimon Three Force, which would pass several centuries after the initial story. This story would be part of a Virtual Pet initially created for the United States, however the project was canceled.
As in previous anime, Digimon Frontier had a film and a Drama CD, but they were not as important as it was with Adventure, 02 and Tamers. Apparently, what was done in previous years was not successful with Digimon Frontier. Some people attribute the failure to economic crises that were occurring in Japan at the time and this may have ended up harming the success of the new era of the Digimon franchise. Anyway, what is known is that Digimon really had to go through changes before its next evolution.
==Some things left behind==
Here I am going to talk about some details that I did not mention previously but which would be interesting to mention. About the manga so far all it was having was Digimon V-Tamer, started before Digimon Adventure and ended up lasting until after Digimon Frontier. The manga had no planning when it could end, and how the animes were successful Yabuno and Izawa thought they could enjoy all the time of the anime because it did not have great chances of Shueisha want to cancel the project. Thanks to this, the V-Tamer manga turned out to be Digimon's most enduring manga, ending some time after the end of Digimon's anime until then.
As you may have noticed there was a pattern for some of the Digimon products on some things. Usually an earlier series ends up introducing some concept that ends up being explored more completely in the next series. In Digimon Adventure 02 there was the introduction of Four Holy Beast, that would be important characters in the games and in Digimon Tamers. In Digimon Tamers the Bandai / Toei introduced the concept of Zero-ARMS and Royal Knights, which were very prominent in Hyper Colosseum, this would come to be used in Digimon Frontier. The concept of Zero-ARMS had an interesting focus on Digimon Tamers, but the scenario of the Royal Knights was something entered by the company after Tamers' planning without prior notice to Konaka, which made this ignored during the development of Tamers.
Digimon games have developed their own setting. Digimon World ended up having a direct sequence, Digimon Card Battle, and in the future the game Digimon World 2 made several references to the first game, in the end the player ends up going to File Island where the first game happens. The game Digital Card Arena ended up bringing more context to the world of the games of Digimon, it was explained again the existence of multiple digital worlds and also the existence of systems of surveillance that protect these worlds. Throughout this period the Tamer / Tamers games starring Akiyama Ryo made a good hit among fans of the franchise, and in the last game of the series the concept of multiple universes was further explored seeming that certainly the problems of consistency of the franchise seemed be ending (Or not.. thanks Ryo for more plot holes...). Meanwhile in Digimon World 3 a new concept was introduced in the franchise, Servers. In this case the Digital World was formed by several Servers, each Server being an alternative version of each other. Thus there were several worlds within a larger world, Servers within the/connected by the Network.
As said before, it became common in the franchise to introduce the new scenario still in the old series. In March, when Frontier was close finalized, something new was emerging in the franchise. In February the Card Game of Digimon had introduced a new type of card, the Red Frame. The Digimon's name remained the same, but his appearance changed drastically. To complicate matters further, these Cards did not have a story and so it was not possible to know what was happening. On March 28, 2003, with just two days remaining for the end of Digimon Frontier, a new version of Pendulum Progress was released and although the toy contained the Four Holy Beast together, the focus was not on them or on Omegamon, but on new Digimon that have been announced. Fandom did not know what was coming, and only referred to the characters as "Neo/New Digimon", but that was how the new Digimon scenario would born.
==The power of the will to survive==
If you remember well, Digimon began with the V-Pets and the alternative media had as a function to expand the V-Pets, however with the success of the animes the main focus became the animes and the other materials (Including the V- Pets) had the function of expanding the anime. However, no new Digimon anime had been announced, the manga was almost being finalized and then for the first time in years the V-Pets were once again the base material that ushered in the new era of the franchise.
The main material of sales was the new versions of Digimon Pendulum, the Digimon pendulum X that would be divided in five versions(1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0). Each version continues a certain amount of Digimon and was accompanied by a booklet that told the story behind this setting in text format and also manga, the story behind Digimon Pendulum X was known as the Digimon Chronicle. Unlike previous works that actually could tell a story without the necesity of looking at multiple sources, this would be impossible with the Digimon Chronicle. At the very least it was necessary to read the manga that came with each version of the game (they were short chapters of a few pages ending in clifhangers) and also read the chapters available online on the Digimon Channel. Another source of information was the Digimon Hypercolosseum Boosters that also told the story and were often needed to understand some points. For additional information, extra content could be found in the Pendulum X manuals and V-Jump editions.
The new toys explained the existence of X-Antibody that could be new Digimon, but that were stronger than most other Digimon of the same level, or new versions of old Digimon. Digimon redesigns would be made anyway, basically the one who would be responsible for the redesign could do whatever it wanted, being a good entry for new people to become Digimon designers. A very special case was from As'maria, who was a Digimon fan who went on to win several drawing competitions that would be used in Hyper Colosseum, Bandai liked the drawings and then hired As'maria to create multiple X-Antibody Digimon, and even though there are many Digimon X-Antibody non-made by As'maria it is undeniable that many of the As'maria X-Antibody Digimon that created the more general notion of what to expect by an X-Antibody came from As'maria's drawings mainly the X-Antibody versions of the Royal Knights (And they are not just "spikes").
Incredibly, for the first time after the creation of the Digimon Adventure anime it seems that we have a solid story with no plotholes in it and the expanded universe really matters as it is just a simple fragmented story in card games, manuals and information on the Digimon Channel. It seems that Digimon really figured out how to make an expanded universe work out, I guess the normal thing is to hope that from now on it would be reused would not it? Unfortunately not... Yeah Digimon, it seems you can not live without some problems with the universe.
===Once again expand causes problems===
Since the beginning of the Digimon anime, the Digimon franchise was developing more like "the anime does something, the other materials complement," although it takes longer until a new Digimon anime is created, a movie had been planned. This time the film would follow a different route from animes, it would be exclusively based on the scenario developed in the v-pets, so even though the anime started with this function, it ended up creating a new scenario rather than just developing an existing one. The new movie on the other hand would be something practically planned by Bandai-only, and the team that was part of the anime was just there to put it beyond planning. Anyway, it's not as if the animation team had not been able to do what they wanted, since since Digimon Frontier Kakudou had the will to work on a series focused only on the Digimon, and then on Digital Monster X-Evolution he had the opportunity to do so. This is one of the reasons for some changes in the movie scenario, which are the absence of humans who were present in the Digimon Chronicle. Despite the changes, Digital Monsters X-Evolution can be considered a good adaptation of the original material.
As in Frontier, Bandai Asia created a story that is a continuation of Digimon Chroncile, but unlike the previous project the new one was not canceled. I think since there was no need to use animation characters (after all, no character in Digital Monster X-Evolution was a human created just for animes) so there were no problems. The manga that continues Digimon Chroncle is known as "Digimon D-Cyber: Super Progressive Dragon Soul Wars" going on more than 10,000 years after the events of the original Digimon Chronicle.
Well until now you must have read this and thought "Hey you exaggerated" because until now there have not been any of the ridiculous things of the past that confused people because of the expanded universe, in fact so far everything is somehow cohesive and nothing really was presented in a way that looked like "They're just saying it's the same world of the TV series to sell more" after all this time it was just the opposite, the Bandai was ahead ... until she decided to make the same mistakes as before with the jewel that was Digimon World X. There is so much lost in this game, hidden so that only who goes behind the original content can know that anyone else would not see the problems, but I went behind and I must say I did not expect see so much wrong since Bandai attempted to explain Battle Spirit and Battle Spirit 1.5 by saying that it actually occurred in the anime chronology. To not take too much space from this blog with this, I'll make a new blog just to talk about it, wait and see.
==Digimon: ACCEL!==
===A New Setting ? NOP===
In 2004, even before the release of X-Evolution, the story of the Digimon Chronicle was already over and a new era was to emerge in Digimon, as it is normally done this new era is announced in the Hyper Colosseum next to a storyline written in the boosters (As it was in Digimon Tamers, Frontier and Chronicle), but this time it was something less direct. The X-Antibody Digimon had already been announced in Boosters that did not focus on the X-Antibody Digimon and also V-Pets from the Frontier era, known as "Red Frame" or "Neo / New" Digimon.
However this time there were no major new Digimon announced, at least not that they called attention. Before the Royal Knights were revealed as something great, they had many old Digimon re-upgraded with the "Group: Royal Knight" description added, similar to that many cards of old characters (Lilithmon, Devimon, Lucemon and Beelzebumon) were released with the description "Group: Seven Great Demon Lords". In addition, two new characters, that had already been leaked in the Bandai Asia D-Spirits V-Pet, are created: Barbamon and Leviamon. The two also had the description "Group: Seven Great Demon Lord". Along with this a new card with the name "Advent of the Seven Great Demon Lords" (七大 魔王 降臨) containing the six characters already revealed and behind them, there is the silhouette of the seventh Digimon. After a long time without a new setting, in 2004 the Booster 24 of Hyper Colosseum (Called: Advent of the Seven Great Demon Lords ~The Evil Gate ~) introduces a new story for the Digimon franchise.
The well-known Beelzebumon, Demon, Lilithmon and Lucemon are now reunited in a group with the new Barbamon and Leviamon introduced into the X-Antiboy era and also the newest Digimon Belphemon. Now they are part of a group known as "The Seven Great Demon Lords" that represent the Seven Deadly Sins and they face the Royal Knights. Maintaining consistency with the Digimon Chronicle which was a great success, the Royal Knights still retained their X-Antibdoy form. There were also mentions of something known as "The Gate of the Seven Deadly Sins" (also called "The Evil Gate"), but little is known about it.
No new product, like a game, was created focused on the Seven Great Demon Lords, however the mention of them was clear. For example, the "Digimon Battle Chronicle" mentions that Belial Vandemon was theorized as a member of the "Seven Great Demon Lords".
Along with all of this a new Marsmon card is released reusing the “Olympus XII” setting used for the frist time in a old Marsmon card in the Booster 16.
Surprisingly, the new Digimon main scenario virtually ignores the Seven Great Demon Lords and is more concerned with continuing to use the Royal Knights, X-Antibody Digimon, Olympos XII, and new created content. The only mention of the Seven Great Demon Lords is with the participation of Beelzebumon and new characters.
===Digimon Accel: Digitalize!===
Although I already mentioned about Digimon X-Evolution and Digimon World, it was only after the introduction of the Seven Great Demon Lords as a whole in Booster 24 that the movie was broadcast with the release of Digimon World X. As was customary, the launch of a new Digimon Storyline (In the case the sequel to the Digimon Chronicle Storyline) used to be accompanied by a new Hyper Colosseum Booster, which often seemed to prepare fans for the new storyline.
In March 25, 2005, the new Hyper Colosseum Booster, "Digitize Booster Pack", which not only contained cards based on the X-Evoluton movie and the Digimon World X game but also introduced completely new Digimon that would be the focus of the new V- Pet, Digital Monster Accelerator or simply: "Digimon Accel". The "Digitize Booster Pack" introduced the evolutionary line of Commandramon, Dracumon, Liollmon and other new Digimon. Some of these Digimon were used in the first version and second of Digimon Accel, Justice Genome and Evil Genome. In addition to the backgrounds of each new Digimon that could introduce new data about ancient scenarios and also completely new information, Digimon Accel introduced new concepts. One such concept was the DNA, Digimon Natual Ability.
The idea of DNA is based on the families of each Digimon, this is the description of DNA in the Digital Monster Artbook "Elemental data that can be taken from materials from the Digital World. There are eight attributes: Dragon, Beast, Past, Insect, Darkness, Light , Water and Machine. The growth is promoted by giving it a Digimon allowing it to evolve in a short time. Compared to Protein, due to being Digital World Data, less burden is given to Digicore".
In Digimon Accel it was possible to pass the hand on an electric current reader in the toy that simulated the absorption of human "DNA", which could replace a certain type of Digital DNA, depending on the DNA absorbed this could facilitate the evolution of a Digimon. When a large amount of DNA was collected, it was possible to use the "Blast Evoltuion" that modified the appearance of a Digimon while leaving it much stronger (This concept already existed in previous products but was improved and became an essential part of Digimon Accel ).
Another concept introduced was that of Chaosmon. Since the Digimon Pendulum Digimon with some compatibility would be able to merge resulting in a stronger Digimon, the concept of Chaosmon has emerged to increase the variety of fusion. In the Chaosmon case it would be the result of an incompatible fusion between opposing Digimon, allowing for more possibilities of mergers, but with the negative side of Chaosmon living less than other Digimon that emerged from stable mergers. Although we currently have only 3 known Chaosmon, Digimon Accel presented in its history many more versions (they shared the same majority of the same Sprites in the Digimon Accel, so the details of the other Chaosmon are unknown). It should be noted that following the Digimon Chronicle, the Digimon Accel continued the lore of the X-Digimon still using the X-Antibody versions of the Digimon as well as introducing new Digimon with the X-Antibody.
The Digimon Accel Justice Genome has focuses on the Bantyo Leomon while the Evil Genome has its focus on Darkdramon, the result of the merger between these two Digimon generated the first available Chaosmon version, Chaosmon (Darkdramon + Bantyo Leomon). In particular, it should be noted that Evil Genome was the version that introduced additional details about Gran Dracumon, being one of the few additional details to the Dark Area that did not receive a focus since the Hyper Colosseum Booster 24.
In July 30, 2005 is released the third version of Digimon Accel, Nature Genome, it's focus in the introduction of Valdurmon that's the special Digimon that could be used to form the new versions of Chaosmon with the fusion of Valdurmon with BantyoLeomon or Darkdramon, currently only the fusion between Valdurmon and BantyoLeomon is used (Besides the original version of Bantyo Leomon and DarkDramon).
In November 19, 2005 the latest version of Digimon Accel was produced, Ultimate Genome. This reunited some Digimon from the previous versions and focused on the inclusion of Sleipmon which resulted in the birth of 3 more versions of Chaosmon merging Sleipmon with each of the main Digimon of the previous versions. Curiously, these Digimon (Bantyo Leomon, Darkdramon and Valdurmon) are also included in this version of Digimon Accel with Sleipmon, they are necessary for the unlocking of the last Chaosmon of that toyline, Ultimate Chaosmon, that would be the fusion of these 4 incompatible Digimon in one .
In was only in November 25, 2005 that a new Hyper Colosseum Booster was created, "Digitize Booster Pack 2". Just as the previous package introduced new concepts for the first time, this did the same. The new package used Digimon of the others versions of Digimon Accel like the new Royal Knight, Sleipmon, the new Olympos XII (Mercurymon and Neptunemon), new X-Antibody Digimon and others Digimon that was used in the others versions of the Digimon Accel.
This possible delay in the new Hyper Colosseum Booster would be explained in 2006, when the Digimon franchise would enter into yet another stage of "evolution."
*Just before the last Hyper Colosseum booster a new V-Pet was produced, the Digimon Mini was a 10-year commemorative product of the original Digial Monster. The toy did not introduce a new setting and reused many old Digimon. However in this V-pet it became more common to create drawings of the Digimon simulating everyday situations of the digital beings, new designs are created until today in Digimon Twitter. The Digimon Mini had three versions and lasted until June 28, 2006.
==Savers,Card Game Alpha, Story and much more==
===Story and Savers===
After the development of Digital Monster X-Evolution and Digimon World X there were no plans for new animations (The desires of the production teams until then had already been realized), in this situation the game's producer of Digimon, Ryo Mito, decided to make a new game of Digimon. Observing the dissatisfaction of the fanbase with the last games of the World saga, he realized that it would be a good idea to introduce a new saga, Digimon Story. The new saga would be friendly to a new audience using the latest technologies, it was difficult to receive Bandai approval, but after some discussions the project was approved. After a time of original planning, the development of a new anime was discussed. As soon as the discussion about the new anime was started it was planned that the game Digimon Story should relate to the anime.
::Habu: After the development of "Frontier" and "X-Evolution", "Savers" began after a certain period of time, was the "Digimon Story" project released as part of "Digimon Savers"?
::Mito: It was another axis. We were already working on it before the conversations about "Digimon Savers" popped up. It was at the time that "X-Evolution" ended and there was no further development of new animation, but we decided to develop a new game. So I thought I could try to make a game that I thought of myself and I was planning the project. Anyway, as soon as the animation plan "Digimon Savers" began to move on another axis, we decided that some Digimon and others characters from Digimon Savers would appear as guests in the right time.
::Habu: As the Agumon that appeared in "Digimon Story" was wearing the red leather gloves, I thought it was a work that came up in "Digimon Savers" project (Agumon was somewhat modified in "Digimon Savers").
::Mito: Regarding the Agumon design, I thought it would be more enjoyable for fans to adapt to "Digimon Savers" and incorporate it in the game.
::Habu: When I first talked to Mr. Mito I heard "Anyway, releasing 'Digimon Story' was a difficult project"
::Mito: As there was already the "Digimon World" series, inside the company there were opinions that seemed concerned about another RPG like the "Digimon Story" series, so it was difficult for the project to be approved.
::Habu: At that time, was there a trend in home games to be a part of the "Digimon World" series?
::Mito: Exactly. Although the "Digimon World" series was well known, "DIgimon Story" was an original RPG, a new work, and many differences were pointed out in relation to previous work. I explained what was interesting in "Digimon Story" and received the permission to go ahead.
The development of Digimon Savers was initially based on four points:
*1. Increase hero's age to more than a middle school student.
*2. Hero belongs to an organization that takes care of Digimon crime.
*3. The hero's father, who is involved with what would become the center of the problem, is currently missing.
*4. Hero's Partner Digimon must be Agumon.
The story of Digimon Savers would rescue concepts that have been at the top of the franchise since they stopped showing the anime. In Savers it returned and the focus to the Royal Knights, the story of one of the Olympos XII was developed and also there was a development of the Seven Deadly Sins and with that the Seven Great Demon Lords. There is no denying that this time there was a great development of these groups, in particular the Seven Great Demon Lords that besides being mentioned and important for the history of both Digimon Story and Digimon Savers in certain points, was also the main focus of other products like the Digimon Card Game Alpha, Digimon Battle Terminal and Savers Another Mission.
===The Age of the Seven Great Demon Lords===
The Digital Monster Card Game received a major update to its Alpha version, the artworks had a new style more based on the material of Digimon Savers and the artworks of the Digimon Mini. This time the Card Game Alpha had its own story and now it was no longer dependent on other stories within the franchise.
This thanks to a novelty within the Digimon franchise, Digimon Carddass machines. With the Card Game Alpha there was arcade machines that uses a cardgame system were produced (much like Dragon Ball Heroes), this was known as the Digimon Battle Terminal, a new method of interacting with the Digimon. In the past, V-pets' training and observation of Digimon were limited to small pixels, now the Battle Terminal would be an information network where multiple Tamers could face challenges in 3D combat. The story of the first Battle Terminal focused on the Seven Great Demon Lords, expanding as Tamers' goals were to defeat these opponents who sometimes invaded the Battle Terminal system. The system had some updates that made the game compatible with new cards of the Battle Terminal model.
The Battle Terminal may feature 3D Models that are similar to something you have seen, and they are in fact similar to something. Simultaneously to the Arcade game another console game was also being produced, Digimon Savers Another Mission. Being inserted into the Digimon Savers universe he also worked on the Seven Great Demon Lords and was made using the same models of Battle Terminal. Like Digimon Story this was another game produced by Ryo Mito.
Bandai also rescued the custom of introducing a new toy simulating the electronic device of the anime, the this time was the Digivice iC. He acted like most V-pets by then, even if he ignored the Quests' system of the other Digivices looking even more like the V-pets. The Digivice iC used many Digimon that were in focus at the time (like the protagonists and villains of the anime and manga), but also rescued old Digimon that until then were forgotten.
This toy enhanced Digimon Accel's capabilities that preceded it, the DNA concept was enhanced for the Digisoul, being roughly the same, but with the difference that the Digisoul could be used unlimited.
Another product created was the Digimon Next manga, using a setting of Digital World and Tamers similar to what was being developed in other media of the time this manga introduced a story using the Battle Terminal and developed for a long time. He worked on the concepts of Seven Great Demon Lords, Digimon Mini, Digivice IC, Digisoul, Yggdrasil and several others that were in focus at the time.
This period was a great success for the franchise, especially in the game scenario with sales of Digimon Story going far beyond what was expected. After the development of the Battle Terminal a new chronology would emerge in Digimon being direct continuation of this one.
===Digimon Twin and the Battle Terminal 02===
On 19 March 2007 the new LCD toy was released, Digimon Twin. It was created in two versions and took advantage of the infrared connection that was already being developed in some previous toys. The Digimon Twin was developed with a new Storyline next to the new version of Battle Terminal, Battle Terminal 2. The story would happen soon after the end of the previous one, where as a precaution of the Seven Great Demon Lords for a possible defeat they released a program that began to corrode Digicores causing many Digimon to lose control of itself. The story unfolds greatly in Battle Terminal 02, at a level far beyond the original Battle Terminal. This story needs a post for itself.
Also on March 29, 2009 the Digimon Story sequence was released, this time it was two games - Sunburst and Moonlight - that would tell a story through two different views from two rival teams facing the same problem. This game was important for further developing the idea of multiple servers, rescuing the concept that multiple versions of the same universe existed on different servers of the network, the game made direct connection not only with the anime, as it occurred in the previous game, as also with the Digimon Next manga. The game was a success which made the ideas of a sequence begin to be planned.
However, strangely after all, the franchise began to slow the news again, unlike the end of Frontier where new chronologies were being created instantly, the franchise practically died for a long time. There were still some toys being produced, but nothing very spectacular as was Pendulum X or Digimon Accel.
The Digimon Savers broadcast was finished on November 25, 2007, the last chapter of Digimon Next was released in 2008, the last booster of Battle Terminal 02 was released on December 20, 2007, the last set of Card Game Alpha was released on January 24, 2008 and the last game released in that period was Digimon Championship and was released on February 14, 2008. Since then, Digimon has virtually stopped. It was only around 2010 that Digimon would come back with a new story of great proportions.
==The Xros Wars==
Just as there was a void in the franchise for some time between X-Evolution and Savers, Ryo Mito was already planning a game even without any perspective on an anime, in case he wanted a game based on the concepts of Mars and Jupiter, but the game ended becoming Digimon Story Lost Evolution. It is important to note that at this time Kazumasa Habu joined the Digimon Story team as the Production Assistant.
During the half-time of production of Lost Evolution, the planning of the anime of Xros Wars began to circulate in the companies. So it was very similar to what happened in the first Story, but Lost Evolution ended up not being influenced by Xros Wars, instead a new game would be produced focused entirely on the Xros Wars environment. This game, Super Xros Wars, would be part of the Story series and marks the entry of Habu as Production Director in game development.
The period of Xros Wars was definitely the most focused on just one thing of the whole franchise since the Adventure~Tamers time. With the exception of Lost Evolution and some Mobiles games (but they still had events based on Xros Wars) everything else that was produced in the franchise was just Xros Wars. This was an attempt to reinvent the franchise for the new kids by modifying Digimon's main concept of "Evolution" to "Fusion." In addition to the Xros Wars anime and the Super Xros Wars game, there was also a Battle Terminal based on Xros Wars (Super Digica Tensei), a Xros Loader based game, two new Xros Wars based arcade games based on Xros Wars (which later came to receive homemade version) and more. Let's detail each thing as much as possible.
News regarding the new era of the franchise began to spread since April 2010 when it was announced that a new Digimon anime would be broadcast on Japanese television. After a while advertising other products that would accompany the anime were also announced. The Xros Loader was created with a focus on some characters that would have a focus on the anime, it would have a color screen with several scenarios and could have several more detailed sprite of Digimon on screen like the ones they had in Nintendo DS games. Also a novelty of the toy would be the ability to play MP3 songs, according to the producers this was done to meet the requests of what was successful at the time.
Just as there was an update of the Digimon Card Game for the Alpha version and the inclusion of the Battle Terminal cards, there was a new version of the Card Game based on Digimon Xros Wars. The Digimon Xros Wars Super Digica Taisen was an arcade machine modeled after the Battle Terminal that used a fighting system between 3D models using a card game. This time the machine only had some events based on the anime and other exclusive, but nothing great as there was in the era of the Battle Terminal in which despite having themes similar to anime, it created a story of its own coming from that.
The Digimon Xros Wars anime was divided into three arcs. The anime, along with its own novelties, also pays tribute to ancient characters and concepts of the Franchise through the Digimemorys who would represent legendary Digimon who were part of the war against the Bagramon army, the fact that most of them were important Digimon in the past (Leviamon, Examon, Omegamon, Agumon, Patamon, Impmon, etc.) should not be just a coincidence. The story of Digimon developed through the Digital World and Real World until bringing for the first time in the animation a crossover between the multiple television series that until then were disconnected. Xros Wars to date is the Digimon anime with more episodes.
Something more that was created at the time was the Digimon life, it worked in a similar way to Pokémon GO. If moving through the GPS of a cell phone it was possible to collect data from a Digimon until he could register it, this registry released a profile of the Digimon in a similar way to the DRB, however there were many profiles in Digimon Life that did not exist in the DRB and to this day, there are still many Digimon Life profiles that have never been placed on DRB. There was still another mobile game at this time, but I'll leave it to talk about it later.
For the consoles there was Super Xros Wars for Nintendo DS that was divided between Blue and Red. It was the only game of the Story saga that really existed only in the name of the anime, differing from the other games that despite indicating the presence of the anime, was not something that history depended. In that case Super Xros Wars is a rare exception, so far, of Saga Story where a game would serve as an extra story within the chronology of the anime.
In addition, Digimon Xros Wars also received a manga. Just like in Next, this was planned to be an anime adaptation, and it really was. The beginning of the two has its great similarities, but then they end up getting very distant. Nakashima spent a good deal of time studying the franchise - which he had never known before - and discussed with other people working with Digimon on how to develop the story. Almost as a tribute, Xros Wars is until now one of the works that most direct reference to practically all the parts of the franchise (Even making exact references of terms of the official profiles). The Xros Wars manga is one of the few materials that managed to connect the multiple eras of the franchise in one single work, bringing a great story (Something that would only happen again after the franchise almost died, again).
Although the Xros Wars era was grandiose, having pretty much everything that all other ages have ever had (some Dramas CDs, films and novelizations for Xros Wars have literally already taken advantage of every mode of development of the franchise) and tons of merchandise on Xros Wars were produced, there was a big problem at the end of that era, lack of financial result. And that, almost killed the franchise.
==Near Death and the Rebirth==
The financial situation of the Digimon franchise is explained in interviews that Habu gave on some websites. According to him, because of the marketing decisions involving Xros Wars (that is, the focus on merging rather than evolution and targeting the kids) ultimately disappointed people who were really part of the franchise fanbase. Digimon was portrayed as a franchise for children and the consequence was that there were not many resources left in the franchise and budgets for future projects were almost zero.
Not seeing a vision of improvement, Habu began arguing with Bandai about the possibility of creating a new project that instead of attracting a new fan base should attract fans who have followed the franchise since the era of LCD toys. After some discussion, the project was accepted. However, there were many challenges, since lack of budget made the project very difficult. To save resources Habu began looking for information that already exist in the Bandai database to speed up the development process, he got some 3D models of games like Savers Another Mission that were modified for the new game, but some files seemed to have really disappeared.
Despite the difficulties, the production team struggled to create a new game, Digimon World Re: Digitize. The game was a tribute to Digimon World, one of the most famous Digimon home games that is enjoyed even today in Japan. Although Habu believed that the game was not finalized, sales of Re: Digitize were going perfectly well. With more than 20-year-old marketing, mature content, a more stylized and cool style of art, and a gameplay system that brings what the old-fashioned game had but adapted to the new generations. With appreciated content, Re: Digitize was one of two products that gave Bandai the proof that Digimon could work for older people. Another game that also helped the franchise was the Mobile Digimon Collectors game, which featured a wide variety of events based on many facts from the franchise's past along with completely new stories with both new and old characters. Collectors were actually released during the middle of the Xros Wars era, but lasted until 2014. After that a new Digimon game was also created, Digimon Crusader had a Card Game mechanic and continues its own storyline showing interesting information about another group of Digimon characters, Olympos XII. Also like Digimon Collectors, this game had other stories in special events that were based on other information of the setting of Digimon. With the game, Digimon World Re: Digitize, has also been released two chapters of a manga adaptation, it actually tells the events prior to the game where Mirei observes the interaction between humans who would come to appear in the game. In the end Mirei sends the humans the email that would be part of the initial scene of Digimon World Re: Digitize.
In Re: Digitize producer Habu managed to re-attract the fanbase of the franchise, more specifically those who grew up with the franchise since its inception with the LCD games. To expand this audience and attract another portion of the fanbase that was introduced thanks to the first anime, Digimon Adventure. For this Habu began to develop an anime-based game that would include the whole history of the anime, the movie Our War Game and also a wide variety of events never seen before including a new crossover that would reunite again the leaders of animes until then.
This adaptation was very important for Habu, he already showed the desire to learn about the franchise and he was able to do this on the one hand through his conversations with people who work in Bandai, be it WiZ people or game development. With the adaptation of Digimon Adventure he had the chance to talk to the director of the anime, Kakudou, who was on the development team of the game. In his conversations with Habu, Kakudou took advantage of the situation to tell the producer of the games the whole concept behind Digimon Adventure that differentiated the anime from the original concept of Digimon. Habu loved Kakudou's ideas, and then he began to think more about the development of the franchise.
After Digimon Adventure for PSP the next Habu project was the Digimon World Re: Digitize Improvement. The initial project aimed to attract the older target audience and so the PSP was used, this time the 3Ds would be used to also attract a younger target audience. The new version would include improvements over the original game including new Digimon, new items, new gameplay mechanics, new locations, new characters and new stories.
At the end of 2014 several Digimon services were discontinued. This included Digimon Collectors, Digimon Crusader and Digimon Fortune. Then in 2015, the franchise would show its strength again.
*There was a Western Digimon game, All Star Rumble, did not go very well and overall, it is largely ignored. Without any Eastern influence by what I know, then it should not be very important for development here.
==Connect the past to the future: Cyber Sleuth and Tri==
In 2015 many new franchise projects were released. In 2014 a new Digimon Adventure site focused on the 15 years of the anime was created, so on August 1st the site started a great mini-game. The goal would be for the page to receive a certain number of clicks that would represent the "swim-swim" in a Digitama. This has evolved to be necessary to destroy enemies and other things. In the development of all this was revealed the new project of anime, Digimon Adventure tri. a sequence of events in the world of the first anime. The goal of Digimon Adventure Tri. was to present a moment in history where the characters of the first generation realize that they are becoming adults and would begin to have to change according to what they would like to do, an important moment in the lives of these people that ends up influencing their decisions in the way of how they interact with the Digimon and the catastrophe that is occurring.
The production of Tri. had a good budget, a good production team, but with a very bad performance. Tri. was made as part of a premium product that would be available in a few sessions for a few days, in this regard the series of six OVA managed to achieve a good financial success, according to Toei. Meanwhile, the misrepresentation of ideas in history, with a confusing plot and various incoherence in the evolution of the characters (which contradicts the point that they would contradict the very evolution they have had in the past) led to Tri. to receive innumerable criticisms by many people not only in Japan but also around the world. Tri. also received a theatrical play, this one really was good and serves like a real development of the personages, but its history is almost annulled in the end when one discovers that all the events were part of a distortion that was being occasioned by Meicoomon.
Leaving the territory of the OVA's, we arrived at the games. The first one we'll talk about, Cyber Sleuth.
Cyber Sleuth continues the evolution of what started in Re: Digitize, being truly a product completely targeted for adults. The successes of the products aimed at the older audience were what enabled this, and Cyber Sleuth would once again show that this was the right course to take.
The theme of Cyber Sleuth would be a discussion of how great the link between real life and digital life is. The relationship of how humanity would change when she meets the Digimon, and vice versa, has always been a theme within Digimon, Cyber Sleuth would pick up this theme and put it within a scenario close to the present day. This idea would build on Digimon's own history as a franchise. Habu realized how the original concept of Digimon as being computer viruses began to become no longer used since the fantasy-focused Digimon anime began to make a success. Trying to reflect the duality of Digimon's story within the Habu game decided to unify the two concepts by showing a story that would start to be based on the original Digimon concept but that would change the extent to which Humans were discovering more about the Digimon thus adapting to animes stories.
This is a consequence of Kakudou's involvement in the development of Digimon Adventure for PSP, since Habu began to be interested in the occult in Digimon and therefore Cyber Sleuth would use this as base in the Sub Quests. To develop the occult in Digimon the novelist Kouji Watanabe was called to write the Sub Quests that would have that as base.
:::–I’m informed that Watanabe-san is working on the draft for the game’s scenario.
::Habu: Watanabe-san’s not writing the whole main story, but he’s writing some of the scenario for the sub-quests. We believed that he would be able to create an arrangement that meets the worldview of this work that entwines its cyber and occult aspects better than we could without worrying about the story and the Digimon setting. The scenario isn’t as simple as “evil Digimon go on a rampage”, but it ties together the cyber and the occult, and gains a sort of horror-like feel to it.
::Watanabe: When you want to write works about the occult in a logical and reasonable manner, you need to establish the relationship between the things like that world and this world, or reality and fantasy. When I heard the drafted story from Habu-san, because the theme was Digimon’s “real world” and “cyber world”, I thought, “this’ll be a very good theme to combine with the occult”.
:::–I see. So in what circumstances were you asked to do the draft?
::Habu: Previously, on the “Premium Cafe” program, when we were introducing Digimon Adventure for the PlayStation Portable, I met Watanabe-san for the first time. During the program, I appeared with the director of Digimon Adventure, Kakudou-san (Hiroyuki Kakudou. Worked as the director for the TV anime Digimon series), and at the time he said, “strictly speaking, Digimon can only exist through electronic devices, so being able to perceive those things called Digimon could be thought of like a youkai-like or spiritual existence.” Following up on that, he said, “I think you’ve been writing about that kind of theme in your novels, Watanabe-san.”
The development of Digimon Story has decided to take this series of games to a more stylized and cool design in a similar way to Re: Digitize. For this reason the artist of the main characters would be the same (The only one different would be Eaters who would have a different designer). Initially Ryo Mito was surprised that Habu wanted the game to be a Story because the themes were very different from the originals but in the end Habu decided to keep the game as a Story because of the focus on creating an easy gameplay to be understood for people who did not know the system as well as in the original Story.
::Mito: Before Cyber ​​Sleuth, when Suzuhito Yasuda was named as a character designer in "Digimon World Re: Digitize" (2012) and I saw the characters, I got the feeling of a different and new possibility with Digimon. I think "Cyber ​​Sleuth" is good for adults with a cool and stylized line. I got to say "You do not need to put 'Digimon Story' in the title."
::Habu: You're right. As the age of the players of "Digimon" is about 20 years, I did "Digimon World Re: Digitize" focusing a bit on adults, but in "Cyber ​​Sleuth" not only the images but even the worldview has changed. Anyway, as I wanted to follow the idea of ​​"easy to understand for anyone to play" from "Digimon Story", at the planning time I decided not to change the fundamental gameplay system of "Digimon Story" and while chatting with Media / Vision development company together we have done a planning trying to improve the feeling of feeling comfortable while playing. So we thought fans could recall the gameplay by seeing the title, so I thought and said to Mr. Mito "I want to use that in the title."
::Mito: Yes, yes. Even considering that it followed the gameplay, the art changed from something more pop to something more stylized, so I did not find it fit like a "Digimon Story".
Cyber Sleuth was a sales success for Bandai, in the first week more than 91% of the available copies were sold. The success of the sales was not the only positive thing that was happening at that time...
===Operation Decode: Digimon Games Return to the West===
In response to the lack of Digimon being located in the West, fans began to gather to bring news of the Digimon games to the western public, began trying to translate the games unofficially and endeavored to initiate petitions for Bandai to make a official location of games like Digimon World Re: Digitize. Around 65,000 signatures Bandai became aware of the petition and the game developers decided they should do something about it. They were unable to create a localized Digimon World Re: Digitize Decode, but managed to make one from Cyber Sleuth.
Cyber Sleuth was a success for Bandai around the world, which revived the franchise definitively worldwide. Now the western market is something that is taken into account in product development
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As Cyber Sleuth began to be announced in the West, a new project was announced in Japan: Digimon World Next 0rder.
==The Next 0rder==
Digimon World Next 0rder was the new game in the World series created after Re:Digitize Decode, created for PSVita it tries to improve the conventional gameplay with the style of game with two Digimon per player and the fusion system inside the battles (Extra Xros Evolution).
::How does Digimon World: Next Order separate itself from the previous Digimon World releases, Re: Digitize and Re: Digitize Decode?
::Habu: “The biggest feature is that you can take two Digimon along with you when you go out on your adventure, which you weren’t able to do in the past. And because you can take two along at the same time, if one is in danger, the other Digimon will cover him and that kind of stuff in battle. We also have a new system called ExE Evolution, where the two Digimon can combine together in battle and form a different Digimon. That’s one of the big feature in this game.”
::Is ExE Evolution applicable to every Digimon?
::Habu: “Yes, it’s possible, but it differs for each Digimon, like how many different types you can evolve to. But basically you can combine every Digimon.”
The game took a long time to sell a quantity of copies proportional to the Cyber Sleuth game, needing 4 ~ 5 weeks to sell a quantity of copies similar to what Cyber Sleuth achieved in the first week (this disregarding the digital market). Anyway the game was decided to be ported to the western market through an international version for the PS4. To accomplish this project Bandai called Habu to refine the game to the international market. Originally Habu was not in the development of Next 0rder since he was still busy with the Cyber Sleuth project, so Next 0rder had no influence from him originally.
As Cyber Sleuth was a success for Bandai in the West, then Next 0rder was allowed to have a complete conversion to the Western market including a complete graphics enhancement, bug fix, unique content and a complete dubbing of audio content.
::Can you share a bit about the new content included in the PlayStation 4 version for the overseas release?
::Habu: Of course, since we brought it to PlayStation 4, the graphics have been improved. And we adjusted the balance of the gameplay itself so that it’s harder to clear.
::You have an English dub this time, which is something you didn’t have with Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth. What compelled you to do a dub this time?
::Habu: The previous game, Cyber Sleuth, which launched in March, was very popular in the States, so that kind of gave us the push to do the English voices this time.
::Was that something you wanted to do, but couldn’t, for Cyber Sleuth?
::Habu: Indeed. It was because Cyber Sleuth was so popular and sold so well that we were able to put English voices into this one.
::You mentioned that Cyber Sleuth sold well, at least well enough to warrant an English dub for Next Order. How did you take to the positive reaction overseas?
::Habu: I wasn’t part of the PS Vita version of Digimon World: Next Order, someone else was in charge. I was brought on for the overseas release. I wasn’t really sure how popular Cyber Sleuth was going to be in the states. We got to localize Cyber Sleuth because overseas fans signed a petition. We really felt the power of the fans. We’re already working on thinking about the next series, so we’d like to know what fans overseas think and try to put it into the new game.
Anyway, between the time of Next 0rder receive its international version a new project that would take the name of Digimon was announced, Digimon Universe: Appli Monsters. There is a lot of content to talk about, but it will only be added here when the general Digimon content is already placed (when this occurs, this paragraph will be deleted to give way to the Appmon text).
==The age of 20th Anniversary==
In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of Digimon many goods were produced, especially a revival of the original Digital Monster. Since the v-pet based on Xros Wars was created in 2010 there was no v-pet to the mold of the originals, the material being created since then only new versions of the Digivices of Adventure, 02 and Tamers during the celebrations of 15 years each of these anime. This time a new V-Pet to the molds of the originals were created, from that we will find Digimon in a situation where more behind the scenes of the franchise become available.
The new Digital Monster was developed bringing together everything the original had and more. In all it was possible to get all the Digimon that were available in the original Digital Monster from Ver.1 to Ver.5, in addition Digimon that were added in more recent toys were also added and also there were new Digimon that were created for this toy for the first time. New additions were also made from other toys such as the Jogress that emerged in the Digimon Pendulum, in addition to innovations that were first made as the system to care for two Digimon at the same time. Reliving the past of the franchise tournaments using V-Pets also came back to occur.
A great addition in this period was the return of books focused on V-pets. In the past a new book was created every year, however at the present time this type of method would not work, but it was possible to produce a new book that would bring information from the first Digital Monster, news of the new version and many curiosities about the whole history of the franchise including an interview with Kenji Watanabe revealing crucial information on the development of the Digimon franchise from the conception period to the present day.
The design of the Digital Monster Ver.20th was a success and soon thereafter its sequel was announced, Digital Monster Pendulum Ver.20th in honor of the 20 years of the first Digimon Pendulum. This also includes all the contents of the original Digimon Pendulum including the Digimon that would participate as well as newly created Digimon. New mechanics like the Copymon were inserted. Just like the previous briquedo, a new book containing information on the Digimon franchise was also produced containing more interesting information, although with fewer news when compared to the previous version. One highlight is the fact that this time there were two interviews, one focused on a meeting between the designers of the franchise and another on the meeting of people who helped in the development of the original Digimon Pendulum and the new version.
==Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth "1.8": Hackers Memory==
With what he had achieved with Cyber Sleuth Habu thought it would be time to change the franchise again, Digimon was still reusing a lot of older game material with some 3D models being reused since Re: Digitize, which would not be a good thing for the public consumer if he really wanted to make Digimon into a recognized game franchise in the world. So Habu decided he should produce a new Digimon game from scratch based on the capabilities of PS4 not having to be limited to PSVita capabilities like the previous games. However producing a game from zero takes a lot of time, and if Digimon remained without games for another three or four years the franchise could fall into oblivion again. So to prevent this from happening Habu decided he would launch other games in the meantime so he could still show that Digimon was having a development. While producing the new Digimon Story saga game for the PS4, Habu was also working on a Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth extension, Hackers Memory.
:::4Gamer.net: It seems that Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth also received favorable reviews overseas.
::Kazumasa Habu: While it received high praise in Japan, we received extremely high praise from fans overseas, so we took the path of worldwide expansion for the future. However, nowadays PlayStation 4 is the main hardware overseas, and PS Vita has little to no retail space at stores. So for the physical version of Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, we developed a port for PlayStation 4.
:::4Gamer.net: Overseas, Digimon World: Next Order was also a PlayStation 4 port based on a PS Vita game.
::Kazumasa Habu: Right. It would have been made based on PlayStation 4 hardware, but we have to rebuild the game engine for PlayStation 4, as well as redo the graphics. In that case, it would take about three to four years to make a good game from scratch. At that point, it would have been quite a long gap from Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth. We consider “not dampening the fans’ enthusiasm” extremely important in continuing the Digimon IP, and for that reason it is important to regularly offer content. So, while working on a completely new Digimon Story project, I thought I could offer a new story that depicts another side of Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth called Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Hacker’s Memory as not to dampen the fans’ enthusiasm.
:::4Gamer.net: A completely new Digimon Story that is separate from Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Hacker’s Memory is already in the works? That is a bit surprising.
::Kazumasa Habu: Regarding Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Hacker’s Memory, officially we refer to it a “new title in the Cyber Sleuth series” rather than “new title in the Digimon Story series,” and in reality there is reason for that. That includes my desire to reliably provide content for fans who enjoyed the previous titles.
Hackers Memory is said to be close to a 1.7 / 1.8 version rather than 2.0. Hackers Memory (at least the Japanese version) would contain all of the original game content as well as extension enhancements, which would be something like 70% new content when compared to a new game. Thanks to the success of his old games Habu now had more confidence in what he did and was able to draw more attention to the development of the games, with the right motivation became more common in him to participate in an interview with other development members of the Digimon franchise. He did this in order to learn from people who had already worked with DIgimon on what he could do, what he could do better, and what he could take advantage of in the past. Habu came in contact with people from all parts of the franchise as the developers of LCD toys, manga, anime and even other Digimon games that he did not work on. While fans would learn more about the franchise, Habu would also gain the knowledge needed to develop their games.
The original game had the idea of working with the duality of people's lives in reality and within virtual space, however the more fantasy elements were coming in and because of the fate of the main characters, after a certain moment some elements end up getting covered by the importance of the history brought by the Royal Knights. Because of this the new game would try to continue the original plot with characters who were not heroes, just ordinary people who end up working behind the protagonists in some situations.
Habu's conversations with production members began to be posted on a new website created that would focus on the fans who play the franchise games, Digimon Game Community. The website, in addition to posting interviews with the developers, also included content listing the available Digimon games, news about the Digimon franchise, and pages where members could communicate in addition to submitting questions to the Digimon Staff. The site got very busy during the Hackers Memory announcement season with interviews with toy, game and manga developers and the grand finale would be a great livestream where Habu met up with Kenji Watanabe, Volcano Ota, Konaka and Kakudou to discuss the past, present and future of the Digimon franchise.
The Livestream gave details on the production of toys, games and anime with a few moments in which they answered questions from fans. The final discussion involved the content of the games, including the secret behind the games involving Cyber Sleuth's relation with Kakudou's ideas, the content was discussed along with the other Staff members who liked the idea and really think it makes sense. Specifically, Volcano Ota and Kenji Watanabe think it is surprising how Digimon unraveled from LCD toys until they become what they are today, in the end they end up having fun as they talk about the multiple interpretations of the Digimon.
<tabber>4Gamer=
::Mr. Kakudou said "As the Digimon can only be observed by modern digital devices they are called the Digimon, in the past they may have been observed as Youkais (妖怪) or Shikigami (式神) and the perception seems to change according to the era." Mr. Habu said that he is strongly influenced by this idea of interpretation of the Digimon while doing Hackers Memory and the previous work, building a setting not only based on science but also on elements of myths and occultism and so the game was created.
::Kenji Watanabe and Volcano Ota said "We are happy that the worldview has spread from a small LCD toy to this, and we aren't the only ones" and they celebrate the 20th anniversary showing pleasure by the various interpretations that have been made.
:::Source
|-|Famitsu=
::First of all Kazumasa Habu tells the secret story of creating "Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hackers Memory". He explained about the world view of the work in detail and talked about the great affinity of Digimon with the occult. He explained about the world view of the work in detail and talked about the great affinity of Digimon with the occult. Mr.Ota agrees. He spoke about what he thought about it and his opinion was, "The existence of another four-dimensional world became popular in my childhood, but humans have always had this kind of thinking. Because it is something visible through a virtual environment they are called 'Digimon'".
::Mr. Konaka said "Digimon itself has its basis in various religious views and it was possible to integrate them into it. It is convincing that the occult is also."
:::Source
</tabber>
Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Hackers Memory did not sell much like the original game, however due to the game reuse a lot of information from the original game so the number of necessary sales was not very high, and even selling few copies the expected result in percentage has already gone beyond half showing that this result was already part of Bandai's expectations.
==The future of Digimon: Digital Monster X, Survive and many more==
Following the remakes of the old V-Pets, the Digital Monster X is currently being sold, a direct sequel to the Pendulum X. Just like the original new product comes with a little manga in its instruction manual to show you the story of the V-Pet. In addition, the X-Evolution session of the Digimon site has been re-released, although it currently has a much smaller amount of information than it originally existed.
Future projects for V-Pets are unknown, but according to the producers of these toys it is possible that the next ones will reuse concepts that have never been used in toys a long time ago like DigiXros, Digimental and Spirit Evolution. It is also expected that with the merger of WiZ with Bandai Namco, toys and games begin to have a greater connection than in the past.
Since entering the franchise Habu kept in touch with production members who informed him of various aspects of the franchise digimon, Habu learns from it and through his new games he shows what he can do with it. During the interviews he did something was noticeable, Habu began to get closer to the more epic stories of anime and manga beyond their unique aspects that until then could not be exploited very well in the games. An example is the mechanics of evolution based on the emotional evolution of the human partner, something that was explored in Digimon Adventure and served as the basis for the development of the anime setting. Habu saw this as a challenge and would like to apply this process in a new style of gameplay besides the series World and Story ones.
While developing Hackers Memory, Habu had contact with Tenya Yabuno, the V-Tamer artist commented with Habu as in upcoming games it would be important to have a greater focus on the scenario at the time of evolution so that it is something important and impactful. Habu found interesting information given by Yabuno and said he would consider it in the upcoming games.
::Habu: May I ask, which of the scenarios you helped create for the manga left the deepest impression on you?
::Yabuno: (after thinking for a while) I think the chapter that left the deepest impression on me would have to be chapter 22 of volume 3, Butter-Fly. Zeromaru doesn’t devolve, unlike in the anime series, so he didn’t really have any chances to evolve, but he finally does so in that chapter. It was a huge occasion, so I racked my brains trying to think of how I could incorporate as much drama as I could into the designs. In the end, the scene where Taichi put on his goggles for the aerial battle was like a realisation of one of the initial ideas that I had, so I felt really glad that I was able to work on this manga long enough to make that idea a reality. Not only that, I still remember working on the scene while keeping the anime series’ opening theme, Butter-Fly, in mind, while trying to portray that moment of growth and evolution. I think some readers might have noticed by now, but I tried to make the panel where you see Zero’s silhouette resemble a butterfly.
::Habu: (while rereading the manga) You’re right, the silhouette does look like a butterfly! I never noticed.
::Yabuno: I felt that it was important for the evolution scenes to be staged well, so even in Arkadimon’s case, I tried to position its tentacles so that the scene where it evolves to Ultimate level would resemble a skull. The same goes for the Super Ultimate level as well.
::Habu: Sorry, I didn’t notice that either…
::Yabuno: I paid lots of attention to the evolution scenes, so I was honestly anticipating what Arkadimon’s evolution sequence would look like in-game (laughs).
::Habu: The in-game evolution scenes are the same among all the Digimon…we had put more attention into animating each Digimon’s Special Moves, but now that you mention it, I should look into evolution scenes too…
::Watanabe: Looks like you’ll need to pay more attention when reading next time (laughs).
::Yabuno: (laughs) Well, it’s true that I didn’t make any mention of my fixation with the evolution scenes all these years, so I’m glad to have this opportunity to publicly announce it.
::Habu: The party Digimon evolution sequences are implemented in a systematic way so it might be hard to introduce unique evolution sequences for those, but it might be interesting to consider unique sequences for story-related evolutions or evolutions with special requirements for future games! I shall take that into consideration.
The result of all this research led to the announcement of the next game produced by Habu, Digimon Survive. Being different from the World or Story series, the focus on this game would not be in training the Digimon as in V-Pets or in the Digimon collection, but rather in the mental development of the characters and how it would affect the evolution of the Digimon. The game is based on what was in the anime, however the game would have more serious themes and more details that could not be addressed in anime in the normal way. Habu has also stated that the scenario of this game will move away from the cyberpunk that was used as a basis in Cyber Sleuth and will approach more of an occult and supernatural scenario as was Digimon Adventure. Digimon Survive will be a game for most popular gaming platforms at the moment and will have a worldwide release.
The game had an announcement with a lot of information focusing on the development of the characters and how this would lead to alternative routes (that could lead to the death of the characters), Digimon that are completely compatible with the development of the story and the possibility that the game still could be expanded during the rest of the development. However the game at the moment is without much news, since the team is totally focused on the production of the game. In addition, Digimon Survive is yet another game that will be produced while Habu continues to develop the new Story series for PS4.
After the mixed results of Digimon Adventure TRI, a new Digimon Adventure project was announced. Still without much information, it will bring the old characters as adults with a design made with a base in the original design molds thanks to the return of the original designer. In addition many members of original production of Digimon Adventure have returned to produce the new project that promises to really revive the original anime. However there is still distrust regarding the production of this project, since the director of the original anime, Hiroyuki Kakudou, gave up working on the project because it is incompatible with what has been produced so far within the setting of Digimon Adventure. He said he would move away from the film for now, but said he would continue working on the franchise with other products like games, toys, cd dramas, etc.
Category:Digimon
Category:Explanation Pages