Tai Kamiya

## Love interests

* Matt Ishida
* Catherine Denevue (formerly)
* Dante (Semi-crush)

**Taichi "Tai" Kamiya** (八神 太一 *Yagami Taichi*) is a protagonist in the anime. He is a DigiDestined, partnered with Agumon, and the bearer of the Crest of Courage. He is the older brother of Kari Kamiya.

## Appearance

Tai is an attractive young boy with spiky brown hair and brown eyes. He usually wears light grey goggles with a black strap. Because of his attractiveness, he was one of the targets for Dante.

He wears his trademark goggles on his forehead over a blue headband and sports a blue T-shirt with orange stars on the sleeves, a yellow pocket on each side of the chest, and three buttons in the top, over a slightly longer yellow T-shirt with a turtleneck collar. He also wears brown cargo shorts, where he keeps his Digivice, a black armband on the left arm, white gloves, whitish-blue loose socks with blue and white sneakers with yellow triangles (similar to the "Three stripes" Adidas logo) on them. His underwear is blue briefs with a white band on the top.

His soccer uniform consists of a red T-shirt with a white collar, lines on the sleeves and a white "10" on the back, white shorts with a vertical red line on each side and socks with red borders, and black and red football boots with white marks on them.

## Personality

Tai is energetic and adventurous. He is also acts impulsively and rushes without thinking the consequences, especially when his friends are in danger but is quick to realize and admit he has been wrong, and does whatever it takes to fix his mistakes. Despite his flaws, Tai is very caring and considerate of others, even if his actions may cause some people to think otherwise. It takes time for him to learn how to be a leader, but eventually he grows into the unifying force that leads all the other DigiDestined and keeps them together. As a teenager, Tai acts like the mellow and experienced mentor to the new Digidestined. He is less brash but still easygoing.

Tai's oldest friend is Sora Takenouchi, who has been in the same class as him since the first grade. In elementary school, they are both regulars in the soccer club. His closest friend is Koushiro "Izzy" Izumi, who he met at the soccer club. As the adventurous leader of the group, Tai is always the first to jump into action, though it often throws him into the path of danger.

Tai's usual focus on the "big picture" leads him to become more cautious about battling after seeing the destruction caused by the Digimon's battles, and his resolve falters against the risk of collateral damage. When it becomes clear that Digimon like Alphamon will only cause more damage if they aren't stopped, Tai makes the decision to fight against them, but he still remains uneager to battle.

## Relationships

### Agumon

Though Agumon is more powerful, when it comes to pure affection, things go in a very different direction. Agumon's bond with Tai is close and intimate, with the two being companions who stay together until the bitter end. However, Tai's relationship with Agumon didn't start off as positive. Tai's reckless desire to force Agumon to become stronger resulted in Agumon suffering in his SkullGreymon form. While Tai and Agumon's relationship blossomed into a lifelong companionship, the friendship between them had lots of problems early on, driven by Tai's urge to be strong. Tai and Agumon's power is also manifested by the love and trust they share for one another. The deeper the trust, the greater the power.

### Matt Ishida

Matt is Tai's opposite; while Tai is extremely impulsive and acts without thinking, Matt tends to think cautiously about a situation and choose a solution that would be the most practical. This can lead to disputes between the two about whether to take the most logical but not necessarily humane solution, or to go with emotion and choose the idea that seems most empathetic.

the two are on extremely tight terms. They often get into disagreements, which are not helped by Matt's "lone wolf" personality. Tai believed that Matt did not "understand" anything and thinks too much, and that his antisocial ways would not help the team at all. Despite this Tai does on occasion relent to Matt's point of view. When the group needs to get back to Highton View Terrace, Tai repeatedly denies requests to use their money to get food until Matt mentions he wants to as well. The reason for this is possibly because of Matt's practical reasoning as he does point out in this instance that their Digimon wouldn't be able to protect them if they are hungry as opposed to the others complaining. Similarly in the second episode of the series Tai is prepared to explore the beach until Matt says he's staying on the beach for a while because even if they can't phone anyone, someone may be able to call them.

Tai and Matt are on much better terms. At one point, Matt punches Tai in order to snap him back to reality, and Tai thanks Matt for doing so. They consider each other to be best friends and attribute this to the fact that they fought a lot.

later on, they seemed to have gained romantic intentions with each other. as the others have realized, and are aware of. whenever Tai and Matt reunite, they always hold hands and stare into each other's eyes. Tai is also the only person who Matt does not hides his true intentions.

### Sora Takenouchi

Sora and Tai had been classmates nd were already friends with each other by the time the series had started. They also played on the same soccer team. Sora becomes an important person to Tai and the source of his distress when she is kidnapped by Datamon. Sora is also someone whom Tai often relies on, both for her opinion and for her reliability. In the episode in which Agumon digivolved to SkullGreymon, Tai asked Sora if he had gone too far in pushing Agumon to digivolve to Ultimate, and in several episodes Tai asks Sora to take care of certain things for him (for example, watching T.K. and Kari while he and Izzy looked for medicine for Kari, who had fallen ill, and finding Matt when Tai was facing Piedmon). In the beginning of the series, Sora often showed concern for Tai's bullheadedness, arguing with him when she thought he was being reckless. As Tai matures as a leader, Sora is more often seen actively supporting his decisions.

Sora and Tai are slightly detached. However Sora still remains an important person to Tai and he seems willing to help her when she has problems.

Sora later on tells Tai her feelings but he kindly turns her down as he loves someone else, she soon understood and they remained on good terms.

### Izzy Izumi

During the first season while Tai likes to mock Izzy for carrying his computer around, he does indeed understand Izzy's ability to think through things and process facts. Tai often looks to Izzy as his closest ally in situations (particularly when his relationship with Matt turns sour) such as when Sora is held hostage in Etemon's pyramid, Tai chooses Izzy to accompany him into the pyramid. Tai also looks to Izzy as his immediate partner to accompany him to find medicine when Kari becomes ill. When Tai recognizes Izzy's capacity to figure out the code of the cards to get them back home he admits that Izzy has a better intellect than himself.

it is stated that Izzy is Tai's best friend, although Tai has punched him when angry.

Tai was also the one to invite Izzy to summer camp, since Izzy was in the soccer club.

### Mimi Tachikawa

While Tai sees Mimi as a fragile pacifist, he seems to trust in her opinion. Similar to Sora, Tai considers Mimi an important person and valuable to the team. He also occasionally goes to her for solace. Mimi is also the one who cheers him up since he mistakenly forced Agumon to dark digivolve to SkullGreymon, Tai returns the favor by forgiving her actions at ShogunGekomon's Castle.

### Joe Kido

Tai sees Joe as a source of practical know-how and as someone who can be relied upon to take care of the team.

### TK Takaishi

whenever Matt is not around, Tai acts as the missing older-brother figure to T.K. However, as the series progresses, Tai exhibits more of this behavior more often, leading to tensions with Matt.

in season 2, Tai believes T.K. to have grown up enough and thus lets him have his own responsibilities.

### Kari Kamiya

As Kari's brother, Tai feels responsibility for Kari's well-being, something that escalated when Tai wanted to play with Kari as a young child and ended up giving her pneumonia. This leads to a paranoia of sorts, as he eventually becomes so overprotective of her that he begins to believe anything should be sacrificed for the sake of his sister.

in season 2, Tai places more trust in Kari, but still shows some protective tendencies. Like the other DigiDestined, he tries to prepare Kari and her team for the possible need to actually kill evil Digimon, as the new DigiDestined are not used to Digimon who are malicious of their own free will.