Tai Kamiya

## Voices

**Taichi "Tai" Kamiya** (八神 太一 *Yagami Taichi***?**) is the protagonist in the anime and manga *Digimon Adventure* and *Digimon Adventure tri.*. He is a major supporting character in *Digimon Adventure 02*. He is a DigiDestined, partnered with Agumon, and the bearer of the Crest of Courage. He is the older brother of Kari Kamiya.

His appearance is based on Tai Kamiya, the human protagonist of the *Digimon Adventure V-Tamer 01* manga, who in turn was based on Kentarou Kamon from the *C'mon Digimon: The capering monster BUN* one-shot. The goggles he wears are a characteristic that would eventually become shared among the leaders of the various DigiDestined in *Digimon*.

## Appearance

Tai is an attractive young boy with tan skin and chocolate brown eyes. He has spiky brown hair that sticks out wildly in three distinct triangles. He usually wears light grey goggles with a black strap. As an adult, Tai's hair is neater and more wellkempt.

He is usually seen with a smirk.

Tai is taller than he was as a small child. 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 is very close to Kari and very protective of her, in part because of their past experiences. On her part, Kari idolizes Tai and confides in him even when they are older. Tai and Kari used to share a room, but sometime between Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02 Kari has moved to another room.

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.

In *Digimon Adventure tri.*, 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

### Yamato "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.

During Adventure, 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.

In *Adventure 02*, 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 when they were younger.

### Sora Takenouchi

Sora and Tai had been classmates prior to Adventure and were already friends with each other by the time the series had started. They also played on the same soccer team. Over the course of Adventure, 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 Adventure, 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.

In Our War Game, Tai is seen trying to email Sora to apologize for a hairpin he had gotten her that offended her, and is distressed when it seems that the email can't be delivered. He also later confesses to Izzy that he already tried calling Sora many times to apologize, indicating how important it was to him that Sora forgive him.

During Adventure 02, 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, such as when she wanted to confess to Matt that she had romantic feelings for him.

### Koushiro "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 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.

In the Digimon Adventure PSP game, it is stated that Izzy is Tai's best friend

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.

### Takeru "T.K." Takaishi

In the beginning of Adventure, 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 Adventure 02, 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 *Adventure 02*, 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.

### Davis Motomiya

To Tai, Davis is his protégé. Since Tai has entrusted taking care of a DigiDestined team to Davis, he passes on his beloved goggles to him as a symbol of such. Tai occasionally oversees everything that Davis does to make sure he's doing it right, and is always willing to offer advice. Tai also placed his sister, Kari, and T.K. into Davis' team, as representatives from the Original DigiDestined, since they happen to be of Davis' age group, as well as having known about Digimon longer than him.

### Yolei Inoue

Tai sees Yolei as the more excitable girl of the group.

### Cody Hida

Tai sees Cody as the "straight man" of the group.

### Ken Ichijouji

Tai is often willing to assist Ken in times of need and help him get over his stress over having been the Digimon Emperor.

### Marcus Damon

When the Old Clock Shop Man summons the heroes of the past to the *Fusion* universe to help take down Quartzmon, Tai and Marcus fight together to help Xros Heart.