#Digimon ocs

[bechnokid]

I started remembering the old days on DeviantArt when artists would draw themselves clinging onto their favorite characters and saying, "Mine", and I felt inclined to draw something in a similar vein!

[smokbeast]

more digimon, my beelzemon ocs...yeah you can tell which are my favs PFF

[morgannox]

My brain is forever trapped in 00s/10s humor and references. The characters that make up my AU fall victim constantly.

[imptrashcan]

lil thing on my digimon ocs

So yeah, this is dumb but idc, if you have any questions go ahead and ask I'll try to answer them

[alpaca-clouds]

The Digimon Fandom's Obsession with Crests

Let me vent a bit about one thing that kinda annoys me within the Digimon fandom. The obsession with crests. Digimon OCs - no matter whether they are for the Adventure-verse, any other canonical verse, or something original - will often come equipped with a crest. And even characters from any of the other seasons will often have fan-made crests for a variety of fanfics. Crests for Takato, Jianliang and Ruki. Crests for Takuya and Co.. Crests for all the Goggle Boys.

And I am honest: I kinda hate it.

Now, I make no secret out of the fact that I hate the crests both as a concept, as well as the way it was implemented in the show. A couple years back I had a talk with Nishizono about this (the head writer for Adventure) and he somewhat got my criticisms and spoke about how much of an issue it was to actually do this within the show.

I like the other concept they focused on in Adventure: Make the main characters children with "real world problems" (like divorce, adoption, problems communicating with parents and such). That was a nice concept for this. But the crests? Well, I do not think they work very well.

The issue with the concept

My issue with the concept is most easily explained with the same issue that a lot of folks pointed out about the House System in Harry Potter. (Look, I hate HP by now, but the issue is very well explained with this.) They put a kid into a house for 7 years based on who they are at age 11. Kids change. A kid who is "brave" and stubborn at age 11, can become studious later. Yeah, yeah, I know, Rowling does not do character development, but realistically it is like that.

Same goes for the crests.

See, the crest are supposed to be the strongest positive trait of the children. There is another problem with this in regards to implementation - but I will come to this in a moment. For now the issue is the concept itself.

The first issue to me is, that I find it very reductive to reduce someone's positive to one trait. I am sorry, but I do not like it to reduce complex characters into that one trait. And I also think that in some ways it has hindered the writing in Adventure a lot that they always had to focus the character arcs around this one thing, which definitely hindered them.

But then there is the other thing: The kids were chosen in 1995 during the Hikarigaoka incident. When they were between 3 and 8 years old. And kids develop super fast. A kid who is seven or right is very different from whom they were at ages three of four. A kid in fifth grade is also very different from a kid in first or second grade.

Now, the latter part is used as an actual point of conflict in the novels to some degree. ("Yeah, actually we struggle with the crests, because we are no longer the persons who we were four years ago.") But the show does not really work this out, and as such it just seems... so forced to push the kids into those traits.

The problem with the implementation

The other issue is the implementation. This starts with the fact, that a) not all the supposed "traits" are not really character traits, and b) that they struggle with cultural context.

Let me explain.

Courage or Bravery can be considered a character trait. Friendship and Love though? Those are emotions but not character traits. Knowledge is also not really a trait. This should actually be curiosity or something. After all it is always curiosity that triggers Koshiro's crest. Purity/Sincerity are a trait. But the main issue is that the way this is depicted is very much rooted in Buddhist mythology - which obviously just did not translate into international dubs. Reliability is a trait, that is fine. Hope is not quite one, though I guess "hopefulness" does count. And then there is... Light. Which is not a trait or even a character trait.

Now, Hikari having the crest of light is apparently rooted in Hikari being there being based on executive meddling. (Long story short: Originally there were just six planned characters, then Mimi was added to have another girl in the group, which ironically worked out well, because she accidentally got written really well. But then it was very last minute decided that Hikari would be the "sixth ranger" stereotype. And Nishizono at least did not want this, because the show to him was too crowded. He could not change it, but in protest he kinda did as little with her as a character as he could get away with. And thus her crest is just "hikari", her name.)

I personally do not like a lot of the stuff that Kakudou decided for Adventure/02 I might note - I will not go into the why here, but it is something I want to say. However, even though this was probably a result of hindsight, the novel he and Misaki wrote on Adventure definitely did improve the implementation of the crests through the aforementioned thing: Very clearly implying that the kids had trouble activating them due to not being who they were when they were younger.

The other part is, that at times I feel that really the crests and their traits stand in the way of good character arcs. I would argue, that at large the crests work well for Taichi, Joe, and Mimi. Now, I will be one more person who notes that it makes very little sense that Mimi needs for so long to activate her crests, because she is very sincere and pure in everything she does. In the novel she already gets the activation at the Gekomon castle - and yes, there I very much agree with the novels: This is what should have happened. While I love her crest activation episode in the show, I think for her it is too late.

Meanwhile Koshiro again has the issue that his trait is actually curiosity, not knowledge. And indeed, it is always his curiosity that activates the crest. But if we just say "yes it is curiosity", then why does it activate so late?

Yamato and Sora meanwhile have very little traits in Adventure that bind them to the idea of the crest. Yamato is the worst friend out of the Adventure-crew. I am sorry, but there it is. Now, if we had used that as a conflict of him hence struggling to regularly activate his crest, this would have been interesting. But... that is not what happens.

With Sora meanwhile Love is a very vague idea. Sure, it is about a platonic love like in family, but it is very vague and just is not worked with a whole lot. I honestly think of all character arcs in Adventure hers is the one that works least - mostly due to her conflict being set up so very late and then gets connected to the trait with the ironbar method.

Takeru is complicated. Because I think the main issue with him is that he is very young still - and as such for half the show gets reduced to the little brother role, due to which he has so little development of his own.

Well, and Hikari in Adventure very much is a non-character, who only gets to be a full-fledged character in 02.

Generally speaking, I do think that generally the concept of the crests did hinder the writing of Adventure in a lot of ways and made the character arcs a lot more complicated to write, than they wouldh have been before. Which is why I really hate to see that so many folks writing about Digimon in any way, try to force in some kind of Crest mechanic.

Sure, the crest designs are nice and something fun to work with, but... like, we can come up with better ideas, right?

I dunno. I am really annoyed with this. I am honest.

[virozero]

Ooouuhhhhaaahhuoouuuhhh

Hurricane cancled college for a week and Im doing my best to not dread losing power and stuff again

[spinydogfish]

And they were girlfriends

[blessedcactus]

Sorry if this posts twice, but I can't see the first? Anyway, tadah! I finished: @discendia had a lot of fun. I imagined they got separated, and right now Amina and Lopmon are trying to think of what to do next didjk I decided to try yellow and red for Eri's dress! Hopefully, this can help you decide a colour for her. Cx

Commission me here 👀✨️

[fanciful-wonderland]

Thank you so much for commissioning me, Junie! It was a joy to draw this!! @discendia

Commission me here

[himbosuplex]

Any other Digimon dorks out here?

update: see the colored version here :) kos39 on Tumblr

[bechnokid]

@avalypuff showed me the original 1998 Digimon Pendulum commercial, and it changed my life.

[smokbeast]

I keep seeing digimon everywhere so I’m slapping down my digimon ocs.

[r0bitadraws]

Digi-gals and digi-guys~♡

Edit 11/25: I decided to brighten the image for a bit more clarity...

[imptrashcan]

Do Wizarmon or Witchmon have further evos yet?

Ya

Alright get ready

And then they went their separate ways

Witchmon turned into LadyDevimon, makes sense I guess, but then she turns into Beelstarmon which was kind of surprising considering her previous evolution.

This one is obvious

Silly siblings

[alpaca-clouds]

I just found this picture again. Riza did it back in the day as a commission. It was a picture for the sequel to Digimon Alpha Generation. Characters from top to bottom: Ryou, Ruki, Takato, Steve, and Shoji. I am kinda looking forward to translating Battle Generation.

Translating Alpha Generation currently, I am really surprised that a lot of it still works. But I know that in Battle Generation I was working way heavier with themes and stylistic devices. And I loved the drama between those five characters here.

[pomegranate-vinegarete]

The self insert digimon ocs are getting to powerful

The one with goggle is my best of friends Oliver