#Super Digica Taisen

[digimontamerrichie-tcg]

DIGIMON XROS WARS: SUPER DIGICA TAISEN!

[shihalyfie]

First, thank you for taking the time to answer all these questions! I hope your year ends on a good note. Second, one of the production rumors I remember hearing is that a TV special that aired during Xros Wars' run showed off concept art for a Shoutmon, Greymon and Darkknightmon DigiXros. This, along with the existence of things like GreyKnightsmon and Shoutmon X3SD, was seen as proof that the series originally had a very different plot that ended up changed. Did this special really ever air?

Hello! Thank you, and I hope you have a good end of year and beginning of next!

I wasn't really paying close attention to what was going on in the Japanese airing side back when Xros Wars was airing (and my Japanese was nowhere near good enough to do so), so I can't tell you if a TV special like that aired or not. What I can tell you is that from what I understand, if such a thing existed, it seems doubtful that any of this was made for the TV show to begin with, because GreyKnightsmon and Shoutmon X3SD are from the Super Xros Wars games (from the Digimon Story series), and those games were a "side story" that aren't incredibly linked to the story of the anime. Or, in other words, I don't think any of that would have been compelling proof that the TV series was meant to have such a different plot, because games by nature like to have exclusive forms and all that.

Even putting Super Xros Wars aside, it's not unusual to have concept art for designs and forms that don't get used, especially when you have something like the Xros Wars setting where the whole draw is mashing together different Digimon forms and seeing what comes out of it. Also, Xros Wars was far more than just the anime and Super Xros Wars; it had the manga (which had a different plot from the anime entirely), and it had other things like Super Digica Taisen, Jintrix, etc., and other merch and product lines. (In effect, it was trying to be a soft reboot of the entire franchise in a sense; if Xros Wars hadn't financially bombed, it's likely they would have very seriously pursued the idea of making DigiXros a staple mechanic for the rest of the franchise's future.) So even if such concept art existed, I wouldn't rule out the idea they were futureproofing for other spinoff media.

That said, like I said, I wasn't exactly "paying attention" to the little intricacies going on in the Japanese side back when it was airing, so maybe anyone else who remembers anything can chime in? But so far, in all of my surfing around the Internet, I've never run into anything about a TV special like that or any evidence that the plot changed drastically in planning.

[magpiejay1234]

Anyway, Savers is over, now onto Xros Wars.

I won't be going over Appmon, since it is own subfranchise. So after Xros Wars, including Hunters, we will move to Adventure reboot.

Xros Wars will take longer, since it is three seasons (a novelty, as other Series have been all single season long), with the third season, Hunters, effectively being its own sub-series. So we will take each season on its own, like the YGO series.

****

Now for the general things about Xros Wars:

**This is the second major time Digimon TCG was revived, though in Xros Wars, this was in the context of Super Digica Taisen arcade games, which were not released to the West.

**Because of the arcade focus, and TCG revival, as well as overall merchandising, Xros Wars, like Frontier, focuses on the collectible aspect of Digimon, rather than the raising aspect of Digimon.

**As such, in Xros Wars, there are no Evolutionary Levels. Any Digimon can theoretically beat any other Digimon. Evolutions themselves will be reintroduced, for obvious reasons, and retroactively Xros Wars era Digimon will be given Evolutionary Levels (some will be given during the Xros Wars, since many Digimon introduced around the show don't have much to do with the show itself).

**Because of the merch focus, as YouTuber Billiam notes, many Digimon have mechanical looks to them, even if they are bestial. This ties into the Xrossing mechanic, since each Digimon detachable parts that can be recognisable on a DigiXros form.

**The overall artstyle will try to emulate earlier Series, but not have the same character designers, and tropes. Differences, while subtle, are noticeably there.

**Because of the "war" aspect, there are many recurring characters in these seasons, though only a small number of them matter a lot.

**There aren't that many Xros Wars era video games, surprisingly enough. Most of the video games between this era, and Adventure reboot are around Appmon era, and many of the games released during this era focus on Adventure era stuff instead. This is again mostly due to the arcade push.

Xros Wars era would be one of the bigger bumps of Digimon's popularity, bringing back some old fans, and bringing in many new ones due to simplified mechanics, and expanded lore. This era is the favourite of many people, and it is one of the few periods where new concepts could, temporarily, rival Adventure era stuff. Due to the poor reception of Hunters, it didn't last long, but it is notable nonetheless.

Dubbing of this Series apparently had many interesting controversies, but we won't go over the dub. The original had obvious production issues, as more prominently seen in Hunters, but a lot of those come from the new status quo.

Xros Wars manga, despite having most of the same cast, is completely disconnected from the animé, but much like the GX manga, many people prefer it over the animé, and it gets decent amount of promotion by Bandai due to its international popularity. We won't discuss that a lot either.

[aaa-japan-store]

[digitalgate02]

Ok so, someone asked on an artist’s art if Daisuke counts as tamer and i decided to gently answer that.

I think this should be common sense but if there’s people confused regarding the term “Tamer” and if it applies to characters with titles like “Chosen Child/Digidestined” (Adv-02-Frontier-Appmon), “General” (XW) or “Hunter” (XW-YH) ... Well, my answer is...

YES. it does.

The term comes from Bandai’s Digimon lore (AKA “Null lore” or “Bandai lore”) which is the term to refer to a human with a digimon. Y’know, like how Pokemon (franchise) has the “Trainer” term to refer to people with a pokemon.

So, no matter what the anime/manga/game series use to refer to their main cast of humans, they’re all under the “Tamer” description.

Also, the term “Tamer” had been used in 02 as well -- in Daisuke & V-mon’s duet “2-TOP” in which its chorus is:

We’re the invincible 2-top, you know So leave it to us We get in fights, but we’ll still get it done We’re tomorrow’s 2-top, you know Let’s scatter them all ’round We’ll be the ones to show you The power of a Digital Tamer

TL by Kazari → https://digi-lab.blog/digimon-adventure-02-best-partner-character-song-2-top-daisuke-and-v-mon/

In which Daisuke refers to himself by “Digital Tamer”, which is something odd to those who are too used to Adv/02′s Chosen Child term being used from time-to-time through the Adv franchise.

But yes, other material also refer to him (and others) by “Tamer” in certain All-Series (or All-Media) material -- Such like the newest TCG “Digimon Card Game” (DigiCa), in which the cards for any human character within the franchise are labeled as “Tamer Cards”. Yes, this also includes Adv’99/reboot, Frontier and XW characters as well.  Or like the previous card game, which had a category called “Tamer”.

HOWEVER, in another material, the late “Super Digica Taisen” card game, had another term along the lines of XW mechanics and terms -- General. (Note: this term also applies to Taichi, Yamato, Sora, 02 Hikari, Takato, Takuya, Masaru, Tohma and Yoshino -- characters featured in it alongside Daisuke and the XW characters Taiki, Kiriha, Nene and Yuu)

I hope this helps to clarify why it’s safe to claim Daisuke is a Tamer (or any other character from a series who does not use this term) .

(Or General if you like XW that much like me hehe~~)

[shihalyfie]

I watched a friend playing DigiSurvive recently so i have to ask: Is there any name for the kids in-game? Like, did Bandai/Habumon's dev team pick some term alluding to Adventure's or did they go by the Bandai's (null lore's) term "Tamer"?

So for Survive, it's a bit of a complicated scenario. They do not allude to the word "Tamer" in the game, but that's also because the word "Tamer" is a meta term anyway -- we've already seen a lot of arguments about the word being unfitting for anything that involves the more equal relationship between a human and their Digimon partner, and the term itself is a bit of an artifact word from the period of the franchise before Adventure. (You know, back whey were even selling Digimon products with them in cages.) It doesn't even work for the series called Tamers, which itself only uses the word because of the premise of Digimon being an in-universe franchise. I'd argue it doesn't even work for V-Tamer! I think at this point everyone only uses the word "Tamer" as convenience because with so many different portrayals of different kinds of Digimon partnerships, you need some kind of unifying word, and it's only natural anything you pick will be incongruous with something in there.

So if you're talking about broad franchise things, comparing one thing to another, then yes, they are Tamers, but this is strictly a term used for pragmatic reasons more than anyone takes the word literally. They even allude to this in Cyber Sleuth when Nokia declares her team to be "Tamers" instead of "hackers" as proof that her team treats Digimon as equals, which makes no sense with the meaning of the word, but does make sense in terms of meta symbolism, because she's bringing Adventure's ideals to the CSHM setting. The card game also classifies Takuma, Aoi, and Minoru as Tamer Cards, but keep in mind that the Frontier kids are also Tamer Cards despite having nothing to "tame", and when Oikawa got a Tamer Card fans were congratulating him, not for becoming a "tamer", but for being given status equivalent to a Chosen Child like he always wanted. Daisuke and V-mon used the phrase "Digital Tamer" in 2-TOP, but character songs tend to be a bit outside-fourth-wall anyway. The Survive kids are "Tamers", but purely in a franchise meta sense. (Incidentally, it wouldn't be the first time this kind of necessary forcing has happened; Super Digica Taisen, from the Xros Wars era, classified Adventure through Savers kids as "Generals", despite this also not entirely making sense.)

In-game, the kids are not "Chosen Children" in the sense they were chosen to be heroes like Homeostasis picked the Adventure kids due to their virtues. However, Aoi comments in the Harmony ending that their role in being pioneers in Digimon-human relations makes them "chosen kids" (this isn't a localization slip-up; she uses the word "erabareta kodomo" instead of the actual term normally used for Chosen Children, "erabareshi kodomo"). Ironically, this isn't as far from Adventure as you'd think; Koushirou points out in Two-and-a-Half Year Break that having a Digimon partner isn't inherently special, and that the only thing that distinguishes a Chosen Child is that they were chosen to be the first to have Digimon so they could guide this important time of first contact. So actually, it wouldn't entirely be wrong to call the Survive kids Chosen Children...but I personally wouldn't use it for them, because Homeostasis and the Holy Beasts at least "chose" Adventure and 02's kids for the purpose they ended up carrying out, whereas the Master "chose" the Survive kids for them being the nearest available human sacrifices and they themselves ended up diverting that plan. It's kind of how like, yes, according to Leviathan in Appmon episode 49, the Appli Drivers are "Chosen Children" (the term erabareshi kodomo is used here), but that's in the sense it's revealed they were all pawns in Leviathan's plan from day one, so is that really a term you want to positively apply to them?

Ironically, the dub term "DigiDestined" may arguably be the most accurate here; the term "destined partner" is brought up a lot to describe human-Digimon partner bonds (the localization handles it as "fated partner", but the word used is "unmei", which the dub has typically handled as "destiny"). So they are DigiDestined, in that they're destined for a Digimon partner (as is everyone else in Survive's universe). That would require a hell of a technicality, though, and most people would probably get confused if you used this without explanation (especially if you're like me, who rarely uses dub terms), so I honestly just call them "the Survive kids" if I need to make a distinction between them and other Digimon protagonist groups, and "Tamers" only if we are strictly talking technical franchise designations. And if we're only talking about them within the Survive universe, well...they're just normal people, and that's really the point anyway.

[shihalyfie]

The Mysterious Case of Yoshino’s Unidentified Second Voice Actor

If I had to make a “seven mysteries of the Digimon franchise” thing (one of which would involve the mysterious case of Takeru’s Patamon suddenly changing type), my favorite would probably be the mystery case of Yoshino’s anonymous second voice actor.

What’s that, you ask?

You see, Yoshino’s original voice actress, Aragaki Yui, is normally a live-action actress. Her career was just getting off the ground at the time of Savers, and her agency seemed to be trying different opportunities for her, with Yoshino being one of very few voice acting roles she’s ever had. After that, her career as an actress exploded. Ask any J-drama fan and they’ll probably know who she is. And unfortunately, it is a known fact that once a live-action actor gets famous enough, you’ll probably never see them in kids’ media ever again -- especially if it’s a semi-obscure series like Savers. Not only is it going to be too expensive to get them back all that easily, the actor’s agency will also be likely to deny the request because the actor will be booked for potentially years ahead of time. (Official staff seems to be all too aware of how far past Digimon she is at this point, but they did quietly post a suspiciously well-timed Lilamon picture right after Aragaki’s marriage was announced. Her husband, Hoshino Gen, is also an incredibly big-ticket live-action actor, and it was often joked that people didn’t know which of them to be more jealous of for getting to marry the other.)

Anime and game characters being associated with their original voice actors can be very Serious Business, to the point that changing them without a seriously significant reason can get a lot of people very angry (I’ve seen people boycott tri. and Kizuna before they even released just because of the voice actor change, and by that I mean not just “it doesn’t feel right to me personally”, but actually boycotting). Digimon has thus historically had to dodge including certain characters in things whenever real-life circumstances with their voice actors get messy and reusing archive audio isn’t an option, such as with Taichi and Adventure-era Takeru in the 15th anniversary Adventure drama CD or Renamon in Information and the Unordinary (Taichi’s voice actress Fujita Toshiko was later revealed to already be very ill by that point, and Takeru and Renamon’s voice actresses Konishi Hiroko and Imai Yuka had some very messy splits from the voice acting industry). So unfortunately, it’s probably best to accept that we’re never going to see Yoshino in anything that requires voiced lines ever again...

Except we did see her once, in Super Digica Taisen.

Super Digica Taisen was an arcade game that ran from 2010 to 2011 as part of a cross-promotion with Xros Wars, and Yoshino appeared as a General in it (rather surprising on its own since not everyone was in the game, so they could have easily gotten away with not even going past Masaru) -- and there, her voice actor remains uncredited.

Unfortunately, Super Digica Taisen wasn’t very popular and died a quick and untimely death, so we have no surviving footage of Yoshino in it, but rumors say that her voice felt fitting even if it was clearly not Aragaki’s, so nobody complained. But when someone sent an inquiry to Bandai asking about the new voice actor’s identity, they refused to disclose it.

So this will probably remain an unsolved mystery for the time being. On the bright side, this does at least confirm that if Toei or Bandai does ever want to bring Yoshino back, there is some precedent for finding a way around the issue, and any fan with common sense will probably be willing to understand. And in anything voiced lines aren’t involved, they’ve included her on all of the recent Savers lineups -- especially in the card game, where she got her own Tamer Card like the rest of them -- so the franchise has clear interest in respecting her position in the series as long as they’re able to.

[aaa-japan-store]