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firedragon1321 · 2 years ago

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Hey Kids! Who Wants to Learn What it Was Like Getting into Digimon in America in 2007?

This is my Digimon origin story. Click to read my tale of woe, Youtube videos, bootleg figurines, and the birth of the Tai thirst.

IN THE BEGINNING

So I was too young for Digimon Adventure’s original airing. I was around five, and- at that time- I wouldn’t watch anything I thought was “a boy’s show”. Yet, I was okay with The Powerpuff Girls and its brutal opening sequence. Buttercup was my favorite. So ???

Little me was stupid.

Pokemon came first, and- without it- I wouldn’t have gotten into Digimon. There’s a Youtube Pokemon parody that sucks, but it mentions Digimon and Agumon. Here it is if you want to suffer-

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My sister knew that Ash’s blatant OOC got under my skin, so she would play this 200 times a day. It was enough times for me to wonder what an “Agumon” was. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because you could barely hear the word “Agumon”? He doesn’t even show up in the video.

So I looked up Digimon. I discovered the In-Training and Rookie-level Digimon first, which was good because they resemble Pokemon the most. I fell in love with the cute blobs and critters. This led me to wiki pages for the DigiDestined. The first one I found was Sora, followed by Tai.

Yes, this man. But Kizuna didn’t exist yet, so it was when he was a cocky little shrimp. That cocky little shrimp moved into my brain and hasn’t left.

But this was 2007. Digimon didn’t air on Saturday mornings on Fox Kids anymore. How could I possibly access the adventures of Tai, Agumon, and the rest of the gang? Well, there were two answers, and both sucked absolute shit.

METHOD 1: JETIX AND THE TIME SLOT OF DOOM

Any anime fan of a certain age- namely from before streaming- remembers a time when anime was only on at an ungodly time. Midnight, 2 AM- whenever normal people weren’t awake. This was common- and somewhat understandable- with anime loaded with violent content, in order to keep it away from the kiddies. But Digimon is specifically for children. Yet, it still got this treatment.

At least, any season before Data Squad did.

Digimon was owned by Disney at the time, and they aired it on Jetix (which was one of the higher channels you had to pay extra for). Data Squad- the newest season- got a normal air slot. This may be due to the fact that Disney had a hand in its dubbing. In fact, Marcus Damon shares his English VA with Axel from Kingdom Hearts, and references his famous catchphrase in one episode. (Go to 0:27 to catch the line, plus avoid having your ears destroyed.)

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If you wanted to watch Adventure, 02, Tamers, or Frontier, they were only on at Stupid AM. I kept my interest in Digimon a weird secret at first- probably because Tai awakened my hormones and I felt embarrassed. My mom caught me at two in the morning watching a children’s cartoon, but she thought it was...something else.

After explaining the issue, we taped the episodes on old video cassettes. I still have them around somewhere. So we did find a way around the time slot of doom. Unfortunately- once Disney XD came into the picture- they nixed everything but Data Squad, which only aired for a very short window. After that, they were pretty much done. Digimon wouldn’t air again until Fusion dropped on Nickelodeon, and Fusion was never one of my favorite seasons.

Which brings me to-

METHOD 2: YOUTUBE PART 1/3 VIDEOS

Yeah. I had to deal with these.

I didn’t know about pirate sites. There was no Crunchyroll back then. The only episodes I had on tape were those obtained via Method 1. Because Digimon requires watching all of its episodes to understand the story (unlike Pokemon, which is more loose with its storytelling), I needed a way to fill in the blanks.

Enter Youtube.

Youtube’s videos were a godsend. I watched them while waiting for after-school activities. I even used the software at school to make a crude AMV begging for a continuation to Tai’s story (this was before tri. threw me a monkey’s paw). There was just one teeny issue, and any anime fan from this era knows what I mean.

Part 1/3 videos were the only way to access Digimon episodes on demand in 2007. While it didn’t bother me much back then, it was nonetheless a pain in the ass. For the whippersnappers- Youtube videos containing old anime episodes cut them into pieces (usually two or three, but sometimes four), forcing you to dig through the recommended videos or the uploader’s account to get the whole episode. This is still the only way to watch some old anime for free. Fighting Foodons and the English dub of Mon Colle Knights come to mind for me.

...I like kiddie anime. Digimon and Pokemon both had a hand in that.

ADDENDUM: FANSITES

Digimon had little to no active internet presence in 2007 outside of ancient shrines. I would read shitty fanfiction on Angelfire relics. This was also my first exposure to bad fangirl practices, which came through sites like The Lost Temple of Ishida. This was its splash page (found through Wayback Machine- the site itself is dead).

The best/worst part of this is “come in my pretty ones”, which is just so out of character for Matt that it’s funny. But at the time, I only had a instinctual understanding of what OOC was. It was the thing that made the Pokemon parody so annoying, but I had no name for it. So I had a weaker bullshit detector than I do now, which let me enjoy more fanfics with plenty of OOC trash in them.

Everyone starts somewhere.

I didn’t interact with any Digimon fans- as the sites were old and inactive- which was probably for the best. Their ancient scrolls introduced me to fandom basics, like shipping. I tried my hand at it, shipping Taiora in part to deal with my Tai thirst. That didn’t work for reasons listed below.

ADDENDUM: TAI THIRST

I had a crush on Ash as a small child, but that was innocent since I was small. Once Tai came into the picture, I was a bit older. My crush on him was- different. Like “look up pictures of his naked butt in the uncut version of Ep. 8 and save them to a friend’s computer so I didn’t get in trouble” kind of different. (I’m sorry, friend.) The fact that this content was only in the Japanese version made it doubly taboo.

(Actually, this image is about the same quality as what I had access to, lol.)

I went hog wild at first. I wrote bad poems and had a binder full of screenshots. I wrote my first initial and his in hearts on my notes. It was pretty bad. Over time, I figured out this was kinda cringe, which intersected with general shame at my sexuality waking up.

So I shipped Taiora. I thought- by putting Tai in a relationship with another girl- I could segregate myself from my raging crush on him, and all the uncomfortable thoughts that came with it. Unfortunately, this pairing didn’t click in my mind. I was plagued by daydreams of Tai being deathly ill, which was my brain’s way of saying “hey- maybe forcibly shipping Tai to deal with your personal BS is a bad idea?”. So I moved on to Mary Sue stand-ins, which had the same result.

The one good thing about being 11 in 2007 means I (sort of) grew up in real time with the character. Tri. dropped when I was 19 (kind of odd, but there was only a two year difference between me and tri.!Tai’s age of 17). Kizuna was only two years ago. Both of us were in the adult world in our own ways. Tai’s like an imaginary childhood friend, and he helped me through a lot of things. I know he’s fictional, but I really felt like I grew up with him.

By around tri., I decided I didn’t give a shit anymore, I compromised by keeping my fangirl thirst to Tai exclusively. Since I had a lot of background with the character in addition to thirst, it was more “acceptable” to me. tri. Determination...helped.

I just completely lost my mind with this screenshot. This led to the towel my friend gave me, which I haven’t used but can’t get rid of. I’m in a more comfortable place on this subject than I was in 2007, even if it’s not perfect.

ADDENDUM: MERCH

Finding merch in 2007 was a pain in the butt. It wasn’t really widely available in the same way as Pokemon. So there was only one option- eBay and its bootlegs.

There was a woman who was somewhat of a family friend at the time. She was my ticket to all the Digimon figures I wanted. But of course- eBay being eBay- the figures I got my mitts on were fakes. I didn’t care, as long as I got tiny Tokomons and Patamons to play with. As a kid, I was drawn more to the cute, more Pokemon-like Digis. Blame Tai (again) for making me obsessed with the giant dinosaurs.

This was my only ticket to any form of Digi-merch, except the odd book here and there. Except the Bin that Got Away.

I remember someone was selling Digimon figures at a giant yard sale. My mom only allowed me to buy two of them. So I chose a large Terriermon- who I’ve since lost- and WarGreymon. I liked WarGreymon due to his connection to Tai (it all comes back to Tai).

The catch is this WarGreymon was a digivolving figure that went with a MetalGarurumon. At the time, I didn’t like Matt, and connected the Digimon to him. My reasons for hating Matt were really dumb, since he’s a lot like me personality-wise. Matt always fought with Tai, so I thought their relationship was more antagonistic, like Ash and Gary. Not to mention I didn’t like Matt’s fans. My only exposure to them was The Lost Temple of Ishida. So I purposefully picked out the MetalGarurumon bits of the digivolving figure, only taking WarGreymon.

Some other lucky kid bought the whole bin, so now my WarGreymon can’t digivolve. But I can take comfort in the fact that he was equally screwed.

CONCLUSION

Being a Digimon fan in 2007 was tough. If I wasn’t an autistic kid who hung out with other, older autistic kids, I might never have found anyone to talk to about Digimon. Luckily, times have changed. I now have all of Adventure and tri, on DVD, and Kizuna on my PS4. On top of the old tapes, I have one or two official tapes I got from consignment shops, including one of Tamers. I figured out Digimon merch could be found if one knew where to look. I have the blursed towel.

As I keep collecting things and thinking about what these characters mean to me, this story will keep growing.

#digimon #my digimon origin story #multiple videos #mentions the evolution of my fangirl thirst #might not want to open this at work #it's not graphic but you never know #tai kamiya #matt ishida #fan origin story #taiposting #Youtube

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