#the way he speaks evolves not just with lopmon but with everyone else as well

[ranshoku]

I saw a discussion on the second-person pronoun usage in Japanese for another fandom on my dashboard, and because I happened to also be working on the appellation table for Digimon Survive, it got me thinking about Shuuji and the multilayered way he speaks.

One thing non-Japanese speakers often don't realize is that Japanese people tend to avoid referring to someone with a second-person pronoun (i.e. "you"-ing someone). In a society where a hierarchal system is constantly enforced, you're expected to refer to other people with the proper title or honorifics when needed, so referring someone with "you" is like bypassing the established hierarchy and being too direct with the person you're addressing--therefore it can come across rude. "You" is acceptable when you have an intimate relationship with the addressee, like for example with a friend or family member who's of the same age as you or younger. However, even then, I feel like "warm" families tend to avoid referring to each other with "you" and instead just addresses each other with name (with the exception of あなた "anata" being used by wife to husband, which is similar in nuance to "honey" in English). Case in point: Takuma's mom addressing Takuma just by his name all the time and never once uses "you" with him.

Then we have Shuuji's family, who's a far cry from Takuma's family. First there's Shuuji's dad, who carries himself with an air of sophistication by using the stiff and formal pronoun 私 "watashi" even towards his own children (friendlier dads would refer to themselves as "Dad"). Despite that, he addresses Shuuji with お前 "omae" when not calling him with name--which is, anyway, a very rude way to say you, even for parents referring to their own child. Combined with how Shuuji strictly uses keigo with his dad (something that usually doesn't happen in normal families--but I've talked about it before on my sideblog), the way they communicate with each other does feel especially degrading for Shuuji.

It doesn't just stop with his dad--Shuuji's brother also addresses Shuuji by the rude お前 "omae". Sure, I'm aware that we see this with the Shinonome siblings with Kaito sometimes calling Miu お前 "omae", but the nuance is a bit different--Kaito defaults to speaking in a very rude language, so him referring to anyone with お前 "omae" is kind of... to be expected, for the lack of a better word. The older Kayama brother, on the other hand, speaks in an otherwise soft-spoken tone. The pronoun he uses to refer to himself is 僕 "boku", which feels gentle and relatively polite (it's the "male" equivalent of the feminine 私 "watashi" actually), so him using お前 "omae" to his brother creates a somewhat unexpected contrast not found in Kaito's speech.

Shuuji himself is actually a relatively polite and soft-spoken person. He may be domineering (and his language in the early game actually reflects this--he speaks in a way that subtly positions himself as the authority figure among the kids), but even during the heat of his argument with Kaito, he never once resorts to using お前 "omae" and at worst just addresses him with 君 "kimi". It's going to be long to explain the nuance of the pronoun, so please refer to this article to understand more about it. TL;DR it's nowhere near as rude as お前 "omae", however it can sound condescending depending on the context.

So, we've established that Shuuji is soft-spoken that he wouldn't stoop so low as to using a rude language in a fight. However, there's specifically one person that he refuses to extend his politeness to no matter what, and that's none other than Lopmon--at least in the beginning of the game. In fact, he doesn't even want to call him by his name and only addresses him with the insulting お前 "omae" every time--the same way his dad and his brother address him. And just like the case with his dad and his brother, Shuuji's use of rude language with Lopmon stands out even more precisely because it's juxtaposed with his usual "soft-spokenness" that isn't always found in other characters.