#xw pickmon

[koushirouizumi]

{from here!}

[digimonreviews]

Hybrid/No Level Fridays: Starmons

So, eventually Digimon started experimenting with stuff outside the usual “Baby through Ultimate” paradigm, and it gave us stuff like Digimon Frontier and Digimon Xros Wars. With the other, normal evolutionary stages covered on Sunday through Thursday, Friday is dedicated to those Digimon who exist, how do we say, outside the norm.

Digimon Xros Wars in particular is notable for introducing us to a concept called “Digi Xros”. While the series would later introduce evolution, the gimmick du jour was Digimon combining, super robot style, with one another instead of them all evolving individually. As such, most of the Digimon introduced in this level are commonly referred to as “No Level” Digimon, because they weren’t assigned a traditional set of evolutionary forms. While a good number of them would later be fit into the typical evolution system in various video games and whatnot, it can be kind of a headache to figure out just where a lot of these guys match up to more traditional Digimon.

But that’s enough context. Our first Digimon for this category is a Digimon represented in our grading system: Starmon!

... No, not you.

THESE guys.

Starmon(s) - Major Digimon Attacks: Meteor Squall, Wish Upon A Star, Rock’n’Rolling ; (Dub) Meteor Shower

The "Starmons" are composed of a corps of several Pickmon with a Starmon at their heart. The will of the corps is at the discretion of Starmon, the Head of the corps, and the Head's decisions are briskly and unconditionally followed by the Pickmon, keeping them from falling out of line as they maneuver according to Starmon's directions. The complex maneuvers required by the corps techniques "Meteor Squall" and "Wish Upon a Star" are made possible by their strict hierarchical system.

As Starmon has a cheerful, showy personality, it is an extreme optimist. Basically, it never gets depressed, and if it even seems depressed it seems to only be thinking things like, "I may be down, but I look good, don't I?" Because of that, even though it is taken lightly by other Digimon, it certainly doesn't worry about itself at all.

- Translation by Wikimon.

So you may or may not be familiar with the Starmon that was introduced first, who is shown further up, but he’s more or less a Digimon who’s starshaped. This guy does that, and also plays with the idea of a star having something in its orbit; in this case, all the little guitar pick-shaped Digimon that accompany it, the Pickmon(s). Together, they’re known as the “Starmons”, and Starmon is their boss, with the Pickmon being in his “orbit”. It’s a clever idea.

There would be other Digimon in Xros Wars in the same vein as these guys. See, Xros Wars started with the idea of the main characters being “generals”, and each general having an army. This didn’t end up coming into play much in the anime, but little guys like the Pickmon would basically serve as the cute little infantry for the various teams, and were called “Nanomons” (not to be confused with the Perfect-level Digimon ALSO named Nanomon), of course. The Starmons were the only ones to get much play in the anime, though, while their equivalents in the other armies only made scattered appearances.

The reason why Starmon and his buds got more play in the anime was because they actually factored into the whole DigiXros thing. Starmon would combine with the Pickmon and certain other ‘mons, with them all collectively serving as “one” Digimon, to create weapons for the other characters to wield. Here are a few of them:

Did I include the Dorulu Copter just because it’s hilarious? Maybe.

In any case, Starmon(s) wouldn’t be the only instance of them taking an existing name and reusing it. A lot of people like to consider this Starmon the Child/Rookie form of the earlier one, but considering he takes more after one of that guy’s evolutions, SuperStarmon, it makes things flow a teeny bit weirdly. Anyway, my love of Xros Wars has faded a bit, and while there are some clever ideas here with the Starmons, they don’t really do much on their own and basically just exist to attach to the other main characters in XW and get wielded as a weapon. They’re cool, but not very exciting.

Starmon’s grade is...

THREE STARMONS! Kinda fitting, really.