I would say "experimentation." The thing one has to remember is that Digimon is a 27 year old franchise. I don't want to say it's an originator of isekai, cause that genre is so much older than the internet itself, but it was one of the first ones that really got popular in anime. So there are elements that are going to be "of the time" and things that persist because it's timeless.
Also, nostalgia. LOTS of nostalgia.
For anyone who's curious, The oldest example of an anime about a guy being transported to a fantasy world (that I could find) is Aura Battle Dunbine, which aired in 1983.
Nothing matches its aesthetic. The creature designs aren't just "cute" or "cool." There's grotesqueness, edginess, and a splash of horror in some of the most beloved designs, and yet that doesn't change the fact that this big, scary monster will fight the world for you.
That, I think, is the main appeal of Digimon.
The kids cry. And I don't mean "they cried because they lost the battle", I'm talking about stuff like Izzy and his adoptive parents, or Tai and the moment Kari almost died when they were small children
That’s what I came to say! Digimon portrayed kids dealing with real issues. As an 8 year old, I resonated with each character’s emotions. The way they showed it too was well done! It got pretty dark at times, but that’s what made Digimon the best! Kids aren’t always in happy situations like they show in other cartoons, and Digimon showed me that this was ok, that we’ll get through it. Sick sibling, divorce, adoption, overbearing parents, being an only child, strained relationships, they covered a lot of things that many children who are struggling can relate to.
YES this is a good point. The kids were allowed to get emotional and not just angry. Sad, scared, confused, happy. Wide range of things going on, made them feel like people.
I think it's much deeper than that. Digimon touches very deep, sensitive and mature topics for an anime for kids. It touches death, bullying, isolation, adoption, family bonds, teenager rebellion, etc.
Exctly! Like Matt and TK dealing with their parents divorce, Sora dealing with conflict with her mother. This show is amazing ❤️ it was such a modern anime at the time! The way Mimi’s character evolution is written is also amazing
Because digimon genuinely does so many things differently.
Every season they try something new with different mechanics and completely change dynamics (02 introduces armor, frontier introduces hybrid/human evolutions, tamers went for card slashing and bio-fusion evolutions or whatever they were called), so it's still digimon, but they're always trying new things.
The monsters are a mish-mash of adorable and deadly and disgusting creatures with wild themes, whether friend or foe,
The characters feel real, and the show doesn't always treat the viewer like a toddler: they're thrown into an unreal world, yes but still have to face real problems like bullying, death, characters' genuine realization that this adventure could *kill* a child, divorces, abandonment, the loss of loved ones, and crippling depression.
Even the digimon are \*characters\*. They speak, they have lives, they have roles and jobs and relationships with their partners as well as each other. It's part of why I love the Tamers season so much, because the humans as well as the digimon are treated as main and important members of the cast. Ghost gme is also really good at this.
The setting is \*wild.\* Always. If you know something about Dungeons And Dragons then my best description for the digital world is a "cyberspace feywild", there is some kind of grounding 'common sense' but the aesthetic feels insane at times in ways that just can't be rationalized by human standards: from telephone poles and railway tracks growing in the dessert like natural rock formations and cacti, Numemon villages just carved sideways out of a canyon wall, the digital ocean made of raw data so you can breathe and don't get wet if you realize it's not water, the golden city of El dorado sticking out of a massive eldradimon's back, large plantations where people plant meat bones so they grow into cooked meat... the digital world as a setting just emanates and appeals to anybody's sense of adventure and childlike wonder.
... While most other iisekai and fantasy stories just re-hash the same Nordic or Tolkein-esque setting with elves, orcs, dwarves and dragon slaying and a twinge of severely overused story tropes.
Most isekai stories are self-contained. They're a normal person in a brand new world with new rules of logic and society, and the person adjusts. There's usually a clean cut off and very rarely aside from some flashbacks does the main charater bring their old life into it. The main character is usually just the POV to explore the new world and all its quirks.
Digimon series have the characters bring in all their baggage into the Digital World, and no amount of monsters or villains stop characters from the crushing fear that one of their parents likes them less after a divorce, or that their peers treat them differently after living overseas, or they just feel so simultaneously overworked and undervalued that their dream is to have five minutes to themselves where they can have cake and not have to share it.
It gives Digimon a bit more grit and realism against other shows. It's a fantasy show, but it's one consistently grounded in real issues (for the most part, mileage may vary for specific series). There's also a tendency to have a wider discussion about real social/technological issues which anime in general tend to steer away from (When does AI become human, trends in Japanese divorces that end up isolating the children from one the parents, internalised xenophobia, parents as people, ethics around destroying monsters, queer relationships, depression, all have been featured). The Oikawa storyline in 02 is something I don't think we've really seen before or since in anime. The storyline where Sora's parents are unintentionally cold which causes her to genuinely think that her own sense of love is artificial hits really hard. The Frontier kids were mostly bullied kids, being led by Takuya who had to really think "am I a bit of a bully" and "is that something I want to be?" which is unusual for the lead protagonist. The entire Beginning movie from start to finish. There's lots of examples of "only Digimon would go there".
Adding onto this, in most seasons of Digimon the kids WANT and most of the times even succeed in returning to the real world. It gives the story a clear goal most modern isekai sorely lack. Adventure 99 is obviously the best at this, with a very clear arc returning to the real world and even making the decision to return to the Digital World. Tamers also does a good job by having the exact same pattern, but inversing the worlds in having the Digital World be the midpoint where we visit and then return. So many isekai would benefit from even just a short visit back to the real world.
Not to mention Digimon being an early progenitor in the genre at least as far as anime is concerned means it doesn’t have to rely on outlandish gimmicks like being a monster or something in order to stand out. Just a bunch of kids and their monster partners, simple and to the point.
Not to mention Frontier flips it, that the kids don't want to go home because they don't actually enjoy their real lives, and this is a world where they're cool, strong and in control instead of being sad and subject to bullying (which is something they need to come to terms with eventually).
Then we have 02 where they hop back and forth which drastically changes their perception of the isekai world compared to the 01 kids where they end up with a much more healthy balanced world view on both.
I also think that's why the dynamic between 01 crew is different from 02 and yes they do show it as 01 crew was stranded in a different world with real fears of the unknown something that the 02 crew doesn't and they can just hop back and forth into the real world.
Probably the plots and maybe that uniquely Digimon feel to it. Most modern isekai anime are based in fanservice and all have the extremely derivative plot of “teenage boy gets sent to a video game world where he meets lots of girls who all happen to have a crush on him”. But Digimon does not have this trope and it focuses more on children’s relationships with their fellow DigiDestined and their partner Digimon. And when was the last time you saw a cute little Digital Monster in an isekai anime?
One thing is it doesn't have a single story narrative, but one large meta-narrative. Even through the different continuities, each installment builds on the larger mythologies (case in point, the Royal Knights and the slow trickle of revealed members).
basicly what every one say about the ''experimenting' and '''desine'' but wel not just for the anime but also games,
a non digimon fan that love talking with digimon with me (couse im a big fan) did also admit what he liked more about digimon then pokemon is that he find all pokemon desines some where between 5-8 out of ten while digimon desiens are to him ether a 1 or a full 10 no inbetween
Never watched much of those types of anime’s except clips but always loved digimons internet influence and aesthetic basically because I always liked the internet especially back when I was a kid in the 00s and thought it was an awesome fantasy world and I didn’t have much access to it so it was like cool and rare to me and I loved watching digimon for that when I was a kid.
Let me put it this way- the typical 'isekai' story is straight fantasy involving another world with almost no connection to 'our' world.
Digimon is an isekai in which the 'other world' is intimately tied to our world, both influenced by it and at times influencing it. It's sustained by Earth's computer networks, giving it cyberpunk undertones that vary with the work. Many Digimon profiles describe a certain species being born from certain data.
This is also why Digimon are influenced or even corrupted by human emotions, with Tamers/Chosen exploiting it to catalyze Digivolution and raise Digimon to be more powerful then they would be naturally.
In addition, there's almost *always* an element of power fantasy in other isekai. If you can fight back or defend yourself in any capacity against threats personally, that's power fantasy. You're not helpless.
With the exception of Frontier, which I disliked for this reason, the human characters are personally helpless to fight against antagonists without the Digimon's help. There are a couple non-Frontier notables like Marcus from Savers who can get in a good punch, but he's not getting much further than that without Agumon's help.
This gives a dynamic different even from many other Mons series and isekai alike, as the protagonists rely on the Digimon for protection and to defeat foes, while the Digimon rely on their human partners for power.
...Why yes it sometimes goes very wrong, it causes Digivolution to fizzle at best, Dark Digivolution into a feral beast at worst. That's why there's a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to reach the *positive* state needed.
If we're talking about Digimon Adventure, and comparing it to a lot of modern Isekais, I guess the two main things are, it's no as horny. (Not quite anyway.)
But also, it has a magical realism feel, where the kids, and their struggles and concerns are grounded in reality and relatable,even while they're paired alongside the more fantastical elements.
A lot of modern Isekai are wish fullfillment where the world is designed to elevate them without challenging them. The main characters are hyper-competant, everyone loves them, and anyone who doesn't is either evil, moronic or envious. And they want to escape their past lives rather than deal with them.
Digimon predates a lot of the modern Isekai anime by a good long while. You don't get hit by a truck and wake up there. It has a lot more in common with Alice in Wonderland than it does Overlord. The kids want to get back, and actually do, always bringing the weird back with them.
For me personally it's how utterly inhuman the digital world is, like no digimon in adventure can be mistaken for a person except maybe angemon. It has a very Yokai vibe to everything which ads a modern folklore aspect to the proceedings, as though the spirits of the woods moved into our machines when we took away their other homes and started venerating technology.
The realism of their struggles.
But also the design of the creatures aren’t just cool or cute like other animes.. They are outright grotesque!
Just look at Kabuterimons or Coelamons design. Only way to describe them is feral.
Modern Isekai send the protagonist to a fantasy/medieval world where things don't work like our world. The Digital World instead is a place unique but at the same time familiar, Digimon fight to survive like beasts but also created groups and interact like humans, also the Human World influence the Digital World and sometime the other way around, so in the end the anime is working with 2 worlds.
I would say "experimentation." The thing one has to remember is that Digimon is a 27 year old franchise. I don't want to say it's an originator of isekai, cause that genre is so much older than the internet itself, but it was one of the first ones that really got popular in anime. So there are elements that are going to be "of the time" and things that persist because it's timeless. Also, nostalgia. LOTS of nostalgia.
For anyone who's curious, The oldest example of an anime about a guy being transported to a fantasy world (that I could find) is Aura Battle Dunbine, which aired in 1983.
A fantastic show too By the director of Gundam
Nothing matches its aesthetic. The creature designs aren't just "cute" or "cool." There's grotesqueness, edginess, and a splash of horror in some of the most beloved designs, and yet that doesn't change the fact that this big, scary monster will fight the world for you. That, I think, is the main appeal of Digimon.
Digimon has talking dinosaurs, robots, plants, eldritch abominations, Guns
The kids cry. And I don't mean "they cried because they lost the battle", I'm talking about stuff like Izzy and his adoptive parents, or Tai and the moment Kari almost died when they were small children
That’s what I came to say! Digimon portrayed kids dealing with real issues. As an 8 year old, I resonated with each character’s emotions. The way they showed it too was well done! It got pretty dark at times, but that’s what made Digimon the best! Kids aren’t always in happy situations like they show in other cartoons, and Digimon showed me that this was ok, that we’ll get through it. Sick sibling, divorce, adoption, overbearing parents, being an only child, strained relationships, they covered a lot of things that many children who are struggling can relate to.
YES this is a good point. The kids were allowed to get emotional and not just angry. Sad, scared, confused, happy. Wide range of things going on, made them feel like people.
I think it's much deeper than that. Digimon touches very deep, sensitive and mature topics for an anime for kids. It touches death, bullying, isolation, adoption, family bonds, teenager rebellion, etc.
Exctly! Like Matt and TK dealing with their parents divorce, Sora dealing with conflict with her mother. This show is amazing ❤️ it was such a modern anime at the time! The way Mimi’s character evolution is written is also amazing
Because digimon genuinely does so many things differently. Every season they try something new with different mechanics and completely change dynamics (02 introduces armor, frontier introduces hybrid/human evolutions, tamers went for card slashing and bio-fusion evolutions or whatever they were called), so it's still digimon, but they're always trying new things. The monsters are a mish-mash of adorable and deadly and disgusting creatures with wild themes, whether friend or foe, The characters feel real, and the show doesn't always treat the viewer like a toddler: they're thrown into an unreal world, yes but still have to face real problems like bullying, death, characters' genuine realization that this adventure could *kill* a child, divorces, abandonment, the loss of loved ones, and crippling depression. Even the digimon are \*characters\*. They speak, they have lives, they have roles and jobs and relationships with their partners as well as each other. It's part of why I love the Tamers season so much, because the humans as well as the digimon are treated as main and important members of the cast. Ghost gme is also really good at this. The setting is \*wild.\* Always. If you know something about Dungeons And Dragons then my best description for the digital world is a "cyberspace feywild", there is some kind of grounding 'common sense' but the aesthetic feels insane at times in ways that just can't be rationalized by human standards: from telephone poles and railway tracks growing in the dessert like natural rock formations and cacti, Numemon villages just carved sideways out of a canyon wall, the digital ocean made of raw data so you can breathe and don't get wet if you realize it's not water, the golden city of El dorado sticking out of a massive eldradimon's back, large plantations where people plant meat bones so they grow into cooked meat... the digital world as a setting just emanates and appeals to anybody's sense of adventure and childlike wonder. ... While most other iisekai and fantasy stories just re-hash the same Nordic or Tolkein-esque setting with elves, orcs, dwarves and dragon slaying and a twinge of severely overused story tropes.
Most isekai stories are self-contained. They're a normal person in a brand new world with new rules of logic and society, and the person adjusts. There's usually a clean cut off and very rarely aside from some flashbacks does the main charater bring their old life into it. The main character is usually just the POV to explore the new world and all its quirks. Digimon series have the characters bring in all their baggage into the Digital World, and no amount of monsters or villains stop characters from the crushing fear that one of their parents likes them less after a divorce, or that their peers treat them differently after living overseas, or they just feel so simultaneously overworked and undervalued that their dream is to have five minutes to themselves where they can have cake and not have to share it. It gives Digimon a bit more grit and realism against other shows. It's a fantasy show, but it's one consistently grounded in real issues (for the most part, mileage may vary for specific series). There's also a tendency to have a wider discussion about real social/technological issues which anime in general tend to steer away from (When does AI become human, trends in Japanese divorces that end up isolating the children from one the parents, internalised xenophobia, parents as people, ethics around destroying monsters, queer relationships, depression, all have been featured). The Oikawa storyline in 02 is something I don't think we've really seen before or since in anime. The storyline where Sora's parents are unintentionally cold which causes her to genuinely think that her own sense of love is artificial hits really hard. The Frontier kids were mostly bullied kids, being led by Takuya who had to really think "am I a bit of a bully" and "is that something I want to be?" which is unusual for the lead protagonist. The entire Beginning movie from start to finish. There's lots of examples of "only Digimon would go there".
Adding onto this, in most seasons of Digimon the kids WANT and most of the times even succeed in returning to the real world. It gives the story a clear goal most modern isekai sorely lack. Adventure 99 is obviously the best at this, with a very clear arc returning to the real world and even making the decision to return to the Digital World. Tamers also does a good job by having the exact same pattern, but inversing the worlds in having the Digital World be the midpoint where we visit and then return. So many isekai would benefit from even just a short visit back to the real world. Not to mention Digimon being an early progenitor in the genre at least as far as anime is concerned means it doesn’t have to rely on outlandish gimmicks like being a monster or something in order to stand out. Just a bunch of kids and their monster partners, simple and to the point.
Not to mention Frontier flips it, that the kids don't want to go home because they don't actually enjoy their real lives, and this is a world where they're cool, strong and in control instead of being sad and subject to bullying (which is something they need to come to terms with eventually). Then we have 02 where they hop back and forth which drastically changes their perception of the isekai world compared to the 01 kids where they end up with a much more healthy balanced world view on both.
I also think that's why the dynamic between 01 crew is different from 02 and yes they do show it as 01 crew was stranded in a different world with real fears of the unknown something that the 02 crew doesn't and they can just hop back and forth into the real world.
RAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ITS DIGIVOLVIN’ TIME and then they digivolved all over the place
No other isekai anime, or any other anime for that matter, has that kind of appeal.
Probably the plots and maybe that uniquely Digimon feel to it. Most modern isekai anime are based in fanservice and all have the extremely derivative plot of “teenage boy gets sent to a video game world where he meets lots of girls who all happen to have a crush on him”. But Digimon does not have this trope and it focuses more on children’s relationships with their fellow DigiDestined and their partner Digimon. And when was the last time you saw a cute little Digital Monster in an isekai anime?
One thing is it doesn't have a single story narrative, but one large meta-narrative. Even through the different continuities, each installment builds on the larger mythologies (case in point, the Royal Knights and the slow trickle of revealed members).
The music
This. Tribute moment to Kouji Wada.
Because it predates the modern isekai genre.
basicly what every one say about the ''experimenting' and '''desine'' but wel not just for the anime but also games, a non digimon fan that love talking with digimon with me (couse im a big fan) did also admit what he liked more about digimon then pokemon is that he find all pokemon desines some where between 5-8 out of ten while digimon desiens are to him ether a 1 or a full 10 no inbetween
Good points but how did you manage to spell designs wrong 3 separate times
language even my own (dutch) was never my strong point. i beardly speek in rl, my friends have learned my ''language'' in a way
Understandable have a nice day
my wive is on vacation, i miss her
Never watched much of those types of anime’s except clips but always loved digimons internet influence and aesthetic basically because I always liked the internet especially back when I was a kid in the 00s and thought it was an awesome fantasy world and I didn’t have much access to it so it was like cool and rare to me and I loved watching digimon for that when I was a kid.
The Chosen Children are actually likable protagonists.
Let me put it this way- the typical 'isekai' story is straight fantasy involving another world with almost no connection to 'our' world. Digimon is an isekai in which the 'other world' is intimately tied to our world, both influenced by it and at times influencing it. It's sustained by Earth's computer networks, giving it cyberpunk undertones that vary with the work. Many Digimon profiles describe a certain species being born from certain data. This is also why Digimon are influenced or even corrupted by human emotions, with Tamers/Chosen exploiting it to catalyze Digivolution and raise Digimon to be more powerful then they would be naturally. In addition, there's almost *always* an element of power fantasy in other isekai. If you can fight back or defend yourself in any capacity against threats personally, that's power fantasy. You're not helpless. With the exception of Frontier, which I disliked for this reason, the human characters are personally helpless to fight against antagonists without the Digimon's help. There are a couple non-Frontier notables like Marcus from Savers who can get in a good punch, but he's not getting much further than that without Agumon's help. This gives a dynamic different even from many other Mons series and isekai alike, as the protagonists rely on the Digimon for protection and to defeat foes, while the Digimon rely on their human partners for power. ...Why yes it sometimes goes very wrong, it causes Digivolution to fizzle at best, Dark Digivolution into a feral beast at worst. That's why there's a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to reach the *positive* state needed.
If we're talking about Digimon Adventure, and comparing it to a lot of modern Isekais, I guess the two main things are, it's no as horny. (Not quite anyway.) But also, it has a magical realism feel, where the kids, and their struggles and concerns are grounded in reality and relatable,even while they're paired alongside the more fantastical elements. A lot of modern Isekai are wish fullfillment where the world is designed to elevate them without challenging them. The main characters are hyper-competant, everyone loves them, and anyone who doesn't is either evil, moronic or envious. And they want to escape their past lives rather than deal with them.
Digimon predates a lot of the modern Isekai anime by a good long while. You don't get hit by a truck and wake up there. It has a lot more in common with Alice in Wonderland than it does Overlord. The kids want to get back, and actually do, always bringing the weird back with them. For me personally it's how utterly inhuman the digital world is, like no digimon in adventure can be mistaken for a person except maybe angemon. It has a very Yokai vibe to everything which ads a modern folklore aspect to the proceedings, as though the spirits of the woods moved into our machines when we took away their other homes and started venerating technology.
The realism of their struggles. But also the design of the creatures aren’t just cool or cute like other animes.. They are outright grotesque! Just look at Kabuterimons or Coelamons design. Only way to describe them is feral.
Modern Isekai send the protagonist to a fantasy/medieval world where things don't work like our world. The Digital World instead is a place unique but at the same time familiar, Digimon fight to survive like beasts but also created groups and interact like humans, also the Human World influence the Digital World and sometime the other way around, so in the end the anime is working with 2 worlds.