Digimon’s Latest Design is Perfectly Over the Top

The Digimon franchise is celebrating its landmark 20th Anniversary over the next couple of years, and one of the major efforts is the release of a new version of the original digital pet monsters in Japan. This updated release will feature Digimon altered by the X-Antibody, and this has resulted in some wild new designs for many fan-favorite monsters. While fans have come to expect some elaborate new looks for each addition to the X line, it turns out one could have been much more elaborate than what we got with the official release.

Bandai shared a look at one of the newest additions to the X-Antibody line, and it immediately caught fans’ attention for how fancier Examon looks with its full Examon X evolution. But it turns out that it could have been much…larger. Check out the official reveal below:

And here’s a pitched design for Examon X that didn’t make the final cut as noted by @MasaruDz on Twitter:

Unlike the official design, it’s a much larger monster as a whole. The already massive dragon Digimon seems to be using a mecha suit in a sense as it rides in giant versions of each one of its limbs. That’s on top of brandishing a massive lance that’s certainly going to be hard to beat. But the official design is no slouch either, and it’s just as fearsome!

This is one part of the massive 20th Anniversary celebration of the Digimon franchise which also includes a new film project, Digimon Adventure Last Evolution Kizuna, currently scheduled for a release February 21, 2020 in Japan. Tomohisa Taguchi will be directing for Toei Animation, Akatsuki Yamatoya returns from the original series to write the screenplay, Seiji Tachikawa will serve as chief animation director, Hiromi Seki returns from the original series to serve as supervisor, Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru returns as character designer, and Kenji Watanabe returns as the Digimon designer.

The Digimon series was originally conceived by Bandai, Toei Animation, and WiZ in 1997 as a way to capitalize on the virtual pet craze sparked by Tamagotchi. The franchise focus on its titular “Digital Monsters,” monsters that live in a parallel, digital world that came from mankind’s technology. The franchise had its first anime adaptation, Digimon Adventure, which focuses on a group of children known as the DigiDestined (or “Chosen Children” in Japan) that are transported to the world of Digimon and have to fight the various evil digital beasts that roam the land.