As a children’s television show, Digimon is always compared to Pokémon and on the surface, the two shows have a lot in common. Broken down to the most basic elements the shows both center around a group of young people who bond over their shared love of creatures and become friends. However, when it comes to the tone of the shows that’s where the similarities end.
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While Digimon has its share of adventure, fun and even crude humor, the show also has some seriously dark themes and many of the show’s best and most complex storylines are rooted in death, loss or other difficult subjects making the inviting children’s program surprisingly dark at times.
Read on for some of Digimon‘s darkest moments.
MetalSeadramon’s death
Digimon battles are almost always brutal, but the fight between MetalSeadramon and WarGreymon in the first season of Digimon: Digital Monsters is particularly gruesome.
WarGreymon is almost crushed by MetalSeadramon’s jaws before Whamon intervenes. That rescue results in MetalSeadramon rage killing Whamon by striking him in the head with River of Power. However, MetalSeadramon isn’t a good victor and brags about his impending victory, so much so that WarGreymon uses his signature brave tornado move to not only avenge Whamon, but stop MetalSeadramon for good. WarGreymon literally tunnels right through MetalSeadramon, destroying him from the inside out and literally leaving him in pieces in the ocean while children watch.
Tai returns to the Digital World
There is nothing as difficult as children having to make adult choices which is why Tai’s return to the Digital World is so difficult and so dark.
After being dropped back into the Real World via dimensional rift, Tai settles back into taking care of his younger sister, Kai. However, Tai quickly realizes that his friends haven’t returned and then Digimon begin appearing that only Tai and Kari can see. Tai receives warning from Izzy to not return to the Digital World, but Tai recognizes that he must return to fix the balance. That decision is further cemented when he sees the Ogremon Koromon digivolve into Agumon, opening another dimensional warp. Tai, torn between his duty to his family and his duty to the Digital World, follows Agumon, willing entering the rift to the Digital World despite his little sister begging him to stay.
Hypnos’ torture of Dark Lizardmon
Evil organizations are great for plot in any television series, but when that evil organization is shown actually carrying out acts of torture it might be too dark for children’s programming. However, that’s exactly what happens in Digimon Tamers.
When the evil organization Hypnos captures Dark Lizardmon, Dark Lizardmon is brutally tortured and interrogated. How brutally? Dark Lizardmon is literally and violently torn apart while awake and is shown screaming in pain before having the rest of his data deleted. And while Dark Lizardmon is himself a villain who deserved to face the consequences of said villainy, having a character actually tortured, completely with sounds of agony, is way too dark for a children’s show.
Ken’s Dark Spore
While most of the time the darkness and violence only happens to the Digimon, there are a few instances of the creatures’ human partners having very bad things happen to them as well and perhaps one of the darkest happens during Digimon Adventure 02. On Christmas Day Mummymon and Arukenimon cruise around Tokyo luring children into a truck. The next day Arukenimon convinces Ken to come with her, using the “kidnapped” children as motivation. Once in the truck, Ken is confronted by Yukio Oikawa who then copies the data from Ken’s Dark Spore and implants it into the taken children.
And yes, while the children willingly went with Arukenimon the imagery of kids being put in a truck and then implanted with a sinister device that turns its human host slowly evil is several shades too dark.
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