I re-watched the Digimon anime recently, and surprisingly, it still holds up sub however, it's just peak, something that kids ought to watch, despite being meant to sell toys.

the funniest thing about digimon is how a little creature that looks like a dinosaur or lion or whatever can evolve into either a giant cool monster, a giant disgusting monster, a mech, or a woman with almost no clothes on

Well, digimon digital monsters digimon are the champions so jot that down

looks like it's a franchise that kinda had a neat little toy, got an anime that hit, and then bumbled into literally every other industry that collectibles do and did them all in a way that made essentially zero cultural impact outside of unlimited contrarianism against pokemon by kids who had a chip on their shoulder about it

Nah that's like 90% of it.

The other angle is that the anime was better than the Pokemon one. If you were only engaging with these things by watching their shows, you'd think Digimon was the best. Of course the Pokemon games were better than either of these things, but that didn't mean anything if you didn't own a game boy.

It's the anime. Watch the first 3 seasons. The first 2 are in the same continuity and are the kind of kids show kids should watch. They really deal with some pretty heavy real shit that like an 8 year old might irl and take that stuff pretty serious and it's just generally a really really good kids show that had care put into it. Season 3 is amazing but it's like if Eva and serial experiment lain had a kid and they somehow barely passed it past kids show censors. I fell off after that

from what I hear they've got essentially human-levels of intelligence

So do pokemon you racist

Umm, sweatie, the hook-on point is clearly the official stage play where the villain is called Political Correctness who attacks the protagonists with Cancel Culture because one of the writers got mad that their favorite conspiracy theorist was banned from youtube.

just watched adventure recently and i thought it was good fun

Like all that grimdank stuff it seems like a rabbit hole with no payoff

The hook up is the anime, mostly talking about the first 4 series (adventure, 02, tamers, frontier) after that it had many breaks and it lost its momentum and unlike Pokemon it didnt have a big game to center its identity on since the many digimons games tried diferent things to see what sticks but that meant it didnt have a mainline game so it could keep getting popular.

it just kinda fumble on many things so it never capitalized on its early popularity hit like pokemon did with red and green

Born too late to enjoy the euphoria of the fan-made AMV. This shit was the epitome of cool to nerdy 10-year old at the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWtyWjhbhSA

Ok, hear me out. Christopher Walken Devimon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5st8Wemu7Y4

I liked Pokemon and Digimon as a kid. There’s some good video games that I still like as an adult. The little devices are fun. The creature designs are fun in a goofy, over-the-top kind of way. The new card game is pretty interesting, if you like that kind of thing. I don’t think it has to be any more complicated than that.

Just watch Digimon Tamers and don't touch anything else

I like the digital pet but that's only because I'm a freak that loves anything monster related.

yugioh, manga card game, got it

yugioh monsters, projections of cards.

Poor naive woman...