there's a lot of truly excellent digimon designs but i think they really peaked with a little frilled lizard that turns into a dimetrodon that turns into an ojousama lamiagirl that turns into an even more ojousama spin on medusa with boots that open up and bite people. absolute S tier line that doesn't get talked about enough
^^ this? this is peak.
@emeraldsk or other commenters asking: Digimon aren't metamorphosing animals like pokemon, but are like "electronic spirits" born when humans invented computers.
Being made of "data," they take forms based on the ideas and knowledge we've stored digitally, and "evolving" is when they rewrite their internal code to take a different form, with higher forms frequently biasing slightly more towards various mythological figures (from any culture at all)
While many digimon characters are thematically designed around eachother, like these, Digimon can canonically evolve into any other Digimon at all. In this card game, most of them can evolve from any Digimon card of the same color for instance. In the video games, each tends to get at least five or six evolution options that can change with each game!
Digimon can be more likely to take a form that makes sense for them, but evolution is always based more on their personality, environment and lifestyle than just biology, because they don't have biology! So this is like a unique character changing her "avatar" as she matures. Reptiles, fossils, fantasy monster women and fashion aren't too far fetched as facets of one character's identity really :)
