#child level

DigiMonday - GAOMON

(Child Level/Data Attribute/Beast Type)

There are many dog-themed Digimon, but among them Gaomon stands out as a personal favourite (something about that blue-and-red colour scheme combined with its cute "plucky kid trying boxing for the first time" vibe, I think.) Its official description states that it wears those big boxing gloves to protect the claws on its hands which are still growing in, and indeed with their thick padding they do kind-of resemble bag gloves (a type of boxing glove used for training, but which aren't generally used for actually fighting.) It's also apparently a relative of Gazimon, which I suppose implies that Gazimon is a dog as opposed to some sort of cat/springhare/monkey... thing?

(Bag gloves are made to protect your hands when training with punching bags. That Agumon's hands are basically unprotected, but then I supposed that's clearly not the biggest breach of punching best-practice its committing here...)

Gaomon debuted in 2006 in the Digivice iC 10X VPet, but is probably best known for its prominent role in the Anime Digimon Savers/Digimon Data Squad which debuted later that same year (where a Gaomon serves as the partner of Thoma/Thomas Norstein, and one of the main non-human characters.) Gaomon made another major appearance in the 2012 game Digimon Word Re:Digitize (where a named Gaomon, Sashenka, features as the partner of major supporting character Nicolai Petrov) and has since made frequent appearances in Digimon games, cards and merch. Its nice to see this funny little punch-pup getting some love!

Favourite Gaomon Art: This early Gaomon design, which is as silly as it is cute. It looks like early on Gaomon was intended to be more of a baby version of its "official" evolution, Gaogamon.

Funbeemon!!!! Fanbeemon in the dub!

Funbeemon’s a Child-level insect digimon, and one of very few examples of such. There’s Tentomon, Kunemon, and Wormmon, and there’s also a robotic beetle called Kokuwamon, but insect digimon are unfortunately quite uncommon in general. They don’t even have their own dedicated “Field” category – they usually either get lumped in with the generic monsters and dinosaurs of the Nature Spirits, or with the plants of the Jungle Troopers. Funbeemon, interestingly, is neither – it’s a Wind Guardian, which is the classification primarily used for birds and other flying creatures. And also plants, sometimes. Digimon’s Field categories are wildly inconsistent and weird, hence why I’ve never actually mentioned them up until now.

But yeah, Funbeemon’s a splendid little bee! I’m not sure what makes it notably more “fun” than your typical bee, but yeah! It probably is fun!!! Normally I’m not fond of when insect creatures end up with generic anime eyes, but Funbeemon does look quite cute with them, and they’re complemented by three occeli! Occeli are small, simple eyes that many flying insects have, usually in sets of three just like with Funbeemon. Funbeemon’s actually quite a good representation of a bee in general, with a more muted color scheme than the typical black and yellow, and a subtle fluffiness that’s surprisingly rare among digimon. Anatomically, it’s actually similar to Tentomon. It has two limbs for standing and a set of four limbs for “arms” – a larger set ending in simple points, and a smaller set ending in more dexterous pincers. For a subtle Digimon-y twist, the stinger is serrated!

Funbeemon is affiliated with something called the Royal Base, an “aerial, covert honey base”. The base is defended by Funbeemon’s most direct evolutions – Waspmon, Cannonbeemon, and Tiger Vespamon, which are all much more imposing than our little friend here. Funbeemon’s role is simply to gather data from flowers and vegetation, then bring them back to the base as raw materials. The exact use of these materials is framed as some huge mystery, but given it’s literally called a honey base and these are a bunch of bees I’m gonna go ahead and assume they’re making honey with it. Just a hunch. While Funbeemon mainly just gathers data, it does have offensive abilities as well – its stinger, for one, and it’s also capable of summoning allies with a technique called “88 Call”. 88 Call apparently being a bee pun – 88 is read as “hachi hachi”, with hachi being the Japanese word for bee!

As a relatively obscure digimon, Funbeemon has no other forms or recolors to speak of. What’s really unfortunate, though, is that it is already an X-Antibody digimon. Many digimon from this era were conceptualized as already possessing the X-Antibody mutation by default, with the unfortunate effect of never being able to receive a proper X-Antibody variation in the future. X-Antibody designs are historically rather hit-or-miss, but the more recent ones have often been pretty outstanding, so it’s a disappointment we likely won’t get another take on this lil bee.

Fortunately, Funbeemon’s pretty great as-is regardless. It would make an excellent partner :3

DigiMonday - SOUNDBIRDMON

(Child Level/Virus Attribute/Bird Type)

At several times in the Digimon franchise's history the team at Bandai-Namco have run contests that let fans from across Japan submit their own Digimon designs, with the winners getting an official design and often appearing in whatever Anime series was running at the time. Soundbirdmon is one such Digimon; the brainchild of one Satoshi Yamaguchi, it was one of 5 winners of the 2011's Digimon Xros Wars Original Digimon Contest and would officially debut later that year in a brief cameo in the anime Digimon Xros Wars.

The image above is the original doodle from which Soundbirdmon's design was adapted, helpfully archived by Wikimon. As the image shows, young Satoshi's original design had a somewhat move conventionally bird-like look to it with clawed feet and what looks to be a distinct head (looking a little bit like a particularly menacing Black Swan.) Its final design does away with its feet entirely, converts its head into a flag-like crest and makes its body smaller and rounder, giving its silhouette the overall shape of a single quaver or eight-note to play up its "sound" theming. The red spots on Soundbirdmon's wings are also explained to be speakers, which it uses to emit loud shrieks to attack or defend itself. This might be inspired by the high volume many songbirds can achieve in spite of their small size (with perhaps the loudest bird species, the White Bellbird, being capable of producing calls of over 120 decibels!)

Though Soundbirdmon's initial 2011 debut was modest, it would land a more substantial role in the 2020 remake of Digimon Adventure through somewhat unusual means; since Soundbirdmon, either by coincidence or as a deliberate design choice, bares a resemblance to Deathmon the decision was made to make them part of the same evolutionary line, with a flock of Soundbirdmon fusing into a single Deathmon which then served as a major antagonist. Making the connection all the more fitting, Deathmon is a fan-designed Digimon too (being one of the winners of an official pixel art contest that took place in 2000!)