Digimon Anime and the Female Characters
Given I recently had a discussion about this on Reddit, I kinda felt like doing a proper write up on this topic. Because it is a complicated topic given hat Digimon is definitely weird in regards to female characters. It is definitely better than many of its peers in regards to the animated monster show, but there is also so much weirdness in how the girls often get treated and shafted in comparison to the boys.
So, I thought to myself, what way to start the new year. Let's talk about girls in Digimon.
Adventure & 02
Adventure itsself started out really strange in regards to the girls. This is your gentle reminder that it was originally not planned to include Hikari as a chosen child, and this decision was only made as the production was already underway and the first episodes had been released. (Adventure and 02 generally suffered from a very chaotic production, with the animation often only being ahead by a couple of weeks compared to the release.)
The ironic thing is that originally Adventure was actually only meant to have six characters. The other last minute addition was Mimi.
Sora was technically the kind of girl character we saw a lot of in Shonen Series in the 1990s. The tomboy, who still was very caring and motherly and generally very much still fulfilled this idea of "the girl" on the team. If you compare her to Kasumi (Misty) on Pokémon, Hiromy (Hilary) on Beyblade or even Holy on Monster Farm, you can generally see some similarities. A cool girl, who has a close relationship with the main protagonist, often is a bit of a tsundere towards him, but also is very nurturing. Personally I always was fairly annoyed with Sora, because the show tells us that she is a tomboy, but outside of her design she is one of the most feminine girls on Digimon in general. A lot of people always complained of her being more girly in 02 and later entries, and while I agree that her passiveness in those later entries feels definitely out of characters, I also think that generally speaking she was always a very feminine character. It was kinda what I generally disliked about this era of girl characters. I am totally fine with feminine girls, but I really got irked by "she is totally a cool tomboy girl" and then being presented with a girl who wore trousers but otherwise was super passive and feminine in many ways. (I have a long seated issue with Kasumi. She could have been such a cool character, but instead she is Satoshi's abusive cheerleader. Ugh.) Sora and Holly were definitely better than many of their peers, but I still do not think they were ideally made. Holly still works better than Sora (mostly due to her having the advantage of being from that other world) rather than also being isekai'd.
Mimi is in many ways the polar opposite of Sora, which was not intended but is so noticable. Mimi is shown to us and introduced as the girly girl. The pink princess. She wears pink and a long dress and all that. And yet... she is the girl who is absolutely willing to grab a handfull of shit and hurl it at a Digimon. Mimi, who was originally not intended to be in Digimon at all (as I said, the original plan was 5 boys + Sora) is genuinely one of the best female characters from anime in the 1990s in my opinion. She has a surprising amount of depth, especially in how she dislikes violence (something you can definitely see as feminine), but then comes up with a solution herself. She goes and talks to others, including former villains, talking them into supporting them. And this was great. Of course sadly Mimi is also the character who in 02 gets completely shafted with her screentime reduced to like 3 episodes or so. *sighs*
Hikari... Ah. Back when I was very active in the German fandom I had a friend there who summarized Hikari very well: "Is it weird how girly they made Hikari in 02? Yeah. But also, at least Hikari in 02 is undeniably a character, instead of being defined by being Taichi's glow-in-the-dark little sister." And yes, that is fair. Hikari was pushed into Adventure fairly late due to the entire thing with the movie. People really liked her in that one, and so she was written into Adventure. But in Adventure itself she really is mostly Taichi's little sister. Given her young age (she is 7 to 8 after all) her being a girl never much comes into play in Adventure, while in 02 it obviously is a big deal suddenly due to Daisuke crushing on her constantly. And Hikari in 02 is a bit of weird character, as 02 in general never quite figures out what to do with her outside of the Dark Ocean plotline that goes nowhere (and mind you: was never meant to go anywhere). But this is probably to be chucked up to 02 having barely any time in preproduction and generally being very chaotic in the way it was made. Still. While she is definitely more a character in 02 than in Adventure, that character still is very much "the pink ranger". Which, again, is a bit sad. She has a couple of really good episodes with Miyako though, and I do like the (sadly also never quite going anywhere) idea of her having a bit of a brother-complex. But yeah. It definitely is not really empowering writing.
And then there is Miyako. Miyako is a bit of a strange character. On one hand I really do like her, in the sense of her really being written as a weird girl. She reads very neurodivergent (AuDHD girly specifically), and that actually is really fucking nice. She is definitely the kind of female character we do not get a whole lot off. And in some episodes she is a really good character. But then... there is the other episodes. And yes, this is less of a girl/boy problem, frankly, because it is more of a "there was barely any time in preproduction and the episodes were often written parallel and so character and plots could often not develop during the single episodes", but you definitely feel it with Miyako. I still do really like her, and still feel she gets too little love in the fandom, compared to pretty much everyone else from Adventure and 02. Iori is probably the one character who gets less attention then her. RIP girl.
Tamers
Say about Konaka what you want, but Konanka can write girls. I would actually argue that in many ways he is better at writing girls than boys, especially after having seen some of his non-anime work.
Ruki is hands down probably the best written female character in all of Digimon. I wrote a whole essay on her before, but there really is some excellent writing, that very much tackles her being female as a central part of her conflict, while also not reducing her to it. Ruki's entire character is a conflict of her actual tomboy and "likes monster" hobbies, and the feminity her way-too-young mother (who had her as a teenager) wants from her. And how Ruki rejects femininity explicitly because her mother tries to force it onto her, before she finally learns to accept it, which is what in the end triggers her final evolution. This is really fucking good writing and tackles the topic with more nuance than pretty much any other female anime character that I know off.
Then we have Juri. Juri obviously is also a driving force behind the plot of Tamers, if not in a weird way the most important character in the last arc of the series. When we first are introduced to her she is very much "the girl". She is again this classical idea of a female character that our protagonist has a crush on. But again her story is once more written in a way that does relate to her being a girl, while also not reducing her to it. Digimon has this kinda small running theme in the first couple of seasons of siblings being parentified, which is also a fate that Juri suffers. She is parentified both towards her father whose emotions she had to deal with as soon as her mother died, and then her younger brother, who was born just a bit more than a year later. And obviously this parentification does happen very differently to her than to Taichi or Yamato in 02, because she is a girl and because it is even more expected of her to have her emotions under control as a child, to fulfill the nurturing role. And she is already breaking under it. Her going to the Digital World is explicitly her rejecting this role - only for that decision to be then so fatal. And this, too, is just good writing.
Meanwhile there is Shaochung. Okay, I do adore her, but I also am very aware that Shaochung I mostly adore as the character I made her into in Digimon Alpha Generation and the related fanfictions. In Tamers itself she also is a character more defined by her being young, than by her being a girl. Sure, she likes to play with dolls, which is more of a girl hobby, but she does not really have much of a conflict of her own. She more exists to carry Jian's conflict or be a catalysator for it.
I do want to mention though that Tamers also has a bunch of cool female background characters. The teacher, Nami Asakusa, has a whole little story about the societal expectation for her to marry and her frustration with the dating world. Then there are Megumi and Reika, with especially the latter (who is named Reika Ootori, like literally several other characters that Konaka has written, something I am still very confused by) being a fucking badass and computer wiz. Then we have the mothers, especially Rumiko Makino, who also has her own little arc, and Takato's mother, who definitely is the parent of Takato who is more stern. Like, yeah, Tamers really excells here.
Frontier & Savers
And then there was Frontier. Oh. Frontier.
Izumi was... there. I still think she is possibly one of the top three most wasted characters in all of Digimon. Her entire character conflict of her not really fitting in due to having grown up in another culture, but also being too proud to admit her loneliness and all that... It is actually a good and interesting character conflict. Buuuuut, then she is mostly standing in the background to cheerlead for Takuya, be rescued after once more being useless as Fairymon, and then be completely shafted in the latter third of the series like everyone but Takuya and Kouji. Hooray. What a waste. To be fair, Junpei (who is still the only fat character in all of Digimon) does not get treated better. Not that it makes him being a pervert towards her any better. Also, her - a 10 or 11yo girl - being constantly sexualized is deinitely... a choice.
Then we have Savers. *sighs*
Yoshino. She is the second female character after Ruki to actually have her Digimon reach the final level, and it should be positively noted that Rosemon does not just reach Ultimate, but also Burst Mode. Hooray. She also at that point was the oldest main character in Digimon, given she was 18. And she also has a super interesting conflict due to her having suffered a lot over the fact that a lot was expected of her and her having more successful older sisters........ only that this once more is another plotline that fully was abandoned and never fully explored.
Then we have Chika. She is very much Masaru's little sister and a side character, though she definitely is more developed as a character than Hikari was in Adventure, despite being a side character. But she still is a side character, and while having a couple of cool moments, in the end there is not much of an arc for her.
The same is also true for Miki and Megumi, who are obviously named after Tamers characters, and also very much fill a similar role in the show as Reika and Megumi do in Tamers. And yet... They do not have that much to do or plot. I should mention: it is kinda cool how they are heavily implied to be lesbians in a relationship and all that, which was early for 2006, but... again, just implied and the show never does much with it.
Xros Wars
What is there to say about Xros Wars? Akari gets not treated much worse than Zenjiro, and Nene not that much worse than Kirito, I guess. But in the end this is the Taiki-is-the-most-awesome-character-to-ever-character-and-nobody-should-be-important-but-Taiki-Show, so, yeah.
Akari never gets a Digimon partner. She is there for the first 30 episodes to cheerlead and mother Taiki and remind everyone how cool he is, while from time to time being inappropriately sexualized by the camera and animation, and then to disappear, before in Xros Hunters showing up as Taiki's girlfriend.
And then there is Nene. She actually has something of a character arc in the first half of the series, where she still acts as the somewhat antagonist. Like, her arc is interesting... before she joins the Taiki-cheerleading-squad and from that moment on basically loses anything that so much as resembles a character. Not to mention that the show afterwards becomes very, very interested in this 14yos tits. Like, holy fuck. What the hell is going on there? And while a good part of the second half of Xros Wars is dedicated to her story with her brother, and we even have the whole parallel going on with her and big-boobs-and-cameltoe Mervamon, in the end obviously it has to be our main character Taiki to save Yuu. In Xros Hunters she gets written out by being turned into an idol. Great.
And then there is Airu, whose only defining characteristic is that she is crushing on Yuu. Like, literally, I could not tell you a single other thing about this character. *sighs*
I have seen people say that the Xros Wars Manga was worse in this regard, but I am sorry, no, it wasn't. Like, sure, Nene-Shademon is very sexualized and that is at times really fucking uncomfortable, especially as it definitely gets drawn in a way that you should feel somehow aroused by it. But the girls in the manga actually have a character arc and agency, something you cannot say about the anime. Generally the manga is just the better story. For real.
Appmon, Ghost Game & Beatbreak
And finally we have the latest three seasons (okay, there was the Adventure remake but I have not seen it fully, so I do not have much of an opinion on that).
And I will say: while all three seasons (so far in Beatbreak, given that we are just 12 episodes in) only have one female character, I would argue they are fairly good in regards to how they have written them.
Both Appmon and Ghost Game obviously suffer very much from the very episodic nature of both series, but Eri still is one of the most badass female characters in Digimon. Which is especially nice because she is at one time very girly, but also very badass. She is the one character outside of Daimon Masaru to ever take on a Digimon head to head. And that was really nice. She also is literally one of the very few Idol characters that I really liked, as her arc did actually mention the really ugly bits of idol culture and had her deal with it. This way I can actually respect that bit. While obviously the anime does not go outright into SA, it does go into her being harassed by guys, due to being an idol. And that was... more than I usually see in this stuff.
Ruli meanwhile... It is hard to talk about Ghost Game in terms of handling characters, because Ghost Game had no overarching plot or character arcs. Ruli was a good character when she was on screen. But it is near impossible to compare her to any of the other characters due to her not having an arc. So... Uhm, yeah.
Reina in Beatbreak obviously is so far the only character who did not yet have an episode focus on her. If it remains that way, it is bad. But we are only 12 episodes in, and there is a good chance that her backstory is somehow intertwined with some stuff that will come in as a "revelation" later on in the show. So, we will wait for that. Due to the massive amount of named side characters there are also gonna be a bunch of other female characters, so we will see what they are going to do.
All in all the Digimon anime is really weird in this regard. Especially given that these days we know that this is actually a fandom that has actually a fair share of female fans. There are a bunch of really well written female characters for sure - but also a bunch of characters who are done really dirty by the shows they are in.
I really have high hopes for Beatbreak, and do hope this is gonna be one of the good seasons in this regard. We really could use it. Eri has been almost 10 years ago.
