#free attribute

DigiMonday - RINKMON

(Armour Level/Free Attribute/Cyborg Type)

Rinkmon is such a dork, and I love that about it. The armoured zip-up jump suit. The oversized spiky helmet that makes it look like a Sonic the Hedgehog gijinka. The fact that its official image in the Digimon Encyclopedia shows it fist-pumping because its just that proud of itself. The Digimon Encyclopedia states that Rinkmon is a man-made Digimon created by human scientists by combining data collected from a particle collider with the Digimental of Friendship (an ancient trinket from the Digital world that allows child-level Digimon to reach unique, powerful new forms, and the source of its armoured helmet and blue-and-yellow colour scheme from a design perspective) in order to make the fastest Digimon possible, and the idea that this merging of cutting-edge science and ancient otherworldly technology resulted in an ice skater that can apparently skate at speeds close to the speed of light is extremely amusing to me.

(The Digimental of Friendship. It's looks kind of like a bladed clown shoe...)

Given its ice skater-themed design it seems safe to assume that Rinkmon's name is in reference to ice rinks. Wikimon, however, suggests an alternative origin; it compares Rinkmon's spiky helmet, oversized scarf, gaudy getup and super-speed to Jet Link (Romanised as Jetto Rinku,) a character from Shotaro Ishinomori's immensely popular manga series Cyborg 009. Like Rinkmon, Jet is a cyborg with the ability to move at superhuman speeds (in his case due to rocket boosters in his legs, as opposed to hypersonic ice skating,) and while his design was toned down to be a little more grounded in later adaptations his original design features a red jumpsuit, enormous spiky hair and a flowing white scarf. This wouldn't be the first time a Digimon's design was a reference to another piece of Japanese media, and while I would have never made the connection on my own I'm now pretty convinced that Rinkmon's name is indeed a play on the fact that both "rink" and "link" can be written as リンク ("rinku") in Japanese!

(Jet Link, image source here. There's a definite resemblance, both in design and overall dorky (affectionate) vibe.)

Like many armour-level Digimon Rinkmon debuted in 2000 in the D-3 line of VPets. These were some of the wackier Digimon VPets, allowing players to obtain Digimentals to use on their Digimon by using an antenna on the device to detect actual, real electrical signals produced by electrical devices. Rinkmon was specifically available in the D-3 Version 2, and could be obtained by exposing Hawkmon to the Digimental of Friendship.

Baalmon!!!!

Baalmon’s a Perfect-level digimon associated with the previously-reviewed Beezlebumon as a potential pre-evolution – though it very much has its own thing going on aesthetically and conceptually. Known as the “Sublime Lord”, Baalmon is a digimon themed around knowledge, said to be “enlightened” with a cape made of pages. These pages are referred to as “amulets”; perhaps better translated as paper talismans, they’re said to contain the written solution to every possible problem. With all this information, Baalmon is said to be capable of defending against any attack. The pages also provide its means of offence: Baalmon is capable of transforming them into various weapons, including bullets. It can also attack with the Dǎshénbiān, or spiritual whip, it holds in its hand – which deals particularly immense damage against Holy-species digimon.

In exchange for one’s soul, it is also said to share its information, granting one page from its “Red Book of Applin” – apparently a real book dating back to 1863, full of hermetic stories and allegorical fairy tales of the Middle Ages. Nothing to do with Pokemon’s Applin, though. Sounds like a peculiar book to contain all known information, but uh, alright. Baalmon will also answer any question, but only if you manage to overcome an “ordeal” it provides – and failure to do so results in it taking your soul as well. Lots of soul-taking going on here and I’m not really sure it’s worth it!

As a design, there’s some subtle Beelzebumon influence to be seen, primarily in being a long-limbed masculine-presenting humanoid being. Overall, though, it’s pretty distinct. Its most notable characteristic besides its cape of pages is probably its weird arms, with one completely covered in a large sleeve bearing even more pages, and the other arm abnormally long and thin. Its pants also bear numerous zippers, which with its blond hair, give it some aesthetic parallels to the possible pre-evolution Adult-stage Wizarmon. This arguably provides an implied “canon”  complete evolutionary line for Impmon, which is neat. One other aspect that unites it with Impmon and Beelzebumon is the presence of the red scarf tied on its arm, a very subtle design nod to them.

Overall, Baalmon’s rad, and definitely one of the cooler humanoid digimon. It’s got a strong theme going on and it incorporates that theme into its design quite well, and I’ve got a lot of respect for it even if I hadn’t actually known much about it until doing this review.

DigiMonday - TYLOMON

(Armour Level/Free Attribute/Ocean Dragon Type)

Tylomon is an armour-level Digimon, which in terms of lore (tm) means it's the result of a child-level Digimon using an ancient tool called a Digimental (or "Digi-Egg" in some English media) to take on a powerful new form that it wouldn't naturally achieve. Design-wise, armour-level Digimon tend to incorporate the design of one of the 11 Digimentals (these funny little egg-shaped trinkets here) into their design in the form of a piece of inorganic-looking armour on an otherwise largely organic-looking creature design. In the case of Tylomon here, its helmet boasts the blue-and-white colours of the Digimental of Sincerity, which can also be seen on some other aquatic armour-level Digis like Depthmon and Mantaraymon.

The "Tylo" in Tylomon's name, combined with its finned, slender, scaley body, makes it clear that in addition to its eggy armour Tylomon is inspired by Tylosaurus, a genus of marine reptiles that lived towards the end of the Cretaceous period. Like their more famous cousins in the genus Mosasaurus, Tylosaurus species were squamates (part of the same group of reptiles that contains modern lizards and snakes,) and are though to have descended from semi-aquatic lizard-like ancestors that adapted to life in the sea, ultimately replacing the superficially-similar but only distantly-related pliosaurs which had been in decline throughout the cretaceous. Compared to other Mosasaurs Tylosaurus had an unusually long, hardened snout which has been speculated to have served as a sensory organ or, interestingly, a weapon used for ramming prey. Not unlike one might do with an armoured helmet? A helmet themed around a magic egg, perhaps??? Hmmm? That's probably a stretch, but if Monochromon can be themed around the extremely obscure Monoclonius then you never know! Given the sheer number of dinosaur-themed Digimon there must be some paleo-nerds working in Bandai-Namco's design team.

(A mounted Tylosaurus fossil, image source here.)

Like most armour-level Digimon Tylomon made its debut in 2000 in the D-Terminal VPet, a VPet toy made as a tie-in to the then-ongoing Digimon Adventure 02. Uniquely among Digimon (at least as far as I can find) the year of its debut is referenced in its design, with the number "2000" being visible on one of its little helmet spikes. Tylomon is also one of the few armour-level Digimon to get an X-Antibody variant (essentially a re-imagining of and existing Digimon, typically with a more "extreme" design not unlike Pokémon's Mega Evolutions.) Tylomon's official description boasts that its speed and power in the water makes it "the jet plane of the deep", and Tylomon X's design seems to take that idea and run with it by replacing the original Tylomon's armoured helmet with more sleek, angular structure resembling the nose of a jet plane. A mesozoic marine reptile fused with a high-speed plane makes for a pretty intense-looking creature even without the giant knives on its fins, back and snout (the latter blade potentially being a further reference to the theory that Tylosaurus' unusual snoot saw use in combat,) but I'd be lying if I said I didn't find it all rather stylish!