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Digimon is a Japanese Anime-style television show, and the name of the digital monsters in the show which inhabit the "Digital World", a universe parallel to ours (the "Real World") that is the inhabitable manifestation of the global Internet. The story tells of a group of pre-teens (the group changes per season) who help the Digimon to defend their world from various evil forces, both Digimon and human.
Contrasting rumors claim that there will be between four to seven seasons of the Digimon television series; nothing has been officially confirmed. As of 2003, there are four seasons: the former two make one storyline, and the latter two, Tamers and Frontier respectively, have similar but unrelated plots. The third season makes reference to the televison and commercial enterprises of the first two. In addition, there are several movies and video games based on the three storylines.
Digimon is produced by Saban and Bandai. Originally, the series showed on Fox Network's Fox Kids and Fox Family, but after Disney's acquisition of Fox Family (renamed ABC Family) during the third season, the first three seasons stayed on ABC Family and the fourth premiered on UPN.
Season One
A group of young teens named Tai, Mimi, Joe, Izzy, Matt, T.K., and Sora and their Digimon friends (in the US) become the "Digi-destined" and try to save the digital world from evil. Each Digi-destined was given a 'Digivice' which selected them to be transported to the digital world. The digices help their digimon allies to 'Digivolve' into stronger creatures in times of need. The digimon digivolve to stronger forms as more items are collected and bizarre incidents occur that trigger them to digivolve to these higher forms.
Long on pointless battle sequences, short on plot or characterization in its first few episodes but has begun to develop (as many television series do) as time went on. It covered such difficulties kids face when growing up such as making friends, being courageous and standing up to bad people, lending a supportive hand to people even though they may be different, saying goodbye to the ones you love, and much more. This has best been displayed by the collection of 'crests' that the children collect to help make their friends the Digimon 'digivolve' into stronger beings to help them stop the evil forces. The crests embody: Love, Hope, Friendship, Sincerity, Courage, Knowledge, Reliability. The crests won't work unless the bearers of the crests exhibit the quality that their crest represents and this has lead to the children expressing the trait they didn't know they had, sometimes with interesting emotional and dramatic results.
The children realized that the world that they were in was not a game and the creatures there had feelings and could feel pain. Digimon expressed every quality that humans do but they didn't look human. They decided without much thought that they had to defend the strange creatures in the Digital World because they didn't want the creatures there to suffer, and they were the only ones that could help. The Digi-destined never tried to destroy any Digimon unless the Digimon were evil and gave them no other choice.
In the next season Tai's little sister Kari joined the crew. Her involvement expanded the scope of the show as a new dark world was introduced and a description on how the digital world got besieged by the 'Dark Masters' was added. There was even a suggestion of a preceding story before the first Digi-destined in the series landed in the world but that was not explored very well. In the next season there was more information provided on the dark dimension but there was still a visible gap in detail, suggesting that what we have witnessed in the series is just a small story out of a much larger.
The Movies
At around this point the movie came out. Divided into three separate stories:
The first was when Tai and Kari were mere toddlers and they (and what would become the rest of the Digi-destined were watching nearby) saw and participated in their first digimon battle after raising a quickly growing digimon.
The second story showed many of the Digi-destined but only four ended up saving the day when an artificially-made Digimon constructed by a nice young, but careless boy genius named Willis, got infected with a computer virus and raised havoc all over the globe through the Internet. The kids must stop the evil digimon quickly before the nuclear warheads it launched destroy Japan (where the kids are) and Colorado (where Willis lives). Two of them are so worried about their digimon that are fighting the monster that they actually phase into the Internet and mysteriously give them the power to destroy the enemy in time.
The last story involved the next generation of Digimon kids after they travel from Japan to the U.S.A. and meet up with a grown up Willis (who is American) and they must help him stop the mess that he created as the virus mutated and infected one of his digimon (he was given two for some reason) who is wreaking havoc in the real world. The movie was very humourous, fast-paced, had action-packed battle scenes, a great soundtrack and demonstrated that everything you do in life can have repercussions for many years to come.
Season Two
Indeed, the next season involved the main enemy they thought they destroyed in the previous season, but has been manipulating events from beyond the grave. In this season the original Digi-destined grew up into high school students (save Kari and T.K. who were the youngest) and could no longer watch over the digital world and be with their digital friends. All of a sudden a young kid later found out to be named Ken Ichijouji, but calling himself 'The Digimon Emperor' rampaged through the digital world attacking digimon, putting them under mind control, making them into slaves and making them fight with the help of 'Dark Rings', 'Dark Spirals' and 'Dark Towers'. A new generation of Digi-destined named Yolei, Cody and Davis, along with former original Digi-destined Kari and T.K., are given devices known as D3's which allow them to be transported to the digital world. Here they must stop Ken and find out that he became the Digimon Emperor after his brother died in a hit-and-run car accident. It was about this time that we learn that there are Digi-destined children from all over the globe that were fighting evil forces all over the Digital World the same time the original Digi-destined were in the first season, and probably even before that. Ken was one of the original Digi-Destined with another group than the originals in the series where he was attacked by a 'Dark Spore' that got stuck in his neck. The spore made him great in sports and his schoolwork but it made him evil. After Ken it brought to by his own digimon after being told that the Digimon the other kids had were like 'human babies' he cast off his gear and slumped to the ground crying. Later on after much hesitation he joined the other Digi-destined as they fought a human who was using two evil digimon 'made from his own DNA' to make the Dark Spires into super-strong soulless Digimon. This man also scans the Dark Spore inside Ken and implants it into other children who volunteered for the job to be like their soccer hero Ken. The spores develop into flowers that harvest the kid's energy. Eventually they confront this evil man, who turns out to have been a friend of Digi-destined Cody's father, a cop who died in duty when Cody was young. The man and Cody's Dad were reportedly the first ever to see the Digimon at home when playing old video games when they were young. Distraught over the loss of his only friend he accepted a deal from a voice he heard out of nowhere that said he could make him see his friend again. This voice inhabited the man's body and made him do all these bad things and from the energy harvested from the kids (not the Digi-destined) he springs from the man's body and the Digi-Destined recognize him as a stronger version of the evil Digimon they destroyed before. This season ended with the help of all the other Digi-destined from all over the world lending a hand, using the light that existed inside each one of them and their dreams to kill the bad guy. The 'final installment' of the Digi-destined ended here with the boundary between the Digial and Real world being broken down, everyone in the world getting their own companion digimon and fulfilling their dreams.
Season Three
The new season (year 2001) has changed the whole nature of the series. It admits that Digimon was just a game and a TV series but somehow kids: Takato, Henry and Rika (with more on the way); get their own digimon friends and have to fight 'bio-emerging' (digimon who cross the barrier between the information network, begin synthesizing proteins and become real) digimon. Based more on the card game version (and downright dependent on it as kids use the cards to make their digimon digivolve as well as give them powerups. Can you say 'strategic item placement'). Takato creates his digimon when he slips a mysterious blue card he found in his deck through his hand-held card reading device and it changes into a digivice. Next his sketches of a digimon he created on notepad paper get mysteriously scanned into the device and the digimon bio-emerges and is found later by Takato.
The origins of Henry finding his digimon have not been revealed and Rika (the 'Digi-Queen' as the local kids know her because of how well she played the card game) was approached by her digimon (and many others) and asked her to make her stronger.
Along the way the kids learn to be responsible of the digimon as a man tries to stop the Digimon from coming to the real world at any cost.This manifestation of the Digimon series depends more on character development and an increasingly growing plot...Will Rika learn its ok to love and trust others...why is the man trying to stop the digimon...what are the details of the project that Henry's father was involved in that created the digimon...where are the blue cards coming from...and who is the man in the yellow jacket. Right now the new Digi-destined are fighting a series of evil Digimon calling themselves the Devas who think its disgusting for a digimon to be paired up with a human. After dealing with the Devas, the new digidestined had to fight a malevolent computer program called D-reaper, which threatens both the real and digital worlds.