Digimon Tamers/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Why didn't Impmon's Tamer(s) get a digivice when he first bioemerged? It seems like with the others, the Tamer received the digivice minutes or seconds before their partner appeared. And second, how are a pair of siblings supposed to mutually "share" a digivice, especially say, during battle if it ever came up? It is simply not built for two people to use...wouldn't it make more sense for both of them to have one?
    • As to the first question, Impmon never biomerged. He got his powers through a deal with a deva, so the kids had no part in it. For the second question. They share by sharing, it's simple. Who's to say it's not built for two people to use. Remember the d-arc is a communications device made by a human, so whose to say Shibumi didn't make it possible for certain models to be used by different people.
    • Ack, rats, I meant bio-EMERGED. First came to the real world, is what I meant. Damn weird terminology. Thanks for the latter, though. :D
      • For the same reason Jeri didn't become Leomon's partner until later on; It's only after both the digimon and the human want to help each other that they receive a digivice. The twins initially just wanted to use Impmon as a doll or playmate, and they only receive the digivice when themselves want to help him. On another note, we don't know for sure if the digivice is shared or it just belongs to one of the twins.
      • Aha, thanks.
      • As I understand it, the digivice only belongs to Ai.
  • How was Juri/Jeri alive after beeing isolated for weeks in the D-Reaper?
    • Answer in the fridge Digimon folder.
  • I don't know Japanese, but I read the translated "message in a packet" Drama Cd. From What I understand, it say's that a year has passed since when Tamers began (due to their school year), which means about a month after the end of Tamers, and making the Second Movie Possible. So why does everybody say both are incompatible?
    • Because the Drama CD's first track is literally titled "Us a Year Later" meanwhile the movie takes place 6 months later. Not a month and Takato does say that several months have gone by, since they analyzed the portal, than in another script someone says that a year has gone by since they last saw their partners. Maybe you didn't read the script carefully.
    • Never mind; they were in the 6th grade in the short story, and when they were fighting the D-reaper they were in the 5th grade; I likely was confused by Ruki's line. Besides, according to Takato he prepared to go in the portal in the winter vacation, but they returned from the Digital World in February.
  • How exactly did mind raping Jeri make the D-Reaper stronger? Was it just Rule of Scary?
    • 1) Consider that, that a lot of things that goes on the series are better explained by data beeing powerfull 2) The D-Reaper did not depend on Juri/Jeri to expand, as the entity in the digital world shows; rather it allowed it to grow faster 3) If you think of the D-Reaper taking advantage of the computing power of Jeri's mind by using it to transform energy into usable destructive data, you'll understand that it suited the D-Reaper better Jeri having destructive thougts; And I think that clears things.
  • In one of the later episodes, Kazu and Kenta are seen being arrested by police in a black helicopter. This is never mentioned again in the series (although, to be fair, they only had one or two episodes left and there were more important things to cover, like defeating the Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror D-Reaper). WTF happened to them? Why were they arrested in the first place?
    • For parking their Digimon in non-parking area?
    • Non Sequitur Scene!
    • Maybe the cops were instructed to keep everybody away from the reality eating monster, saw two kids dangerously close to said monster, assumed youthful stupidity and arrested them to get them to safety?
    • Probably thought they attacked the other cops that were really attacked by the monster, and those cops told what really happened. Cause Kazu and Kenta's next appearance, in the final episode, is their Big Damn Heroes moment.
  • How are Jianliang and Terriermon able to Matrix Evolve? Okay, sure, "they're the secondary male leads", fine, but it doesn't make much sense compared to the other three Matrix Evolutions. Takato and Guilmon have an obvious connection - Takato created Guilmon. Ruki and Renamon seem to share some sort of telepathic link (which is used in all of three episodes). Ryo is actually a Chosen Child from the Adventure universe, and Cyberdramon is his chosen partner (or, at least, part of him is... it's complicated). Jianliang and Terriermon, meanwhile, are... really good friends?
    • Friendship, I think, is the most important part of Matrix Evolution.
    • Ah but you forget that matrix evolving is reserved only for the character focuses. Ever notice the powerful states are ONLY reached by the main-lead digimon in literally every season but one? (Savers is an exception in which everyone actually hits Burst-Mode)
      • Yes, I especially liked pawnchessmons' burst modes...if there were any that is.
    • I think its also important to note that Jianliang and Terriermon have been partners for longer than Takato and Guilmon, and have been friends from the beginning, unlike Ruki and Renamon. I've always seen the relationship between Jianliang and Terriermon to be like and older and younger brother, whereas Takato and Guilmon are a boy and his dog, (or alternately, a new father and his son), and Ruki and Renamon are...well...
      • Ruki and Renamon also develop a big sister/little sister relationship eventually, but in their case it's Renamon who's the big sister. Ruki even says she sees Renamon as a big sister (several times!) in the CD drama A Message in the Packet. Which is saying a lot, because in Japanese culture family is really Serious Business.
      • When you say "Matrix Evolve" are you meaning getting to Mega level? At least in the English Dub that's called Bio Merging but since you're calling him Jianliang you almost certainly watched a different translation. Anyway, if you are talking about reaching mega level in order to reach Mega and bio merge, each character had to reach the apex of their development. Takato had to reach the same level of living in the moment wisdom Guilmon had and recognize him as an equal (not a pet) and the boy and his dog became Gallantmon. Rika had to recognize strength is more than battle and it takes a great deal of strength and power to protect rather than destroy. Thus she became the defense focused mega we know. Henry had to learn some things are out of his control and that he needs to learn to trust other people's judgement and abilities. In doing so he and Terriermon got to attain mega level.


  • After Juggernaut, the barriers between the worlds(for lack of a better term... is there even a canon name for that?) were all but destroyed, and odds are the D-Reaper wasn't repairing them(more likely it was making the holes bigger, and for that matter, the D-Reaper problem was solved with another dose of Juggernaut, or at least a variant of it, which still couldn't have been good for the world-barrier-things... ). So how does everything go back to 'normal' after the D-Reaper? The Cd Drama makes it seem like there have been no digimon appearing in the human world, but if the barriers were that damaged, there should have been countless digimon bio-emerging (well, maybe not that many, mostly because of the amount that would be deleted due to the D-Reaper, but there still should be some appearing, unless the entirety of the digital world was deleted...). Digimon don't seem to have control on whether they bio-emerge or not(except the Devas, but thats probably due to the sovereigns), so the potential argument that they were trying to rebuild(and therefore not wanting to bio-emerge) doesn't really make sense(and its not like the Tamers digital world has much to rebuild anyway...). I suppose the sovereigns could have done something about the barrier (i.e. repairing it), or prevented them from bio-emerging, but that just raises the question of why. And even if the sovereigns could do that, why wouldn't Azulongmon just completely lock Calumon in the real world after sending it there?
    • In the original version at least, Janyu mentions that "the barrier between the worlds is stable once again" at the end. The Shaggai/Juggernaut used in Operation Doodlebug was said to be different from its original form as well, so it may actually work the opposite way.
  • If everyone else de-digivolved at the end to go through the digital gate, how come Marineangemon didn't de-digivolve? Was he protecting them from the digital world when they went back?
    • Probably mostly just because it was so tiny it could fit through the gate anyway.
      • According to a few of the materials (such as the card game and data books), MarineAngemon's data density is lower than that of his lower forms. Go figure.
  • The very purpose of the D-Reaper. What kind of idiot devises a program that deletes data that gets "too big"? Apparently, the D-Reaper was created in the late 1970s by the United States Department of Defense - I imagine file sizes of even a few-hundred megs of data was unheard of in those days, nevermind a gigabyte. Someone should have reminded the designer that Science Marches On. Nice Job Breaking It, America.
    • The D-Reaper was part of the original program the digital world grew out of, not a seperate program. As far as I remember, there's no mention of the Department of Defense at all in the digital worlds origins, everything came out of an experiment that Henry's dad worked on in college. I also don't remember anything about filesize being what the D-Reaper used to determine what gets deleted. I do sorta remember the show giving a very, very, simplified explanation for the programming concept of garbage collection which would have been used in the 70/80s (most modern languages handle it in the background without the programmer having to do anything). Since the digital world and digimon were designed to be self-evolving and learning, it wouldn't be unlikely that the garbage collection subroutine would have to be programmed to recognize changes in what the program considers garbage data, and over time gained intelligence like the digimon did.
      • I believe it was stated in the show that the cryteria for the activation of the D-Reaper was a low size of available free memory (a bit like windows's cleanmgr.exe program). The thing is, the Digital World expanded the more data was used (according to the show), so it was never in risk of exceding memory capacity, which was inconceivable to a program designed for fixed memory sizes.
    • The show does take inspiration from the real world, in which the "Creeper" vírus, one of the earliest viruses and the one that infected most of Arpanet (early internet, created by DARPA, the Department of Advanced Research Projects of America), was deleted. From here on, the creators started fantasising with the idea that it was, in fact, deleted by a program designed to eliminate unnecessary data, named "reaper" (which actually existed) and was very much necessary at the time due to limited memory sizes, and not today's ever expanding ones. Then, they speculated; after all such a program would need to analyse the data in order to determine whether or not it was unnecessary, before deleting the data, as J-Reaper explained. Now, in order to delete the virus the programmers had to give the program additional instructions. And what sets a virus apart from other programs? It's purpose, which is to spread to other systems (or areas) and consume resources unproductively. Additionally, due to the great variety of forms viruses can take, the program had to be able to adapt, or in other words, classify previously unaccounted types of data as either productive or wasteful. What the original programmers couldn't have predicted (and has never been achieved) was the development of artificial intelligence, which supperficially is identical to computer viruses (no clear objective other than spreading), and that by analising data the "reaper" program would alter itself (evolve), assimilating abilities deemed necessary to fulfill it's purpose. Additionally, they couldn't have imagined that digital programs could materialise in the real world! So they can hardly be blamed. This is a purely educated speculation, though.
      • Note that the Digimon perceiving the D-Reaper as Chaos is an ironic dubbing misunderstanding, since the D-Reaper aims at eliminating data without defined purpose, otherwise known as chaotic data!
    • See the D-Reaper Report (in English) on Konaka's site. There's also notes in his Chronicles page.
      • So apparently, the D-Reaper binded itself to another plane of existence and became an Avatar of Azathoth/Death/TEH REI. Creepy as hell, and definitely explains why it kept Mind Raping Jeri to obtain more subsistence to manifest itself.
  • The whole thing with the Monster Makers/Wild Bunch. How are Digimon artificial lifeforms they tried to create and a popular toy and game line at the same time? And if they were so well-known as toys, why didn't more people know what Digimon were when real ones started appearing in the city?
    • The original Digimon Project the Wild Bunch were involved with lost it's funding, and a toy company later decided to turn their ideas into a game.
    • Just because a toy line is well known, doesn't mean adults are familiar with it or its characters. Even with Pokémon, a global toy fad, you'd be hard pressed to find adults on the street who know the names of more than the ~10 well known mons, or could even identify the others as Pokémon characters. I assume that in the Tamers world, there are probably many different Mons franchises, the same as it is in our world.
  • When the Tamers first meet Beelzebumon, Kyubimon says to him, "Tell me, what did you promise them?" In other words, "What did you offer the Devas in exchange for this power, Impmon?" How she could have known he had made a deal with the Devas is unexplained, although you could link it to her conversation with Vajramon. In the Japanese version, she just made the observation that he, Impmon, had evolved.
    • I always assumed it was because Kyuubimon 1) is really observant, 2) knows Impmon the best, and 3) has that weird "bond" with Impmon. Add all that to her talk with Vajramon and the fact that Impmon really wanted to digivolve, and I don't think it would be too hard for her to connect the dots.
  • The Seven Deadly Sin Digimon are never brought up in Tamers, but he appears in this series so I'll ask it here. How does Beelzemon relate the the sin of gluttony at all? Yes, he's named after Beelzebub, the Demon of Gluttony, but Beelzemon is a motorcycle rider, not a fat guy.
    • Digimon don't eat the same way matter-based life does in Tamers; they eat by absorbing the data of defeated opponents. When it comes to that sense of eating, Beelzemon fits quite well.
      • Especially considering his rather special trait in that regard. While there were other cases in which a digimon could use an attack not unique to them, this was through the use of modify cards. Beelzemon could use attacks of anything he absorbed, the only downside seeming to be that he might get overwhelmed with the data if he takes in too much, the instance in which Terrimon and Renamon's ultimate forms seeming to break out of his body after absorbing them being a key example. Of course the best example of this his his use of Leomon's attack to save Jerri. Taking this trait to its logical extreme, this makes a relatively fresh Beelzemon not a particularly threatening mega, least for a demon lord, but one who has spent a large amount of time 'eating' other digimon a terrifying force to behold with a near infinite pool of attacks to choose from.
    • Also, back when he was Impmon he had a habit stealing Guilmon's bread.
    • If the "Dark" Crests follow the same type of logic than the "Light" crests... well, following The Other Wiki, the Olympian Spirit of the Seal associated with Gluttony controls metal and Venus, their planet, is associated with the Metal element in the China.
    • Besides all that, gluttony doesn't just mean eating a lot. It's a general term meaning either wasting a resource or taking more than what's necessary (both can be applied to food, but it's not necessary). In Beelzemon's case, he kept absorbing data even though as a Mega he was already very powerful.
  • I admit I have not watched the show in years (I inted to rewatch it, though), so I may be misinformed on this, but why did the Tamers not realize something was wrong with Jeri after she was replaced by J-Reaper? Granted, they might have just thought she was reacting badly to the death of Leomon (and who would blame her?), but it's pretty blatant that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong, and they just took it in stride. OK, Takato realized something was wrong during the subway ride with her, but you'd think they'd figure it out sooner.
    • Note that only we can see the J-Reaper scary eyes; it was a (classic) trick to help the audience destinguish the real Jeri from J-Reaper, and add a bit a lot of creepiness through a masterful application of the Uncanny Valley. Thus, we realise that everyone around her is either confused (stepmom) or mistaken (Takato). Additionally, note that most of her soul crushing terror comes from small expressions (most evil smile ever? Brr...).
    • Also, her partner just died. They probably explained her actions in their minds with that.
  • How do the military's magnet bomb crap manage to get inside the D-Reaper when bullets and missiles fail to get through? Sure it drew more power from Jeri to turn them off but they never should have got through at all.
    • Maybe becaues the missiles were attacking the D-Reaper and so seen as a threat, while the magnet bomb was not offensive in any way, so there is no reason for the D-Reaper to guard against it. And the missiles did hit the D-Reaper, they just had no effect on it.
  • How come Jeri doesn't seem to suffer any adverse effect from the D-Reaper drawing energy from her? If she's not losing anything where does the power come from?
    • The D-Reaper gives Jeri back the energy it takes, which was why it was reading the label on the bento to figure out what in the lunchbox could be used as energy to "re-fuel" Jeri, or Jeri was still stuck in the state she was in the Digital World, a digital being who had no need to be fed.
    • Jeri shows no adverse effect as the D-reaper draws energy. Energy has to come from somewhere. Replacing it is fine but she shows no fatigue or signs of energy loss as D-reaper draws power from her. She just cries about being stuck.
  • If artillery can't piece the D-Reaper, why can Beelzemon's shot gun slugs get through?
    • Because Beelzebumon's gun slugs are not like real world artillery. Maybe Rookie-bazooka champion-tank-ultimate-nuke mega-end of the world give or take? Beelzemon uses slugs for rule of cool and they are stronger than they look?
  • Why is the D-Reaper treated as some autonomous machine simply following its programming both in and out of universe? Many a Movie Rant made by it clearly evil show that it is thinking and evil. It tries to justify killing by saying that humans and digimon only want violence even though the human and digimon it spends the most time harassing want nothing of the sort, and it sends an agent to directly destroy plant life because it "...can't absorb organic data" despite the trees not hurting anything. It should have been permanently deleted.
    • First; that monstronsity could not be deleted. They tried (the Tamers have been permanently deleting setient beings since the very start, so that wouldn't stop them), but it was simply too powerfull. To achieve partial victory, the monstermakers had to betray the Tamers by not telling them the consequences. Second, the reasoning it employs is based on the Tierra project, a real life AI creation program (search it on wikipedia) that the D-Reaper had deleted. There, the definition of life was competition for resources; i.e., no useful purpose (as it is stated above). Meanwhile, the D-Reaper is clearly furfilling its original objectives. On the other hand, creating an analysis on humanity based on a completely depressed girl did not help things (J-Reaper seemed to be independent from the main D-Reaper mass). Finaly, note that there is a difference between English dub and original Japanese.
    • Its actually stated several times that the D-Reaper could not be permanently defeated.
    • Essentially it is permanently defeated. Juggernaut devolves it into its most basic form, after which it disappears. And Janyu says, about the Digimon "They must return to the digital plane of they'll disappear forever just like the D-Reaper". They just didn't think it could be due to the number of times they tried to destroy it, before they discovered its weakness.
      • In the original japanese and all other dubs it was a bit different; If they didn't return to the digital world, they would become a program like what had happened to the D-Reaper. In another words, what the program was doing was regressing them (note the way Henry understood the full implications of this, especially because he was told what the juggernaut would do to the D-Reaper) into a simple program (like the ones the mostermakers had created), which is different from killing. Although to be honest, it's rather unlikely for it to return (unless we have a sequel... which is just as unlikely).
      • Yeah, that's all good, and that's when they should have taken extra care to permanently delete it, when it was in its most basic form.
      • Is it really that hard to understand the concept of impossibility? After all, you can't delete something if you don't know where it is, or how it came to be. It's pretty clear that if they could delete it permanently, they would have done so.
      • They can now that it is a simple program. They decided not to put effort into finding it because that would cost money and they were genre savvy enough to know there would be no sequels to Tamers(thus no reason for blob reaper's return)
        • No,no,no. This is way to much of a conspiracy theory. If they were nearly as aware of the 4th wall as you say they would have spent the extra money to get a happy ending because after all they wouldn't want to traumatize the viewers as much as this series (and especially this ending) apparently did.
  • How come Guilmon and Gargomon get 3d digivolution sequences when they evolve from champion, but Renamon only gets a 2d one?
    • Actually, Renamon's digivolutions have a 3D background (Usually water effects, but the cherry tree petals in Sakuyamon's evolution as well). Besides (although it is more a personal opinion), the evolution sequence wouldn't have looked as good.
  • Where'd the idea that there are no Digieggs in the Tamers universe/Digimon don't come back from the dead in the Tamers universe come from? There was an entire episode revolving around a Gorillamon getting revenge on Henry and Terriormon for killing it prior to the start of the series!
    • Gorilamon wasn't deleted in the game (or at least the deletion wasn't shown). He could have just been badly beaten like the Ox Deva, Vajramon (who seemingly lost half it's body to Rapidmon's attack but managed to restore himself outside the digital field. The whole Digimon don't ever revive, as stated above, comes from the episode where part of the Tamers reach the chuchidramon village, the "village of discarded data" (in an obvious parallel to Adventure's primary village), where they find out that digimon are formed from random data (like those globes floating around) coalescing, which creates an entirely new digimon, as opposed to a previous one who died. Besides, according to writer, one of the main points of the Tamers series is how some actions have consequences that cannot be fixed (as opposed to the childish conception than a mistake can be solved by a simple apology).
  • Okay, so Ryo has a long and complicated backstory that's only harder to understand due to the No Export for You factor, but there is one bit of it that, despite all the reading I've done on the kid, has always bugged - how the hell did his parents get to the Tamers world?! Or was it just his dad?
    • I'm pretty sure nobody has a definite and according to cannon answer to that question (I could have missed something, though). Considering that the ryo in the games had parents, D-1 Tamers Ryo was pronounced dead after the battle with Moon-Millenniummon (note that he could have returned afterwards), and that ryo didn't remember said games' events (message in the packet implies that he may have started to recover his memories), there are at least four possibilities: 1) The Ryo (we know) from Adventure got switched with the Ryo that was originally from Tamers. This leads to serious issues that were never raised because Ryo himself didn't remember the events with millenniummon 2) Both Ryo and his parents got switched, and the real world is so similar they can't tell them apart or all of them got mind wiped to some extent. Again, it would not be pretty if they found out. 3) He simply got adopted by new parents, but doesn't remember that he had real parents beforehand. Would also break him a little 4) None of the game's events transpired. The games were initially created after Ryo won the tournament 1 year ago, and the game developers made D1 Tamers/Brave Tamer after the D-Reaper's invasion based on some thorough research on the Tamers and their partners, and even though I find it unlikely I must point out this theory has yet to be disproven.
    • For another point Brave Tamer has dimension hopping, and Time travel in the same game happening at the same time, and that's without mentioning the two different dimensions and time springs mixing together. Plus it had Zeed Milleniummon and the various super computers involved who did have the ability to do that, so its actually not out of the question so its really not out of the question to say that when things were fixed it was not how it used to be.
    • Now that I think about it, it could be that Ryo was a digital being way back since the end of D-1 Tamers, which would explain why the tamers and chosen children can't team up with ryo directly and can only send their digimon along with their digivices across the time portals ENIAC opened in Brave Tamer (mind you, the game never provides this explanation, so it's just a conjecture).
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