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I’m not sure what’s weirder; that Ed doesn’t seem to know what Pokémon and Digimon are or that Brooksie has never looked up Angewomon, LadyDevimon, or (unfortunately) Renamon art.

What made you think he doesn’t know what they are?

His first response to Brooksie’s question comes off as if he’s never even heard of Pokémon or Digimon before now even though it’s a very easy question to answer, as Jess has shown.

I disagree, it seemed fairly clear to me that Ed wasn’t sure where this line of questioning was going, but he knows enough to know that it’s probably somewhere he isn’t comfortable with discussing.

I would say the opposite, really. He is familiar with both and is uncomfortable with where the conversation is going.

It’s not that he doesn’t know, it’s that he *wishes* he didn’t.

I mean… there is A. LOT. of Renamon out there… but yeah, the scale tips in the other direction. At this point, I’d expect it to just be that Pokemon has had almost exponentially more iterations and characters by now.

This is an excellent point that needs more discussion, why is it that pokemon are more chosen despite digimon technically being aimed at a slightly older audience and technically still doing the same thing. Is it because pokemon really pushes the development of emotional bonds with your pokemon? Where as digimon tend to evolve into new forms constantly that tend to have a lot of design disparity and perhaps lack emotional continuity?

I think it has to do with the games. Pokémon is WAY more successful with their games than Digimon is. Not only that, but despite people saying that the Digimon animé is better than the Pokémon animé, the Pokémon animé has been running non-stop since the 90s while the Digimon animé has big gaps between seasons.

Pretty much, yeah, it’s popularity and recognizability. The more a thing is on the minds of the people who make lewd art the more likely it is to be made into lewd art. Pokemon is easily one of the most popular franchises in the world, so it spends a significantly larger amount of time on peoples’ minds than Digimon.

Also, while I can agree that some seasons of the Digimon anime are better than most or all of the Pokemon anime, I think the Pokemon anime is better on the whole, if nothing else due to consistency. Digimon swings wildly in writing quality from amazingly good (Tamers) to god-awful (Frontier) meanwhile Pokemon has maintained a decent average, with some especially hype parts (most of Journeys, XY) and some mediocre at best (Sun and Moon), but overall has managed to stay just above mid-level quality, as far as anime targeted at pre-teens goes, and with well over 20 years on the air, that’s pretty impressive.

Popularity and exposure definitely plays a major role, but I think what the comic brings up is also an important factor. As someone who never cared about either as a kid, when I look at Pokemon (both the Human characters and the Pokemon themselves), the designs are all distinct, cute, and appealing; when I look at Digimon, the Human characters seem dull and the Digimon all blend together into one big overcomplicated mess. This is likely part of the reason for their different levels of success too.

And here you all are forgetting about Monster Rancher….shame.

Monster rancher is less lewdable to be fair, I guess there’s the succubus looking monsters? But still.

As someone who’s played most of the Monster Rancher games, yeah, the only ones you can really lewd for the masses is the Pixie family of monsters. You’ve got dragons, wolves, walls, floating masks with cloaks, dragons, mecha, fish, golems, apes, scorpions, beetles, stuffed dolls, wooden ducks, slimes (called Jells), yetis, reapers, and on and on.

I think it might have something to do with Pokemon still going. Digimon kind of boiled off after about 1999 or so. It had like one movie that I know of. But Pokemon had a couple that made it to US theaters.

Digimon’s got a fair share of movies too, and has been regularly releasing games (albeit clunky games). Heck, the one movie that I remember making it to NA theatres was actually 3 separate short film releases in Japan, spliced and localized down into one continuous story.

I have noticed that Digimon doesn’t seem to get localized anymore these days, so that might be a factor in the equation, one to which I’ve never investigated

For someone in my age range I’m just going to think of this as a Velma v. Daphne discussion. Am I very far off?

(PS: Velma for me.)

It’s probably close but given the gaming aspect there is probably an aspect of one sport vs another that skews the argument a bit. I’m old enough that I’m down for original Velma. My son was big into Pokemon (he is now 30). I remember him coming down stairs in tears because he had been searching for Pokemon on the family computer and he had stumbled onto a pokeporn site that set itself as the home page for the web browser. He couldn’t make it go away and was certain that he was in big trouble. This was when browser protection was just becoming a thing.

It’s actually more of a Scooby Gang v. Flintstones conversation, and why one has more lewd art than the other. Though now that I think of it, the talking animals might be part of the reason in either discussion.

No, Velma/Daphne or even Ginger/Mary Ann debates are comparing folks in the same show. This is more akin to Transformers/Gobots or Sesame Street/Mr. Rogers Neighborhood comparisons. Similar concepts (robots that change into vehicles in the first example and long-running children’s shows in the second) but different execution.

Unlike Jo, I *have* run across (what I assume some people think is) sexy Digimon art.

It was deeply, DEEPLY disturbing.

On many levels.

Digimon is still a thing? I legit can’t remember the last time I heard it mentioned. While Pokemon, pfft, you can’t get away from it unless you avoid all video games, message boards, and nerd culture. Though in my wanderings, I’ve noticed that like 10 Pokemon get 90% of the lewd art (the art that isn’t of human characters). I don’t know their names but I would now recognize them from rule 34 rather than their actual source material, and I don’t even go looking for it. Well, I know Hypno because…obviously.

I think the lack of lewd Digimon art comes down to the TV show having the Digimon capable of devolving back into their younger forms (never played the card game so I don’t know if that version had devolving, and only played the first Digimon World on the PlayStation and that was a long time ago). Then there’s also the word poke in Pokémon which led to Poke-A-Woman parodies out there… and I’d better stop there before I go corrupting too many people or even get my comment moderated.

Pokemon at least has Nintendo willing to push it for all its worth. The same can’t be said for Bandai and Digimon, especially with the anime series. I admit that the first season of the Digimon dub on FOX kids back in the day was great but the show really jumped the shark with the second half of the second season and perpetual virtue signal bullying.

IMO it comes down to Pokemon leaving room for imaginative anthropomorphization, cuz there are very few actually humanoid pokemon (the more humanoid ones tend to get picked a lot, like Machamp or Gardevoir, but they aren’t the only ones chosen). A sexy version of a pikachu is more interesting and subversive than making Gatomon sexy when we already know she’s gonna turn into a hot, half naked angel woman in her next evolution. Most of the digivolutions get more humanoid (and then circle back) as they evolve. You don’t have to anthropomorphize them. So, when you do see lewd art of them, Digimon tend to just look like their humanoid forms, if a little exaggerated (Angewoman with bigger boobs, etc), which is just not as exciting for artists to play with. Plus, if you’re really hard up for spank bank material, the original forms of the digimon will suffice without having to reimagine them.

It’s also because Pokemon is more relatable than Digimon. Digimon were, “Digital” Monsters, as in computer programs. They don’t feel relatable as you KNOW they’re not real. Pokemon however are depicted as just straight up animals, like cows, chickens, and dogs. They’re more relatable and feel more “real” to the childhood viewer, because they are depicted as living creatures, not just sentient and self-aware computer scripts and java programming turned into a hard light hologram. Yes, Pokemon are not real, obviously, but they are DEPICTED more realistically and FEEL like a more natural fit into their world.

This has been happening to me, recently-

I’ve been trying to see art by webcomics’ authors, + by other artists, on sites like- tumblr, deviant art, + twitter.

But recently, the experience goes like this- I look at about 6 images on their sites, + then the sites say- “Oh dear, oh DEAR! You’ll have to sign [in], if you want to see more of the images.”

This makes me really mad.

Maybe they NOW want me + everyone to sign in, so the sites can hit me with personal ads, but for…[how long?]…perhaps…since all the years back to 2000, I could get on these sites, + view as much of them as I desired, and not have to- pay, or sign in, to see everything on these sites.
What gives? This just stinks.

What gives is that the “give me everything for free” mindset only works when you can monetize your work via some method that’s passive. All those means have been destroyed because not enough users protected them. If you want content you have to pay for it one way or another. I used to be able to get $700 a month out of the ads on the website. It’s down to $130 now. $700 wasn’t enough back then & $130 sure as fuck isn’t enough now. So I have to try and convince people to directly support my work. About 900 people keep the lights on here for the 6000 or so other readers. Suck it up buttercup, because things aren’t looking to get better anytime soon.

Oh yes- I do “suck it up, buttercup”, but it’s, to me, like a public park(s)- does someone pay for it?…oh yes.

But- give me something, for free…with ads, for over 10 years, myself and others expect it to [always] be without charge + with ads.

Thus the topics of services that are paid by- charity, donations, capitalism, ads, + the like, come up again.

It’s true…People [do] like to get paid.
Whichever.

I’m struggling to even understand your comment with it’s horrific punctuation (sorry if English is not native for you), but it sounds like you’re just complaining. Now, I can sort of understand disliking when you have to make an account for every corner website you just discovered 5 seconds ago, because I don’t even know if I care enough about the content to bother. But yeah, the adpocalypse is real. Also, so is saturation. If Patreon, the company itself, wasn’t so distasteful to me, I’d throw more money at more folks (don’t worry Jackie, you’re one of the two I back). Doesn’t help that Google and Facebook have also decided to mostly focus on being yet another way for mainstream media corporations to reach the populace, instead of regular people–damn peons need to stop trying to TALK and just LISTEN!

Uh huh.
Did I single out you, or anyone else, with my comment?
Because you seem to be very miffed, or suffering from a personal attack, very recently. If I was attacking you, I don’t remember it.

Quite so, I do comment, at times, just to complain about things.
As I recall, I didn’t a promise to anyone, that I wouldn’t comment to just about things.
My apologies if you found my comments or topics as distressing things.

OK?

Not sure what gave you the impression I felt attacked; that seems to be what YOU’RE feeling and then you’re projecting it onto me. You complained; I agreed with you to a point but pointed out you’re basically just complaining. You have every right to complain, but then I have every right to complain about your complaining.

That is fine.
However, when you had used the term, [your horrific punctuation], in your above comment, it sounded like an attack on what I had said. It sounded, to me anyway, like an expression of- “I don’t know. Maybe you don’t understand what’s happening…or maybe you just can’t speak good English”. Maybe that isn’t the message you were trying to send out, but to me, that didn’t sound like a friendly thing to say.

Please pardon me if I misinterpreted what you had said.
In the company that I keep, unusual expressions are sometimes used as a method to hide insulting messages.
That’s how that goes.
No offense meant, but I wasn’t sure what sort of message you were sending, back there.
Later on.

*Put a photo of me, looking very annoyed at me, here.*

My apologies, everyone.

I’m not happy with the way I’ve behaved, today.

The way that I’ve acted in today’s comments, is what I try to avoid.

I think I’ve spent a lot of today, chatting on the internet, while feeling very stressed-out and gregarious. That wasn’t a great decision by me.

My motto should be- don’t drink + drive, and don’t chat online while being-totally-perturbed at the universe.
I had a long week of my-family-having-health-issues, and wildlife-annoyances, that had really wrung me out. That was rough, but I shouldn’t have brought that here.
Next time I’ll just stroll to the backyard, + have a good sulk.
My apologies. Later on.

Pokemon was more easier to remember if I’m gonna be completely pragmatic with you. I couldn’t remember most Digimon. I would know which kid had that particular digimon and that’s only for their Secondary form. It also had a lot of computer coding bullshit that I wasn’t that interested. Pokemon had definitely more tech with it but it didn’t have that overbearing feel to the said plot with technology, there was also a balance at the very least and felt rather realistic at the time. In pokemon’s universe, all I had to do was walk outside and catch a Pidgey with a pokeball when it was a little weak/tired and boom that’s it.

But with Digimon, you actually had to be friends with the said Digimon and hope to god they didn’t eat you. And then getting their evolve form was fucking annoying because you had to actually bond with them to earn their trust and experience. And you had to go to the Digiworld as well.

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