"Digimon Adventure:" is very close to its last episode and a new series "Digimon Ghost Game" will take its place, something that didn't happen for the franchise since Tamers-Frontier. It seems that Ghost Game will talk about some concepts that I like, so I'll explain them. 
Why am I making this ? A number of reasons. Especially because I started to see some people talking about it making no sense for Digimon to talk about some themes, even with them always being a thing for Digimon and the fanbase simply never knowing about them.
So, it's time for me to talk about some setting information that I don't see archived in a single place anywhere that I looked at (Other than my personal Fandom blog)... So at least it will be on Twitter. This is going to be a long thread.
And to start that, let's talk about Tamagotchi. Yes, I did that Tamagotchi thread because I wanted to use it as the basis for this thread, so if you haven't read it yet, it's here. However if you don't want to, I'll give the important information anyway
https://twitter.com/RavelMonte/status/1436759817553682436
In the original Tamagotchi Setting the Tamagotchi were beings that couldn't be seen or heard by humans. Tamagotchi turned into electron-like beings when they entered Earth. Not only they couldn't survive on Earth, but humans couldn't understand or know about them either.
The Tamagotchi V-Pet, known in-universe as Tamagotchi HOUSE, was built in order to show the Tamagotchi in a way that humans could understand. It was thanks to this high-tech gadget that humans started to take care of them.
Digimon started with a similar premise. The existence of the Digimon was something that humans couldn't understand or see, without a computer.
The development of the Digimon Capture, Digimon Loader and the Digital Monster itself was a way to translate their lines of code, and their "world", into something that humans could understand. What before was simply a formless program, got translated into something with a form.
Before becoming what they are today, the Digimon simply appeared in PCs as Viruses that incorporated data in the Computer Network causing a lot of problems. Later it was possible to control them and give a shape that could be studied because of their interesting characteristics.
And while some Digimon would be studied by researchers that wanted to understand their mysteries, Hackers would later influence Digimon. They were the enemies of the first Digimon game and there was even one of them who wanted to disrupt and destroy the net.
This in particular is something that I couldn't understand about some criticism that I've seen about Digimon, in relation to people finding it strange to have Digimon being used for cyberterrorist attacks... While that was the idea since the beginning of the franchise…
Anyway, an important thing for the Digimon and humans in the earlier days was that they always existed separated. Digimon lived on the internet and humans developed programs that could translate what happened there into things that any human could understand, nothing more.
In fact it was part of the setting at the time that Digimon could not appear in the RW, as they were only a Digital existence, and humans could only interact with them because we could use the internet for it. However this changed when a particular work broke the rules forever.
Digimon World is the first major Japanese work, that I know of, that directly breaks this rule and has "analog humans" (Such as Analog Boy and Analogman) being directly sent from the RW to the DW and even a Digimon that travels to the Real World.
It's always good to remember that Digimon had so many changes and extra material in the short period of 2 years, in a way the series was still being developed in relation to the basic worldview due to requests to expand the settings in order to get more content for magazine pages
Such changes could be seen with Digimon Adventure that was created as a sequel to the concepts from Pendulum and World, but what we first saw was the battle of two Digimon in the Real World. But of course, the effects of Digimon in the RW weren't only physical destruction.
During the movie we could see different strange things happening in the world while electronic devices would have errors without any explanation for an human who didn't know of Digimon (Although it wasn't explained how Digimon affected them either).
When the anime series started, the effect of the Digimon in the RW would be a bit different. It also started as something that humans couldn't see, but it wasn't affecting only electronic devices, but Earth as a whole.
It was during Episode 21 that the connection between the natural disasters was connected with the Digimon, as they appeared as beings that humans couldn't see normally and were causing problems there.
And in Zero Two we would see even more of that. With Wizarmon's ghost affecting electronic devices and also changing the weather with thunderclouds. 02 would try to focus more on Digimon affecting the world like this for some reasons.
Episode 33 of 02 would be the most important to explain this idea. Here we have Black WarGreymon in the RW alongside other Digimon, but standard humans can't see them, only Miyako. However they affect electronic devices and can be seen when someone uses them.
And here we have the first direct parallel between the Digimon and the Youkai by Haruhiko Takenouchi. This would be a part of the background setting of Digimon, although the reasoning for that never appeared in the series itself.
Other than that we had Oikawa and Hiroki seeing the Digimon and the Digital World in old video games, and they started to believe in this would that no one else could see.
For Digimon Adventure the idea was to have the Digimon being the children's "soul partner" (魂のパートナー), being that would accept the children for what they were no matter what and would help them evolve into something more.
The idea behind it was that the physical body does not have any more space for big evolution, as such the only thing that could still be evolving would be our "souls". In the past they were poorly defined, but now they can be seen as "Digimon".
Of course you could notice a bit of that in the series, but that can be said about any anime series that is about friendship. The more deep aspects of this setting couldn't appear in the series itself due to the problem of needing to focus on entertainment.
Also our souls aren't something new. Using technology they are now known as "Digimon", but what about when we didn't have this technology ? The setting then answers that this spiritual existence was seen in the past as ghosts, youkais, demons and so on.
Of course this setting could only be seen in a very superficial way in the TV series itself, with a bit of expansion in the extra material such as the Drama CDs, or if you looked for background information from interviews, something that has become more common since Cyber Sleuth.
In the end this concept takes the original base of Digimon and tries to give an answer to it while giving space to multiple interpretations that could coexist, in a way this setting reflects the history of Digimon.
After the Digimon Adventure series we would see the start of "Digimon Tamers" that tried to return the original concepts of Digimon, but that really isn't what happens when you see the whole picture.
It's not a mistake to think that Digimon Tamers is the series that does the most deep on the nature of Digimon as man-made programs, as they we have the entire backstory of the Digimon with the Wild Bunch, but that isn't really everything that exists in this series.
Digimon Tamers did have its own mysteries, or at least things that were inspired by mystery. The Digignomes are man-made programs, however they were still created having the image of a being that could change reality, a "magical being".
In special the Digignomes were made with the 'aliens are ultraterrestrials beings" theory, that is, that aliens and supernatural events that happened across the human history are in fact events and beings from another dimension beyond our understanding.
As you can see that was very similar to Adventure's idea about Digimon, something that Konaka does mentions, although it isn't the same. He also mentions how in this work the DW could still be related to different worlds and dimensions as planned in Adventure.
As you can see that was very similar to Adventure's idea about Digimon, something that Konaka does mentions, although it isn't the same. Other unnatural events could be seen in the series, as a mystery without any official answer, such as the mystery if Alice is a ghost or not.
But of course the biggest mystery is how the D-Reaper evolved so quickly into something that could be above even the Digimon. This is a special mystery because it's directly mentioned in the series in its final moments and remains as such to this day.
Taking that mystery in consideration, the D-Reaper could be the key to also connect Digimon Tamers with the category of Cosmic Horror.
But the Digimon are also a mystery in this series, as it was also never explained why the Digimon were also capable of evolving in the way they did. This was also mentioned in the series itself.
Different from what see on fan groups, the orign story from "Digimon Tamers" isn't supposed to be taken as the true origin, but just a "fake" (捏造) created by Konaka that works within the story that Tamers tell, but it's not supposed to overwrite the setting of the V-Pets/Adv.
As such the mystery behind the reason for why Digimon evolved beyond the Human understanding wasn't answered in the series and is such open to interpretation.
I see that some Digimon fans tends to not like to think of the various interpretation as coexisting, but in the end most of those settings are "interpretations" that can coexist and they are only shown in order to help the story.
Moving away from Tamers and now in Frontier, well... We don't know a lot about it. At best we know that they had returned to the concept of "partner is a part of you soul" Adventure, at least in a sense.
Digimon Savers is another series that we don't know a lot about the background settings, but at least the way that the Digimon acted was familiar to what was implied in ADV/02. Most of the time the Digimon in the Real World and affect it, mostly by helping a human do to something
Digimon Xros Wars is known to be the one to fully restore the Adventure worldview in a very direct way, not only restoring the idea of the DW existing before and above the Real World, but also with Digimon normally not being seen by humans.
And its third part used again the idea of Digimon affecting the humans in the background, normally doing what Humans wishes in order to gain more power.
"Digimon Universe: Appli Monsters" seems to be known as the series that tried to not be Digimon, but that is far from the true. In fact even about the background setting, there was an understanding of Adventure's setting and from the other series.
And of course, Appmon used once again the idea of the monsters affecting human life, directly by affecting our electronic devices. As you can see, the concepts themselves were never removed, totally, from the franchise. It was always there.
And of course, I think that I don't need to mention how much that is connected with the Cyber Sleuth games or the views of Kazumasa Habu about this subject, but if want to know more I have an entire thread about that.
https://twitter.com/RavelMonte/status/1292290696397946880
Digimon Ghost Game is a series that has been announced a few weeks ago, but I can't help but already feel a bit of negativity from some people as "this series is not Digimon". I know that this seems to happen with any new Digimon project, but why ?
The original concept for Digimon already had its roots into mysterious events that humans couldn't understand, that was even the basis for what was used in Tamagotchi, the unknown gaining a form thanks to technology.
What Adventure did was nothing more than embrace the unknown as always the same, but with the idea that it changes after every generation.
If in the past we were afraid of ghosts doing something in our houses during night time, the Digimon represents the unknown dangers of the internet. What if computer virus, were nothing more than computer ghosts ? In a way the original setting continues normally from this.
The only other extra adition that Adventure gave to the settings was to have the evolution of the Digimon connected to the mental growth of the partner
I don't know if I'm wrong, but the character development in Adventure is one of the reason for why it's still talked about today
I don't know if I'm wrong, but the character development in Adventure is one of the reason for why it's still talked about today
The reality is that Ghost Game will most likely just continue with the Digimon settings that we always had, maybe just focusing more in some parts of them than others, but I can't see any reason for not think of this as anything other than Digimon.
I can't wait to see what Ghost Game will do, and as you can notice from this thread, I also can't wait for the development notes to be talked about during interviews so I can learn from them just as I did with all the content from this thread.
And of course, while we don't have Digimon Survive as a game to continue on the settings that I mentioned earlier, it would be really interesting if Ghost Game did that. Maybe it's even better if Survive is released while Ghost Game is airing.
I can't wait for the Ghost Game themed DigiNavi and the series itself. I hope that anyone that has read this thread until this point liked it, or at least, learned something new.
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