Digimon of the Week: Gigimon

Ok I'll admit this week I'm sick so just going to keep this one short and cute.

Gigimon is what happens when you give Tokomon Guilmon's color scheme and ears. The Gigi in its name is an onomatopoeia for a squeaking sound in Japanese. Like all in training Digimon it keeps the basic design philosophy of being a orb shape with little features and also being just down right adorable.

Still as the lower form of Guilmon the question comes of did Gigimon ever come up in the show? Well once..

Admit it you cried by this point

but no matter how adorable he looked it was kind of defeated by the feels.

So that was the short look at Gigimon and if you don't mind I'm now going to pass out and hopefully feel better when I wake up.

Digimon of the Week: Blimpmon

Digimon can be straight up weird sometimes. Which I'm not saying is automatically bad but one thing that Digimon had over other shows in the 'mon subgenre is that its concept basically made it able to do what ever the hell it wants with designs and it isn't going to be declared as completely unsalvageable a franchise if something that looks like ice cream starts hopping around. It's monsters made out of computer data and I'm pretty sure most could say if the stuff on their computer came to life it would be a weird ass thing. Just go to any web page categorizing them and hit random you'll probably get something that will confuse you for the rest of the day. In fact I did and today we are talking about Blimpmon.

Yes after 15 pages of fanfiction Digimon, no seriously I think the Digimon wiki is infested with a Infermon that keeps sending you to pages about crappy fanfiction, I found this glorious robotic monstrosity. It's champion level and from all I've looked up it doesn't digivolve from anything or digivolve to anything. Yet it looks like a Locomon ate a Guardromon and then went to flight school. Also the little arms that just kind of stick out the front there are just an added touch to the ridiculous degree in which this thing just exists. It sits there as this obscure trading card confusing all who find it and I fucking love it.

So as tradition Let's talk about blimps... well actually lets talk about Zeppelins which the armed design of Blimpmon better matches.

Created by  Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin ..

the first patent for his airship designs were given in August of 1895 and five years later his first airship the LZ1 would take flight.

From there it would go through many versions and in 1909 the Count founded the German Airship Travel Corporation to promote his ships which at the same time made it the world's very first air line.

Of course many when they think of Zeppelins think of them by their military use for recon and bombing back in World War 1.

Which it was true many were seized for the war effort by the government and the older models were recommissioned but the airships weren't really the most effective of aerial offense. Primarily because something that is a metal passenger car carried by a giant balloon turns out to be not good at take bullets. Meaning most of the air force used in the war would end up shot down by fire from the ground and destroyed in the crash that followed.

So how well does Blimpmon work as a Zeppelin? Well the basics are there but it does have the one flaw in that the top of the balloon was never known to be covered in heavy chunks of metal nor did they have jousting spears sticking out the tip. Yet those are the sacrifices of practicality that can be made when you are cursed to live out the rest of your days full of hot air.

In the end that was Blimpmon the ridiculous balloon, gun, robot, amalgamation that proves I'm going to have material for this for a long while.

Digimon of the Week: Ancientsphinxmon

Riddle me this; There are two sisters: one gives birth to the other and she, in turn, gives birth to the first. Who are the two sisters?

The Digimon franchise has a love of making groups and organizations to clump together some of the creatures in and today we are going to be looking at one of those with Ancientsphinxmon. Now this guy is a member of the Ten Legendary Warriors which those that remember Frontier, whether you want to or not, know that those were the brave heroes who in the past fought and freed the digital world from Lucemon. In general canon that seems to be the same basic premise of what they did. All ten are at the mega level and have the prefix "Ancient" in their name. Sometimes it is because they are an alternate version of another type and sometimes they aren't. Ancientsphinxmon is the latter as there is not just Sphinxmon in the canon.

Ancientsphinxmon represents the element of darkness and one of his only on screen appearances is when he acts as a finishing move in Battle Spirit 2 and a couple of the DS games... which were never localized and most likely never will be.

totally not bitter about that

The design of Ancientsphinxmon itself is good if not giving much to talk about. It keeps the lion theme of all the darkness spirit Digimon do and I've always liked black and gold in combination. That and it looks like what it was named after even having the little pharaoh beard made of gold. 

So with that over and done let's go into the disconnected learning segment of the week.

Anyways when you first hear the word sphinx you most likely with think of the one in Egypt.

No one knows who exactly built this statue in Giza though it is said the head would be of a pharaoh, most likely the pharaoh Khafra, and that would place construction around 2500 BC. The Egyptian variation was mostly male and was a benevolent source but with fierce power. The missing nose also spawned the popular myth that it was shot off by soldiers in the army of Napoleon.

If it isn't about me it can go fuck itself

But yet there is another to talk about before we are done here. The Sphinx of Greek myth from Oedipus the King.

The Spinx in myth was a female beast that was part lion, bird, and human. The beast plagued the town of Thebes holding it in terror and every traveler that would try to come to the city it would ask a riddle and if you got it wrong she would eat you. This riddle was the classic "legs... time... the answers man yadda yadda" that probably everyone knows. Though in some cases it would also ask the riddle this article started with (the answer to that I'll leave you to figure out). Anyways the story goes that eventually up struts Oedipus who when given the riddle is able to answer it correctly. In response the Sphinx fell into great distress and killed itself by casting off a mountainside. I'm serious it was like someone blew their brains out with a revolver over losing on Who Wants to be a Millionare or that time Optimus Prime let himself be blown up over losing a video game. 

This actually happened

In the end it is easy to see which version Ancientsphinxmon is based off of but it is nice to have an excuse to mention a creature that kills itself over the fact it gives out an easy riddle as a challenge.

So that was Ancientsphinxmon the dark warrior cat Egyptian and with that I hope to see you all next week.