A place for examination and contemplation about various subjects when it comes to things consider "Nerd" and fiction and general. Language will be blunt and frank. All content is aimed for at least a late secondary education audience.
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 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.
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.
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.
In other words welcome to Digimon of the Week and today we get to learn about alternate armor evolutions. Now most people that grew up with Digimon remember the second season which had two gimmick evolutions armor and DNA. Armor digivolution was using Digieggs, or Digimentals if you feel sub over dub, based on the crests from the first season to create vaguely champion level Digimon when normal digivolution failed.
In the show proper the main five Digimon each got at least one. Veemon had Flamedramon, Raidramon, and Magnamon. Patamon had Pegasusmon. Gatomon had Nefertimon. Aramdillomon had Digmon and Submarimon. While Hawkmon had Halsemon. Yet outside the show the makers went wild creating and armored form for every egg to every Digimon and then some which today we talk about the one called Moosemon.
Moosemon is one of those armor digivolutions that really doesn't look anything like either the egg or the Digimon it was before. Hell some would say it looks closer to an elk than an a real moose even. Though thinking about its color scheme it almost looks like some strange cousin to Garurumon which is really weird. It also has the tendency some do in this franchise for random buckled belts around each of its legs that look fine and could be somewhat said to be based on the buckled belt on Hawkmon's head.
Moosemon from what I can tell is just based on moose. Not really any mythological moose and I'd have to check were it graduate college to say if it was a pop culture based moose but that probably not a matter to you. So for this section might as well give a fun fact about moose.
Did you know that in the Americas more people are injured by a moose than any other wild animal. Though the injury isn't always has harsh as with other wild animals the numbers make one of the few things to injure more people be the hippopotamus.
This aggression doesn't seem to be shared by Moosemon as in its only TV apperances it was either just a beast Digimon mook in the Frontier film or one of the collected Digimon by a character in Young Hunters. In fact in its major video game appearance, Digimon World Data Squad to be exact, it is a digivolution from Gaomon based on the HP stat.
So over all Moosemon is just a somewhat generic armor digivolution based on a kinda silly looking animal. Though I personal like moose so this one gets a thumbs up in my book. Besides with armor digivolution almost anything besides Manbomon can be considered good.
Hello and welcome to what I'm hoping to make a segment here every Sunday Digimon of the Week. Having been a fan of the series for a long time and realizing there are more of these things than I could ever count, and hardly a damn thing gets localized anymore, I will spend these segments talking about at least one of them. Sometimes it will be long and in depth sometimes just a short little review of how they look.
Now it being 420 I original was thinking I would just be unoriginal and do the segment on Weedmon.
Still that did get me thinking on the general theme of plant based Digimon and as such today I'd like to talk about one of the Olympus XII Ceresmon.
Now to clarify the Olympus XII are a set of Digimon based on various Greek/Roman gods which have been slowly introduced throughout the series run time. This one is a giant living forest of a bird at Mega level that is said to house injured and weak Digimon in itself to allow them to regain their strength but will destroy the more wicked. Well in actuality it exists in two parts. One being the really cool forest bird thing and the other...
Being the Ceresmon Medium which really just falls under that now overused style of Digimon design the "Chick with nice boobies in costume" group. Which yeah I guess having a humanoid form matches the whole Greek pantheon thing but honestly this design in the torso gets a bit goofy. The headdress, leg guards, and gauntlets are all very nice but then you get to the middle and it seems like they forgot a chest guard or something and were rushed to release the design. I mean sure you could say it connects to the theme of a fertility goddess but then why have the big badass gauntlets and armored clawed feet in the first place? Just go a direction and stick with it is all I'm saying.
As for appearances in the franchise from what I can tell the only work this Digimon really appeared was Digimon Crusader which was a mobile game and one of the tens that never get translated and released. No in all seriousness this segment will probably have to frequently be taking obscure info on an untranslated game or some such when talking about newer Digimon it has gotten that bad.
Finally before getting to the final segment on the origin of the "Ceres" in Ceresmon one fun fact is that apparently the fruit grown on the forest bird is used to make drink by the Digimon version of Dionysus.
So early I mentioned this is one of a series of Digimon based on Greek/Roman gods. So the question is who is Ceres? Well Ceres is the Roman god of agriculture, fertility, and the love a mother bears for her children.
Her Greek base from what I can link is the goddess Demeter. That is a name you might recognize as being the mother of Persephone who was kidnapped by Hades to be the god of the underworlds bride.
So does that make this creature match up well to its mythological counterpart? For the most part yeah. The living forest matches the nature themes with the sheltering of injured Digimon being an interpretation of the love a mother bears for her child part.
So in review Ceresmon is a big island bird with a less interesting Medium based on a Roman rename of a Greek god of nature. If I were to give ratings I'd give it overall 4 harvests out of 5.
That's all for this weeks installment join me next week for something more modern.
Ok so I really badly want to talk about Winter Soldier the whole film but there is so much big everything changes stuff continuity stuff in it, also college and work eating my time, I'm going to be fair and wait a while longer to do a whole post on that. Just for now I'll say I loved the hell out of the movie and don't regret seeing it. Still wanting to talk about something in relation to it to make myself less impatient to spoil I found a short subject I can talk about....
Now before you ask no this is in no way saying anything bad about Widow in the movie. I thought she did fine good performance got good action beats. More it just how just goofy this poster looks. I mean I know comic properties have a tendency for sexy pose time with their characters but this is so absurd it even kind of fails at that. I think it is the arms mostly. If they were down at her sides it might look normal strut but with the pose it is like she is doing jazz hands. I tried to walk like that myself and tripped in two seconds.
Though it could be worse..
At least her legs don't look like they are farther in the background than the rest of her body.
So this took me by surprise was planning different topics and out of nowhere I found out that there is now a trailer for the Bay helmed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This of course made it time to drop everything and briefly talk about it.
So first Megan Fox as April O'neil.... yeah it's going to suck but you know it's going to suck. Even her fainting didn't seem to work. That and apparently the makers of this film were too lazy to even dye her hair. Also the first shot of her face in her trailer just sums up how she is probably going to be in this movie.
Seriously her eyes look deader than a perverts anime girl love pillow.
Then there is the actions shots which look like it is just going to be the Transformers films again. Shaky and impossible to see exactly what the hell is going on. Also exploding buildings because Bay.
On top of that the lighting is starting to make it look like the Star Trek reboot. I mean I don't hate that film but yeah the lighting like there is constantly flash bangs going off gets annoying.
Also the narration is by what I think is the Shredder for this film. I'm not going to go into the casting though because everyone else has and I'll just let people judge how the role is filled when it comes out. Though at the same time he give this speech of him and April's father "making" heroes. So does that mean Shredder made the ooze? Do they have something to do with mutating the turtles? Also how then does Splinter factor into all of it? Is Splinter in the film? Have they changed his backstory? I myself have a few worst case scenarios in my head but for now it is a wait on new information.
Then we get to the men, boys, teenagers, or insert pronoun here of the hour our Ninja Turtles. They are seeming to be full CG because Hollywood hates practical effects now I guess and as for there looks...
Well if this is what a Ninja Turtle is now I think I may have found a long lost relative who made their film debut twenty years ago.
Yeah I'm at this rate going to stick with the old movie costumes myself. As for personalities? Well really don't get enough with anyone but they aren't super complex so shouldn't be that hard to mess up... I mean yeah Megatron was made a lackey to the Fallen and kinda joined the final fight in Dark of the Moon only because some underwear model questioned his robot manhood .... uh let's just move on to final thoughts.
So am I enraged by this trailer? Well no in fact I can't find the same bile for this film as I do the Transformers films. Which I think primarily stands on the fact the older film exists.
Live action turtles have already been delivered so unlike Transformers which the only live action offerings that exist are the awful Bay ones while for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I can just watch the old one and ignore the new ones existence.
That or my expectations have been lowered so far it is impossible to be anymore disappointed than I already am. Whatever works really.
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