You see, this is why I loved Digimon Tamers as a kid. No other kids show would give you properly fleshed-out characters that have real world problems. No other kids show went this dark either (and for the record, kids love complexity in what they watch, since they so rarely get it elsewhere).

Still, good review. Look forward to see what else you have to say about the series.

I think the thing about Renamon being a furry "goddess" so to speak is that there aren't that many furries in anime. There are lots of kemonomimi (animal ears and tail), but that's not the same thing as full fledged furry.

No, the thing about Renamon being the most overrated furry in existance is because of the goddamn tuft of fur on "her" chest that everyone thinks is boobs.

Besides, there was a full-fledged furry 2 years before. Gatomon, anyone?

Not to nit pick, but a furry is someone who is a fan of anthro animals, not the anthro animal itself. Like a Trekkie and all that entails.

I personaly had the disadventage of watching the whole thing in german, i still loved it but because of that I thought Renamon was a dude for a long time.. I'm shocked anyone would consider that part anything but fur, seriously it does not even closly resemble bust... also I saw this character as male simply cause there aren't any realy definetly female features in Renamon, just look at that fox and tell me it couldn't be considered sexy as either Male or Female..no furry suggestions here.. Even the combinde form didn't realy change the fact (remember watching in German) for me Renamon was a dude, at the end combined with a girl making the last form a Female made sense cause a male form would be insulting to Rika
Oh and I never took gender in Digimon seriously for 1 reason and I can't stress this enough,
Why The Hell was Birdramons next form a freaking birdMAN, in every form girly, a female voice with most and than a birdMAN?!?! it always pissed me off, it should be A STRONG FEMALE THERE, that would made a nice contrast to the flower fairy form taken by the other female Digimon from Adventures, but NO they had to make a ripped birdGUY
Btw you can't realy blame some fans for creating erotic fanarts of those two, when while in ultimate form they are pictures "naked" ( atleast Rika) next to each other, I bet there are just as many of Fan arts with other partner duos

Finally!

You know, it has never stopped annoying me that everyone in Digimon refer to their digimon as the name of the race that they are.
Not only do I find this just odd in general, but the fact that this actually *changes* from time to time and they call them whatever form they are currently in.
If you had a friend like that, wouldn't you give them some sort of nickname to always call them?
Not really on topic to this particular video, but something that always has irked me.

Well, that is Anime for you.
I actually don't think that it is that weird for the Digimon, since that really is what you get in the games and stuff (apart from V-Tamer 01 it was actually never implied for Digimon to have names on their own).
I actually think it is waaaaay more weird in Magical Girl series, were best friends go from calling themselves by their normal names to their magical girl names just like that. No explaination EVER. If they would go: "Actually, if we do this secret heroine thing, we shouldn't call each other by our real names." But that never is the case. They just transform and have new names

The reason the Diginmon don't have names is simple. They do. Unlike Pokemon, who are pets,Digimon are living things and they have names for themselves. Renamon is Renamon, that's who and what she is. It's how she identifies herself and should be addressed, why would you call her anything else? The same for Terriermon or any of the other digimon. They introduce themselves by their moniker why would you change that? Why would that be not good enough for you? Leomon and Impmon both identify themselves as such, the Devas address each other as such. It is their name.

Well, to be fair, Pokemon *do* identify themselves by their name too. It's all they say. (:
But, to your point, they call them that even when there are multiple of the same type of digimon in existence. If I came up to you and said "Hi, I'm Human," you'd probably still find it weird to call me that.
And, the other point, the fact that the name changes with the form. If you did have no problem calling me Human, wouldn't you still find it odd if when I grow a tail you then start calling me Monkey as my name?

This digital-real cultural divide is addressed when the infantile Guilmon keeps referring to Takato as "Takatomon", revealing his unfamiliarity with personal names. Or maybe that was just to be cute. Je ne sais pas.

Wow this a long introspective. shows how deep and complicated the characters are....kind of

Am I the only one who thinks that "Oh, my goodness" in the Rika part sounded exactly like Bridget Hoffman?

Well, now I really notice all of the Jerri stuff in my recollection.

I feel depressed now.

On another note I've always had a big issue with Renamon's art design. She is way to big and adult looking for a child stage. I know there are some adult and older stages that look young and cute, but all of the other rookie or child stage Digimon look like children, though some look bigger than others, (Goblimon, Guilmon). Her form, her size, her voice in most versions, they all read adult.

I hate ccccccombo breakers. She should have been a bit shorter, her tail should have been smaller, and while perhaps not cute she needed to be less adult humanoid. If they wanted an adult character Digimon she should have been defaulted at adult/champion.

(Plus her design was way too complicated, (in terms of geometric shapes). She was always the one the most off model in any episode where they didn't have some sort of budget.)

I usually associated the tiny size of most partner digimon to be a trait of their Data attribute. I thought Renamon was a Vaccine type.

I liked that the Rookie/Child forms were useful in this season

Renamon is bigger to convey how much longer she's been fighting. She's supposed to be more mature, so she has to look older.

It's like they went the opposite direction of Gatomon, as she's a Champion who is as small as a rookie because she toughed it out alone.

Male Renamon ftw! XD This is the dub I grew up with, when I first came across all the female Renamon fanart I was thouroughly confused...

I know what you mean

I was pretty shocked when I found out Renamon was originally female

through the gender switch really doesn't make those undertones any better

God I love these so much, the Jeri one most, I couldn't help get teary eyed (and I was almost all the time), thank you so much for doing these

The show was truly excellent, for these 2 being the lead girls, its very true. The show was dark, and you can better understand most of the characters. I actually teared up at the end when they had to say goodbye to their digimon. Rika and Renamons' relationship was a bit weird, and Jeri and Takato I think were a perfect match.

Wow nice stuff there! So excited. BTW I watching the German Dub and ... yeah they turned Renamon into a guy for some ungodly reason, but I'd still say it works. I guess the German dub has better voices and it's based directly off the Japanese version, hence imagining a romancing there is easier ALTHOUGH, I guess a straight underage romance should be more creepy than a lesbian underage romance.... guess that's the power of German voiceacting! I LOVE IT!

As for Rika and Renamon, I really my say, I never thought of them this way. NO, I never thought of them as boring or bland, but you really did bring out a lot of things I didn't notice! Also about fan complaining about Rika's developement... I notice a lot of anime fans like to think that "being emo" or grouchy is character developement or progress, which I really cannot agree with! It's quite the opposite! And as much as I love Savers, even more than Tamers (by just a little bit, no need for rage over this), that was the example of a female character becoming the classic female archetype. With Rika it did feel genuine. More "people more gentle and open to feelings" than "be a normal woman! Not a tomboy!", kind of like Sora in the first series.

I still hate the german dub. Tamers was the first anime I EVER watched in japanese and when the german version was aired I went like "WTF? Fuck this!" Because pretty much all the main digimon voice actors annoyed the hell out of me. Renamon for being male, Terriermon for pronouncing "Moumantai" wrong and Guilmon and Culumon for trying to sound cute.

What you actually should knew about the way Tamers was written (and which also Konaka actually never clearly stated on the website) is that they pretty much devided the main characters between them. Konaka dedicated himself most to Takato and the adult characters, Yoshimura did Ruki's development, Masaki did Jenrya, Maekawa Hirokazu and Kenta (and Maekawa loves Boys' Love and Girls' Love *caughs*), Yoshida had her part with Shuichon and Yoshimura's HUSBAND did Ryou. Therefor funny enough Yoshimura can tell you way more about Ruki then Konaka can. Konaka may have made up the Character, but it was Yoshimura to develope her.
Actually I think that whole partly romantic bantering with Ruki and Ryou also originated from husband and wife writing those two for the series. (But also, since her husband doesn't have much writer experience, I also guess why the whole Ryou background thing is so messed up and he is so very deus ex machina).

What I kinda missed about Renamon the furry queen was that actually Tamers clearly stated that Digimon don't have a gender.

What I hate about all the complaining that Juri was so exaggerated or unrealistic, that a lot of those persons like Yamato. The kid who was even more whiny JUST BECAUSE HIS PARENTS WERE DIVORCED!
So, yeah, obviously having divorced parents is the hell of a reason to be self-piting about, while having a parent and then your digimon partner die isn't. Right. -.-"

I hope you adress the "canon" issue with the games, when it comes to Ryou. That there is actually no clear statement, that it is the same character as in the games and there is actually just from the show a whole bunch of evidence against it. With him having parents in the Tamers world, being just from his behavior a completely different character (the game Ryou was very thoughtful and so emotionally scared that he actually got amnesia due to that emotional mess up, you know, with everyone threatening to kill him and stuff. Which Tamers' Ryou clearly NOT IS).
Yeah...

You think the German dub is bad? I don't really see why, none of the reasons you listed seem that bad.

Wonder how you'd react to watching the Danish dub of Adventure; bad acting, an intro that would send anyone channel flipping within seconds, and a script based on the American version.

I really never liked the dub from Tamers onwards. Maybe it is just because I have seen Tamers in japanese first.
But I just hated it.
I hated how they did pronounce the names. (Or changed them, of course)
I hate how Renamon did get a male voice.
I hated the "cutie" acting (which was never convincing to me and sounded just forced) of Guilmon and Culumon.
And I hated how much stupid translation mistakes came with it. Especially with Yamaki's tech-talk.
I am really quite content with just sticking to my beloved japanese version ^^"

Do you actually speak japanese? If not it's more likely that the sub you were watching had the translation errors. Fansubbers are not professionals. At any given subs I've watched I found errors, without even speakting japanese, just from the logic behind it.
The german dub is usually really good.

Ofcourse once you watched something in one dub, every other dub will sound weird. That's just human nature.

But regarding the cutesy speak, I saw the japanese dub too and that was in there. So I don't understand the complaint, really.

Yes, I actually do speak japanese. For I had pretty much no choice. You know, back then, when Tamers was aired, there were actually only a few subgroups around at that time. Tamers didn't get a sub for years. So I had to learn japanese in order to understand it.
And the stuff the whole scientist group was talking (Hypnos and Wild Bunch) didn't make any sense in german at all. Additionally there were stupid mistakes that made plotholes were no plotholes were in japanese. For example Makuramon said "We don't need gods since we have our gods now" in the german dub, which made no sense at all. The japanese version was "We don't need you creators anymore, for we have our own gods now". And really that are mistakes were you should stop while writing it down and think "Wait a minute, that doesn't make any sense."

So you learned a language for one TV show... riiiiiight.

Tamers got a Danish dub!? I wish i could check it out and see how crappy and inaccurate it is ^_^

Nope! just Adventure, which sucked so bad they never even tried any other Digimon series

The original Finnish dub of Adventure was craptastic. I got to know Digimon as a show that was so bad it was good. However some time after the first arc they changed direction of the dub, and it became much closer to the original intent.

Really good analysis of Rika. Becoming a more open, protective, and nice character is a good thing, I think some people get too enamored with the "badass/ice-queen/dark" archetypes that certain characters often start out as that they become resistant to when the characters develop into a more caring/non-jerkish character.
But damn...Jeri's character arc is truly a sad (and eventually uplifting) one. I wonder why the dub decided to change Leomon's last line? Because at the end of dub episodes when Jeri refers/recollects to Leomon's last lines again in front of the D-Reaper they seem to sound like they are referring to the Japanese version of the lines. That always confused me a bit.

This is the review that never ends! Yes it goes on and on my friends! Jesu started reviewing it unsure how long it'd take, but she'll continue reviewing it forever just because... Seriously though, your commitment is commendable.

Literally the first thing I thought when I watched that scene where Rika gives Renamon an energy drink was, "Wait a second. Is Rika being...tsundere for Renamon?". Funny and oddly adorable.

Anybody else find english dub Renamon's voice oddly sultry? lol at male Renamon, bet there were more than confused expressions on the faces of German viewers when Sakuyamon showed up.

When you mentioned her doing anything to keep Takato around I got an amusing picture of Yandere Jeri. By amusing I mean creepy.

I liked Jeri's resolution in Tamers. It'd be odd for a kid to just get over issues she been carrying with her for over a decade, not to mention the trauma she goes through in the final arc. It'll take some (or maybe a lot) of therapy, and she may never completely get over all her problems, but Jeri's on the upswing by show's end. Given time i'm sure she'll be fine.

"lol at male Renamon, bet there were more than confused expressions on the faces of German viewers when Sakuyamon showed up."

In-fucking-deed XD

actually I wasn't too shocked
I guess it was because Renamon and Rika were fused at the time, and we just assumed Rika's gender was the dominant one here (seeing as Digimon officially have no gender)

Yeah it made me wonder as well, why would they change the last line is what I asked too.

"What I kinda missed about Renamon the furry queen was that actually Tamers clearly stated that Digimon don't have a gender."

Fan speculation is that the line were Renamon mentions Digimon not having a gender was actually intended to mean that Digimon don't have different sexes. Which honestly makes a lot more sense as many Digimon identify themselves as male or female and at least have some sense of gender identity.

Just something I found interesting. Of course Renamon is incapable of certain...practices dipicted in more risque fanart either way.

Rika is the most popular?

Strange... you'd never think that from looking at the Youtube comments...

Huh... somehow I missed the romantic subtext between Rika and Renamon when I watched the series... then again I never got to see the final episode because of some dickery by the channel I was watching it on.

I agree with TheIrrehensibleTJ regarding the Digimon's names, or lack thereof. That bugged me alot. With Guilmon it's possibly justified since he was created by Takato and is presumably unique. But for the others it doesn't make sense, Renamon for example, there are other renamon out there, it's just luck they don't run into any. It's like me addressing a person by calling them 'Human'.

I also agree with Ladatte that the Digimon don't have different sexes but do identify with one gender or the other. Even ignoring their physical appearance which, given how Digimon are created, can be random and not indicative of gender (but usually is), their behavior is usually recognizably one gender or the other. For example Renamon obviously identifies with the female gender and Leomon obviously identifies with the male gender.

Oh god the Renamon pron. It hurts my soul a little bit. She was my hero when I was a kid, what with the lack of non-forced "girl powah" characters about and she was so wise and stoic and loyal and HOLY SHIT WHAT ARE THOSE FLOPPY TUMOROUS MASSES PROTRUDING FROM HER CHEST OH GOD WHY DID I GOOGLE SEARCH IN A FIT OF NOSTALGIA. OW MY INNER CHILD. People can pornify what they want yo but did you have to turn the badass genderless warrior-assassin into a total sex object while you were at it? Couldn't she at least have some agency along with her impossible mammaries?

But yeah, I'm amazed at how deep you're going with these analysis videos. That's pure devotion! (Also German Renamon made me laugh like crazy. Bet if she were a dude she wouldn't be such pron-bait, grumble grumble...)

Clearly that Digimon Rika stabbed spent too much time learning to defend from fresh fruit and was weak against pointed sticks.

And is it just me, or is Jeri's situation very similar to Oichi Oda's in Sengoku Basara? Both are posessed by some destructive entity taking advantage of their emotions, using them as vessels, and Oichi's even got hand puppets of her dead husband as her joke weapon. Hmmmmm...

Huh... You know you may have only strengthened the idea of Rika and Renamon as a couple by have a male voice for Renamon Otaku. Just saying.

Actually its kinda rude to automatically assume that just because a kid (especially a girl doesn't have a father figure), and they have relationship problems it automatically stems from that (statistically, for girls it usually stems from their mother). It can come from other places, such as the lack of a parental figure or the inadequate emotional support of one, sure her grandmother is around but its not her mom whom has custody over her.

Also something you didn't pick up about Rika, her mother was 17 when she had Rika, so its not out of the question to say that she wasn't ready to have a kid. Her not being around Rika also means that she may not have taught Rika the skills she needed to form relationships, due to her having no experience with them.

Renamon is officially considered also officially considered part of Ruki's family in the Japanese version, they also outright say it in the English version as well.

Renamon is the furry queen because digimon don't have a sex (they don't reproduce, and a digimon that is male can easily become a female when he evolves and vice versa). So just as easily as she is female she can also be male. And none of that stops them from forming romantic relationships with one another on an emotional level. At least that's what my friend who likes furries said.

And yeah Rika and Ryo and their interactions were handled by a married couple (who actually wrote the story for the Ryo games imagine that) so they're actually the best people to ask about them, not Konaka.

Yeah I never understood why people said that Ruki was chickified, the way how she was before wasn't healthy and the story goes out of its way to tell you that. She actually wasn't harsh at all in the Japanese version, especially with Jeri she was very playful.

Also Jeri will be fine she doesn't just have Takato now, she has Rika as well, and her father is now aware of the damage that was caused. So unless they all die in a freak accident she'll be fine.

Agree on that second bullshit point. That's pretty much her entire character!?

never got that love couple thing out of it. I just figured that Rika wasn't really used to that whole being emotionally close to people, and that was why she acted kinda like a tsun-dere when she accepted Renamon as a partner.
also yay! German Renamon! grew up with that version.

22:59 well, in that particular clip, in the Japanese version, Rika/Ruki was just angry that Jeri/Juri/Jen called her Ruki-chan and when she smiles it's because she teased Jeri/Juri/Jen by calling her Juri-chan.

maybe it's just me, but Jeri's introuction never seemed disturbing to me in German and Japanese, but in English!? Damn.

I think Jeri will be fine, since Takato obviously cares for her and will probably snap her out of anything if needed. You know, unless some clockguy suddenly appears at extremely bad timing and takes him to a different universe to capture strong digimon.

Ok love the Retrospective also loved your Cameo in NChick's top hottest guys, Death by Digimon Tamers was funny.

Ok I am 25 and I watched this show a LONG time ago when I was younger when it first aired in America. I never realized it till you pointed it out that Rika spoke to Renamon that way.

But my theory (Which was just created a mere second ago) is that she really would have no skill in dealing with people or how to talk to someone you do care about. It is likely her talking to Renamon might relate in some ways to how her Parents spoke to one another before the divorce so affection and cutie-pie without understanding romantic subtext. She is 10 after all. I honestly never linked them like that.. I have of course seen THOSE images.

But I agree Rika and Renamon where my faves in the series, Renamon was just a badass character and I loved the design of not having a small form for her, Guilmon and Renamon have to be some of the larger Rookies shown as partners with Agumon and the rest being very short even on the kids from Adventure Renamon is at least as tall as Rika and seemed to have a more interesting fighting style then just throwing balls of fire at people, at least Guilmon bites Agumon never did.

Now for Jeri, I honestly thought she was a weird character even to start with as she seemed to have such a weird first appearance and somewhat radical appearance through the first arc she was shown and then would disappear for a bit then wildly show up again. All within the first 13 so yeah she was out hanging out but still. Her character I think at the end was shown to the kids as Yes bad things happen but they get better so they left off at a high moment without having to show how much harder it would be for her to get better.

As much as you said you didn't wanna talk about it, I really do see what the creator's were doing here. See, I'm Autistic, and, I DO see that Jeri could be too. People with Autism tend to be REALLY bad at making new friends, going to EXTREMES to try to make them, and sometimes scaring them in the process (I did that once or twice). Yet what friends they do have end up being their friends practically forever. A perfect example of this is Jeri and Takato. At first, Takato see's Jeri as "weird". But as they hang out more, they start to care about each other as friends. And as Jeri started to go mental, Takato got scared of losing one of his few and closest friends. And once Jeri was pretty much non-existent any more, Takato did EVERYTHING to get her out of it. And even though Jeri didn't change much in the long run, at least she got back to being her and was slightly less hurt about her losses.

And I think JO was being a little too simplistic with Jeri. Even if Jeri IS Autistic, I'd say "damaged" or "frilly" is a better word, she's not retarded. Autistic/AS kids take trauma and problems very personally, and Leomon's line in the dub is much more damaging if you put it alongside what her father says in the flashback: the guilt of both deaths will forever be with her, even if she doesn't want them to. And Jeri will be fine, her father's character-arc will make sure of that.

By the way, I'm surprised you didn't bring up Elizabeth Kubler-Ross Syndrome in her video. She goes through that big time. At least you mentioned Calumon helping her, which is true. Why they never became partners is beyond me... >_>

Probably because Calumon is digivolution incarnate and power corrupts.

I never thought of Rika and Renamon's relationship like that before. But I'll never get these thoughts out of my head now, I mean jesus this is coming from Digimon?

But between Renamon acting like over a gift and being male in a dub and all the other stuff. I can't come to any other conlusions between them now.

But I am really glad I watched this video now.

I only saw it as a good friendship myself. I mean that is kind of how I treat my good friends.

....Ack. I completly forgot what i came here to say.

Tamers has now become my fave series of the franchise, though the Myotismon arc remains my fave arc of all Digimon. I liked all the kids, save henry but i don't hate him. and Rika and Jeny were great characters though yeah, both of them are somewhat unique when it comes to all other kid characters before and after them. Although only know have I just found out the true extent of how much different Rika is

Also I never found Rika sexist by the end, I've suffered Metroid Other M and looking back. Rika was never like Samus, from beggining to end.

Never found the depiction of Samus in Other M that much sexist
She was traumatized and was going through allot of shit at the moment. If it happened to a male character, no-one would even raise an eyebrow.
(it's kinda like people were in arms about that beach scene with Starfire in Redhood and the Outlaws #1, but when Jason Todd spent the entirety of Redhood and the Outlaws #6 running around completely naked, with gratuitous ass-shots of him, no-one seemed to give a damn)

yeah...
double standards

Samus had no reason to be traumatized or follow some obscure officer guy's orders because she's supposed to be a badass, independent bounty hunter who's beaten Ridley like three times already.

Also, Starfire was disgustingly misinterpreted as an emotionally distant, sex-obsessed bitch when previously she was a very caring person who had sex when she could actually connect to her partner. The gratuitous beach fanservice was really just a symptom of the disease, and really, why should anyone give a damn about that comic now that it's obvious how low the bar is for it?

So yes, both "Other M" and "Red Hood & the Outlaws" are, in fact, sexist.

Face it, Samus had no proper personality before Other M, and what Other M gave us, was consistent with the back-story we were given in the past
She lost her family pretty much twice, and the commander was the closest thing to a family she had left, until they parted ways due to a falling out.
Now she has to deal with meeting him again, as well as dealing with what killed her family, which has just proven itself to be pretty much immortal and unstoppable in the long run.
That's enough for someone to snap.
So yeah, you know shit.

Oh, and none of what you just said about Starfire's depiction is true. If you actually stuck around, instead of just jumping on the bandwagon like the lobotomized chipmunk you are, you'd learn that Starfire is still a very caring person, even tho more hot-blooded that some remember.

so yeah, you just proven that you don't even know what you are talking about.

I admit I haven't played that much Metroid, but I do know the basics. Samus never needed a man to rescue her or tell her what to do until Team Ninja came in. She is not in the army, and that Adam guy is not her superior, so no matter their personal connection, his orders shouldn't mean squat to a bounty hunter who's proven herself on multiple occasions. Ridley has already come back from the dead twice, and she was still capable of beating him, so why would one more time be so terrifying? She's not just some ordinary person, she's a fighter who kicks ass all through space on a regular basis. Other M is *Very* inconsistent with the basic aspects of her character established in the previous games.
I know enough, you understand nothing.

As for Starfire: She's supposed to be loving towards her friends, but in RH&TO #1, she can't even tell humans apart. She also screws any guy who's good-looking enough and flat-out says "love has nothing to do with it". And yes, I've only read the first issue, and I don't give a flying crap what comes next because the beginning was not at all promising. Comics in an episodic format need to give the reader a reason to read the next issue.

And since you insist on bringing insults in to this: Get a clue, you pathetic dolt.

I think you can have a character who delivers a lot of fanservice moments provided they remain a 3-dimensional character. Pre-52 Starfire was a well-developed character with a large fanbase, so the 52 Starfire, who had a very poor introduction to her lack of character, seemed like a middle finger to that fanbase. There was probably very little uproar about Jason's fanservice moments because it happened in #6 and people still reading that comic series by that point were the ones who weren't turned off by previous issues.

It's really sad that people didn't stick around longer, seeing how much character all 3 main protagonists displayed in later issues

I find it somewhat odd that people found Rika/Ruki to be a sexist character. She was the first female character to get a Mega level evolution (one of only two in the first five seasons!) and also easily one of the most fleshed out girls personality wise, especially more than Yoshino in Savers.

I don't argue with your point in the Season 1 that the girls tend to be more shallow in terms of personality, but Tamers really does seem like an exception to this.