Digimon Franchise: When a Bit of Philosophy Reveals New Truths
- The one who Is Many
- Apr 16, 2023
- 19 min read
Let's start We all know that with the passing of time concepts are added in the Digimon franchise to increase the amount of content in your lore. Much of the content we have in Digimon comes from things we have in our world as information from mythologies, historical events, animals, etc. Digimon began being developed based on the idea of beings that live in the internet that were result of the constant exchange of information that exists through the network. It was on this basis that the first storyline of the Digimon Franchise (Coming of the first Digital Monster and presented in the books and in the game Digital Monster Ver.S: Digimon Tamers for Sega Saturn) was created and this was followed in the second Storyline of the franchise (Coming of the Pendulum and use of this idea in Digimon Adventure V-Tamer 01) that only continued the idea that had already been presented before. But in the middle of that began the production of an anime that would be directed by Hiroyuki Kakudou. During the production of this anime Kakudou, and some other members of the staff, had ideas that contradicted what had been established by WiZ Co,Ltd (The owners of the Digimon Copyrights) and when this happened he had to argue with the members of the WiZ to have the permission to use these new ideas. This happened for example when Kakudou decided that it would be best if the Digimon returned to previous evolutionary levels after a fight, people like Kensuke Ota were totally against it, but in the end Kakudou got permission to make his changes (To see more details about that read this interview. http://tamashii.jp/t_kokkaku/92/?wovn=jp
In the end some anime ideas (like Digimon go back to the previous stage) were normally adopted in games and manga in the future. Among the original ideas coming from Kakudou we have a more mystical explanation about what the Digimon are. One explanation that has apparently been accepted for the rest of the Digimon franchise as we will see further ahead. Kakudou Hiroyuki Tweets In March of the year of 2013 Hiroyuki Kakudō General Director of Digimon Adventure, Adventure 02 and X-Evolution and who also directed several episodes of Tamers, Frontier and Xros Wars https://myanimelist.net/people/40537/Hiroyuki_Kakudou
revealed some details of the development of the creation of Digimon through his account on twitter. The explanation he gives about the concept of evolution in the anime series has a basis in Platonic and Gnostic ideas based on the souls and world of ideas. This came to be applied in works like the novels of Digimon Adventure and even more recently in Digimon Adventure Tri.
About Digimon 1: I first heard about the story of a Digimon animation in August of 1998. At that point the heroes were decided to be 5 people or more, each with a different Digimon. It was to be different from the previous works for commercial reasons, but the basis of the work had to be done for appropriate reasons.
This is interesting. Considering that the anime began to be planned in 1998 and that V-Tamer 01 began to be developed since 1997 soon after the development of C'mon Digimon then it can be said that the manga was already advanced 1 year in planning in relation to the anime who had just decided its director.
About Digimon 2: Much attention is given to "Evolution" which is a characteristic of the Digimon. Normally, evolution is a change in the totality of a species. So why call a simple individual change of a Digimon as being evolution? Although I was working on it, I played it during a conversation between Tentomon and Koushiro in episode 2, but the mystery remained unresolved
This is the conversation that Kakudou mentioned in this tweet
It is important to know that the Novel of Digimon Adventure also mentions this and in a way even more similar to what Kakudou said in his tweet. “I wonder why it’s called ‘evolution,'” Koushiro mused, voicing his thoughts to Tentomon this time. “I mean, evolution normally consists of an entire species changing slowly over a long period of time. The changes that you and your friends undergo are more like a transformation. You each transform into something too enormous to be an evolution.” “Well, I don’t know the answer to that myself,” Tentomon replied. “I can’t give an explanation, but all I’m aware of is that it isn’t a transformation but evolution.”
Third,fourth,fifth Tweet
About Digimon 3: The question of how mankind had come to evolve had always troubled it before then, and it had previously been impossible to determine the cause of the most significant change, the development of a high-functioning brain. Even now, when a fetus is created, its skull is split into three parts and pushes itself through the birth canal. But it can’t sustain something at 1.5 times the force.
About Digimon 4: However, I do not think that other parts will change very much. It seems that the number of teeth and so on are getting less, so the transition period of evolution is approaching somewhat.. So if it’s not going to be the body, then it has to be the mind or soul that changes.
About Digimon 5: It’s fairly limiting to think of a human as defined by the structure of their body and brain. Other than just your body, there’s another “you” that exists. If that is a supplement to ourselves, it would be evolution to have that existence
I put these three tweets together because they create an idea only. For Kakudou human evolution is diminishing, in fact we are changing some things in our body as the number of teeth which indicates that evolution is occurring, but the change is little. So for Kakudou how limiting it is to think that we human beings are only body and mind, he believes in the existence of another self and it would be that existence that would be evolving.
Sixth Tweet
About Digimon 6: The reason we’re still evolving in this time period starts with electronic equipment and the development of the Internet. Something that can be called another Earth, covering the whole planet, an invisible world, is being created.
Here Kakudou begins to relate his idea with the Digimon franchise. It shows the idea of another world being created in the shadow of the Earth because of the advancement of communications, this is clearly referencing the Koushiro theory in episode 19 of Digimon Adventure.
About Digimon 7: Although the idea of a counterpart to the soul has existed for a long time, nobody was able to make it manifest in a clearly understandable form. So in this digital world that makes up another Earth, defining their form becomes possible. That’s why for a long time, things like electrical or electromagnetic waves appeared in things with so-called higher affinity, like psychic photos and psychic videos.
And now the relationship between the "soul" that Kakudou mentioned before and Digimon finally makes sense. Although theories about the existence of souls existed. The role of the Digital World would be to be the place where these souls could have their true form understood. And this affinity is already very old and would be the explanation for videos and photos with supernatural content.
About Digimon 8: In 02, this is what Oikawa and Iori’s father saw in the game they played on the TV. They were perceived as youkai, and that’s what Professor Takenouchi was talking about in episode 33 of 02.
Here Kakudou explains that Digimon really manifested as Youkais in the past and this was what happened to Yukio Oikawa and Hiroki Hida when they were younger. This also makes as fact the theory that Haruhiko Takenouchi showed in episode 33 of Digimon Adventure 02
Ninth Tweet
About Digimon 9: That’s why Gennai, the existence in Adventure who was that of neither Digimon nor human, has a name with are deeply involved with electricity: that of Hiraga Gennai. (Even in 02, on that line of thinking, the name of Gennai’s other self, Benjamin, was from Benjamin Franklin, but it was just him because doing more would be repetitive.)
This is a further reference, because of all the ideas regarding technology they've chosen names with reference to electricity for Gennai and the other agents.
Tenth Tweet
About Digimon 10: The first trigger point for humans to gain partner Digimon was the Hikarigaoka incident in 1996, when it was too early for a network environment. The following year, there were two people, then four people who had made contact, and by 1999 there were eight people. And every year after that, it increased at double the pace (thinking on the lines of it being binary because it’s digital).
There are some contradictions in this statement. The Memorial Book dates the incident and the counting beginning in 1995 and not in 1996. Moreover considering Kakudou's statement it will not be possible to explain the existence of Wallace and Ryo, Kakudou himself says that he does not know how to explain them. So what can be said about this idea is that it was made making sense to Adventure, but when applied in what was planned for its sequel, the games and movies it is unable to be valid.
Eleventh Tweet
Eleventh Tweet
About Digimon 11: After two decades, which was portrayed in the final episode of 02, all of humanity was finally able to have a partner Digimon. This is the ultimate endpoint of the evolution that takes place in the Digimon Adventure work.
Just the continuation of what he pointed out above.
Twelfth and Thirteenth Tweet
About Digimon 12:
The last enemy of the first season was "the possibility of sealed evolution", but there should have been something that unleashed its power, as it’s the same thing that Oikawa manipulated through Ken Ichijouji in 02,
About Digimon 13: If there is a third season, that power will be set as "something that inhibits evolution" that came from outside the earth, and this is what made Yamato become an astronaut in the final part of 02. Because it’s a place where the topic of evolution is concerned, the next goal after the moon would be Jupiter, so naturally it would have taken on a science fiction-like feeling.
Interesting, according to this Kakudou already imagined a third season of Digimon Adventure and would explain the background of Apocalymon. Digimon Adventure Tri. showed using the concepts that Kakudou revealed in these tweets and recently we know that Apocalymon is one of the causes of Meicoomon. I wonder if we'll have more on Tri. At least we know the basis of Yamato's idea of becoming an astronaut.
This has gotten long, but in regards to the series anniversary. As for why things of a digital world can materialize in a real world, the concept of soul in this work has to do with Neoplatonic emanationism, so I’ll leave that for another day.
And this is just the beginning...
Extra Tweets
Supplement About Digimon 1: You can say that as the Digimon in Digimon Adventure are the counterparts to their partners’ souls, or perhaps another version of themselves, they had similar personalities, or they would have opposite personalities to compensate. But you absolutely cannot deny that they function as partners.
Supplement About Digimon 2: Now, this concept in which another version of your soul takes an animal shape and stays near you and will take different forms based on a person’s growth also exists in another work, Northern Lights, Lyra’s adventure series that recently became a movie. It was published a few years before this in its home country, but it wasn’t published until November 1999 in Japan.
You could say I was surprised when I read Northern Lights after 02 had ended! On top of that, in its sequel The Subtle Knife, there was a tool to open the gate to a different world, and I thought, wouldn’t this play the same role as the D3 in 02? I read it too much, so even though I bought the last book, I haven’t read it. I recommend the books to Digimon Adventure fans.
And here we have the direct explanation of Kakudou. The Digimon would be like the souls of their partners and this would explain the connection that they have, mainly in the personality. But that sounds just like a pretty idea, but it's time to know the philosophical explanation behind what Kakudou uses to explain what that means. So... see below.
Souls
Before continuing I need to explain what souls are, the Platonic vision about them. As I explained in my contingency blog there are contingent things that may or may not exist, but they should not be illogical at all. The real meaning of souls so far is contingent, any explanation that makes sense may or may not be real. And there are many theories about what souls are, and Plato had his own. As I explained in my blog about Universals, Plato imagined that there was a higher world, the Realm of Forms. A place above the limitations of the Physical World where the Forms/Ideas existed, the true forms of what exists in our world. These forms would be atemporal and aspatial, immutable, and unique. Such forms are things that we humans can not really see, but we would have an idea of what they would look like. For example we do not have the ability to create a truly perfect sphere (ie where all of its half-axes are identical), but we all know how a perfect sphere should look. If we did not have a real physical example of the Perfect Sphere Form and all we had was imperfect and ever-changing matter because of the flow of time then we should have knowledge of the Perfect Sphere Form because we knew it before. In Cratylus' dialogue this is said:
"But if the very nature of knowledge changes, at the time when the change occurs there will be no knowledge; and if the transition is always going on, there will always be no knowledge, and, according to this view, there will be no one to know and nothing to be known : but if that which knows and that which is known exists ever, and the beautiful and the good and every other thing also exist, then I do not think that they can resemble a process or flux, as we were just now supposing."
Socrates
The explanation for Plato of knowing of the existence of the Forms and how they would be is because our Souls already existed before our physical body, our souls would have existed in the Realm of Forms and there they knew the real form of the world. For us to gain knowledge we must experience this knowledge in some way, we can not know anything if we do not have prior knowledge of it, but the Forms existed outside our Physical World and then it would be impossible for us to know about them. The same goes for knowledge of the most basic natural things of living beings. Plato explains both the knowledge of "past lives" and "true knowledge" with souls, they would be immortal and would simply occupy another body. Thus our knowledge of the Universals would be a reminder of the natural origin of souls coming from the Realm of Forms. Now that you have knowledge about what souls are and their relation to the Universals we will continue with the explanation about Digimon.
And now... 'DIGIMON!!!!!! Well, unfortunately this has not been worked too hard for quite some time. But I doubt that the production members of the franchise did not know about Kakudou's plans, after all the project was very close together between manga, games, anime, etc and a lot of obscure information (How to know that the names of the characters were decided by the production of the anime using a program of reading names to predict the future) was known to production members. And fortunately, the explanations that Kakudou gave about the Digimon really are known to the members of the production and to this day we have mentions of it. And the clearest mention is:
There is a mistranslation here. It should go like:
"In the beginning: Within the universe existed the soulless creator Demiurgos, the true form of the world Idea, and a single shapeless soul in chaos. Demiurgos does not know of it's own existence, nor of the soul, nor of Idea. The world that was created is a shadow of the true world." Well, there are 2 lines here that are wrong. Chaotic, shapeless souls is wrong, there is specifically a single soul mentioned. And of course a small error in saying it doesn't know its creator, rather it doesn't know of it's own existence.
For those who do not know Demiurge is a word that originates from the Latin word Demiurgus which is an adaptation of the Greek word δημιουργός (Reads dēmiourgos) and has as original meaning artisan / artist, but with the passage of time gained the meaning of Creator thanks to the myths created around the use of this term in philosophy. This initially originated in philosophy, with the idea that we will use here, in the Dialogue of Timaeus made by Plato where the creation of the Physical World by Demiurge is approached. He had been based on the Forms that existed in the true form of the world - which is the Realm of Forms or World of Ideas - and thereby created the world in which we live. Initially Demiurge would be a good being and would try to make a perfect creation, but for it to be based on an initially chaotic existence his creation would never become really perfect. However over time other ideologies took advantage of what was initially established. In some aspects of Gnosticism, for example, there is a great duality between the intangible plane and the sensible plane. In the case the intangible plan would be the realm of good that was created by God, while the physical plane would be a realm of evil that was created by Demiurge that would be an entity opposed to the will of the Supreme Being. Now conveying this to Digimon, more precisely in the Demiurge scene we see how this was applied:
The text describes the beginning of existence. It is interesting the relation of Idea (A clear reference to the World of Ideas aka Hyperuranion and Realm of Forms) and the souls. Now let's go to relationships. Do you remember Souls = Digimon? This should be maintained in this section, with this idea we can relate Idea to the Digital World. Demiurge did not even know about the existence of the Digital World or the Digimon, but created a world that was the shadow of the true world. This would be the Physical World in which we live.
The share of shapeless and chaotic souls can be explained by the fact that the laws of the Digital World have not yet been established, as I shall explain later there was a time when the Digital World did not have its laws formed. This simply puts the relation between Real World and Digital World in a completely opposite way to what was initially believed because it was believed that the Digital World arose from the Real World, but this analogy that Tri. does uses the opposite. Curiously, this is what Wisemon and Wizardmon seem to say in the anime and manga, respectively, of Digimon Xros Wars.
Instead of saying that the Digital World stands at a higher structural level the Japanese translation mentions "上位の構造である i.e " aka "It's a Superior Structure" to the point it encompasses the Human World. And instead of saying that even even if all processing resources available in the human world wouod be used it would not be even enough to prcess the Digital World's data, it's used with the comparison of the world itself being used as a processing resource. Aka the human world as a whole is not enough.
About the beginning of the Digital World it is interesting to mention something that is said in the third novel of Digimon Adventure, unfortunately we do not yet have the exact transcription of the scene, but a member of the forum With The Will that read the novel explained what the scene said. It also shows what may be the origin of Kakudou's speech of having something that originated the power of Apocalymon:
"Koushiro connected his laptop to the access point that Andromon told him about.
After hearing the click and whirring of the modem, his laptop was connected to the Digital World’s network.
“What is this?”
The network that he had hacked into once while on Server Continent was now in shreds, and the shadow of a mysterious polygon shape was calmly moving through it.
“Is it a virus?” Koushiro said aloud, to which Andromon replied,
“It’s not a virus. It’s neither data nor a program either. But if you asked me what it was, I wouldn’t know what to tell you. It seems to have formed after Nanomon made the black hole. It could have been the cause of the black hole, or perhaps it is a barrier… The venerable Gennai has called it the digital form of an Idea.”
“What does that mean?” Sora, who was ignorant about computers, asked, but Koushiro also shook his head in puzzlement.
Andromon continued his explanation. “This is outside my field of expertise, but there is an old legend. It says that when the Digital World was first created, two Ideas fought over what sort of world should be made. One of those Ideas won and the rules of the Digital World were established. The other Idea was cast out into the ‘Wall of Fire’…”
“Is that what this is?” What Andromon was saying had flown over Taichi’s head, but he questioned him anyway.
“Well, the venerable Gennai says it is possible.
I… am not so sure.” “Is it an ally of the Dark Masters?” Takeru asked this time. “I don’t know. But it doesn’t appear to be our friend.”
So yes, before the Digital World got their order ideologies fought each other to form the laws of the Digital World. And this should not be talking about moral laws, because evolution is not just something the Digimon decides to follow but rather something that is part of the very nature of the Digital World and there is a part of the Digital World System that governs evolution. So evolution is not even an option for the Digimon, but something of its own nature. And before you say that this is just something random and there is no relationship in what Kakudou said and what Tri. approached ... Kakudou himself confirmed the relationship between the two. And he was surprised by Tri himself. working with it, as he was NOT involved in the development of Digimon Adventure Tri. So being Demiurge, World of Ideas, Plato Gnosticism, etc. are things that are in the Digimon franchise even if Kakudou is no longer working on the franchise, this has become an integral part of the Digimon franchise.
With regard to Digimon Adventure, Nico revealed the first five minutes in a livestream, many people saw this, but at the premiere, I thought, oh !? in the mention of Demiurge and Idea. I had no contact with the production team of this work, but in the original series I used Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, and Emanationism.
Of course, this is not limited to anime, after all it is virtually impossible for any information within this franchise to actually be isolated, but we know that these ideas influence even other works of the franchise such as games, more specifically Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth. If you have seen my text about the change regarding the target audience of the Digimon franchise you should remember that in relation to the new games focused on the new public Habu worked with Re: Digitize and Adventure, both for PSP. Kakudou had finished working on the third arc of Xros Wars, popularly known as Hunters, and thought that he had finished his mission with the franchise, but soon after he was summoned to assist in the production of the adaptation (You can see this story on the official website of Digimon Adventure or you can see an English translation at this link).
Habu ended up having contact with Kakudou and some details of these conversations were revealed by Habu himself in an interview to Famitsu https://www.famitsu.com/news/201501/22069957.html where he comments that Kakudou revealed to him about what he used while producing Digimon Adventure (And many of the parts are exactly what he revealed in the tweets, so I personally believe that Kakudou at least told Habu what he revealed to us on twitter).
Famitsu: The cyberpunk scenario seems to reveal a new perspective.
Habu: Honestly, I do not really think so. At first when the first toys were released, the setup was that "a Digimon is created when you attach a wireframe template and a texture to a computer virus program." So the setup of the original base was already enough cyberpunk to get started. This time, I would like you to pay attention to the worldview of this game, which takes advantage of this configuration. While you are invading the Internet world, you can break security if you have a specific Digimon, and as the world view of the series has been fully expressed in this game, stay tuned!
Famitsu: I see. So you feel like you've been using a scenario that already existed from the beginning and refined it.
Ookubo: Digimon has a solid configuration, so I focused on putting that in the story. After that, the stage of the story. We worked hard to make "modern Tokyo" so that there would be no discomfort.
Habu: This time we are making a very realistic Real World. I would like the players to find it interesting and fun that there are monsters appearing in a familiar landscape. An image like this was produced in animation from Digimon Adventure, we thought we wanted to try to achieve this in a game, and this time we managed to achieve that. In addition, I had the idea of making the protagonist a cyber detective through the anime Digimon Adventure 02, which was broadcast in 2000. In Digimon Adventure 02, everyone gathered in a place like the computer lab after school and accessed the Digital World , and were in a situation where they would solve incidents occurring in the Digital World and in the real world. It was a very attractive concept, so we used that as a reference and we created a scenario where a group of friends meets at a detective agency saying things like "this can not be it, it can not be that" when analyzing incidents. In addition, when we did Digimon Adventure for PSP, I had the opportunity to talk to the director of the anime Digimon Adventure, [Hiroyuki] Kakudou, about the Digimon. Director Kakudou said to me: "Digimon may have existed as Youkai, ghosts, spirits that existed before computing developed. Perhaps these spiritual beings were recognized as human programs by computers on Digimon ... " and this was very interesting to me. So the incidents that Digimon causes in the real world being portrayed as ghost stories are originally inspired by this idea.
Perhaps this was also the origin of metaphysical ideas being mentioned by Suedo and the characters referring to our world as "real" World or Physical World being an opposition to the Digital World, this being a more perfect world where anything is possible. Something that could potentially have been inspired by the same ideas that Kakudou used while developing Digimon Adventure.
At the same time these conclusions resulted in some controversy, one of the most recent was Kakudou revealing that by linking Human-Digimon in case the human dies, the Digimon will also die. The reverse is usually not valid since the Digimon can be reborn and the link can be redone (which is exactly what is happening in Tri. After the Reboot). This was revealed in a livestream with several producers of the Digimon franchise where interesting parts of the past, present and future development of the franchise was revealed.
Kakudou explains that this is why we no longer see Yukio's partner after the end of 02, as Yukio died as a human his partner also died.
Conclusion
My goal with this was to show information that I believe to be quite obscure regarding the Digimon franchise. Also recently I have turned against the arbitrary use of "conceptual manipulation" and "abstracts" in some fictions (At least in another Wikia that I participate) and then I decided to show that Digimon actually treats concepts as being Forms of Theory of Forms.
A short summary for those who did not read everything: Originally there was only Idea, Souls and, potentially, Ideas / Forms / Ideologies. The World was chaotic and formless. In that period an unknown being, possibly God, created Demiurge. This being knew no Idea or Souls. Demiurge then created the Physical World, a shadow of the True Form of the World. After a while Ideas collided. After this the Idea Laws were established and the Digital World was formed. Souls became the Digimon. They would in future be linked to the Souls of humans, so Digimon partners would have complementary personalities (whether they are opposites or similar). However the connection is very strong and one can not live without the other. If the human dies, the connection will die. However Digimon are immortal and as long as they are not definitely deleted the link between Humans and Digimon can always re-form from scratch. Note:Just as in Plato's theory, just because a Digimon (Soul) exists does not mean there is a human for it. For a soul can exist without having gone to the Physical World, however if a human exists in the Physical World then a Digimon for it will also exist. This arrives at the apex at the end of Digimon Adventure Zero Two where all humans on Earth have landed a Digimon partner.
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