You heard me.
inb4 genwunner
If you look at only Kanto designs, the nature-based ones are more naturalistic and less 'busy' than the stuff after. So the step 2 of "add adjustments for a fantasy appeal" was even less true in Gen1.
Compare Charizard to Blaziken. Simple dragon vs. humanoid fire karate master with loads of busy color details.
Personally, this was one of the reasons I loved pokemon, I was super turned off by stuff that resembled gundams and transformers and stuff.
I never got into digimon because I just assumed it was a shitty knockoff of pokemon. Also I never knew what was going on in the digimon anime but the pokemon anime was usually really self contained.
but missile dog is cool as hell, that's definitely a good basis for a media franchise.
I always say Pokémon was the better game franchise and digimon was the better show.
Maybe Pokémon has gotten better but the show almost always sucked ass.
Digimon was a lot more coherent and had some internal logic. Digimon design def was more out there and tapped into a lot more of the weirdness of Japanese design and mythology a bit more than Pokémon. Although Pokémon has some great designs too.
Digimon is wild. Season one and two are one continuity, an isekai (pretty sure that's right/applies?) series about kids in a "digital world" where they befriend the chill digimon and fight the evil asshole ones.
Season 3 (Tamers) is like Neon Genesis Evangelion for kids.
Everything after that is shiiiit.
oh yeahhhhhh! I guess I do kinda remember some parts of digimon. Honestly the plot does sound way more coherent than pokemon, it sounds like the plot isn't as completely full of holes because of the digital world thing.
Is it worth watching as an adult?
I personally think 3 is pretty good and “dark” enough to get some enjoyment out of as an adult.
The first two seasons are more just nostalgia and not really that well done. Some arcs are okay.
I'm basically gonna second the other reply, Tamers is solid, but the original two, while I like them for nostalgia, have such brutally limited animation budgets (and in 02, tons of dropped plot-lines because of behind-the-scenes creative disputes) that it's a hard watch. Also the music in those first two seasons was profoundly bad on rewatch.
If you could ever find the little OVAs they did (good luck), those were really good, particularly "Our War Game". They were edited together (arguably butchered, but there's still fun to be had) into the US Digimon film.
EDIT: https://www.wcoforever.com/anime/digimon-adventure-season-3 You can find all the seasons of the show on this site
