Mimi - The Accidentally Best Character
You know what? While I am on it, let me also talk about Mimi. Because Mimi to me will never stop to be a fascinating character, largely based on how she really accidentally was written as the best character in Adventure. Because this was not a plan. It was the lack of a plan, and the lack of the plan saved her.
But also, because she was voiced by AiM, she kinda got shafted for 02, because scheduling and money and other stuff.
So, let me start with what I mean with her being written well on accident. I talked about this in the Sora and Ruki entry, but let me go over it again: When Digimon Adventure was conceived, the group of kids was originally meant to be six kids: Taichi, Yamato, Sora, Koshiro, Jyou, Takeru. With Sora being the only girl, because that was how shonen shows at the time were rolling: there was one girl, who had the job of being the girl.
Bandai, however, asked for Palmon to also be included in the main cast. If you look at the lineup of the original seven Digimon, this instantly seems off. Because all the other Digimon are the sole representation of their respective field: Agumon is Dragon Roar. Gabumon is Nature Spirits. Piyomon is Wind Guardians. Gomamon is Deep Savers. Patamon is Virus Busters. And then... Both Tentomon and Palmon are Jungle Troopers.
Still, Bandai wanted to add in Palmon and it was decided that Palmon should have a girl partner. And so Mimi was added to the roster.
However, by the time Mimi was added, they had kinda already gone through with planning the main character arcs - the one thing that actually was planned ahead. I have spoken on this before. Adventure generally had planned the character arcs around a specific kind of concept: every kid represented a social issue real kids were familiar with, and a core trait. Taichi represented the Responsible Kid. Yamato and Takeru were the divorce kids. Sora was the kid struggling to communicate with her mom. Jyou was the kid pressured into academic success. And Koshiro was adopted. And those problems were supposed to then contrast to with their most positive traits. The crests.
Mimi... did not get a big problem to overcome. They thought about it, could not think of anything else, and then just decided that, no, actually, Mimi is the kid who gets along well with others and her parents and everything in her life is fine.
And accidentally this decision made her into the best written character.
The Lack of Conflict and Development
The main issue that Adventure's character arcs had, was that the "trauma" the kids had to overcome was fully in the real world, while the kids were in the isekai. So, what happened necessarily was mostly that the kids largely overcame their trauma by having bottle episodes in which we were made to understand the issue they are facing, at times get some flashbacks, and then within the bottle episode the trauma is overcome.
This is of course an issue that a lot of the Toei 4-cour series do have: character development is often contained in specific bottle episodes. Yes, of course, the isekai structure of Adventure did not really help because it kinda made it impossible to largely tackle the actual issue.
And Mimi... well, she did have core development episodes, but because she did not have a trauma to overcome, she actually got to do something the other kids did not get to do: largely exist in synch with the narrative.
Mimi's arc is not defined by some thing that happened in the real world at some point. In the real world Mimi was okay with everything. So her arc is her reacting to the Digital World and realizing her own strengths through this. Not against a trauma, but actually on who she is.
Yes, she is a creature of comfort. She is the character who hates the "sleeping on the ground" stuff the most. But she is also the character who interacts with the Digimon most as people - especially the non-partner Digimon.
This kinda shows in the running gag with the Numemon. Now, is that gag... hella weird, if you consider Mimi is like 9 or 10? Yeah. But it is also noticable that Mimi is the one who reacts to Digimon like this like she also does to humans later on.
And what this entire thing leads to is... that despite her reacting more to the Digital World than anyone else, she actually is easily the character with the most agency.
This is of course clearest during the Dark Masters Arc. Everyone else is just "Welp, I guess we gotta fight and end this." And Mimi goes: "Actually, no. I am not gonna fight. I do not think fighting will solve this problem. I am not gonna go and protect Digimon." And then she does that.
And it is this agency that kinda works for her so much.
As you know, I have talked with Nishizono in the past. And something that did amuse me quite a lot was how he kept saying that Mimi easily was the most fun character to write. And they just had not expected it.
Mimi obviously out of the entire Adventure cast is the most shafted character in 02. The only one even close is Jyou. While Taichi, Yamato, Sora and Koshiro show up fairly regularly, Mimi is largely removed from the plot by being in America, and Jyou for some reason does prioritize school over the Digital World most of the time.
And I mean, yes, 02 had its general issues, but really this is the issue I hate the most. Because Mimi is a great character, and I would have loved to see a bit more of her. But then again, it is probably well known by now that I would have loved the World Tour Arc to be a bigger part of the story. Which also would have allowed Mimi more time to shine. Even if it was just double the episodes. Give every location a full episode rather than just 10 minutes or so. Though I have heard that part of the reason Mimi's role was so limited was also due to scheduling issues with AiM, who is after all not just one of the main singers for those early Digimon seasons, but also provided Mimi's voice.
Obviously, my favorite thing about 02 Mimi is her dynamic with Miyako, because those two are just wonderful, and they are in love, and they deserve to be together. But yeah. Sadly Mimi in 02 does not do that much. Which is sad.
Mimi in anything that comes later is just... Well. It feels to me that Mimi was weirdly enough the character who nobody seemed to really know what to do with.
Honestly, the main things I remember about Mimi in tri. are her lesbian moments with Meiko, and the fact that now they made a point out of Koshiro crushing on her. Yes, I admit, I only watched tri. once and that has been just as the things released, but I do definitely remember more about some of the characters.
In Kizuna, Mimi is also sidelined - as are most of the Original Adventure cast. The movie is once more largely a Taichi and Yamato vehicle after all. And of course in THE BEGINNING, with it being a 02 story, Mimi is also not really there.
And this is kind of the recurring problem with her, right? The story never fully knows what to do with Mimi.
Mimi was amazing in Adventure. And she was amazing mostly because she was added so late and had a structure for her character that was so different from anything else in the show, which made her work. But it also feels like anything after Adventure was kinda limited first by the specific circumstance of her character, and then nobody seemed to really know what to do with her character afterwards. And I find it so sad. Because Adventure!Mimi is easily one of my favorite Digimon Characters. And I kinda hate that after Adventure, Mimi... often became just the princess, and the character who also existed and was a girl.
Admittedly, Mimi is also a character that in regards to fandom tends to often frustrate me. Because she is one of the characters who often largely gets only talked about in regards to shippings. Especially with how... Well. Obviously, there was some push canonical for Koshiro/Mimi, which I personally obviously hate. And yes, there also was some push in the show for Mimi/Jyou (stemming especially from the US dub). And also often within fandom - as Taichi and Yamato are the core characters - people often put Mimi with whoever of the two they do not put Sora with. So if people ship Taichi/Sora, they will pair Mimi with Yamato. If they pair Yamato/Sora, Mimi will end up with Taichi. And... Look, to everyone their own and all of that. I just wished the character would be more acknowledged outside of her ability to be "the girl" for a boy. And yes, I fully admit that this is also just related to me being queer and reading Mimi as queer and I just kinda hate how so much shipping talk around her feels so comphet. But it definitely is something that I often find frustrating.
