How about Yamaki? I have reservations about his character, but I'm curious what other Tamers fans think.
I like Yamaki a lot! He was great in the primary arc of Tamers as a human antagonist, and a lead villain at that—02 tried to do it first with Oikawa, but, as with most of the plots in 02, the attempt just fell flat. Yamaki is really the first big, non-monster threat to appear in any Digimon series, and he was written for the part excellently. Though not evil, Yamaki has goals that are in direct opposition to the tamers’, and he will do ANYTHING to achieve them. Unlike many megalomaniac digimon villains, who want only world domination/destruction for reasons that are never explored, Yamaki has a clear directive in his actions that is developed/explained throughout the series and actually makes sense from the point of view of his character. We really get into his head, and it’s not a very nice place to be for the first arc. He thought he was doing his damnedest to save the world, and he went too far to accomplish his goals. And everybody knew it.
Yamaki was frightening as a villain because he has the power to threaten the children, not just physically (which he did a few times, in extremely creepy fashion), but with real-world consequences for their actions. He was unsettling in a way that fictional digimon just…weren’t. He was an adult in a position of power, and he didn’t hesitate to lord that fact over the kids when it gave him a strategic advantage. I liked that his ruthless dedication to his cause drove him to commit actions that were dangerous and reprehensible, not only from the viewpoint of the tamers and the viewers, but also from his coworkers and the government in-universe. Now that is a villain. And then, in the second half of the series, the writers went above and beyond and actually redeemed the creep. Tamers is awesome like that.
One thing I didn’t like about Yamaki is that his change of heart seemed a little too abrupt—though his relationship with Reika humanized him, his decision to turn around and help the kids when they decided to go to the Digital World seemed too sudden for his character to make sense. This is a dude who openly threatened Takato, and physically attacked Jenrya, for their connections to the digimon appearing in the real world. I understand that he might feel have felt a moral obligation as a responsible adult to try and protect the kids from dying or getting hurt in an unknown place—I even understand that as an authority/expert on digimon he might have wanted to use them for information. But his actions in helping Takato and the others seemed too genuine to be self-serving, and if he’d only wanted to keep them alive he would have called the police on them before they could leave. There was one scene in an early episode where Hypnos worker Megumi meets Culumon at her job, and interacts with him long enough to realize that he’s non-violent and even cute for a digimon. Something like that for Yamaki would have been enough justification for his change of heart, I think. But it’s not really a huge problem for me either way.
It's a very referenceful comment!
