Trying to revitalize the Digimon Fandom further with this account, I decided to try and organize another fandom event. You can do it one of two ways (or both), so that a lot of people can participate.
Every day has a question for everyone to answer - and a prompt for art or fanfics or whatever else you want to submit. (Like, you can also do picture collections or stuff like that. I am leaving this fully up to you! :D)
I am posting this today, so that everyone has about two months to prepare their stuff for this. Though obviously you can also post stuff for this after August. Especially as this account is going to be active throughout the year! :)
Rules
Any submission needs to be about Digimon of course.
You can submit NSFW stuff on the Ao3 collection (which I will open in July), though if you post it on tumblr I will not reblog it with this account, as this account is purely SFW.
Ideally you post your fanwork (if you do fanwork) on the days, though you can post it later.
On each day I will also make a post for the day - if you want to answer to the questions you will have a little reference pic for that!
As fanwork you can enter anything: fanart, fanfics, renders, gifs, aesthetics, whatever...
Let's talk about the Japanese sweet that everyone by now is aware off given that it is one of those trendy foods that actually are by now readily available in many western grocery stores. Mochi. A sweet I became aware of first not because of Digimon but actually Monster Farm (Monster Rancher).
Mochi is a type of rice cake, or at least that is what it usually is called in western literature. Though I would argue that it is not technically speaking a cake in any sense of the word we use over here.
Still, it is usually made by pounding steamed rice down into a paste. Due to the high amount of protein and starchs, this will create a very sticky paste that can be formed surprisingly easily. Often enough certain other ingredients might be added for flavor, color or texture. Some mochi also come with a variety of fillings. They are a traditional food, but one that is still very popular today, and that you can buy in pretty much any supermarket in Japan.
While mochi will be eaten year-round they have a specific relation to New Years, which is why I decided to put this into January. This goes back to a specific samurai tradition in which a small figure was made of two mochi stacked on top of each other crowned with a bitter orange (daidai). The exact origin of this tradition is not quite clear, but these mochi, called kagami mochi (kagami = mirror) was used in all sorts of ceremonies where people prayed for blessings for anything new (like a wedding, a new home, a new career etc), which then naturally translated to use them for praying for blessings in a new year. These kagami mochi are usually kept at a family shrine for several days until they start to become brittle as they dry out. Once they break (which is done with a wooden spoon if it does not happen naturally) they will be eaten. Traditionally they are put in a family shrine on December 28, and eaten on January 11.
It should be noted though that mochi are generally very popular so there is a bunch of different mochi for all times of the year. We obviously also have the Sakuramochi (the kind that mochi in Monster Farm was named after), which often is eaten during Hanami, as well as some other traditional mochis.
These days there is also a ton of local varieties among mochi, and obviously over here in the west we often have strawberry mochi and also matcha mochi, because we love putting matcha in everything by now as much as Japan does.
Here I go, further rambling about Japanese culture, because I can.
There is one specific Japanese holiday that I am almost surprised never came up in regards to the Adventure movies - specifically Kizuna and Beginning. As they would have made for a really nice context there. (I also could have sworn that I have seen some official art for this, but I could not find it.)
Seijin no Hi is also often translated as Coming of Age day. And this one actually goes back to almost as far as Japanese history is recorded.
Like many cultures Japanese culture had rituals around the idea of Coming of Age. While historically speaking this often was less bound to specific ages, and more concrete changes of the body, or specific archivements, the idea of Coming of Age played a big role. This also was associated with a change of clothing style, and in old Japan also a change of hair style for the girls.
The traditional ceremony was once called Genpuku, though to explain the specific ceremony would be hard, given that it changed a whole lot over the many centuries. Usually they were however individual festivals that only were greatly celebrated among the nobles. Peasants did not get that much for it, though some villages did have group celebrations for the children who transitioned into adulthood.
The modern Seiji no Hi however goes back to the end of World War II, in which Japan obviously was defeated. Morale was low, and one small city decided to boost morale by turning a youth day into a local celebration of the coming of age. This worked out rather well, and within two years was adopted at a national level. Originally this was celebrated towards the end of the year. But one thing that you have to understand is that Japan as a country is often quite flexible about putting holidays so that morale is good. It was at some point decided that most holidays would be put onto Mondays, so that the people could have a long weekend. Which ended us with Seiji no Hi on the second Monday of January.
Usually the people who reached the age of maturity in the current school year will be invited to a local place (often a city office hall or something along the lines) where a small ceremony is done. Often young women especially wear kimono (specifically furisode) to this. For a long time it was also quite common for young men to wear hakama for this, though men wearing hakama has fallen out of fashion, so only few will do it today. After the official ceremony, many will go and visit a temple or shrine to pray for archiving their aspirations.
In some places the ceremonies might also be held at local schools.
It should be noted that while the national holiday is on that second Monday in January, there are some prefectures where it is more common to celebrate coming of age during Obon in summer.
Something that actually has surprised me is that it took so long for us to get a Darumamon, given that those little guys are a piece of Japanese culture that is fairly commonly portrayed in a lot of Japanese media.
I am assuming most people reading this have seen them show up in some piece of media before. Those weird little red dolls that often have blank eyes.
The Daruma dolls are a Japanese tradition stemming from Buddhism. Specifically Zen Buddhism, the kind that you will most commonly find in Japan.
These little red wooden dolls do actually not just portray a weird little guy, but a very specific legendary Indian monk, Bodhidharma. He is considered to be the historical person who actually brought Zen Buddhism to China, though like many historical figures who lived very long ago and were closely linked to religion it is quite hard to find where the myth ends and history begins.
One of the myths around him was that he had his eyelids cut away so he would never fall asleep again, which is probably where the design of the Daruma comes from.
Daruma are traditionally sold with two white eyes. When you have a big goal you try to archive, you fill the left eye in, as you pray to archive the goal. Once you archive it, you fill the right eye in as well. Usually then the dolls are brought back to the temple on New Years, where they will be ritualistically burned.
Generally it is said that people only ever keep a Daruma for one year, which is why they have been so closely associated with New Years. A lot of people - especially those who might have a big plan for a year (like graduating school or uni, or getting a specific job) - will get a Daruma at the beginning of the year as a good luck charm, but also a reminder to themselves of what they plan to archive.
I wanted to try something fun this year, given that Digimon is fairly popular right now and I can use this a bit (maybe?) to just go and talk a bit more about one of the things that actually does not get talked a lot in the fandom: Japanese culture. After all Digimon is a Japanese franchise and has a surprising lot of things relating to it both in terms of the monsters and in terms of the show itself. There is a bunch of things happening in the anime that explicitly are related to just some things in Japanese culture. So, I thought: cool, I am gonna write small little blogs each week to talk about that.
(And do not be confused, I totally messed up when creating those first headers and accidentally put 2025 in there. You know how it goes.)
Let's start with New Years. Which kinda is ironic to me actually. Because despite it being treated as a fairly big deal in Japan, we never got a New Years episode in Digimon. The only two seasons that from my memory even come close to the timeframe are 02, but that one ends on New Years Eve (the last episode takes place explicitly in the night between December 31, 2002 and January 1, 2003) and Tamers. But neither feature a New Year's Celebration.
Still, Digimon Web posts a bit of art for it every year, so... let's talk about it.
In many places in Japan businesses shut down between January 1st and January 3rd, as the new year is welcomed. Usually people clean their homes towards the end of the old year to welcome the new year in a new home, and quite often there will be traditional decorations, often made from bamboo or plum, at the doors of homes.
While a lot of European countries have new years eve traditions involving fatty food, Japan's traditional food for New Years Eve is toshikoshi soba (so buckwheat noodles), as they are associated with longevity.
The New Year day is called 正月, shōgatsu, and it was often a tradition to watch the first sunrise of the year as it has special meaning (after all, Japan has a lot of traditions involving the sun). Even today a lot of young people stay up the entire night to watch the sunrise on the next day.
It is also tradition to visit a temple or shrine (reminder: temples are Buddhist, shrines are Shinto) during those first three days to pray for good health and good fortunes in the new year. This also often goes hand in hand with getting a new omamori (one of the little charms you see commonly in Japanese media) for the new year, and have the old one cremated.
Ironically a lot of the New Years traditions we see today are fairly recent and only have arisen during the Meiji era, though that does not change the fact that a lot of people doing it. The five biggest shrines or temples alone will together receive close to 15 million visitors during those three days.
As announced before: The Rewatch is doing a holiday hiatus, given that a lot of people just will not have time over the holidays to watch anime. As such the Rewatch will probably continue on January 5th, when the worst of the holiday cluster is over.
I also have planned some new fandom events for the new year, hoping to keep some momentum going.
Until then we wish you a good start into the New Year!
Episode 02 of the new Digimon season is out today. We are learning a bit about how the ePulse works and how the government is dealing with the Digimon here.
Episode 02: Glowing Dawn
As always, you are invited to come join us on the Discord Server!
Pardon me while I find a dumpster to hibernate in for 10,000 years. I'm proud I pulled this off, but it will be a while before I do something of this scale again. 💀
