Bandai V-Pet Crossovers Part 1 (Part 2 next friday)
In 1996 Bandai and WiZ inc. released the original Tamagotchi. To their surprise, the toy proved to be popular among boys as well, despite it being mostly marketed for girls. And in 1997, as a more targeted approach to this demographic, Digital Monsters was born!
A huge virtual pet boom followed and not only did Bandai and Wiz release new versions of Tamagotchi and Digital Monsters, and try multiple v-pets with a variety of styles within the next couple of years, but other companies also tried to bandwagon on the success of these virtual pets!
(Such as Nintendo in 1998 with the Pocket Pikachu-)
While the Tamagotchi was shaped like an egg (jap. tamago) with a crack in its shell where the screen is, the Digital Monster was shaped like a brick cage with bust-open bars! It also featured the ability to connect and battle! Otherwise they both use the same three button layout and similar menu icons. On the Tamagotchi, the toilet icon is portrayed by a duck themed potty, which is also used as the look for the Portable Potty items in many Digimon games.
Now with how closely these two franchises were developed, there's bound to be more that connects the two, right?
One such thing is Tamagotchimoji and Digimoji/DigiCode!
You can see that the two scripts are basically identical, just stylized differently. While Tamagotchimoji got used sparsely until they stopped using it in 2004 (But had a surprising comeback in one social media post on April 10, 2023?!), Digimoji has been used, and still is being used everywhere in the Digimon franchise! There is also a separate set of characters for the Latin Alphabet.
[Tamagotchimoji on the left, Digimoji on the right, respective Hiragana above the character]
Just like we know it from the Digimon Franchise, the Tamagotchi also grow through evolutionary stages along a branching path, depending on how well you take care of them! The original line of Tamagotchi as well as Digimon owe their designs to Kenji Watanabe! Generally all Tamagotchi's names end in "-tchi" or "-chi", similar to how Digimon names end in "-mon".
In these evolution charts, the Tamagotchi and Digimon are arranged by how well they've been taken care of / how good they are, with the top line being the best, and the bottom being the worst.
But that Tamagotchi chart is actually just the international version, which had "Bill" (aka Gaijintchi/Ketotchi) as secret character past the adult stage. Instead the Japanese version featured "Oyajitchi" (jap. oyaji means "old man").
But wait, doesn't that face look familiar...?
According to the Digimon Reference Book, Nanimon's true identity is unknown and it in fact came from another dimension, where it was known under the title OYAJI. In order to survive in the new environment of the Digital World, Nanimon had to go through a lot of training and battling.
Nanimon's name is also a play on its bizarre nature. In Japanese, "nanimon" is a casual abbreviation of "nanimono" which means "what (thing)". So, with intonation indicating a question, "nanimonda" can mean both "What are you?" or "I am Nanimon".
This joke is even included directly in Digimon World when the player encounters Nanimon.
「ん？なにもんだ？！」 "N? Nanimon da?!" “Huh? What are you?!”
「ナニモンだァ！」 "Nanimon da!" “I’m Nanimon!”
Nanimon BT6-058 by Kenji Watanabe from BT-06 Booster Double Diamond
So yeah, Nanimon is supposed to be Oyajitchi who came from the Tamagotchi World to the Digital World.
Stay tuned for next friday when we talk about another World connected to the Digital World!
Special thanks to: tamagotchi wiki, gotchi-garden and tamatalk for being great resources!
If you're interested in more Tamagotchi stuff, go check out @tamapalace !
