I don’t want Tomoro’s e-pulse to make him special, I kind of just want him to always be a fuckup because like. He reads so ADHD to me and as a kid who has been punished a lot because of his disability, and I don’t need a like ‘disabilities are superpowers’ kind of narrative. Like I want this to be a thing he always struggles with but at the same time learning to love himself and his wacky e-pulse.
Tomoro and Gekkomon are so extremely ADHD coded and yes, I mean both. Beatbreak is doing the Survive thing I love where digimon are mirror reflections of their tamers. Gekkomon is so impulsive they’re like a caricature of ADHD or…they act the way small children do. They’re the type to jump out of a car and start running along the fence. They’re the type to totally abandon their task because they smelled something familiar. They also have hyperfocus! They became so enamoured with the idea of being Pandamon’s sibling that they had to remind Pandamon about the sibling code.
Tomoro has learned to mask a lot of his symptoms, but there are some he can’t hide. He’s still a very impulsive guy, just not in a cartoonish way like Gekkomon is. As a child I think he let it out more, like straying from his piano lesson. His distractible nature does almost endanger him in episode four, as Reina points out. He’s also very emotion driven and hard on himself. What gives him away most is the drumming. Tomoro seems to use this to calm his nerves or help himself focus. It’s cool that he has his own drumsticks to carry around everywhere.
From the outside, he mostly looks depressed, which I think he is, also. I mean, who wouldn’t be, if their only family was just put into a coma? But he shows signs of depression before the hyemon drains Asuka, and in flashbacks you kind of see why. You can tell he feels like a burden or a problem in all aspects of his life. Even if Tomoro doesn’t have adhd, he does have a disability in the context of the world he lives in. His e-pulse can be too powerful, and when he gets emotional he can glitch the sapotamas that society seems to be fashioned around. He’s been ostracized and blamed for a thing he can’t control and which society has no intention of helping him with.
If the e-pulse is emotion or brain waves, then I think that his adhd causes the e-pulse glitches. He just thinks more powerfully or more unevenly than what the sapotamas were calibrated for. Kind of stupid that they wouldn’t test this technology that every living person is *forced* to have on people with this common diagnoses but also like- like- that’s not far from how the medical establishment is.
I want there must be other people out there with wacky e-pulses like Tomoro, and I bet he’s not the first guy to use such an e-pulse in accord with a digimon partner to make them unusually strong. In fact, I kind of have this theory that one of the Five Stars has ADHD e-pulse. I have absolutely nothing to go on, but it feels right for the story I see taking shape. One of the themes of Beatbreak is a class divide. The Shangri-La egg hangs in the background like an omen. You just know we’re going to have to tackle it one of these days.
Being poor makes it harder to get the resources you need when you’re disabled. Like the savant autistic piano players don’t come from poverty. Historically, autistic kids in poverty are just called lazy or stupid and punished for behaviors they can’t control. Maybe there is a rich person who had the same disability as Tomoro, but because they had better resources, they were able to harness their wacky e-pulse in a way that benefitted them better. And they happen to have given digital birth to a super powerful digimon who they use as a cleaner.
I also suspect that the reason Gekkomon is such a heavy eater is because Tomoro is the kind to ‘punish’ himself by denying himself food. Gekkomon is his mirror. The more Tomoro denies himself, the more ‘gluttonous’ Gekkomon is going to be. It only materializes as food, but I feel like Tomoro is craving a lot of things he’s decided he doesn’t deserve: love, safety, understanding. I wonder if sometime in the future we’ll see a more mentally sound Tomoro, and Gekkomon’s will not have as much of a lust for human foods. I kind of hope not, though. I really like the silly little lizard the way they are.