DigiMonday - RINKMON
(Armour Level/Free Attribute/Cyborg Type)
Rinkmon is such a dork, and I love that about it. The armoured zip-up jump suit. The oversized spiky helmet that makes it look like a Sonic the Hedgehog gijinka. The fact that its official image in the Digimon Encyclopedia shows it fist-pumping because its just that proud of itself. The Digimon Encyclopedia states that Rinkmon is a man-made Digimon created by human scientists by combining data collected from a particle collider with the Digimental of Friendship (an ancient trinket from the Digital world that allows child-level Digimon to reach unique, powerful new forms, and the source of its armoured helmet and blue-and-yellow colour scheme from a design perspective) in order to make the fastest Digimon possible, and the idea that this merging of cutting-edge science and ancient otherworldly technology resulted in an ice skater that can apparently skate at speeds close to the speed of light is extremely amusing to me.
(The Digimental of Friendship. It's looks kind of like a bladed clown shoe...)
Given its ice skater-themed design it seems safe to assume that Rinkmon's name is in reference to ice rinks. Wikimon, however, suggests an alternative origin; it compares Rinkmon's spiky helmet, oversized scarf, gaudy getup and super-speed to Jet Link (Romanised as Jetto Rinku,) a character from Shotaro Ishinomori's immensely popular manga series Cyborg 009. Like Rinkmon, Jet is a cyborg with the ability to move at superhuman speeds (in his case due to rocket boosters in his legs, as opposed to hypersonic ice skating,) and while his design was toned down to be a little more grounded in later adaptations his original design features a red jumpsuit, enormous spiky hair and a flowing white scarf. This wouldn't be the first time a Digimon's design was a reference to another piece of Japanese media, and while I would have never made the connection on my own I'm now pretty convinced that Rinkmon's name is indeed a play on the fact that both "rink" and "link" can be written as リンク ("rinku") in Japanese!
(Jet Link, image source here. There's a definite resemblance, both in design and overall dorky (affectionate) vibe.)
Like many armour-level Digimon Rinkmon debuted in 2000 in the D-3 line of VPets. These were some of the wackier Digimon VPets, allowing players to obtain Digimentals to use on their Digimon by using an antenna on the device to detect actual, real electrical signals produced by electrical devices. Rinkmon was specifically available in the D-3 Version 2, and could be obtained by exposing Hawkmon to the Digimental of Friendship.
(Look it that little dweeb go...)
