I think I’ve figured out the reason why I prefer Meiko’s Meicoomon over Wallace/Willis’ Lopmon.
If you’ve been in the digimon fandom long enough you’ve probably seen/hear comparisons between Wallace/Willis’ Lopmon from Hurricane Touchdown and Meiko’s Meicoomon from tri.
The similarities between both of them that plenty of digimon fans have pointed out are that they are both partner digimon with uncontrollable evolved/digivolved (or in Meicoomon’s case mutated) forms with their respective human partners going through character arcs about realising that for as much as they love their partner digimon and how much it pains them to do so, they’re too dangerous to let live so they end up letting them die to save everyone and put them out of their misery (I have seen some people compare Meicoomon to Yujin's Offmon but I feel Offmon is more comparable to Ryo’s Monodramon and I’ve already made a rant comparing those two). Keep in mind that for this comparison I’m only looking at the partner digimon themselves and not their human companions since I actually like both Wallace/Willis and Meiko which unfortunately I cannot say the same for the partner digimon and I’m going to go over where I felt Meiko’s Meicoomon succeeded where Wallace/Willis’ Lopmon failed. And the reasons are actually a lot more simple than you’d think. My biggest problem with Lopmon and by extension Hurricane Touchdown as a whole is how little character and personality Lopmon has outside of the fact that he’s a partner digimon under the effects of a virus and having undergone a dark evolution/digivolution which can be attributed to how little screentime Lopmon’s personality outside of his dark evolution/digivolution. That aspect of Lopmon’s character only gets two scenes dedicated which is strange given that Lopmon’s dark evolutions/digivolutions get plenty of screen time which can be attributed to bad pacing on Hurricane Touchdown's part. I do think it’s a little weird how I seem to be the only person who has this complaint with Lopmon that I know of.
First is the flashback involving Wallace/Willis, Terriermon and Lopmon’s backstory and how he turned into Wendimon/Wendigomon.
And the second being before he dies and... that’s all we get to see of what Lopmon’s character is like outside of his dark evolutions/digivolutions. The only two personality traits I could get from both of these scenes are that he’s childlike and playful which doesn’t even stand out amongst the other partner digimon in the adventure continuity since plenty of other partner digimon have shown traits of being childlike and playful (as well as those two traits not even being their only character traits including Meicoomon). I’m a firm believer in the idea that there is a huge difference between a character being simple (for example Jo/Joe’s Gomamon comes to mind as while being undeniably simple, as he’s rather brash, confident and loud to contrast his partner) and a character being underwritten (I’ve already criticised Ryo’s Monodramon for more or less the same thing before) and unfortunately in a story where we are supposed to feel sad when Lopmon dies I don’t think it’s an unreasonable thing to criticise said story if the character dying doesn’t have much character to begin with.
In comparison Meicoomon has plenty of scenes where we get to see what her character is like outside of the fact that she’s the source of the infection and how her mutations have much more violent personalities. The first 20 minutes of part 2 of tri being a great example of this since even when we limit ourselves to just the first quarter of determination since we see multiple different traits of Meicoomon such as her having a tendency to wonder off on her own, being easily scared, playful, being rather dependent on Meiko and naive despite being an adult/champion level. These aren’t even the only times we get to see the traits as they are more consistent than you’d think since we actually do see them again in later points in tri including flashbacks.
I don’t think it takes a genius to see where I’m coming from since a lot of the points I made in Meicoomon’s favour can basically be attributed to the fact that Hurricane Touchdown is only a single movie whereas tri is 6 OVAs (or 26 episodes if you’re watching it on a streaming service like crunchyroll and other examples that I don’t feel like typing down). I feel like another contributor is the fact that when we first see Lopmon in Hurricane Touchdown he’s already dark evolved/digivolved into Wendimon/Wendigomon whereas when we first see Meicoomon in tri it’s kept a mystery as to what her importance to the plot is which is why she gets so much more screentime dedicated to establishing what her character is like compared to Lopmon who only gets a single flashback and 1 scene afterwards.
Because of this, it’s way easier to get sad over Meicoomon’s death since we actually get a decent amount of screen time to what her personality and character is like outside of the infection (which is still a simple character mind you, but being a simple character is not the same as being badly and/or underwritten).
A point I have seen some people made in Lopmon’s favour in comparison to Meicoomon that I don’t really seem to get is that when Lopmon dies he briefly becomes Cherubimon (Virtue) before disappearing whereas Meicoomon doesn’t briefly become Rasielmon when she dies. The reason I don’t get this criticism towards Meicoomon is that the people I’ve seen make this complaint claim that her not becoming Rasielmon means she wasn’t purified when she died even though Meicoomon appearing in her regular non mutated self could also be interpreted as her being purified since that’s what Meicoomon is like when she’s not a rampaging mutated digimon. Gonna be honest this complaint feels more like an excuse to complain about a lesser known digimon not getting their anime debut in a scene where if that did happen... you’d change absolutely nothing about the story other than Rasielmon waving goodbye to Meiko (a digimon Meiko’s never seen before mind you) instead of Meicoomon before disappearing. Honestly if Cherubimon (Vice) briefly turned back into Lopmon instead of Cherubimon (Virtue), you’d change absolutely nothing about Hurricane Touchdown’s plot since Cherubimon reverting back into Lopmon could still be interpreted as him being purified anyways. I dunno this complaint feels very surface level and difficult for me to agree with given the points I’ve made. Anyways TLDR: the reason why I feel Meiko’s Meicoomon is better written than Wallace/Willis’ Lopmon is that Lopmon is extremely underwritten outside of the fact that he’s a partner digimon under the effects of dark evolution/digivolution and that digimon’s personality and character outside of that has way too little screentime anyways whereas Meiko’s Meicoomon doesn’t have the same problems. I don’t really know what else to type here.

















