as a girl who grew up extremely emotionally repressed who would later be diagnosed as bipolar, i still find takato and guilmon the most immediately relatable of any of the three main tamers - having all these explosive emotions crashing into sudden responsibility and all the repercussions of struggling with that responsibility and the moments where your emotions escape into something far worse (and the arc dealing with that) is still immensely relatable and comforting to me.
that being said, watching tamers as an adult gives me a deeper perspective on, say, ruki/rika. i didn't have much opinions on her as a kid, but in particular i'm thinking about her stint of hating digimon, scorning her partner renamon, and learning to trust them again - and how you can read icedevimon as having assaulted ruki.
i don't quite mean literally assault, but when you're that young all it takes is the very real, strong, physical restraint and the threat of retaliation if/when you say no. all the tamers kids are around 10 years old (with the dub trying to age them up a little bit to 12-13) which means ruki is crashing headfirst into what reaching that pubescent stage is going to mean, and how differently it will treat her compared to the boys. the difference in maturity between jian/henry and takato is acceptable at this age because one has the higher responsibility of an older sibling and is maturing, emotionally, faster than the other who is still allowed his breadth of childhood since his arc is crashing with the responsibility of suddenly needing to mature.
ruki isn't allowed either of those paths, and the terror that icedevimon causes her writes that in stone. she can try to stay in her childhood but that will make her mom treat her in ways she hates with things she doesn't like nor want to associate with anymore, because she is maturing. she can act mature and competent individually, but then that will draw the eyes of someone like icedevimon - someone who will restrain her, coo over her power, promise power in return, and who will threaten violence if she disagrees.
it's no wonder she flipped so hard into hating digimon to try and protect herself. that girl just...learned she was just a girl to the world, in the worst, worst way.
i haven't watched the dub in a while, but if i recall correctly "I hate digimon" got translated to "i don't need you, i don't need anyone" (i know she said that line at some point to renamon anyway). while i find the sub to be a little more carefully written, i do think that's a very important line the dub pulled out. if ruki goes one way, she's babied and treated like a girl in that she's supposed to like cute things and be feminine in a way that doesn't match her. if ruki goes the other way, she's treated like a girl - something to be controlled, restrained, and manipulated into assault. "i don't need you, i don't need anyone" - she wants her own path and there's none for her to take because at the end, she's still a kid, she has no power, and she knows it.
say what you will about nonaka's recent stints as a response to how the eng fandom treated him online, but we need more weirdo dark writers in kid's shows, because whether it was through takato or through ruki or otherwise, i am so glad i had this show as a kid and i'm sure others are too
