#koichi kimura

[redoxchai]

Okayyy huge delay thanks to being bounced between different interests, but here’s everyone together and some scattered thoughts about this crossover AU under the cut! Obviously spoilers for Digimon Frontier and The World Ends With You (2007):

There’s really only two flimsy reasons why this AU occurred to me:

If I had a nickel for every time someone who died in Shibuya underwent a supernatural journey to come back to life, I’d have…three nickels, actually. But let’s put aside that third one for now.

If you do the math, the Frontier cast (who were 11 in 2002-2003) and the TWEWY cast (who were 15 in 2007) are roughly similar in age! Weird to think about. (Ignoring the timeline shift introduced by the TWEWY anime and NEO.)

…I said I wanted to share my AU thoughts, but I don’t really have anything concrete. 😅 Part of why it took me so long to post lol. It’s been over a decade since I played OG TWEWY and I don’t remember much of the lore, especially from Secret Reports. I couldn’t tell you what the plot of a crossover would be. Should it be a regular Reaper’s Game without any proxies or other shenanigans from the higher-ups? 

But I’ll share my random ideas anyway:

Reaper’s Game Format

I can’t decide whether Frontier x TWEWY should follow the original partner format of OG TWEWY or the team format of NEO. I’m inclined towards partners, but it’s difficult to figure out a full Week 1 pair order for the initially odd-numbered Frontier cast.

With Takuya as the protagonist, I figured it would go something like:

Week 1: Tomoki

Week 2: Kouichi (deferring Reaper status like Beat did)

Week 3: Kouji

Incidentally, this setup would mean the twins would never be partners…It’s not really a big deal tho imo

Kouichi

Predictably, I've been thinking mostly of Kouichi’s place as a Reaper in this AU lmao

Kouichi died before everyone else and played a different Reaper’s Game, which he won. He became a Reaper in exchange for the complete erasure of any memory of his existence. From his POV, this meant less of a burden for his mom and no unsolved mysteries for the twin he doesn’t even know. Of course, he would check in on them from time to time from the UG.

Initially, I was imagining he died at 11 in 2002, same as in Frontier, and has been a Reaper ever since. This would theoretically let him have a higher position and a Noise form. I dropped this idea when I realized that…Reapers don't age. Still, here's Velgrmon as Noise:

(Although…we already have a black lion-themed boss Noise. It's kind of funny that Sho’s aesthetic suits Kouichi the most lol)

I was also playing with the idea of him being the one who killed Takuya and/or Kouji as the Composer's proxies, but that's a little fucked up LMAO also not really necessary. The Composer should do their own dirty work smh my head

Other stray thoughts

Considering it’s basically how Frontier was written anyway, would the entrance fee for Week 3 be everyone else, leaving only Takuya and Kouji in the game? (Which is also what happened in TWEWY tbf)

Imagine if Tomoki died (again) and got turned into a cute little (bear) Noise like Rhyme did 😭

I thought Kouichi’s Week 2 entrance fee might be Kouji, but that would put Kouji out of the game for a little too long, narratively. Would it be his mom, then? Is that even allowed? 

[statixwhy]

[allewyn]

[hayannoran]

Takouichi heathers paro

*really self indulgent

[alpaca-clouds]

Digimon and the Sibling Dynamics

The blog from @aquaticnaho got me to think a bit more about the entire sibling topic, that is so weirdly prevalent in Digimon. In some degree it makes sense: the kids of the first five seasons were all born in the late 80s and early 90s, a time when a lot of Japanese families, if they had kids, would often have two of them. And still, it is quite noticable how many of the Digimon characters have siblings. In Adventure 5 out of the 8 kids have siblings (with Sora, Koshiro and Mimi being the single kids), and in 02 it is 5 our of the 6 kids.

And I kinda do want to talk about it. So, I am going to.

For illustration purposes I use some old artwork once done by TKG, who made a ton of Digimon fanwork up till the release of Xros Wars, and then sadly moved onto other fandoms.

I am doing the first four seasons for now, and see if I might do the latter seasons sometime end of the week.

Adventure

Taichi and Hikari are already complicated siblings, due to Taichi being so parentified. We see in the first movie, when Taichi is 7 years old, that he is taking care of Hikari, who is about 4, for pretty much the entire day. The mother only comes home in the late afternoon, and the father (like a good old 90s Salariman) does not come home till very late in the night.

I will also note again, that Hikari was originally not planned to be the 8th child, but it was decided at some point when the show had already the first couple episodes done. This is why the legend speaks of "seven chosen children", only for everything to go: "Were you not supposed to be eight?"

Something that should be noted: a lot of the writers in Digimon did not fully realize how much of an issue the parentification this is, but Hosoda and Yoshida did seem to realize this to a degree.

I talked about this before: Hosoda shared in the past that under his understanding of the kids Hikari has a crush on Taichi, because to her he is the reference of how a boy is supposed to take care for her. He has taken care of her for so long, that she simply has developed a brother complex.

The entire flashback of how Taichi getting punished for taking the sick Hikari out, is still such a thing. Because that episode does not really treat it as if any of this is messed up. (The episode was written by Nishizono...)

I will note again: yes, in Japan there are a lot of parentified kids. But it is really a headache to see how little this is problematized within the series.

02 at least has Hikari slowly becoming a bit less reliant on Taichi, and - it should be noted - it actually being brought up that her fixation on Taichi might be an issue. Not in terms of how she might have incestuous feelings, but in terms how she makes herself so dependent on Taichi. Sadly a lot of this is rolled back in tri., due to tri. removing the other social net from Hikari. But... We do not have time for that now.

Fun fact: despite not having to take care of Takeru most of the time, Yamato is still parentified. In the way that so, so, so many Toei franchises do it. Yamato is still the one doing most of the chores and cooking for his father. This is a theme that runs through so many Toei series between 1990 and 2010. Towards the end of this period there were shows that then started to take this serious in terms of what it might mean for the kids. (Love Momozone in Fresh PreCure is probably the example I think of most here. Because the show actually explores how she relates to her parents in this context.)

Otherwise a lot of the relationship between Yamato and Takeru is very much focused on the trauma they got from being torn apart through divorce. Though I really gotta give it to Digimon here that despite saying: "Hey, this did harm to the kids." The show never goes: "Therefore it was bad that the parents divorced." It is valid that the parents divorced, even though we regularly see them actually cooperating throughout the series.

Something that I wish we had learned more off is the fact that the mom is half-Japanese, but... that besides the point now.

Something we see through this though is that in regards to both of them we have Yamato, who constantly has the need to be responsible for everything. It is almost sad that the show drew little attention to this. While Yamato and Taichi parallel each other a lot, the show could have done more to pull attention to the fact that the two of them often clash because due to being parentified they feel like they need to be responsible for everything.

Takeru meanwhile is the constant people pleaser because of everything. Honestly with him I am very sad how 02 does not really address this. 02 does address that this boy has a bunch of trauma from the time he was lost in a hostile world for months on end, but... not much in regards to homelife.

And then we have the Kido boys. Frankly, I am very sad that we never actually saw them hang out together, and outside of tri. did not even see Jyou interact with the parents, that are so prevalent in the story.

There is clearly some issues going on given that both brothers are a good bit older than Jyou. From what we know (we never get confirmed ages for Shin and Shuu) they both are already in university during the events of Adventure.

We do only ever see Jyou interact with Shin, while Shuu never on screen interacts much with his younger brother. But the main issue in this family really does more seem to go back to the father - who apparently is a doctor - wanting his sons all to follow in his footsteps, and never actually cares for what the boys want.

Mind you, this is still why I hate so much that Jyou officially becomes a doctor. I really wish the show had a moment where he realized that he is always like that because he got pressured into it and that he can be someone and something else.

Adventure 02

Daisuke is interesting in context of the series, because he is the younger child to an older sibling, where the relationship between the siblings is... actually the normal kind of relationship you would expect two siblings to have. Jun as a teenager will go "ah, my dumb younger brother, he sucks so much" which is... about the relationship you would expect two kids of this age to have with each other. They still care about each other, but they will bitch about it most of the time.

Honestly, Jun is played for laughs a lot in 02, but I really do like her and her role in the story. She is a teenager, and she is acting like it. And I really like it.

I wish she had a bit more screentime in fact. But I love that she and her social circle are something that is constantly happening in the background of the show.

Then we have Miyako, who has three older siblings. The running theme in 02 is really that the kids are all the younger siblings that are the protagonists.

With her we have only about two episodes where the siblings have any notable voice lines to speak of. Which is a bit sad. Chizuru and Momoe are characters that do have something going on - being part of Jun's social circle and in this context appearing doing stuff with her in the background. Mantaro meanwhile is very much a non-character. We know pretty much nothing about him.

These kids are shown to having adult responsibilities in terms of having to help out in the combini the parents own. Though this is not really shown as being too much, given it is a responsibility shared between the siblings.

Osamu and Ken meanwhile are a classical story of a dead character haunting the narrative. Osamu is haunting the narrative.

Something that frankly I wish was a bit more shown - because it is there, but it is not really much of a focus - is that the family dynamic between these kids are a clear example of a family with narcissist parents, who have a golden child, and then a child that mostly only can do wrong in regards to what they do, and getting punished for it.

In this case it seems to mostly be the father, with the mother realizing after Ken going missing, that what they did was wrong.

And oh boy, there is so much going on with Osamu and Ken. The two of them and their dynamic were written by Yoshimura, who really did a good job here. There is also stuff that has gone into the design here. With Osamu being shown to have had a bit more ruffled hair that was hard to keep down, while Ken has very straight hair - but when he is the Digimon Kaizer he makes his hair look a lot more like Osamu.

Of course the theme here is that Ken feels so guilty for the death of his brother, because to a child's mind going "I wish he was dead", because he gets neglected over his brother, and the brother then dying, will mean: "I caused this. I wished too hard!" Because magical thinking is very common in this age.

Tamers

Tamers has of course Jian as the first character with siblings, and in regards to Adventure/02 it is interesting that he is a middle child, rather than the oldest or youngest. The Li family has basically more two pairs of kids. The older siblings are close in age, then there is a 5 year gap, and then there is Jian and Shaochung.

Tamers is a show that is more readily aware of everything going on in it. It is a topic that yes, Jian is half-Chinese and does experience subtle racism from time to time. (The thing with his name is brought up a lot - with Japanese not being able to properly pronounce or read it.) He is very withdrawn because of it, but also, due to being the middle child and the older sibling to Shaochung, he feels constantly responsible to save her from everything that he has possibly lived through.

While the show never outright addresses it, there is also a constant theme going on with Jian being clearly the closest child to his father, as he is having similar interests as his father. Something that only becomes more clear when Zhenyu finds out that Jianliang has a Digimon partner.

While this is never said out loud, we do have several scenes - especially in the second half of the show - in which we see visually how the two older siblings, Rinchei and Jaarin, are often left out of family things, as the parents just focus more on Jianliang and Shaochung given those two are involved with the Digimon and have stuff going on.

At the same time there is also a thing to be said about Jianliang having middle child syndrome. He is not as heavily parentified as Taichi or Yamato in their specific contexts, but he still feels very, very responsible for Shaochung, to a degree that it is harming him.

While Jianliang is not really parentified by his parents, Juri is. She is so parentified and it is part of why she has that breakdown eventually. And at the time I think Digimon Tamers was actually one of the very, very few shows that actively said out loud: "Parentifying kids is not good."

We see especially that Juri was parentified more than once. Because we actually have her father's flashback to the death of his wife, Juri's mother, and how he kinda expected her to grow up instantly, because he had not learned how to regulate his own emotions, let alone take care of a child. Which is very typical for men in Japan. Even more so than for men in the west (and let's face it, it is already really fucking bad over here). And then the father remarried, had another child and just... expected Juri to be basically the mom to this younger child. She was seven at the time.

And the show makes it really clear that: yes, this is what is generally expected in Japan - also with Juri constantly masking her feelings about any of this and putting her own feelings last - but it is very much not healthy and does incredible harm.

And then there are Ai and Makoto, who generally speaking are mostly non-characters due to being only four years old. We do not know a whole lot about them, other than: they are Impmon's partners, they are twins, and they are both very young. Too young to have a partner in a proper way.

We know they argue a lot, but they are toddlers, so that is about to be expected in that age. Other than that we do not know a whole lot.

Something I do like though is that the show did not do the cliché of making the siblings the same height. It is a little thing I really like. Ai is a good bit taller than Makoto, because... yeah, kids grow differently.

Frontier

And then there is Frontier. Frontier once again has four out of the six kids being siblings - though obviously for two of them this comes as a surprise. xD And the other two never have a whole lot of stuff going on because their siblings never are actively part of the plot.

Takuya's relationship with Shinya is generally also what you would expect. The show in Frontier tries to have this theme of the kids all having been egoistical in the past and learning to be a theme, but frankly, all we know about Shinya and Takuya mostly feels one more like about what you would expect for siblings to have. We only see Shinya in the first episode and then in two flashbacks, I think, which is... oh well.

The same is true for Yutaka. We know very little about him, other than that he rejected Tomoki mostly because Tomoki was the younger child and hence was very often spoiled, probably more than Yutaka as the older brother was. And this caused a rift between the two brothers, because yes, it made resentment build, while Tomoki did not really understand why his brother was resenting him. The kid is in 3rd grade, so this makes sense.

But again, this relationship is very much an off-screen relationship due to the kids in Frontier never returning to the human world.

Finally there is Koichi and Koji. And their enitre Lisa and Lottie thing. (Really, given that Lisa and Lottie are such a popular story in the west - and especially here in Germany, given that the author was German, I never was able to watch Frontier without thinking of that story.)

The entire point of the two is that prior to the series they do not have a relationship, because they never met. Koichi only recently learned that he has a brother, and Koji only learns about it when he is in the Digital World.

Again, I will note that the story happening with them - the parents just taking one child each - is a scenario very, very typical in Japan. Including the no-contact between the brothers due to their young age during the divorce. And in all of Digimon Koichi is actually the one character were we see how this often leads to poverty. Which to me is interesting, because poverty generally is not a topic very prevalent in Digimon. Most of the kids are middle class or even upper middle class.

Of course this scenario also means though, that we see the two of them as a relationship mostly in the term of "there was another half to me and it was missing", rather than having a more complex established relationship before.

I do keep wondering, if after the end of the series the father can be assed to pay child support for Koichi, given that he seems to be doing well for himself.

[salifidae3]

没给takuya戴帽子因为我觉得这样更帅

[kaikaikulet]

some who's behind from the person so i thought a real the monster from horror game lol

here's the original picture :

[nami-moittli]

I’ll be honest I rb’d the original version of this with the intention of throwing it in the pile of “I’ll do it someday! (Doesn’t)” but uh. Yeah. Not a bad thing! I did want to remake this! Just kinda funny

Anyways love these two