Digi Dynamic Shipping Game
Send me two names among the following 12 and I’ll write a short analysis post about them:
Taichi Yagami | Yamato Ishida | Sora Takenouchi | Koushirou Izumi | Mimi Tachikawa | Jyou Kidou | Takeru Takaishi | Hikari Yagami | Daisuke Motomiya | Miyako Inoue | Iori Hida | Ken Ichijouji
Disclaimer: I won’t claim this to be a conclusive/definitive analysis of all of the ship’s aspects. Ship dynamics vary depending on which parts of the series/timeline or media types you are looking at. So this is going to be my personal take on it and just a personal interpretation of how I perceive them.
Whether canon provides input on them or not.
As I try my best to get myself out of writing/art block, I thought about one of the many relationship analysis posts that are still at the back of my queue - and thus we may start with our genius bug boys, shall we?
As I had already outlined before, their relationship may not be the most fleshed out compared to other older/younger Chosen Children pairs - but this wonderful moment in particular is, in my opinion, still enough for us to speculate on how their bond may develop. It's Senpai!Koushirou at his very best, taking the still very distraught Ken under his wing, reassuring and comforting him in his own ways - because these two have way more in common than just being smart boys with bug Digimon partners.
While their set-ups are being focused on in very different ways, their arcs are both defined by trying to be more casual, natural with the people close to them due to identity-and-family-related trauma. While Koushirou buried himself in his laptop and knowledge gathering to avoid thinking about himself and his potential whereabouts for being adopted, struggling with social interactions, Ken was dragged into the world of the dark ocean after the death of his brother, getting corrupted in the process and committing horrifying actions, thus feeling unworthy of being redeemed and befriended for a long, long time. One might argue that, if it wasn't for two certain goggle boys reaching their hands out to them, they may have never found the courage to become confident in their abilities, using their intellect for the good and the sake of their friends and families, letting their natural kindness shine through eventually...
And in the same vein, I feel like Koushirou, by the time of 02, had to become the person he is there first to be able to reach out to Ken himself, so Ken could move on to reach out to the others as well. Even if he may not have been consciously aware of it, he (besides Yamato, Takeru and Hikari) was probably among the people who could relate to Ken the most - and thus, treated him with kindness.
Unfortunately, we never really see them interact directly after that again, even though Koushirou did try his best to integrate Ken into the team despite everything he had done. So long story short - we at least know there is a peaceful, trusting and kind foundation between them.
Whether I think why and how they’d work.
In case you haven't noticed how I talked about them above, I would absolutely love for these two to be closer with each other. My assumption is that the creators of Digimon tried to avoid putting them together too blatantly, because they may be way too powerful in figuring out everything on their own. I also don't believe that there would be any kind of competitive spirit between these two - in fact, Ken has quite the tendency to play himself down and canonically confirms that "if Koushirou-san can't figure this out, how are we supposed to?", implying that he is also still looking up greatly to his senpai. I think they could be quite knowledge bombs due to their natural curiosity in different fields, with Koushirou being more accustomed to the technical and theoretical side of things, whereas Ken may have more knowledge outside of that. They're both the voices of reasons in their respective groups - and may also need a little time-out every now and then to settle down, enjoy some quiet time by themselves (and with each other) after being exposed to the shenanigans their friends come up with.
This may be more of a dub-only thing, but - I could actually imagine them having fun at quiz nights and despite being the smartest people in the room, would always be the least competitive about it (especially when Miyako and Daisuke are with them), because they could just talk about their gathered findings for hours without end. Nobody else could follow their train of thought at this point, but that's okay, because they just enjoy theorizing together.
Whether I’d prefer them as platonic or romantic ship.
Overall, I think they would work better on a platonic basis, mainly because they're both people who need other people with outgoing energy levels as complementary forces to pull them out of their shells as romantic partners. But again, I believe they could be amazing friends to each other, a safe haven so to speak.
