Mimi and Koushiro ;0; your art of them is my lifeblood
i don't think ive ever mentioned this anywhere but i loove them in Digimon Last Evolution Kizuna. i love that koushiro is like... a 20 yr old tech CEO but he still spares the time to code mimi's digital storefront for her fashion store based in paris LOL like the glitzy international situationship of it all is very yuppie romcom... very k-drama to me.
In mid July, I’ve repeated the shipping poll experiment from 2023 to estimate which are currently tumblr’s most popular Digimon Adventure ships! Thank you all for participating!
This main post will analyze the general vibe of the polls, discuss limitations and biases - because every single character will get their own analysis post in the upcoming weeks. Thus, this main post will continuously be updated under the cut, so if you’re interested, feel free to check in every once in a while!
Discaimer: Please take into account that these results are by no means a definitive display of the Digimon shipping landscape out there, but only a "brief snapshot"! This is just a little experiment I felt like diving into a little more for fun once again!
Main Polls
Taichi Yagami Poll 1 & Poll 2
Yamato Ishida - Poll 1 & Poll 2
Sora Takenouchi - Poll 1 & Poll 2
Koushiro Izumi - Poll 1 & Poll 2
Mimi Tachikawa - Poll 1 & Poll 2
Jou Kidou - Poll 1 & Poll 2
Takeru Takaishi - Poll 1 & Poll 2
Hikari Yagami - Poll 1 & Poll 2
Daisuke Motomiya - Poll 1 & Poll 2
Ken Ichijouji - Poll 1 & Poll 2
Miyako Inoue - Poll 1 & Poll 2
Iori Hida - Poll 1 & Poll 2
Discussion & Links to Analysis
The vote was open from July 12th to July 19th 2025. All the 12 main Chosen Children known from Digimon Adventure and 02 received a main and a secondary poll. Unlike last time, Meiko didn't receive an individual poll this time, since that would have been unfair towards other movie main characters (such as Wallace, Menoa and Rui). While the main poll listed the 10-11 other main Chosen Children, the secondary poll listed a few potentially notable side characters that might be seen as viable choices in fandom.
Limitations & Biases
Before I go into presenting the most notable results, I NEED to address a few things worth taking into account.
Limited reach/exposure bias: Since there were two polls for every character (and the secondary polls got posted with a bit of a delay), the first poll usually got way more exposure than the second one. Thus, the secondary polls rarely (or only temporarily) made an impact. A few of the polls were reblogged once and thus gained more attention in general.
Low sample size: Since the polls have not been shared around/reblogged a lot, the numbers we’re talking about are not very reliable - singular votes didn’t matter much in most polls, especially when it came to ships that are considered to be “rare pairs”. Thus, those didn’t have a lot of time to shine overall. Additionally, the Digimon Adventure fandom overall is a lot more quiet these days (due to lack of new content).
Follower bias: Since I was the one who posted the polls, my follower circle may have had a significant impact on who was picked for which poll. Naturally, people who follow me, who like the characters/ships I like, are more likely to vote for those certain ships. I can only assume that the results for several characters might have looked a lot different in other spheres of tumblr - or the internet in general.
Choice bias: The additional characters in the secondary polls were based on my personal guesses, so I may or may not have forgotten other fanon ship choices!
Redundant voting: It cannot be guaranteed that people haven’t voted for several options in the first and second poll, instead of picking the “someone from poll 1/2” choice. Or: If they picked “someone from poll 1/2”, they might not even have voted there at all, we cannot tell. Thus, there might be contradicting votes.
Notable results: Winners (overall)!
Disclaimer: As the votes for “Someone from Poll 1/2″ have been excluded from the final analysis and all results were culminated in another “final count”, the results will not be 1:1 to what the polls look like. See Taichi’s spreadsheet for transparency (all other sheets will be included in the respective analysis posts):
*In both 2023 and 2025, Iori's polls were mostly dominated by either the "others" or "no ship/ace" options, but among all actual characters, Takeru got the most votes each.
Notable results: Stats
Now, let’s dive into the more interesting bits, shall we!
Most votes overall: Taichi (162), Daisuke (144), Yamato (142)
Least votes overall: Sora (115), Miyako (117), Jou (119)
Most polls won: Yamato x 3 (Taichi, Sora, Jou), Taichi x 2 (Yamato, Koushiro), Hikari x 2 (Takeru, Miyako) + Takeru x 1,5 (Hikari + technically Iori)
Clear victories: While Daisuke received 59% of all votes in Ken's poll, no other victories were achieved by +50%. However, most of the polls had clear preferences from the very beginning - or rather by the second voting day - and the winners mostly won with a margin of ~10%.
Notable results: General observations
Not as clutch as 2023: Throughout the 2023 polls, various "multicules" had very close races, most notably Yamato vs Koushiro vs Sora in Taichi's poll, Taichi vs Yamato in Sora's poll as well as Jou and Koushiro in Mimi's poll. This wasn't the case this time: While the first day had all the aforementioned results rather close together, by the second voting day, Yamato had been in the lead in both Taichi's and Sora's poll - and while Mimi was the clear winner in Jou's poll in 2023, she was dethroned by Yamato in Jou's 2025 poll as well. And speaking of Jou, in comparison to the close race in 2023, he was clearly dethroned by Koushiro in Mimi's 2025 poll from the very beginning.
Most competitors: Similarly to 2023, even though Ken was basically unbeatable from the start, Daisuke's polls had the most competition; while Takeru came in second, Hikari and Wallace competed for third place. The same occurred in Mimi's polls, where Koushiro won, Jou came in second and Sora and Meiko competed for third place.
Miyako: Hikari vs Ken; just like in 2023, this was very close from the beginning, but Hikari led the entire time.
Iori: As mentioned before, the "no ship/ace" option completely dominated his polls, so Takeru snatched the majority of the remaining votes, whereas Miyako, Noriko and the OC option were standing out the most among the smaller numbers. Iori’s analysis overall, however, might turn out to be the most interesting in the end…
Notable results: Where the 2nd poll mattered
Jou: One of the reasons why the secondary polls were created in the first place back in 2023 was the number of people who for “Bike Girl” (literally the girl he took the bike from in “Diablomon Strikes Back”). Once again, she came in third overall in the end, being very closely followed by his mystery “girlfriend” in Tri (which may or may not also be Bike Girl, but this was never confirmed or denied, so we’ll never know).
Iori: As previously implied, his individual analysis will be quite interesting to look at. To keep it shortly for now, the votes, comments and tags may indicate that the majority of voters view him as asexual or do not ship him primarily with the other 11 Chosen Children (except Takeru and, on a smaller scale, Miyako which may or may not be linked to his age and/or lack of interaction with others). Choices like Noriko, or even OCs, may be more preferred.
Mimi, Takeru, Daisuke: For Mimi and Takeru, Meiko became a viable third choice, whereas Wallace finished third in Daisuke's poll.
The "ace/no ship" option: This option was added as a "learning" after some commentary in the 2023 polls - and proved to be a notable contender not only for Iori (54%), but also for various characters, such as Koushiro (11%), Takeru (11%), Hikari (6%), Daisuke (10%) and Ken (6%).
Honourable mentions: Almost every poll had an "outlier" vote that didn't make it into the top 3, but still had 2+ votes (such as Meiko and Menoa for Taichi, Jun and his uni colleague for Yamato, Menoa for Koushirou, Michael for Mimi, etc.). This will get more attention in the individual analysis posts!
Personal thoughts/observations on my behalf
To my pleasant surprise, most of the polls got more attention than they did in 2023 - Taichi, Mimi and Ken were the only ones that got less than last time, but every single character received at least 100 votes! Just for example, Yamato and Iori got +20 more votes than they had gotten in 2023, indicating a rise in popularity in the current tumblr landscape and thus, their votes contributed to more clear results. Especially in Yamato's case, as he had won three polls. It's still a comparably low sample size, but considering how quiet the fandom appears to be, I'd still rate this as a huge success.
Taking into account how Digimon has been a shipping juggernaut for +20 years now, it shouldn't be too surprising that the 2025 results are, in many ways, very similar to the 2023 ones - with a few placement changes and, actually, a few surprises in between. For example, I had already commented on how the results of 2025 appeared to be a little bit less diverse than in 2023. As pointed out above, some of the most influential/popular triangles in the OG Digimon Adventure verse (Taichi/Sora/Yamato + Jou/Mimi/Koushiro) had not experienced the same kind of close races as last time - Yamato (in Sora's poll) and Koushiro (in Mimi's poll) had been on top of Taichi and Jou for almost the entire time. The same can also be said about Taichi/Yamato instead of Taichi/Koushiro (in Taichi’s poll). However, I am still very happy to see that people who voted still generally agree with my personal opinion that Koushiro, Yamato and Sora are the most shippable choices for Taichi.) Ships like Takeru/Hikari and Daisuke/Ken were comfortably in the lead without any serious contenders the whole time - but this had been the same as last time. However, some of the niche ships that had gained attention as third place choices in 2023, such as Taichi/Takeru and Ken/Hikari, completely vanished from the results.
In several cases, if one side of a ship won a poll, the opposing character usually won the complementary poll as well - such as Taichi/Yamato, Takeru/Hikari and Daisuke/Ken. Unsurprisingly, the Jogress partnerships have been very popular in general as well (such as Taichi/Yamato, Daisuke/Ken, Miyako/Hikari and Takeru/Iori).
There also appears to be a clear cut between the Adventure and 02 groups - the main choices for each character almost always stem from the same group, with only a few exceptions (such as Koushiro/Hikari and Mimi/Miyako).
I really hope I will be able to repeat the votings in the future with more participation, just to see how things may have turned out if more choices could get more time to shine!
Final verdict: It was a lot of fun to observe the polls once again, to see how certain results have changed - or remained the same -, with even a few surprises in between!
If you have any further questions, feel free to ask!
I’m watching Digimon adventure 02 for the first time rn (I was too pissy that it wasn’t exactly like 01 to watch it before) so I was inspired to make some ship art! I drew this before Mimi was shown so her hair isn’t crazy
