Grading/Ranking Villains Re: Digimon
For this post I'll be doing all the Big Bads from Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02.
DEVIMON
Appearance: This design is incredible. The color scheme, the pure red eyes, the long horns going out to the side, the tattered wings, the big orange insignia on his chest, the belts, the spikes, the skull shoes, the everything just screams EVIL. 5/5
Performance: The late Kaneto Shiozawa voices him in the original version and I get what he was going for, but his acting in the role does nothing for me - it kind of puts me to sleep. The late Tom Wyner had worse scripts to work with in the dub, but his voice is far more commanding and sinister sounding. 3.5/5
Character: He doesn't have much character, as he's mainly just your archetypal big bad guy who serves as the DigiDestined's first hurdle to clear. The most interesting thing about him is that he is savvier and more mature than most villains, fighting smart, setting clever traps for his enemies, and never undergoing a villainous breakdown. 2.5/5
Motivation: He just wants to take over the Digital World because evil. Simple and sufficient enough, but not particularly interesting. Half a point added due to the factor of him wanting to punch above his weight class, as he's aware he's just a big fish in a small pond. 1.5/5
Villainy: For a Starter Villain, he does villainy pretty well, being responsible for the black gears that corrupt the Digimon on File Island and attempting to ensnare and kill the DigiDestined every step of the way, even being willing to personally crush the smallest child to death in order to remove the biggest threat to his power. However, he's also more benevolent than most other villains in Digi World. 3.5/5
Resolution: He gets swiftly murder-suicided by Angemon, but as he dies he taunts Angemon with the knowledge that there are many other competiting dark forces at work across the sea from File Island who are all far stronger than he is, and with Angemon's holy power used up, the DigiDestined just might now be doomed. 4/5
Impact: Devimon and his machinations on File Island server as the testing ground for the DigiDestined and their Digimon partners. Were they not challenged by him and able to defeat him, we'd have no story! 5/5
Aces Villainy? YES
Overall: 3.5/5
ETEMON
Appearance: He's supposed to be a monkey puppet but he looks more like a guy in a monkey-like jump suit that has this sock-shaped head and he also wears shades....for real, what am I looking at here? It's creative, to say the least! 4/5
Performance: Etemon lives to perform! His expressiveness and showboating ways coupled with his voice acting - the JPop Monkey voice by Yasunori Masutani and the Elvis impersonation by Richard Epcar - make him immensely entertaining to watch. 5/5
Character: A significant improvement over Devimon. He's a silly party animal but also a brutish egomaniac who demands to be the center of attention and doesn't want anyone spoiling his rise to stardom. 3.5/5
Motivation: This, however, is not so much. He wants to rule the Server continent just so he can make everyone watch his shows and worship him, the most basic egotistical motive you can get. When he comes back from his initial defeat, his motive changes to the even less interesting "get revenge!" This guy is a villain without a cause. 1/5
Villainy: That said, he does do damn fine as a villain. You wouldn't think a goofball like him would pose much of a threat, but he is a complete badass who at times seems virtually unstoppable, especially when he merges with his own Dark Network and risks destabilizing and destroying the Digital World! 4/5
Resolution: "Vulcan's Hammer!" "Ha ha, that won't work! My body's made of chrome digizoid - AH! How'd that work?" "My hammer is also made of chrome digizoid, but stronger! Vulcan's Hammer!" "Aaaah shit, I'm dead!" It's pretty fast and anticlimactic. 3/5
Impact: Probably the least impactful Big Bad in the story, but he gains half a point extra for one thing that made him super impactful to the franchise - being the first villain to kill Leomon! 4.5/5
Aces Villainy? YES
Overall: 4/5
MYOTISMON
Appearance: He looks magnificent, both as regular Myotismon and as VenomMyotismon. There is no vampire that looks this distinct. 5/5
Performance: He has a theatrical flourish that oozes fearsome malevolence, and Ryūzaburō Ōtomo and (again) Richard Epcar do masterful jobs at the voicework for him. 5/5
Character: He acts cold and composed in a menacing, spooky way but is also quite the gentleman who is very savvy and scholarly. Then you tear through that facade and find that he's not just a savage, power-hungry monster but a complete sadist who absolutely relishes harming others and thinks nothing of killing them should he deem they be failures or have no use to him. Now that is a solid villain! 4/5
Motivation: Not content as being just a disciple of Piedmon, he desired to conquer the human world and then merge it with the Digital World so that he'd have his own underworld to reign over and derive endless power from, believing this to be his destiny due to the castle with the gateway between worlds he'd overtaken and studied. 4/5
Villainy: If I got into detail about just how goddamn villainous this guy is in his many heinous deeds, we'd be here all day! 5/5
Resolution: The combined power of the crests, the very things he'd attempted to depower and destroy, end up binding him and giving Wargreymon and MetalGarurumon an opening to destroy him once and for all, even working in a Soccer move! It's as epic as it sounds. 5/5
Impact: He's the quintissential villain of this series who takes the longest to deal with, as once he makes his move to invade Odaiba, nothing is ever quite the same again. His impact on Kari and Gatomon is particularly powerful. 5/5
Aces Villainy? YES
Overall: 5/5
METALSEADRAMON
Appearance: An excellent final Seadramon evolution look, even though I think I like MegaSeadramon's design better. 4.5/5
Performance: Yuto Kazama, who voices Yamato, also voices him, though you'd not be able to tell. In the dub it's Doug Erholtz (who'd later voice TK in 02) voicing him like an impression of Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men. Both are different but they both work. 3.5/5
Character: He's a ruthless and tactical miltary commander who leads his Deep Sea Divers in battle against the DigiDestined, being very cocky and possessing quite a hot temper, but like Devimon he's more pragmatic and benevolent than most evil Digimon. 3.5/5
Motivation: It's just "destroy those kids and their Digimon friends". As basic as it gets, though half a point added due to him being one of the Dark Masters who is all in on Piedmon's goals. 1.5/5
Villainy: He's okay at villainy too, being a sufficient threat for the good guys to contend with and even skewering Whamon to death. 3.5/5
Resolution: It's really not much other than "Wargreymon kills him". but just the way it's done is honestly one of the coolest looking villain deaths in the entire series. 4.5/5
Impact: He's the starting Dark Master, so he got the short straw in being the least impactful. He comes, he goes, we move on. 2/5
Aces Villainy? YES, but only barely
Overall: 3.5/5
PUPPETMON
Appearance: If you want to visualize Pinocchio as a Digimon, this is how he'd look. The X-shaped wooden cross on his back is particularly striking. 5/5
Performance: He is an absolute psychotic, diabolical, hilariously excrutiating brat every time he's on screen. Etsuko Kozakura voices him like you'd expect Pinocchio to sound, but David Lodge plays him more like a whiny, goofy voiced man-child. 5/5
Character: Puppetmon has, bar none, the most character out of any villain in the first series. Despite being a Dark Master, he's not just evil for evil's sake - he's lonely, maladjusted, and pitiful, not knowing the difference between a plaything and a friend. This makes him a bit of a tragic figure, but his wanton cruelty, selfishness, and stubborn insistence on controlling and abusing everyone he comes into contact with makes him impossible to sympathize with. In the end, he could never be a "real boy" because he lacked a functional heart with which to form real bonds with others, and that was his downfall. 4.5/5
Motivation: He just wants to play and have fun, but in the most twisted way possible that involves hurting people because he derives sadistic joy from putting others under his thumb. After a discussion with Cherrymon (in which he kills him), he also becomes fixated on figuring out what it is he might be "missing." 4/5
Villainy: He literally controls the good guys with voodoo figures and chases TK around with a fucking gun! He only gets worse from there, to the point where he ends up pitting Matt against his own friends. 5/5
Resolution: Mistakenly believing that Matt and MetalGarurumon are his allies, he tries to force them to fight for him but they refuse. He comes at them in a rage, at which point MetalGarurumon fries him point blank. He lies dying on the ground, winding down as he asks "Cherrymon.. what was it that I was missing?" 5/5
Impact: The Difficulty Spike from MetalSeadramon to him is impactful enough, but the DigiDestined splits apart during his section of the story thanks in part to his antics, making him extra impactful. 4.5/5
Aces Villainy? YES
Overall: 5/5
MACHINEDRAMON
Appearance: Just look at that mechanical monstrosity! 5/5
Performance: Hisao Egawa and David Guerrie voice him in similar ways, both of them terrifying. 4/5
Character: He's a great big robot with natural killer instincts. There is nothing on his mind except "Kill, destroy, trap, harm, injure, brutalize, annihilate, eliminate, exterminate, erradicate, make not alive, etc." almost 24/7. While it makes him effectively frightening, it's also incredibly basic. 2/5
Motivation: He's just a psychopath who likes killing. That's literally it. Probably the most generically motivated villain. 1/5
Villainy: As a trade-off, though, it means he is one of the most heinous villains in the series, being Piedmon's Number Two guy who's been directly complicit with him, doing shit like bombing a whole city to kill some kids, and even being responsible for massacres like with the Gekkomon Kingdom and the Numemon workers. 5/5
Resolution: Lamest death ever. WTF even just happened there? 2/5
Impact: Not as impactful as Piedmon or Puppetmon, but he gets the job done due to his high position within the Dark Masters, with his tyrannical reign over the city area of Spiral Mountain even bringing Andromon on board as an ally. 4/5
Aces Villainy? YES
Overall: 3.5/5
PIEDMON
Appearance: He's a masked pierrot who's got every color of the rainbow, so both of his names are fitting for him. 5/5
Performance: Much like Etemon, Piedmon lives to perform! He conducts himself like a stage theater actor, viewing everything as a farcial play in which he is playwright, narrator, and leading man. Chikao Ohtsuka and Derek Stephen Prince both kill it in the role. 5/5
Character: The strongest Dark Master and highest ranking demon Digimon, Piedmon is a devilish, sadistic fiend who's prone to waxing poetical and cracking jokes, being both funny and frightening as monster clowns are known to be. 4/5
Motivation: Piedmon yearns to use and abuse all Digimon that don't serve him as he exploits the distortions in the Digital World to warp it and send it on a collision course with Earth so that his forces can exterminate humanity and have free reign over the graveyard they'd make of both worlds. It's got nothing deeper to it other than "he's evil", but for a Big Bad, that works just fine. 4/5
Villainy: As the Dark Master's de-factor leader, he's the most powerful dark force in the Digital World and the overaching antagonist of Digimon Adventure. Whenever we see him in action, he more than lives up to this, especially as he starts picking off his foes one by one to turn them into keychains! 5/5
Resolution: He and his Vilemon army are beaten by all of the Digidestined's Digimon and their allies, with MagnaAngemon creating the Gate of Destiny that seals all of them in, with Piedmon as the last to go. Basically, Piedmon doesn't just die - he gets sent to Digi Hell! 5/5
Impact: The DigiDestined and their partner Digimon would never be a thing were it not for Piedmon. That is impactful. 5/5
Aces Villainy? YES
Overall: 5/5
APOCALYMON
Appearance: It''s a big dark cube that then turns into a bigger cube with claws and then this guy who looks like a Devimon-Myotismon-Piedmon fusion appears at the top. Okay, sure, whatever. 4/5
Performance: There's nothing restrained about Apocalymon, they are melodramatic to the extreme, which works given the context. Chikao Ohtsuka voiced them excellently in the original version, but sadly, Paul St. Peter in the dub was not up to par. Not one of his better roles. 4/5
Character: They really have no character, as they're an amalgamation of the souls, negative sentiments and anguish of Digimon that died due to failure to evolve, hence why they're sad, mad, and spiteful all the time. The dub tries to make more of a character by making them this incessant joke cracker, but that really did not work. 1.5/5
Motivation: For what they are, their petty ass motivation is perfectly understandable. "If we couldn't continue to exist and be part of the world, then we'll destroy the world and all life in it, reduce it all to void that will be assimilated into us!" 4.5/5
Villainy: This freakish glitch in the digital matrix literally caused the entire plot to happen. Everything bad in the story spawned directly from them coming into existence, and once it's time for them to be faced as the final boss, they do nothing but acts of ruthless villainy, intent on destroying the heroes and both worlds. 4.5/5
Resolution: After a frantic and exciting final battle, beating them down back into their default state triggers a self destruct technique, as they blow up attempting to take everything in both worlds down with them. Fortunately, the kids' Digivices create a containment cube that encases the explosion and shrinks it on itself, sparing both worlds from destruction. 5/5
Impact: Read what I said in Villainy again. 5/5
Aces Villainy? YES
Overall: 4/5
THE VIRUS DIGIMON
Appearance: He has three major forms - Keramon, Infermon, and Diabolomon - and each of them are very well designed. 4.5/5
Performance: After starting as just a curious toddler eating its way through online data like Pacman, he evolves and becomes more and more malicious with each new form, and it's reflected in the way he carries himself. By the end he's just a feral demon! 4.5/5
Character: A combination of being born a Virus type and eating so much online data shapes him into a childish mischief maker who wants to play games online, and even as he matures he can't shake that, hacking the Pentagon and launching nuclear missiles while multiplying himself just to play a game of "Who Has The Clock?" 4/5
Motivation: Like the supercomputer from War Games, he wants to play a good game and he wants to win. Too bad he'll do anything to do so, no matter how many lives he puts at risk! 3/5
Villainy: This is one of the most dangerous, powerful, and above all competent enemies the DigiDestined ever faced, who comes closer to success in wrecking the world and killing them than the Dark Masters ever did! 5/5
Resolution: He gets impaled through the fucking face by Omnimon with one second to spare in one of the most suspenseful and intense climaxes to anything in the Digimon franchise. 5/5
Impact: Not only is he the sole antagonist in the film, but he's literally Beta Love Machine! He's so impactful he impacts a later work that isn't even Digimon! 5/5
Aces Villainy? YES
Overall: 5/5
KEN ICHIJOUJI/THE DIGIMON EMPEROR
Appearance: Ken has a fantastic supervillain look for the most part. The single questionable inclusion is those dorky looking 3D glasses he wears. They're alright at first but after he reveals his true identity, why keep wearing them? He looks perfectly good without them! 4.5/5
Performance: Romi Park. Derek Stephen Prince. Both playing up the evilness to maniacal perfection. Need I say more? 5/5
Character: It's...it's Ken, guys. He is just a peak character all around, and that goes for him in his initial villain arc. 5/5
Motivation: Believing the Digital World to be a simulation game, he wants to abuse, control, and lord over inferior creatures the way he wishes he could in the human world, and he takes the DigiDestined as being challenger players for him to defeat. Eventually he wants to not only completely dominate the Digital World, but live there too! Given his backstory and what we see his present day life is like and how poorly he connects with others, it's perfectly understandable. 5/5
Villainy: This kid is everything I love to see in a villain. He can be the "fun" brand of evil where he really is entertaining to watch and even humorous at points, but then he can shift so easily into being the seriously loathsome and disturbing brand of evil where his actions horrify and disgust you and you just despise him and want someone to slap the shit out of him. But then even still he can also be deeply humanized and tragic, even mildly sympathetic, reminding you that he is a human child who has been twisted by trauma, emotional and mental manipulation, and an increased disassociation from reality and others around him, especially those from whom he percieves a lack of true love and care for him. 5/5
Resolution: The way Ken comes to his ephiphany is stupidly rushed and not very convincing given that it mirrors something we already saw from him just an episode ago! The immediate fallout, however, is glorious. He completely crashes out, discards his entire Emperor attire, has to face Wormmon dying in his arms (thus reliving the trauma of losing his big brother that he'd been trying to evade), and he staggers off into the desert and out of the Digital World completely broken, a sad, drained, hollow shell of his former self. 4.5/5
Impact: He's the first villain of 02. Fighting him and undoing the damage he does lasts literally half the series. He goes on to become one of the most prominent heroes and Davis' best friend. Massive impact all around. 5/5
Aces Villainy? YES
Overall: 5/5
KOKOMON
Appearance: Like the Virus Digimon, he has three different forms that are all well designed, especially the final form. 4.5/5
Performance: He goes from being large, lumbering, loud and berserk to being sleek and quiet to being a blend of both that has been completely overcome with pure evil, hatefulness and destructive urges. So he carries himself as an intimidating antagonist all throughout. 4/5
Character: Kokomon is a very sad figure, being a remnant of childhood that got displaced into a time that moved on from him, with him having missed out on everything that happened in between, so he's gone mad from confusion and desperation to return to the happy, comfy, familiar time with the Willis he remembers. 4/5
Motivation: He wants to find Willis and "go back" with him, back to their childhood together so that they can pick up where they left off and he can be happy again. It's a pure desire tainted by mania and increased darkness in his heart. Really he's just hurting inside and wants it to stop, but has the wrong approach to making it stop. 4.5/5
Villainy: He kidnaps kids and Digimon, brings them to his dream world recreation of Willis' childhood at the place where they were separated, and the longer the kids and Digimon remain there, the more they de-age and risk obliteration. Kokomon does not care because he just wants to have the good old days back, no matter the costs. 4/5
Resolution: When it seems Kokomon has been lost to the darkness inside him, he gets triggered by a memory that brings him back out, making him finally recognize Willis as his old friend and urge for Magnamon and Rapidmon to both protect Willis and heal his pain by ending his life. They do so, destroying the darkness and purifying Kokomon as he dissolves, his happy gaze firmly on Willis while he does. (Don't worry, he's reborn and will be re-hatched!) 5/5
Impact: He's the sole antagonist of the film. 5/5
Aces Villainy? YES
Overall: 4/5
ARACHNEMON & MUMMYMON
Appearance: Both their disguised forms and their real forms are superbly designed, especially the former. 5/5
Performance: They're both deliciously evil, creepy, and campy all at once. Wakana Yamazaki and Toshiyuki Morikawa do great as their voices in the original, as do Mari Devon and Kirk Thornton in the English dub. 5/5
Character: They're some of the more fleshed out villains in the series, with well defined personalites, a solid dynamic with each other, a direct hand in the creation and later actions on BlackWargreymon, and ties to their boss, Oikawa. The one flaw is that after Mummymon is introduced, the way their characters are presented suddenly becomes a bumbling Discount Team Rocket, which doesn't really add up with their earlier setup. 4.5/5
Motivation: Undeniably their weakest area. Not individually - Arachnemon is driven by fealty to Oikawa/Myotismon, and Mummymon is driven by be a simp for Arachemon. That much is easy to grasp. But at first Arachnemon is creating Digimon out of Control Spires to terrorize the Digital World for no clear reason, then she and Mummymon want the Digital World's balance to be thrown off so that it can be destroyed and they use BlackWargreymon to do so, but then this is contradicted by their boss wanting to bypass the Digital World's strict "no adults allowed" borders so that he can go there! In the end, they just come off like stupidly evil Mooks! 3.5/5
Villainy: They do alright at villainy. Nothing spectacular, but definitely not ineffective either. 3.5/5
Resolution: When MaloMyotismon reveals himself, the first thing he does is brutally torture Arachnemon to death. A heartbroken and enraged Mummymon attacks him in response and refuses to show him his fear, promoting MaloMyotismon to disintegrate him. I don't like it at all! 3/5
Impact: As Oikawa's chief flunkies who propped up the Digimon Emperor, created BlackWargreymon, and did a lot of heavy lifting during the final arc, they're reasonably impactful. 4/5
Aces Villainy? YES
Overall: 4/5
BLACKWARGREYMON
Appearance: He's a palette swap of Wargreymon and honestly, the black and yellow in that palette looks really good on him. 5/5
Performance: Nobuyuki Hayama and Steve Blum both voice him well, barring some wangsty lines that they can't make sound cool. 4.5/5
Character: The setup for a compelling, morally gray antagonist is there - he's a confused artificially created lifeform looking for a purpose and some sense of fulfillment because he lacks a heart. But then when he finds the Destiny Stones and their connection to Azulongmon, he loses his mind and starts destroying shit for no reason other than to find a strong enemy to fight all while continuing to wallow in existential angst and self pity that eventually just irritates rather than endears. He's just a mediocre, confusingly written character. 3.5/5
Motivation: It's never consistent. First he wants to stop feeling empty and find a purpose and place in the Digital World he can accept, but then he just wants power and to fight a worthy adversary, then he just wanders aimlessly searching for the one responsible for his creation so that he can kill him or whatever. Nothing ever really came together to make his character arc feel coherent. 3/5
Villainy: He steamrolls the DigiDestined's Digimon and destroys Destiny Stones. Again and again and again. 2.5/5
Resolution: He protects Cody and his grandfather from an attack by Myotismon that puts him in a weakned state. Stating that Myotismon can't be allowed to threaten the Digital World again, he gives his life to seal the gateway to the Digital World at Heighten View Terrace, thus finally finding his purpose. It's a great sacrificial moment and a nice end to his arc....that ends up completely pointless (see below). 2/5
Impact: Turns out Myotismon was never interested in going to the Digital World first because he needed to be reborn in an adjacent dimension, so all BlackWargreymon's sacrifice did was shut people out from the Heighten View Terrace gateway so the other good guys end up having to use the Summer Camp gateway instead. But then even without a specific gateway, every DigiDestined and their Digimon from around the world are able to enter the Digital World, and in a few years time, human-Digimon relations and access to the Digital World are common. So really, what did BlackWargreymon accomplished? What cruical role did he play that you'd lose if you cut him from the story? Ultimately his worst fear was true - his existence was meaningless! 1/5
Aces Villainy? NO
Overall: 3/5
DAEMON
Appearance: Another fantastic evil demon design - Digimon is really good at those! 5/5
Performance: He is an eerie and incredibly menacing villain in his three episodes of glory, and while Masami Kikuchi is kind of whatever in the role, Bob Papenbrook more than makes up for that. 4.5/5
Character: Daemon barely had much character to speak of in the original version, being just a mysterious, spoopy evil guy who aura farmed and said generic villain stuff as he terrorized the city and fought the Digidestined. The dub script rectified this by turning him into a Disney Villain, with the hamminess, snarky one liners, and air of theatrical sophistication making him more memorable. This is like Dub Apocalymon done right. 3.5/5
Motivation: The darkness of the Dark Spore is comparable to his own darkness, so he insists it belongs to him and wants the Spore for himself to add to his own power for reasons kept cryptic and never revealed to us. It makes him a threat to be taken seriously, but the lack of an end goal adds to the feeling that he had a bigger story waiting to be told that just never ended up being told. 3/5
Villainy: He is damn effective as a villain for the short time he's around, with he and his minions launching straight up terrorist attacks in Tokyo, being ruthless and heinous in their methods, and bringing a sense of close personal stakes and peril that was lacking for a long while. He also ends up becoming the ultimate obstacle for Ken to conquer as he battles the darkness within and withhout. 4.5/5
Resolution: Just like his motivation, his resolution slaps you in the face with wasted potential, as he gets sent to Dagomon's Dark Ocean since he's too powerful to be killed and is too easily able to bypass the breached Digi-Ports, and as he's sent away, he vows this isnt over - he shall return and the dark power he seeks will be his! And that's it for him. He never makes good on his threat. 3/5
Impact: Because nothing further comes of his plot, he impacts nothing. Even the angle of the new DigiDestined having had to kill Digimon doesn't really matter in the end. Which sucks because they set up the Evil VS Evil conflict with him and Oikawa/Myotismon way too well for it to amount to nothing like that. 1/5
Aces Villainy? YES, but only barely
Overall: 3.5/5
YUKIO OIKAWA
Appearance: He has one of my favorite human character designs to come out of the franchise. The purple high collar trenchcoat, the red shirt and tie underneath, long black hair, the pale skin and unpleasant looking face - it all comes together to create a striking villain design. 5/5
Performance: Damn does the man ever have presence! Toshiyuki Morikawa is appropriately creepy in the role, but as the character isn't around for too long, he doesn't get as much to chew on compared to his Mummymon. This can't be said of the dub, where he's voiced by Jamieson Price in his first big voice acting role. He'd become a staple of Digimon and anime voice acting in general thanks to his performance here. 5/5
Character: Oikawa is a masterfully crafted, well depicted, very compelling and tragic character, on a textual level representing a boy who could've become an OG Chosen Child but wasn't chosen yet who became unable to move on from his childhood passion due to grief over the loss of his best friend with whom he shared the passion, and on a subtextual level representing a kid who, due to a combination of being forced to "outgrow" his childhood comfort series and experiencing traumatic, soul-crushing grief, was unable to grow up in a healthy way and let his still burning desire to become a part of his childhood comfort series consume him - a tragedy that can speak to Digimon fans and fans of any major childhood franchise. 5/5
Motivation: It's a bit messy since he really just wants to see the Digital World for himself and possibly stay there due to his misanthropy and desire to live out all the wildest fantasies he and Hiroki used to have about the place, but he also acts like he wants to tear it all down and assert dominance over the place. It's explained away by that second part being the specter of Myotismon darkening his heart and infuencing his mind. 4.5/5
Villainy: As the mastermind behind the Digimon Emperor who's also responsible for the creation of Arachnemon and Mummymon and even BlackWargreymon, Oikawa is a major villain and an absolute bastardly one. There's something deeply personal and disturbing about he, an overgrown child, preying on children, manipulating them and exploiting them for his plan to enter the Digital World. The one downside is how sloppy his master plan is when it comes together due to how hastily connected the whole narrative of the series had to be, especially with the parts played by those goddamn Control Spires! 4.5/5
Resolution: While I'd have liked a little more from him than just dropping half dead after Myotismon came out of him, his actual ending is beautiful. He meets his own destined Digimon partner and is right in front of the Digital World with the chance to finally set foot in it like he always dreamed of... but he sees that his dream has been turned into an unpleasant nightmare as a result of his actions, so he prioritizes the well-being of the Digital World and all the kids who may yet still have their own adventures there over his ambitions by making the dying wish for his life energy to revitalize the Digital World. In doing so, his spirit joins with the system so that he becomes a part of his own dream for all eternity. 4.5/5
Impact: Oikawa is to 02 what Piedmon was to the first series. Without him there'd be no story and no new Digidestined. 5/5
Aces Villainy? YES
Overall: 5/5
MALOMYOTISMON
Appearance: What is that? WHAT THE FUCK is that? (The wings + shoulders are cool, but they'd look better on a different design!) 1.5/5
Performance: Toshiyuki Morikawa...you tried, but you're just no Ryūzaburō Ōtomo. The problem is averted in the dub, with Richard Epcar reprising his role and still doing it excellently. 2.5/5
Character: He goes for a medium between the intelligent, articulate and sadistic Myotismon and the brutish, beastial and psychotically ravenous VenomMyotismon, but he doesn't work as well as either of them did. 3.5/5
Motivation: It's the exact same motive Myotismon had before! They even make note of this in the show! 4/5
Villainy: In terms of sheer EVIL, he's still got it. What he does to Oikawa, the captive children, and Arachnemon and Mummymon is viscerally uncomfortable and vile to watch, and then he tries to Mind Rape all the DigiDestined with illusions while he attempts to feast upon their minds, and on top of that tries to merge the two worlds with overwhelming darkness just so that he could them tear it all asunder and assert his domination over the living and the dead. He loses half a point only due to how ridiculously inactive he becomes in the very last episode. 4.5/5
Resolution: Oh, this is just embarrassing. He stands totally still with his arms raised for the entire last episode, barely puts up a real fight against all the Digimon and Digivices that came after him, and then he somehow gets completely taken apart by the captive children stating their personal dreams and getting Digimon and Digivices of their own. When he's back in specter form, Imperialdramon fires his cannon and makes him go BOOM! That's it. He's gone for good just like that. What a fucking disgrace to the best Big Bad from the first series! 1/5
Impact: MaloMyotismon is to 02 what Apocalymon was to the first series, so at least he's still got this going for him too! 5/5
Aces Villainy? YES, but only barely
Overall: 3.5/5
Final Ranking:
1. Myotismon, Puppetmon, Piedmon, The Virus Digimon, Ken Ichijouji, and Yukio Oikawa.
2. Etemon, Apocalymon, Kokomon, and Arachnemon and Mummymon.
3. Devimon, MetalSeadramon, Machinedramon, Daemon, and MaloMyotismon.
4. BlackWargreymon.
