Hybrid/No-Level Fridays...
This week really has been a crapshoot, hasn’t it? Today’s delay was because of writer’s block. I’m gonna work on building up a bigger backlog so this happens less.
Anyway, as for today’s review...
Shoutmon - Small Dragon Digimon Attacks: Rowdy Rocker, Rock Spirits [Rock Damashī], Soul Crusher; [Dub] Rock’n’Roller, Fiery Fastball, Bellow Blaster
A ferocious Digimon with extremely high aggressiveness due to its hot-blooded enthusiasm. However, it is friendly towards its comrades, and its friendship with other Digimon, surpassing species, can be deepened even further if they are recognized by Shoutmon.
There is a unique feature to Shoutmon's singing that converts its passion to energy, and it can perform an attack called "Soul Crusher", which uses its mic to amplify the heated emotions blazing within its chest, then bash the opponent. Because passion is the very source of the attack, it will definitely inflict damage no matter the target, and since Shoutmon won't give up fighting unless its passion disappears, this is the reason Shoutmon is said to be a ferocious Digimon with high aggressiveness.
On one hand it seems ferocious, but on the other it is said to love music and songs, and it likes to hum songs with natural sounding background music like the sound of the wind, raindrops, the murmuring of a river, or the stirring of leaves on a tree. Because it can often become too enthusiastic in its song, accidentally letting off its "Soul Crusher" even though there aren't any enemies, it's probably safest to leave the spot at once if Shoutmon starts singing, so that it doesn't notice you.
Shoutmon itself is said to have the mysterious trait of always having its McField-brand mic in its possession, and a Shoutmon without the mic is not really a Shoutmon. It is said that a Shoutmon that has completely lost its mic will rapidly lose power from the shock of not being a Shoutmon anymore, and before long it will have wasted away. Therefore, you should never play a practical joke like hiding the mic. Incidentally, its "Rowdy Rocker" lets it wield the mic as in bōjutsu, so it is excellent not only in scuffling matches but also in performances.
- Translation by Wikimon.
Yes, today’s Digimon is the one who’s so bad ass he generates his own theme music, aka Shoutmon, the lead protagonist of Digimon Xros Wars. And I say “lead protagonist” in that Shoutmon seems like he’s just as much the main character of that show as his human partner does.
As I explained in my Starmons review, the whole point of Xros Wars was super robot-style combinations, and as the main character, Shoutmon is the core of the series’ main combination. While a lot of the designs for this series were blatantly more toyetic than normal, this more applies to their combined forms, and Shoutmon himself stands out pretty well on his own without looking much like he has to split apart to become a toy, albeit while appearing a bit more robotic-looking than Dragon-type Digimon tend to do.
And honestly, he’s just the sort of design that appeals to one’s inner child. A rock and roll dragon who turns into part of a super robot and uses a microphone as a bludgeon is just the sort of thing a 10 year old would appeal to, and for a Digimon, that’s a super important thing to achieve. While Agumon is basic and very archetypal, Shoutmon has his theme and screams it, for lack of a better metaphor, as loudly as possible.
Seriously, one of his attacks is throwing musical notes made of FIRE.
There’s a few clever touches with Shoutmon going on conceptually too. For instance, his microphone, called the “McField brand microphone”, is a reference to the character Mike McField from the franchise “Legendz”, which was co-developed by Bandai and WiZ, who are both responsible for bringing us Digimon. It had a manga and an anime and a toyline and everything! Digimon has paid homage to its sister projects multiple times, and seeing it continued with Shoutmon is super nice.
But wait, how can Shoutmon get more awesome? Well, this totally objective reviewer, will tell you how:
You take Shoutmon and you make him taller and more bad ass with scars and a scarf and looking like he escaped from Getter Robo for the express purpose of kicking evil’s ass, that’s how. This form of Shoutmon was used for Xros Wars’ third segment, where he was older and a bit wiser. When I think of Shoutmon, THIS is the version that’s always in my head.
Xros Wars was, unfortunately, a very flawed show, and I don’t hold the same esteem for it I once did. But all the same, Shoutmon is an excellent character and an excellent design, and he remains one of my favorites in the franchise. It’s rare that you get a Digimon whose motivations drive the story, and honestly, he’s an excellent example of how to take a well worn character role like “the main hero’s dragon” and find a way to make it appeal to the kind of kid who thinks dragons and rock and roll and yelling at the top of your lungs how cool you are are the most awesome things ever.
Because honestly, that’s Digimon’s core audience.
Shoutmon gets...
FIVE STARMONS!
[The subtitled screenshots for this review come from Ryuu-Rogue's Xros Wars fan-subs.]