DigiMonday - SHOOTMON
(Perfect Level/Vaccine Attribute/Machine Type)
Seemingly a creature-ified version of a pitching machine, Shootmon is all about balls. Its official descriptions states that it was born from data regarding various ball-based sports and wants to pass its love of ball games to other Digimon by means of bludgeoning them with balls fired at 185mph. Its official artwork in the Digimon Encyclopedia shows it carrying an arsenal of baseballs, footballs/soccerballs, volleyballs, basketballs and what appears to be a large bowling ball that its preparing to fling. It's a pretty wacky and over-the-top idea for a 'Mon, but there's something quite amusing about a ball-game obsessed creature so excited about its beloved sports that it can only express it through high-speed spheroid slinging.
Shootmon debuted in 2021 in what I consider one of the most interesting Digimon VPet lines, the Vital Bracelet Digital Monster. The Vital Bracelet was essentially a standard VPet crossed with a fitbit, requiring the user to meet certain exercise requirements in order to let their Digimon reach more powerful forms. Different themed evolution lines of 'Mons could be installed in the Vital Bracelet by inserting little memory drives called Dims, with Shootmon debuting in the first Dim released (named Impulse City,) alongside many other exercise-themed Digimon that could evolve from the Vital Bracelet's mascot Pulsemon. Its also notable that, standing notably shorter than Pulsemon's other possible Perfect-Level evolutions such as the karate-themed Boutmon or bouldering-themed Climbmon, Shootmon falls into an archetype of small, spherical perfect-levels seen in many early Digimon Vpets; in particular, those oddly buff arms on a spherical body give it a resemblance to the very first little round perfect-level Mamemon while its perpetual toothy grin is very similar to that of another example of the archetype, Giromon.
