Following on from my last countdown post for the Kizuna Countdown, today I’m writing about my favourite Digimon Adventure Villain.
Gosh this is a really, really hard choice. The Adventure villains are mostly all just so good (for lack of a better term). So let’s talk about who is not a good villain before I try to choose who is my favourite Digimon Adventure villain.
First of all, we can rule out Vamdemon being my favourite Digimon Adventure villain because, out of all the other baddies in Digimon Adventure or even Digimon Adventure 02, he never really tried to actively kill the kids; Devimon tried to murder them in their sleep, Etemon and MetalSeadramon tried to murder them with strong Digimon, Machinedramon dropped nukes on the children, and Puppetmon, well, PUPPETMON HAD A GUN.
I left out mentioning Piedmon because he never really tried to murder the kids because I feel like he never needed to. Palette-swapped-Hisoka just wanted to get rid of them by turning them into dolls forever, and nearly did it. Basically, Piedmon is unique in the way that he didn’t try to kill the kids because he just needed them gone, while the other Dark Masters used brute force (or, just kidnap and separate like Puppetmon did), Piedmon realised he didn’t have to necessarily kill the children.
I didn’t mention any of Vamdemon’s lackeys as most of them were fairly average, except for Phantomon who was oddly hilarious for a lackey in the English dub (not choosing him was no easy…tusk…). In any case, Tailmon would have clearly be chosen as my favourite Digimon Adventure Villain if she actually was a villain because, if not for Hikari being her destined human partner, she would have murdered an eight year old.
Puppetmon, while not as violent or calculating as the other Dark Masters, was as sympathetic as he was terrifying and Etemon was a good mix of hilarious and threatening in both the Japanese version and the English dub.
MetalSeadramon can be ruled out as he had the same plan as Machinedramon but was far less effective with it. However, both of them died fairly quickly anyway.
I am also not including Ken, as, he would win by a landslide, but also because he later became a good guy.
My answer is fairly clear, and I’ve mentioned this episode so many times, but honourable mention to Cherrymon for convincing Matt that he should kill his friend.
However, as a villain team, the Dark Masters in general are pretty strong, even if they never really work as a team, they’re individually each fairly effective villains.
My favourite Digimon Adventure Villain: Puppetmon
Honestly, I almost chose Etemon, but Etemon never really felt as close to killing the children and achieving his goal as Puppetmon.
When I look at a villain, I mainly focus on how effective they are at achieving their goals (usually getting rid of the kids in some way) and how interesting they are as a character – Etemon was funny, sure, but he didn’t really have much character depth, in fact, I can’t think of any other villain who remained a villain (as in, not Ken) who actually had any depth or characterisation other than ‘is evil’.
Puppetmon was, as I mentioned before, sympathetic; he was lonely, kind of just wanted friends, and really just had the mid of a child. However, said child is also in possession of a gun.
So who is your favourite Digimon Adventure villain? Let me know in the comments!
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