I was wondering if any of the Digimon Profile articles would get to a point of containing enough in-depth information to actually get me excited, and I guess their "DigiPro" might actually reach that level, even if right now the excitement is still kind of at an "at least a step in the right direction" stage.
We're finally getting from all the basic yeah no shit type of information like "Did you know that levels make Digimon stronger", which only the biggest contrarians with no grasp on statistics have ever tried to dispute, to the parts of the lore that actually had some sort of ambiguity going on even if much of it boils down to clarifying and in some sense redefining a bit of terminology.
First and foremost this update clarifies something that has been up in the air for a long time: Chrondigizoit and Chrome Digizoid are actually different terms with Digizoit referring specifically to the raw metal and Digizoid to the refined alloy. And they didn't just state it here, they clarified it consistently throughout the DRB, during the time leading up to this they went on a literal crusade through all profiles mentioning the concept and made sure that everything fit the definition, and reworking it if it didn't, down to altering single words or letters (and not just some copy and paste stuff either). And what a benevolent crusade it was.
Among many similar changes they went into MetalEtemon's profile and dropped the word "Metal" after Chrome Digizoid because it's an alloy and no longer a pure metal and conversely they went into Chaosdramon's profile and changed the mention of red digizoid getting purified from chrome digizoid to referring to the digizoit metal since chrome digizoid would have already been the processed variant. This really gives me a warm fuzzy feeling in my heart; Those are tiny details, technicalities that 90% of the audience wouldn't even notice and they cared enough to actually go back and tweak it and that is a great sign of genuine commitment and not just "it's a generic anime fantasy setting who cares". If they can get this sense of consistency and attention to detail into the actual storytelling of the franchise then yeah we could have some real potential here.
Of course that won't stop translations from mixing up the terms due to their similarity or even going completely off course ("Kulon mines" anyone?).
Anyway, let's talk about the actual implications that this not really new but at least newly clarified information actually has.
I remember a post about the digizoid/digizoit distinction a while ago where I argued that because CresGarurumon's profile used the Chrondigizoit spelling it shouldn't be assumed that his armor is the same as Magnamon's because if they meant the special golden alloy and not just the metal they wouldn't have spelled it like that.
Turns out I was half wrong, half right. They apparently do intend it to be the same kind of armor (at least now they do) but I was also correct about the spelling argument because now that they are actually canonically stating them to be the same when they did their profile updates they actually went into his profile and changed the spelling from t to a d.
And that happened across the board, whenever the material was mentioned as actual being part of weapons and armor it is now always the "chrome digizoid" spelling there is now canonically no Digimon that equips unprocessed chronodigizoit. It's hard to say why, perhaps they want to imply that unprocessed it's still to close to the weight and unwieldiness of Huanglong ore, but the exciting part is that this basically acts as some sort of retroactive reverse power creep for many older metal Digimon.
Because they were previously stated to contain/use "digizoit" and to anyone aware of the distinction between the raw and processed material that would put their equipment below that of Digimon with "chrome digizoid" armor/weapons made of the actual alloy in terms of effectiveness (think iron swords vs steel swords).
But now it's official, It's chrome all the way for all of them which evens the playing field a little bit overall. After all, if it's literally stated to be the same material why would it be harder on an Ultimate level Digimon than it is on a Perfect and the original Adventure seems to back up that it isn't.
That's not to say that all of them are definitely on the defensive level of Royal Knights like Dukemon and Dynasmon since their profiles like to bring up the degree of purity of the Digizoid but at least it's something.
Another interesting hole that was fixed was that the past use of nomenclature left open a bit of a weird ambiguity, as we couldn't be quite sure that the organic CHO-alloy mentioned in MetalSeadramon's profile was actually the same as Chrome Digizoid, since the CHO term was never mentioned again and there being plenty of "Metal" Digimon that don't seem to have digizoid armor.
We could have either been looking at different digizoit based alloys one organic and one not, or Chrome digizoid secretly had all these organic properties that were never really brought up (outside perhaps of the gold variant).
Just going by the facts stated it was kind of hard to say which way Occam's razor would actually cut here but with the new information we can confidently state that all the digizoid variants can act like organic tissue to some extend.
I wonder if that could explain why Chaosdramon is seemingly more organic than Mugendramon. It always seemed strange to me that a Digimon whose whole point was to be 100% metal cobbled together from machine parts would get upgraded and somehow end up with more squishy organic parts that don't seem to offer any advantage. But with all Chrome Digizoid being possibly organic we could be looking at chrome digizoid acting as tissue or something.
But the organic part it does leave Gold Digizoid in a kind of weird position since its organic properties were hyped up like something special... It's like someone announcing they found a very special version of water that's actually wet omg.
It could be, just from inferring about the part about muscles that they mention, that the organic integration of regular chrome digizoid is limited to basically just "external" material while Gold digizoid takes it further to be actually directly interfacing with nerves and stuff and actually act like an actual organ.
As a side note, after the comment of gold digizoid degenerating without enough training, I really want to see what a lazy, malnourished Magnamon or Magnamon X would look like, would their armor crack and blemish like metal, or would it go the organic muscle route and shrink up into some weird wrinkly flaps around his body or something?
Now there is still a bit of an oddity here that is unfortunately not resolved by the new edit, and maybe even made a bit weirder, and that is the fact that MetalSeadramon explains the use of Chrome Digizoid applies to all "Metal Species" Digimon and that is wild since that would cover Digimon such as MetalMamemon, MetalTyranomon and MetalPhantomon that aren't usually assumed to consist of Chrome digizoid.
Most of this could just be a weird oversight based on the original context, it's possible that back then Chrome digizoid wasn't meant to be that super high end invincible material indicative of ultimate strength and rather just a generic magic metal for explaining why Digimon covered head to toe in steel slabs are much more nimble and flexible than they should be.
Note that not even the actual concept of "Metal" as a species of Digimon has really been used outside the profiles of MetalEtemon and MetalSeadramon presumably because it really doesn't make sense (it's like claiming that the rhinoceros beetle's species is rhinoceros instead of beetle) the metal is a type designation, a modifier not a species name in itself and it's great that later profiles recognize it, but it leaves the older profiles in a weird spot where you can't be sure how to handle a term that was applied inconsistently.
You could claim that it invalidates it and that because of that we for example shouldn't assume that for example MetalMemon's psycho Blasters contain Digizoid, or you could go the opposite route and say that in the absence of any actual metal "species" of Digimon we should interpret in a more liberal way as applying to basically all or most Digimon species with a significant percentage of metal parts.
That might seem extreme and we kind of got used to the use of Chrome Digizoid being explicitly mentioned in the profiles but there have been examples of it being brought up in connection with Digimon whose profiles have been silent about it.
For example in HiAndromon's profile states "The percentage of Chrome Digizoid parts which compose its body has increased" which clearly implies that the regular Andromon had at least a few chrome digizoid parts to begin with.
And at another point I believe Next claimed that MachGaogamon's fists were chrome digizoid even though nothing else ever claimed that.
The logical conclusion of this would be a reversal of the prevailing attitude that the existence of Chrome Digizoid needs to be proven in all cases to basically the expectation that if you have a full metal Digimon there's probably Chrome Digizoid involved just as a base assumption.
Aside from that, overall the descriptions of the individual types of Digizoid were just a bit too generic and obviously pasted from the profiles that mentioned them, but I don't think the connection between the black and obsidian types has been made before and with Yggdrasil's involvement in black Digizoid pointed out yet again, it makes it seem like obsidian is basically the "secular" version of the black type. Which is interesting I guess and maybe that means that any potential future Digimon with Black Digizoid would also be associated with Yggdrasil in some way.
...So that turned into a text wall but that's also the way I like it.
