Digimon Profile #35- The Dark Area of the Digital World

[Unknown Neo]

I still love all those pictures. But this is fun and interesting. It makes a lot of sense that this is the afterlife/where most big evils go to stay/hide.

 

[Noni]

I would like to understand the "geography" of the "main" digital world from the Reference Book in relation to it's boundaries a bit better.

Is not quite clear to me where the Net Ocean and the Firewall are positioned, for example. At times the Net Ocean seems to confuse itself with the Network, maybe they kind of gradually link to each other without a clear border.

I know the digital world exists inside the Network, and so does the Net Ocean. We know in the depths of the Net Ocean is the boundary that leads to the Dark Web and the Dark Area below. But is hard for me to visualize all of it. So I am hoping future profiles will talk about the Net Ocean, The Firewall and The Dark Web.

The Firewall itself is also an interesting type of area and how does it interact with the previous ones?

I remember reading a meta once of someone pointing out that the way the digital world is described to us in the Reference Book is such, that we have no reason to believe is even spherical like the Earth. Which makes sense, is not a space dictated by the regular laws of physics, I would like to get a better picture of it.

 

[geoomega]

I didn’t know Gulfmon had the Same authority in Dark Area as Grandracmon.

 

[Bancho]

I remember reading a meta once of someone pointing out that the way the digital world is described to us in the Reference Book is such, that we have no reason to believe is even spherical like the Earth. Which makes sense, is not a space dictated by the regular laws of physics, I would like to get a better picture of it.

I was reading Ravel Monte's Wordpress recently and he says that early lore had humans creating File Island and Folder Continent to create a visualization that humans can understand to study digimon. The firewall could be something not adapted into this virtual space (the Digital World) so it might exist only in areas where digimon aren't rendered? It's all very confusing to me and both his writings and the reference book mentions of the Firewall are probably about null canon during the franchise's formative years that the franchise doesn't go by anymore

 

[ThEOnE94]

I would like to understand the "geography" of the "main" digital world from the Reference Book in relation to it's boundaries a bit better.

Is not quite clear to me where the Net Ocean and the Firewall are positioned, for example. At times the Net Ocean seems to confuse itself with the Network, maybe they kind of gradually link to each other without a clear border.

I know the digital world exists inside the Network, and so does the Net Ocean. We know in the depths of the Net Ocean is the boundary that leads to the Dark Web and the Dark Area below. But is hard for me to visualize all of it. So I am hoping future profiles will talk about the Net Ocean, The Firewall and The Dark Web.

The Digital World doesn't exist in the network. In Tamers is a world outside the network. In the other anime is a higher plane of existence than our world or more specifically a superior structure to our world(baseline infinite multiverse) that transcends conventional reality at multiple levels of space-time and stands at a higher structural level to the point where eevn if you use the real world as a processing resource you cannot process the data that makes up the Digital World. Its various aspects transcend and even errode reality. The Network is just an inter-dimensional space/spaces that serves to connect both worlds. As for geography:

Go from bellow up:


Super-Dimensional Space Time(outside all worlds and all space-times)
-Kernel(transcends the DW and sees it as a lower plane of existence.Highest point in the DW.)
-Infinity Mountain(100 floors each one a higher dimension than the other as you get the 3 and 6D reality in the lower floors,12D and finally 24D in the Kernel
-Digital Dungeon
-Singular Zone/Infinite Cauldron
-Realm of the Gods: The layer of the Four Sacred Beasts
-Normal Digital World
-Firewall that defends it from illegal entrances
-Dark Area
-Net Ocean
(-Dark Web
-Deep Web
-Surface Web)
-Network
-Material World

The Dark Ocean is confirmed to be another DW in interviews for 02 so it would amount to the DW. It is very much a hierarchy of worlds with lower and imperfect worlds and higher and perfect worlds running on the outflow theory of neoplatonic emanationism as Kakudo puts it.

when did we ever see them do this?

JESmon and Omegamon slash through space-time and created portals from the real to the Digital World in TRI.Alphamon straight up breaks through the fabric of space-time.
In Chronicle/Chronicle X the RKs have to transcend linear time to move between the layers of the NDW.

 

[Exodd]

Hadesmon seems to run the equivalent of Dark Area for Appmon. I wonder if Cocytus also accesses that. Maybe MetalGarurumon's "Cocytus Breath" alludes that Cocytus is extremely cold.

Many Dark Area Digimon are said to have personal armies and territories, and some have titles like "prince" and "count". Maybe they keep each other in check as they compete, unless they decide to team up.

Also I guess Valkyrimon can reincarnate Digimon before they get to Anubimon.

 

[Theigno]

Hey, do you guys remember in Cyber Sleuth where Sayo killing the Digimon Story DS universe's Demon Lords made them more powerful in the other universes? With the new information of every Digital World sharing one Cocytus, I think these two details may be connected

Actually, they seem to be getting into each other's way if anything. There's only one instance of Cocytus and so only one place where data is turned into the flesh of the Demon Lords, which kind of contradicts having one Demon Lord per world idea which clearly would make more sense if... well the Demon Lords actually corresponded to the different "per world" Dark Areas.
Or you could go for the very silly interpretation that data still gets split up between all the different Worlds and even though there's one Lair per Demon Lord, there are just dozens of incarnations from different Dimensions hanging out there, like all the Belphemons just having one big demonic sleepover.

but generally the Dimension/Universe/Continuity relationship is not exactly well-defined even if people pretend that it is. So it is possible, and I would argue likely, that this particular constellation of DW, Iliad, Cocytus (and let's throw in Witchenly as well) is in fact only a single Universe onto itself and even though there's a single Cocytos for those worlds, others would have their separate Cocytuses (Cocyti?). Ot they might not have any at all. The Dark Area as envisioned in Frontier was basically just a spherical prison for Lucemon with no deeper interdimensional layer below it (Lucemon could probably just have gone there instead of to the human world if there was).

JESmon and Omegamon slash through space-time and created portals from the real to the Digital World in TRI.Alphamon straight up breaks through the fabric of space-time.

Completely irrelevant to the question. Neither JESmon nor Alphamon are Ryoal Knights as far as Adventure is concerned. And that's not just my Interpretation, their cards in the tri memorial cards set explicitly omit the Royal Knights tag.
And of course throughout tri infected Digimon like Kuwagamon and Ogremon have no problems crossing over into the human world either.

In Chronicle/Chronicle X the RKs have to transcend linear time to move between the layers of the NDW.

That is rather comically missing the point, because the separation into different time states is a basic feature of the NDW in general and has nothing to do with the Royal Knights themselves.
And Yggdrasil has helpfully connected all of them, and of course he allows his servants to go wherever he wishes.
Deriving a general ability from this is like me claiming that I have the ability to walk through walls because I can open doors someone else built into the walls.

The Dark Ocean is confirmed to be another DW in interviews for 02 so it would amount to the DW. It is very much a hierarchy of worlds with lower and imperfect worlds and higher and perfect worlds running on the outflow theory of neoplatonic emanationism as Kakudo puts it.

Uh, that's some shaky argumentation. Only because Kakudo made some tweets mentioning his idea of how those "Neoplatonic" concepts were his take on Adventure, that doesn't make it the ultimate truth about the lore in general, which started getting written before he got involved in the franchise, and continued without his involvement (as far as we know) long after Adventure. Even claiming that all this is canonical to Adventure is questionable, especially since many of those tweets were him just spitballing about the potential possibilities he would have explored after Zero Two... but he never did. And I don't think that all those themes were magically codified in Adventure and Zero Two as they exist now. What we have to ask ourselves is, even if that was his interpretation of the setting from the very start, were any of the many other writers and artists involved with Adventure in agreement or even aware that this was the point?
Especially considering that we know that Kakudo seems to have issues with the Hosoda movies and left the development of Kizuna because it wasn't compatible with his vision, I don't think the idea that his philosophical musings are the center of some digimon cosmology that all other writers adhere to is really feasible at all.

Deathmon and SkullSatamon better have their own new Angel digimon forms that should reveal in the future...

Deathmon, maybe since we kind of lack an actual bestial angel (Cherubimon is still too much of a... plushy looking design), but SkullSatamon is very clearly based off Angemon and Pidmon already, there's no need for another Angel analogue for him. Whereas Devimon is a very direct conceptual inversion of an angel, SkullSatamon represents a different kind of corruption and fall from grace, one based on degeneration and decomposition, that was always the reference, and squishing in another angelic design would be ruining that.

The "three worlds" are not merely three universes. They are multiverses. Yggdrasil's DW,Homero's DW and the 3rd one are a collection of worlds. The DW is confirmed after CS to have an infinite number of universes,an infinite number of timelines,an infinite number of parallel worlds,infinitely branching space-time,to be broken in layers(dimensions) wich would be an infinite number as well and hosted on multiple servers. Both layers and servers containing individual universes as well as encompassing an infinite number of them, higher ones containing multiverses and stuff like that. And there's an infinite amount of each (though we admittedly only know the individual names of 4 or 5 different servers).

That might be "true" for CS, but there's not really any proof that any continuity outside of it operates like that.

And we do need more proof in addition to what CS itself says because of the way continuity works in general.
We have some Statement A which is true in continuity A but false in continuity B and vice versa. That's an easy enough concept to grasp, but it only works cleanly as long as we are restricting ourselves to cases in which a continuity only contains information concerning itself.
Continuity A can assert "Statement A is correct across all continuities" and Continuity B can assert "Statement A is incorrect across all continuities".
Which is basically what happens every time we get a crossover.
Other universes in the same Multiverse have different rules "for the entire multiverse" that are paradoxically only valid in that particular Universe.

The WS games claim that every digital world in existence derives from ENIAC, tri can claim that every world in existence comes from the quantum ocean, while Xros Wars claims that the human world is a subset of the digital world which predates it, and Cyber Sleuth can do whatever else it wants with "Universes" but that does not make it all "absolutely" true at the same time.

Apocalymon wasn't born in the Dark Area but always existed since before the creation of the Digital World as we know it.Apocalymon is actually an abstract being. A concept, an idea without a material body. The very idea that denies evolution and anything of the sort. He was one of the Ideas involved in a long fight to decide wich kind of world the DW will be and when he lost he was banished behind the wall of fire. This Idea used the data of the defeated Dark Masters and the negative feelings of the Digimon that perished in the evolution process to build a material body for itself.
Source: Digimon Adventure Novelization.

...And since the Adventure Novelization is its own continuity, its interpretation of Apocalymon is necessarily applicable to any other Digimon continuity out there. Hell, the whole concept of the struggle between concepts of how the digital world should "be" is not something that is even relevant to the lore of basically anything else.

And not even other versions of Adventure stay true to this interpretation of Apocalymon as for example the Ryo games claim that Apocalymon was formed because of Milleniummon's power of evil with none of those metaphysical claims.

I didn’t know Gulfmon had the Same authority in Dark Area as Grandracmon.

Literally not what it says, it just says that it's living there.

 

[Mattman324]

They could most likely overthrow Anubimon (if they wanted).

According to Chronicle X, at least, they absolutely could - if they wanted to suffer the consequence of such an action, which is that Anubimon has Yggdrasil on speed dial, and Yggdrasil has Examon on speed dial, and you'd better have some absolutely massive game changer like the X-Antibody if you're going against Examon because he's going to smash through you otherwise. (And even that only works until he decides he's going to give himself an X-Antibody, because he can just... do that, because Lore Examon is peak tomfoolery.)

Ot they might not have any at all.

Xros Wars, at the very least, doesn't seem to have a proper Dark Area - it had at least two potential equivalents in Hell Zone and Prison Zone and neither of them fit the mold we see from any other continuity in basically any way outside of "is the underworld where bad things get screwed up but Demon Lords are strengthened, and are super hard to live in."

 

[Muur]

When it comes to one Cocytus I think they mean per timeline/universe. E.g. it would connect the regular, Illiad, Witchelny and others but it doesn't connect Aventure to Tamers, or Cyber Sleuth to Fusion etc each universe has its own Cocytus. So rather than infinite Blephemon's hangout together there's only one Belphemon per timeline and they just chill in the Cocytus inbetween each Digital World. So if you try to go from the regular one to Illiad youll end up running into the SGDL, Gulfmon, and GranDracmon unless you're really good at avoiding them.

So there's technically infinite Coytus, one each for each infinite universe/timeline/whatever you wanna call it.

 

[Tarama]

Tarama:

I assume the Cocytus only connects the three Digital Worlds in each dimension/universe where there are the three Worlds, not all the Digital Worlds in multiverse.

This one is an interesting Profile. Thanks Bandai.

The "three worlds" are not merely three universes. They are multiverses. Yggdrasil's DW,Homero's DW and the 3rd one are a collection of worlds. The DW is confirmed after CS to have an infinite number of universes,an infinite number of timelines,an infinite number of parallel worlds,infinitely branching space-time,to be broken in layers(dimensions) wich would be an infinite number as well and hosted on multiple servers. Both layers and servers containing individual universes as well as encompassing an infinite number of them, higher ones containing multiverses and stuff like that. And there's an infinite amount of each (though we admittedly only know the individual names of 4 or 5 different servers).

I don't know if my wording are ambiguous. But if you think they are, I can confirm that was exactly what I meant: That Worlds are not Universes.

You and I basically have the same take on that.

 

[Mattman324]

When it comes to one Cocytus I think they mean per timeline/universe. E.g. it would connect the regular, Illiad, Witchelny and others but it doesn't connect Aventure to Tamers, or Cyber Sleuth to Fusion etc each universe has its own Cocytus. So rather than infinite Blephemon's hangout together there's only one Belphemon per timeline and they just chill in the Cocytus inbetween each Digital World. So if you try to go from the regular one to Illiad youll end up running into the SGDL, Gulfmon, and GranDracmon unless you're really good at avoiding them.

So there's technically infinite Coytus, one each for each infinite universe/timeline/whatever you wanna call it.

The whole thing about applying "infinite" to something is that the minute you start doing it you have to start wondering about greater infinites. Like, so, every Digital World is linked across infinite realities, sure, except we know that some of them aren't actually connected like that. But those worlds that aren't connected are connected to their own infinite variations, so maybe they are connected to the other worlds, just only through greater infinites? And then what about things that aren't connected to those, are those really actually connected by greater greater infinites? And that's even before getting into the canonical crossovers with other V-Pets and Medarot and, I dunno, Angela Anaconda or whatever else - how do those fit into the cosmology?

It's a lot like the fact that Tamers' Digital World is directly connected, according to the drawings we've seen of its structure, to another world. What other world is that? Totally irrelevant, so they don't ever go into it. Because in general, when you say big sweeping statements involving infinite realities and such, like, sure, there could be infinite variations on that world... but we're not ever going to see an infinite number of those so who gives a fuck about them. A world being connected to another world is only relevant when that world being connected to that other world is relevant.

 

[Darklabo]

JESmon and Omegamon slash through space-time and created portals from the real to the Digital World in TRI.Alphamon straight up breaks through the fabric of space-time.

Completely irrelevant to the question. Neither JESmon nor Alphamon are Ryoal Knights as far as Adventure is concerned. And that's not just my Interpretation, their cards in the tri memorial cards set explicitly omit the Royal Knights tag.
And of course throughout tri infected Digimon like Kuwagamon and Ogremon have no problems crossing over into the human world either.

In fact, both Jesmon and Alphamon are Royal Knights in Adventure Tri. Tai even met Jesmon as a Hackmon before he became a RK in the PSP Game. And the card doesn’t prove nor disprove anything, especially when there is a Tai’s Omegamon and a Takato’s Dukemon cards, both having the Royal Knight mention.

 

[Yamato-san]

Hadesmon seems to run the equivalent of Dark Area for Appmon. I wonder if Cocytus also accesses that. Maybe MetalGarurumon's "Cocytus Breath" alludes that Cocytus is extremely cold.

Now that you mention it, I wonder if the name "Cocytus" was coincidental, or if it was chosen deliberately to somehow connect it to MetalGarurumon. I mean, surely they would've realized that, of all the names they could've chosen for a hellish realm (including literally any of the other four rivers of Hades), this particular one also happens to be referenced in the attack name for what could be considered among the most heavily marketed Digimon in existence.

 

[TMS]

The Royal Knights have never been mentioned in the Adventure universe. They were only a thing in the PSP game because there was a crossover with other universes. The Hackmon in the PSP game isn’t the one in Tri, either.

I doubt that there’s meant to be any connection between the Dark Area and MetalGarurumon. Cocytus Breath got its name for being cold, whereas if you’re going to have a deepest part of Hell, Cocytus is the first thing to come to mind.

 

[Noni]

I remember reading a meta once of someone pointing out that the way the digital world is described to us in the Reference Book is such, that we have no reason to believe is even spherical like the Earth. Which makes sense, is not a space dictated by the regular laws of physics, I would like to get a better picture of it.

I was reading Ravel Monte's Wordpress recently and he says that early lore had humans creating File Island and Folder Continent to create a visualization that humans can understand to study digimon. The firewall could be something not adapted into this virtual space (the Digital World) so it might exist only in areas where digimon aren't rendered? It's all very confusing to me and both his writings and the reference book mentions of the Firewall are probably about null canon during the franchise's formative years that the franchise doesn't go by anymore

I wasn't aware of this blogger at all, thank you, I will give it a look. I love early development information like this.

 

[Dr. Drake]

If Cocytus links DW yggdrasil and DW Iliad, as well as witchelny, it is possible that the description of Plutomon is not restricted to DW Iliad alone, But that he is actually the ruler of the dark area as a whole, as well as in this way Anubimon might be the supervisor of the dark area as a whole as well, that's interesting.

 

[Bancho]

I'm only just now realizing that if the Demon Lords have reason to surface in Digital World (Yggdrasil), there's no reason they wouldn't also be popping up in Iliad. Previously I thought of angels and demons as not existing in Iliad in the same way they do the Digital World since Homeros tries to maintain neutrality to better observe free will.
I guess Beelzemon meeting Vulcanusmon on friendly terms isn't just a one off event; the Demon Lords probably walk around peacefully in Homeros

 

[HeroWars]

With all this topic i really wonder why Toei didn't make plot like what other popular anime do
Like introduce digimon field then do a battle with big group like demon lord to angels to royal knight to etc then explore more about digital world. Then they could make movie like battle in Witchelny or battle with Olympos 12.

 

[Darklabo]

The Royal Knights have never been mentioned in the Adventure universe. They were only a thing in the PSP game because there was a crossover with other universes.

It’s completely irrelevant. The PSP Game feature Tai and Davis from the Adventure Universe and two Royal Knights, so the RKs exists in the Adventure Universe.
If anything, it’s just another evidence that the RKs can freely travel between Universes/Timelines, like Veevee did in Cyber-Sleuth.

The Hackmon in the PSP game isn’t the one in Tri, either.

Except it is.
- It’s the same Digimon.
- The only one of it’s species appearing in the Adventure Continuity.
- Who have a similar role in both instances (In the PSP Game he’s still trained by Gankoomon, in Tri he’s a Royal Knight who works for Homeostasis).

 

[Muur]

They meet Hackmon and Gankoomon in the Digital Dimension, which is separate from the World of Adventure and is a World of its own that connects to all the animes. Supposedly something in promotional material confirmed that Hackmon and Gankoomon are from Cyber Sleuth universe and were training in said dungeon before the events of CS.

As for Gankoomon training Hackmon, that doesn't really prove anything as that's their official lore you'd may as well say all Hackmons are from Adventure at that point