I love episodic shows, and even I started to feel like Ghost Game was testing my patience towards the end.
It's all the worse when you take outside media into account. Now I guess Gammamon gets a bunch of Perfects that are just never gonna appear at all (further showcasing what a complete waste his branching evolutions were in the long run). Meanwhile, Gulus is supposed to get an entire line to himself, but it's looking like, at best, any development on that front is gonna be crammed into the last two episodes.
how would you nerf agumon each time? or does it get to where mega is nothing and theres like 25 levels after that
that's just not true, they got a ton of mileage out of the adult form branches to where Wezen and Kaus got quite a lot of memorable moments in stories where they felt like the ideal forms to use over the other two when they really could have just shilled Betel and Gulus and sidelined Wezen and Kaus instead. They even went out of their way to showcase that all three adult Gammamons (other than Gulus) can become Canoweismon and the end result honestly feels so nice as non of the branches in the anime feel wasted. Also, Gulus is still relevant in the last three episodes
So I take it you really enjoyed Adventure: 2020
It's still just the Adult forms that get any variation, though. They're pretty much glorified Armor evolutions, albeit seeing a bit more usage after Perfects came into the picture (possibly since, as you mentioned, they're all able to evolve into said Perfect instead of being a bunch of dead-end branches).
You do realize that the virtual pet is to Digimon what the games are to Pokemon and have been so since its inception right? Like literally one of the defining characteristics of the franchise, Digivolution not being fixed, comes from the fact it's a v-pet.
Right - but Vpets are not equivalent to a main-console game. Or even a Handheld-console game in terms of appeal or reach.
But the thing is that the western video game market has a history of volatility as evidenced by the original crash of 1983 which many have predicted a coming repeat of.
And yet Digimon has succeeded despite that, because one of the defining characteristics of a strong core is flexibility and we've seen how flexible the structure of the virtual pets is by just how many ways it's been adapted over two decades.
I could actually see this working out with a series like Adventure, especially 02, and Frontier. As much as I love all the characters, at times the series was a bit bloated trying to develop stories for each character.
On a related note Sora’s character arc is one of the most infuriating in the entire series.
I'd definitely say that the V-Pets are the main element of the franchise in the same way the core series video games are for Pokémon. The anime for both are pirmarily used to promote those products. The problem is, there isn't a lot you can do with V-Pets, as there's no story, and they're a really niche thing so most people don't even bother getting them. But Digimon has expanded itself in terms of video games, and a lot of them tie back into the V-Pet mechanics, mostly the World series, the Wonder Swan RPGs and the Story series, so they've at least expanded it.
Also unlike the Pokedex, the Reference Book isn't numbered, which makes it a bit trickier as to how you even organize this huge catalogue of critters. I will say, the Wonderswan RPGs had a good idea by organizing Digimon by their V-pet debuts...... though even those bestiaries get kinda screwy (D-1 Tamers list some of the Digital Monster debuts by their more recent Pendulum appearances, Ver.S and Ver.Wonderswan get placed after the Pendulums, nobody can seem to figure out where the Pendulum .5 debuts go, and Patamon and Tailmon get thrown in with the rest of the 02 Partners), and also not helping is the placement of recent anime promotions, like Terriermon, or Digimon debuting within the game itself. Cyber Sleuth listing Digimon in Japanese kana order and evolution stages also kinda works, though the numbering can't stay consistent that way (we even see this when Cyber Sleuth's bestiary got updated for Hacker's Memory).
It depicts the typical Japanese view that any deviation from gender norms is just childish rebellion and your parents know best that the true path is to become a Yamato nadeshiko perfect flower woman.
Which actually makes Sora sort of the opposite of Susan, who represented people who outgrow their religious beliefs, which Narnia's author considered a bad thing. Sora, on the other hand, the writers considered fully developed and lost interest in once she started wearing skirts instead of jeans (a "positive" development).
