The Original Name of Garurumon Was "Garumon," Says Former Director

"LLLAADDIES AND GENTLEMAN, I'M SORRY FOR KEEP YOU WAITING, VOLCANO CHANNEL IS BAAACK, YEEAAHHH!"

February 9th, 2016. Former Digital Monster series project director Oota "Volcano" Kensuke uploaded the latest entry in his Volcano Channel video series after a two month hiatus. In this latest episode, Oota discussed the "Digimon All Stars" figures, a line of 1998 transparent figures. Each All Star figure set included 14 figures plus Digitama, and the series was succeeded by the "The Digimon" figure line of colored Super Deformed toys.

For this week's quiz Oota used five one-handed dumbbell rolls as a timer, asking fans this question; "In development, Garurumon was known by another name. What was that name?"

A.) Wolfmon
B.) Foxmon
C.) Garumon.

The answer is C.) Garumon. (Wolfmon is the name of the H-Spirit of Light in Digimon Frontier, while Foxmon has never been used.) It wasn't until later on that the second -ru sound was added. Oota also noted that in the Digimon anime series, Garurumon was pronounced with an ascending tone (emphasis on "ru,") while he had always pronounced it descending. (Emphasis on "mon.") He ended the episode by asking viewers what kind of nostalgic Digimon history they would like to see him talk about in the future.

Oota Kensuke is the original project director for the 1997 Digimon virtual pets, who has continued to work with Digimon to the present day. Serving as a lead developer for all Digimon toys up to 2007, Oota came back to prominence in 2014 due to his involvement in the development and release of the Digivice Ver. 15th.

His personality "Volcano Oota" was originally created to promote the D-1 Grand Prix tournaments, and has remained a memorable component of his public persona for almost twenty years. In 2000 this character was made into an official Digimon, Volcamon, and in 2002 given the Ultimate form Pile Volcamon, corresponding to his "Pile Volcano Oota" upgrade. In 2015 Oota launched Volcano Channel, his YouTube channel where he discusses the development and history of the Digimon franchise.

He later resigned from Bandai in late in that year to work at an unspecified company, stating publicly that he made the decision to challenge himself. While there were some concerns over what this meant for Volcano Channel, Oota assured fans that the series will continue, and he has remained an active part of the Digimon fandom on Twitter. His previous video focused on the design process of Omegamon, the Digimon created for the March 2000 film Our War Game!