Omegamon Wins December 12/5 Digivice Tournament, Dianamon Tops Cyber Sleuth Tournament

Original photo uploaded by @digimado.

Update: A detailed top cut has been posted.
December 5th, 2015. Today Japanese Digimon fan event organizer DIGIMADO hosted the end-of-year All Digimon Cultural Exchange, a combination meetup and tournament series revolving around the various Digimon games. The Exchange was scheduled a month in advance, and registration was coordinated over the TwiPla event scheduling site. Although preregistration numbers were at a low of 27 out of their 55-person cap, a significant number of walk-ins lead to more than 40 persons joining in. A record high of 18 people participated in the Digivice & virtual pet tournament; fans at DIGIMADO are usually drawn to the video game and trading card events instead, and the increase in participants likely reflects new interest following the premiere Digimon Adventure tri.

Original image uploaded by @soraki_t

Incredibly, one tamer using a Patamon DigiBat figure made it to the tournament finals, taking down multiple Digivice Ver. 15th opponents like Metal Garurumon and War Greymon. The DigiBat figures normally connect as if they are an Agumon on a Digital Monster Ver. 1, with one of the most middle-of-the-ground power levels of any Digimon. Usually the DigiBat toys are used as punching bags to rack up a high win ratio on the virtual pets, but in today's DIGIMADO tournament the bags punched back.

The top 4 included a Patamon DigiBat, a Digimon Pendulum 5.0: Metal Empire pet, and a Digivice Ver. 15th. The tournament was ultimately won by Sorakichi (@soraki_t) partnered to Omegamon on his Digivice Ver. 15th. Sorakichi was awarded with a Digmon plush toy for making first place. The 18-person tournament included at least 9 Digivice Ver. 15ths, 2 DigiBat toys, 1 Pendulum ZERO, and 2 Pendulum Progress 1.0: Dragon's Roar virtual pets. The previous Digivice tournament was won by Gerumon, partnered to Jesmon on the Digivice Ver. 15th.

The DIGIMADO Cultural Exchange also included separate competitions for Digimon All-Star Rumble, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, and the Hyper Colosseum Digimon TCG. The winner of the Hyper Colosseum tournament was Butterscotch, playing Lucemon Falldown Mode; second place played Matadormon, one of the most popular decks in the metagame.

Original image uploaded by @digimado.

The exact details of the Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth tournament are still yet to be published. The tournament finalists' in-game names were Saito and Takumi; Saito won the tournament using Dianamon, Dynasmon, and Imperialdramon Paladin Mode. Takumi's exact party is unclear, but it's known that his last Digimon standing was Etemon. Although most tamers use fully evolved Ultimate Digimon in Cyber Sleuth's multiplayer, some Perfect-level Digimon like Etemon and Aero V-dramon still see play because of their lower memory costs and skills on par with Ultimate Digimon. In Etemon's case, his Reinforced Monkey Suit reduces all physical damage by 15% for the entire party, and his Love Serenade is one of the rare piercing attacks in the game that ignores defensive stats, while dealing damage to the entire opposing party equal to his Intelligence.

All Digimon were automatically scaled to level 50 during the tournament, and tamers were restricted to a party size of 150 memory maximum, with no more than 11 Digimon in total. Each tamer was allotted fifteen minutes per turn to make their moves in, and only one Digimon could have healing or restoration skills, limiting the defensive options available. Saito's team was structured around passive buffs; Dynasmon and Dianamon's Support Skills respectively boost Fire, Light & Water damage by 10%, while Paladin Mode's Support Skill reduces incoming damage by 10% if the opponent has an attribute advantage.

Saito's Dynasmon also helped get around the healing restriction with its Dragon's Roar Special Skill. Dragon's Roar restores Dynasmon's HP equal to 50% of the damage it deals, and its damage is already boosted 10% by his Support Skill in addition to hitting twice. Layered over several turns, this has the effect of mitigating damage dealt to Dynasmon. A secondary focus of his team was status effects, which are very powerful in Cyber Sleuth due to immunity only being possible through specific attachable items. Dianamon's Goodnight Moon Special Skill always inflicts the Sleep status effect on its target, effectively taking them out of the battle unless the opponent spends a turn trying to recover the status, by which time another of their Digimon will likely be asleep. Dianamon also ranks very highly in Cyber Sleuth's Speed tiers, second only to Lord Knightmon and Ulforce V-dramon, giving her more turns on average to inflict Sleep in.

All Digimon Cultural Exchange 2015 Ver. 04 Schedule
10:00 AM Opening
11:00 AM Digimon Card Game Qualifiers 1 (Cyber Sleuth Tournament Begins)
2:00 PM Digimon Card Game Qualifiers 2
4:00 PM Digivice Tournament (Cyber Sleuth Tournament Ends)
4:30 PM Digimon Card Game Finals
6:00 PM Digimon All-Star Rumble Tournament
(7:30 PM Clean-up)
8:00 PM Closing

DIGIMADO (デジ窓 "Digi Window") is the de facto lead organizational force in the Japanese fandom since Odaiba Day 2009. Their formation was prompted by the demise of Bandai's official systems of organized play for all Digimon card games in 2008. In addition to hosting fan gatherings for the virtual pets, video games, and card games, DIGIMADO also puts out occasional podcasts in Japanese. Fitting its origins as a TCG event organizer, DIGIMADO's mascot is Cardmon C1, from Digimon World 3: The Door of A New Adventure. Participants in DIGIMADO events usually go by their Twitter handles, rather than their real names.

Western Digimon fans have begun to emulate DIGIMADO, beginning with the Digimon Celebration event series founded by the Digimon World Tour organization. The first Digimon Celebration will take place in Pittsburgh on February 6th, 2016, four days after the North American launch of Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth.

Today is the Tenth Anniversary of the Digimon Mini

November 23rd, 2015. Today is a bite-sized anniversary for Digimon; ten years since the launch of the Digimon Mini. Originally created for Digimon's own ten year anniversary (June 26, 2007), and released several years in advance of that in 2005, the Mini stands out as a pivoting point in Digimon's history. Unlike previous toys, the Mini was the first time one of the franchise's virtual pets was targeted squarely at an adult audience, and ten years later we can still feel its effects as Digimon Adventure tri. steers us firmly away from being a Saturday morning cartoon.

Similar to the Tamagotchi Mini seven months before it, the Mini was not just marketed as a pet, but also as a fashion device. "Digimini-style" was a major campaign point for Bandai's latest pet, advertising how fans could integrate the Mini into their daily fashion, whether that was on a tote bag, a dog tag, or a key ring. Tellingly, the Mini was excluded from that year's D-1 Grand Prix, while the preceding Digimon Accel and succeeding Digivice iC and Burst both had their own competitions. Although it was briefly the subject of the manga Digimon Next, it wasn't a device primarily targeted at children.

The Mini was advertised in its promotional video as "compact, light, and historic." The Mini restored the background images that the previous Accel pets had ignored, and also reverted the sprites back to the more nostalgic 16x16 instead of the 32x32 sprites that had been used since the Progress toys in 2002.

The Digimon Mini's relationship to the original Digimon Monster series was similar to that of the Tamagotchi Mini and its own forefather. The Mini was about 70~80% the size of original Digital Monster series, 3 x 4 cm vs 4 x 6 cm. The Mini was popular enough to lead to a cross-promotion deal between Bandai and clothing brand UNIQLO, creating five different special editions, each promoted with a corresponding article of clothing.

It ultimately came in the third-largest variety of color variations among any Digimon pets, after the Pendulum and original Digital Monsters. At least thirteen varieties of Mini were distributed in its lifetime; two colors for each original release, five special editions with a limited production run, and two giveaway exclusives.

Archived promotional image from the official website.

Rather than just being a straight port of its Digital Monster predecessors, the Mini included many of the innovations introduced by the similarly-successful Pendulum series. First among these was the attribute system, where Digimon were classified as Vaccine, Virus, or Data, and gained an advantage when fighting attributes with a weakness to them. And instead of a best-of-three battle system like on the Digital Monster pets, the Mini gave each Digimon six hit points, with one Digimon's attack hitting each round and the other dodging until one of the combatants fell. Although it did not have an actual pendulum counter, the Mini had a similar pre-battle "count" feature, controlled through button inputs rather than shakes. At the beginning of a battle, the tamer would rapidly mash the A button to match that Digimon's specific tempo and try to score a terahit, and after the three-second period was up the battle would play out.

In addition to the Vaccine > Virus > Data triangle from the Pendulum series, the Mini introduced a Super Ultimate evolution for each version, which evolved from that pet's Ultimate by having 100 or more wins. For Ver. 1 this was an evolution from War Greymon to Omegamon, for Ver. 2 this was Heracle Kabuterimon to Tyrant Kabuterimon, and for Ver. 3 this was Holydramon or Piemon to Lucemon Satan Mode. Bizzarrely, there was never a Data-attribute Ultimate or Super Ultimate available on the Mini. All fully evolved Digimon on the Mini were either Vaccine or Virus-attribute.

The Ver. 1 Mini is notoriously more difficult than the Ver. 2 or Ver. 3, as on the Ver. 1 even with a cumulative winning percentage of 80~100%, the probability to evolve to the Perfect and Ultimate stages is lower by as much as 30%. This was likely to compensate for Omegamon having an overwhelming advantage versus the Ver. 2 and Ver. 3 Super Ultimates.

Xros Wars Mini

The success of the Mini lead to the Digimon Twin in 2007 being initially announced as a successor to the Digital Monster series, and to the creation of the Xros Wars Mini in 2010. The Xros Mini actually inherited the original Mini's battle system, sans attributes. (Neither of these devices were actually compatible with the original Mini.)

At present Minis average $65 for new-in-package on the secondary market, one-third the price of packaged Digital Monster pets, and about equal with loose DM toys.

Happy tenth birthday, Mini!