Pokemon and Digimon have long been dueling franchises, what with them both being based around the concept of raising cool-looking monsters and using them to fight. Both of them enjoyed mainstream success with their anime, videogames, and TCGs, though fans would often debate which one was better.
This debate rages on even today, and it seems that there will never really be a true winner. Pokemon has its fans, and so does Digimon, with the only winners being the fans of both. The two franchises are compared on many things, from the quality of their gameplay to the style of the animation. Here we take a look at which franchise comes out on top when looking at character design.
10 Birds: Pokemon
Pokemon’s skies are positively full of birds of all shapes, sizes, and colors. From lowly Pidgey to mighty Skarmory, Pokemon really captures the natural diversity that birds represent in their Flying-type. They are recognizable yet visually interesting, and you can easily see the real-world analogs that the designers drew from.
Digimon’s birds however are a little less appealing. There are some standouts such as Biyomon or the adorable Penguinmon but a large proportion of bird Digimon look bland or downright ugly. These birds don’t make for the most attractive of virtual pets.
9 Plants: Digimon
The first series of the Digimon anime was full of great plant-like Digimon, really showing off their designs and encompassing the sheer range of the natural world. These Digimon can be beautiful like flowers, old and craggy like aged trees, or vicious and deadly like the thorny Blossomon. There are even Digimon based on vegetables!
The huge variety within plant-like Digimon almost highlights the lack of diversity that Pokemon has with its plants. While they venture into different designs, they all look overly friendly to some extent and this is one limitation of Pokemon’s design philosophy: all Pokemon must be potential friends. You can’t really imagine petting Cherrymon and feeding him a Pokeblock, can you?
8 Sea Creatures: Pokemon
Like the animals of the sky, the animals of the sea are an extremely variable lot. Pokemon does really well in showing off the diversity of the ocean, with great takes on creatures such as angler fish, manta rays, leafy sea dragons, and more. You need only spend some time in the underwater courses of New Pokemon Snap to feel the majesty of these aquatic designs.
Digimon, on the other hand, tends to be more one-note when it comes to watery creatures. They are quite often monstrous and err towards realism. Even friendly giants such as Whamon look scary at first glance, and the Seadramon line makes for an impressive yet repetitive set of villains in the anime’s first season.
7 Dinosaurs: Digimon
While we will never actually know what dinosaurs looked like all those millions of years ago, the designers of Digimon have a pretty solid guess. These Digi-dinos are always impressively fierce-looking and make up a rather large portion of all Digimon, meaning there are quite a lot of distinct designs that cover many different species of real-world dinosaurs.
In comparison, Pokemon’s repertoire of dinosaurs is rather lacking. They are mostly relegated to being fossil-Pokemon for obvious reasons, and while they have cool designs they don’t inspire the same feelings of awe that Digimon’s dinosaurs do (Aerodactyl excepted).
6 Garbage: Pokemon
This is a somewhat limited design category, but it stands out as one that fans talk about a lot. Trubbish and Garbodor are great representations of humans’ negative effects on the environment, a topic that Pokemon has been bringing up since its inception with creatures like Weezing and Muk.
Compare this to Digimon, which has designs like Numemon that stick out as particularly ugly piles of green sludge with horrific eyestalks. A more direct comparison would be Sukemon, which has a design so foul that the Digimon in its entirety is used as a punishment in the Digimon World game.
5 Robots: Digimon
Thanks to the very modern setting and sci-fi theming, Digimon naturally has a greater range and greater number of robotic creatures to encounter. They don’t shy away from heavy-duty weaponry and can take a larger inspiration from real-world machinery, making the robots (and androids, of course) of Digimon extremely recognizable. They make for great threats, with Machinedramon specifically being a villain in the anime and more than one videogame.
Pokemon, on the other hand, doesn’t have much success with robotic creature designs. Pokemon like Golurk and Registeel are ostensibly robotic, but they lack the instant recognizability of their digital counterparts.
4 Babies: Pokemon
Not every Pokemon has a baby form, but the ones that do are very memorable. These creatures are rarely any good in battle but they make for fantastic mascots and adorable friends. They enjoy great success in the anime, with Pichu and Togepi being fan-favorites thanks to their appealing designs.
While every single Digimon will have eventually been a tiny “In-training” creature, they are largely simple blobs of different colors that are visually unappealing and quite boring to look at. In Digimon games where the creatures are raised from eggs, the stages before the “Rookie” stage are mostly seen as speed bumps before anything interesting happens.
3 Humanoid Creatures: Digimon
Both Pokemon and Digimon have plenty of humanoid creatures to encounter, but Digimon seems to have the edge when it comes to design. This is likely down to the fact that Digimon can speak, which makes the human-like Digimon more relatable, especially since they wear clothes. If Pokemon could speak to their trainers, having Pokemon like Gardevoir, Medicham, or Throh would be quite awkward indeed.
Digimon’s more humanoid designs are usually some of the most memorable and include iconic villains and allies such as Piedmon and Wizardmon. Their designs lend themselves to fanfiction and cosplay in a way that Pokemon’s designs don’t, and they are exciting to add to your team in the videogames.
2 Heroes: Pokemon
While there are many different protagonists across the history of Pokemon, they all follow quite similar design philosophies. They usually wear suitable clothing for traveling and almost always wear hats, making them quite recognizable as Pokemon protagonists. In both anime and videogames, the heroes are well-prepared for travel, and their enthusiasm is incorporated into their designs.
The same cannot be said for the Digidestined and other digital heroes found in the franchise. More often than not they are wearing any old clothes and are not cohesively designed as adventurers in an unknown land. This is less egregious in games where the excitement happens purely in the digital world, accessed safely from our world, but it means that there is no “Digimon protagonist look” as there is with Pokemon.
1 Villains: Digimon
Digimon has great villains. They are threatening and malicious, and as they are mostly Digimon themselves they can back up their words with actions. There is definite thought behind their designs too, as they are often based on classic fears. Arukenimon evokes arachnophobia, Piedmon is the scariest of scary clowns, and Myotismon will make anyone wary of vampires. This clever approach to villainy makes them very memorable and iconic.
In Pokemon’s case, outright villains often take the form of powerful men and women who use Pokemon to do their dirty work. Team Rocket are the most iconic of the villains, but even they pale in comparison when compared to the stylish evil of the digital world.
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