Digimon types - What are they all about?

[Nate Hunter]

Something you need a tinity to explain... it's sort of like this:

Virus is concerned with power, therefore a Digimon who is simply supposed to be powerful would fall in easily as a Virus type. Viral digimon can be generally personified as being the "chaotic" alignment out of Digimon, the self-serving ones who care about power over order. As such, they don't form very good teams, because they work on the principle of individual progress.

Data is like the "neutral" political alignment in D&D (The political alignments being Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic), meaning they're as likely to work well with a team as to work well alone, and will be fairly concerned with the well being of the team for purposes other than their own safety. They are, perhaps in a sense, undecided, and could possibly be swayed either way. [This is demonstrated in my "Digimon: TtLG" when Kenmon (Data) becomes a Viral Coyotemon].

Vaccine is like being a "lawful" character in D&D, meaning that in general they're about order and rules and following the rules.

Now these types don't touch on the good-evil scale, or the "moral alignments". We do see some Viral Digimon who in spite of their Chaotic nature are Good heroes (Stingmon, Guilmon) and we also see at least one Vaccine Digimon who in spite of being Lawful is clearly Evil (Lucemon).

As far as strengths, think of it like Paper/Scissor/Rock, but instead make it Virus/Vaccine/Data -- A Virus will almost invariably lose to a Vaccine of the same level in a fair fight, while a Virus will easily defeat the "undecided" Data type. On the other hand, because Vaccines are unlikely to attack something that isn't an obvious threat to order, they are likely to hold back against Data types, resulting in Data winning over Vaccine.

Citing the above example of "Eternal Darkness", you might place the VARIABLE type which is used by Hybrids in the center -- because it's type is EQUAL to the opponent when it evolves, it has no strength or weakness to them. Alternately you could use the No Type as the fourth, because Variable is, well, Variable.

So...

Code:

VACCINE
     /|        ^\
    / |    H   | \
   /  V        |   \
VIRUS --> DATA

Is sort of how it works... I guess. I can make a quick layout of how it would play out in Photoshop, and I'll post that later on today... Wish I had my canner though, for those pages of Lost Light...

Ah well.

[UnknownH]

in simple terms
vaccine +
data =
virus -

and think virus protection software is like vaccene cause it stops viruses
and viruses are easy to understand
and of course data is used for everything so it's nothing

and of course there's good and bad everything but cases like gulimon he has virus tendences (the eye thing he does when he smells a digimon) and wormon is too normal ken like to be virus too meak
I think that works

[Stormy  Wizard]

Err... sorry, didn't catch that bit about Wormon.

He is definitely a virus, once again, some proof

http://ca.geocities.com/digi_josied/digi...rmmon.html

And if Vaccine beats virus beats data beats vaccine, then the vaccine destined digimon should lose against data types, and data digimon should lose against viruses.

For example, Greymon vs. Shellmon. Greymon is a vaccine, and Shellmon is a data. So, logically, Shellmon should win, no? For crying out loud! Fire vs. Water, that battle was stupid! If what people are saying about data beats vaccine is true, then Shellmon would've easily blasted Greymon, but that didn't happen. The same with Wargreymon vs. MetalSeadramon, Flamedramon vs. Monochromon, the vaccine won against a data, the list goes on, so I guess that's not the right way.

[Cyber Stryker]

I think the theory works in the context of a broad overview.

Once you take into account the actual experiance of any particular digimon and their power levels thereof it changes the equation.

Besides I have to agree with Wisemon's example of how it effects DNA digivolution from DW2 as that makes the most sense so far as to what type effects what.

On the other hand we may have gone a bit too gung-ho on this one and all the types really indicate can be compared to blood-type in organic creatures.

[UnknownH]

wormon is too meak to be evil like a virus is normally and we are making too much of this

[Stormy  Wizard]

Well, it just seems a too big a thing to overlook.

In that episode in 01 when Gennai was telling Izzy about digimon, he said all digimon can be broken into three groups - Vaccine, Virus and Data. If it was just something as trivial as blood type, like if the whole plot was turned around and someone was telling digimon that humans were broken down into four groups, type O, A, B and AB, then that would be a complete waste of time.

On the other hand, if the person explaining about the human world was referring to the three main types of human - Asian, European and African (just examples) then it would be a different story, but I can't really see differences between the digimon types. Most people don't even know that Wormon and Guilmon are virus types, and that's a big difference, we can identify types of humans instantly... hmm, maybe only the digimon can tell the difference, who knows?

[Wisemon]

Another interesting clue from Digimon World 2 is that Monzaemon, a Vaccine, has the anti-Virus assist. Digitamamon, a Data, has the anti-Vaccine assist. WaruMonzaemon, a Virus, has the anti-Data assist.

[Cyber Stryker]

Whoa Stormywiz, pixie-dust, the blood-type thing was just a joke.

I think what the type thing originally indicated back around the creation of digiworld might have had a simpler connotation and just evolved as the digimon themselves evolved.

Assume digiworld is in it's primordial soup phase, sometime back in the sixties most likely. At the moment there's not actual ecosystem just packets of data fragments floating about. The data is just a middle of the road type of thing like we deal with all the time.

Now someone from our side of the divide inputs a virus that is just as we know them in the way that it corrupts and changes data to follow it's own programming which indicates a bit of an evolution in and of itself.

Someone else sees that his or her mainframe is being screwed over and writes a virus deletion program and classifies it as a vaccine. Now the vaccine program isn't advanced enough for a seek and destroy mentality but just takes out viruses that cause problems within the system.

So now we have all three types doing what they do naturally. Of course this kind of thing happens all over the world which creates different sub-categories that start to evolve as more and more hard drive space, and information is added to various computers around the world. Among the added information are pictures in various formats and explanatory data. Organic myths, legends, and evolutionary data on all the different species of our world are part of this.

The base program of digiworld starts to read this vast amount of archived data and distributes it to the different packets of data and the first digi-eggs are created. The various viruses that are still around continue to corrupt data, now as digi-eggs and the vaccine programs try to counter this thus also being fused with digi-eggs. Sometimes the virus is more advanced and sometimes the vaccine is, meanwhile other digi-eggs stay completely unchanged.

The eggs hatch and start to evolve in what digiworld understands as evolution and from the basic data in the egg decides what alignment that the resultant digimon takes. Now because digimon have a personality they can decide how to live their lives and make their own moral choices.

Now this whole phenomenon confuses the hell out of us in the context that we've got a knee-jerk reaction to be wary of viruses and trust vaccines in the way of both computers and the various diseases we deal with in our day to day lives.

Look at DW1, Myotismon was a benevolent researcher.
In Adventure the same type of digimon was a sociopathic monster.

These digimon made their own moral choices in life that had nothing to do with evolution and assuming that they would make the same choices based on either history or supposed origin of it's type is a profiling mistake that humans are prone to make no matter how liberal or open minded we are (or think we are.)

[Stormy  Wizard]

Okay, so in other words, Vaccines and Viruses are natural enemies, but like in every species, there are exceptions (Wormon, Guilmon). Okay, that's very well, but Data types still confuse me, anyone care to enlight?

[Cyber Stryker]

Well I wouldn't say enemies per se. Traditionally anti-virus software is supposed to halt/eleminate viruses but throw in the sentience of an A-life program and there's no need for any animosity between them.

Of course the natural enemy theory works for digimon like Leomon and Ogremon since there was no real clear-cut reason why they fought other than that they were "destined rivals."

Data types though, I think it may just mean they have an easier time digivolving into either virus or vaccine digimon or staying as data types.

Can anyone think of any digimon that digivolve straight from virus to vaccine or vice versa naturally? Or is it only that the two types can digivolve together to nuffify each other's type to become a data type like Paildramon?