Written by Jonathan Wojcik with the aid of With the Will, Digimon Wiki and Wikimon


The Bearmon Line


CHILD: BEARMON

So Kotemon, Koemon and Bearmon here are all starters introduced by Digimon World 3, and as a matter of fact they DO have coherent themes, as obtuse as they may seem; Kotemon was melee weaponry, specifically swords. Koemon was themed around guns, starting out with just a slingshot. Now we have Bearmon, the physical fighter, so he starts out just a bear cub with big claws. Alright I guess. The backwards baseball hat is funny, and while he's a bit plain, he doesn't feel too different from a series one Digimon. Just okay.

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ADULT: GRYZMON

Koemon and Kotemon completely change motif from one evolution to the next, but Bearmon really just evolves into a bigger, more quadrupedal bear, huh? The only thing of interesting note here is that its profile claims its deadly claws were imitated by the claw arm of Warumonzaemon. I'm still not too impressed.

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PERFECT: GRAPPLEOMON

So NOW the line changes into something else entirely, but it's another variation on Leomon. I feel like the Adult stage should have been yet another kind of mammal, then, like a canine or something, right? The spinning wrists and ankles are at least kind of interesting here.

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ULTIMATE: MARSMON

The final stage is a completely different animal, in a sense, and a fairly interesting surprise. He's clearly a human, but he's dressed up in skin similar to Gabumon. What's odd about that is that Gabumon was supposed to be a little dinosaur or lizard wearing that skin, but the horn was a real part of his body. In any case, this Ultimate-level furry should have just been Gabumon's final form instead of that dog robot. It would have been much more thematic.

This digimon was later made one of the "Olympos XIII," thirteen digimon based on Olympian gods. We could have waited and reviewed them all together, but Marsmon was first introduced as the final stage of this line, and other Olympos mons wouldn't debut until many years later, so, we'll see them as they come.

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ALTERNATIVE ULTIMATE: CALLISMON

Sadly, this is another digimon exclusive to the manga, and no, there isn't any higher resolution artwork available, but it really is badass as hell for an anthropomorphic bear. It's actually what happens when a villain infuses Gryzmon with data from the notorious Arkadimon, and it's as brutal and malicious as you might expect from the combination of a world-ending alien and a bear.

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