We're really playing catch-up with this one now, since Bemmon actually debuted in 2002 for Digimon World 3, and I just sort of completely forgot to review it before. Whoops! I guess it all worked out in the end, because it took until 2023 for Bemmon to get a proper Digimon Reference Book entry and appear in any of the virtual pets.

"BEM" of course stands for Bug Eyed Monster, which used to be shorthand for space aliens back in the 50's and remains a popular term in Japan. Bemmon is a dark purple, bipedal dinosaur-like creature with an artificial, chunky exoskeleton. It has a singl large, clawlike toe on each foot and its torso looks like a plastic chassis with an "01" printed on it, It has a metal collar and broken chain around its neck, since it's supposed to be some sort of experiment that got loose. Its head looks like a motorcycle helmet, swept back a little to perhaps evoke a "xenomorph," with silvery insect mandibles similar to those of Tentomon and a glowing green eye like a camera lens visible through the helmet's black visor.

Bemmon's most stand-out feature are its three-clawed hands, each with a glowing yellow eyeball in the center, strikingly similar to Ghoulmon, AKA "Deathmon," which would suit it well as an alternative final evolution.

Bemmon is said to have been programmed only with the command codes to "eat and grow stronger," and on defeating an enemy, it absorbs their data with its "Fusionize" ability, described specifically as "turning the enemy into its flesh and blood."

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Bemmon's designated Adult is exactly what you'd think; the same sort of creature in a taller, more elaborately detailed and more menacing form. Its purple armor is a little more complex but not terribly cluttered, made up of swooping, sharp, menacing shapes. The yellow eyeballs are now on the backs of its forearms, and it even has some black yellow belts and zippers so you really know this is an evolved Digimon. Most strikingly, its dinosaur tail has moved to the back of its head. It's also more whiplike and threatening, with a claw on its tip and some belts of its own for good measure. It feels a lot like a bit of a tribute to various Dragonball Z villains, too.

Snatchmon apparently evolved when a number of Bemmon cannibalized one another until only one remained.

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So, unfortunately, those who liked that whole "Dragonball Xenomorph" angle might be disappointed, since the only "official" evolution for Snatchmon was built only around a plot point in which it absorbs the data of the world's most devastating military vehicle, an experimental high-tech battleship. The result is a purple dinosaur wearing the repurposed ship as a cybernetic exoskeleton.

It's cool looking for what it is; I like that the underlying reptilian alien has a wasp waist, a tiny head and huge, long arms, giving it the most bizarre silhouette of any cyborg-reptiloid Digimon, plus, it borrows the face and mouth area of its helmet directly from Evangelion, so there's that.

On its own merits, it's good, but by necessity it drops almost everything Bemmon and Snatchmon were going for, and since it only exists because of a single Snatchmon's storyline, it feels like the line is left without a "true" or "natural" Perfect stage.

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Still not satisfied with its fusion to the strongest thing on Earth, our little space mutant turns its attention beyond the stratosphere, and takes on an Ultimate evolution merged with a military satellite. It's said to be the largest Digimon of all time, but there are probably a number of newer Digimon rivaling whatever Ragnamon's canonical size was supposed to be.

As a design, it's as cluttered and excessive as Digimon come, but that's of course built in to its whole concept. We still have a lanky purple lizard arm and a long, serpentine tail protruding from the convoluted space satellite, while an entire NASA space shuttle hilariously serves as its right forearm with a pair of metallic, purple pincers added on the end. Squint, and you'll see that the whole massive thing is still divided into an upper torso and lower trunk by an impossibly thin waist, and topping it all off is its now relatively miniscule head, which actually bears the best face of the line, because it now has its glowing green eyes inside the blackness of its "mouth" (again, you'll have to squint) while the rest of the cranium is an eyeless, silvery bullet-like shape that, to me, evokes a cool little shark head.

Having this "Alien" homage fuse to an entire space station is at once funny, melodramatic and thematically appropriate, which is the best kind of Ultimate Digimon, and it returns to looking a bit more like a weird extraterrestrial entity than the Perfect stage. However, I still think this line deserves a "real" or "default" Perfect and Ultimate some day.

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