What do you think?
Rate this book
Digimon Tamers #1
Digimon Tamers, Vol. 1
When three Digimon fans -- Rika, Henry, and our lead Takato -- suddenly find themselves with "real" Digimon, they discover a living creature under your care is far harder to deal with than a few pixels on your TV screen. The kids try to be Digimon 'Tamers,' aka Digimon caretakers, but they all seem to have different opinions on what that should entail. Rika thinks Digimon should fight, Henry thinks they should never fight, and Takato ... seems to be somewhere in the middle.
Being a Tamer isn't just about believing one thing or another. It's about learning and adjusting for the good of everyone else. But they have a long way to go, and their problems are just beginning.
192 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2004
1 person is currently reading
115 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 13, 2013
Among the first four seasons of Digimon I would say that the third is the most forgettable of them all. I found not very entertaining and more complicated than it needed to be.
Let me first say that the setting is just odd and, for a lack of a better term, just unnecessary. Apparently, the world in the first two seasons was just a fake world, or a world that revolves in a game. While the world in this book is reality and Digimon are nothing but creatures in games.
Uh . . . what?
Why would you-
You know what? Never mind. Let’s just move on.
The characters are not really that interesting. Takato is your typical nice hero and that’s about it. There’s not much depth to him except for him being a fan of the Digimon games. He’s not really that interesting and his digimon partner isn’t really that memorable either. In fact, I found him quite annoying. He doesn’t listen, is VERY childlike and just gets into trouble.
Henry and Terriermon are just bland and forgettable. There’s not much to them except that Terriermon wants to fight but Henry does not.
Rika and Renamon are okay. Rika is a loner who sees Digimon as nothing but data and has no desire to bond with her digimon but just wants to make her stronger. She does change throughout the series and begins to care for others but they don’t give her a backstory or anything interesting about her. There isn’t really a reason why she is the way she is.
The only character I found more memorable is Impmon because he has an attitude and is given somewhat of a backstory. He was friends with two young children and then they forgot about him and so he has no purpose. He wants to digivolve and become stronger.
I would complain about the villains but I forgot about them and the only thing that stands out in Tamers is the fact that the human merge with their digimon in the mega form.
Don't get me wrong, it's not bad. It's just kind of dull and forgettable for me.
Let me first say that the setting is just odd and, for a lack of a better term, just unnecessary. Apparently, the world in the first two seasons was just a fake world, or a world that revolves in a game. While the world in this book is reality and Digimon are nothing but creatures in games.
Uh . . . what?
Why would you-
You know what? Never mind. Let’s just move on.
The characters are not really that interesting. Takato is your typical nice hero and that’s about it. There’s not much depth to him except for him being a fan of the Digimon games. He’s not really that interesting and his digimon partner isn’t really that memorable either. In fact, I found him quite annoying. He doesn’t listen, is VERY childlike and just gets into trouble.
Henry and Terriermon are just bland and forgettable. There’s not much to them except that Terriermon wants to fight but Henry does not.
Rika and Renamon are okay. Rika is a loner who sees Digimon as nothing but data and has no desire to bond with her digimon but just wants to make her stronger. She does change throughout the series and begins to care for others but they don’t give her a backstory or anything interesting about her. There isn’t really a reason why she is the way she is.
The only character I found more memorable is Impmon because he has an attitude and is given somewhat of a backstory. He was friends with two young children and then they forgot about him and so he has no purpose. He wants to digivolve and become stronger.
I would complain about the villains but I forgot about them and the only thing that stands out in Tamers is the fact that the human merge with their digimon in the mega form.
Don't get me wrong, it's not bad. It's just kind of dull and forgettable for me.
October 25, 2017
Of the Digimon series I've watched (Adventure, Zero Two, Tamers and Frontier), Tamers is my favorite. I like Adventure, but like Tamers more, probably because of the darker and more realistic approach it took. Which can only be expected, being that it was directed by Chiaki Konaka (the guy who did Serial Experiments Lain - you look that one up; it's hard to describe), but still notable. So, here's my review of the first volume in the Tamers series. Please note that I will be calling the characters by their Japanese ones, and expect to see that in all Digimon reviews that I put out from here on in.
The Pros:
- The art is the main highlight. It does a good job at imitating the show, and here, model sheet use is minimal. Some scenes are exact copies of shots from the anime, but for some reason, it feels less lazy to me than reusing character design photos. For example, the shot of Devidramon about to take flight in Shinjuku is straight out of the cartoon, and unless it's meant to be a shadow/perspective thing, even includes his incorrectly-colored bottom jaw.
- Especially well-done are the chapter covers.
- As is fairly regular in the Tokyopop manga books, some fight scenes are depicted differently here, but it doesn't negatively impact the adaptation.
- Overall faithfulness to the cartoon, with few significant modifications.
The Cons:
- Occasional use of cheesy dialogue, though it doesn't plague the manga like it did the anime. That's part of the reason I'm not a fan of the dub...
- Probably the main inconsistency I notice is that during Ruki's flashback to several Digimon wanting to be her partner, one of them says it's Devimon...but is clearly not him. None of the Digimon in the window are Devimon, and the word balloon appears to be coming from Mushamon. Clearly, someone wasn't paying attention...
- Related to that, if you look closely at the panel, all three windows are the same shot flipped and/or differently angled, unlike the anime, where each window had different Digimon characters. Disappointing, because the scene is otherwise captured quite well.
All in all, a well-done adaptation, and definitely recommended if you like Digimon, especially if Tamers is your favorite series. Just be prepared for your wallet to take a beating, because not only did Tokyopop never do reprints for the series, they're also hard to come by online.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
The Pros:
- The art is the main highlight. It does a good job at imitating the show, and here, model sheet use is minimal. Some scenes are exact copies of shots from the anime, but for some reason, it feels less lazy to me than reusing character design photos. For example, the shot of Devidramon about to take flight in Shinjuku is straight out of the cartoon, and unless it's meant to be a shadow/perspective thing, even includes his incorrectly-colored bottom jaw.
- Especially well-done are the chapter covers.
- As is fairly regular in the Tokyopop manga books, some fight scenes are depicted differently here, but it doesn't negatively impact the adaptation.
- Overall faithfulness to the cartoon, with few significant modifications.
The Cons:
- Occasional use of cheesy dialogue, though it doesn't plague the manga like it did the anime. That's part of the reason I'm not a fan of the dub...
- Probably the main inconsistency I notice is that during Ruki's flashback to several Digimon wanting to be her partner, one of them says it's Devimon...but is clearly not him. None of the Digimon in the window are Devimon, and the word balloon appears to be coming from Mushamon. Clearly, someone wasn't paying attention...
- Related to that, if you look closely at the panel, all three windows are the same shot flipped and/or differently angled, unlike the anime, where each window had different Digimon characters. Disappointing, because the scene is otherwise captured quite well.
All in all, a well-done adaptation, and definitely recommended if you like Digimon, especially if Tamers is your favorite series. Just be prepared for your wallet to take a beating, because not only did Tokyopop never do reprints for the series, they're also hard to come by online.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews