Devimon debuted before any other explicitly evil or diabolical digimon in both game and anime formats, including his own prevolution. In the virtual pets, several unrelated Digimon could evolve into this powerful virus type as an alternative to Angemon, and in the anime, Devimon was the main villain of the first story arc, the very monster that actually prompted Patamon to finally evolve for the first time.

As the go-to Bad Man Digimon of the series since the start, Devimon serves his purpose pretty well and still holds up great as a design, especially since he's been allowed to keep his freakishly gangly proportions to this day while the Angel digimon are drawn increasingly human.

What's truly great about this guy, though, are the sheer layers of goth he's pulling off. It's not enough that he's covered head to toe in black latex, that he has giant skeleton hands or that he has tattered bat-raven wings, no. He's also got...hang on, let's find another angle so we can take a proper inventory...

• TWO skull markings.
• ONE red bat-shape marking.
• ONE red bat-shape-devil-face combo marking.
• THREE unnecessary zippers.
• FOUR metal ball studs.
• FIVE studded leather bands
• FIVE partial metal bands
• FOUR sets of stitches on the same arm.
• ONE mummy-bandaged hand.
• THIRTEEN leather belts.
• ZERO leather belts that are holding anything up.

It's a scientific fact: you cannot and you will not out-goth-punk this electronic monster man. Don't even try. The only one who can ever possibly stand to do so is himself, as we will see later.

Scanned by The Togemon Garden

Another fun thing about Devimon is the fact that they even got away with this in 1999 at all. I talked about this a couple times when we were reviewing Pokemon, most notably when I reviewed the Abra family, but the America I grew up in was still coming down of the Satanic Panic of the 60's and 70's, and a significant swathe of the nation spent the turn of the millenium in outrage at the fact that, if you kind of squint, these "pokey mon" things could almost be interpreted as d-d-d-DEMONS.

DEMONS! SATAN'S DEMONS in a CARTOONY PICTURE SHOW what CHILDREN LOOK AT!

Meanwhile, Digimon not only had this full blown Satan in it, but went on to have approximately 10,000,000,000 more Satans, including even good guy Satans, which would have had these watchdogs positively busting a gasket if they'd ever really bothered to pay attention to this series.

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So, a special child level for Devimon only came later, and they never actually say so, but I'm sure Demidevimon in the anime is meant to be the rebirth of the very same Devimon the kids originally went up against. I was so, so sure they were going to acknowledge that at some point, or have the little guy re-evolve at the last minute for revenge, but it never came to pass and the kids never seemed to notice any connection. In fact, they fell completely for this little bastard's lies and scams at first, like there's simply nothing remotely suspicious about something called "Demidevimon" showing up immediately after "Devimon" tried and failed to murder them all.

Demidevimon continues to be the go-to "spooky" child Digimon, unfortunately still one of the very few such options and still one of the best looking. He's sort of a cartoon bat monster, except when you look closer, he's more like a bodiless human head with bird talons, overall a much stranger and more interesting physiology than I think he gets credit for. It's one of those cases where a Digimon appears so frequently, it just starts to feel less special, but I'd honestly settle for one of these as a main Digimon partner if I had to, especially since he can evolve into pretty much any or all of the darkest and spookiest Adult stages, not even just all of the Satans, but ESPECIALLY all of the Satans.

It's also worth noting that Demidevimon's primary battle move is called "Demi Dart," and is supposed to throw a giant syringe that sucks out the opponent's blood. How cool is THAT!? Much too cool for Western audiences, apparently, by which we mean too violent and too reminiscent of "drug abuse imagery," so the syringes were carefully painted over as shadowy, black energy-darts in the dub. WEAK!

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Like Devimon, this demonic dragon-man appeared before Demidevimon ever existed, as a possible evolution of a few different Digimon. I'm kind of surprised it's not actually a Perfect Level evolution for Devimon, but I guess the idea here is that Devimon is the Digimon Satan of the humanoids while Devidramon is the Digimon Satan for the beastlier monsters to evolve into, though we all know Digimon doesn't stick close to that kind of logic.

I like this design primarily because it's more than just a scary dragon in latex. It still looks just unwholesomely human enough that it feels like a person stretched out into a dragon, and that they decided to give it a second pair of eyes really brings an alien feel to this messed up dinoguy.

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This "artificially enhanced" Devimon is arguably both less goth and more goth than Devimon Classic. It doesn't have nearly as many accessories, but what it does have includes little metal coffins for kneepads, a series of subcutaneous red orbs, even more exaggerated arms, wild silver hair and an eerie golden mask hearkening to Evangelion, showing off its six eerie pairs of eyes.

Neodevimon must also get some points, of course, for also going shirtless and showing off the most skin of the entire Devimon family, even compared to the really fanservicey one we're gonna get to shortly.

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While this doesn't have "devi" anywhere in its name, Skullsatamon was one of Devimon's go-to evolutions before Neodevimon even existed, and you can tell almost at a glance that we're basically looking at Devimon's skeletonized carcass, so I'm counting it as a true Devimon family member.

This was actually one of my favorites back in the day for being such a decrepit looking ghoul. I still love the gruesome feel of those pure red bones and of course the skull head so perfectly shrink-wrapped in black leather. It's just one wicked undead demon, and I remember a more awkward kid-me pointing specifically to Skullsatamon as evidence that Digimon can get dark and messed up enough for older people to get into, which is odd, because I had absolutely zero such shame when it came to Pokemon.

And, damn, you know, the fanservice is still a whole lot more explicit with the female monsters, but these trading cards still put forth some admirable effort into making buff gargoyles and rocker skeletons look pretty studly themselves.

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Nautical-flavored Devimon surprisingly never evolves from regular Devimon, but it does evolve in some instances from "Icedevimon," which is really just Devimon colored blue.

Surprisingly, I kind of overlooked this one until doing this review, and now I see how much there is to really love about Marinedevimon beyond merely the addition of tentacles. His gnarlier, more hunched build, animal feet, goth squid-mntle head and third eye are all really menacing and cool, plus I like how every tentacle is decorated differently, the single cephalopod arm for a tail, the pressure gauge he wears for no reason other than to look even more nautical, and best of all, the fact that all skull markings have been swapped out for skeleton fish!

On another note, Marindevimon's first anime appearance puts him at roughly a hundred feet tall, probably worth mentioning that.

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Full disclosure: teenage me fell pretty hard for this one, and I'll try not to let that bias my review, but unlike that white bread Angewomon, I really think Ladydevimon improves quite a bit upon her masculine predecessor.

Sure, she drops some of the buckles and ALL of the zippers and bandages, which is really kind of a shame, but chains had to be the one thing sorely missing from Devimon's ensemble, and Lady is so hardcore that her chains are bolted directly into her thigh meat. Not to mention that she goes hog-wild with the stitches, she's got some cool asymmetry going on with one regular-sized hand, her wings are even tatterier and creepier, I'm not ashamed to admit I like the skullboober, and she's apparently overflowing with so much goth energy that her spandex is peeling itself off into what's really only one of several demonic familiars on her person.

At least illustrations like these make more sense than usual for a succubus-like monster, and so does the very fact that she can evolve from regular Devimon, too, since a succubus and an incubus are supposed to be alternate forms of the same exact demon. What was I just saying about fundamentalists sorely overlooking Digimon? Maybe they just couldn't navigate their way more than two inches into the canon before they had to give up. Maybe they just couldn't keep enough of it even sorted in their heads long enough to get mad about it. I'm a fan, I guess, and I'm already teetering on that feeling.

Anyway, here's a plastic statue of Ladydevimon they sell for more money than I've ever had on my person:

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With that, we've covered every Digimon you can argue as an immediate member of the "Devimon" family, but like I said earlier, the number of Satans in Digimon is through the damned roof, and almost all of them connect back to the fiends we've seen here through one evolutionary path or another.

I'm just doing my very best to keep these pages compact and focused, so the likes of Vilemon, Daemon, Lilithmon, Boogiemon, Beelzemon, Impmon, Mephismon and others will just have to wait their turn.

Until then, you have a satanstic rest of the evening!