So, here we go, the REAL "big bad" of Digimon Frontier, a child-level angel digimon who, in ages past, supposedly ended the brutal wars between human-type and beast-type digimon and was once seen as the digital world's savior.

Unfortunately, from there, Lucemon went increasingly mad with power and believed the digital world needed him to be its absolute ruler until the original Ten Warriors rebelled against him and banished him to the Dark Area, the digital world hell.

You gotta love how much Japanese media plays with the idea of god himself as a supervillain. I've said this before, but it's funny how much religious outrage there was against Pokemon for the longest time while digimon practically got away with murder.

Lucemon is an interesting and unsettling concept for a villain, but the design is just a straightforward angel kid, so we're giving him a three for now.

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I love that "falldown mode" lingo for fallen angel digimon. It was changed to "chaos mode" for the West to soften some of that potential controversy, but like I said, the controversy never even happened. This was supposed to be Lucemon as a perfect level digimon in its original incarnation, freshly escaped from the inferno, but this form was later retconned into an ultimate level and the mightiest of the Seven Demon Lords.

Falldown Lucemon's official description is some heavy stuff, informing us that it rivals the power of "the existence called God" and that its right half is all-loving while its left half only hates. It is, again, not a design I'm personally into, but I appreciate how much it looks like a Castlevania boss.

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So now we're REALLY getting somewhere! Lucemon's supposedly truer and final form is based on "the dragon of revelation," but instead of having seven heads, those floating runes are supposed to be the "crowns" representing all seven deadly sins, a very creative and visually interesting interpretation. The design is also pretty killer, especially the eye-like nodules along its tail, the multiple wings and an eyeless Giger-dragon face with a very classic digimon feel to it.

This design, however, has an absolutely KILLER secret.

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Oh my god. Look at it. Look at this simply stunning little creep. It's 50% Daphnia and 50% vertebrate embryo with an angel digimon twist and it is one of THE COOLEST things in the entire series, ever. Absolutely up there with the D-reapers.

This thing is the actual, really true form of Lucemon, and I've always been a very big advocate of the trope we're seeing here. While Western media pushes for the "final boss" or ultimate god-being to be huge, scary and dramatic, Japanese stuff tends to expect something eerily small and disarming the more powerful the foe, and there's a particularly unique sort of menace to a godly entity that looks embryonic and undeveloped, sort of symbolizing that it's the ancient root of creation or that it simply doesn't need any more of a form.

The little god-maggot lurks inside "Gehenna," which is the planet-like "orb of darkness" held by Satan Mode, and the entire massive Satan Mode body is canonically nothing but the larva's shadow. DAMN that's cool! That's cool as SHIT! Ugh! Just when I think I'm going to burn out on reviewing digimon they always remind me again how great they can actually be.

I said I wasn't going to have a gold rating for a while, but I'd just totally forgotten that this one was a thing. NOW we won't have another gold rating for a while, but a lot of you have accurately predicted what that's going to be already. Sit tight! There's a couple dozen minor digimon we've got coming next!

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