Oh yes. This is a real digimon. And this is what it really looks like. It's a perfect level in the same "puppet" family as digimon like Monzaemon and Etemon, but it's only known to evolve from cat-like Adult stages such as Gatomon and Mikemon, so you could kind of consider it a "failure" evolution for the felines.

The real reason for Betsumon's existence was as an in-joke about a notoriously "bad" cosplay by a voice actress and V-jump editor known only to the fandom as Tailmon Betsu

Betsumon was added into the D-Scanner 2.0 as just a throwaway shout-out to a prominent fan, but I'm not sure why they added the big crotch bulge other than as some sort of rude cross-dressing joke. Apparently the real Tailmon Betsu approved of it all anyway, and she went on to get a cameo voicing the baby digimon Poyomon in Digimon Frontier.

Betsumon would remain nothing but an obscure curiosity in Digimon canon until 2010's Digimon Xros Wars, which had a grand old time dredging up some of the strangest, most forgotten digital monsters for new roles. Here, Betsumon was imagined as the digital world's master of disguise, sort of, unable to hide its face but able to imitate the powers and abilities of other digimon through the power of cosplay.

They also got rid of the crotch bulge, which is a win if you found the joke insensitive and a lose if you looped back around to finding the design just charmingly peculiar at face value. That's always a pretty fine line, isn't it? Overall, I like Betsumon in the same way I like any of the other cartoonier, quirkier, trippier digimon, and I'm glad at least one anime refused to let it languish in obscurity.

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