Well...here we are. At long, long, long last, we have come to the one and only digital monster for whom my adoration actually rivals that of Raremon, and for that matter, the first Digimon I've loved even half as much as Raremon in over 150 review pages. This magnificent monstrosity was unexpectedly dropped on us well into the age when robot angel dragon furries had seemingly conquered the franchise, and in fact debuted as the villain of a Digimon Tamers movie, Runaway Locomon, in which the aforementioned sentient steam engine is behaving rather oddly.

As its name implies, Parasimon is the first and still only digimon themed around parasitism, a frail but crafty creature that invades other digital monsters with its tentacles, drives them mad, puppets them around and slowly drains away their lifeforce. As physically weak as it's supposed to be, however, this digimon is an Ultimate stage, perhaps the only Ultimate in the series that completely fits my aesthetic, and does it ever!

From the "front," Parasimon's visage is nothing but one huge, bloodshot, lidless, human eyeball with a cluster of slimy, retractable green tentacles. In the "back," its bulbous green abdomen splits open into a pink-lipped mouth worthy of Audrey II, and supporting the whole affair are eight beautifully bony, claw-tipped spider legs. It's a tentacle monster, an eyeball monster, an arthropod, a brain parasite and even kind of a little plant-like, effectively combining almost every single thing I love the most in all the world into such a perfect package that I still can't believe I didn't just dream the whole thing up myself, and just in case it wasn't perfectly on the nose, I've long been a sucker for the combination of purple and green.

It's so damn perfect of a concept in every conceivable fashion, I almost don't want to admit that it might be my favorite digimon. I might just keep telling myself I love Raremon slightly more because I'd have to admit that I'm a predictable stereotype of myself. Stop typecasting me, Parasimon!

And you know what's even more fantastic about this digimon? Its dub voices.

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Tell me if any part of you was expecting basically Yosemite Sam from our main Parasimon, a decision I'm sure they made entirely on the basis that he's stealing a train, which is hilarious, to say nothing of the Parasimon swarm he subsequently unleashes upon the rest of the city. Far from eerie, otherworldly alien invaders, the huge bugs are a cackling, giggling horde of deranged maniacs, and I don't think that's only an English Dub innovation. Even the Parasimon appearing later in Xros Wars displays that same energetic lust for villainy.

Could anything make this digimon even more perfect for me? As a matter of fact, yes, because it's time to talk evolutionary lines!

As an Ultimate, Parasimon can't evolve any further, but its go-to predecessor is Arukenimon, and it's also been known to evolve from Infermon and Anomalocarimon, a more than worthy selection of monster bugs!

Much weirder but no less delightful is an option provided by the trading card game, in which the parasite can evolve from a fusion of Pumpmon, Jagamon and Shogungekomon. This is a fairly typical level of nonsense for the TCG's fusion evolutions, but I want to say I kinda get it? Parasimon may have no explicit elements of a Halloween pumpkin, a tuber and a singing toad, but...there's definitely something there, if not just that these three are so unlike one another, what else could they fuse into but some bug-eyed abomination?

If one particular prevolution matters most, however, it's that Digimon World: Dawn and Dusk allow Parasimon to evolve directly from Datamon. I love this progression, because Datamon is an unstable, hodgepodge cyborg that compensates for its physical weakness with its incredible brainpower and the ability to "hack" other digimon with its infectious nanobots. Parasimon's smoother bio-mechanical appearance and parasitic mind control seem like natural refinements of these characteristics, not to mention that they even share the presence of both a single, exposed eye and multiple legs!

But that's STILL NOT ALL, because just try and guess one of the things Datamon can evolve from in the very same game?!

...HOW DID THEY KNOW!?! Who decided there should be such a direct link between the two digimon I love most of all, without any immediately obvious reasons for the connection?! I suppose the transformation from Datamon to Parasimon is for the reasons I already stated, and the transformation to Datamon from Raremon makes just as much thematic sense, what with Raremon being a completely botched cyborg. Of course it would only manage to stabilize into something as wonky as Datamon! Of course its final form would go on to be that of a "degenerate" parasite!

      

It's taken us 190 review pages to hit this mark, but here at last is my actual, complete, perfect personal digimon line, with Chuumon as the pitifully tiny, fragile, and cowardly child-level who bit off more than he could chew when he tried to mechanize himself...but eventually sorted his hideously broken form into a skulking, manipulative brain-sucker with what I'm sure would have to be the persona of a cackling mad scientist. Also, I made that animated Chuumon myself out of the one seen with Sukamon's sprite, so feel free to use it wherever you want.

But now, having said everything else I can say about this digimon, I'm afraid all we have left is a bit of a downer...

Parasimon debuted all the way back in the ancient, bygone year of 2002...and in the many aeons since, through dozens of new video games, manga and anime, almost no digimon has ever again qualified as one of my "new favorites." Out of hundreds more digital monsters that exist by now, my personal, most treasured top ten or twenty of them have simply never changed again, remaining more or less the exact same list in the whole sixteen years that have now passed at the time of this writing. Some of you were conceived, born, and grew old enough to be reading this review in the amount of time since I fell in love with a digital monster, and this is one of the very last times I will ever be able to use my "personal favorite" gold rating.

Admittedly, there are still a great number of digimon I'm going to keep having fun going over, and I did just say it's only "one of" the last times I'll be giving out my personal stamp, but the coming exceptions are so sparse and so minor that I'm not completely certain I'd have really missed them if they never happened. Pokemon has never once stopped wowing me and even totally displacing old favorites with each new release, but I'd have scarcely noticed a difference if poor old Digimon just ended right here, and it sure does feel lousy that I can say such a thing about 16+ years of a monster-based franchise.

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