We've had six flawless 5/5's in a row thanks to six Japanese children who, like every child ever tasked with using their imagination, absolutely ran circles around everybody actually PAID to come up with new digimon...so are you ready for the seventh, and this time FOR REAL the very, very last digimon that's going to earn my gold rating?

One word: sublime. This is the unequivocal zenith of digimon design. It cannot, has not, will never get better than these cardboard boxes in the shape of a little dude. Not even any other conceivable little dude of cardboard boxes could ever exceed the splendor on display here. The fact that it offers a cute digimon kitty-cat eye on one side but a terrifying bakemono's eye on the other. How the top of the box head is open but we don't get to see what's even in there, if anything. The one random box that's gift-wrapped. The duct tape. The dents that evoke "teeth."

Even the angle of the box head goes the extra mile to be as interesting as it can be. Have you seen a lot of characters with box or box-shaped heads? I certainly have, and I can tell you almost each and every single one of them just puts all of the facial features on one side and calls it a day. This digimon was literally the first time I ever in my life saw a box-headed being in which a corner of the box served as the center of the face, and now it just seems stupidly obvious to do it that way. It looks so much nicer. It flows so much more naturally. It provides so much more space to actually work with. I will never go back to perpendicular cardboard box faces. If you catch me making a cardboard box into a perpendicular face, take a hit out on me and I'll pay for it myself.

Bacomon's designer is Ishii Kenichi, not only a master wizard of cardboard box creature design but technically skilled enough and clearly familiar enough with the digimon style that they didn't have to tweak almost anything in translation, though his illustration is still just a little bit livelier and more pleasing than the stiffer Bandai art.

What we know abut Bacomon is that its true interior form is a mystery (YES!!!), that it is highly agoraphobic and only feels secure with its cardboard suit on (GOOD!!!) and that if you dare to try and peek inside, it will instantly pack you in a box and hurl you away as a special delivery to an unknown destination (FANTASTIC!!!!!).

Bacomon EVEN get to appear for a whole episode of the anime, as sweet and gentle crew of a digital world amusement park...and it turns out that every Bacomon is in fact unique. None are nearly as magnificent as Kenichi's original type specimen, but getting a variety of different Bacomon with varying degrees of quality is still much more fun than simply duplicating the same magic half a dozen times.

There's even an extra tall, extra fancy Bacomon who sort of serves as their "boss," though he actually answers to none other than the evil Jokermon, who in turn works under an even more surprising villain who's only using the poor Bacomon to kidnap humans!!!

As for that original and greatest Bacomon...he actually turns out to be the loser of the bunch, whose shoddier appearance and pushy behavior only scares away most potential park-goers...

...But he never gives up on his fantasy of being nothing but a boring boat tour guide. A fantasy in which he envisions himself both taller and made of nicer boxes.

He. Is. Too. Pure.

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