We're saving some new favorites for later and skipping ahead here a moment, to review the brand new partner Digimon from the 2021-2022 anime Digimon Ghost Game, which reframes classic Digimon as creepypasta-like horror figures! So far, this series focuses on spinning spooky little mysteries from existing monsters, but the main characters receive brand new partner species, ans Gurimon is the baby stage to the central protagonist's sidekick. There's not much to it, a simple blob Digimon with a developing horn and crest, but it gave us a convenient spot to get you up to speed on its series, at least.

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With Gurimon, it becomes obvious what kind of Digimon line this is: it's basically a disembodied Triceratops head! Cute, but a bit on the nose.

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This is the important one, the one we see the most of. Gammamon is a small, white, bipedal Ceratopsian whose tiny nose horn is kind of drawn more like a little black dog nose in a lot of cases, and overall looks kind of like a Sonic the Hedgehog character, but it's honestly pretty cute. Oddly, this Triceratops has tiny little bat wings on it, barely visible from its official art, and yes he can fly. I'll give this little guy a 4 because it's about time they had a new child-level dinosaur that wasn't another carnosaur.

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This is Gammamon's seemingly go-to or "ideal" evolved form, now a tall, lethal looking red-skinned humanoid with longer horns and spines on its Dino the Hedgehog face. Apparently this evolution is supposed to come from Gammamon's "Blazing Spirit," which is also supposed to be why it turns from white to red. Most of Gammamon's evolutions are sleek and speedy looking, which is exactly the opposite of what we associate the ceratopsians with. I like that.

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...But if evolving under a "calm, cool and collected" spirit, Gammamon can take on a more flight-oriented form, a sleeker, blue skinned, cybernetic Ceratops-man with gliding membranes between its limbs and air jet ports for thighs. Again, it's fun to see some thin and agile Triceratops creatures, I've never really seen that done before.

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This one, however, is a more traditional bulky, quadrupedal beast, covered in cool sea-green metal with elongated cannons for horns, a gun grafted to its tail and even hoof-like feet that function as additional guns.

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Uh oh! This is Gammamon's evil evolution! His child stage is written as an adorable, almost infantile Digimon, but if he's pushed too far you get this sadistically violent, black and purple, more devilish variant of Betel Gammamon.

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All of Gammamon's forms can evolve into Canoweissmon, which returns to a predominantly white color scheme with a red underbelly and horns, blue highlights, and shadowy darkness it can generate from its claws and its menacing tail. It does feel equally appropriate for any of the four forms, a fully armored dragon whose three horns and skull crests are still evocative of a Triceratops. Fairly neat! It's like whatever emotional outburst Gammamon evolves under, they all even out into this balanced but very threatening beast.

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This is the "dark" Perfect for Gammamon, basically the true Perfect for Gulus Gammamon; a scarier and more menacing counterpat to Canoweissmon corrupted entirely by negativity. It's supposed to be almost as powerful as the more highly evolved Megidramon, and it spreads a virus called "GRB" or "Gulus Realm Burst" that can turn other digimon more "frenzied." This form wasn't even revealed until Ghost Game was almost over.

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The long anticipated ultimate stages for Gammamon were...alright. Unfortunately another digimon line that goes from outrageous dragon to humanoid warrior. After so many digimon like this, do any fans really prefer it this way? I understand the tradition of a final evolution that "streamlines" down to something smaller and simpler, but that doesn't necessarily need to mean "humanoid." I've just seen this so many times, I gave it a 2/5 at first, but it's popular enough that I can throw it a 3.

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The Dark & Evil Ultimate is equally predictable, after the perfect stages were so similar. I give this one a 3 at least for the cool color scheme and drill arms, but is there really anyone who wouldn't have rather this line ended on the giant kaiju dinosaur dragons? Or, if the humanoids are supposed to represent more order and refinement or whatever, have the "light" evolutions go from dragon to knight, but the "dark" evolutions go from knight to dragon! Right?! Then at either Perfect or Ultimate stage they have a dragon/dragonslayer rivalry!

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Wait, whoops! I actually forgot to update with this one when I first uploaded this review! Proximamon can evolve from a combination of Gammamon's two Ultimate stages, balancing the forces of "light" and "dark"...but that's not necessarily a good thing, here. Proximamon is surrounded by an "Extinction Cloud" that breaks all digital life down to its smallst components so that its "Light of Recreation," generated by a sweep of its axe, can remake what it destroyed in a new form. It's another in Digimon's tradition of doomsday bringers, and exactly what you'd think the "Ghost Game" anime was building up to, especially with the final episode being named The Devourer of All...but we actually never see this monster. Gammamon's whole character arc is a conflict between its protective and destructive facets, but the anime cuts just short of addressing this final, epic outcome.

Not a bad design for what it is, however. It does allow the line to end on a "dragon," albeit with a knight-like figure sprouting from its back. The coolest detail of course is that the four-legged dragon body has what look like eyeballs for shoulders, and I like how this part of the design is done in an overall darker motif, so the visual is like an angelic figure riding a demonic one.

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