Written by Jonathan Wojcik with the aid of With the Will, Digimon Wiki and Wikimon
WANKOMON & SIESAMON
Wankomon is another child stage made for the Eastern-themed Shambala, though this one first appears in the Toho Braves virtual pet, which it shares with Renamon, and both can evolve into the new Renamon stages we reviewed a few pages back. Like I said, I'm not going for a reasonable "order" with these reviews. I never will, and you can't make me!
Wankomon is designed after an inu hariko; a cute little decorative dog statue not unlike the more globally familiar "lucky cat" figure. Wankomon has a pleasant husky-like color scheme, a grey-white face surrounded by darker, stormier grey, with a big pink tongue lolling from its cartoonish puppy face. It also has a shiny golden horn, gold and turqoise tunic and a decorative yin-yang ball clutched in its tail. It's nothing exceptionally original, but it is cute, and makes me reminisce a little about Yo-Kai Watch.
Wankomon is designed after an inu hariko; a cute little decorative dog statue not unlike the more globally familiar "lucky cat" figure. Wankomon has a pleasant husky-like color scheme, a grey-white face surrounded by darker, stormier grey, with a big pink tongue lolling from its cartoonish puppy face. It also has a shiny golden horn, gold and turqoise tunic and a decorative yin-yang ball clutched in its tail. It's nothing exceptionally original, but it is cute, and makes me reminisce a little about Yo-Kai Watch.
RATING:
Wankomon also feels like it was designed especially to evolve into Siesamon, which it indeed does in its debut virtual pet. This is a lion-dog Digimon from all the way back in 2011, but it's one of a handful of miscellaneous mons I've neglected to review until now. It's only fitting that we finally get to it as it receives a new child stage!
Siesamon Digimonizes its inspiration well enough, though it hails from that lengthy dark age when Digimon designs almost all aimed for a chunkier, spikier anime style. It's still reasonably organic, especially for being based on a common stone statue that tends to be much blockier, with nice looking "swirly cloud" paws. Its one original twist is that its liony mane is comprised entirely of golden drill-like cones, which is an interesting elaboration on the spiral locks of the classic lion-dog.
Siesamon Digimonizes its inspiration well enough, though it hails from that lengthy dark age when Digimon designs almost all aimed for a chunkier, spikier anime style. It's still reasonably organic, especially for being based on a common stone statue that tends to be much blockier, with nice looking "swirly cloud" paws. Its one original twist is that its liony mane is comprised entirely of golden drill-like cones, which is an interesting elaboration on the spiral locks of the classic lion-dog.
RATING:
There's also a more recently added Siesamon X, and wow is that some gorgeously colorful art! There's a lot more personality in the face here, and overall denser detail with golden wings for ears, bells, red tassels, longer horn-like silver drills and all sorts of gleaming decor that may seem cluttered, but no moreso than the paper-mache lion dogs you can see guarding over some restaurants, shrines and festivals throughout East Asia. My only criticism is that this should honestly just be a regular evolution, and doesn't truly need to be an X evolution. It feels much more like a Siesamon perfect stage!
