PUNKMON TO HEAVYMETALDRAMON
ADULT: PUNKMON
We're currently reviewing Digimon that came out almost a year or more before I'm putting up this round of posts, and I'd have thought by now that we'd have larger quality art of "Punkmon," but no such luck. Punkmon debuted as an alternative Adult stage for
Impmon, but it was very obviously designed more around
Shoutmon, the little rock & roll reptile who never really had its own dedicated, conceptually thematic Adult stage before. It's literally like a bigger, beefier Shoutmon with blue skin and a bunch of punk rock flair, including a neon green mohawk and (of course) a lot more belts. There's a jagged muzzle-like metal casing around its jaws for some extra edge, and while it may seem redundant, it has brass knuckles on top of its claws, which apparently brand opponents with the digimoji for "punk."
Its bio also informs us that its tail is a guitar pick, and generates a rhythm when strummed against any surface at all, playing a tune on its surroundings while it battles. It's also an anarchist, of course, and it loves to show off!
RATING:
"LOUDMON" is Punkmon's Perfect-level evolution, a slightly burlier dinosauroid now wrapped in huge, heavy cybernetics from the waist up, exposing only its head, all of which is modeled after audio equipment! The forearms are foot pedals, audio cables are wrapped together to form a tail, the shoulders are oversized speakers and the lever-like power switch protrudes from the chest. This is a Digimon that supposedly only cares about "performing," categorizing its battles as a public performance and concerned more with putting on an awesome enough show than it is with actually winning.
One of its attacks is called "Metallica Edge." Not just metallic edge. I know, I know, Metallica aren't actually very punk at all really. I very much doubt these Digimon would approve of Metallica killing Napster back in the day, which was probably a Digimon itself.
The final stage is HEAVYMETALDRAMON, a new dragon Digimon that's probably exactly what you wanted out of this line, and then some. Its mechanical snake-tail lower body ends in a spike that evokes the tip of a guitar, with rad blue flames sizzling down the spine. Its waist has fishlike red fins and yellow teeth, kind of like its own tail is a serpent devouring its torso, which sports a single red eye between its skeleton-finger "ribs." Its upper chest armor bears menacing black eye sockets and more yellow teeth, forming an almost Ogremon-like face. It has clawed, armored upper limbs, a sleek metallic dragon head, and oh yeah, flaming wings formed from multiple black guitars.
I'm still not sure why the first appearance of this line was associated with Impmon when it's so, so clearly the overdue completion of a Shoutmon family, but I guess I appreciate the regular reminders that Digimon evolution is up to your imagination, and even Digimon that were "made" to evolve from each other aren't shackled to that in-universe.
