My brother and I watched a lot of cartoons and played a lot of video games as children...and that hasn't changed as we've grown up. We still watch cartoons and play video games, and every so often, I find something within a cartoon or video game which I think is insightful and should be written down somewhere. Thus, this series. This is the second post, and it's all about Digimon!
UPDATE: You can now read a slightly edited version of this on the Harvard Ichthus!!!! This is the link to that: http://harvardichthus.org/2015/04/christ-and-cartoons-how-a-digimon-imitated-jesus/. What you're reading below is the original version.
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Over winter break last year, my brother and I found the second season of Digimon on Netflix, and we decided to watch that season all the way through. Note: for those who haven't seen the second season of Digimon, this blogpost will have spoilers. So if you want to watch it without spoilers, go watch it on Netflix and then come back here. It was fun to relive those Saturday mornings when we would wake up early to watch shows like Digimon as kids, and it was fun to see how we reacted as adults to some of the stuff we watched thirteen (!!!) years ago.
One thing that didn't change much was of the six main characters, my favorite character was Ken. I couldn't really explain why when I was a kid, but as an adult I figured it out. In the first part of the season, Ken was the Digimon Emperor, an evil genius who took over the Digital World (the place where all the Digimon live) and ruled it with an iron fist. He was a very cruel Emperor, making the Digimon work for him as slaves, making them evil by taking over their minds with Dark Rings, and punishing those who didn't obey. For most of the first part of the season, the five other main characters were trying to stop Ken, and everyone knew he was a jerk...except his Digimon partner, Wormmon. (People who have never watched Digimon must be finding this very weird to read! I hope you all get this.)
Wormmon had been assigned to Ken as a Digimon partner before he became the Emperor, and he remembered that before Ken became the Emperor, he was a very kind boy. However, a series of events including his brother's death and being infected with a "dark spore" made Ken very spiteful and evil. Ken even treated Wormmon like a slave, and at one point, he rejected Wormmon as his Digimon partner and tried to create a new Digimon partner for himself, one that was bigger and stronger than Wormmon. This new partner was a monster, and he eventually went mad and started destroying everything. When Wormmon realized that Ken's new partner was going to destroy everything, he finally told Ken everything he thought about him, but despite Ken's treatment of him and all the other Digimon, Wormmon told Ken that he still remembered the kind boy that Ken used to be, and that he hoped that Ken would become that person again. He then gave all of his life energy to defeat the monster, saving Ken and the other main characters. That event made Ken realize the error of his ways, and he stopped being the Digimon Emperor after that. Eventually, he joined up with the other main characters to save the Digital World. It took time for the other main characters, but eventually they were able to see Ken like Wormmon saw him: as a kind and noble person, and a hero.
I just retold a major subplot of a kids' TV show from fifteen years ago, but there are themes in that subplot that are for people of all ages in real life now. Figuratively speaking, we have all met a Digimon Emperor. Perhaps that person doesn't go around killing people and controlling their minds, but the person does have fundamental flaws that end up hurting them and the people around them. And if I'm speaking that way, about people who have missed the mark and hurt other people and have flaws and scars that they can't handle very well, then I can say with certainty that we have all been the Digimon Emperor at some point.
But I can also say, daring to hope, that there's a Ken in all of us too, someone who is kind to other people, ingenuous and has something good to share with the world. Not everyone sees it, and it may be buried beneath all the flaws. But it is there, in all of us. And we need someone, kind of like Wormmon in this plot, to see that person and never stop believing that the good kid is there somewhere. We need someone who can deal with all of our flaws and help us find the inner kindness. We need someone to take on our burdens so that we can be helped. And if we can find that person--that exceedingly rare person--they will usually succeed in bringing the good out of us, not because we were good enough to find the good, but because we know how much it cost them and we want to repay them.
People like those are hard--nay, nearly impossible to find. There's no greater sacrifice for a person than to give his or her time, energy, and even his or her own life to see a friend gain life. I dare say that there's nothing that messes with your head or your heart more than realizing that someone believed in you so much that they were willing to give your life to see you find your dreams. That's why Christianity still continues to grow today, though people's actions throughout history have sullied its name--because in Christianity, Jesus is that person. If you find a person who believes in you so much that they can bet their life on it, it might take a while, but eventually, you start believing in yourself and wanting to do better for yourself, and you don't want to go back to the way you were, because if someone gave their life for you, then your life must be worth it.
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