Digital Monsters

What started out as a spin-off of Tamagotchi turned into a phenomena that was often considered a pokemon knock off.  Digital Monsters or Digimon as we in North America know it, has help revolutionize the digital pet industry into super stardom.  It has had its fair share of the pets themselves, ongoing anime series, mangas, even video games revolving around such a simple idea.

Created in 1997 by Bandai as a more "Boy friendly." version of Tamagotchi, these particular pets were pretty much the same as Tamagotchi in almost every way.  Feeding them caring for them etc.  Even the controversial letting them die. However unlike Tamagotchi, Digimon had a unique style of play that lets you and another Digi-pet player link the devices together in order to befriend or battle each other for experience points.  This in turn caused the titular monsters to digivolve into more powerful beings.  When I was a kid I learned about Digimon through the anime show, but I stopped watching during the Tamers era.  I even had a few toys from between 02 and Tamers, such as A D-Terminal and Takato's D-Power Digivice.  Though my personal favorite season to date would have to be 02 mainly because it's a lot Darker.  First off in that season the Destined are not just facing a rogue Digimon or Virus.  They face off against one of their own and those type of battles I like the most.  Though I do agree with JesuOtaku about the damn epilogue, as I too am a Tai/Sora TK/Kari shipper myself.  I mean come on Angemon and Angewomon it can't get any more obvious.

Now for the fun part.  Could it Exist In Real Life?   Well the answer is yes in many ways.  First and foremost is the obvious I pointed out in terms of A.I. as with the proper tweaking you can create a virtual pet just as good as the real thing, but without the mess.  Hell many of the chatterboxes and other Vitural Assistants could be attributed to being just humanoid Virtual pets. My personal favorite being Verbots, as it is free and has a simple way of tweaking the brain of said assistant. 

However that's only scratching the surface. PETA also known as the People's Ethical Treatment of Animals has started a campaign to try to legally register Digital Pets as actual pets.  This campaign is in an attempt to kill a lot of birds with one stone. Not literally of course.  But meaning the following.
* To give a person a pet without having a real pet suffer.
* To train a person on the ethics and responsibilities in taking care of a real pet.
* A suitable substitute for an animal lover that has allergies to the real thing.

Now if anyone knew me in real life.  I hate PETA personally.  I am a meat eater so I wouldn't get along with them even if the members happen to be celebs I like such as Alec Baldwin.  That aside this campaign is actually pretty clever in many ways. I myself think that Digital Pets might be the way of the future in terms of animal companions.  Who knows, maybe they might pull a Yugioh and do a holographic version of the Digimon of your choice.

As usual, debate, argue and let me know what I missed.  Stay Tuned For More.