My story with Digimon starts in 2001, when I was 6 years old, and first saw Digimon Adventure on my local TV station in my home country, Serbia.
It's a little known fact that Digimon actually came to the West before Pokémon did (even though Pokémon came out earlier in Japan).
In Europe and North America, Digimon Adventure came out in August 14, 1999 (even though the first virtual pet came in 1997), while the first Pokémon anime came in September 8, 1999 (and the first Gameboy game in 1998) - only 3 weeks difference for the anime, and a whole year for the games.
As for my country, from what I can remember, Digimon came out around 2001, while Pokémon came out about a year later.
For about a year, Digimon was a huge hit (until the Pokémon craze took over).
I, just like my peers, had Digimon toys, sticker albums, colouring books, you name it.
Then, as Pokémon took over, people, including myself admittedly, forgot about Digimon for a while.
We had cable TV, and when I was about 9-10 years old, I rediscovered Digimon on a Bosnian TV station by going through the channels.
It was the 4th season of Digimon (Digimon Frontier), and, as I only started watching it half way through, I was, understandably very confused.
I could recognise it was Digimon, but everything was so different, and as this was a time before we had access to the internet, I couldn't just Google what this was...
Nevertheless, I'd watch it all the time, sometimes even skipping first class of school to be able to watch an episode.
Fast forward to when I was about 12 years old, and we had an another run of Digimon Adventure (season 1), but this time on national TV.
This time they dubbed the 2nd season as well, so, as the first season ended, the 2nd started right away, howvever I missed the first episode.
Everybody at school was talking about this new season of Digimon, and I thought it was what I watched before. I was very cocky claiming "I already know everything that'll happen" (even though I didn't even understand Digimon Frontier fully, since I had a lot of gaps).
Understandably, everyone thought I was lying. Then they started naming characters, and I started naming characters, and that's when I realised that something's not right.
When I saw the episode's rerun, I was blown away that this was actually a direct sequel to the 1st season, and that even the characters from it appear, even though they're a few years older now.
This just increased my confusion, and at this point I had no idea what I saw before, and what's what.
It didn't help, that about a year or two later, I stumbled upon the season 3 of Digimon (Digimon Tamers), in some foreign language, at my cousin's, on cable TV.
My confusion lasted until year 8 of elementary school, when we were introduced to the computer class.
Every time after class, when we'd finish all our tasks, our teacher would allow us to browse the internet freely. This was also my first time using the internet.
You betcha the first thing I searched was "Digimon". I had this confusion about it for years, and I needed to settle it.
One of the first things I found was TheDigiZone blog, along with the Digimon Wiki.
That's when I started to frequent this blog (around 2009).
That's where I found out about all the seasons - which was which, what was their hierarchy, and also read about evolution lines and many more.
About a year later, we got internet at home. It was the old, slow dial-up, but it was great at the time.
I found a sketchy website where I could watch Digimon episodes for free, and decided to watch the 5th season (which was the latest season that came out at the time) - because "I already saw the first 4" (even though most of them I only saw partially - especially Digimon Frontier, where most of it was in gaps; and I only saw a part of an episode of the season 3, in a foreign language).
I didn't watch that many episodes at the time - probably about a dozen or two, but then I decided to give Digimon manga a go.
As I'd quickly get bored of one thing, and keep jumping from thing to thing, I started reading the mangas.
I read the one-volume pilot manga from '97, as it was quite short, and then moved on to the 1st manga season (Digimon V-Tamer 01).
I read quite a bit of it, but never finished the whole thing. I moved on to reading other mangas (like the Digimon Chronicle, D-Cyber and Next), but only read a few volumes of each.
Then I jumped to the next "phase". I discovered that the Digimon Wiki wasn't the only one out there. There was an nother major English-language one (Wikimon), but more importantly, there were Digimon Wikis for so many different languages (including German, Polish, Spanish etc.).
That's when I decided to make my own Digimon Wiki in Serbian language (Digimon Serbia Wiki). I worked on it quite regularily, for about 3-4 years, during high school.
I was, pretty much, the only contributor ever, so the Wiki's editing was really slow. I haven't touched it for over a decade now.
During the time when I was actively working on it, Digimon had a re-appearance, as a new season (Digimon Xros Wars) came out after a bunch of years of no anime.
I watched it online with English sub with my little brother, who, I'm pretty sure didn't even know how to read at the time, so he had no idea what's going on, but was just happy to watch a cool-looking cartoon.
Since I was already a highschooler for a while, I considered myself "too big to watch cartoons", so during these years I stopped watching Digimon anime, reading the manga, and working on my Digimon Wiki.
That was until I was somewhere in my mid-20s and decided to re-play old Gameboy games in an emulator.
I played Pokémon Yellow and Pokémon Crystal, and then re-kindled my old nostalgia and interest for Digimon as well.
When I played these games, that's when also my opinion on Pokémon vs Digimon changed, but I'll be making a separate post about that soon.
This takes us to early 2025, when I discovered Neocities and the "old web revival".
I started binge watching late 90's and early 2000s and 2010s media, replaying old games, reinstalling old software, and visiting nostalgic websites.
That's when I made this website and this blog.
This was a heavily abridged version of what I wanted to say, however, in my head it seemed way shorter.
What's next?
Firstly, I'm planning to rewatch the original season 1 from 1999, and also the reboot from 2020. I want to be brought back to my childhood and also compare the 2 versions of Digimon Adventure.
I'm also planning to stream some Digimon episodes and movies on this site, so stay tuned for future posts!
