Digimon (デジモン, dejimon^?) (short for Digital Monster) is a very popular Japanese series of children's merchandise, including toys, manga and anime, featuring monsters of various forms living in a "Digital World". Digimon contains many of the typical themes associated with mon (monster).

Overview

Digimon started out as a dueling digital pet similar to Tamagotchi, which was called "Digital Monster" that was released by Bandai on June 26, 1997. The Digital Monster toy was enormously successful, and four different colors of the toy were released in November of the same year. In December of the same year, the second generation of "Digital Monster" was released. Many have criticized it as a clone of Pokémon, as the Tamagotchi was released in 1997 as opposed to 1996 (Bandai was already working on Digimon in 1995), though it became popular in the United States before the latter. However, the Tamagotchi bears little resemblance to the Digimon TV show or card game. Digimon and Pokémon may have a few factors in common (being marketed toward children in North America and being part of the same genre), but differ in original target audience, concept, spirit and design.