People do tend to imagine their favorite fictional world being real. Entertaining the possibility that your favorite fictional character might meet you one day certainly is fun, but a lot of fictional universes don’t really work well with our reality. Some of the elements are either impossible or completely unnatural to our world, which means that the fictional world we love so much is going to remain – fictional. But one media franchise stands out in this category – Digimon! Do you think Digimon could be possible in the real world?
On a purely theoretical level, Digimon – as beings created by Earth’s digital networks – certainly are a possibility. But still, seeing how our technology is not that advanced and how such a co-existence would be hard to maintain, we think that Digimon aren’t going to happen in the real world.
In today’s article, we are going to entertain the possibility of Digimon being real. We are going to dig deeper into the creation of Digimon and see whether that’s possible in the real world, so if you want to know more – keep reading!
What are Digimon?
A Digimon (Japanese: デジモン, Dejimon), or a “Digital Monster” (デジタルモンスター, Dejitaru Monsutā), is a fictional creature from the multimedia franchise of the same name. The Digimon inhabit the so-called Digital World, a vast world (somewhat a polar opposite of our world) created alongside the development of human digital networks. The Digital World is made out of data and so are all the creatures inhabiting it.
A Digimon is a sentient creature. They have free will, they interact with each other and, despite being made of data, they actually behave like every living being; it would be best to compare their behaviour to human behaviour. Some Digimon tend to act feral, like animals, but most of them – regardless of whether they are humanoid or not – can speak and freely interact with others.
A Digimon is born from a Digi-Egg (Japanese: (デジタマ, Dejitama) and it starts at the Fresh Level. They grow through the process of Digivolution, reaching their final form at the Mega Level, although certain form variations still exist even after that Level. A Digivolution can be permanent or temporary.
Digimon can also die naturally or can be killed just like regular living beings. The difference is that the data of a dead Digimon usually goes back to a Digi-Egg so that the Digimon is reborn after a while, but this is not a firmly established canon rule, as there have been exceptions. A Digimon can die permanently.
A Digimon can travel to the real world and vice versa, which means that the data a Digimon is composed of somehow transforms into actual matter and vice versa. The same goes for humans who travel to the Digital World.
The creation of Digimon
The exact mechanism through which the Digimon were created is unknown. It is known that the Digimon were disovered in the network around 1997 but how they came there and how the data accumulated remains unknown, as the anime never truly explored that part.
The 47th episode of Digimon Adventure 02 does, on the other hand, show a brief history on the discovery of Digimon, as shown in this video (we’re sorry for the Japanese audio and the Spanish subtitles, but we haven’t managed to find any other video):
So, if you really want to explore the creation of Digimon, we advise you to watch the anime series and try to come up with a theory for yourselves based on the fragments provided in the shows. Each plausible theory is good as the next one, so we decided to let you explore the magical world of Digimon.
What we do know is that Digimon can also be created artificially, which is not that strange seeing that they’re made of data. So, if one could manipulate data, he could also create a Digimon. In Digimon Adventure 02, The Digimon Emperor created Kimeramon artificially, and there was also the creation of BlackWarGreymon by Arukenimon using a hundred Control Spires. Likewise, in Digimon Data Squad, scientist Akihiro Kurata created an artificial Digimon called Gizumon. These are just some of the examples shown throughout the franchise.
Real-life Digimon – a possibility or fantasy?
Well, on a strictly theoretical basis – Digimon are possible. But, speaking realistically, they’re highly unlikely. We shall now see how.
The process of creating Digimon wouldn’t be that complex on a theoretical level. A Digimon is a sentient accumulation of data, basically – an A.I. At this stage of development, humans are able to create A.I., and the level of complexity is increasing.
Certainly, our A.I. is still significantly underdeveloped to become a proper Digimon as it is envisioned in the series, but a rudimentary form is quite possible. We could interact using some form of VR, which would make the interaction more realistic, but also through classical screens, which would actually mimic the original V-Pet, the predecessor of modern Digimon. The interaction would depend on the complexity of the A.I., but at one point in time, we’ll quite possibly be able to interact with a fully sentient being.
At this point, such a complex A.I. is not possible, since it would need a supercomputer to run and there is no such machine at the time of writing this article. Plus, there’s the issue of one Digimon per computer, which would certainly make it difficult to fully enjoy the experience as there would only be just one Digimon at a time.
But again, this is theoretically possible and we can imagine such a thing appearing. Still, the issue would be that such Digimon wouldn’t actually be the living, sentient beings with free will we’re used to, but rather a preprogrammed A.I. with all its limitations, and limitations are not something we associate with Digimon.
The problem would be that these Digimon would still be just a virtual presence and not a real being. The creation of a real being would be far more complex and from what we currently know, it’s just not possible.
Another big issue here is the question of transference. Sure, data is energy and energy is the same as matter (and there’s Einstein’s E = mc2), but the process of transforming data into matter or matter into data for that matter is, as far as we know, impossible.
Surely, you could entertain some theoretical possibilities, but the laws of physics currently in force prohibit such a process and that process is essential to the concept of Digimon. Okay, Digimon coming into the Real World (data to matter) is not that essential and we wouldn’t be all that sad not to see Digimon in our neighborhoods, but humans have to be able to travel to the Digital World (matter to data) at one point, and that is just not possible.
Our whole bodies would have to be transformed into large chunks of data and we just don’t see how that could happen. Maybe, at one point, someone will create a process for this to happen and we’ll have to rewrite our article, but as of now – this is a major issue and the reason why we think – sadly – that Digimon aren’t possible in the real world, despite the theoretical possibilities.
And that’s it for today. We hope you had fun reading this and that we helped solve this dilemma for you. See you next time and don’t forget to follow us!
