30 Day Digimon Challenge: 22
Day 22: Favorite villain?
This is a question I haven't really thought about, so I suppose my answer is rather boring. As usual, I'm restricting myself to 01 and 02. And I'm gonna make it more complicated than it needs to be.
Part of me wants to say Myotismon in 01, because he *was* scary and bringing the fight to the "real world" was super interesting. The characters were all spread out, had to hide their partners, protect their families, and they had some major communication difficulties. On top of that, there was the hunt for eighth child, which every fan knew was Hikari from the moment Gennai said "oh by the way, there's another one of you," but it took the kids a right long time to figure it out. It was just a lot of fun. Scary, and very different from the pace of the Devimon and Etemon arcs: those were much more predictable, straightforward, "power-up-means-winning" sort of adventures, whereas Myotismon complicated things by making it about strategy and subterfuge (as much as fifth graders are capable of). Moreover, the previous enemy, Etemon, was more just narcissistic and stupid than straight up evil. Myotismon by contrast was waaay more cruel, and cruelty was the new danger the Chosen faced. Devimon was more similar in that, like Myotismon, he was aware of a prophecy/legend that one particular Chosen and their partner would destroy him, and again like Myotismon, he sought specifically to destroy that one. But he didn't go about it with Myotismon's smarts: his army sort of sucked, he relied entirely on black gears to make people obey him, and the gears could be destroyed by Digivice power. (We see this same thing repeated in 02 with the Emperor's dark rings. Devimon's solution to the Chosen's method of destroying the gears was to put more of them in one Digimon, but Ken was smarter about it: he kept revamping the design [the spirals], trying to reach a large number of victims with one structure [the spyres], and trying to undermine the Chosen's ability to defeat his inventions with the Armor evolutions, though he never succeeded in the last.) So basically, Devimon was cruel, but he was also terrified, and not smart enough. His insecurities (lol!) prevented him from having the impact Myotismon did; his biggest scheme was to separate the Chosen in order to make Takeru vulnerable, but he didn't keep a close enough eye on where each kid ended up. ^^; And Etemon was just an idiot. Dangerous, but still an idiot. So Myotismon was cunning and cruel. Egad.
There were some great team-ups to: Taichi finds Mimi after Myotismon abducts her, Jou and Takeru meet up and then find Wizardmon, Yamato tries to protect Hikari, meets up with Sora who's sent there by Taichi, only to have Hikari abducted as well, and Koushirou teams up with Yamato's dad. It was fantastic. Even VenomMyotismon was frightening, not because of who he was exactly but because of the story that went on around him and how the kids had to come up with a game plan and take risks to beat him. I think all the Chosen did the most growing and learned the most about what it really means to fight during this Myotismon arc; up until then they'd been fighting mainly because they were being attacked, secondly in order to get home. Now they were home, but the battle continued, and there was no longer any Leomon or often enough even a Gennai to help them out. They were on their own, and it was clear that they were fighting to save the world rather than just their own selves. It was a big shift, a grown-up shift. Then the way it segued into the Dark Masters was all the more powerful, because the kids had to decide to go back to the danger and uncertainty now with full knowledge of what they're getting into. Knowledge is powerful, but it can also be overwhelming (and we saw all of the kids in their own way get overwhelmed by it).
So that's my choice, 01 Myotismon, but it's worth mentioning that I also really adore the Dark Masters arc for the character development that happens during it (even though I wish the Masters themselves had been a little scarier. They were scary, and it's kind of interesting that Machinedramon was only around for a very short time, yet he made such an impression on me. But they could have made them much more interesting). The kids had to face death and the tensions between them became that much more difficult. Taichi thinking about "the big picture" says a lot about how the kids changed over the season, so that's why I like it. And the final battle with Piedmon, from Taichi fighting on his own, to Yamato's return, to the escape by the rest through the circus, to Sora's sacrifice and the advent of MagnaAngemon, was just so cool.
I also liked Oikawa a lot. I really felt for him. The involvement of Myotismon, which could have been interesting, was unfortunately mishandled and watered down to the point of being super heavy-handed. But up to that point I was really intrigued by the dark spores and Oikawa and also BlackWarGreymon. None of them got the ending they deserve, so I can't say they're my favorite, but I do love the ideas they sparked. That's why I'm dealing with a lot of that in my fic.