Agumon

Now we get to the main event, the little yellow dinosaur and "child stage" Digimon most recognize as the entire face of the series. Even compared to today, almost nothing flew off the toy shelves of the 90's quite like any kind of carnivorous dinosaur, and Agumon really distills the "ugly-cute" vibe that sold so many on Digimon's debut.

Agumon shows off several design quirks that actually remain signature to the franchise even today, notably the colorful irises and the flaring, mole-claw forelimbs they stick on virtually everything they possibly can.

In the anime, of course, Agumon's uncanny veins and muscles were a little toned down, but he still had that hilarious little beer-bellied human body with freaky dinosaur limbs on it. He was, if you hadn't guessed, the Digimon partner of our main hero and leader of the "digidestined," both of them basically the same sort of naive, over-eager but pure-hearted hero figure, which I know sounds super boring and is usually super boring, but they really did a good job of making every single kid and every single monster in the show incredibly likeable.

It's especially nice how the characters, no matter how cookie-cutter they may seem, show off a whole lot of carefully planned emotional growth over the course of the original series, with Tai and Agumon helping one another mature into more responsible leaders by the end of it all.

This statement will also be completely meaningless and devoid of myriad in-jokes to the majority of you, but my spouse and I at least were fairly delighted to discover that Agumon has the same Japanese voice actor, performing the same voice, as Anpanman's friend Tendonman here, and you only have to listen to his song once to know that we say "friend" in more of a "grudgingly tolerated" sense, the only sense in which anybody has ever been Tendonman's friend.

Anyway, I'm gonna rate Agumon a three out of five, because it's pretty much the most basic possible measure of a Digimon you could point to.

Digivolves from

 * 1) Koromon

Digivolves to

 * 1) Greymon