Gatomon

...That's because, unlike our other seven heroes, this Digimon spends most of her downtime in her adult stage, never reverting back to child form. It doesn't effectively make much of a difference, since this is an adult stage that looks and acts like a child stage anyway, but we never do find out exactly how this works.

Does this mean our other heroes COULD remain in their kaiju-size battle modes if they really wanted to? That's certainly not what we're shown. They quite often "run out of power" and revert back whether they like it or not. Is it that Gatomon has a whole lot more experience than the others? That hasn't been applied to the rest of the gang either.

It seems like we just have to chalk this up to "the writers wanted it that way," but if you want my personal theory, I think it's probably a mix of both experience and personal identity. An experienced enough Digimon can hold the same form indefinitely, as we see with most of the non-focal Digimon, but whenever possible, returns to just whatever form it's the most comfortable with.

I'm also not sure why on earth they changed "Tailmon" to "Gatomon" outside of Japan, but we're going by Gatomon because that's what I knew first.

As for her role in the show, Gatomon is initially introduced to us as a villain, and that's not really a spoiler, because we're already told a new team member is coming before this highly marketable kitty cat shows up and the whole narrative zeroes straight in on her.

Gatomon's human ends up being Tai's baby sister, Kari, and there isn't a whole lot more to her personality besides the fact that she's a quiet, nice little kid, but I guess that suits their relationship well enough. This is the one partnership in which the Digimon is already significantly stronger and more experienced than her human, but at the same time, the one partnership in which the Digimon is the only one learning and growing from that relationship, with Kari helping this hardened, tormented, formerly evil feline rediscover kindness and forgive herself for all the horrible things she supposedly had to do in the employ of the real villain, Myotismon, who we'll review in due time.

It's an interesting setup, at least, even if she's not as interesting to me as some of the other Digimon.

Digivolves from

 * 1) Salamon

Digivolves to

 * 1) Angewomon