While at summer camp, seven kids are sucked into a strange parallel world created by all of the data and information that runs through our world’s computers. When they land in the Digital World, they are greeted by small creatures called Digimon, one for each kid. It seems that these young visitors are the prophesied DigiDestined and have been called to the Digital World in order to stop some great evil from taking over.
The kids are made up of Tai, Matt, T.K., Joe, Sora, Mimi and Izzy. Each has unique character traits that make them stand out in the crowd, and it is partially because of those traits that they were chosen. For example, Tai, the de facto leader of the group, represents courage while Matt’s trait is friendship and T.K.’s is hope. Sora exemplifies love; Joe’s trait is reliability; Mimi’s is sincerity and Izzy is full of curiosity.
While these traits aren’t all that important in the show’s first story arch, once the kids get off of File Island and start to explore the larger continent of Server, they will need to let those traits shine in order to get past their ever-increasing problems and let their companion Digimon Digivolve and become more powerful.
Tai is paired with a dinosaur digimon named Agumon, while Matt’s new friend is Gabumon and Sora gets the bird-like Biyomon. Matt’s brother, T.K., has the little winged Digimon named Patamon while Izzy gets a bug-type called Tentomon. Mimi’s new friend is plant-based and called Palmon, while Joe’s Digimon is called Gomamon. Each takes on stronger and stronger forms as the series progresses, but this particular collection sees only a few of the Digimon making it to their Ultimate form.
This collection takes the DigiDestined from their first adventure against the evil Devimon where they meet new friends like Leomon and Andromon, through their trials against the Elvis-impersonating Etemon who has a network of cables run all over Server and uses it to keep track of the Digidestined in an attempt to keep them from realizing their full potential. Digimon: Digital Monsters - The Official First Season Volume 1 begins to wrap up when Etemon is defeated and the new enemy, Myotismon, takes the stage. It seems this new threat has bigger plans and wants to take over the real world, not just the digital one.
Any fan of the Digimon series should see this as a great chance to pick up the show’s first episodes, unless of course, you already picked up the full First Season collection already. Personally, I would choose the he full season over just Volume 1, but if you don’t want to drop the money on the big set, then this is still a viable option.
