The most popular is probably Adventure 1 and 2, with Digimon Tamers being the most prestigious among fans.
Seasons 1 and 2 represent the series peak of popularity, but Tamers has more "clout" among adult fans for its willingness to challenge the audience, bringing in elements of speculative fiction and thoroughly deconstructing its genre tropes. Season 4 is largely fluff. A fine shonen action romp, but doesn't leave much of a lasting impression.
Adventure 01 and 02 (I loved Adventure 02 the most), followed by Tamers Frontier was okay, if it wasn't for the godawful edit and I effing loved the "With the Will" (RIP, Koji Wada Too bad they replaced that awesome tune with some jungle-y music ) insert track when the guys did the Digi-spirit (?) transformation
Adventure 01 will always be my favorite because it was the first one, and it’s the one I grew up watching the most. It still had a good story and characters to go along with it too. Tamers is the most mature and probably the best one objectively. Adventure 02 has its moments, and it was neat to see the characters from the original aged up a bit. However, it was also very repetitive in its storytelling. I didn’t hate Frontier to be honest, and I’d say it was the last season I truly enjoyed. I never got into Data Squad, and I only saw one episode of Fusion out of order, so I don’t feel qualified to comment on that yet. I haven’t seen Tri yet, but I still plan on checking it out in the future.
I've only seen season 1 and 2 and I LOVED season 1. Season 2 was ok. Mainly watched it because I saw the movie before that. Which season is Tamers, Tri and Frontier?
The problem I had with 02 wasn't so much the repetitive storytelling, since the original Adventure had that in droves as well (having to claim the Crests, and then unlock them separately. With eight kids, that's 16 variations on the same thing. 23, actually, if you consider that the kids each individually unlocked Champion form in a similar manner. Only Kari/Hikari was spared this step). 02's problem was that it was just clearly making crap up as it went along. First third or so had the armour hunts. Then after that arc, the whole thing became irrelevant as they unlocked their natural Evolutions and DNA Evolutions. Then there was the whole Dark Ocean plot that got dropped. And then the whole "Sealed Crests" retcon to prevent the old guard from being uber. And then there's the final villain being beaten by hopes and dreams. It's just slapped-together and schlocky. Tamers is Season 3, the last of the Fox Kids seasons. That was the one that started as an urban fantasy story, with just the three kids who played the Digimon TCG. Frontier was Season 4, or "Digimon: Power Rangers Edition", with the main kids using totems to transform into Digimon warriors. Tri is the series of 6 movies that just came out in the last couple of years, featuring an even older (college age, mostly) Adventure cast.
Meicoomon is cute, you gotta admit. I had a Maine Coon growing up and that was my favorite animal I ever had. I miss him.
Can't speak for popularity but I stopped watching Digimon after the 4th series i think. Whichever one involved the Kids actually becoming the Digimon.
As much as I love Adventure, mostly because it introduced me to the franchise, Tamers is my favorite season. It was so we'll structured. A small, tight-knit cast, a threat level that rises pretty organically, incredible characterization, and some genuinely heartbreaking moments. It was epic, and I was genuinely sad to see the franchise kinda nosedive right after. I have "moumanti" tattooed on my wrist, so the show has a pretty special place in my heart .
Will always respect Adventure for going beyond just a toy commercial at times and juggling that many characters. 02 has its REALLY good moments but became quite a mess. I need to rewatch Tamers again to get a better feel but I remember appreciating how different it was. I feel so bad for Frontier because I think it had a FANTASTIC number of early episodes. It crashed and burned after around 20 episodes? Savers was a disappointment and I stopped here. I heard some good things about Appmon like that it puts tri. to shame. Agreed. Supplemented by the lack of that option on the poll. It was actually three "movies" and I honestly enjoy it way more than I should.
The "movie" gave us this: Which almost justifies its existence for that moment alone. First 2/3rds or so were pretty good, but then it began treading water during the Lucemon and the Royal Knights arc, as it struggled to keep its cast relevant. Everybody except Takuya and Koji were relegated to cheerleading duties, and all the fun and interesting villains had already been defeated. Of the "original" four series (before the franchise went on a bit of hiatus for its animated adaptations), though, I'll say it had the best "final boss" fight.
Adventure 02 gave me the shits because soon it became the Ken and Davis show, and Davis was an insufferable fucking loudmouth. Also I was salty that TK and Kari weren't the leaders since they had the most experience.
01- Adventure: Most basic and where it all started (Unless you count the movie that came before it). 02- Adventure 02: Started okay, but the writing was messy in later arcs and plotpoints that didn't go anywhere. 03- Tamers: My most favorite of the franchise and one of my most favorite anime of all time. I like the darker tone and deconstructing of the previous Digimon rules to give us a unique entry. 04- Frontier: Leaving the evolution method aside, this was bad. Lot of padding, lot of wasted opportunities, and terrible character writing. 05- Savers: It is an enjoyable entry if not without its weaknesses. Lots of throwbacks to previous entries, but it's an okay series. 06- Xross Wars: This is my second favorite entry. The war of multiple factions and the endless fusions with one of my favorite main characters in the franchise. 07- Xross Wars - Boy Hunter Who Leapt Through Time: On the other hand, this is the worst Digimon entry I've seen in my life. An annoying child, an insulting premise, terrible writing, and the sorry excuse of a crossover. 08- Appmon: Some may not treat it like a Digimon entry, I don't care. It has the Digimon brand in its title so it's a Digimon series. I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I liked it being totally unique without relying on nostalgia for the previous entries. All human characters are likable and enjoyable to watch. True, there are similarities between it and Yo-Kai Watch, but I don't care. It's still entertaining. 09- Adventure Tri: It was exciting at first, but then it overstayed it's welcome and dragged the plot around.
It gave us all the wonderfully kitschy 90s songs spammed during season 2. Runaround being my personal favourite, although Going Digital was awesome when leading up to a climactic showdown. It also contributes to Smash Mouth's All Star's rather ridiculous theatrical record.
I was thinking the same thing. I get why 1 and 2 are grouped being that they're both Digimon Adventure. Most of the cast changes except for TK and Kari but other than than it's basically a continuation of the same story. There should really be five options up there. Adventure, Tamers, Frontier, Savers/Data Squad, and Xross Wars/Fusion. Adventure is the longest being that it now extends into Tri. I loved the original two but Tri is dragging on forever and accomplishing nothing. Plus they seem to have reset all the characters and are making them learn lessons that they already learned. They have those Digi-Crests for a reason so why is Joe, the reliable one having to relearn how to be reliable? It's the same for the others but Joe bugs me the most cause his Digimon was my favorite and seeing him finally get a Mega form should have awesome but it was just a let down because he unlocked it with character development that already happened for him to go to his Ultimate level. That's just dumb. Worst reuinion ever. Adventure is still one of my favorite series just minus Tri. Tamers was pretty good. I liked the whole Bio-merge thing which gave the kids something to do besides holding a Digivice while the Digimon does all the real work. One draw back is this seems to be the only series where the Leader's Digimon didn't get fused with another Digimon. I always thought a DNA fusion of Gallantmon and Justimon would be really cool. Frontier was a little hard to get into at first. The kids not actually having any Digimon partners and instead becoming the Digimon themselves took some getting use to. I guess this was the next logical step after Bio-Merge that got the kids more involved in the story and after a while I really started to enjoy this concept. I just kinda missed seeing the relationship develop between human and Digimon. You don't get that when the humans are the Digimon. I never even realized how much I cared about that relationship between the partnered characters until it wasn't there anymore. It's a good series just took some getting use to. Data Squad or Savers... I freaking hate this show. It was nice of them to stray away from the goggles look for the leader. I never understood why the goggles were even a thing in the first place. They reused Agumon again again which I thought was going to be worse than it was. He had completely different evolution line from Tai's Agumon so it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. The thing I really hated though was Damion freaking punching everything. I know there was a reason for it but it's still really dumb. Why would any human even think to punch a Digimon the size of a building in the first place. Why would you jump off a cliff to punch it and think you could survive. How the hell is this kid alive when he does stupid things like that. The show had some of the best designs I've seen in any Digimon series but the writing and characters are terrible. At least Tai, Davis, Mickie, and all those other humans in other shows knew they couldn't fight alone without their Digimon but this idiot over here is constantly trying to fight monsters on his own without Agumon's help. This kid should of died in the first episode because he's that freaking stupid. I couldn't even watch this one because I hated him so much. As soon as I saw him punch a Digimon while Agumon sat in the side lines watching the human fight that was it, I was done with the series. Fusion... so this is a very different beast right here. For starters only the Leader actually has a Digimon and yet his friends are able to travel with him to the Digiworld without Digivices. They do get partners and Digivices later in the series but how did they cross over without having them originally? On top of that each kid has MULTIPLE Digimon which makes this series a lot more like a Pokémon knock off than any of the previous series. People have always joked about that without even seeing the shows and realizing how the plots are completely different but here it's actually true. Human child has Shoutmon as his starter Digimon and as the series progresses other Digimon are "captured" and join his team. Sound familiar? Because of the multiple partners and the whole fusion gimmick for the first time ever there are way too many Digimon and possible combinations of those Digimon for me to even keep track of all the different Evolution lines. Hell the show doesn't even seem to care about them either considering most of them are just called Shoutmon. They can't even be bothered to come up with names for each evolution or Fusion, they just add X# to the end of everything the # representing the number of other Digimon currently fused with him. That would be like if Omnimon was instead just called Wargreymon X2 of if Paldramon was Exveemon X2 and Imperialdramon were just Exveemon X4. This dude it seems no matter what form he's in he's always still just called Shoutmon. The designs are kinda cool but the names are just lazy. I have not yet seen the crossover event towards the end of Xross Wars because it hasn't been dubbed in English yet... or maybe they have but put it under a different title than Fusion. I mean even the Japanese version added the Boy Who Traveled in Time. And we get second goggle kid here... don't know anything about him other than what he looks like and I think I like his Digimon more than Shoutmon. I mainly started watching this series because I knew the crossover was coming and wanted to see that... and this series has been freaking boring... it's not as bad as the last one but I haven't liked this nearly as much as I did the the older ones. Not quite as boring as Tri but there's just so much going on I can't really keep track of it all. It's like they're trying to do too much with this and have ended up not doing anything at all if that makes any sense... I just want to see what they do with that crossover later in the series. It may not be great because this show kinda sucks but I'm expecting it to at least be a better reuinion than Tri was.
