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In the summer of that year, strange things happened all over Earth.
So begins the first Digimon series, appearing to onlookers as a Pokemon knockoff, and to the fans as something completely different. Pokemon never had Metal Greymon, for one thing. Or death. Lots of it. Or people trying to actually make the world a better place.
Tai, Matt, Sora, Izzy, Mimi, Joe, and T.K. (Taichi, Yamato, Sora, Koushiro, Mimi, Jou, and Takeru in Japan) are caught in a mysterious bout of snow in the middle of summer. When strange devices fall from the sky, they are sent to another world and meet up with Mons that somehow know their names and are devoted to protecting them. Fighting stronger and stronger enemies to Save Both Worlds, the seven children learn why they have become the "Chosen Children" ("Digidestined" in the dub) and how to become stronger with the power of their own hearts.
And giant monsters. Can't forget that.
Also see the character sheet.
This show provides examples of:
- Affirmative Action Girl: Kari
- Aloof Big Brother: Matt, though atypical for the trope
- Alternate Universe: See the main Digimon entry.
- Animation Bump: Episode 21 was directed by Mamoru Hosoda, who made the first two Digimon films. The quality of the artwork was considered by many to be a huge improvement, but Hosoda only directed one episode due to creative differences between his style and the style of the series as a whole. This episode is in some ways comparable to the Dark Ocean episode in Adventure 02.
- Anyone Can Die: Mostly during the Dark Masters arc, complete with DisneyDeath
- Attack Of The 50 Foot Whatever
- Balloon Belly: Happens to Agumon
- Big Badass Wolf: Gabumon's later evolutions
- Bittersweet Ending: The kids save both of the worlds from Apocalymon and the Digital World reformats so it can start over in peace with the absence of the evil Digimon, but they have to leave the Digital World and their Digimon friends behind, seemingly forever. Fortunately, the next show fixes this.
- Brainwashed And Crazy: Leomon
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Mimi
- Calling Your Attacks
- Captain Ersatz: A lot of the Monsters of the Week's voices are based on iconic celebrities, from Elvis (Etemon) to Marlon Brando (Cherrymon) to Tim Curry (Piedmon).
- Casual Danger Dialog: A lot of which wasn't in the original
- Cheerful Child: Kari, TK—see entry for comments
- Cyberspace
- Colour Coded For Your Convenience: All the Chosen Children have colors that correspond to them, based on their Crests.
- Crowning Music Of Awesome: Best use of El Boléro de Ravel. EVER.
- Dangerously Genre Savvy: Infermon in Our War Game, for attacking during a Transformation Sequence. Tai actually complains about the unfairness in the original.
- Deadly Upgrade: When Greymon was pushed by Tai into evolving, he changed into the dark Skull Greymon, a mindless monster. When it evolved "naturally", he became his true Perfect form, Metalgreymon.
- Dead Sidekick: TK witnesses Angemon's death.
- Devour The Dragon: Venom Myotismon to Demidevimon
- Diabolical Mastermind: Devimon, Myotismon, and Piedmon
- Disney Death: Although Angemon sacrifices himself to defeat Devimon, since destroyed Digimon turn back into eggs, he gets reborn.
- Dropped A Bridge On Him: Most of the ally Digimon in the Dark Masters arc.
- Also, Phantomon. He was killed by being too close to an attack aimed at somebody else.
- Dub Name Change: Many. Some notable ones:
- Plotmon/Protomon to Salamon
- Tailmon to Gatomon
- Vamdemon to Myotismon
- Pinocchimon to Puppetmon
- Empathic Weapon: The Mons themselves.
- Everythings Better With Monkeys: (or worst)
- Eye Catch (Spoileriffic too.)
- Five Bad Band: Apocalymon and the Dark Masters
- Flashback
- Fur Against Fang: Weregarurumon vs. Myotismon in episode 33.
- Gag Dub: The actual dub, no less.
- Genki Girl: Mimi, she's a Valley Girl in the dub.
- Goldilocks And The Mines Of Moria
- Gondor Calls For Aid: The Dark Masters arc.
- Good Is Dumb: That Lightning Bruiser status that Gatomon enjoyed as a villain? Disappears rather quickly once she turns good. Then again, by that point, Champion-level opponents were increasingly rare, aside from the Bakemon during the end of the Myotismon arc (who were so weak that the Rookies could take them on easily.
- Gratuitous English: For the first few seasons of Digimon, the titular monsters would almost invariably call their attacks in English. Spurts of English dot the evolution themes throughout the franchise and would sometimes even be used as the titles of said songs (For instance "Brave Heart" being the name of the Digimon Adventure evolution theme, which ends in "SHOW ME YOUR BRAVE HEART!").
- Growing The Beard: While the Devimon and Etemon story lines contain some good, mindless fun (especially Etemon, who is delightfully silly), most fans agree that the series, along with the enitre franchise, didn't really come into its own until Myotismon burst onto camera for the first time, with the far longer and more epic plot arc around him taking the show in a completely different direction than other Mons shows (and into places most "kids" shows never dared to go, even in the edited American version).
- Hachiko: Episode 33: Patamon is lost and overhears that Hachiko is a popular meeting spot (English dub just refers to "the park", but the statue is still shown.)
- Heel Face Turn: Gatomon & Ogremon
- Heroic BSOD: This happens with pretty much all of the kids, Matt being probably the biggest victim.
- Hot Springs Episode: In episode 8. It's turns out to be an illusion or something.
- Ho Yay: Tai and Matt to the fangirls, Izzy and Tentomon to their voice actors.
- Idiot Hero: Tai, but he overcomes it.
- Ill Girl: Kari
- Kansai Regional Accent: Tentomon, who's vaguely British in the dub.
- Kick The Dog: Wizardmon's whole arc.
- Large Ham: Apocalymon
- Lightning Bruiser: Gatomon is incredibly agile and strong, which lets her take on 5 of the DigiDestined Digimon at once with little effort, despite being about ten times smaller than any of them. She's a Champion-level Digimon and the ring on her tail is an Amplifier Artifact.
- Limited Wardrobe: Even on Earth, they still wear the same thing.
- Manipulative Bastard: DemiDevimon and Cherrymon.
- Meaningful Name Sora means "sky", and Sora's partner is a bird-like Digimon.
- And don't forget Hikari's name!
- Mentors: A metric ton of them. Ironically, only The Obi Wan (Gennai) survives the series.
- The Messiah: Tai, ultimately, evidenced by how quickly the group broke up when Tai was sucked back into the Real World.
- Metaphorgotten: Episode 50: "The bases are loaded, two out, and we need a slam dunk."
- Monster Clown: Piedmon, strongest of the four Dark Masters, master thespian, collector of key-chains...
- Monster Of The Week
- More Teeth Than The Osmond Family: Tokomon
- More Than Mind Control: Matt
- Musical Pastiche: In the the Japanese version, Digimon reused a musical score from Sailor Moon, and strangely enough the music composer for both shows was none other than the late Takanori Arisawa, compare the two, at 2:35 for the Sailor Moon version
 and click here for the Digimon version, and tell me that they don't sound almost exactly the same.
- Mysterious Waif (Kari)
- Nakama
- Names To Know In Anime (Kaneto Shiozawa as Devimon)
- Narrator: Japanese only.
- Not true. Tai narrated the shows at the beginning of the episodes.
- Also, partway through the Myotismon arc, a narrator would give a "tune in next time" phrase at the end of each episode.
- see Previously On below.
- Never Say Die (Myotismon is just "sending the mooks back to the Digital World" for disobedience. Riiiight.)
- But also averted in a sense. Digimon get killed—although they do get reborn—in the English dub, and one villain even says 'die' at one point.
- Tai said Kari would have died during the Machinedramon Arc
- And in the following Machinedramon episode, there's Izzy's line "Sure, just let our Digimon DIE!"
- Nice Hat Sora gets a fair bit of ribbing for her unusual headgear. Mimi's pink satellite dish, meanwhile, goes unremarked upon.
- Speaking of Sora's hat, notice how often it switches between being a helmet and being just a sort of toque?
- Nice Job Breaking It Hero regarding Myotismon. Joe brings it up.
- Nightmare Fuel Unleaded: Tokomon's teeth.
- And Piedmon's, ah, "keychain hobby", and Gatomon's life under Myotismon, and Wizardmon getting shredded by Myotismon, even in the edited version, and... well, needless to say, for a "kid's show" this sure got dark at times. That so much of it got past the censors is rather impressive.
- Nobody Poops Averted, at least with the Digimon.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: A vast majority of the non-main Digimon's English voices are based off of actors from the heyday of the voice actors' various childhoods, so this doubles as a Parental Bonus.
- No Ontological Inertia: Applied to the Digimon Taken For Granite in episode 17 of Digimon Adventure, even though the character was not even dead.
- Not So Harmless: Etemon, Monzaemon, maybe Digitamamon and Datamon.
- Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Averted in Our War Game, where the main battle is a race against the clock to keep a nuke from detonating in Tokyo Bay.
- The Obi Wan: Gennai. Check out that flashback!
- Pilot Movie: Also called Digimon Adventure, oddly enough; dubbed as part one of Digimon: The Movie.
- Polly Wants A Microphone: Piyomon
- Post Episode Trailer
- Previously On: Rotated between characters in the American dub; seperate narrator elsewhere.
- Princesses Prefer Pink: Mimi (and Palmon) wears a pink dress when she is posing as a princess for a Gekomon kingdom. She generally wears a pink hat anyways.
- The Power Of Friendship: Matt's crest was even called Friendship, so it's actually fueled by this.
- The Power Of Love: Sora's crest.
- Power Of Trust: Does Joe's crest of reliability/sincerity count?
- The Promise
- Rapid Fire Comedy: The dub movie (especially the "Our War Game" segment) had loads and loads of surprisingly clever tongue-in-cheek and audio/visual gags.
- The "Analog Monsters" poster really stood out for this troper.
- Recycled Soundtrack: The Saban dub reused the score from Masked Rider.
- Re Tool: The show was originally just intended to be a short, 13-episode-ish tie-in intended to sell the Tamagotchi-esque Digimon digital pet devices. It proved a little more popular than expected, so the run got extended twice... with the second extension allowing the directors to introduce Myotismon and take the show into the territory it is now famous for.
- Reverse Mole: Wizardmon — good guy posing as a bad guy.
- Road Apples
- Save Both Worlds
- Short Anime Movie
- Solomon Divorce: Yamato and Takeru's family.
- Spoiled Brat: Mimi in ep.25, less so in other episodes.
- Spoiler Opening: Depending which station you were watching it on, the dub ending credits gave away the Ultimate level Digivolutions and the fact there was going to be another kid. Also, the champion/adult digivolutions.
- The Short Guy With Glasses: Izzy, only without the glasses. Ironically, the one with the glasses is actually the tallest member of the group (Joe).
- Shorttank: Sora
- Sixth Ranger: Kari and Gatomon.
- Ship To Ship Combat: Tai/Sora fanboys/fangirls are notorious for this, as Digimon Adventure 02 has an epilogue wherein it's shown that Sora hooks up with Matt in the future, and most of them can't stand the thought.
- Sorting Algorithm Of Evil
- Spirit Bomb: Three times!
- Stock Footage
- Take My Hand In the first Digimon series, Tai saves Sora from falling into a huge hole by grabbing her arm. Datamon, who had kidnapped Sora and tried to clone her so he could use her Crest of Love to his advantage, uses his mechanic arms to try injuring both of them and force Tai drop her, but he still holds on.
- Taken For Granite: Cokatrimon does this to five of the ally Digimon.
- Taking You With Me: Apocalymon was willing to kill himself and destroy everything and everyone in the process.
- Also, Datamon tries this with Etemon. Kinda fails.
- Team Mom: Sora.
- Team Spirit
- Theme Music Powerup: The Japanese version plays this in reverse—if there's a powerup going on and "Brave Heart" is not playing, something is about to go wrong. The Transformation Sequence becomes almost eerie without the music.)
- Theme Naming: Brothers Matt (Yamato) and TK's (Takeru) names come together to form Yamato Takeru, a figure from Japanese myth.
- Theme Tune Cameo In Adventure, the song Mimi sung to wake ShogunGekomon in the original was the first ending, I Wish. Mimi was also voiced by AiM, so they just had to use the prerecorded audio until he woke up.
- This Is Iron Drill Spin
- Tokyo Is The Center Of The Universe: The dub tried to avoid this until they just couldn't get away with any more.
- Tomboy And Girly Girl: Sora and Mimi.
- Toy Ship: TK and Kari.
- Train Station Goodbye: The season finale. Though, it's more of a train crossing goodbye.
- Trapped In Another World
- Trash The Set: By the end of the Myotismon arc a good portion of Tokyo is in ruins, specifically the iconic Fuji TV station which broadcasts the show in Japan.
- Tree Buchet: A particularly surreal example in episode 17.
- TV Genius: Izzy got this in the dub, although it seems like in the the original, he was just very good at solving puzzles.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Myotismon. A lot.
- Metalseadramon, Machinedramon, and especially Puppetmon are also guilty.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: Causes Tai to later on suffer from a Heroic BSOD. With horrible timing.
- You Shall Not Pass Piximon holds back the Dark Masters. He dies.
- Wendee Lee (in English dub): Tk, Additional Voices
- What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic: VenomMyotismon and the whole 666 prophecy deal.
- White Gloves: Nearly all of the Digidestined wear gloves in this show, apart from TK, Kari and Joe. However, not all pairs of gloves are white.
- Will They Or Wont They: Throughout this season it's implied that Tai and Sora have respective crushes on each other. They're eleven years old, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that it goes unresolved until the next season.
- SPOILER ALERT: They don't.
- World Gone Mad: The Digital World was a screwed up place before it became Spiral Mountain.
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