The newest anime in the Digimon franchise, titled Ghost Game, premiered on October 3, which happened to be the perfect time. Although it shares many elements with the other entries in the sprawling anime, Digimon Ghost Game mixes in horror tropes and spooky imagery, making for a perfect Halloween watch.
In the future setting of Digimon Ghost Game, holograms are a common part of everyday life. When Digimon begin to appear in the real world, they are partially-formed and resemble the holograms, which leads the public to dub them "hologram ghosts". Stories of their terrifying exploits spread like urban legends, and the Digimon seen so far each "haunt" a particular location, victimizing any human who wanders into their territory. Hiro Amanokawa and his Digimon partner, Gammamon, investigate reports of hologram ghosts and put a stop to the Digimon behind them.
The atmosphere of Ghost Game is a mixture of comedic and creepy. Hiro bonds with the childish but loyal Gammamon through food, and co-protagonists Ruli Tsukiyono and Kiyoshiro Higashimitarai are bold, quirky characters with very different attitudes toward the hologram ghosts -- Ruli is chasing them down for the sake of her social media account, while Kiyoshiro is a coward who is scared of his own Digimon partner and attempts to protect himself and Hiro with talismans. However, the battles with the "ghosts" take place at night and feature horrible things happening to the Digimons' victims.
Clockmon steals the "time" from students at Hiro's school, feeding on their futures and aging them to the brink of death, while Mummymon turns visitors at the local museum into mummies, mistakenly believing this will "heal" them. While Mummymon turns out to be well-intentioned and even a little comedic, the damage he was doing to his victims was very real, regardless of being accidental -- and of course, mummies are a staple of the Halloween season, making him perfect as an early adversary for Hiro. Even the designs of the "hologram ghost" Digimon have been slightly tweaked from their earlier appearances to better fit Ghost Game's spooky aesthetic.
There are hints that Gammamon, Hiro's lovable partner, will eventually turn into something horrible as well. Gammamon is a Virus-type Digimon, which are usually evil. When Clockmon tries to steal his time during their battle, the future he sees for Gammamon is a tall, shadowy Digimon that seems to frighten him. This future dark evolution of Gammamon also appears as a silhouette in the opening, which sets the tone for the series with its haunting music and images of frightening Digimon hiding in the shadows and stalking Ghost Game's protagonists. The first episode also features short appearances from BlackTailmon, implying she will become an important character; notably, she is a Digimon based on a black cat, which is a common symbol of Halloween. Since new Ghost Game episodes air on Sundays in Japan, its fourth episode will even fall on Halloween day.
Ghost Game features many elements common to the Digimon franchise, such as humans bonding with Digimon partners, interactions between the real and digital worlds, and a monster-of-the-week format. However, it is interesting to note that the other Digimon series it most resembles is Tamers, which famously included some very dark elements and contained many references to Lovecraft. Like Ghost Game, Tamers also featured a protagonist with a Virus-type Digimon partner who had a dark evolution.
While it remains to be seen if Ghost Game will become as dark as Tamers, it is quite similar so far with its real-world setting and its application of horror tropes to the Digimon formula. Between these elements and its more lighthearted moments, Ghost Game is the perfect Digimon anime to air in the Halloween season -- like the holiday itself, it's a little spooky and a lot of fun.
