From my response to someone on a messageboard who couldn't quite grasp the fact that yes, Ryo in the games IS the Ryo in the anime, and the producer Seki Hiromi says so himself:


Pardon the extreme length, I felt the need to ramble incessantly on one of my favorite subjects in science fiction. Sorry.

Now, this fact and the statement put below just don't seem to fit together. Either they have far too many plot holes, the ENIAC thing does not encompass all dimensions, or the Tamers world is kind of like the season 1 Digital World, moving very quickly in comparison to the other worlds. How else could it have become so well developed in so little time?

Here's how I see it, this theory is adapted from the parallel worlds theory from Robert J. Sawyer's Hominids series that ran in four parts in recent Analog: Science Fiction and Fact issues. That in turn was adapted from the generally accepted theory used in most sci-fi. As a brief run-down, I'll go citing passages from Hominids (and no, not just because it's my favorite sc-fi reading this year... though Greg Bear's Vitals is vying with it for position right now):

"...Let me ask you a question. If you shoot a single photon at a barrier with two vertical slits in it, and a piece of photographic paper on the other side shows interference patters, what happened? ... Well, one interpretation is that the single photon turned into a wave of energy, and, as it hit the wall with the slits, each slit created a new wave front, and you got the classic interference, with crests and troughs either amplifying each other or canceling each other out. ... Well, as I said, that's one interpretation. Another is that the Universe actually splits, briefly becoming two universes. In one, the photon - still a particle - went through the left slit, and in the other, the photon went through the right slit. And, because it doesn't make any conceivable difference which slit the photon went through, the two universes collapse back into one, with the interference pattern being the result of the two universes rejoining. So, we have an experimental physical basis for possibly believing in the temporary existence of parallel universes - those interference patterns really do show up, even if you only send one photon toward a pair of slits. But what if the two universes didn't collapse back into one? What if, after splitting, they continued to go on their separate ways?"

Now, let's apply this theory to the Digimon multiverse.

The starting point is ENIAC and Atanasoff-Berry (revealed later in Brave Tamer as ENIAC's sister computer), that much is pretty uncontested as there's nothing to go against it. The history for ENIAC and Atanasoff spans between the 1930s and '40s. Now, let's set up a divergence point. We know that the Wild Bunch/Monster Makers in Tamers were directly dabbling with the natural evolution of the Digital World and experimenting with creating artificial intelligences that could evolve, and were probably doing so around the late 70's/early '80s (there was a wonderful article in a recent Analog magazine covering the genuine possibility of digital life gaining intelligence through the process of growth and evolution, I really should find it again).

So, here's where the multiverse probably separated: in one universe we have the Wild Bunch and their creation of digimon. This, obviously, is Digimon Tamers (and, indeed, the show makes mention of Palo Alto. Xerox Palo Alto Research Center has been dabbling with Intergrated AI Environments for a while now). In the other we have a universe where the Wild Bunch never gathered and digimon evolved on their own without human intervention, thus slower. We know it as the Digimon Adventure universe. Thus, the universes split and the differences are too great for them to reunite as one universe.

Thus we shall consider these the main two universes from which Digimon is rendered (and possibly a third was formed for Digimon Frontier). With V-Tamer, another universe splits off from the Adventure universe. It is too different from the Adventure universe to be able to reunite with it. However, Anode/Tag/D-1 Tamers attempt to weave into the Adventure anime. Because there are discrepancies, they spun off into their own universes for a while. However, as the events settle back into the normal timeline for the Adventure universe, Anode/Tag/D-1 universe eventually collapses back into the Adventure universe because the differences are not important enough to allow the Anode/Tag/D-1 universe to stand on its own.

Brave Tamer uses this to to its advantage. With ZeedMille taking over the future, a vast number of universes spun wildly out of control. To regain control of them and make sure every one of them was under his command, he tried to go back into the past and take over the past so everything would fall back into place and suit his vision for a new world order. Among the many divergences are universes where Takato is the one who gives Ryo the D-ark, Ryo has a run-in with the Kaiser during the Chimeramon fiasco, and so on. However, as they are not important divergences, those universes collapse back into their respective mother universes when Ryo defeats ZeedMille and the universes collapse back into two (four if you count V-Tamer and Digimon Frontier. But as they weren't mentioned in the game at all, they have no bearing here). At the end of the game ENIAC says that it's through ZeedMille's "defeat" by Ryo that the mini-universes reunite with their parents and everything is back on its natural path.

But then what makes Millenniumon so special that he has the power to transcend the divergencies in the multiverse? I am of the opinion that it was because he was a mistake. He was a freak of nature that wasn't supposed to exist in the first place and his birth emphasizes this (Anode Tamer explains it as the severely weakened Chimeramon and Mugendramon jogressed into Millenniumon since it was the only way they could survive). In turn, Ryo wasn't meant to be a Chosen Child either: he doesn't have his own digivice, his D-3 later went on to Daisuke (implied in Brave Tamer since the V-mon Daisuke has says outright that Ryo was his first partner, not Daisuke), and Takato gives him the D-ark. Given the behavior of Mr. Akiyama in DT ep 42 which is a stark contrast to the kind though rarely home Mr. Akiyama in Anode Tamer, I'm of the opinion that Ryo wasn't really supposed to exist in the DT universe either, but circumstances forced him there. So we have a freak of nature and a boy who doesn't belong anywhere, one who gained the power to transcend dimensions through his body's unnatural death and one who is given the power to transcend dimensions by ENIAC.

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