Ryo Akiyama is a very confusing character within the chronology of Digimon. He first appears in the anime in the film Our War Game! We see him watching the events unfold on his computer screen as WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon fight Diaboromon to save the internet, the Digital World, and the Real World especially from the very real threat of nuclear ICMBs that Diaboromon set off and sent toward Japan, and Colorado (in the English dub). Based on contextual clues like the landscape and the clothing worn by Ryo and his friend in this scene, we can conclude that he is in Turkey.

We next see him in Digimon Adventure 02 in a flashback sequence with Ken. In the Japanese language version of the series this would be roughly three years after the events of the first series, but four in the English dub for some reason (let’s just discount the dub’s four year number out of hand). Ken has a dream that he is in a desert with a young man that looks exactly like Ryo. A then unfamiliar Digimon, Milleniummon, had been defeated and is being dragged below the sand. Some black gears come flying from behind the two boys and Wormmon. One heads directly for Ryo’s neck, but Ken jumps into actions and knocks him out of the way thereby getting hit in the neck by the gear instead, which lodges itself in Ken’s body and becomes the source for his evil ways in the future.

Finally, Ryo’s first real non-cameo appearance comes in the third Digimon series: Digimon Tamers. In the Digimon Tamers Universe, the Digimon Adventure universe is seemingly merely a television show. Digimon are thought not to really exist and instead of Digidestined, we have Digimon card battlers. Ryo is a masterful player of the Digimon card game in this series, but one day goes missing. We find later that he has entered the Digital World, which actually does exist, and has acquired a powerful Cyberdramon as his ally. He later Digivolves his Digimon into the Mega form Justimon and helps the Digimon Tamers to defeat the D-Reaper and the save the Digital and Real Worlds in the process.

So, where does this leave us. If we approach Ryo just through the Anime, we find that he is either Turkish or lived or visited there at the same time as the events of Our War Game! He looks to be around the same age as the Digidestined were then. But later he somehow either moved to Japan or met Ken online and went with him into the Digital World on some sort of quest. After which time, he somehow managed to find himself in the Digimon Tamers universe where his old Digimon Adventure world is a mere television show. Something pretty big had to have happened in between these events to make sense of the whole story.

But one will not find the information they are looking for without exploring Ryo Akiyama’s origins in a series of games for the WonderSwan handheld console in the early 2000s. Here, the story of Ryo Akiyama becomes more clear, but it contains many twists and turns that make the story complex as well. There are bits of retconning that make total sense, parts that don’t, and others that challenge and change all of our preconceived ideas about series chronology and introduce a multiverse theory into Digimon.

To follow the mysteries of Ryo Akiyama with me continue following this blog in the coming months as I review the series of games that explain how the first three seasons of Digimon are connected through their, arguably, most important Digidestined child: Ryo Akiyama.

Hasta luego,

The Digidestined Cody

[Continued HERE]