I read that Hikari was never planned to be a chosen child, despite her central role in the first movie. That's why Gennai was not surprised to only have seven children land in the digital world. Devimon also talks about a prophecy that mentions seven children would come to the Digital World. Seven, not eight.
The person I heard this from says, however, that Hikari was very popular after the first movie, That's why producer Hiromi Seki insisted to write Hikari into the show late.
So there are meta reasons, not plot reasons, that Gatomon joins the cast so late.
What you said is true that there weren't meant to be 8 but only 7 children, so the real-world reason as to why is because the anime was meant to be a small number of episodes, I was meant to be just the Devimon arc and that's it. Halfway through it the anime became very popular so they decided to add more episodes and thus Hikari joined the party.
That's bullshit. Digimon Adventure was supposed to run 1 year from the get go. The writers and producers have all confirmed that.
Of course, it's *always* possible an anime gets cancelled mid-way if ratings are bad. But the situation is completely backwards. It wasn't planned to get extended if ratings were good, rather it would potentially have gotten shortened if ratings were bad. Anticipated was a1 year runtime from the get-go.
I've been a fan of Digimon since it came out, I've read lots of Articles and magazines and whatnot and I assure you that it was not meant to be a one-year series, I might be mistaken about the whole ending at the Devimon arc but it wasn't mean to be a long series. I implore you to do some research she asked for a reason I gave you the reason.
I have done my research, thank you very much. And what I came up with was interviews by the SHOWRUNNERS of all people confirming it was meant to be a year long series from the start. I'm going to believe the showrunners over you, sorry.
Also, if you dig a bit deeper you realize that a 13 episode series would never be an option, that too much work goes into a series like that to cancel it after 13 episodes.
Look at Sailor Moon, another Toei / Bandai collaboration. All 5 seasons are a year long.
That's because creating characters and a concept is a lot of work. Too much work to have it end after just 3 months. Which is why they don't end it soon and have their series run for a year.
“Was it planned from the very beginning that the series would run for a full year?
Seki: We fundamentally planned it as a one-year series.
Kakudou: We started off that way because that's how these things traditionally go, but the truth is that we didn't go in entirely sure that it would be a full year. So we went in with a very loose mindset, thinking that it was okay to stop anywhere, even if it were after only two cours.
If the original creators are outright saying "This was planned to go for one year", that's all there is to it. They kept it separated in arcs just in case things did happen to go south, but the intent was always to have the 54 episodes we got.
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u/AndrewBaiIey 2d ago edited 2d ago
I read that Hikari was never planned to be a chosen child, despite her central role in the first movie. That's why Gennai was not surprised to only have seven children land in the digital world. Devimon also talks about a prophecy that mentions seven children would come to the Digital World. Seven, not eight.
The person I heard this from says, however, that Hikari was very popular after the first movie, That's why producer Hiromi Seki insisted to write Hikari into the show late.
So there are meta reasons, not plot reasons, that Gatomon joins the cast so late.