Digital World Exploration Party
The Digital World Exploration Party (デジタルワールド探検隊, Dejitaru Wārudo Tankentai) was a project team[1] that was established ten years before the current events of Digimon Savers occurred. They served as the predecessors of DATS and were among the first humans to ever set foot in the Digital World, and were also the first to perform a successful Digital Dive.[1]
History[edit]
It is first mentioned by Satsuma to the DATS team regarding Professor Daimon Suguru's disappearance. He stated that despite the many difficulties the group faced upon their arrival to the Digital World, the destruction of their camp being among them, they avoided disaster during their various encounters with Digimon and were able to safely return home under Professor Daimon's leadership.[2]
The reason behind the formation of Digital World Exploration Party was due to a string of mysterious events in which people began disappearing one after the other for no apparent reason. Yushima and Satsuma, who were detectives working at the Kanagawa Prefectural Police Special Investigations Unit, were investigating these sudden cases. In response to those events at the time, the National Confidentiality Ministry gathered a group of people that specialized in different fields – in addition to Yushima and Satsuma, that group consisted of Professor Daimon, his assistant Kurata Akihiro and the Noguchi couple, who were the leading experts in hyperspace research. As a result of the inquiries and research, it led them to pursue the existence of another world – the Digital World.[1]
The Noguchi’s participated in order to find their infant son, Ikuto, who was sucked into a Digital Gate that was generated during one of their experiments, disappearing into the Digital World. It was their own personal connection to the other disappearance cases that the group were investigating. During their search for Ikuto, they failed to find him, only his basket and the toy robot that he always played with.[1][3]
As a specialist of superorganisms, Professor Daimon was overly enthusiastic and fascinated by both the environment and inhabitants of the Digital World despite Satsuma questioning his seriousness on the case at hand - searching for Ikuto. In contrast, Kurata reacted with nothing but fear towards the Digimon that stood before them like Lynxmon and Ikkakumon, a fact that he was chastised for by Professor Daimon. During their hellish journey, they traveled along Infinity Ice Ridge and attempted to seek refuge, only to be encountered by Saber Leomon. Kurata, acting out of fear, triggered a prototype space-time oscillation bomb, creating a Digital Gate in the process and managed to escape back to Human World. For their own safety, Professor Daimon told the rest of the team to exit via the Digital Gate while he remained to fight Saber Leomon and Mercurymon.[4]
Aftermath[edit]
Professor Daimon, still in the Digital World, sent blueprints for the Digivice while at the same time he sent Kudamon and Kamemon as emissaries to the Human World, entrusting them with a message for the sake of fulfilling his wishes: to cooperate with humans to create an organization that provided protection to any Digimon that wandered into the Human World and prevent them from attacking humans; that organization was DATS.[4]
Due to his experiences with the Exploration Party in the Digital World having a long-term effect, Kurata led an attack force into the Digital World, and used several Gizmon to exterminate countless Digimon, whom he believed were a menace and threat to humanity. Because Gizmon have the ability to permanently delete a Digimon, these actions resulted in the death of many Digimon, including Ikuto's guardian, Yukidarumon. Mercurymon eventually intervened, believing that Professor Daimon and the humans had betrayed him, forcing the fearful Kurata to retreat and once again escape to the Human World.[4]
