Taiora vs Sorato: Why are we still fighting about this?

So as many of you guys may already know, the long awaited continuation of the Digimon Adventure series titled "Digimon Adventure Tri" is coming later this year. And of course the fans couldn't be more excited, I mean finally after more than a decade, we're finally going to get to see the OG digidestined go on another adventure. And of course there have been tons of speculation going on, such as what the villain is gonna be like, if the 02 characters will make an appearance, whether the other Digimon aside from Agumon or Gabumon will go mega, it's all just so exciting.

But of course there's one bit of speculation that has been going around as well, one that is not so positive. I'm of course talking about the shipping. Now for those of you who aren't familiar with the terminology of the Internet, shipping is a term used to describe taking two fictional characters from a series and putting them in a romantic relationship. And if there's anything I've learned from being in multiple fandoms over the years, it's that shippers (the people who are fans of a certain pairing) can get a little too passionate about their ships. Which often leads to shipping wars should two different pairings share a certain characters.

The spark that started the flame war

Now where does Digimon tie into all of this? It's all traces back to the two pairings known as Taiora (Tai and Sora) and Sorato (Sora and Matt). Hoo boy, the flame wars between the shippers of these pairings is practically the stuff of legends these days. Back when The original Digimon series first aired Taiora was an extremely popular pairing, mainly due to the fact that Tai and Sora were the lead male and female, they had a lot of interaction of the course of the show, and in the movie "Our War Game" they even had a bit of ship tease! 

And then Digimon Adventure 02 happened. This is the series that opened the gates of hell, why you ask? Because halfway through 02's run Sora was revealed to have some romantic feelings for Matt, which he returned. And in the epilogue for the series, it was revealed he and Sora are now married with two kids. 

And while the Sorato fans rejoiced, the rest of the fanbase was just completely baffled by this ending. Hell, its says something about how much this pairing caught people off guard when even the freaking voice cast admitted to being surprised by Matt and Sora hooking up, and of course this was the start of a vicious flame war that spanned for nearly a decade and a half. But that's not all folks, the creator of the Digimon anime, Hiroyuki Kakudo, even admitted in an interview that Sorato was planned to be canon since day one as he felt that having the lead male and lead female (Tai and Sora) hooking up would feel clichéd. Oh and the ship tease you saw in "Our War Game"? It turns out the only reason why that happened was because he had no involvement in the creative process for the film what so ever. As you can already guess, this only poured fuel on the flames.

 But as the Digimon franchise grew old, things began to die down a little bit. That is, until the announcement the Tai and the gang were back for one more round. And the flame wars began anew.

Enter the Tri 

As I've said before, the announcement of Digimon Adventure Tri made fans across the globe jump for joy. But with that great joy came hope as well. No seriously, not even 24 hours after the announcement was made, Taiora fans began to speculate on whether Tri was going to retcon 02's ending and make their ship canon. And given that the official trailer for Tri gave implications that the adventure canon as a whole might have gone through a "Days of Future Past" style retcon, all hell broke loose. And when Tri comes out later this year, it's most likely going to get worse.

My thoughts on this whole mess

Sheesh, many fandoms are known to have pretty vicious shipping wars (Naruto and Avatar: The Last Airbender to name a few), but Digimon is a really special case since I used to love the original series when I was growing up. And I’m gonna be straight up honest with you guys, I used to love Taiora when I was young. I always wanted those two to end up together, and you know what? I was legitimately torn up when she ended up with Matt instead of Tai.

But in spite of that, I still loved the show regardless and I wasn’t going to let something as trivial as a pairing ruin the series for me. And goodness, the creator of Digimon himself said that Sorato was planned to be canon from the very beginning and yet here we are a decade and a half later still fighting about the final ending to the adventure series even when everything has been said and done. And now with announcement that the original series is getting a continuation, the flame war bullshit is starting all over again. It’s just really tiring to me.

But I’ve been beating around the bush for too long now and it’s time for me to finally answer the question. As far as pairings go, I hope absolutely NOTHING is changed about the shipping. Seriously, as much as I love Taiora, it would seriously feel like pandering if they were to go out of their way to show some love to this ship now. 

 And besides, Digimon was never about shipping in the first place so why should it matter? Can’t we just all be happy that we’re gonna finally see the O.G. digidestined back together again? With that said, I’m not the least bit concerned about pairings at this point in the game, and I look forward to reuniting with Tai and the rest of the gang this fall. Until then, I'll see you guys later.