Username: saifors.
I started watching Digimon back in 1999 when I was like 2-3 years old and it was brought over to the Netherlands, saw the first episode and everything, and I absolutely loved it, I had seen Pokémon before but didn't get into it at all.
However Digimon just had something I really liked, it kept consistent in it's episodes with the plot always advancing and didn't have much filler (somehow 2-3 year old me was able to know the difference, then again I was a strange 2-3 year old that acted way more mature than the others my age). I actually would skip school to watch it or have my parents record it on video tape (it was in a pretty incovenient time slot) I barely missed any episodes, then everything changed slightly after 02 ended (of which I didn't even get to see the final episode) when Fox Kids was changed to Jetix, I waited for weeks just to see if there was a new episode, but the new episode never came.
Fast- forward to 2007 when I was 10-11 years old and I got a Nintendo DS lite, and after a bit my parents decided to get me a R4 cart for it, this cartridge came pre-loaded with about 300 games on it.
This was also when I got into Pokémon as on the R4 there were titles like Pokémon Pearl, Diamond and Mystery Dungeon Blue rescue team, after playing those games I started looking into what other games there were, eventually I found 3 games: Digimon World DS, Digimon World Dawn and Digimon World Dusk. I started playing them and I was about 12 years old by this point and I absolutely loved them, sure, I was really bad at them as my Pokémon pearl strategy of "solo with infernape" wasn't possible and I did eventually adapt, of course, it wasn't until a few years later I found out that the right use of healing items and equipment could probably help me get through the game.
A bit before this I had actually been watching some TV and came across a German channel, and Savers was on, at this point I had pretty much forgotten of Digimon's existence (even though I still had some posters of it) so when I suddenly saw Digimon and Agumon, I went kind of crazy as I never knew there there were more than 2 seasons.
A bit after these events I got my first laptop, and the gates to the internet were opened, eventually making me stumble upon anime streaming sites and I found out that there had been 3 seasons after 02 and started marathoning through them. A few years later Xros Wars came and I watched every episode the day the subs for it came up, unfortunately it's the only one I didn't like, one of the cool things about Digimon is that it sort of grows up with every season there were more mature themes the Savers just flat-out used teenagers, but Xros Wars was more for little kids than Adventure and I was kind of disappointed that by the end there was barely any character development. I also just hated Tagiru, he was really annoying to me.
My favourite Digimon is a hard one, I love Apollomon and Dianamon, Machinedramon, VictoryGreymon, Gallantmon and pretty much all of the Royal Knights, Olympos XII and 7 Demon Lords.
Favourite characters, as a kid I really liked Izzy for being the smart one, I also like Marcus/Masaru who is pretty much the opposite, I just find him really fun, also he has some character development, unlike a certain other hot-blooded protagonist.
Favourite season: Tamers, while I have a lot of nostalgia for adventure, I can not deny that Tamers is the most well written season in the series.
One final note: On the whole subject of Digimon being a Pokémon rip-off, I think it's safe to say this is just plain and simple: not true, Digimon was developed as a virtual pet originally, a spin-off of the Tamagotchi to get more male fans as Tamagotchis primarily catered to girls so they made monster that are generally more interesting to boys (this is why there's so many Dinos and dragons), the .mon part was used by Digimon in Japan already (where Pokémon was known as Pocket Monsters) before Pokémon got localized in the west, and finally the monster raising aspect, Pokémon didn't invent this, Shin Megami Tensei was the first to do so. (just wanted to get this off of my chest).
(also vote Coronamon for smash 4 kthnkbai)
I don't know what to put here, not allowed to post gifs, not even by putting it in a spoiler, so have some empty space:
...yay...?