Remember the Filipino-English Dub of Digimon Adventure back in the day? That got a lot of us started in the Digimon Franchise. The Virtual Pet (V-Pet) Digivices, being able to raise the titular Digital Monsters, and growing as a person alongside your Digimon all of those are the core appeal of the franchise. The Vital Bracelet line has been one of the most recent and accessible ways to do that. With the Vital Bracelet BE, an improved model, will you be able to become a Digimon Tamer while getting fit?
The Vital Bracelet line of devices has been Bandai Namco’s attempt to blend the simple joy of raising your very V-Pet with the ever expanding market for fitness trackers. Several franchises are actually under the Vital Bracelet banner, Ultraman, Kamen Rider, and even My Hero Academia. There’s one franchise that is perfect for this: Digimon.
Simply put, the Vital Bracelets a fitness tracker that lets you raise your favorite Digimon as you exercise. Every step you take, workout you do, and game you play with it will buff its stats and help Digivolve it to the next stage. The first iteration of the Vital Bracelet came out in March 2021 and is still available at various online retailers such as Toys R’ Us for about PHP 3,199. The product we have today is an improved model of the Digimon Vital Bracelet released in November 2022, which features several quality-of-life updates, a completely new type of Digimon Identified Memory (Dim) cards, the watch is now waterproof up to IPX4, meaning it can now tolerate a few splashes of water but not full submersion. We got our copy from Zenin TCG (Not Sponsored) for PHP 3,883.50 (with the Imperialdramon Dim card) and we’ve had the smoothest time shipping this device to the Philippines. We even got free stickers from them!
Straight out of the box you’ll get one Vital Bracelet BE, we have the Digivice VV version, a micro-USB charging cable, and one Gammamon BE Memory Dim card. The BEMemory is where your Digimon are stored and is loaded onto your device by inserting it into a slot on the side. Collect as many Dim Cards as you can but the Vital Bracelet BE can hold up to 3 Digimon.
The Vital Bracelet BE feels much more like a toy than an actual fitness tracker. Much lighter and plastic feeling. There is no touch screen so you have to navigate through the menus with just the two buttons on the side. If you have the chance, get a screen protector as the face scratches easily. The strap itself is of good quality but it’s easy to loosen due to its design. Battery life is also an issue as the purported 18 hours feels much shorter.
Mimicking the original V-Pet, the pedometer of the Vital Bracelet tracks every step you make to not only develop ‘Vital Values’ to keep your Digimon alive but also play games to raise its stats, and fight enemies. The exercises you can do to raise its states are Squats, Crunches, Punches, and Dashes. All of these rely on the pedometer and you doing a specific motion for a set number of times before you win and your Digimon gets a boost. Doing repeated punches, crunches, and many more is quite a workout and doing so to raise a digital pet really does have this effect of motivating you. You want it to be strong, so you’re getting stronger. That’s the part we liked about the Vital Bracelet. One problem is that the requirements to Digivolve your Digimon to the next level sometimes requires a ton of squats so don’t be afraid to cheat the device by mimicking crushes, dashes, etc.
Battles are a simple affair as you simply go up a gauntlet of increasingly difficult enemies. You first have to set what Adventure your Digimon is going on, walk the appropriate number of steps to ‘encounter’ the enemy Digimon, and your stats will determine if you win or not. Victories are important as they determine how you Digimon will evolve. Lose too many though and your Digimon will revert back to an egg. Getting all the victories is required for your Digimon to evolve and sometimes you need up to 15 battles. There’s nothing stopping you from repeatedly battling the weakest enemy to meet that quota. So much like the exercises, raising Digimon is more of a grind that you’re supposed to spread out over weeks when you remember to set it to Adventure or Training mode.
When all is said and done, what does fully raising, training, and evolving your Digimon feel like? It feels amazing putting in that hard work to get your favorite Digimon. You truly feel like you went on your own adventure, going online to find the evolution charts, getting the requirements, and you sort-of start forming a bond with your partner.
One thing we were not able to use properly in all the time we’ve had with the Vital Bracelet BE is the app, the Vital Bracelet Arena. The Vital Bracelet Arena is supposed to let you transfer your Digimon to your phone and battle online. Because the App has been a pain to use since it’s been a buggy and unreliable mess, we never spent too much time on it.
Now how’s the Vital Bracelet BE feel day to day? Having already had a dedicated fitness tracker, a Galaxy Watch 3, and the Vital Bracelet BE, we were able to test both watches during our daily workout routines. One immediate difference we noticed is that the Vital Bracelet wasn’t as accurate as the Galaxy Watch 3, about 2-4 steps behind when comparing their step counts. Next point we’d like to actually set up workouts and battles. If you want to raise your Digimon as you workout, you’ll have to stop every once in a while to set, do, complete the activity all in order because if you don’t hit the button after the step count is maxed out, you’re not progressing any further. If you’re doing your morning jog the process is good but if you’re in a gym it can get pretty hectic going from set to set.
One year in, once I finally maxed out all 2 of my Dim cards, I was finally satisfied with it. There’s several more Dim cards available for it, but I had already gotten the Digimon I wanted and didn’t feel the need to exercise with it anymore as my workout routine had gotten more complex than simple punches and crunches. Still, if you are a massive Digimon fan, you’d probably want to keep collecting the Dim cards and keep raising Digimon.
At the end of the day, The Vital Bracelet BE smooths out some of the rougher edges of the original yet feels more like a novelty than a practical device, it still accomplishes its goal of being a functional V-Pet inside a fitness tracker. It’s a very good start for Bandai Namco and it really shows the staying power of the Digimon brand as well as the flexibility of the technology with other franchises. Now, will the next iteration of the Vital Bracelet be any better? We’ll have to see. For now, if you want to get a Vital Bracelet, get the Vital Bracelet BE.
We give the Vital Bracelet BE 2 stars out of 4.
Pros
- Training to Raise Digimon is a good motivator to help you get fit!
- Collecting and raising the various Digimon is quite a journey!
Cons
- More toy than fitness tracker
- App really doesn’t work well.
