The following article contains spoilers for Digimon Ghost Game Episode 43, "Red Eye," streaming now on Crunchyroll.

Although most episodes end peacefully, Digimon Ghost Game has incorporated many truly creepy and disturbing creatures and supernatural legends, combining Digimon with unexpected folklore roots throughout the series' run. While Ghost Game has incorporated body horror in the past, Episode 43 "Red Eye" involved some of the series' most gruesome transformations yet.

In this episode, a Digimon called Eyesmon caused multiple red eyes to appear across the bodies of his victims, and he used these eyes to gain more information and grow in power. Eyesmon's folklore roots in yōkai stories showcased how the writers of Ghost Game adapted an old folklore legend in an even more gruesome fashion to present a parable about information stealing in the modern technological era.

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Digimon Ghost Game's Eyesmon Parallels the Legendary Yokai Dodomeki

Emma Hanes discovers eyes all over her body in Digimon Ghost Game

In the "Hiro's Study Files" segment of the episode, Ruli Tsukiyono revealed that Eyesmon had similarities to the yōkai Dodomeki. Author Toriyama Sekien catalogued multiple yōkai legends in a four-volume encyclopedia back in the 18th Century, explaining that the Dodomeki was a long-armed young woman thief who was punished for her crimes by the appearance of a hundred birds' eyes on her arms. As Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt explained in Japandemonium Illustrated: The Yokai Encyclopedias of Toriyama Sekien, "Bird's eye—chōmoku—was slang for money in Sekien's era, as copper coins were minted with a hole in their centers." Therefore, the extra birds' eyes were intrinsically related to Dodomeki's crime of theft.

In contrast to the legend, Eyesmon's hosts were not just women, but the episode still uses the proliferation of eyes to represent Eyesmon's hosts' desire to "steal" information from the people around them for their own profit and gain. Some of the victims may have initially been seeking information for a good cause. For example, the first victim shown on screen was a woman determined to discover if another programmer was actually spreading computer viruses. Still, under Eyesmon's influence, she became singularly focused on looking into every programmer's history to determine whether they were committing cyber crimes, regardless of their guilt.

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However, many of the hosts were attempting to gather information for less noble causes. Emma Hanes, Kiyoshiro Higashimitarai's frenemy and love interest, traveled to Japan explicitly because she wanted to discover what he was hiding from her. She had already exposed Kiyoshiro's secret journal of stories about himself as a hero online before, and Kiyoshiro's assumption was that she wanted to release more of his secrets. Another host wanted to gain information on celebrities to increase her own public profile. Most chillingly, one of the hosts, a police officer, was using his extra eyes to spy on a young woman for unknown reasons. Eyesmon amplified his hosts' desire for information, twisting it into far more dangerous invasions of privacy to show how humanity could be its own worst enemy.

While Dodomeki only grew the eyes on her arms, in Digimon Ghost Game, Eyesmon's hosts instead gained extra eyes all over their bodies, making their transformations far more gruesome. When Emma Hanes was chosen by Eyesmon, the episode showed him plucking out her eyes and replacing them with a pair of his red ones, albeit in a bloodless fashion. As Eyesmon's hosts gained more information, more eyes appeared. Eventually, the extra eyes started peeling away from the body, leaving their host to crumble. Thus, Digimon Ghost Game took Dodomeki's transformation to a greater extreme, making it far more dangerous for the hosts.

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Episode 43 Adapts the Dodomeki Legend Into a Lesson on Information Stealing

Eyesmon, a draconic Digimon made of eyes, in Digimon Ghost Game

Eyesmon mainly stayed in the shadows throughout Episode 43. He also kept his victims in metaphorical shadows, wiping their memories of the eyes when they started to question their appearance or worry about the ramifications of extra eyes. Once the team forced Eyesmon to appear, his actual appearance was more draconic since he is a dark dragon type. Once defeated, Eyesmon was reduced to a tiny, birdlike creature, powerless without his hosts to feed him more data. Eyesmon's appearance provides an avian connection to the Dodomeki yōkai and her additional eyes' specific bird's eye origins, even if the episode did not focus on the money aspect of the legend.

Overall, "Red Eye" provided a strong adaptation of the Dodomeki legend for today's technology, focusing on information as the true currency. While Emma seemed to have turned over a new leaf and will keep the team's secrets, the rest of the hosts were left with limited memories of the eyes or Eyesmon's influence on their actions.

Therefore, while Eyesmon has been defeated and contained, the circumstances for another Eyesmon to thrive still exist due to increased technology and new ways to invade other people's privacy. Eyesmon showed how the Ghost Game writers have adapted old legends to fit new times throughout the series and will continue to expand on old legends as the team meets more Digimon in the human world.