You're about to dig into possibly the most unhinged ship manifesto you've ever seen in your life.

What if Ken was... And what if Takeru was the one who...

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The evidence presented here is not presented as evidence that takeken is "totally canon". Instead, this concerns the chemistry, very particular circumstances, and psychological profiles of both Takeru and Ken in their canon contexts, and how these factors contribute to and support FALLDOWN MODE's interpretations. Put simply, there are specific character traits and events which, taken as a whole, paint a picture of two people perfectly set on the knife's edge of catastrophe, where a little push is all it takes to send things spiraling out of control.

By out of control we're referring to noncon, to be clear. LOTS of it. We did tell you this was the most unhinged ship manifesto you'd ever seen.

There's a lot to read on this page! While we recommend reading the sections in order, for convenience there is also an index of the biggest sections. Each item in this index is clickable and will jump you to that section. In addition, at the end of each major section will be a link back to here for easier reading or referring back to specific sections. You're welcome, mobile users.

Index

Character Profile: Ichijouji Ken

Character Profile: Takaishi Takeru

On TakeKen's basis in the text of 02

The Dark Ocean and its role as corrupting force

Next dissertation

Sparrow:

Moro: Sparrow has a PhD in Ken, which is why I had her write his section, but I've crammed at least a bachelors' degree in Takeru between November 2023 and September 2024, so I'll be covering him! I love my awful son from the bottom of my heart, and he's been such a fun headspace to inhabit, so please understand that everything you're about to read comes from a place of love! I really love characters that are messy or have a lot of contradictions, and Takeru is such an excellent example of this... Without further ado, let's jump in.

Of all characters in Adventure 02, Takeru may be the most misunderstood, perhaps even more so than Ken. The average Digimon fan, if asked about Takeru, seems to buy whole-heartedly into his surface-level appearance, as though the front he is constantly holding up is the sum of his whole personality. This is such a fundamental misunderstanding that comprehending who Takeru truly is as a character while still operating under this assumption is doomed to failure.

Takeru's core trait that causes this misunderstanding is that he is categorically unwilling to let others know or see what he is truly thinking and feeling. Crucially, he is not only obfuscating this from the people around him, he is also obfuscating it from himself. He is unwilling to let others see what might be bothering him, and he is also unwilling to acknowledge his own problems or even contemplate them, much less talk about them or reveal them to others. In short, by default, he pretends everything is fine, no matter what, until it's not.

The mechanism by which he covers this up is the surface-level all-smiles persona that everyone is already familiar with - cheerful and optimistic, helpful, and under control of himself at all times. He carefully keeps a smile on his face as much as possible and often won't display stress even when other characters do. When none of his triggers have been touched, Takeru is consistently one of the nicest, most personable individuals in the group. He carries himself confidently and with a sort of easygoing chill that gives the overall impression of someone who's hard to ruffle, who doesn't let anything get to him.

It's because he's so effective at this that so many viewers simply buy into this impression totally uncritically and their interpretation of what he is actually like as a person stops there, no questions asked. I generally won't be saying much about the dub here, but the dub is also very much to blame in this, because the dub makes him much more outspoken, open about what he's thinking and feeling, and in general erases all the underlying complexity in the process... However, in terms of the original version, anyone paying real attention should notice the cracks, that something's a little "off" about him, something in his demeanor that's a little too carefully maintained to be genuine.

As a side note, 02's Japanese fan base appears to have realized this a bit better than the Western fanbase. I think this is partly because many Western fans' first exposure was the dub, but also because Western viewers are frequently less savvy to subtle information. I've read multiple Japanese 02 doujinshi which has other characters making jokes about how Takeru's actually kind of scary! In one doujinshi there's a panel that shows Ken (post-Kaiser) seeing Takeru without his hat on and feeling immediate panic. Now that's some tasty conditioning.

When one of Takeru's emotional triggers is hit in a way he can't suppress or ignore, this facade completely collapses and this manifests in an explosion of irrational, uncontrollable anger. In fact, it's really the only negative emotion we see leak through in 02; anger is his default response to upsetting things! For our purposes, the most important example of this is in episode 19, where, upon seeing that the Digimon Kaiser (Ken) has harvested some of Devimon's code for the creation of Chimeramon, absolutely loses his shit and recklessly runs off to take his anger out on the Kaiser personally. Don't worry, we'll be digging deep into this scene in the next section, but for the moment just try to keep this in mind. In any case, Takeru's inability to manage his own negative emotions means that when something forces them to the surface, having no real mechanism to cope with them, Takeru inevitably lashes out at the source of the trigger seemingly without regard for the consequences.

He even lashes out at Hikari, someone he cares about a lot, in episode 13, and is left to deal with the direct consequence of this outburst immediately after. It seems to be implied that his lashing out in response to her attempt to seek help is the final push that allows the Dark Ocean to "capture" Hikari. It's just one of many incidences where his refusal to address things that he's sensitive about causes him to lash out at the people around him, and shows that it's not exclusive to an "enemy" like the Kaiser.

Worse, because Takeru always returns to suppressing and refusing to contemplate ideas or facts that might be upsetting or inconvenient after he has had one of these outbursts, it is extremely easy for him to rationalize away anything he does as a result of this loss of control. What makes this not only destructive but dangerous is that Takeru seems to totally lack any awareness of this problem, which prevents him from doing anything to counteract or work on it at all. It doesn't even seem like he knows but is in denial, which could at least be addressed by breaking through said denial; nothing in his words or actions indicates he knows he's doing this at all.

Additionally, Takeru has a very strong conviction of the rightness of his particular moral compass and a simultaneous ability to completely discard any concerns about potentially violating it when he's been set off, with seemingly no long-term consequences to his worldview. This results in behavior that seems completely contradictory, an almost Jekyll-and-Hyde situation. His friends have some awareness of it, some more than others, with Yamato, Hikari, and Iori likely having the best insight. But he's so good at hiding what's going on inside that even those close to him don't see the full extent of it. In any case, as Shiha so accurately sums it, "[...]Takeru’s behavior is contradictory because he’s acting based on what’s personal to him, not necessarily via principles that make sense."

Put another way, he absolutely does have principles and values he considers important, but these principles are readily bent when necessary to justify his own emotional reactions. This also makes it difficult to properly nail down what his principles really are, and it's telling that other characters still describe them in terms of emotions (such as when Iori wonders why Takeru "hates the darkness so much").

Takeru's method of dealing with this inherent contradiction is, no surprise, the exact same "coping mechanism" that causes that contradiction in the first place - that is, his staunch refusal to think about ideas or emotions which are uncomfortable to him. He's thus quite capable of deviating drastically from his stated moral code, and then justifying whatever he did to himself afterwards so he doesn't have to deal with any of the emotional fallout. Guilt isn't really something he has a mechanism to handle internally, so anything that might cause him to feel guilty is quickly rationalized away and then compartmentalized.

This is demonstrated most clearly with his reaction to Black Wargreymon, which Iori actually notices in a way the rest of the group seems to miss. Quote Shiha, "The fact that ostensibly one of the outwardly “nicest” kids in this group suddenly blows up in certain circumstances and basically goes “absolutely nope, needs to be killed!” in the midst of a few moral debates over killing sentient Digimon disturbs [Iori] deeply, and really, it’s not even about the killing part [...] as much as Takeru’s being pretty gung-ho about it. Not “I don’t like it, but we have to” like he said earlier, but NOPE, GOTTA DO IT." Takeru professes to care an awful lot about the value of Digimon's lives as a general principle, and it's mostly true, right up until he's dealing with an "evil" Digimon, at which point all of that abruptly flies out the window.

It's not missed, of course, that Black Wargreymon's existence is an indirect result of Ken's actions as the Kaiser, even though it's Arachnemon that created him. When Takeru snarls that Black Wargreymon's existence is "absolutely unforgivable" in episode 34, the camera briefly cuts to Ken. Ken's frightened expression says a lot about how he feels about seeing Takeru acting this way, and shows that Ken's arguably still a little frightened of Takeru.

This mindset shows up again in episode 45, with Takeru seeming to suffer absolutely no distress about killing the "evil Digimon" in the Real World. The argument can't be made that the reason he's unbothered is because of the Digimon cycle of rebirth, either, since he is well aware that any Digimon killed in this manner die permanently. It's his effective rationalization at work; as far as he's concerned, they were the enemy, they were evil, and they were going to hurt people he cares about, so they deserved to die, and that's all there is to it.

We don't directly get to see a lot of how these might apply outside of the primary conflicts in 02, but something that gets overlooked a lot is how this would apply to Ken, despite there being a very important scene dedicated to it! It's this we'll be really sinking our teeth into in the next section.

In sum, it's this combination of traits that makes Takeru not only volatile and unpredictable, but dangerous, with the ready potential for his behavior to escalate into something worse than mere angry outbursts...

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Now that we've gone in-depth on Takeru and Ken individually, we'll bring it together to discuss how their traits combine and how the events of a single episode show us everything we need to know about their "relationship" potential (or, rather, about just how perfectly it sets up for the best kind of noncon...)

Sparrow: That Scene in Digimon Adventure 02, Episode 19:

Moro: My partner is correct, of course. Without question, episode 19 is the most crucial to understanding Takeru and Ken's dynamic. It's surely obvious by this point, but if you've somehow missed it, noncon is probably my most favorite kink to write and read. Therefore, understand that everything you're about to read is coming from that lens. Even the first time I watched Adventure 02, there was something about that scene that felt absolutely primed for a noncon scenario. The narrative beats and the atmosphere slot into it perfectly. So much about good noncon stories has much in common with good horror; a gradual buildup of fear and tension that leads to a dramatic release. It was after more "study" that I realized how much "That time Takeru lost his mind and got vicious on the Kaiser" was not some kind of one-off isolated madness, but just part of a larger pattern of behavior.

Takeru's actions in episode 19 are a culmination of all his issues coming to a head at once, all triggered by Ken. Since it is a sort of release of tension Takeru's been holding for a while, before we get to episode 19, it's important to talk about how by this point in the series Takeru is carrying around significantly more anger and hatred for the Kaiser than the other characters. Obviously, with the Kaiser being the primary antagonist, all the characters have good reasons to be angry at him, but Takeru really seems to take it personally in a way other characters don't.

Besides the separation of his family, Takeru's deepest and most affecting trauma is the loss of Angemon in Adventure episode 13. This manifests most obviously as Takeru being extremely touchy about threats to his partner, particularly outside the framework of a "normal" battle. In episode 11, the Kaiser manages to briefly capture Patamon and gets dangerously close to putting an Evil Spiral on him. Daisuke, still conflicted about fighting Taichi's Evil Spiral-controlled partner, stands helplessly and doesn't direct his own partner to attack the Kaiser and stop him. Takeru is so furious at Daisuke's inaction that he almost gets in a fistfight with him before Miyako breaks the two of them apart.

In the end the Kaiser isn't successful at getting the Spiral on Patamon, and he's returned to Takeru unharmed, but there is absolutely no doubt this is something Takeru holds onto, nursing a grudge in the background he's probably not conscious of. Fast-forward a bit to episode 19, where the Kaiser jabs at this sensitive spot again...

All right, now that we've got this important background factor in mind, let's get into episode 19 for real! Because this episode is so important to understanding the dynamic of Takeru/Ken, I'll be breaking things down in excruciating detail, as is my specialty. I hope you wanted a play-by-play of That Scene, because you're getting one! Strap in!

As Shiha notes, quote: "This is Takeru getting the closest we ever see him to being a genuine sadist [...] blowing up in anger out of nowhere with a passive-aggressive demeanor, [...] mixing the [smiling] ^^ front he puts on with his tendency to blow up angrily at anything that cuts him a little too emotionally close."

He sees that the Kaiser has deliberately used data from Devimon to create his "ultimate Digimon", becomes enraged to the point of losing control of himself, and recklessly walks off into the depths of the Kaiser's base. Though he's clearly mad as hell and absolutely couldn't wait to go do something to the Kaiser to the point of abandoning Iori, Tentomon, and Armadimon in their task of freeing the imprisoned Digimon, he doesn't even run off. Instead he walks slowly, purposefully, even though he has no idea where he could be going. Patamon is well-attuned enough to his partner to know this isn't good, and tries to dissuade him from doing this, but Takeru ignores him completely. There's no other possible reason he would have to do this except to make the Kaiser pay with his own hands.

Takeru doesn't have to walk very far before the two of them run right into each other.

There's something so ominous about the way Takeru speaks and behaves in this scene that's unlike any of his other emotional outbursts. The Kaiser meets him with his typical haughty attitude, but Takeru's response is extremely dismissive and contemptuous, not so much treating the Kaiser like a threat (the way he always has in front of his friends) but more like he's simply beneath him, a reprobate who needs to know their place. It's immediately evident that Ken was not even close to expecting this, and right away he's clearly unsettled and on the defensive, frozen in shock.

Takeru needles Ken about his real identity immediately and mocks the Kaiser's entire persona. The Kaiser claims he commands the power of darkness in an attempt to intimidate Takeru, and Takeru immediately throws it back at him as something he couldn't possibly understand, with a cryptic and extremely threatening remark that Ken "won't just get hurt". Despite how clearly furious he is, Takeru doesn't yell at the Kaiser at all, instead speaking the entire time with an extremely unsettling calm. Takeru's voice throughout the entire scene is so soft, almost sounding gentle, and it really makes the entire scene feel much more loaded than it would have if Takeru was shouting at Ken like a more typical conflict. In all aspects Takeru appears not to have lost his cool at all, but to be in total control of himself and the situation.

The Kaiser's attempts to respond are clumsy, as he can't even manage to formulate a real response to Takeru's words, opting instead to call the entire group "insects". Ken's behavior is so clearly that of someone fighting down panic that it's almost startling, since we have, to this point, not seen this kind of vulnerability from him before. As already discussed, this emotional vulnerability is one of Ken's core traits, but up until this point, the persona of the Digimon Kaiser has been sufficient to cover this up to outside observers, and none of the others in the group manage to get under his skin like this.

Takeru doesn't care at all. He gives an utterly contemptuous smile, and simply asks Ken, "Is that all you can say?"

Just look at that expression!! This expression alone shows how dangerous Takeru is in this state. We know it, and Takeru knows, and Ken sure knows too!! That smile looks downright sadistic... it's perfect. This might be my favorite shot in the whole episode...

Anyway, it's then that Ken lashes out physically, whipping the side of Takeru's face hard enough to draw blood.

And Takeru doesn't even flinch!! An angry glare melts into another contemptuous smile, and Takeru softly remarks that Ken obviously "Can't win with words, so you resort to violence, huh?" And despite every other act of violence we've seen the Kaiser commit thus far, he immediately tries to back down in response to this comment, stammering out a weak denial. He's terrified in a way we don't see at any other time. And for good reason, as Takeru calmly remarks that it doesn't matter either way, and just asks Ken if he's "done".

If you compare between the two screenshots of Ken's face, you can clearly see him physically shrink away from Takeru, so visibly frightened you can see right through the Kaiser persona yourself. Takeru cheerfully says "It's my turn"(!) It's clear that Ken physically attacking was really just the excuse Takeru was waiting for. Takeru could have simply jumped him the moment the Kaiser walked into the hall, before he had a chance to react. But he chooses instead to talk to him first, like a cat playing with its food. But now that Ken's thrown the first blow, it's all the excuse Takeru needs, and it's only now that he leaps at Ken, throwing such a nasty punch that it knocks Ken flat on his back.

It's at this point that we cut to the exterior battle, and when we cut back into the scene, Takeru has climbed on top of Ken and straddled him, pinning him to the floor to keep beating him. What a gift, for us to be handed such a scene on a silver platter. Takeru's really letting him have it, until a tremor from the battle outside causes the base the shake, which knocks Takeru off-balance.

Takeru's momentary stun gives the Kaiser the opportunity to throw Takeru off and grab his whip, but when he tries to get Takeru with it, Takeru catches the whip like it's nothing! Ken is supposed to be more physically fit and generally athletic than Takeru, (remember that at this point Ken still has all that Dark Seed superpower juice making him an extra special talented prodigy) but none of that matters when his mind's not in it. The fear is so palpable. For maybe the first time since becoming the Kaiser, he's really scared.

When we cut back, Takeru's already shoved Ken back to the floor and straddled him again. He just can't stay off him! In the background, their partners fight, until Chimeramon blows the roof clean off, at which point Takeru leaves to join the battle outside.

He's so persistent, so determined to keep attacking - how much of a stretch is it, really, for Takeru to conclude that just a few punches isn't enough for the likes of the Kaiser? That he needs to find a more... significant way to hurt him? That he needs to not only hurt him, but humiliate him, lay him low, make him feel violated and ruined...

Even sticking strictly to the canon events, it's extremely telling that Takeru never, at any point, mentions to the others any details about what he did in episode 19. Iori, having been present to see Takeru get set off, has some inkling that Something happened, but even he is in the dark about what Takeru actually did. It's not so hard to imagine Takeru crossing the line into true sadism, for his hatred of Ken to become sublimated into gleeful cruelty. Takeru's established patterns of behavior and specific grudge against Ken are practically enough on their own, but the final piece already at play in episode 19 that could easily give him that push is the presence of a direct conduit to the Dark Ocean, in the form of the Dark Whirlpool. A little extra influence from the Dark Ocean, pushing and prodding at Takeru's worst impulses, urging him on to do ever more awful things...

(For more in-depth discussion of this aspect, see the next section, "The Dark Ocean and its role".)

I've always maintained that Takeru is the one of the Chosen most likely to, and most capable of, committing rape under the right circumstances, especially to do it to someone he's angry at, since it's a uniquely awful way to hurt someone. It'd be so easy for him to do it and then justify it to himself after the fact - the Kaiser was evil, so he deserved it, after all... That's exactly the path the first episode of our story follows.

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Moro: The Dark Ocean is a dimension connected to, but separate from, the Real World and the Digital World, with specific properties that are variously touched on but not fully explained.

In Adventure 02 the Dark Ocean or its influence comes up repeatedly throughout the series: in episodes 13, 19, 23, 27, 31, 45, and 48. I'll refrain from a play-by-play deep dive into episode 13 here, but we do need to talk about it because it's the most detailed look we get at the Dark Ocean in the whole series. Having some understanding of the Dark Ocean is am important piece to understanding how Takeru's issues could become intensified and worsened through something other than only his conscious choices.

Due to a dearth of definitive information, much of what I'll discuss here is inferences and logical deduction, and not things that have been explicitly confirmed. Even the name "Dark Ocean" (暗黒の海) isn't always what's used; per Wikimon, it's referred to as the "World of Darkness" (暗黒の世界) and also "Dagomon's Ocean" (ダゴモンの海), after its ruler, Dagomon (seen in the screenshot below). In the original Japanese language version, the characters themselves only call it a "world of darkness", "dark place", or "the Ocean".

The Dark Ocean's connection to other dimensions appears to be transient, wildly fluctuating, and generally unstable. Hikari begins to phase through the dimensions to the Dark Ocean early in episode 13, where she sees a hallucination or vision of dark water all around her while she's just sitting at her desk at school. The actual boundary between the Real World and the Dark Ocean is somewhat ill-defined and it goes both ways - in episode 13, Hikari catches sight of a Deep One at school in broad daylight.

Anyway, moving on, it's established in a flashback that the Dark Ocean was a major contributing factor to Ken's transformation into the Digimon Kaiser (along with the Dark Seed). This is really all the textual evidence we need of the Dark Ocean as a potentially "corrupting" force. In Ken's case, it's inarguable that the Dark Seed was the more significant factor, but it seems a certainty that this exposure to the Dark Ocean helped accelerate or possibly catalyze the process. Ken's corruption was also extremely drastic, to the point of changing him almost completely as a person, and this makes sense even if he did not have the Dark Seed; his exposure was the most direct compared to other characters that come into contact with the Dark Ocean.

In any case, it's clear that an individual's emotional state is the biggest factor in how they will be called to, or reached by, the Dark Ocean. The aforementioned example with Ken when he was younger is a clear instance (even if it was partly due to Oikawa's actions), but both times Hikari is pulled to the Dark Ocean are also caused by emotional distress, her ongoing problem of being unable to let herself vocalize her needs and problems to others, even when it directly harms her.

Likewise, Ken's behavior is altered according to his grief, feelings of inadequacy and envy of his brother, and the aggravating factor of the Dark Seed. This makes him "evil" in a sort of aimless, misguided fashion, because fundamentally Ken isn't a cruel person! What the Dark Ocean pushes someone to think or feel is dependent on their own issues, personality, and natural inclinations, as well as their emotional state at the time of "exposure".

This brings us to Takeru, who is exposed to the Dark Ocean on three occasions. His first, as already discussed above, is when he deliberately goes there to rescue Hikari in episode 13. However, the one we are going to talk about here is when he's in close proximity to the Dark Whirlpool (which we can infer from context has a connection to the Dark Ocean and the Dark Area) in episode 19. You might've wondered why I didn't start with his approach to the Dark Whirlpool in my episode 19 breakdown - it's because I wanted to dive into it more in-depth here.

I mentioned earlier that the Dark Ocean has an implied connection to the Dark Area, and it's in episode 19 that we see this. The Dark Area is where evil Digimon reside and also where deleted data goes and the residual data of dead Digimon. Devimon was pretty categorically obliterated in episode 13 of Adventure, and we get confirmation in this episode that his residual data has been kicking around down in the Dark Area ever since. Not long after retrieving the scraps of Devimon's data, the Kaiser begins to suffer horrible hallucinations, a direct byproduct of aggravating the Whirlpool - a dual effect of connecting with the Dark Area and provoking the Dark Ocean's attention.

Pegasmon senses that it's not good and tells Takeru not to look too deeply into the Whirlpool when they're flying above it, but Takeru stares into the abyss long enough to see strange ghost-like apparations before flying off. It's not an unreasonable deduction that he could also have been affected by the Dark Ocean (with some added juice from the Dark Area) the way Ken was, but since their personalities deep down are so different, the effect of this contamination is also different. Contemplating the effects of Takeru becoming infected with a Dark Seed... well, he'd be far worse than the Kaiser ever was.

Now recall that the Kaiser's base is powered by a reactor that siphons evil energy from the Dark Ocean. It allows the fortress to float and move around, powers the electronics inside, and allows him to create Evil Rings, Evil Spirals, and Dark Towers. This means that the entire time Takeru is walking around in the Kaiser's base, he's getting that dark energy all around him.

This is why we make the case that the Dark Whirlpool could influence Takeru's behavior in episode 19; when he's already unstable and already acting irrationally, it's not much of a stretch to think that the Dark Ocean could sense that coming from him and reach out, respond.

Takeru also comes into contact with the Dark Ocean in episode 27, wherein he is directly exposed to the conduit power source in what remains of the Digimon Kaiser's base. This is important to "reinforcing" the influence it has on him in our work, but I'll save digging into that for the second part of this manifesto, since it pertains more to our story's timeline than to the original canon it diverges from.

Interested in reading analysis and more background information, and details about the dynamic specific to Takeru and Ken and their relationship in It's Only You I Can't Escape? We're so glad you are!! We would've put it on the same page, since the manifesto is the supporting and underlying structure for understanding how they end up the way they do, but this page has gotten extremely long as it is...

Additionally, we wanted to separate it since some of the contents of that page contain major spoilers for the work. The most significant spoilers will be hidden under a readmore arrow, but you should still proceed with caution if you haven't finished the story.

Click the link below to read the next segment of the deranged academic paper that is our thoughts on takeken:

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