In 1997, raising a Digimon meant pressing buttons on a keychain and feeding it virtual meat. In 2021, it meant getting your heart rate up. The Vital Bracelet Digital Monster is the V-Pet's strangest reinvention: a Tamagotchi that runs on your heartbeat.
It launched in Japan on March 13, 2021, in black, white, and a Collector's Shop "Special" edition — a wearable LCD toy that Bandai classifies as a "wearable terminal-type" virtual pet. North America got the same hardware a year later as the Vital Hero, in stores on July 21, 2022.
What makes it special is what it took away. Your Digimon needs no food, and there's no poop to clean. Instead, a pulse sensor and step counter turn your activity into Vital Points, which act as both food and growth fuel. Walk, run, or get your heart rate up, and your partner earns Vitals, with some evolution routes locked behind total activity and battle records. Each Digimon's personality even sets its own bedtime.
The conceit had teeth. Take the bracelet off while your Digimon is awake, and Vitals drain. Leave it off a full 24 hours with no heartbeat detected, and your partner dies. For a franchise built on gentle care routines, it was a shock — your body is the raising interface now.
The idea wasn't new. The 1999 Digivice toy from the anime was already a pedometer; you walked, or shook, your way through areas toward boss fights. The Vital Bracelet removed the training wheels and strapped the whole loop to your wrist.
Digimon came to the device through Dim cards — "Digimon Identified Memory" — small cards that load a themed roster of up to seventeen Digimon. The box included Impulse City, home of Pulsemon, a new Rookie created for the line, plus a VS Memory for local battles; thirty-seven Dim cards followed over the platform's life. Battles use NFC, so you can touch the bracelet to a compatible phone or an IC reader like a train gate and your partner fights automatically. A Digivice-styled variant, the Digivice-V-, shipped on October 2, 2021.
The upgraded Vital Bracelet BE followed on November 26, 2022. It takes new BEMemory cards, which don't work on the original bracelets, and swaps missions for exercise training: squats, crunches, punches, and dashes raise your partner's stats. For the Digital Monster's 25th anniversary, Bandai also released a BE set styled after the original Ver.1 — brown and grey shells, monochrome dot art of Agumon and friends — at 12,100 yen. Around the same time the platform went multi-IP, carrying Kamen Rider, Ultraman, Demon Slayer, and My Hero Academia characters under the tagline "Fitness with Characters."
The app side has since wound down. The launch app, Vital Bracelet Lab, gave way to Vital Bracelet Arena in November 2022, and Arena's online features ended in September 2024. The hardware still works, though: your Digimon raises, battles, and evolves on the wrist, no server required.
Digimon hardware has always reinvented itself — keychain, anime pedometer, and now fitness watch. The Vital Bracelet was the boldest step, asking the genre's oldest question, "What does caring for something virtual mean?", and answering, "Move your actual body." Twenty-five years after the original keychain, that might be the most Digimon thing a toy has ever done.