With yesterday's post, I finished everything I had for Digimon Tamers' 25th anniversary.
Now that ended, you can ask me anything about it here if you have any doubts.
I'm also free to answer any Digimon topics or anything else if you are interested and I have an answer.

The questions on life/death aren't limited to Digimon Tamers; other works also engage with it.
There are interesting overlaps in the approaches, and I feel like it's possible to establish a comprehensive setting.
But I feel that seeing it formalized is impossible in this life.

And yet, with how important death is in this setting with many scenes making clear about the vision they have for it, I can't help but think that there are enough moments in the story that can make one question how far are the limits for life, and I myself have my answer.

For example, the idea that a Digimon's death is caused by data loading. Of course Konaka included Loading as one justification to remove reincarnation and increase the drama of Digimon fights, but in the anime settings it isn't the cause. They die even without load.

Some fans still want to think about ways in which Leomon could come back, and Konaka even commented about one story written by a fan in an anthology of Digimon Tamers fan stories.
I have seen different approaches to this story, but I think some are lacking in a few aspects.

I don't think exploring this would improve the message of the series, so it's fine that it was never explained in detail.
But as I research more about Digimon, seeing the different ways existence itself is depicted, I can't help but wonder about all of this.

Something like Leomon's death is an example of how important life is.
Still, the ambiguous nature of how the life, death and reincarnation was portrayed in Adventure was exactly one of the things Konaka was interested about, so this is me extending the question to Tamers.

But the more I look into how the Digimon and the Digital World exist in the series (Such as using quantum teleportation with the original data being destroyed to prevent clones) I end up very curious about what exactly is the limit to a life in this setting more than intended.

In fact, since the Digital World here is represented as formed from "metaphors and references" of reality, I easily accept that any visuals in the series are only there for visual impact, and something more complex might happen in the background. Isn't a problem for me.

Considering some of the extreme cases like Vajramon and Musyamon returning even quantum collapse, it's interesting to see that Leomon was just pierced in the stomach region and just slowly collapsed. Maybe being loaded imposes something that forces the collapse, or something else.

We have seen that it's possible for that data to resist being assimilated by the winner Digimon, causing mutations. So what kind of will can still exist as scraps of data? Would be some kind of postmortem spasm? If so, how does it work in these unique structures?

Even by disregarding the Musyamon incident with Konaka's recent explanation, I think that there's enough examples of how abstract a Digimon's existence is and how they are able to exist in manners that makes us question what are the limits to Digimon life and how they die.

But at least the material from back in the day, such as the official episode summary and the Anime Encyclopedia, they were clear about being the same Musyamon and that it was able to resurrect itself after being destroyed by Yuggoth.

This is a curious case because even when Konaka commented on the episode, he suggested that might have been a different Musyamon that was wanting vengeance for the death of a Digimon of the same species. I assume this was him working from true death = no reincarnation.

There's even the curious case of Musyamon who was hit by Yuggoth and we directly see the body being destroyed, but soon after it he spoke to Yamaki and eventually came back for revenge. Like, what really happened there?

In one case, Vajramon was hit by Rapidmon's Golden Triangle, which killed Pajiramon. And we see him being quantized. But he didn't die; instead, he reorganized his body somewhere far away.
Maybe the damage wasn't enough to kill, but Digimon surviving like that intrigues me.

There are also cases in which Digimon resist being loaded by another as their body is in the process of collapsing into quantized particles. Considering how much certain Digimon endured quantization, I wonder what is the point of no return. When is a Digimon just dead?

In fact, when a Digimon travels to the Real World, they once again return to being pure formless information (That is converted from non physical data into physical energy) and they can stay as formless information moving with a Digital Field before finally getting a form.

Although it's unclear how much a Digimon remembers from the old times, they were once alive much before having their current configuration (Even while still in the Digital World), as some only acquired form long after they existed as just scraps of data.

Digimon are nothing like this. Their basic structure is digital data represented by 0s and 1s that are controlled at the most basic level. They don't have organs like humans do and although they might mimic human activity, it isn't by necessity.

Humans are made of a complex overlap of different systems that self-regulate to say alive and function. A problem in a single system can result in death, and there are many causes for it.
Sometimes, although it's unclear if something is dead, some functions might cease.

Especially with the Leomon moment in the series, they wanted to show that death was something you couldn't revert and was something natural for living things and they wanted to make this clear for children.
As a message this is obvious, but I wonder about the mechanics.

But even in the case of Digimon not being loaded, they still don't reincarnate. They just remain as free scraps of data that might gather to become Dust Packets. These can be used to create new Digimon, but isn't intended as reincarnation.

Although some settings were kept from the previous anime, this was meant to be a big difference. Instead of having Digimon be reborn in the Village of Beginnings, here they would be absorbed by other Digimon as a way of justifying the fight between Digimon.

One of the ideas for the 1st Digimon Tamers episode was to introduce some of the ways in which it was different from the previous series.
This included the circuit board virtual space and the wild nature of the Digimon, which introduced how important death was in this story.

In some cases, I think I can understand how it formed, like the Digital World being created by the mysterious world from the end of 02, and similar cases.
But there are other cases where I really have no idea how one interpretation was arrived at and how it became so widespread.

After all, in the very act of trying to understand something, we carry our own biases that are part of our worldview in the moment of interpretation, so it could be that the text itself is more vague than I understood it to be due to my own biases.

Besides explaining what is the intent or what are the most likely readings that can influence future works, I sometimes become really interested in the very formation of those alternate readings. Could be something with me as well.

From time to time, I see some posts here and in other places about Digimon, and I can't help but be curious about how such a misunderstanding even came to be. As something vague in the original? Some summary that didn't catch some nuances? Lack of knowledge of another element?

There were other scenes in the Digimon franchise where the Digital World overlaps with the Real World, this happened even in the Digimon Adventure TV series, but since I read that summary for the 1st movie, the first thing that came to my mind was Digimon Tamers' depiction.