Digimon Tamers is the third instalment in the digimon franchise, it began is 2001. It takes place initially in the real world, a world much like ours where digimon is just a video game, cartoon series and a card game. A group of 12 year olds (10 year olds in the japanese version.) Takato, Henry and Rika who are fans of the digimon card game meet their own partner digimon and start to duel "bio-emerging" digimon who cross the barrier between the information network and their world, when they cross that barrier, they become real. Most of it is set in Modern Tokyo ward of Shinjuku and only changes to the digital world for a short time.

Takato creates his own partner digimon called Guilmon, when he slips a mysterious blue card he found in his desk through his hand held card-reading device, changing the card- reading device into a D-Arc, this is the Tamers version of a digivice. The appearance and powers of Guilmon come from Takatos sketches which were scanned into the digivice. Guilmon bio-emerges into the real world and is later found by Takato.

Henry met his digimon Terriermon while he was playing a video game and Terriermon came through the computer screen. Rika's digimon Renamon went to Rika and asked for her help to get stronger because Rika is very skilled in the digimon card game. Other characters Kazu, kenta and Jeri who are all Takatos classmates from school and Suzie Henry's little sister become tamers later on in the series and Ryo who is Rikas rival and digimon tamer is introduced later on.

They frequently run into two digimon Calumon and Impmon, Impmon is a digimon who left his tamers because he was sick of their bickering and their selfishness and he thinks that all digimon with tamers are a disgrace.

Along the way the kids learn to be responsible of their digimon as a man named Yamaki tries to stop digimon (which he calls wild ones,) from coming to the real world, he operates from a secret government angency called Hypnos. Yamaki was in charge of monitoring all digimon activity around the globe. Later the new tamers are forced to fight a group of evil digimon who call themselves the Deva, they serve the digimon sovereigns, they believe that digimon shouldn't partner with humans.

Their true purpose for coming to the human world was to capture Calumon and take him back to the digital world so they can use his power for digivolution. The Tamers and friends decide to go to the digital world to rescue calumon. They destroy all but one of the deva's who was Antylamon who turned to the good side and became Suzies partner, they confront and defeat Impmon who has turned into Beelzemon after making a deal with Zhuquiaomon for more power in exchange for killing the Tamers.

After traveling to the Digital World to rescue Calumon, the Tamers face the digital god who finally agrees to work together with the Tamers in order to destroy the D-Reaper, a computer programed for keeping digital life in check but it went out of control.

In this season several new things are introduced, the Tamers use cards to give their digimon abilitites and calumon a lone digimon who is soley respeonsible for digimon being able to digivolve. Also they bio emerge to get to their Mega Level bio emrging consists of tamer and digimon becoming one.