I got dragged into watching this in a VC with friends from the Elysium community; we watched the first four episodes together, then waited a few days before watching the last three (as of the time of writing). I had already seen the pilot, but had no experience with the rest of the series besides things heard over the grapevine. It was going to happen eventually, but really, it should’ve started earlier.

I’m gonna try to do something smart for this and seperate this review into a no spoilers and spoilers section, because there are specific things I want to talk about in both.

Spoilerless review#

The Amazing Digital Circus as a world at face value has inspired some worldbuilding I’ve done for alt-sonas of mine (that, admittedly, have all become my main names and sonas online, to the point where I expect people to call me O-N or Mono instead of WISH). For all those guys go through, it’s a fun little world, and arguably that’s even explored in-universe in some of the later episodes. It’s no surprise that I found myself watching it properly at some point, besides the distance I (partially unintentionally) keep from watching or reading media of that sort. I think it’s fair and easy to say that The Amazing Digital Circus was definitely worth my time in spite of this; it was interesting, thoroughly entertaining from the front to the back, and filled with love I wouldn’t notice without really understanding.

This show does what it does well very well; the intrigue is there, the episode premises are all consistently interesting, and the worldbuilding is strong. The characters are well designed, with Pomni as probably one of my favorite designs in the show due to how the animators work with her and Jax as by far my least favorite due to how simplistic the design is, though I feel it plays its role in showing off the character. It’s also incredibly easy to tell when this show got its budget, as the episodes jump massively in visual quality; the detatils improve, the designs improve, and everything just fits into place.

What I feel I need to focus on, however, is the character dynamics. How the main cast interacts runs the show from bottom to top; obviously, Pomni leads the cast in terms of screen time, being the source of the episodes’ perspective, but past the first few episodes, I feel like she plays an important role moreso as the eyes through which the story is observed, the Ishmael to the Pequod that is the Circus. Moments are given to the other characters in spades, whereas Pomni is closer to a blank slate that doesn’t have much to gain, and arguably, the best moments in the show are the ones where she isn’t the one leading the dynamic. It’s a unique way of writing the show that I definitely enjoy a lot, opening up a really unique lens on the large sum of character growth that happens throughout the series.

I can’t say much about the show just because I suck at speaking on things like this at length; this is the first time I actually have to praise something in a while, after all. With it out of the way, I want to speak more on the character dynamics I mentioned above in a spoiler-filled way.

SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE SERIES BELOW#

I mention how I feel about Pomni’s role in the story above already, but I think I need to further state my love for how it’s handled. She’s a beautiful carrier of the narrative based on how she acts; I appreciate how she wisens up and becomes more grounded going into the later episodes, especially episode 7 where she is allowed to take charge, though it does come with the mixed bag of her settling into the Circus overly quickly; as much as she doesn’t really need it, it feels like there should be growth on-screen that never happens. I think how she’s portrayed, especially the contrast between the first few episodes and the rest of the show, makes her great at this blank slate sort of role; every interaction she has tells you less about her and more about the character on the other end of the discussion, from revelations about Kinger to Jax’s crashout to even Ragatha’s struggles to reach out to her, something that ultimately led to that touching moment with Kinger. On the flip side, I will say that I definitely don’t like how little Pomni and Jax suddenly becoming friends is explained; it’s almost portrayed as a heel turn and is outwardly described as “corruption”, even if we get to see Pomni’s emotions in full display at pretty important moments in the show.

Besides Pomni herself, I think Jax is a strong contender for the actual protagonist of the show, at least in the later episodes, but even in the earlier episodes, much of the character interactions involve him in particular; often, he’s angled as a foil or outright antagonist, but much of the show focuses on his mask, the relationship with Kaufmo and Ribbit he no longer has, and how his outlook has shaped how the rest of the cast sees him. I’d like to believe that’s good reason that the scene of him abstracting is deliberately as long as it is, as well as the shift in perspective; we don’t even get solo scenes of Pomni, the main character, but we get one of Jax of all people. The show reinforces the fact that he’s likely here to get fucked, and leaves what truly happens to be incredibly open-ended. With him, however, I think there’s an important dichotomy between loving his role in the story and actually being able to like the character. Compared to the rest of the cast, just because of how he acts, I’d even consider Caine to be more likable. I definitely get it and like it; that arc is what this story needs, and what this story I feel best focuses on, but getting there means dealing with an asshole lead for seven episodes straight. I’m very curious what happens in episode 8, especially considering what we know about it; I think it’s time for him to take center stage.

On the other end of the spectrum of Pomni’s friends, there’s Ragatha, who I feel has a somewhat undercooked dynamic in all of this; however, I appreciate it being acknowledged with some level of dedication. It feels like she never got her chance directly in the spotlight, unfortunately, but it’s not like her dynamic isn’t explored throughout the runtime of the episodes, so I wouldn’t complain too much.

Zooble and Gangle feel to me like the sideplot characters of the show; while the rest of the crew has their dynamic, one that even Zooble and Gangle join in on, so many interactions obviously happen between explicitly the two of them from episode 4 onward, the episode so clearly billed as “Gangle’s episode”. The show quite obviously pit the two characters with more obvious gimmicks together; in the case of Zooble, it’s less immediately present in the writing, but definitely speaks more to how she interacts with the rest of the show at large, which I appreciate even if I think her presence in the show is weaker than Gangle’s. I do, however, appreciate how things pick up when Zooble and Gangle are slated to interact directly, as well as her mentioning her dysmorphia as part of the plot, even if it felt cast over due to the nature of the scene.

Compared to Zooble, I feel I can speak to Gangle more at length, especially in the wake of episode 4 being so clearly made for her (which honestly, I’m sad the mask from that episode never made a comeback, as I liked its design a lot). I’m glad that the direction for how she was written after her moment in episode 4, an incredible moment on its own, didn’t seem to fully be dependent on her gimmick from then on out; at least, not to the extent of her comedy mask immediately breaking. I do appreciate how much her gimmick does apply to her, but she was very hard to find interesting early on until suddenly she got massive amounts of exposition and support from the cast. The interactions she has in episode 6 are a very fun way of using that gimmick productively that I’d rather have seen earlier in the show, wherever it’d be fitting.

Kinger feels like enough of an enigma, even with all of his exposition, to where I find him quite hard to talk about. A part of me thinks he still deserves more, while a part of me acknowledges that they’ve set him up in situations where he can shine more than once and it’s great to see the attention to detail in how they do so; I love a show working around that, but I feel like the interesting side of Kinger isn’t explored as much as I feel it could be. There’s also the mystery of whatever Abel was leading onto in episode 7, which I’m guessing contained more of the truth than was implied by the show; I like Kinger referring to the “first abstraction” in front of people named Caine and Abel of all things, even not long before Caine literally just goes ahead and kills Abel. If there’s anyone I wish was paid more attention, even though he’s already gotten so much, it’s Kinger at the end of the day; perhaps that’s why he’s a character a lot of people liked.

At the end of this long ramble lies Caine. The show, and a lot of the people who watch it, try to make me feel bad for Caine, and it’s hard to do so because at the end of the day, he’s complicit in what’s going on, even given the issues clear with him from episode 3. I’ve always treated him as some evil mastermind when watching the show, and episode 7 was a massive indicator in that direction, even if it tried not to be; he’s got reasons for what he does that go against the wishes of the people he tries to act like he cares about, and he’ll continue doing what he’s doing, C&A or not. Even if I’m not much of a fan of Caine overall, though, I do appreciate his energy and the worldbuilding his presence is able to expose to the audience. Namely, as someone with experience with it, the Chinese Room bit, including its presence as a notable plot coupon, was incredible to see, especially in the context of it being a critique of the machine learning as a brain analogy; unintentionally, Caine makes fun of himself while setting up the entire adventure, and that got me good.

To return to the speculation episode 7 left us with, as I mentioned when I spoke on Kinger: I believe that there was a kernel of the truth in what Abel was saying it, and there’s two very good ways of taking it: If Caine is malicious, he could be trying to throw the crew off by misdirecting them on the weaknesses of the system; however, given the fact that both Abel and Caine mentioned C&A as plot points in an adventure Caine claims he setup himself, this could very well be him trying to cry for help and giving truthful clues as part of an adventure. Caine potentially knows Pomni would recognize the C&A logo, as she’s been in the void, and could be trying to use her as a way to back up his claims about C&A, whether he wants her to be honest to the crew or to go along with a lie propogated by Abel, and I can see both being equally likely in this scenario. Furthermore, a setup like this is a great way to break Jax if he wants him to be abstracted; he’s probably doing a whole lot, as are his friends, if the truth about Caine existing to keep their minds active is true. When I wrote the draft for this, I was wondering whether giving up or death was the closer thing to abstraction; I could see the former because the closest we got to seeing an on-screen abstraction was likely Jax’s dream, and the latter because of Kinger’s “first abstraction” comment, as mentioned above, as well as the funeral, almost as if they were properly dead. I think anyone who’s seen everything they have of this show knows something is going to happen to Jax, or it’s going to get close to happening, and he’s either going to have to redeem himself or abstract, somehow.

With that, I finally get this review out. It’s been a draft since the 29th of January and I felt a need to change that.