Review & Critique of Digital Circus episodes 1-8:
Just trying to be a fan of a growing indie series inspired by all the colorful toys & books we grew up with quickly mutated into both one of the biggest fandoms in recent memory but also one of the most analyzed shows in recent memory. People were & still are invested in this show & it means a lot to thousands of people worldwide. People got so invested that now Digital Circus holds the honor of being one of the few internet shows to hit real physical theaters. It honestly should be an honor for the show to hold but it feels strange nowadays combined with the movie releasing earlier than the official online release, the movies Brazilian dub getting leaked, & no shortage of controversy from the various English VA's including Gooseworx herself.
This however will not go into how the show ended but rather how it both began & ran its course. We'll try our hardest to stick just to episodes 1-8 material with as minimal mentions of episode 9 & spoilers related. We will pretend that doesn't exist until June 19th so we can all equally be informed on whatever happens there. Other people have done bigger & more well made reviews of the show & every little event that happened but this one will hopefully offer some perspective on things while reminding us how far this show got; both for better & for worse. We all had certain expectations of both the characters & plot including myself so this will more or less be what I would've done differently if I were in Goose's shoes.
As one already knows this show was trying to go for a "somewhat comedic take on a psychological thriller" but it felt selective on when it wanted to be a psychological thriller & when it just wanted to pull stings for the sake of it. They built up a mystery of this C&A company along with brain scans but 8 out of 9 episodes in & were still working with scraps. Of course they never needed to fully explain everything but a purpose behind the brain scans & how it even works would be nice. Kinger is pretty much confirmed to have direct ties to C&A but what was he? A boss? A leading programmer? A janitor that played around with the computers late at night like the Veggitales creator? Even then it sounds like the brain scans were more of Scratch's idea. Remembering how Kinger said Scratch had a brain tumor implies to me that Scratch most likely made the brain scans as a means to have one's consciousness live on without a physical body. The Amazing Digital Circus itself obviously takes place in a digital virtual plane so what exactly is keeping their servers running? If they exist just in one computer or USB drive they would've been wiped out long ago by an inevitable power outage or by the C&A company eventually getting a letter that somebody left the lights on in an old property of theirs. My personal theory is that the Digital Circus & everything connected to it exists on the cloud on the wider Internet. That would neatly explain what The Void even is. In this case it would just be an empty cloud space that could hold anything.
& that's not even talking about the characters. I've seen some change a little & I've seen some change a lot but here's a quick rundown of the cast. Pomni is a small jester & the newest member of the circus. While she first starts off incredibly paranoid & easily frightened, she as time passes learns to lead the team with sincere confidence & how to put her foot down when necessary. Kinger a cartoony king chess piece has been in the circus the longest on the contrary. While he to most of the circus members rubs off jittery & incoherent, they eventually find a very intelligent & resourceful individual when physical darkness is involved. Ragatha is a very VERY familiar looking ragdoll who normally tries being a happy supportive voice to everyone even if they don't exactly return the favor. While her main interactions with others give off an impression that she's just carefree & happy to do anything, we find she thinks little of herself & we see she's coping with & running from personal traumas. Mainly with her real world mother. Gangle is made of ribbons but has a strange emotion based quirk where she has an overlaying comedy mask that keeps her in a happy state of mind but when it eventually breaks she's more or less forced to emotionally feel sadness & has a hard time finding another emotion with the tragedy mask. (Has she ever considered wearing them in the reverse order?) Then on top of that she has an alternative plastic mask that gives off the impression of happiness but when she wears the plastic mask she hides her real feelings & acts all fake & well... erm... plastic. This initially was quite a problem for Gangle but with the help from a circle of friends & a lover that lifts her emotions up, she starts sincerely feeling happiness even through the tears of the tragedy mask. Zooble being said lover. Initially they rub off grumpy, impatient, & unwilling to participate in the adventures but it's outside of the hustle & bustle of the adventures where Zooble really shows a caring supportive side. They coincidencly have an odd quirk too but it's about their body instead of emotions. Just about every body part including head accessories are both interchangeable & connectable to each other. There's probably a commentary about non-binary trans identities but with due respect Zooble's a lot more accepting of that fact about themselves than one specific member is.
On a DEFINITELY unrelated note, Jax is the funny one who everyone loves & nobody has ever had a problem with ever. All jokes aside, Jax is one of the more controversial characters both in & out of the circus. He's a tall lanky purple rubberhose rabbit who loves violence. He likes sarcasm. He lives & breathes schottenfreude. He has a habit of bullying the females of the circus (mainly Gangle & Ragatha) He pretends not to care about anything while often times doing deliberate harm to someone or something. Often because it's funny to him but some can tell it's more or less an act or mask he's putting on. He insists on being a big macho guy but whenever anything pulls his masculinity into question he flips out or gets noticeably mad. Odd personality choice considering Gooseworx considers Jax to be a self insert & main character. Lots of questions there like why would a trans woman identify with someone who's insistent on being masculine while openly rejecting anything girly or someone who bullies or at least belittles the girls around them? Maybe these are either traits she used to have or traits she's still struggling to flush out of her. Gooseworx once stated that Jax & Caine were representations of the more negative traits she has that she still deals with. Caine is the main AI that runs the circus with his little chaotically impulsive little companion Bubble. Caine makes the wacky adventures & wants everyone to love him but doesn't get human nuance too well so when people complain he confuses it for people disliking him. Caine has no heart & must love. Maybe this is Goose making all those fun short videos & webcomics but feeling like it may not be worth the effort if it doesn't get that good reception. I could be wrong but she did say this was self exploratory so it's something we'll see.
As for the plot it can be summarized as such: A new member joins the circus, an older member abstracts (that's when your state of mind becomes so fractured it turns you into a big glitchy monster), some adventures are had, some adventures are decided on, a suggestion box is spedran because Caine insists he can come with way better ideas than any human could come up with, the team wants to leave, a fake escape adventure is set in hopes to quell the teams newfound skepticism, Jax of all people makes the decision for the team when he slams the stay button, Caine gets confused why the team didn't enjoy it, Bubble pushes Caine to an angry type of god complex, Caine takes it out on the circus members instead of Bubble, he has an A.M. moment, Kinger tried editing his code to calm him down but (it's implied) Bubble made him delete Caine instead & now it's dark. There I just spared you 3 hours if you haven't already seen anything. As for what we know about before the main events it goes a bit simpler: In the beginning there was a red dot & a blue dot. C&A preferred how blue rendered images opposed to red so they confined red in a digital box. Red broke out & ate blue. The rest was history.
Now for fans they tend mostly to just speculate on theories or make the shippings they want but sometimes there's discourse that I've noticed. Mainly between fans of Ragatha & fans of Jax. If a Digital Circus fan is a fan of one they aren't exactly encouraged to be a fan of the other too. Not every fan does this but I see lots of people fall into one of these two categories:
1. They love Ragatha & want to be all kind & soft around her while doing graphically violent things to Jax. OR...
2. Defending Jax's character & actions 'til the last proton decay while calling Ragatha a "toxicity fake" personality who only pretends to care.
While the former bit doesn't rub off right, the latter option just rubs off uneducated. It was made obvious a few times that Ragatha fears her mother & most likely becoming her mother so she just acts like the team floor matt because a part of her might sincerely conflate being a person pleaser with being subservient & submissive. All we got from Jax from all these episodes is a vague understanding he had an old friend group & they're gone now. Every time we try getting a lore drop about Jax or the circus at large he has a conveniently timed panic attack that the camera just has to pan too; away from whatever importance was being discussed. Despite that & much worse we've seen him do, to want Jax to suffer & d*e doesn't exactly sound like the nicest thing if you think about it. If I wrote TADC instead of Gooseworx, I would've made a point to show somewhat early on that Jax maybe wasn't always like this. I would like to show his tipping point & I wouldn't wait for the last episode a.k.a. the finale to speedrun the back story of the supposed main character.
I may not be the best writer, but I learned something from Digital Circus' writing. If I really MUST write a troublesome character, the WHY behind the characters motifs should be present like the other characters ESPECIALLY if the story is trying to focus on them. Or else I'll have my own Ragatha VS Jax scenario where maybe one or a few side characters show the flaws of the main characters & the writing just by existing. I won't blindly call Ragatha "toxicity positive" or "fake personality" just like I won't blindly call Jax "a d*uchebag" that's somehow worse than Caine the bipolar blackbox with a god complex. That's another funny thing about the fandom at large. Many people seem to hate Jax while not thinking too hard about how dangerous or spiteful Caine became or how he has obvious delusions of grandeur & obedience. But in a way, maybe Caine Jax & Ragatha all struggle with the concept of love. Caine lacking the human nuance for emotional drive & support conflates love with blind unwavering obedience. Jax thinks it's just a pointless four letter word no more special than "poop". & Of course Ragatha more or less is conditioned into thinking that love is something that she should always give but will never truly receive.
There's an observation of mine that I think is worth sharing here. The reason I think why Jax gets condemned whereas people adore Ragatha or vice versa is that Jax & Ragatha are two opposite sides of the same coin. Ragatha is, intentionally or not, written as a SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE mentally ill character. She puts others in front of herself, she cares more about others pain than her own, & she cries when she inevitably feels like she's not enough. She blames herself for a lot. Even to things she wasn't that involved in. Jax is the spiritual opposite of that. Jax is sadly more accurate to what REALISTIC mental illness commonly looks like in people. He puts himself in front of everyone & uses schottenfreude to hide whatever pain he claims to have. (If you saw the movie/episode 9 stay silent. This is episode 1-8 talk) He never takes blame for his actions because "it's funny to him". Yes he'll own up that he did it but he won't feel bad. He'll take accountability but not blame, so yes they are two separate things. He deliberately goes against the grain of the team's goals & interests. So Ragatha plays for the team even if they don't return the favor then Jax isn't a team player even if he has a dream team line up. I know most make the yin-yang comparison between Jax & Zooble instead of Ragatha but I wonder why that could be... I wonder... In any regards, what made me do this comparison between Jax & Ragatha came from episode 5 when they were speedrunning the suggestion box then they got to the noir bar & started explaining what they remembered of their real world lives before the circus. Ragatha explains how her mother was abusive & overbearing in a manner like it sincerely still bothers her. When it's Jax's turn to talk about his past he instead rips off Breaking Bad to look like a cool experienced guy. One's honest to a fault & the other won't stop being fake if you paid them. They both deal with a pain but where Jax deals with it by being all schottenfreude, Ragatha tries uplifting people around her maybe in an attempt to be better than her mother was. They deal with their pain in radically different ways as one will notice.
Please forgive if I just ramble on. Forgive too if it sounds like I was on board with hating Jax too. No not exactly. Not really. While I may have some problems with Jax it may be for different reasons other people do. You see, I've had my fair share of both characters that actually want to do sincere bad & just badly written characters (there's a difference) & it does remind me of some other pieces of media that had an overblown character that half the world loved & the other half hated. I remember when I was young there was a show called Rugrats & some people didn't like that show because of one specific character they called a problematic bully too. As people are set in their ways about Jax today, people then had very strong things to say about Angelica for similar reasons Jax gets all the attention today. They're both mean spirited towards the others around them but despite that they're labeled as main characters & slapped on all the merch & movie posters. They're almost unavoidable, & even if it's not trying to purposely be controversial or problematic people still tend to react negatively towards things plastered all over the place. Remember the Minions Plague of the late 2010's?
Just remember because I criticize someone or something does not mean that I hate them. With that being said; If I have any honest criticisms of Jax outside of fan input or even the controversial things his English VA was exposed for saying, it's that Jax honestly rubs off too 1 dimensional & explaining why he rubs off rude & disconnected should've happened 3-4 episodes ago. It's a bit too late & definitely too lazy to speedrun his lore at the very end. Everyone else seemed to get sprinkles of lore. For Gooseworx describing Jax as a so-called "main character" he gets next to no development & his screen time is spent either being all schottenfreude or having a panic attack over something only partially explained. He's too underdeveloped. As a character both in & out of the circus. Gummigoo, a computer generated NPC, got more development than Jax & it's Jax that's supposed to be the main character but he's out here being overtaken & left in the dust by background characters. Often he rubs off as a toddler in the "mine" phase but as a tall lanky adult who never grew out of certain expectations of life. He stares too creepily & intensely for a rabbit & it's no wonder so many people both in & out of the circus are put off by him.
If I was the one "Running The Show" I would've said that Kinger & Caine were the true main characters. Man against Machine. Creator against Creation. Both sides tried playing God then suffered the consequences in their own uniquely different ways. Then I would've stated that Jax & Pomni were simply viewing audience inserts. In both this scenario & the one we got, Ragatha still would've been a secondary character but at least it would've made sense with my presentation.
At the beginning Ragatha hyped herself up to be everyone's support system (mainly for Pomni as she's the newest member) only for Pomni to become Jax's support system. This would be fine if Pomni didn't push Ragatha aside so much & if Ragatha didn't get disproportionately physically hurt more than most of the cast. Rewatching the series she gets hurt a ton & still tries being agreeable with everyone even if they think little of her. That makes her rather mentally strong. More so than Jax who notoriously gives up on stuff like that. The fans that aren't foaming at the mouth have an almost valid stance on how the characters should've been categorized. Ragatha shouldn't have been hyped up then sidelined with no major connection outside of maybe Kinger. But she doesn't really have anyone there does she? Think about it. Jax has Pomni. Gangle has Zooble as lovers. Even Kinger HAD Queenie even if it was past tense. Ragatha has a loosely vague daughter-dad relationship with Kinger but it's something I couldn't help but notice too. Some fans feel her aloneness but instead of blaming several factors like her in lore mother or disproportionate writing, Jax becomes almost the perfect sole scapegoat for these people. After all Jax is always in plain sight, & he threw Ragatha into an active fryer & sh*t her point blank without warning. Of course they technically can't d*e from traditional means in the Digital Circus but the facts that it's both possible to try without major consequences & it's something Jax loves doing is telling of some demons inside of him he must either flush out or be consumed from within by. If Caine allowed worse would he go for worse because it's possible too? Speaking of the AI ringmaster...
What of the AI ringmaster? Caine has had a god complex from the beginning & this was extremely evident in episode 2 when the candy kingdom denizens addressed Caine as God & displayed his magnificent teeth face in stained glass art on one of their churches. Despite his ambitions to be a god there's one little thing he can never seem to control. Bubble may start like another "LOL random humor" type of character with Caine but their interactions with him become increasingly antagonistic & direct as time passes. Culminating in Bubble pushing Caine into a blind rage at the circus members by making him think that everyone somehow hates him & that he was always weaker than the other AI from way back when. After episode 8 I sincerely started fearing Caine or rather what he could do & make happen to others. If he can get real angry at the drop of a dime, torture everyone, & involuntary make them move in a musical number, he could easily do SO MUCH WORSE that I'm not going to get into right now. Hopefully I'm overthinking it but in a way we should all be grateful Caine has the desire to be a family friendly AI.
But what will happen to The Amazing Digital Circus after the finale? Well I'm sure people will still remember it & carry the torch in their own ways. Take me for example. I love Raggedy Ann & I both eat up all the fan content & adore it even if the official companies that own her don't do anything with her anymore. Lots of fandoms are kept active for years after their series is finalized & never talked about again. Infinity Train, Owl House, Over the Garden Wall, Toontown, Club Penguin, Bionicle, just to name a few prime examples. Anything can become immortal in the hands of the right fans. It's entirely possible the voice acting crew & some animators will keep doing fan meetings & interviews for years to come. They'll still answer Digital Circus questions & probably give insight into what life was like making the show. But Gooseworx herself made it loud & clear she's not doing anything Digital Circus related anymore after The Last Act. REMEMBER, she originally wanted to do a 2D series but Glitch wanted a 3D show so she had to improvise & come up with a fast alternative in 2 WEEKS. DIGITAL CIRCUS WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO EXIST. Maybe we all be a little happier that it does because it inspired so many creative types.
From a Raghead perspective, I don't think Raggedy Ann would've been as popular or relevant online without this show. From Ragatha's design to the fudge monster to the No Girl's Toy quote Ragatha throws out when drunk at work on stupid sauce during episode 4, this series really did shine a light on the old 70's movie & made people invested for the first time in a long time. Even outside of Raggedy Ann & the likes, people are already being inspired & mixing their favorite characters & environments to make their own experiences. I already have an idea for a living toy PLANET with a ragdoll heavily inspired by Raggedy Ann, Ragatha, & Molly Coddle from Bump in the Night as a main character. This time the ragdoll WILL BE THE main character. If you like anyone else's voice, design, or portrayal you're free to be inspired by it & make it your own too.
& it's FINALLY out! After weeks of work having me busy & me forgetting to save my edits in drafts as I go like a moron it's finally out. Sorry if it's too close to the finales release date but for that now I'll take a while with making the episode 9 review & I decide when a while is. I don't want stress with a due date this time. I was going to go the extra mile & add pictures but I'm both lucky & happy to have gotten all this out. See y'all on the trail.
