TADC THE LAST ACT Reaction and thoughts (Spoilers ahead)
Hello to everyone! I watched the movie and I wanted to let out my opinion after just experiencing it. Might change over time when it comes out on Youtube, but I have a few considerations.
Without spoiling anything, at this moment, I can confirm leaks heavily ruined my and many others experiences. This movie has a lot going on and I couldn't fully get the shock and the strength of those feelings due to knowing altready how'd it go. Also, leaks were often badly described, wrong or had assumptions that watching the whole movie in English made no sense.
I can say I had 2 weeks of anxiety over little, because at the end I liked it enough, but I have big nitpicks.
Now, to talk about it all, I'll go into spoilers so if you haven't watched the movie yet, avoid clicking and expanding the spoiler button.
The start with the goldfish was hilarious, I appreciate it a lot and I hope they upload it on youtube even if it's not needed. Having the creepy fish explaining cinema rules etc was super fun.
Now, generally I liked a lot of things of episode 9:
The internal exploration of Jax; how we find out he liked playing piano, and how they addressed the trans implications, leaving open him being transfem, transmasc or just a vulnerability thing. His backstory was very daunting and heartbreaking.
Ribbit. She was lovely, and I felt pretty sad about how things went down until she abstracted.
Ragatha and Pomni being such good friends. Abstragedy... and generally how they handled the heavy themes.
Funnybunny. There was a lot of it.
From Jax implying Pomni scares him the most cause she got the closest out of anyone since Ribbit, to him going down the spiral after their argument due to the shame of thinking of hurting her like he did his mother. Jax playing Daisy Bell on the piano.
Pomni crying when seeing IRL Jax is alright, Pomni hugging him harder as she's having a montage of their moment together and being willing to die to stick with him, her asking him to stay with her, reaching out and looking over him even after he abstracted....
Pomni playing the pianola in the credits, which is the instrument she found Jax used to play.
The parallels of Jax and Pomni with Kinger and his wife... the HUG. Him reaching out to her as last action before abstracting. So beautiful.
The gang letting her go try to deal with Jax by herself without even needing to talk about it cause they knew she would...
What I didn't like?
Pomni like walking off when Jax tried to reach other after all the other times she was just so ready to get him to open up. I get that she was feeling down but she had her pep talk with Kinger and with how attentive she was to Jax even in ep 8, it felt weirdly out of character from her to not even try to reach out back (and at most him taking it back and brushing her off). The moments he can't even fake a smile she just... ignores it? To then being ready to die for him to keep hugging him... I felt like I was watching two different Pomnis, where the writer switched after she ran off to get abstracted Jax.
The initial pacing
Jax's abstraction and how it was handled in the finale. Aside from the initial ep 9 pacing which is eh... I didn't like the way things were left... overly open.
Now, I think people with leaks were exaggerating saying he died, because I think the show pretty heavily implies that he is probably getting reversed to normal eventually. Or at the very least, leaving his fate as open as possible for fans to decide.
We don't get to see him apologize to Gangle or Pomni, we don't get to see him improving even if he doesn't want to abstract anymore and doesn't want to "die". We don't see him atoning for his actions.
Yet he does open up to Pomni and hugs her, something even Ribbit couldn't do fully. He does admit being scared and he's as in a limbo as he was before Pomni entered his mind. He is kept with the other in the circus, as they say they will all take care of him, and they refuse Caine's proposal to "deal with" Abstracted Jax, saying they got it. We see him sleeping peacefully, with no spikes and Pomni smiling at him.
Caine access to his brain scans and IRL datas AFTER Jax abstracted...
I don't see why leaving this all SO open if it wasn't a concrete possibility, especially with character arc he had.
I don't get keeping him in a fort like a zoo animal, if he really was just the dead corpse of Pomni's friend. Especially because we see they have an aquarium like for abstractions but the very last frame of the circus shows that he's still got his tent.
I think I get Goose's intentions, and I get not all suicide victims get their happy ending, but with the arc he had and him regretting his actions and going through abstractions, I think it would be quite... uncomfortable to me to think of him being fully abstracted and that's it. Said and done. But it also gave me the feeling of Jax being trapped in a loop due to being unsure wether to fully commit with him offing himself or making him better.
I'm happy with an open ending. Him turning back with the power of friendship as nothing would be anticlimatic.
But I kinda wish we got some more hints about him being on a road to recovery rather than just having the signs pointed to that but not giving even a glimpse. He's basically fully absent from the end credits aside his face painted on a wall with other abstracted characters, we get to know nothing. Even a little hint or silhuette of his abstraction reducing, or Pomni looking over him again with time, even like I dunno, something silly, playing a piano in the fort. Or Pomni reaching her hand again and see if he's ready to make the choice of getting helped, of changing (As she can't really get hurt permanently anymore.)
Also, with Jax being treated so differently than the others, it makes no sense he would stay in the fort with the others, getting priviliged treatment, if there was no chance of turning back. Which is also something I wish was explained. Why is he different?
Or if anything, at least it was shown with a different abstraction design, to differentiate him from the others.
He's still considered part of the gang, Caine shows his IRL life... his has his files... Why?
I like it, but I hoped a little glimpse more...
Bubble my baby didn't come back
If Caine was just in a "bin", how did he come back? And who made Kinger slip up?
This is mostly it!
Will this change my Phantom of the circus AU?
Not really. My Jax backstory was implied already and so the design, and Ep 8 and 9 would make it impossible to keep my plans the same. Already the Digital Copies theory being confirmed is VERY divergent.
BUTTT I might make a lil spin-off when I'm one with DenDen Au, a what-if, if DenDen was born after ep 9!
