People who compare jax and bojack as the same characters just didn't understand either shows, they're both unforgivable characters but one of them actually has more depth to them besides abusing people and his show blatantly is about rehabilitation and the other is a "cautionary tale about a closeted misogynist who died before transitioning" as if transitioning would've made their abusive actions better. As if rehabilitation wasn't a choice for them. Hmmm almost like bojack was against that whole concept of "being too far gone" and wallowing in pain.
The narrative focuses on jax to make you pity him but Bojack does an understandable and balanced mixture of both pity and consequences. Jax isn't balanced at all and his whole character is being violently and intentionally misogynistic against women. You can't even give pity to that. Theres little to no room for nuance to that. Imagine if bojack tried to make you feel pity for Vance or Hank? Jax more so acts like those two since he never tries to change, his actions are deliberately cruel and he never puts any of his pain onto himself unlike Bojack.
They treated Jax coming out as trans as more important than properly handling his violence against women. This is like if Bojack realized he was aromantic and the show focused on the complexity of Bojack becoming aromantic from his trauma and how his sexuality "accidentally" hurts the people around him since he never displays love properly to his girlfriends and society is too bigoted to make him be self aware about queer identities. All while ignoring and jumping over the time he strangled one of them, because you know hes aromantic, he cant feel love, thats why all of his relationships are so heartless! (This is a headcanon plug, I think bojack might be on the aro spectrum and it makes sense.)
Pomni literally got strangled by jax too, Jax dumped ragatha into a burning hot deep fryer knowing she can feel pain and the joke to him was that she was in pain, Jax laid 10 bullet shots into her for daring to stand up against him, he intentionally named Gangle Gangle to humiliate and ridicule her, completely dehumanizing her, and he constantly made transphohic jokes at Zooble knowing damn well that its offensive, so to wrap up the show ended with Jax putting on a bow and dying. Getting turned into the circus's abstraction dog because he deserves peace I guess. Right, he deserves to feel happy since he was a girl the whole time, that dysphoria and pain mustve been so bad girl. Like genuielly imagine Gina appearing in the view from halfway down and she runs to hug bojack because he's about to die and he doesn't wanna die alone, he doesn't wanna go. And they show the other characters that left him crying instead of showing him fucking going to jail first.
Like... if he didn't want that, maybe the narrative should've pointed out why he dug himself into that hole then? But even with Bojack, you can argue at least that his mental illness isn't his fault. Jax has mental health issues too but i don't really see any sort of symptoms besides "I hate women cuz I couldn't become one" and that's just silly. That's just.... a stereotype! Like I'm just saying the narrative doesn't show Jax suffering from his own mental health issues enough, outside of his abuse, besides him just staring blankly with a vague sad face, everything in this show is too fucking vague for me to understand how much Jax is suffering himself. (And then we find out that his vague sadness is his own fault too like bro he killed ribbit and now he longs for her??) With bojack, you know that dude is in hell, and you know that he's GOING to hell, and the show and all the other characters treat him like that and it's peak. It's actually complex. And it doesn't make you neglect that Bojack needs to be jumped and he needs to get serious fucking therapy at the same time. At least his chronic world destroying trauma from beatrice and butterscotch is explored more. And the show makes a message about growing from abusive parents and processing that trauma. He gets a whole episode about this. What did I get from Jax, uhh he has mommy issues and that makes him abuse gangle. You see him having mommy issues is what makes him misogynistic! Like are we actually fr this is all we get about the effects of his parental trauma.
Bojack is the perfect character for someone who both suffers and makes other suffer. Since a lot of his actions have more nuance besides "I hate women." Not to say he isn't misogynistic, it's just you know, not the most cartoonishly violent example that feels like the creator thinks misogyny is funny. And it calls back to societal systems which is what realistically puts out that misogyny to begin with. Jax is entirely secluded from society and is living with women for years and years and he's just "I hate women!" anyway.
It's like wow the creator really never thought about any other idea or nuance she could add to this character to make him more complex given his circumstance. And wow jax been around women that long and he still decided "yeah imma still hate yall". And the show wants us to treat him as a morally complex character. It's like wow, this character shows the clash of the abused become the abuser so well, because he abused people and he also was abused, that's it. That's the whole lesson. Please feel sad for how sudden his suicide is :(
Whatever man yall just can't handle complex morally grey characters and only weird analytical queers can since jax is a complex female character and he's just a messy transfem.
