So, I have watched TADC due to all the hype that's been around it and I just... Don't see the reason for any hype to be there at all?
I'll break it down, It's not uncommon for Indie animations to accrue a big following that will stay with them throughout thick and thin as the major appeal of the genre is the romanticised idea of supporting an underdog and helping fulfill the dreams of an art school graduate in realising their own little piece of art. It is also not uncommon for this fandom to dissolve when they perceive an issue in this fantasy that no longer satisfies them like this, which results in all of the jumping ship that happens when a new project is released and the previous fascination is portrayed as bad. And of course the entire juvenile idea of there being mature animation (Read crass and rude, not actually mature.)
So it would make sense for the popularity of tadc to be from this combined reasons, and I feel the reason for this because i saw the show, and the only genuine way this mess would be so popular would be because of spawning st the right time, just as the magic from Lackadaisy and Spindle horse is dying a bit and people need to fix on s new project.
Because let's be real, there's no inherent appeal in digital Circus as a show. The promised theme of the show is Dark Psychological comedy. But like that's not a thing, that's a combination of words that doesn't actually mean anything, walk with me for a second. How do you do dark, psychological, and comedy at the same time. Think about it, yeah, dark comedy is a thing sure. But can you turn that psychological? You have to be serious to be psychological, at least in the way the show protrays it, and it's not working. I don't know whether I'm supposed to be deeply invested because the moments requiring that are cut short by comedy, and I can't take the comedy in because suddenly a serious moment requiring deeper focus.
For real, the whiplash doesn't work, it is a tone issue you're not sure how to approach and the writers certainly aren't skilled enough for this to work.
See the premise could work as a comedy, it very much could, but I'd believe people would hate it because fandom hates not being able to theorize and mysterize the show of the week. So we also get, some bits of seriousness, some attempt at a story, but without actually committing to any. We don't get enough of a story to fully grasp anything coherent, even for pilot standards, but what little there is, is distracting from the premise of no story needed just characters in a setting having fun. It tries to be dark and psychological by attempts of horror, except the "psychological" is just mental torture of the main fem character Pomni, which starts reading like outright fetishism of fem suffering after the second time we're very intimately shown she's breaking down. And the "dark" horror falls short because the inherent fear of the unknown from the monster, the mystery that contains dread is immediately revealed, and the existential horror is underutilized.
Speaking of mysteries, it's kinda embarrassing to try and pull a computer based mystery nowadays, and people fully accepting it as a fresh take. I guarantee you that any reveal of why something in this show is the way it is, will be very underwhelming. Possesed headsets, computer code going haywire, possesed viruses, government experiments, dead people souls in some code. Literally any explanation you can think of has been done, and considering how little these revelations add to a story, their only aspect being shock value suddenly dissapears, and now you will be left with a nothing of a reveal in your nothing of a story.
And that's really what it is. A sandbox, It's a tumblr post of one of the various potential cartoon shows like Officer and mr. Paws, except they actually managed to make a pilot. The only appeal the show has is introducing a few tumblr sexymen and sexywomen. I do not see any appeal in this show, no story it wants to tell.
I would say they're like clowns in a circus just playing for your enjoyment, which would be clever, but it's something so obviously advanced for how the show appears to be written right now that I seriously doubt that was an intentional parallel.
