All credits to @swapswap_disbelief for the meme template! Click the green flag to hear music! There are 4 different songs to listen to. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be nice in the comments! The TADC fandom discussions are known for being heated, and I'd rather avoid drama in the comments! Please respect others' opinions and talk about them civilly! WELCOME to my review of The Amazing Digital Circus! My name is @GrapePickle22, and I’m here to show you the most jaw dropping, heart stopping, MIND BENDING paraphernalia you’ve ever laid your eyes upon! All jokes aside…. Yeah. This project is exactly what it says it is. I decided to finally give the Digital Circus a try during the week of July 9-16 this year, and I have SO much to say about this show. So… let’s just get right to it, shall we? I am going to present my thoughts in list form so they stay neat and organized without getting too long and crazy. I want to start by listing what I enjoyed about this show: --The characters were probably my favorite part: they were all very well-written and everyone had some trait or design that I LOVED (yes, I say that even for Jax). However, Gangle is probably my #1 favorite character. She is very relatable for me and I love her masks. --I also greatly enjoyed the songs of this show, as someone who LOVES listening to songs and musical numbers. I have memorized the lyrics to Running the Show, Daisy Bell, and Isn’t She Lovely (I’m aware that the latter two weren't originally from TADC, but they're going to be mentioned here anyway.) --A lot of the smaller jokes and sweet moments made me smile as well. Especially with the sweet talks the characters had, the scenes with Caine and Zooble doing therapy, the casts' evil clones, the disappearing guy, and the swear filter (as a SpongeBob fan, it reminded me very much of the episode "Sailor Mouth," which is one of my all-time favorite episodes of SpongeBob). Now... the stuff I didn't enjoy: --This is not so much a failing with the show as it is a clash with my personal taste, but I was unsure of how to feel about the plot and the way the show was going. I felt this way especially post-episode 5. I think this show had a lot of weird, surrealist stuff in it that just didn't align with my taste, especially since a lot of the other shows I watch are still weird, but more lighthearted and silly in their weirdness (just look at my profile picture!) There were parts of this show that filled me with a sense of dread or dislike that I didn't enjoy. And yeah, I KNOW the show is supposed to do that, and some people like that kind of media. It's just not for me. --I didn't like how a lot of the characters were sidelined. The show got so focused on Jax as the show got close to its end (and ESPECIALLY in the series finale, which I'll talk about in a bit) that Ragatha, Gangle, Zooble, and even Kinger to a certain extent didn't get as much development as I would have liked. They were all such interesting characters that are ripe for development and exploration, yet it feels like we know barely anything about them by the time the show ends. --Do not even get me started on the finale!!!!!!!!! It's hard for me to point to a specific example or reason for why I feel this way, but the finale just doesn't seem like it was written very well. Like, Jax abstracts literally less than 10 MINUTES into the hourlong episode, then Pommi hugs him and somehow goes into his mind (What I wanna know is, how did she know she could do that? We never saw that happen in any other time in the show. I also thought it was implied that abstracts no longer had a sense of self, which Jax still seems to in this episode). We then spend at least HALF THE EPISODE focusing on Jax's past, sidelining everyone else, only for him to stay abstracted anyway and for nothing to change. And I understand what the meaning behind all of that is supposed to be and the effect it's supposed to create. But for as much as Jax's abstraction made me want to cry my eyes out and throw my TV out the window, it also didn't feel like it was written or executed in a good and satisfying manner, especially since it came at the cost of half of the finale episode's runtime. And let's not even mention how rushed and abrupt Caine's return was! It's also revealed in this episode that everyone is just brain scans and there is no way of actually escaping the circus. Again, I get the meaning behind it. It's about finding meaning in a stagnant life. But the brain scan thing bugged me because it felt like every clue, every piece of lore, every escape attempt, and basically everything that happened before this finale ultimately meant nothing (I felt similarly about the ending of episode 7). The characters would never get back to the real world, and they are forced to live inside of the computer forever until either: (Review continued below)
(Review continued here) 1. They all inevitably abstract and that's the end of them, or 2. The power goes out on the computer, which erases the game and the characters we know and love so that they no longer exist. Between this very bleak ending and the finale's pacing issues, episode 9 is probably my least favorite episode of the show. If you loved the episode, that's great for you! I am glad that you found joy where I didn't! I just don't like how the ending played out, and if you did, I respect that fully. --I know this is a hot take, but I am also not a fan of episode 3. It is probably my second least favorite episode after the ending. This is just because I don't like overly creepy aesthetics. I did LOVE Caine and Zooble's therapy session, though, as well as Pommi and Kinger's emotional talk at the end. Overall, my relationship with TADC is very complicated. I LOVED the characters, the music, and the potential for what the show could have been. I have been VERY creatively inspired by those things. But so much of that potential was wasted due to the sidelining of characters and the way the show ended. I know what happened with Gooseworx, and this statement is an expression of my opinion and not intended to pressure her, but I really think this should needed more than 9 episodes to explore the world more and fix some of the problems with the pacing. I think I'm going to keep the parts of this show I loved: the music, the characters, the funny moments and lines, and choose to not engage with the rest. I can sing Running the Show until I'm blue in the face and I never have to watch the series finale or episode 3 again. I also want to use the amazing (digital) characters this show gave me to create my own alternate universes and creative works for this show, as well as for my own original works! Who knows? Maybe you will see some of those works on this very website...... Love, @GrapePickle22 Honorable Mention: The fan creations surrounding this show tend to be bangers as well as parts of its source material. I love songs like "Jax Toy" as well as hearing about alternate takes on TADC and its characters. I want to write about them in a slice of life setting where nothing goes wrong and everyone is peaceful and happy, XD
