LemonScentedNovember

And Mitsuba’s the only one who knows it was Natsuhiko.

Not because he knew about the plan, but because he knows that Natsuhiko can destroy supernaturals because of his last memory of the old world before the time travel nonsense

And yeah that could probably move the plot, but I also think it would be so fucking funny for everyone to learn in front of everyone else because they have such wildly different ideas of who Natsuhiko is.

Like Aoi thinks he’s just some hot guy who wanted to talk to Nene once

While Nene knows him as the guy who helped Tsukasa kidnap her and was quickly abandoned by said party

Kou thinks of him as some benevolent master who may or may not be suspicious

Akane knows him as the creep who knew he had a supernatural contact and wanted to team up (but didn’t think he was suspicious enough to be at the trial 🤔)

And Teru just knows him as the guy who sent a mob of people with a crush on him as a distraction to stop him from exorcising Mitsuba

(I know Natsuhiko’s is technically his blood but it’s black when doing supernatural stuff to the clock

They’re also both described as having a strong aura of death, specifically the deaths of lots and lots of people.

For Natsuhiko, it’s could be referring to his multiple deaths instead of the murders that the Red House Yugi Sensei commited, but the diction is very similar, using words like “Stain”, “Stench”, “Reek”.

These all give off the sense of something disgusting that’s attached itself to the person for a long time.

They’re also both referred to as a “curse” of death and or killings.

And they both were wearing suits, just as a bonus.

I feel like Natsuhiko is a very interesting character, and how he’s connected to Tsukasa has always been one of my biggest questions about him, since his role in the broadcast club is always being mitigated despite him seeming to have decent amount of power and autonomy in the group. I feel like they’ve been purposefully making him seem less important than he actually is, and I find that really intriguing.

Since yellow is the third main color of the Digital Circus, literally the third color of the title, looking for symbolic events or scenes with yellow as an distinguished color could hint at what outcome it might represent before its explicit confirmations.

Yellow’s outcome, notably, would be an ‘other’ that denies the completion of the other two outcomes, leaving or staying, since yellow is absent of blue and red.

After a long time of looking through the episodes (and an even longer time figuring out the best way to explain my thought process, like months long) I’ve found that yellow can be associated with a variety of topics that are all related, in some way, to breaking. Specifically the deterioration of someone’s psyche, a physical (digital) body, or an entire system.

This includes:

Abstraction

(Kaufmo is obviously the first abstracted character we’re introduced to, Ribbit is lime-green, pretty yellow adjacent, and they seem to be another important abstracted character, and whether or not the hotdog dog is Scratch, the first abstraction, or just a random one, he’s still pretty yellow so I’m counting him.)

Caine’s Mind Altering Abilities

(Whenever Jax seems to be directly influenced by Caine, there’s a focus on his eyes-them being irritated when Caine wants to explain the game and being super zoomed in when he has flashing images in his head. Also when Jax is realizing Caine might have more influence on them than he previously thought, there’s a yellow light in his eyes. Kinger, along with Jax, is also theorized to have his mind influenced by Caine more, specifically people thinking Caine might have something to do with his changing lucidity, and while I’m not 100% convinced on that yet, I did notice both Kinger and Jax had their drinks given more focus than the others, and both drinks being yellow. Not to mention both of them being in front of the yellow dog light. And to finish this part off, possessed Pomni has yellow eyes, and I think this could be because Caine, while not directly, is still messing with her mind through the adventure.)

Caine Freaking Out

(Caine almost always freaks out because of Zooble, who is already the most yellow character, but one of these also has Caine in front of a big yellow wall, so that’s neat.)

Game Itself Malfunctioning

(So Caine making the entire game glitch is very obvious in the therapy session, and not only is it because of Zooble, who is again, the most yellow, but it also happens with a very yellow background. And then Gummigoo is interesting to me because he’s kind of a mix of everything, because his reality is shattered and when this happens it zooms in on his very yellow face, and he dies in front of a big yellow structure, but I also think he, as an NPC, becoming self aware and trying to integrate into the circus is a form of the game breaking. Like, he literally glitched under the map.)

Some Degree of Cheating

(This starts off pretty basic with Jax’s gold keys that give him access to places he shouldn’t been in, but it gets a bit more complicated with Kinger creating a glowing yellow butterfly. This sparked a lot of people to consider a “Belief Theory” of sorts where the characters have some sort of ability to warp reality in the circus by just…really wanting it…? But I noticed that not only is Kinger’s special butterfly yellow, but when Pomni first learns to just do nonsense gun moves, she shoots at a yellow block; When Ragatha manages to take a life of Jax just hoping her looney tunes trick would work, she’s behind a yellow wall-and based on red and blue walls are valid :3; When Gangle finally finds her Tommy-gun, as a last minute resort no less, it’s in the yellow part of the tube; When Pomni somehow manages to grab, load, aim and shoot her sniper before Gangle’s loaded Tommy-gun, she’s in front of a yellow wall; And when Pomni pulls of her bs move against Zooble, I was only going to focus on the fact the the many bullet trails are yellow, but the first wall it hits it also yellow…soooo….I’m gonna keep it in. The point is that if they managed to take advantage of this, then they could break the game even more.)

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All of these hint at the third outcome, what yellow will represent, being the eventual destruction or deterioration of everything and everyone in the circus. Caine, the game and the members. This is further implied by the episode 8 trailer, with a ton of scenes of the lights shattering, Caine being extra insecure, and maybe even trying to bring up “dead” people for the sake of trying to fix everything, who knows.

(Lights shattering)

This would also work well as an ‘other’ to blue and red, because not only would being trapped in the circus as it’s being destroyed definitely not escaping, but it’s also not staying in the current situation, not continuing normal circus life.

But…why? Why set up the question of “will they escape or not?” , and then pull out the rug, introducing an entirely different outcome to grapple with?….

Because it was never about escape. It was never about the mystery of C&A and the rebellion against the system or Caine or whatever. Of course, I’m not saying these are stupid things to want to think about, but if we look at what the show’s been trying to say, with the fake exit door and the ‘escape the circus’ adventure-test, and what the creator has said about the theme of the show: This third outcome is much more important than it seems at first glance.

All of the scenes showing yellow being related to breaking, or disturbing the physical, mental and systematic, can actually be categorized in two ways: Caine & the Circus Members, and Influence & Impact.

Through their interactions, the circus members and Caine are in a cycle of not being able to properly understand the needs and limitations of the other party, which makes sense, they are fundamentally different, being humans and ai. And this inability to properly express what they need from the other, (different kinds of adventures, stability, love, appreciation), has led to a negative feedback loop where they influence each other, hoping to get their points across. But these influences impact the other in a way that makes them double down and try harder to push their needs, and their influence seems to be bordering Tampering, especially with Caine. And once those influences get more intense, the impacts become more intense, making the receiving party more dysfunctional, more unstable, causing Disorder.

This is essentially the cycle I’ve worked out, but put simply, when Caine becomes more glitchy, insecure and unstable, he responds by becoming more and more intrusive, either through his adventures, (ep 7 and what seems to be ep 8), and literally intruding their minds, trying to fix them like he would an npc, but not as far as the first time…

And then this causes the circus members to become more agitated, depressed, dissociative, numb, crazy and at some point in the past or the future, abstraction. So they retaliate, currently through more intense criticism and indifference to Caine and his adventures, but based on what we’ve seen in recent episodes, they might be capable of becoming more intrusive of Caine’s system through reprogramming, bugs, and “the power of believing in themselves” apparently. And this brings us right back to Caine and the game becoming more unstable and glitchy.

If not resolved this loop will spiral in on itself until everything is gone.

And I’m betting that when this starts to happen, yellow will be a very prominent color :3

But back to the ‘why?’, what’s the point of this cycle existing? Well, it’s important to the theme of the show by demonstrating the importance of comprehensive and empathetic communication. Strengthening relationships through understanding, breaking out of that loop of trying to fight the other instead of learning about their unique views and needs. Because, if you have a situation that you want to get out of, say, “a stagnant life”, you would really want to leave, but solely focusing on trying to leave and get out makes the next closest thing destroying your current situation entirely, with you in it.

The circus members becoming hyper focused on the exit is leading to them getting the next closest thing: destroying the circus. That’s why they, and we, are being presented with this conflict, to learn that you need to be capable of finding meaning in a stagnant life so that you don’t end up annihilating that life in your never ending search to leave it for something probably unattainable. I’m predicting that the members, and Caine even, are going to go through this rough patch of being so distant from each other, destroying each other from the inside out without really wanting to, and they’ll realize that mutual destruction is not healthy, it’s not good. And they’ll learn to understand each other, to learn their limits and desires and needs. They’ll learn to manage themselves in the circus, in that stagnant life and survive however long they can. Maybe they can escape, maybe that blue will one day be in their reach, but for now they need to come to terms with their environment and each other and learn to live.

The brush with mutual destruction, with yellow, will teach them to find meaning in where they are now, with red, and use that meaning to keep going until eventually they can leave, blue, or some other crazy cliffhanger.

This idea of learning not to destroy what you have because you can’t have it better yet is even seen through Jax and Pomni’s relationship. Jax wants friends and stability, but his situation of having friends isn’t stable enough for him, they keep dying or growing apart, so he does the next best thing and eliminates his current situations (red) entirely. He settles for having thick walls, cutting off his chances of being friends with Pomni, and slowly letting himself dissociate into abstraction (yellow). But yellow is also absent of (blue)- he eliminates his possibility of actually having close friends.

Do you see the vision?

Yellow is the outcome of everything being destroyed, its scenes expose the cycle of influence and instability that Caine and the Members are going through, and could get worse. The point of this outcome being introduced is to teach them and us to find meaning in our lives, even if we want to leave, because self-destructing is worse. This is why Jax is also presented as an antagonist because he also contributes to that self-destruction we need to learn how to stop. Pomni is good at learning how to talk and empathize with people, so she’s the perfect main character to teach this lesson through, learning how to build strong relationships with the people around her, figuring out what they need and how to get across what she needs, and finding meaning in the mundane and stagnant. This is what Gooseworx is trying to teach through her beautiful show and her crazy twists, because a lot of people collectively focused on leaving vs staying, and she’s saying you gotta be careful with that because look, *glitchy trauma circus*, be careful with that, find meaning in your current life so that when you look for something better you don’t end up settling for destruction of everything else instead.

Thank you for reading, I hope you have a wonderful day.

YELLOW.