loqist

okay so now that I am not dog tired, let me be clear since I called it “okay” immediately after watching.

There were so many sequences that still wasted time or kind of lead nowhere, or did lead somewhere in a trite and inefficient manner, which has become very par for the course. The show basically meandered downhill since the pilot in that regard.

I think the element that made me feel like I ‘got what I wanted to see,’ and made me entertained was actually the Jax POV segment. I’d even call it the unambiguously best part (🫢) other than the sixteen minute ragapom lesbian sex scene. As cumbersome as it was for the narrative to railroad Pomni there, and even though I don’t feel any affinity towards Jax, that all didn’t emotionally matter in comparison to the satisfaction of FINALLY seeing onscreen, serious disagreements between fucking anyone in the circus, adults in this “adult show.” Jax turned out to be the only character allowed to get combative so of course this finale had to be his sad weewoo hour (Zooble is performatively combative but never actually goes in on anybody and when Gangle gets pushy she never defends herself).

The show could have been solid if we explored palpable social conflict at any point before the finale, like a Steven U type setup. But no, the only time anyone screams or gets into it personally between these seven mentally questionable people is over Jax rejecting Ribbit for something entirely stupid.

Which—tangent—I feel like Ribbit is painted as an extremely naiive and vulnerable person by this finale, almost to the point that it breaks suspension of disbelief. Alright she was Mormon, but would any average adult not be able to infer that Jax’s rejection is due to internal things, not any external reasons Ribbit should feel guilty or responsible over? He confessed to murder for christssake, of course he is going to be weird at you after that, who wouldn’t? We watch him being a huge manchild to her and you’re telling me that’s the sole reason she abstracts? That paints an extremely weak picture of her constitution when there are other members of the circus she could have switched to relying on. Yayaya Jax parallels her excommunication however she is not isolated in the Circus, she only lost one friend. I can’t help getting an ashy taste in my mouth trying to imagine the narrative that some woman would be so heartbroken over Jax as to basically kill herself over learning this guy she cared about is a broken, disregulated, un-intimate person beneath his jokey exterior. Cry me a river bro, have you met men? Is this news?

Basically, I didn’t like OMORI and I don’t like this. I think fans of one should be huge fans of the other though, since they are both a rising action of silly filler light story with an unbelievable and pointlessly severe ‘twist’ at the end. They wanted to make Omori-Mouthwashing so bad but did not write Anya, they did it to a woman without any development to set things up or earn them. She got one line about Mormonism for her entire backstory 💀 and we don’t see her in a variety of situations to get any handle on her traits.

anyways next: all the stuff with Caine, I just need to rapidfire some reactions. Why did we spend so long on drawn-out sequences with him that weren’t even especially visually appealing (the white void is ugly af). I love the inclusion of more Circus infrastructure but it didn’t add much besides factoids for loreheads and the sequence sucked up so much focus. How did he come back after “deletion,” if his return seems to indicate he was moreso stuck in another box? If a program is deleted then it isn’t running, so his ability to break out of sandboxes or whatever does not logically apply here. Idk I’ll leave it to wiki-minded people to go over the ep in depth but it just did not come across coherently to me; was there non-chronological shenanigans (showing Scratch)? At what point in the story was he accessing the Internet? I guess we could have been seeing like—Caine figuring out web protocols? Was that the point? Since idk I have to finalize my opinion later…

Another annoyance which better have a solvable answer now is ‘why 57?’ My preference is that it somehow connects to Caine’s original filename or project codename (“test_57” or the like) since Kinger said the line, “I don’t know what we first called him,” strongly telegraphing that there exists an answer someplace since we received the answer to his similar statement about, “I don’t remember what [Scratch] was making.” The other possibility to me is that 57x2=114, which happens to be close to the infamous 109 years thing from IHNM, so perhaps related? dunno. it will offend me mightily if there’s no answer and if so I will label the show loreslop (even though I think TADC is respectably light in that department).

lastly trying to wrap up for now, the ending with Caine just fixing himself with little effort was… just eh. okay man cool. I was sitting there thinking ‘aww okay that’s nice, but I’ll read seven million better interpretations of this online.’ And not the credits depicting Caine’s friendship with the crew more than the show 🤦🏼 when it’s about ~meaning in a stagnant life~

Actually his whole last bit very much read like chatbot dialogue. “I know you have no reason to trust me right now,” is such a low effort, generic return—AND ACTUALLY, when you think about it the humans should have been WAY more upset and disturbed by his ‘apology gesture’ because that kind of ostentatious, rubbernecking-a-car-crash type thing has always been Caine’s selfish instinct!!!! Would they not instantly feel that he’s only giving this to us because he’s begging for attention again!? Like we really just ran out of time and wanted to show IRL footage and be wholesome, didn’t we. Not cute!

last-lastly: I feel thoroughly whatever about the real life reveals. It’s inoffensive enough that you can agree with it or choose to ignore it so, whatever. I liked experiencing some of the sudden cuts in theatre so I give it a pass, it was funky, not much harm done really. Kinger looks weird though why does he look like a mathematical average of all Tumblr art by young artists who don’t want to draw grown men