i watched the entirety of the amazing digital circus . i need to hate on it . big block of text under the cut . there isnt even pictures
maybe the main underlying issue is that of i consistently care less about these characters than the author & fans of the show do . these more emotional episodes feel like they drag on and on about being miserable about a character i will acknowledge in moving the plot forward and not much else
i was told by my friend that wanted me to watch it that the fandom had a lot of time btwn episodes to fantheory and fanwork and interact with the author , & so those characters mean more to them
me, i watched this puppy straight with no interaction with fandom & let me tell you : i dont care about these characters .
its probably also a case of the scope : each episode more or less is a designated episode to focus on just one character at a time + throw in a part of main plot development . i believe ? its an indie production that may not be able to afford to produce filler episodes where we actually spend time with what is a fairly large cast (7 characters, 9 monster of the day episodes total) .
but still . point still stands . i dont care about these characters .
i realize this was kind of the emotional core of the finale : a core character suddenly kills herself , no death flags or warnings & shes irreversibly removed from the cast. like a real death!
its supposed to feel unsatisfactory and shocking and youre supposed to feel very very sad (all the characters are crying about it!)
but the problem is that um. in what i consider the jax centric episode (episode 6) its a whole thing that jax & pomni get all buddy buddy until pomni sets off a response in jax that makes her push pomni away and lash out . and we never (as far as i recall) really ever reconcile those differences
but very callously i wish to say : this fails to make me emotionally attach myself to an already (intentionally) annoying character
(the annoying part isnt inherently bad, it just makes me feel turned off from caring about a character that feels like the writing is trying to "isnt it cool and awesome how nihilistic and contrarian this character is" .) the amazing digital circus cast is comprised entirely of people you would real life kill if they were your coworkers , starting with jax .
and i feel like the writers realized this (& they also needed to answer questions and mysteries raised by jax & her backstory) and tried to make the front half of the finale centered around going through her post-death brainspace to learn about different facets of her personality and to explore her character, her relationship with others, and herself
the idea of being able to talk to someone who has died is kind of . counterintuitive to the way they portray the suddenness of death . you just need to sit in a dark room and hug them and get very easily cured magical chronic pain . theres very little stakes involved and it doesnt really feel like a loss because of it
her brainspace is divided into rooms that explore individual relationships. the only good one is the first one , with pomni , where we get a callback to an earlier episode (oxygen deprivation means nothing when you arent a biological being) and reminds us that jax is a character that lashes out when she feels vulnerable , all wrapped up with an uncomfortable bow of 4th wall break . what a way to set the mood!
& then the next rooms are just . jax is transphobic. jax is homophobic. I ALREADY DONT LIKE HER BECAUSE SHES ANNOYING. THIS DEAD WIFE FLASHBACK SUCKSSSS.
& then theres a flashback sequence of her backstory of revealing her backstory & stripping away every ambiguity and mystery around her backstory & then driving ribbit , the person she told all this to , to suicide by socially ostracizing her in fear that ribbit would do it to her first .
um . confession : i dont feel like we spent enough time with ribbit or literally any of the other characters in jaxs backstory for this to have an impact on me . did not feel like a reveal, did not feel like a tragedy , mostly just felt like top 10 jax does terrible things moments . are you sad yet
the conversation of jax and pomni being all sad and weepy about it . was boring for me . sorry . a lot of the early episode of people standing around and crying is boring . i dont care about these characters . i dont feel anything seeing these characters talking headsing out with a fake crying voice .
caine is an antagonistic force to the characters that ultimately climaxes as him giving up on trying to force them to be happy in his world by his own definition of happiness and instead embracing more sadistically punishing them for fighting back. he gets deleted from the world before being inexplicably restored.
and he has a character arc in the course of one scene of realizing oh my god i dont need to force them to do what i want :( theyre fully realized complex people :( i need to respect their agency :(
i feel like im given no reason to root for him to suddenly make this revelation , or to feel happy he does , or to not curl up and die when they do the therapyspeak "you dont need to forgive me but i really will change"/"thats great but we arent ready to trust you"
maybe this wouldve been better if we had as much time to watch him change for good as we did to watch him change to a villain . i dont knowww . it just feels like a deus ex machina excuse to end the story finally
i think a twist of "none of this is real, we are actually all brain scans of real people" is very interesting . (video game soma (2015) does it in a way that i enjoy, i think .)
however , this is a very big revelation for a series long & established to be dangerous line of thinking that is "i am trapped in a digital world and i need to escape to the real world" that is resolved in the course of one conversation of jax giving snappy one liners to characters
i just think the resolution is given not enough weight or time for the amount of time its been set up for
i also thought the reveal being monologued to the cast with little foreshadowing if any (?) is um . kind of . not enough weight still!
caines revelation on this is by being given some names out of no where & . um . looking up the names on instagram . through public wifi . yeah .
i found the concept of looking up & finding out the "real world" versions of characters kind of . boring ? for canon . knowing they have a real world counterpart that resolved their own existing issues in a digital world character compliant manner doesnt do anything for the digital world counterparts . i dont even really care that its a happy ending . because i dont care about these real world characters as individuals OR about the digital world counterparts .
it doesnt really . do anything with the concept of there being different versions of the same person until a point where they diverge . or that these digital world characters have to suddenly grapple with not being the "real" one.
TBH i feel like this feels more like . it would be an interesting fanfiction/AU/character exploration than the actual main story
actual little baby haterism: I THINK THE SET DESIGN IS REALLY WEAK
i just find that the sets very often feel too large . theres so much dead space that doesnt . do anything . its just these awful big, open rooms that are sometimes filled with repeating patterns . that dont do anything.
[Image description: Various screenshots of the circus lobby. It is a very large, empty room with distant, large decorations. End description.]
i feel like the circus, which is a setting we spend a lot of time in, aims to have this surreal playful vibe of being small toys in a childs room. however , it just . has so much dead space that it ends up feeling empty and dead in a way thats distracting and deeply unflattering to the characters moving in the space.
i think a lot of settings would have benefited from being shrunk down and squeezed closer together, maybe .
in this screenshot, im supposed to see jax (right) as a big, scary monster . this is a looming scary beast that the composition of this shot makes you want to LOOK at SO bad . but . um . this hallway is so comically long and large (seriously , this is a hallway for people to reach their bedrooms, this is a waste of space) that it effectively dwarfs jax . this is supposed to be a tense moment of pomni (left) finally facing off with jax after stalking her to this hallway and i dont feel any of the tension because shes TINY . shes SMALLER THAN POMNIS HEAD.
actual little baby haterism: i dont think i enjoy 3D art???
or rather , i found the use of realistic shaders + textures extremely counterintuitive to a world that is aiming for cartoony surrealism . these are probably unique strengths to 3D art medium that they can have more computer generated involvement so that they dont have to render individual stitches or very detailed eyeshines on every single character . but i thought it was an ineffective use.
i feel like . how i see a lot of 3D art with realistic shaders and textures . is that they focus so much on the technical ability of the realism that they forget to consider how it contributes to the aesthetics & narrative the art style is trying to push .
^ see im annoyed because i think personally it wouldve benefited the show to push harder into looking cartoony . have cell shading and a more plastic, unreal feeling. or to even go more the direction of digital ugly or gamification , like Gmod or VR games or online hangout spaces. but the question it raises to me is i dont know if it just means i hate 3D as a whole & just want the show to look like something else LOL
but also i think the way they handle tears looks disgusting
i thought how they handled stylizing gangles tears were extremely effective for this artstyle . even if the world looks like someones blender demo
thanks i just needed to get all this off my chest
