My Thoughts on The Amazing Digital Circus

Local Fan Of "Popular Thing Bad" Enjoys The Popular Thing. Why?

Now, as a brief pre-statement, I somehow have never experienced anything by either Gooseworx or Glitch Productions before, except for the fact that Gooseworx apparently made the one Thalasin video that I still think is pretty damned cool. Also, I have never watched Murder Drones and apparently they have soooomething to do with SMG4 but like. Ok. Honestly fucking with that part more than anything.

Back to the topic on hand. The Amazing Digital Circus seems to be some sort of memetic hazard to the internet, seeing as it's basically fucking everywhere within the last week or so. No matter if you're on Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, /co/, hell, probably even on somebody's website somewhere, you've seen at least something from the show, and it's probably just a shitpost or two of the protagonist, but you've probably seen something. When I first saw an actual clip from the pilot (the only thing out about it other then teasers and behind the scenes and all of that), my first thought was "This is for ENA fans that are getting antsy waiting for Dream BBQ", which is ironic now knowing that Dream BBQ got delayed again.

We are never getting that fucking game.

Anyways, I ended up watching the pilot. I thought it was promising, but overall an alright experience that was neither extraordinary nor horrible. And then within a 24 hour period experienced the same memetic brainrot as the rest of the internet, and within 72, got attached to one of the side characters to a degree of "draw more than three things of her within the same month". Pic related, she is cute and I want to know what her goddamn issue is because I KNOW she has one PLEASEEE.

Won't bother to sum up a plot since it's 30 minutes and you've probably already seen it. If you haven't, probably should. Nice to not be a hater and indulge in the Brand New Thing. My thoughts on it are a bit scattered, but here's the main gist. Everything ideas wise is actually pretty great, and I like the premise and I've actually been theorycrafting on how some hidden metaphors about the modern state of technology, AI, art, whatever Gooseworx is cooking have already shown themselves a little in the plot, mostly revolving around Caine's handling of the circus. The plot of the pilot was kinda everywhere, which seemed to be intentional going off of a certain tweet, but it could've been a little more cohesive.

My biggest critcism is more from an art standpoint than a storytelling one, and it's the way everything is rendered. The start of the pilot is pixelated, trying to immerse ourselves in the arching idea of how the Digital Circus itself is a virtual world -- the animation does not reflect this for the rest of it. It's very SFM-ish, the shading is a bit too clean, everything is too modern. Slap a filter on it! Make it a bit less quality! I want WORSE GRAPHICS for my odd limbo adventures, actually! That would fix most of my gripes entirely if they just made it look a little crustier, and I'm not sure if that'd take more or less effort on the animator's parts, but it'd definetly fit with the artistic visions.

And the rest of what I've seen could be answered with "of course it's like that, it's a pilot". I'm sure the actual show will fix a lot of what other people are on about, and even so, a lot of it comes from the fact that it's so quickly popular. Popular Thing Bad Syndrome, but The Amazing Digital Circus seems genuinely promising, espessially since there's already some good backers (Glitch Productions themselves, and, hopefully, well selling insta-merch to pad up the funding) and signs that, once their current Murder Drones season is over, we're getting an actual show out of this. The character designs are definetly indie, which is also why it's blowing up -- people like the uniqueness that comes with the freedom of being able to design cool things with your niche inspirations tacked on and not even knowing such phrases as "marketability" and "make a gacha whale motivated to spend 200 to obtain this Girl". Toby Fox is a great example of this, actually, as well as...pretty much every indie dev for anything with actual soul in it. It helps create these bonds towards the viewers for that first-impression pull, and why a lot of indie fandoms end up character-based as well.

Also, girls. Ragatha please one chance

Anyways, while I'm sure the hype is to die down sooner or later until something crops up, I'm looking forward for what is to come with this show. I haven't actually watched a cartoon and gotten this invested in years, so that's a testament to if this will stick to me. Hopefully...