very cute, feels authentically like a show from childhood and has a compelling-enough scenario to make for something fun to watch
i liked all the character designs, but a Mega Man Catgirl is a laser-focused idea directed at people like me
i would like to watch more episodes of this, if they existed
neutral
seeing lots of folks on social media having varying reactions to the first episode of this being a “beach episode.” i kind of don’t care, however i was also not in any way surprised to see how much erotic fanart of this show appeared within 24 hours of its debut. didn’t even have to look hard for it; just searched the name of the show and was immediately greeted by Kit stuffing her ass with beads
negative
Arin is a bad voice actor, which is especially apparent when he’s interacting with the other, very good VAs. i enjoy watching Game Grumps, but his “voice work” has always felt amateurish in a way that is charming in the context of a Let’s Play, but not really for a project like this
I realize pilots are proofs of concept, in a sense, but the episode felt very much like that, to me. a whole lot of ideas stuffed into 30 minutes and hopefully things would be a little slower if the show is picked up
* Arin’s VA aside, i’m not really sold on the idea of the dolphin and learnasaurus being main, recurrent characters
watched the first episode of very 00s cyborg spy anime 009-1, so far my main thought is that i’m glad i picked the english dub (timestamped 12:23, vaguely suggestive)
every time this character talks i wonder if it’s someone from the forbidden siren dub
I def found it fun enough as a 1 shot cartoon. The conceit is very Reboot but just the gameCUBE part. It would lean itself well to alot contained scenarios but given the nature of even short episode counts in indie productions I’m curious to see how it plays with the existential crisis of game world denizens pursue their quests or face erasure. Those a pretty elevated stakes until there’s enough pieces for a big meta space war.
the depictions of the ultra-cute characters being torn to digital shreds did have a very Newgrounds feel to it, which honestly i don’t love, but yeah, it has the DNA of a lot of other shows i’ve enjoyed woven into it
Noticed The Amazing Digital Circus occasionally has very waffly, meandering dialogue that sometimes feels like characters are talking past one another. Like their replies just don’t logically follow on from what was just said. I’m wondering if its a storyboarding thing where the production is a lot looser and not so ruthless regarding editing but not sure if this totally baseless. I suppose it could also be an attempt at more naturalistic dialogue but I always find it distracting. Other Glitch Productions feature this but also indie series from Newgrounds.
It has walkways but no means of secure anchorage and its engines don’t appear to be running. I figure they just didn’t wanna animate the propellors in every island scene.
Saw the Digital Circus finale with a group, really loved it! The big dramatic moments hit.
There’s a couple things I would’ve done different, and you get the sense they didn’t have the larger plot threads in mind until the halfway point of the show, but like, they used their time well here, the important character moments were built up and paid off, it had teeth and we were sniffily passing around the tissues and the crowd was super into it. Great end to the series.
Spoilers for the Digital Circus finale
Very glad they established early that they were all uploads and could not possibly “return” to the real world or anywhere. Felt right that they all took this hard and were left completely hopeless.
I liked how Jax’s history had a few understandable but unforgivable fuckups, and that Pomni had to face this with grace. Everything with Ribbit was particularly hard to watch, and made you hate him for his weakness, which made her every literal step towards him for absolution really moving.
I like that the abstracted did not return, they were lost, Jax could not unfuck this and Pomni couldn’t save him from it, but she could absolve him, and the kindest thing everyone could do for them was make a peaceful place for them to be lost within. The aquarium look to it all was really cool.
Zooble being my MVP, I was really happy to see them get so many moments of strength through despair, needing Gangle as much as she needs Zooble. Zoobs has every reason in the world to hate their situation and be furious with Jax and be angry at what Caine has done to them, so it really hit when they formed the chain from their parts and guided the abstracted in, I loved that visual.
Loved Pomni being all glitched and fucked-up after being pulled out of the abstracted Jax, something she ran from when Ragatha had been stricken by it earlier. Ragatha holding her hand on the Pomnster’s shoulder even though it hurt… that’s the juice. Love these characters having earned their bravery.
Was not expecting Caine back at all. I could maybe consider this a little rosey? But I also found Caine’s scene of building each stepping block out of the simple shapes very affecting. I couldn’t quite tell you why, I think something to do with how this was how he built the circus in the first place, how this was him building himself back from nothing. I liked that the fear and the rage were still there and he allowed them to have their say and decided not to let them shape him. Very good AI-character moment. The kind of shit I would’ve liked to see AM afforded, but, I know that’s not what I Have No Mouth is about, AM is lost to it, this hate as human as the things that disgust him.
The shit with Jax, Ribbit and Kaufmo was genuinely heart-breaking. I like that they showed a lot of the good and the joyous before it got fucked beyond repair. The swear-censor bar bit was real good and efficient character moment for them. Really really was not expecting Kaufmo in particular to be as well-done as he was, I love that he was funny in a dumb, sedate way, and that he failed as much as Jax did. You can absolutely see why he abstracted.
Very strange that Scratch was set up as a core designer of Caine, and that his brain tumor was mentioned, but we never actually saw him talk or do anything. I don’t mind it as muuuuuuuuch because we can intuit that he made the brain-scan technology as a way to try to keep a version of himself alive, but, a single scene would’ve been nice.
In a similar vein, a single scene showing Kinger and Queenie when they worked at C&A would’ve been nice. Just a quick little thing. You could’ve had Scratch in there. I would’ve liked that.
Did not need that post-credits showing the irl people, obliviously going about their lives, felt dumb that they’d all somehow be at the same bus stop. Wouldn’t have minded showing, say, three separate scenes of them in different places. We know that Jax frequents Zooble’s bar, there’s two right there. Just a little cute for me.
I found the release of Blue/Bubble/Abel a little odd. Nice that it happened, I think it was meaningful as a Caine moment, but it was a little strange. Definitely one of those things that felt like a retcon a little that Blue was Bubble in a sense. Don’t know if you needed Blue at all.
Visually awesome sequences in this. Beyond the abstraction realm stuff, Ribbit’s room and especially the void DOS-dot Caine manifested into, with the shapes, I liked that a lot. Again, made his building of the staircase from simple shitty shapes affecting.
Cute and whimsical works for me but i think its one final note showing that through any contrivance family can be found anywhere.
I half expected this to be a disney moment when he released blue would be the magic fixall or at least be the order maker that it was implied by being the “better” creation.
I kinda wish Caine’s journey to understanding humans had a few more steps to figuring out how to be more gracious as opposed to being a form of Mutually assured destruction upon figuring out humans do have their own doomsday option too.
Not that there needs to be more but i find it an interesting possibility that they could maybe reconstruct someone from an original brainscan image but having no Circus memories. At least thats how i interpreted the bit where he seemed to recall Scratch in a seperate instance unless that was just an ephemeral memory. That bit still kinda puzzles me.
For the moment i think its good that abstracted didnt magically recover but i personally like to believe that they could have continual therapy sessions like Pomni had with Jax for either full recocery or at least some level of consciousness kinda like nulls in reboot after a certain point.
I saw it in a theater and there was one other family and at the end i heard the mom asking why someone was crying and felt a little outrage that someone shouldn’t be able to have an emotional reaponse to a cartoon or art in general.
We see 10 files in the CA_NeuralScans folder. One of them’s Mike Dobby (Scratch). We’re not shown what the other ones are but, they can’t be all 18 of the known circus members/scans.
Which makes me think these weren’t necessarily among the original scans. I remember Pomni saying in the first episode she put on a headset and that was the last thing she remembered. I don’t think they ever got around to explaining how people are still putting on the headset and getting scanned, I guess that empty C&A office we see in Pomni’s wanderings are maybe supposed to be that.
Anyways, that’s all to say, it was a flashback to when Scratch was first manifested from the abandoned brainscan project folder.
