I dipped out of reviewing the online series The Amazing Digital Circus for a few episodes. That was more than half its season ago, and it’s now coming to an end. Remarkably, TADC – a co-production from Glitch Productions and animator Gooseworx – is the most watched indie animation on all of YouTube, the pilot episode alone racking up nearly 450 million views.
This has come with downsides. Two other YouTube hits have recently been upgraded to full theatrical outings: Backrooms (whose imminent movie version I mentioned in my first TADC review) and Obsession. The ninth and final, hour-long TADC episode was screened in cinemas, paired with episode eight for catch-up purposes; that two-week run took around $38 million internationally.
This has led to the most toxic wing of the show’s fanbase pouncing on Gooseworx for not bending the knee to fan service, and the Brazilian dub of the last episode somehow getting leaked ahead of release. It was enough to make Gooseworx wish they had never made the show in the first place – and suggests it’s found appeal with a youthful age bracket. As an TADC admirer myself, I’ll admit there are a few aspects of cringe in play. Yet in this finale, emotions run high, and it’s easy to be pulled in.
Michael Kovach has his finest hour here as voice actor for Jax, a divisive character who was easy to hate yet hard not to love – and who finally gets his backstory, just before ‘abstracting’, as we see an intimate sharing session with new character Ribbit (played by Skye Redden), a female frog who is shortly rejected. Clown character Kaufmo finally gets his first appearance too, voiced by Arin Hanson aka YouTuber Egoraptor (and not, as was rumoured in some quarters, by Jack Black).
Previous episodes had revealed Caine, the ‘ringmaster’ of this strange world, to be totally in control of the Circus. Not featured in this episode until its final third, when he logs onto a cafe’s wi-fi it enables him to see who these individuals, under his yoke in the Circus, actually are – and the error of his ways. Wrongs are thereby made right – yet the TADC fandom (including this writer) have questions.
It would appear that whilst these avatars are stuck in the Circus as brain-scanned copies, their real-life counterparts have been continuing their various lives throughout. I was hitherto under the impression that the actual people were in the game, and that a lot more would ride on this as a plot point. This is how the finale opens and cracks show through this. The reveal of the characters’ actual names, professions and so forth is essential, if underwhelming.
TADC’s animation and voice acting both improved over its three-year run, and Gooseworx’s own music is fluffy and luminous (the main theme is already a classic). The writing could stand to be tweaked here and there, though the emotional beats work for the most part; the level of anxiety and dread conveyed in scenes such as the spiralling of harlequin character Pomni is impressive.
Fans – myself again included – appear disappointed that the character of Agatha did not get more time onscreen; her fallout with Pomni was less than fully realised, often leaving tension without much context. Still, in light of the major theme of this show – the families we make for ourselves – and message – not to wallow too much in our own negative emotions – here’s to more successes as potent and touching as The Amazing Digital Circus.
The Amazing Digital Circus is available to watch on YouTube & Netflix now.
words JAMES ELLIS
