In the off chance you haven’t heard of this spectacle of a pilot, The Amazing Digital Circus is an animated pilot that dropped on YouTube on October 13th. Gooseworx, and GLITCH create and introduce a colorful world with an immediate dark undertone. I’ve watched the pilot a couple of times now and wanted to dive into why I believe this pilot blew up the way it did. As of writing this review, the pilot is at a whopping 38 million views in such a short amount of time, and it’s only going to increase. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend you do it before reading this review, as I will cover the pilot and the different characters and theories.
Plot Overview
You’re introduced quickly to a small cast of characters as their theme song plays. There’s the ringmaster, Caine, along with his companion, Bubble. Then there’s Pomni, Jax, Ragatha, Zooble, Kinger, Gangle, and Kaufmo, though he’s absent for a good chunk of the half-hour pilot until you make a discovery with some of the cast. Then, the theme song gets interrupted when a new character spawns in. She is our main protagonist, Pomni, who arrives in this digital world because she puts on a headset she can’t take off. She learns quickly that everyone arrived at this colorful circus the same way she did and finds out she can’t ever leave.
Pomni, understandably in shock and denial, freaks out and spends the entire pilot trying to find an exit, something Caine claims doesn’t exist. He gives her a brief tour of the world, which consists of just the giant circus tent, the grounds with a pool and carnival, and the void. The void appears just to be an infinite empty space, and he warns her not to venture into it. They then have what’s called an “in-house” adventure called “Gather the Gloinks.” There’s a bunch of small, oddly shaped creatures that harass the cast and even steal Zooble, and they must figure out the source and put a stop to their shenanigans. Caine disappears while they do this activity, which seems to be a way for Caine to not only operate as a circus ringmaster but to keep everyone’s mind occupied from their crippling reality.
The cast breaks up into two teams. Pomni, Jax, and Ragatha check on Kaufmo because they haven’t seen him all day, while Kinger and Gangle help Zooble. With this, you learn more about the world and the character’s personalities, which we will go over in the next section. They reach Kaufmo’s room to discover he has “abstracted,” which in this show’s context means he went crazy from trying to find an exit. He morphed from the clown he came to the world as to a giant black beast-like figure with glowing, blinking eyes. He’s no longer himself, and he attacks Ragatha, who glitches for most of the pilot until Caine is able to fix her. Pomni flees the scene and comes back to try and help Ragatha, who tells her to find Caine. However, as she does try to help, she discovers an exit door, which she immediately goes through and enters a backroom space with endless rooms. Eventually, she opens a door that leaves her floating into the void.
Meanwhile, Jax had fled the scene with Kaufmo and met up with the others. They jump into a hole in the floor and discover the source of all the Gloinks, which is the Gloink Queen. Zooble gets eaten, and Jax makes fun of the Queen until Kaufmo falls through the ceiling and kills said Queen. This also frees Zooble from her. The cast flees the scene. Right after this, Caine detects on his watch that someone is in the void, and he rescues Pomni. The rest of the cast meet up, with abstracted Kaufmo in pursuit. They tell him he abstracted, and Caine summons a hole called The Cellar and throws him in. It’s a pitch-black space filled with presumably water, and you can see other glowing eyes as Kaufmo floats down.
The pilot ends with them earning a feast from the successful activity, and the pilot ends with a slow zoom-in shot of Pomni’s disturbed face.
The Characters
You can’t talk about this show without the characters, most of whom I find interesting, and I’m eager to learn more, but some of the information I find that wasn’t present in the pilot I found on the Wiki Fandom.
Pomni is the newest addition to the digital circus. She spawns in suddenly when she puts on a headset she can’t take off. She spawns in as a jester-type character and is canonically 25 years old. Lizzy Freeman voices her and is an incredibly anxious person, and understandably so, since she just got put in a world she cannot leave. She reacts likely the same way most of the cast did and tries to escape, though if she doesn’t stop obsessing with escaping, she may abstract as Kaufmo did.
Jax is a lanky, bunny-type character voiced by Michael Kovach, a well-known voice actor in the indie animation scene. Jax is 22 years old and the mischievous jackass of the cast. He is rude to others but in a comedic way at times and doesn’t hold much regard for the other characters. My personal theory for this behavior is likely a coping mechanism on his part to distract from his reality.
Ragatha is a ragdoll-looking character aged 30. Amanda Hufford voices her and seems to be the most optimistic of the cast. She’s not necessarily optimistic about escaping, but more so in trying to be kind and help others in any way she can. She does her best to welcome Pomni to their world and help her settle in.
Gangle is one of the more interesting-looking characters, as her body is made of winding red ribbons, and she wears a tragedy mask with tears, as her comedy mask keeps being broken. She’s aged 26 and voiced by Marissa Lenti. Seeing as she’s only wearing her tragedy mask throughout the entire pilot, she’s more the depressed character of the cast and can be seen crying sometimes.
Zooble is also an interesting character to look at, as they are a mismatched assortment of shapes put together to resemble a body. They’re 22, and their gender identity is ambiguous for now. Ashley Nichols voices them, and there isn’t much to their character at the moment as they’re not seen very much. From what we did see, they seemed to be rather bored and disgruntled by their situation of being stuck in the digital space.
Kinger is the oldest of the cast at age 48. He looks like a chess piece with a royal purple robe on, and he’s thought to be stuck in the digital circus the longest, given how twitchy and nervous he always is. He doesn’t seem complete with it, and everyone assumed he would be the next to abstract, but he didn’t. Sean Chiplock voices him.
Kaufmo, of course, we know the least about because he’s never actually present in the pilot except as an abstracted being. The only thing we really know is that he was a clown character and was obsessed with trying to escape, which ultimately led to his demise.
Caine is a wacky AI ringleader and the one in control of their world. He wears a typical circus ringleader outfit, and his head is entirely a set of teeth and eyes, making him unsettling to look at. He’s charismatic and seemingly unaware of how much this world affects them by being unable to leave. He’s not so much a villain-type character as he is someone who’s just unaware of what he’s doing. He’s voiced by Alex Rochon.
Finally, there’s Bubble. Not much is known about Bubble except that she is Caine’s companion and is voiced by Gooseworx herself.
Fan Theories
To wrap up this overlook of The Amazing Digital Circus, I wanted to touch on a few theories that I found fascinating in the comments of the pilot. There are a few biblical references in the pilot; for example, like when Pomni is in the backrooms, there’s a logo that the point-of-view camera specifically pans to. It reads “C&A,” and fans theorize that this is a reference to Caine and Abel, though there’s currently no Abel present in the show. Whether or not there will be one remains to be seen if the show is able to continue. There’s also a more obvious reference to the final shot with the feast representing The Last Supper.
There’s another theory that Caine made an exit for everyone as part of the map but doesn’t fundamentally understand what the cast, the humans, mean by an exit. He believes they’re talking about just an extension of their world and not leaving it altogether to the human world. As he’s just an AI, he doesn’t understand what they mean or where it’s supposed to go.
There are also some characters’ faces crossed out on their bedroom doors when they enter the hallway with all their bedrooms. There’s even one next to Kinger’s room, with a character that looks very similar to him but with different colors. Some suspect this was a partner of his that since abstracted, and they’re now gone. One can only assume now that they’re in the cellar as well and that Kaufmo’s face will be crossed out.
This one isn’t so much a theory, but the backroom exit of the pilot is likely a reference to the Stanley Parable game since it bears a lot of similarities. In general, the show has a lot of references to other media that I found fun and interesting, even if I didn’t catch all of them.
Conclusion
So, is it worth the hype? Of course, it’s entirely subjective, but I believe so. While there isn’t a grand open world to explore, it doesn’t need it since the point of it is how small and trapped Pomni and the rest feel. We did get introduced to some other locations that we didn’t get to explore, and the cast is also at the whim of an AI ringmaster who can probably end up creating more sets and locations. Even so, I’m excited to see more of what we’ve already seen. I believe it blew up the way it did for good reason, much like how Hazbin Hotel, created by Vivziepop, did when the pilot came out four years ago; it’s an intriguing concept and an intriguing world we don’t know much about yet, with a variety of characters to boot.
I also love all the hidden details in the pilot that you can find if you watch it multiple times. There’s so much attention to detail and the animation that simply can’t be understated. It speaks to the quality and care the team put into it to make it happen.
The Amazing Digital Circus is a fun new indie project that I only discovered a few days after the pilot aired, so I didn’t have to wait like other fans did, but I adore it. It’s fun and interesting, and I’m a sucker for worlds where things seem innocent until they’re not. I’m eager to see this show take off, and I’ll await what comes next.
