“The Amazing Digital Circus” (TADC) is coming to an end in June, with the last episode airing in theaters on the fourth. The story is based off of Harlen Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream”, which, if you’ve read the short story, makes TADC make a lot more sense, but also makes it more disturbing. 

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to put on a VR headset and get sucked into a bright and fun digital world, where you can’t die, but you also can’t take the headset off? You’d be trapped in this world with other humans who have put on their own headsets. No? Yeah, me neither. But if you want to experience this, I suggest TADC.

TADC has taken up a special corner of the internet, and although its initial viral release on YouTube was in 2023, the addition of the show to Netflix has most definitely boosted the amount of viewers in 2024. 

When most people first hear of, or even see images of, TADC their first thoughts are usually pretty consistent – unassuming, bright, colorful animation, with a possibility of it being a children’s show. And if I’m being honest, I thought that too, I wanted something fun and lighthearted to watch, saw the bright bubble lettering, and clicked on it.

In reality, the show does have a lot of those components, but it’s still an unsettling watch.

The plot of TADC follows Pomni, a woman who gets sucked into the ‘game’ and meets the other five humans trapped in there – Jax, Ragatha, Gangle, Kinger, and Zooble – whose avatars are all wildly different, but accompany the bright and ‘toy-like’ style of the show. 

There has been some recent controversy surrounding the cast of voice actors, mainly including Michael Kovach who voices Jax, and Ashley Nichols who voices Zooble. However, the actual event happened seven years ago, so it’s not quite as recent as people are making it out to be.

The circus is run by an AI named Caine and his thought bubble, Bubble – who is one of the main comedic reliefs, and Caine being the central antagonist (next to Jax – though he is more of a morally grey bother than anything.)

The avatars of the characters are manipulated constantly throughout the show – in ways that are comical, but could kill or cause severe harm to any human. Some of the “adventures” Caine makes the humans go on, resemble torture – whether that’s psychological or physical (I mean, there’s literally an episode where they’re handed guns and try to kill each other.) But there are also underlying moments between characters that show their humanity, which makes it even more unsettling, in my opinion. 

It’s easy to get sucked into the plotline so far that you lose it – these are just animated friends going on adventures. Not much else, right? But those moments of humanity can make your brain glitch a little. The point of the show is that these are actual humans inside of this digital world – and who knows how long they’ve been there. Do their family and friends miss them? How did they even get into the circus? What are their actual names? 

I thoroughly liked this show and I am very excited to see it in theatres, though I will be armed with a mask and spray deodorant because some of the fans … just no. I like how the animation style gets more and more sharp throughout the show, like every time someone abstracts it becomes cleaner animation. 

There are also a lot of references to the number 57, I’m excited to see if that has any meaning within the show. I think there are still a handful of loose ends – but with how the rest of Glitch studios shows have gone – I’m sure it will all be tied up in a pretty bow.