A few days ago, I went to a theater to see the finale to The Amazing Digital Circus and I feel like I'm still unpacking some of what went on in it. If you aren't aware what that is, well, I intend to talk about some specific spoilery details so you should probably leave and watch it or risk having your sole exposure to (what I think is) a genuinely great show's themes and plot points be someone poorly explaining them to you. But, to sum up the show, it's an indie animation thing (initially from YouTube) that's about a group of people trapped in some sort of computer simulation.
And, yes, it is a cartoon with jokes and colorful characters and a lot of goofy bits, but it's also surprisingly nuanced. When something happens and there's interpersonal conflict, there is almost always an attempt to reconcile or reach out, to talk about things. It feels a little jarring at times, but having characters candidly discuss what's ailing them felt remarkably refreshing and... human. Each of the characters may effectively fit into an archetype, something the show explicitly calls out at one point, but there's more to every one of them than just that template. Gangle, "the sad one" as Jax calls her, is a self-conscious and traumatized person, but she's also revealed to be someone who enjoys authority and has an artistic side with ambitions. Ragatha, "the nice one", is an outwardly kind and welcoming person who occasionally comes across as insincere, but she's also someone who you can imagine was molded into that by her abusive mother and by the deterioration of her relationship with Jax. And Jax, well, Jax is complicated.
As I mentioned, I'm going to discuss major story and thematic elements from the end of this, so this is your last warning. Seriously, I really liked this show and would rather not spoil it for someone who hasn't seen it. With that out of the way, Jax, the self-described "funny one", is a troublemaker who riles other characters up and doesn't like to bond with other people. Pomni suggests that Jax might be "the villain" but the truth is that Jax is just as weighed down and troubled as everyone else. Sure, you could watch this series and see Jax as the antagonist, and you wouldn't even necessarily be wrong to do so given the things Jax is responsible for, but looking at this as a story with a "bad guy" seems reductive. The fact of the matter is that Jax did do some horrible, arguably unforgivable things but is also, in a lot of ways, a victim as well. That doesn't excuse the actions Jax takes, or undo all of the abuse and manipulation, but I think it does help to at least explain it. Jax has... a lot going on internally.
I've been talking around it for a bit but I feel I need to address the elephant in the room. This isn't overtly stated in the show, but it's fairly clear to me that Jax is almost certainly a closeted trans woman. The thing is, and the reason I've been avoiding pronouns, is that Jax is still, in my eyes, a closeted trans woman at the end of the story. Sure, Pomni has a moment of genuine connection (that ends with a montage where the song "Isn't She Lovely?" plays over footage of Jax), but after that she uses "he" and "him" to describe Jax's exploits outside the computer. Perhaps she's just using those pronouns for the "other" Jax, but I think the fact that the show doesn't explicitly change how it refers to Jax was deliberate.
In some ways publicly using feminine pronouns almost feels like a violation of sorts, to me. Jax doesn't overtly come out to anyone during the story, and while Pomni presumably "gets" who Jax is (as I'm inferring from the "Isn't She Lovely?" montage) Jax chose to keep that from everyone else and Pomni may be purposefully misgendering "him" to respect that boundary. There are ultimately any number of reasons behind the decision not to use feminine pronouns outside of the song, but the fact is that that's the way things played out.
I think there's also an element of this that comes down to my feelings on spoilers. I know some people have the opinion that "spoilers aren't a thing" but I, uh, think that's dumb. The way information in a story is doled out is important and pacing has an impact on how a story can affect you. Seeing people openly tweet about Jax mere days after this came out bothered me. I know for a fact that some of my friends' only knowledge of this show is that it's the one with "the trans rabbit" and I think that's disappointing. I don't want to call it a "twist" because that could imply it's largely only done for shock value (and I don't think that's the case here at all), but Pomni, and the audience as a result, coming to understand who Jax is is kind of the emotional climax of the series.
I'm getting off-topic here, but I think the reason that this left such an impact on me, and why I'm still thinking about it, is that I've come to realize I was like Jax for the longest time. Heck, in some ways I still am. I truly don't know if I'd consider myself a trans woman (I've got some... mixed feelings on how I want to be perceived and in how I think of myself), but I was closeted for a very, very long time and I'm realizing, as I write this, that Jax was intensely relatable. I'll often put up walls and keep at arms-length from other people so as not to make myself vulnerable, and I also tend to divert attention away from myself with humor when I feel things getting too real. I'd like to hope that I'm not a menace to the people around me the way Jax often could be, but in hindsight I see a fair amount of myself in Jax's mannerisms.
The point I'm trying to make with these comparisons is that, maybe because I feel a sort of kinship with Jax, the way people online talk about the character simply rubs me the wrong way. If someone is closeted or being selective with who they tell about their identity, shouldn't it ultimately be up to that person how to reveal that information to others? To take a step back and approach this from a different angle, if Jax is meant to be seen one way to the audience until a certain point in the story, shouldn't people respect the creator's wishes to keep Jax's secret?
Maybe I'm getting too in the weeds here, but this show has been on my mind since I watched it last week and I wanted to work through some of my thoughts. I'd heard people say there was "more to this show than you'd think" but I didn't expect... all of this. It was cool to be genuinely surprised by where it went! I could go on about why I liked the show but, I don't know, talking about why a thing is good is often tricky, especially since so much of what's colored my feelings on this show is so... personal.
It's not just my feelings on Jax, though. I see a bit of myself in basically every character. I see some of my own anxiety and self-doubt in Gangle, some of my identity issues in Zooble, some of my desire to play mediator in Pomni, and some of my... restraint in Ragatha. I, um, don't know that there's much Kinger in me though. It's a good cast of characters and I like them all. Even her.
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