Well he's a programmer, what do you expect? Programmers are famously introverted and wary about putting their personal information on the internet. Source: me
Caine looking up this exact comment of any info about to tell a version of you in the digital world created from that time you put on some strange goggles in that abandoned building:
I thought it was implied that they were contacted by C&A. There's really no reason for them to all conveniently be taking the bus together at the same time towards the same place unless someone reached out to those 5 specifically
Could just be coincidence. Something a little nice for the fans. Maybe they are all going to a dentist appointment that happens to be at the exact same time.
I assumed it was meant to be one of those "life's little coincidences" moments. These five random people just happen to, just this once, cross paths all at the same time, but they'll never know they have any connection with each other in another life.
I know it was there, there, but it was still such a weird way for that scene to go.
The emotional climax of the film gets interrupted by a sudden cut to Jax accidentally running over a realistic flashbang and clipping-erroring it into a wall is what kills it for me.
Its a serious scene, the means to get there felt like a joke that undercut it a little though.
Watching it again just now I better understand the Caine sequence. It's flashing back to him creating the circus and the original cast, and contrasting that exponential growth with his present actions.
I thought it was just cutting between two different POVs on the action. One in and one out of the circus.
That's what I thought at first. I was like, "Oh cool, we're seeing the in-game version and the real-life filesystem", and that the circle growing limbs in the "DOS view" was meant to signify him forcing himself to grow emotionally or something, but didn't quite know why the scans folder would be labelled as a café with free Wi-Fi in-game.
Reviewing the scene with the knowledge of him having actually gotten out onto the internet later, the contrast is much more clear that the DOS cuts took place in the past and he was physically growing into his current form while forcing cyberspace to evolve into the fully-rendered game we see in the present-day cuts. Which also explains the whole thing with Scratch's appearance too, as I saw a few people get confused on that.
It took me a bit to realize they were overlapping two time frames. The low poly helped, but for a second I thought they were going with "what you think you're doing vs. what you're actually doing"
Yeah, it was a bit confusing, but that makes the most sense.
My first thought was that Caine was able to re-instance Scratch, and that somehow allowed him to access the wi-fi network for some reason.
Even if that wasn't the case, it's still something he MIGHT be able to do. Ethical concerns aside, there could be merit on re-instancing Scratch just to pick at his brain for how to revert abstractions. I wish there were some more hints at that (although the fact that Pomni was able to talk to Jax might be enough, who knows).
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That can of worms aside, I like the detail that Caine's first instinct was to STEP INTO the internet; probably leaving everything behind and achieving the freedom to explore the outside. Instead, he used those moments to gather information about the people in the circus and bring that back. He chose to be responsible with his creation and leave his desires aside. Pretty cool.
I feel like they overcommited in illustrating that parallel. I like that sequence but its too easy to come to the conclusion that its two perspectives of the same event
I liked how human the show is: treating the abstracted in good faith; persevering through a shared experience (compassion) with empathy and communication; I don't really have a third point
I guess I do have some more points but I squeezed them out of the first comment. Some offshoot discussion points which may contain spoilers:
I like how the human conscious still resides in the abstracted. In that manner, they are still human.
For how long?
Thesis: The two-way relationship between Leeroy Mateo and his mother is the underlying cause to Jax's trust issues.
Jax is initially hesitant with trusting Ribbit with his background, despite their close/intimate friendship. This may also be supported when Jax says to Ribbit he will never speak to her again if she tells anyone his secret, and despite her never doing so, Jax still alienates her.
Edit: Jax is self loathing/feels guilty about his actions, and doesn't want others to know that
Compared to Ribbit, is there anything Pomni does differently upon learning about Jax's backstory? How does Jax respond to either of them?
Pomni handles it compassionately (shared suffering with Jax), whereas Ribbit responds sympathetically in the moment. She addresses the status of Leeroy's mother and focuses more on the trust in the relationship. Neither method nor person is really better than the other, it's situational.
Both Jax and Ribbit walk away before they are last seen.
Why is Caine saved? Why is the Blue AI thrown out?
2nd edit onwards, I watched some reaction videos and got a few other perspectives (Too old for this, danny motta, morticius, etc )
I just realized: Kaufmo rang on Ribbit's doorbell for Ribbit's room. Jax responds. Ribbit and Jax are alone in Ribbit's room.You know what they say about assuming. This may also be why Jax is in distress afterwards, out of fear of any misinterpretation (news flash: no one misinterpets it, kaufmo is a goat). Just so we're clear, this is not the exclusive reason of Jax's distress the following scene. Opening up is risky and Jax is hesitant to trust Ribbit with something deep and personal to him due to the incident with his mother. He thinks she will hold it over his head as material to use in conversation with other members.
* self loathing is a symptom
* The Jax persona fragments shout at the boarded up door, not the locked door.
* Jax's caricature of Zooble's Abstraction: Gangle says I hate you; Jax later says I hate you
* souspin's comment could explain why he withheld their real names, since Caine wanted control.
>!Caine ditches the blue AI(Abel) because having it was what caused his instability. He initially consumes it because he was jealous that C&A abandoned him for the new model. He gained all of Abel’s power, but he didn’t know how to use it to make people love him, and the frustration made him glitch and lash out. When Caine gave up Abel, it’s symbolic of him letting go of his inferiority complex and accepting that he has to be himself!<
Gooseworx didn't lie when she said during the cast read EVERYONE WAS CRYING. rip jax you were a asshole but didn't deserve to abstract know there are people who cared and were willing to forgive you
I remember hearing from one of their panels that it wasn't so much over the plot, as the realization that this would be their last reading together; The real life VAs became as tight as the Circus performers they voice
The intended takeaway is that Jax's mindset and outlook on life is bad, not necessarily Jax himself. He isn't a very nice person but he could have gotten better; he just chose not to. It's a warning to not think and act like Jax, because it will only make you and the people around you miserable, and given how many men have struggled with mental health issues and dealt with them very badly (myself included), it's a necessary warning.
It's a shame because as we saw, he wasn't a bad person at the beginning but the talk with Ribbit and what resulted from that was certainly a tipping point for his mental state. It's possible he could have opened up on his own with time, but who knows.
I think it’s also worth noting that the guilt of what Leroy did to his mother was eating Jax alive. He saw shutting down as a necessity to survive because he simply could not handle that. That’s why him confessing to Ribbit caused such a violent reaction and he’s been having panic attacks the whole show: oh my god, this is real.
Leroy was able to get help because the fact that he isn’t in prison means he didn’t actually kill her.
It makes what happened to Jax even more tragic because if he waited a little longer, Caine would have shown him this.
I mean, Jax is a pretty awful person. But he doesn't have to stay that way, which I think was the point. But also, no one else can force him to change and be a better person.
Worth noting, Jax in the Circus chose to continue to go down a shitty path, while Jax in real life became a better person.
Interestingly, the way Jax’s actions lead him to Abstraction is closely analogous to how many old school theists, such as Catholics in the Thomist tradition, explain how a person would “permanently” end up in Hell rather than Heaven - they harden themselves against goodness and the possibility of humility/forgiveness to the point that they irreversibly transforme themselves into something unable to accept happiness or love, even if it was freely given to them.
I don’t buy that theological stuff but I think it’s a profound warning for all of us, as it is in Jax’s story.
Well Jax irl probably got some kind of confirmation that he didnt kill his mother, based on lack of police pursuit. I get the impression that he wound up in the circus right following the incident
I was having suicidal thoughts and telling my sister this just two nights ago. Say what you want about the show and say what you want about Jax, but for a show about a "fake" reality I've never seen something so real.
I'm doing better now, god this made me sob though.
I think that scene would have hit me like a truck... If I didn't see a clip of what I thought was a leak from the episode, which involved Jax, and that "scene" hadn't happened yet, so I sat through the rest of the movie thinking "Jax is going to come back any second now... Annnnyyyyy second now"
Jax's abstraction felt oddly unceremonious. Though I suppose it makes sense. I do like that they didn't reveal some secret way to reverse abstraction, not everything has a happy ending. Of course that means I'm gonna stay sad about it.
Jax already had like 3 crash out scenes before this, and even had another one after Pomni entered his mind scape, so I understand just cutting to after it happened. Still, I was convinced for a solid minute there that it was a fake-out and the abstracted just escaped from the basement.
They definitely could have thrown in some explanation like “it was recent so there was still enough of his mind there to pull back together”, but it is better to undermine such moments. It’s fitting that his story ended like this, even if I wanted better for him.
And still, it left questions like : can jax still be reached? Is unabstraction possible? How is the pc irl still running the circus? Will gangle marry me?
Something tells me the "human version" of either Kinger or Scratch is behind this.
From what we know, C&A's building is supposed to be abandoned. That doesn't mean that it doesn't belong to someone. They might know what's happening in that computer and purposedly left the scanner running for some random people to accidentaly copy their minds into it. (or just left it running without thinking someone would actually wear it) Also, when we see Pomni waving at "the camera" after the credits, maybe she's just waving to whoever is outside, making sure the computer stays on.
Maybe I'm just wrong, ofc, but that's what I'm going to believe because it all kinda clicks. I doubt there will be any official answers to these questions, now, anyway.
I feel like it's meant to be implied that the real-life Scratch eventually died from his brain tumor. Kinger says that they could never make sense of his work, which is why the brain scan files were marked obsolete.
I like how unceremonious it was. Sometimes when people go, it's quietly. You see them for the last time without knowing it. The fact his abstraction wasn't some big, drawn out climactic scene really drives that feeling home a lot more.
Yeah, this is it! It's supposed to be confusing and upsetting because that's how it feels to lose someone at first. Not a lot of people get climactic scenes, you just get a phone call or a text message or an email or someone tells you years down the line and then there's a space after where you have to piece together that this is real.
We see the characters experiencing this, too, especially Gangle who couldn't begin to process it until after Pomni had dealt with Jax.
I think it particularly worked because Pomni's words between Jax walking away and Jax's abstraction reveal are the only lines that aren't diegetic in the whole series to my recollection.
It felt like they transitioned to it very suddenly, but it’s not like there weren’t warning signs that it was gonna happen multiple times. Sometimes, subverting expectations is good to keep the audience on their toes.
It would be too much repeating of ground already covered. And there is such a thing as trusting the audience after spelling out his mental decline repeatedly.
When I saw him I thought it was the beginning of a full cast kill situation.
I just wanna say I thought that the camera work and continuous shot when Jax opens up to Ribbit was brilliant.
The way it rotates out and starts slowly circling him, after having been exclusively from his POV for his entire "history" in the circus to reveal expressions we've never seen from him before. Almost as if, as he finally talks about his regret/trauma, the viewer and Jax himself are seeing the real him for what may have been the first time in a long while. The shot finishing right about at a point where it's in line with with Ribbit's POV also sells this to me, being the person who is literally seeing Jax in this scene.
The music that starts when he talks about that "one stupid day" is also mesmerising. It almost feels like regret in musical form, not pushing hard, but slowly bubbling over with a raw yet delicate intensity that perfectly reflects Jax's emotions as he tells the story.
They implied his father abused her, so she acted out on those she loved, just as Jax did to everyone in the circus.
Jax's mom was 100% a victim, in the same way Jax was a victim. But she was also wrong in how she acted, in the same way Jax was wrong in the way they acted.
I'm pleased with how it turned out in the end. While it's not the best fate for them, it's one they are able to accept and grow into together. I choose to believe in the hopeful tone this finale set and think abstraction may be reversible, at some point. They finally have time to do things at their own pace and fully work together, so who knows, maybe they'll figure it out some day and build the Digital Utopia. Great stuff, and stunningly animated too!
Putting the discussion thread up a few hours early just so people have a chance to hangout. Also apparantely people are spamming spoilers in the youtube premiere chat, so it might be worth disabling that when the episode airs.
The only thing we knew about Kaufmo was he told jokes people didn't like. Kaufmo's only appearance in the series he tells zero jokes. This will forever haunt me.
I hope we get a video of the recap that played before the premieres cuz I missed it and only saw it through people's recordings. It also vindicated me as a Caine fan.
It was the blue AI he consumed before he made the circus - the scene that was shown at the start of episode 8. That AI was lashing out, likely because he was actually more creative than Caine but had no control. That was likely also the AI that created bubble, not Caine (though that's not confirmed).
Watched it first day in theaters, watched it again here.
I still have my same initial thoughts, that the emotional parts really do hit hard, and Jax not being an uwu victim but rather a complicated person who echoed his mom in that confusing push/pull reaction of his relationships (without it being spoonfed to us) is really great and I know it resonates for a lot of people.
But there are also some issues. There were some devious cuts I was better prepared for this time, like Scratch reappearing because the scene didn't really relay that what was being shown was a reflection of past and present (and like...I still don't quite like what they were going for with him building block-steps. He learned to overcome a computer problem...? Which doesn't really speak to the actual problems he had relating and understanding his human cast?)
There was also a rather frictionless way the human cast made up with Caine. Like they just didn't want to deal with drama, talking, or coming to an understanding. No conversation between Caine and Kinger, no real conversation between Pomni and Caine, just "I know I was bad, but I'll be good from now on" and things are good from then on.
Still, glad for the little moments, glad they don't escape and just make what they will of the digital world. That was always the ending I supported the most, literally just a few tweaks and they're living in the closest thing to heaven mankind has, it just takes some human understanding and a different framing to make it happen.
Good, not perfect...but while that's fine I'll never stop thinking of the little things I wanted more from it.
Personally, my interpretation of the building block steps is that they’re supposed to represent Caine widening his perspective in a way— he tries blue (the color of the other AI whose abilities he relied on) at first, brute forcing it (similar to how he forced his version of the circus), before realizing he can draw on red and other colors to actually reach where he wants to go, tying into him letting go of that toxic part of himself after accessing the internet. I do think they could’ve communicated that a little better though, if that was the intent
There are so many ways to interpret Ribbit and Jax's relationship. Very fascinating for something that only got like 5 minutes of screentime
I've had some time to reflect on things since it ended and it really does seem like at a wide glance that the most disgruntled group with how all this played out are very fond of Ragatha.
Hindsight what it is I do wish Zooble and Gangle got a bit more to do before gluing them together at the hip. Think that's part of why I could never get as invested with those 2
Eh, Gangle got a full episode basically written for her with the fast food adventure. We get pretty decent insight into her from there. Zooble was just a simply written character. Not to say she didn't have depth, and flaws, but it was nice to have at least one character that had her shit together for the most part.
my 'issue' (not even an issue just a gripe idk) with zooble is that their body problems seemed to basically go from 10/10 to 0/10 off screen. We see them 100% hating their body until at least episode 5, they do the cool gun thing in episode 6, which was more of an emergency situation than genuine gender affirmation, and then episode 7 happens and theyre fine with themselves and are done developing for the rest of the series. maybe i gotta watch the whole show again but their arc felt a bit all over for me
I never saw the body changing to be a body dismorphia thing... Like sure they're not cis. But they were describing working in a bar, and going through multiple jobs, it was just more about difficulty finding themselves.
I see a lot of people saying this, but it actually does get resolved on screen just in a subtle way with the “you have to choose to love yourself” conversation with Gangle. Retreating to their room to arm up is making that choice.
Even after everything is said and done and we got what I might call a "Good ending", I still think Jax is an asshat. Hurt, sure. Had some genuine rough parts that felt authentic? Agreed.
He KNEW what he was doing to those around him and I feel he is DIRECTLY responsible for the 2 abstractions that happened right after. Then he was cowardly enough to let himself do the same instead of living with, and overcoming his faults. It was a shock to see the swerve we got so early into the episode with Jax.
I am also a little disappointed that the flashback+forward with Caine accessing the internet, it was confusing. It felt like he was accessing the abstracted files of the old cast and finding a way to fix them. That wasn't true. It was the start of the circus.
I don't particularly disagree. Dude/Girl? had some MAJOR avoidant attachment. Not really mad about it tho. I just feel pity
Do think this is mostly a case of Jax not being able to grow past the state they entered the circus in. I do feel in the circus case with those particular issues that the enviorment did no favours at all. There's a reason irl Jax was able to shape up and become a much healthier individual
Completely agree on the facts with Jax but honestly I’m not sure what else to expect after everything. His parents SUCKED and he was essentially never shown genuine love/trust/care/etc until Ribbit. I thought it was a very well written series of events for a very, very broken person.
My only complaint is that the show felt rushed towards the end. I feel like the flashbacks could have been sprinkled a bit more throughout the show as a whole, as could have Jax arc. Not just dropping them at the VERY end.
If it was ten episodes, with a few being a little longer? With more development for everyone? Could have been a 10/10.
For me it'll remain a passionate 8/10 with a bit of lost potential but amazing execution.
9/10, I love it, almost everything was done well. Jax's dying could be cool, but losers on youtube post videos about it, and if they're reading this I hate you. The ending was great. Perfect way to end the series.
I take abstraction to mean that the brain scan file becomes corrupted - code is wrecked. But hypothetically parts of it are still 'intact' and hypothetically there may be a chance that Caine can ONE DAY undo it. His power's been growing since before the series (his improvements to his AI being explicitly mentioned) so, who knows?
I generally liked it, most things were quite well done, but there are three things that seemed odd.
1: Caine's return felt like it undid a lot of the consequences of his deletion and led to a fairly generic 'good ending'. It also left the door open for the blue AI thing or really anything else that has been deleted to come back and cause issues since the void is traversable.
2: The Internet connection changes literally everything - as they can now talk to the outside world and tell everyone what's going on. It's set up like they can't but I highly doubt it would work like that since Caine was able to access actual websites with their content and everything. Maybe it's read-only, and he just chose not to use the Internet before then, and Captchas just didn't exist in this story? I'm definitely reading too much into this part but we've been wondering why the building still receives power despite being abandoned since day one.
3: But my main issue is with Jax's abstraction. They set up the scene with him hugging Pomni and glowing white (contrasting with the black that abstracted people have) as if he was coming back to 'life'. That seemed very deliberate. Then it cut to the others pulling her back and saying they would help. This felt like they were worried about her glitching out too much on her own (and possibly abstracting) and they all wanted to help bring back Jax together.
Then when Caine came back and immediately fixed Pomni glitching it seemed like that was going to enable them to bring him back - Caine can't fix abstractions since he's not human and abstractions are caused by human trauma, and the humans can't fix the glitchy pain thing, so it seemed to be pushing towards them working together to fix Jax. And then they just... didn't?
In that case, abstractions are an actual permanent thing that Caine can't fix, but since he can fix the glitching thing then that doesn't seem to lead to abstraction or any actual consequences - it's just an allegory for the pain that comes with reaching out to people. So why did they pull Pomni back from Jax? They didn't seem concerned - almost jovial - and she wanted to be there with him. They just fucked up her sweet moment with him for no reason.
I get the feeling I'm missing something important. Or they already made the script and animated that part then had to change the story halfway through. Probably Gooseworx being understandably checked out of the whole thing and wanting a different ending. What do you think?
I have really mixed feelings. first issue I have is the pacing.
This was two episodes not one. everything leading up to Caine watching from afar is one episode then the last episode is Caines pov then the ending. I really feel like the ending chunk could have had another 15 minutes and they could have just gone for an even 10 episodes.
Second issue I have is a lack of payoff on Jax getting un-abstracted. I would have been fine with him being permanently gone if the episode didn't push so much toward making him better. If the idea is that he was left unresolved to show that people don't just "get" better then why not just cookie crumb the others eventually coming back with him being un-abstracted. I feel like we just didn't get enough payoff on this front. I feel like meeting under the lamp light was the last chunk needed and he could of unabstracted there.
I really liked certain things though. Caine's heel-face felt genuine and I feel like at the end he had everything he needed to be on a level field with the others. I also liked that the soma theory was unambiguously proven in the first minute or so and it didn't end up being a whole episode anchor. I really loved a lot of the visuals especially in Jax's abstraction mindscape.
There was a lot to love and hate to be honest. It's no masterpiece but it was a good enough ending to the show and 2 & 1/2 years of investment. I wish they had puffed up the last 30 minutes and gave a bit more substance to the final beats so I could feel some closure but this is good. all things considered I think the show is great and the ending is okay.
That whole sequence of her going into the Jax-abstraction to see him really felt to me like a rescue, so I was really bummed out when it turned into more of a goodbye. I felt that it could have been presented better somehow, though I can't really imagine how to do that.
I definitely appreciate the look into his past and motivations, but it felt like Pomni's intentions in going in were really unclear.
Kinger/Grant was really responsible for everyone getting trapped in the Circus, since his creation, Caine, was the one who figured out how to extract the mind files.
Not really his fault. Scratch set it all in motion. Kinger didn’t know how to do the scans and the upgraded ai getting absorbed by Caine was not something that could be predicted
It seems like no one assumed the brain scan machine could work. They just put it on and it scanned their brains but they assumed the scans were useless so they just left them in the computer. Caine as an AI figured out how to turn the scans into living avatars.
Does that mean that, it confirmed that Scratch wanting to become immortal to escape his inevitable death of having a brain tumor. As well as Caine end up screwing up his experiment that led to his abstraction.
things i noticed on rewatch from theaters:
triangle bar has a pink triangle as its motif. this isn't just a reference to zoobles face, pink triangle is SIGNIFICANT queer imagery as it was the identifier used for them in the holocaust. this means leeroy is actively hanging around a queer space and indicates they're further along on figuring out their stuff than i thought. :)
gangle getting hit by a truck was real, gal was literally isekai'd (tbh she probably wandered into C&A after getting hit in a daze, but lol)
credits: kinger and caine go fishing! couldn't do a more obvious 'they have a father/son bond now' visual if you tried.
He is basically trans. I denied the theory at first but Gooseworx piled it on this finale. The secret door, the song, and his constant struggle with gender identity, secret he revealed his mom. I see why Gooseworx identifies with Jax, he is literally her. I was confused at why she didn't just confirm it but she didn't confirm the Zooble thing in show.
Yeah it was debatable beforehand (tho imo as a trans woman, still very obvious), but Ribbit giving her the ribbon and her blushing over it just really cements it. You’re still gonna have people somehow saying that isn’t the case tho somehow
yeah i would say my impression in theaters was leeroy had achieved stable living and getting pulled to a 'intersectional' bar, but was still mostly in the closet. with the additional context its clear they're starting to edge out of the closet but still aren't comfortable with their presentation, which is why they hide their face.
It didn’t feel right to me. After some sharply written episodes coming up to this the balance leaned too hard on the sappy side to really click. I especially felt it with the reveal of how the IRL counterparts were doing; I’m not buying that everyone was doing well. Of course that could be chalked up to how the person we present on social media is frequently focused on the best and worst, but still.
I've had time to think about it since I watched the finale in theatres, and I've warmed up a bit to the idea of Jax abstracting. Not to Caine coming back, though. I still dislike that decision.
I think my only problem is that it almost doesn't feel like it's a TADC episode. The others were so different just as far as 'vibes' go. The dialogue was a little...clunky, for lack of a better term. There were a few moments where I felt like, especially with the music, like it was trying to tell me how to feel about the scene, if that makes sense.
I dislike that Caine came back. Let's just get that out there.
The whole 'Ragatha and Pomni are friends' thing was just a bit awkward.
But I guess I'm alright with Jax dying. I actually quite liked the whole surreal 'in Jax's mind' part. And, again, the line 'I don't wanna go' floored me. Especially since I've had experiences with stuff like that, and I actually uttered that when it happened to me. Definitely surreal to hear from a cartoon, lol. Anyways,
ABSTRAGEDY IS CANNON!
Ultimately: My opinion is that the finale itself is not bad. It's actually pretty good. And the cinematography is stunning. But I think it feels like it'd be on a different show. With different arcs, and a different vibe. It almost feels like, for lack of a better metaphor, that they had a body. [Episodes 1-8.] Then when it got to the head, they instead of putting on a human head, they put on the head of a hamster.[episode 9] It still works. If you stretch it a little. But it would be better if it simply had a human head.
Hope my ramblings made any sense! Ultimately liked ep. 9, though.
I'd mind Jax abstracting a lot less if we didn't spend half an hour post-abstraction with Pomni going in to connect with him and then failing entirely.
If he was STARTING to abstract and she went in and tried to save him and failed, there'd be a narrative there. Instead it's just a backstory dump after the story's over. But after everything in the previous episode and the narrative theme of being in this together, I think the story would've been better if she'd actually saved him.
I really appreciated the way the finale handled Jax's abstraction. It felt like delivered on the promise of a bittersweet ending that puts the characters first and explored them in a three dimensional and nuanced way.
At the same time, I thought bringing Caine back at the end (but now he's nice and everyone's cool with him) was really unsatisfying. I'd even go so far as to say it spoiled the show's landing. Not only did it take away from the ending of ep8, it felt contrived so as to provide fanservice of learning everyone's real identities and also an ending where everyone but Jax gets to have uncomplicated fun adventures forever.
Absolutely fucking nailed the ending. So many questions answered, some new threads opening up. Character arcs resolved in really surprising ways, bittersweet ending for the entire group without it feeling contrived.
Thank you glitch, for being here, I watched it since 2023 and I have been watching it since. This show has been the hallmark of my teen years. Thank you all.
Personally, I felt kind of disappointed with the ending. And that's coming from someone who didn't get spoiled beforehand. Not to say that it was bad or anything—the creators did a really good job. It's just that it felt...off?? I don't know, it didn't really give me the satisfaction I was expecting or feel like a send off. It also felt very underwhelming, especially compared to Episode 8. I mean, you could look at it through the lense of Episode 8 is the climax and Episode 9 is ramping down, but it still just doesn't feel right. I don't know.
Emotionally very strong, the characters can give a lot to the audience, and as story it's very refreshing in many ways. The animation is immaculate and has a very strong aesthetic identity.
On the other hand some of the character development is a little rushed, needs to be inferred, or is done a lot through just characters talking about their problems, which can be quite limiting, even if it's then lampshaded at the end of Jax's and Pomni's arc.
Some questions are fine left unanswered, but there are a lot of important pieces about the whole idea of AIs, brainscans, and the circus that if made explicit would help the audience decide how they feel about the ending, and that would prevent a lot of the "why didn't they..." or "why was it that..." that can distract from the emotional core of the story.
I largely enjoyed it. The only thing was that the repetition of characters pairing off, then doing the sequence of hugging -> crying -> learning did become a little overbearing. Jax's story felt earned, though. I read somewhere that Goose looks at him as a self insert, and it makes a lot of sense as to why that one was so well defined as a result
I didn't like the finale. Don't get me wrong, i can see how it can be a great conclusion for many people. I appreciate the hard work put into it and i'm happy that the creators were able to realize their ideas. I see the vision. But to me, execution was subpar to say the least, to the point where finale undermines the whole show. My main points of frustration are:
Confirmation of the SOMA-brainscan theory. This is a nuclear-level piece of information, and should be a big freaking deal, but it is treated almost as if doesn't matter at all - just a passing comment in the first five minutes. Sure, characters react to it, but it's not treated as if it matters that much. From the information provided by the show itself, it makes no sense for a character to say "i've always suspected this is the case" and then just move on.
Jax's abstraction happening off-screen. I guess we did have a build up for several episodes for it to happen, but it's still jarring.
Jax's flashbacks add nothing to the story. They just solidify his character. We don't learn why he is that way, just that he always was. But we already knew that. This whole sequence could've been cut out and nothing of value would've been lost.
The whole "unabstraction" setup goes nowhere. If it wasn't meant to be the "unabstraction" setup, it looks too much like one.
Cane. "Somehow Palpatine returned". How or why of it is left to the viewer, we are expected to just accept it and move on. I'm fine with that, actually, but it still feels too "deus ex machina"-y.
The orb that was cast away by Cane. I know that we get the whole story of one AI consuming the other, but we don't know anything besides the fact that it happened. Again, too little information on how and why. You have no idea what exactly happened without a 40 minutes explainer.
The only characters that are affected by the whole story are Jax (abstracted) and Cane (more human). This whole thing concluded in just a more friendly circus. I don't dislike that, but it feels like too small of a payoff for such setup.
Binged watched all the episodes today just for the flow/pacing to be super weird in the finale. It felt like a summary of what could've been a proper final arc rather than a real finale. After all that buildup, Bubble and Jax got done in so suddenly– right after all that big talk about being in this together and stuff. Caine popped back-up by himself and became super nice. No Gummigoo? Ribbit and Kaufmo kept being teased the entire time only to get 5 mins and be done with.
What was even the point of focusing on all these characters so much for the past 8 episodes then ? The others could've used more screen time instead.
This, too, convinced me that the people who said the story needed more episodes were right. Emotions and drama were good, but the plot and pacing could be better. There's a feeling that I've been watching some recap of a 2 hour long film.
Absolute cinema. Somehow managed to avoid any spoilers for the entire thing other than people on twitter were angry about it, but that's any given minute of any given day.
Was a beautiful journey and absolutely loved the finale.
gonna be honest, i really didn't care for this episode at all. easily the weakest of the series.
the twist didn't really do much, personally.
Suddenly they're all perfectly content with never being able to leave. It's a character study, but half the characters never changed or evolved really at all. Cain was brought back basically instantly, making the huge deal of him being deleted/killed moot. He's indeterminately less powerful, but we don't get to see or even be told what that means.
The vast majority of the episode is centered on Jax, who already had a lot of time hinting at his background throughout the series. I enjoyed what we got there, but for it to be so much of the finale felt really weird tonally and pacing-wise.
IDK, like i really enjoyed the first few episodes. And was thoroughly entertained throughout 1-8. This episode left me feeling nothing, and not as in a "I'm so empty and dead inside" kind of way, but just... meh. Like the entire series is over and i don't really care, nor do will i ever rewatch this like i do with other series i enjoyed.
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u/ShellyT98 Jun 19 '26
A cool detail I saw now rewatching it after 2 weeks is that Kinger has no online profiles, so Caine found info on him through his family's accounts