Work Text:
From being teamed up with Pomni, to his ongoing conflict with Ragatha, Jax played a major part in episode six of The Amazing Digital Circus. His fight with Pomni at the end of the episode and The fandom's odd or frankly just mischaracterization of Jax made me want to make this character break down.
I want to make this clear before we go on. While Jax is my favorite character, that doesn’t mean I don't understand that he, as a person, sucks. It also doesn’t mean that I don’t understand where Ragatha and Gangle’s feelings towards Jax come from. With that being said, let's get to the meat of this breakdown.
Jax uses humor to cope with the people he’s lost in the circus and as a way to cope with living in the Circus. He seems resigned to the fact that they will probably never get out and return to their lives before the Circus, Which at some points seems to help and at other times seem to be his biggest character flaw. He uses this ideology as a front to be the “funny one” when in actuality he himself is delusional. He says to Pomni in the hallway “I at least have the awareness to choose who I am!” While being partially correct, he isn’t changing who he is authentically, but rather putting on a mask to avoid the feelings of grief and loneliness as he isolates himself further by being mean to everyone and pushing them away. Because he has lost both kaufmo and Ribbit, Jax is afraid to let people get close to him in fear of losing them or getting hurt by them.
What this means for the current Jax we know, is how he treats Pomni. With Pomni arriving in the Circus after Ribbit and right at the end of Kaufmo's abstraction, Pomni knows, to our knowledge, nothing about Kaufmo and Ribbit's relationship with Jax other than ‘his only friends left in the Circus abstracted’ which Ragatha mentioned in episode five while they were star gazing. Pomni doesn’t fully understand why Jax is isolating himself but I see two possibilities for what she thinks the reason is. She either thinks he pushes people away so he doesn’t get attached, which has some validity to it because of what she says while arguing with Jax later in the episode. “You're scared that you'll feel an actual human emotion!”. Or she thinks that the others are isolating Jax because of his personality, which she has seen through to a more genuine/kinder side of him. And while I think that she could think this I believe Pomni is more capable than most give her credit for.
While Jax is chasing Ragatha in the tunnel, before Jax tries to shoot Ragatha she says she knows that Jax is trying to corrupt Pomni to be like him. Jax at first still has his mask somewhat on, what really puts the nail in the coffin is her plugging the nozzle to his gun and having it quite literally ‘blow up’ in his face. Afterwards all reserves are gone and Jax pulls out a second gun and fully finishes Ragatha off. When Ragatha accuses Jax of actively trying to corrupt Pomni, he looks taken aback. Which makes sense when you think about how, unlike cartoon characters, people don’t actively make the choice to wake up and go ‘Yeah I’ll be the villain today’. Which is one of many instances of Jax letting that mask slip and gaining some humanity. I also think that this scene coming right after Jax explained to Pomni that because he embraces the fact that they’re in a cartoon, he can do cartoonie things, makes the fact that Ragatha jammed his gun with her finger even more jarring to him. He himself says that he believes that Ragatha fell into her character archetype of ‘the cheerful one’ and the cheerful one normally doesn’t stir up conflict or say rude things to others.
When Jax gets left in the hallway with the doors of current and past occupants of the circus, He looks at both Kaufmo and Ribbit’s doors with both resent and sadness. That is the moment he realizes he cares too much about Pomni and is the catalyst for their fight later in the episode. Not only do I believe he is afraid that Pomni will hurt him by abstracting, but also that he's worried if he abstracts it will hurt Pomni. Jax, while being a bad person, understands the feeling of grief that comes with abstraction and wouldn’t wish that upon someone else, and if that means pushing people away that’s what he’ll do.
I'm a big art/animation nerd, as you may know already. But Jax has one of the most interesting animation quirks in The Amazing Digital Circus other than Gangel, being all ribbons and that. Whenever Jax lets part of his true emotions show his pupils become smaller. The best animated scene in The Amazing Digital Circus is during his fight with Pomni, Jax is yelling about how being around people who are about to abstract is not a good time. After he is done yelling his face slowly resets to the wide eyed and toothy grin that he always has. It is a visual cue for the viewers, but it is unclear if the characters themselves can tell the difference between the faces. Later in the same fight when Pomni asks what Jax would do if she abstracted tomorrow, He says he would move on and forget about her, eyes big and smile smaller than usual, Quite literally ‘Lying through his teeth’. We know from the way Jax acts at any reminder of Kaufmo or Ribbit that he’s lying. Jax feels too much for his own good/liking.
Everything in the episode lead up to Jax and Pomni crashing the fuck out. After taking out Zooble and only being left with each other, in excitement Pomni hugs Jax. For a split second you can see Jax savor the hug, no doubt being extremely touch starved.After that moment Jax pushes her away remembering that he is trying to distance himself from her. Pomni looks a bit shocked but brushes it off for the time being. She turns around and makes a hint that they should double back stab each other and as she turns around Jax is distracted looking at the hand he used to push her way with. Jax doesn’t ‘backstab’ her but instead asks her to shoot him. She then starts to second guess him as he pushes more and more to shoot him.
As the conversation spirals Jax starts to insist that they were never a team, calls Pomni delusional, Denys that they were bonding, keeps pushing for her to shoot him, telling her that she’s not committing, even telling her that they were never friends in the first place, all in an effort to distance himself from her while also making it so that she won’t keep pushing to be friends with him afterwards by being mean and callous. Pomni angrily asked if him being scared is the reason he doesn’t show up to any of the funerals, Jax deflects at first until Pomni pushes more, and Jax breaks, after she insinuates that he /the way he acts is the reason people abstract in the first first place. He starts to lash out and angrily scream about how People who are about to abstract are not pleasant to be around, which seems to be foreshadowing his own abstraction. “are you seriously going to blame me for something everyone else did too”. In this line Jax admits to knowing that the others blame him for Kaufmos death, and it has a big effect on him. He wants to have people to care for and that care for him back but his fear of abandonment stops him from ever letting himself get too attached.
As I mentioned earlier when talking about Jax’s animation quirk, Jax when asked by pomni what he would do if she abstracted tomorrow he said “I’d move on, and probably forget about you” he's lying which you can immediately tell he regrets say when he starts to back track after he sees the way Pomni reacts. “Jeez, you really can’t take a joke can you” he said with a strained tone, it's clear to me he's trying to do damage control. He seems to be trying to find a middle ground which doesn’t exist, one where Pomni is not mad at him but also doesn’t want to get close to him.
Jax is visibly confused when Pomni starts to physically fight him, Pomni hasn’t been violent in any way since she’s arrived in the circus. His mask slips once more as a sick and twisted conglomeration of emotions takes over, ranging from confused, scared, maybe even relieved. Jax got what he wanted to some degree, Pomni’s mad but not leaving him alone. Pomni throws things, bites him, jumps onto him, and hits him, all while exclaiming to fight back. Jax only throws her off him twice, probably too confused to do anything else. After he throws her off the final time Jax exclaims “Are you crazy”, This is the most genuine we have seen Jax, he was so taken aback that he forgot to put on his mask of deflection via humor.
Jax’s final attempt at pushing Pomni away is telling her that he thinks of everyone in the circus as his playthings and that he gets enjoyment out of their pain, but all of the words/phrases he is using are things either Ragatha or Zooble have said about Jax to his face. Zooble on multiple occasions has said that Jax likes to toy with them. Ragatha and Zooble have both bought up how much pain/suffering he has inflicted on the others. He is just regurgitating everything bad anyone has said about him in the circus. During this monologue his pupils are small which usually means he’s being honest, but in this instance I believe it's to imply that he thinks they are right not that he actually believes it himself. It could also be to make him look more angry in this scene.
“There’s nothing more to me, so stop looking” is the last thing Jax says before the Favorite character awards. This is a double anutundra. He doesn’t want pomni to keep trying to understand/become friends with him, but also he wants pomni to stop staring at him because having eyes on him makes him uncomfortable. This could be a reach, but eyes are heavily associated with Abstraction, Jax was there to see both of his friends' abstracted forms which now makes him uncomfortable with eye contact or staring.
During the favorite character awards Jax chooses to sit by himself, which is the text book definition of self isolation. We see Jax upset, he regrets saying the thing he did to Pomni and it's stressing him out, the more he sits the more anxious he gets. He gets up to go to the bathroom. Once there he immediately turns on the faucet as a noise distraction and starts to have a ‘panic attack’. I believe that this freak out is less of a panic attack and the early stages of abstraction, as his eyes get fuzzy and ears start to ring. As much as Jax praises his mask as the ultimate way of staying alive in the circus it’s failing him.
Now that all of the Jax character analysis is out of the way, what are some of my thoughts on the other characters or of the main six as a whole? I think of the main six cast of characters more like a misfit class of high school students rather than a family. In high school you don't get to choose who you have class with, it's up to the councilors, the only thing you have control of is what classes you take. Just like how in the Circus they didn’t choose to be put into the Circus but they all took the same course of action to get there i.e. putting on the head set. These six people may trauma bond, or they could take out their anger on each other. In the circus you see a mix of the two. I also believe that in some way Jax is the scapegoat of the Circus. They all blame him when things go wrong, some of the time he is at fault; like when he threw Gangles comedy mask into the scary door in episode three, but the other five members also blame Jax for Kaufmo’s abstraction in some way shape or form, when it was Caine who made the exit door which was the reason Kaufmo spiraled. What I’m trying to get at is that it's ok that they don’t all get along but the fact that there’s only six of them in the circus really limits the people you can rely on at any given moment. The only person who seems to get along with everyone is Kinger. He's been there the longest and has had time to deal with and process the grief of losing his wife. Right as Kinger was about to lose himself/possibly abstract was right before Ragatha joined the circus, and afterwards his out look changed as we learn in episode six when he’s having a moment with Ragatha after they lost the adventure. I would love to see what would happen if Kinger and Jax had a moment like that together.
All of the interactions with Kinger intrigue me, He is like a father figure to the girls of the Circus i.e. Ragatha, Gangle, and Pomni. Anytime there is a dimly lit room and kingers in it I know a banger of an inspirational speech is gonna happen. Kinger just knows what to say in any given situation. Anytime we get to learn more about Kinger and his life either in the circus or out of it I'm hooked.
My hopes for the end of this series is that they escape the circus and return to the real world and meet each other face to face. Granted I know the possibility of us as viewers being able to see their human form is very unlikely because of the medium of 3D modeling and also Glitch production past works like murderdrones depiction of humans, but a girl can still dream.