The Amazing Digital Circus

(spoiler free)

The Amazing Digital Circus is an animation show of which, until about a month ago, I haven't even heard about. I learned about it from my daughter. It is the work of an independent creator, and was initially published on YouTube and later also made available on Netflix. The YouTube video of the first episode has more than 400 million views and on Netflix it's been in the top ten for a while.

The premise is that a few humans are captured in a virtual reality, where an AI has the job to entertain them. With time we realize that some of the humans have been there for decades, one has partially lost his mind, and there seems to be no way out. The colorful graphics and seemingly silly character designs hide a much darker story, inspired by "The Matrix", maybe "Lost", and "I have no mouth but I must scream".

The show has nine episodes, each about half an hour long and the final episode double that, so not too long.

I find the animation style somewhat subpar, but the pacing is so much more comfortable and relaxed than many other current shows and movies. The characters are really well done, and feel realistic and multifaceted.

The last episode is currently being shown in cinemas, and it seems do be doing extremely well for an independent show, before it will be available on YouTube in a few days (for free, like the rest of the show). We went to watch it today, and very much enjoyed it.

Given how Lost didn't manage to find a fully satisfying ending, and The Matrix had trouble with storytelling after the first movie, I didn't expect that the Amazing Digital Circus would be able to bring the story to a satisfying end.

I was wrong.

The ending was so much better than I expected it to be. It was fresh and novel (well, there's probably some manga or SF short story with that storyline, but it was novel to me) and more satisfying than I would have deemed possible in such a short episode. Not every question seemed answered, but with this show I expect not to have picked up on every clue and I'll probably find more answers in a few weeks. But the big ones were, and the story came to a close.

Can recommend.

Marjane Satrapi

Marjane Satrapi, the brave and talented creator of the wonderful and honest graphic novel Persepolis, has died. Her magnum opus is an autobiography, telling of her young years growing up during the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Iran-Iraq war of 1980, and then moving to Austria, for safety and to study. But Vienna isn't the safe space her family was hoping for, she's having a difficult time, and returns to Iran. The difference between the two worlds really show. Back home, she can't find her place either.

It's not an easy book to read, it is nuanced, it feels sincere, and it shines a very human light on what the revolution meant, on what emigration can be like.

It was a popular graphic novel, pushing what was usually done with the medium. Satrapi was one of the first women to find success with graphic novels.

According to her family, Satrapi died at the age of 56 of a broken heart, following her husband's death last year.

I very much recommend reading the book. It is not an easy story, but it is an important one.