The Amazing Digital Circus - Western Isekai that probably will become Hazbin Hotel killer

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When people expect fanservice in a kid's show
To play devil's advocate, it's not a kid's show. At least it's not supposed to be, according to Gooseworx.


Yeah, this isn't officially a kids' show.

The gun violence and swear words would never be acceptable in a true kids' show. Even the most lenient kids' network wouldn't allow Zooble's comment about wanting extra parts for sex.

That said, the creators know kids make up the vast majority of viewers, and they 100% market their merchandise to them.

It's a faux kids' show. It feels like a kids' show because it's has the maturity of one. Remove the edgy bits sprinkled in now and then, and this would've easily aired on Cartoon Network.
 
Yeah, this isn't officially a kids' show.

The gun violence and swear words would never be acceptable in a true kids' show. Even the most lenient kids' network wouldn't allow Zooble's comment about wanting extra parts for sex.

That said, the creators know kids make up the vast majority of viewers, and they 100% market their merchandise to them.

It's a faux kids' show. It feels like a kids' show because it's has the maturity of one. Remove the edgy bits sprinkled in now and then, and this would've easily aired on Cartoon Network.
I think TADC would be rated TV14 if it aired on television.
 
I think TADC would be rated TV14 if it aired on television.
To be fair some editing would be required. But yes. This is a kid's show in all but name.

It's not mature or adult at all. It just has characters saying edgy things now and then. I said gun violence, but some networks have loosened on it on recent years. Just say it's paint guns or whatever.

I could name at least 3 kid's shows darker than this one. Hell this isn't even the first show to do the scary digital world that turns you into a monster thing. Reboot did it first and it was way creepier there.
 
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New episode on 12/12/2025
 

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I don't get why it's so popular
It's fine but the opposite of "heckin wholesome" where it makes twitter heads feel like they're adults for liking quirky, "dark" humor. I was alright with it in like the first episode but idk how you can carry a show with what is basically the same joke which is my problem with this type of humor trying way too hard to be overly subversive.
 
I don't get why it's so popular
it hit all the right demographics of people who consume cartoons today, tumblrinas who fawn over any LGBTQ representation in cartoons, little kids who got hooked by the G-Rated artstyle and oversaturated color palette, and enough quirky millennial internet humor to last
 
I still don't understand people who repost and share sexual and fetish shit on accounts attached to their public persona.
Most artists nowadays are just averted in acting professionally... and I mean, I kinda get it. When you're an internet weirdo who becomes big overnight, you're pretty set to walk on eggshells for the rest of your new life... which basically means you'd have to become an entire different person. Its not like Gooseworx, creator of TADC, magically stopped being Gooseworx, "I love to commission porn of characters drilling their skulls".

You pretty much have 2 choices at this point:

1- Make an alt account and still walk on some eggshells to not associate your alt to your main (which sucks harder if you're a known artist)

2- "Be cringe and be free" and post all your insane political takes and fetishes on main.

The first choice seems like a obvious take, but if you really think about it, it's not like Goose will ever get blacklisted from the industry for posting inflation porn, they will still be the well known and respected creator of the silly circus show with a bazillion views and earnings from YouTube, so why bother be professional when nobody is gonna stop you?

TL;DR: It's stupid to act as a retard on main, but why bother being professional when there's no punishment for being a retard on main? Blame the player, but also blame the game.
 
Found this on Twitter:

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I don't know about you, but I find it funny that Digital Circus isn't going to easily shake off its reputation as YouTube Kids content farm fuel (context: Huggy Wuggy is the blue thing from Poppy Playtime)


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(This thing)

I know it's not as common as it used to be, but I still find it funny when something Digital Circus-related appears in these contexts:



It's not every day you see Tung Tung Tung Sahur jumping out of a window.


Idk if anyone's ever checked Gooseworx's Bluesky likes but its mostly a lot of inflation porn


I find out about Gooseworx's inflation fetish last year through a Twitter thread. It's a shame they deleted it, so unfortunately I don't have the whole thing; I'm using old screenshots I took back then.

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I don't remember what was said at the beginning, but I do remember the last two posts. The post is barely visible, but in it, the other user is called a hypocrite for saying that "Digital Circus is popular only due to it's appeal to kids" when the same could be said of Skibidi Toilet. The next post was someone responding to the inflation fetish accusations by saying something like "What? Really? Proof?"

You know, now that I've been digging up screenshots of old tweets, here are some similar Digital Circus tweets that I took screenshots of. I took them in early 2024, when Digital Circus was about to premiere its second episode and Murder Drones was still in production.


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Sadly, I didn't save the tweet, but I found the accompanying image. I remember it said something about fearing that Digital Circus would be labeled as brainrot.


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Crosspost from the Hazbin thread

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"If your morals are that easily bent"
How is the consumption of innocuous media a moral act? I didn't have to sign anything that renounces my stance against porn just because I like Punch Punch Forever, an indie cartoon made by a guy who draws animated pornography. I don't know, I guess in some way that might make sense if you believe what makes a morally upright person isn't how they conduct themselves and treat others, but whether or not they hold the "correct" worldview and how strictly they adhere to it. Under that paradigm I could maybe understand why people who play a Harry Potter video game deserves to be sent death threats.
 
worldbuilding really isn't the writer forte.

Worldbuilding isn't the forte of any 2020s Indie cartoon creator. Just look at Vivziepop and Liam Vickers.

and some sex-scene exists in that episode or some future one.

Oh yes, Gooseworx is gonna pull a Friday Night Funkin' and add a canonical sex-scene to the colorful, cartoonish adult work with a huge child fanbase to remind everyone that it was always for adults.




That said, the creators know kids make up the vast majority of viewers, and they 100% market their merchandise to them.

Just like SML. SML is not for kids, as it reaches levels of vulgar humor similar to those of Family Guy, and yet most of its merchandise is aimed at kids because they know that they are the ones who mainly watch the series.

I said gun violence, but some networks have loosened on it on recent years. Just say it's paint guns or whatever.


Does anyone remember that period in the early 2010s when some kids show had gun violence?


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Besides Regular Show, I remember that MAD and The Looney Tunes Show had guns. But as the decade went by, the all dissapeared, and with the massive politically correctness of the early 2020s, they were virtually impossible to do anymore.


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Though it seems that this only applies to TV shows, because kids movies can still show guns. The 2020 Looney Tunes Cartoons show was forbidden to have guns, but Space Jam 2, released a year later, did had guns and was marketed as a kids movie.


I don't get why it's so popular
it hit all the right demographics of people who consume cartoons today, tumblrinas who fawn over any LGBTQ representation in cartoons, little kids who got hooked by the G-Rated artstyle and oversaturated color palette, and enough quirky millennial internet humor to last


It's funny that Gooseworx hates the fact that Digital Circus is very popular with kids, even going as far as saying that it they had a chance of making another cartoon after Digital Circus, it would be a lot more adult from the very beginning.


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Do you think Gooseworx knows that, if it weren't for the kids, Digital Circus, and by extension Glitch Productions, wouldn't be where they are now?


This is a video that analyzes how quickly the internet butchered Digital Circus


Watch these specific clips from the video;








Even during the pilot episode era, people knew that kids were the main reason for Digital Circus' enormous success. Can you imagine how different things would have been if the pilot wasn't colorful, bouncy and easy to follow? Digital Circus probably would had, have its fans, but it would never become the worldwide phenomenon it is today. Its popularity would have been the same as that of Meta Runner, Sunset Paradise and pre-TADC Murder Drones, a small web series with a decent-sized fanbase, known only in its corner of the internet, Glitch would never earned its reputation as the savior of Western Animation, and who knows, maybe this whole "Indie Renaissance" thing would never have happened, or it would have been started by a completely different show. If Gooseworx makes another show and keeps their promise that it will be less colorful and more adult, I doubt it will be as successful as Digital Circus, even they market it as "from the creator of The Amazing Digital Circus". It would be what TV Tropes calls a Tough Act to Follow: A creator makes such a loved work that it overshadows everything they do afterwards.



A really important factor that contributed to Digital Circus' success is that it's a show that was at the right place at the right time. As the video says, most of YouTube top viewed videos are kids content. Kids content is meant to be watch and rewatched. Digital Circus' colorful artstyle and fluid animation is eye candy for children, and even if it's just an artistic choice, since it's meant to be another "kiddy stuff that's actually dark and scary", it's still appealing to them because "kiddy stuff that's actually dark and scary" is also very popular with kids, hence the whole mascot horror genre. Digital Circus has just the right amount of kid appeal, especially when compared to other web cartoons: The Hellaverse doesn't have kid appeal, Murder Drones doesn't have kid appeal, Lackadaisy doesn't have kid appeal, and on top of that, Digital Circus is an easy to follow show, as its simplicity allows anyone to understand it easily. It's not as convoluted as Helluva Boss or Murder Drones. As I said in the Glitch thread, Digital Circus raised an entire generation.

Regarding the animation community, keep in mind the time period in which Digital Circus was released. It's 2023 and the animation industry isn't in great shape: the three main children's networks, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and Disney Channel, have lost popularity to YouTube, and their respective owners are focusing all their efforts on streaming, which only complicates things further for cartoon creators, such as the unfair cancellation of new animated projects by Netflix or the infamous HBO Max Purge. Both Disney and Warner Bros. had their respective 100th anniversaries that year, and both were shit, with Disney being the worst here, making bad decision after bad decision, like with the movie Wish or the live-action adaptations. And then, out of nowhere, this bright and colorful pilot emerges, taking the entire world by surprise. "Ooh! How far the animation industry has fallen when some small, humble and innocent Australian D-list animation studio made a cartoon with great animation, great story, great humor, great characters, great voice acting, great music by themselves! These guys have saved and revolutionized the animation medium as we know it! The Amazing Digital Circus is the best animation of 2023!" Ok, this is an exaggeration, but people really did say things like this in 2023, and they still do to some extent. Even back in the pilot episode era, I remember seeing many comments saying "Glitch Productions defeated Disney," years before Knights of Guinevere even existed. Digital Circus is a milestone in the history of animation, its impact was so big, that the pilot was nominated for the Annie Awards for Outstanding Achievement for Character Animation in an Animated Television/Broadcast Production.

No, seriously, that really happened

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Here's the link if you watch to check it out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie...n_an_Animated_Television/Broadcast_Production

Keep in mind that it's usually stuff from corpos that recieve nominations, so seeing this web cartoon nominated alongside giants, is surreal, and even if it didn't win, the mere fact of having been nominated is impressive. As of this writing, this is the only time Glitch Productions has been nominated for an award.

While Hazbin Hotel demonstrated that indie web animation can reach the same level of quality as mainstream productions and that the internet is the ideal place to pitch a cartoon since there are no restrictions, establishing the format of releasing pilot episodes on YouTube (although it wasn't the first of these, there were already pilots of animated series on YouTube before Hazbin such as Liam Vickers' Cliffside), it was Digital Circus that proved that indie web animation can be very successful and have a great impact worldwide, officially starting the "Indie Renaissance". Each month, many indie pilots come and go, most trying to capitalize on the success of Digital Circus. not understanding what made it so popular. You could even say the same about Glitch themselves, since despite the good critical reception of The Gaslight District and Knights of Guinevere, neither of them managed to reach the level of fame and popularity of Digital Circus. (And that really infuriates some Glitch fans, but I'll talk about that in the Glitch thread).


The Amazing Skibidi Toilet!

Friendly reminder: Gooseworx hates Skibidi Toilet

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There is a substantial number of 10-13 year olds who are fans of Murder Drones on youtube, actually.
Yeah a frightening majority of the fanbase are kids which honestly explains all of the praise because kids just flat out don't understand how dogshit the writing actually is.
Also there's a lot of russian kids into it too for some reason, like I keep encountering russians in discussions about the show frequently enough to mention.
 
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