Canis Mechanicus
kiwifarms.net
- Registrado
- 20 de Dic, 2025
Here's my take on the show.
I watched the pilot back when it came out. Thought it was okay, but I really didn't love it. For a while, I never cared about the show and just ignored the rest that came out.
That is, until now. Following all the drama surrounding the finale leak, I finally decided to watch the rest of the show [episodes 2 - 8] so I could form my own opinion on it. My honest thoughts?
The Amazing POTENTIAL Circus!
I was surprised to find that I did not completely hate this show. There were brief flashes of brilliance which had me genuinely captivated, making me think "is this show actually gonna get good?!?" [Episode 3 in particular] Unfortunately, the show also does a great job squandering it's best traits and indulging in Gooseworx's worst impulses [as many people have already discussed here].
Honestly, I'm just disappointed.
The show peaked at Episode 3, and it went to shit from Episode 4 onward. Episode 3 came the closest to having a good balance of humor and drama. Wasn't perfect, but it was getting somewhere. Then Episode 4 threw that out the window by officially turning the show into Gooseworx's personal vent piece, which in turn ruins all it's potential for imaginative storytelling.
I still watched the rest cause I wanted to see if the show could redeem itself, and to be fair there were a handful of good moments. But that's the problem...they're just MOMENTS. They seem neat in isolation, but in the grand scheme they barely add up to anything.
Flawed At It's Core
I seriously believe that Gooseworx should have reworked his entire concept in the beginning. It was flawed from the get-go. Why? Because it seems like Cooper was so clearly confused about what show he wanted to make - he clearly wanted TADC to be this super DEEP and PSYCHOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHICAL experience that plunges DEEP into the PSYCHE and is on par with great LITERATURE or something. But at the same time, he also wants to make this colorful goofy loopy slapstick cartoon that'll sell a lot of toys that the kids/manchildren will eat up. What the fuck man? You can't have it both ways, it was never going to work like you hoped it would.
Cooper would've absolutely benefitted from having some people working alongside him who were willing to constructively criticize his ideas at their very core. Those people could've been instrumental in helping Cooper hone and refine his ideas into something genuinely good. But unfortunately, that didn't happen because Cooper really really wants to be this epic standalone Auteur Artiste just like David Lynch and Tim Burton, who does EVERYTHING by himself because he is a BIG BOY and he's gonna show the world how AMAZING and TALENTED he is. Cooper never realized that those epic auteurs actually had a lot of help from numerous other talented people, and without their cooperation they never would've made anything of value.
I think that TADC would've been way better if Cooper just picked a lane and stuck with it.
1.) Colorful, light-hearted slapstick comedy for kids, about wacky characters going on zany digital adventures. Basically like Reboot mixed with Looney Tunes, forget all the existentialist trauma shit and just make it fun.
2.) An edgier and more off-putting [but still fun] surrealist comedy with lots of dark humor. Basically like Popee The Performer or an Adult Swim show. Once again, don't even bother with any serious soap-opera nonsense, just focus on the comedy.
3.) Go all in with the IHMAIMS influence and just make a digital horror show for adults. No sappy therapy shit or fake softie "horror", instead put some effort into actually making the show disturbing. Use the "trapped in a VR world" horror premise to it's full potential. Kill/maim your characters, provide some legitimate stakes to keep them on their toes. Have STUFF ACTUALLY HAPPEN.
A Possible Fan-Made Alternative?
I stumbled upon this channel called "Duffy's Digital Circus", which is this fan-made Bizarro horror version of TADC. It's cheesy, but I also kind of like it because it's far more commited to the show's horror premise than Cooper could've ever bothered to do.
My favorite part is the visuals/art style - it leans more into the realm of crude, ugly, low-budget 90's 3d animation, resulting in an unsettling atmosphere. It looks like a truly miserable, horrid little realm that I would never want to be transported to, and it's far easier to imagine how Abstraction could be a legitimate threat - I wouldn't blame anyone for going insane in there at all!
It seems like Duffy's take on TADC has spawned some fan projects of it's own, as well!
With this in mind, there is some hope that we will see an abundance of superior TADC retellings in the future. I see this as being equal parts a good omen and a bad omen.
I watched the pilot back when it came out. Thought it was okay, but I really didn't love it. For a while, I never cared about the show and just ignored the rest that came out.
That is, until now. Following all the drama surrounding the finale leak, I finally decided to watch the rest of the show [episodes 2 - 8] so I could form my own opinion on it. My honest thoughts?
The Amazing POTENTIAL Circus!
I was surprised to find that I did not completely hate this show. There were brief flashes of brilliance which had me genuinely captivated, making me think "is this show actually gonna get good?!?" [Episode 3 in particular] Unfortunately, the show also does a great job squandering it's best traits and indulging in Gooseworx's worst impulses [as many people have already discussed here].
Honestly, I'm just disappointed.
When the show is able to stick to it's important characters/worldbuilding, the writing can be pretty interesting. You get moments like Gummigoo's exchange with Pomni in Ep2, Kinger becoming lucid in Ep3, Jax showing his softer side in Ep5 and teaching Pomni how to shoot in Ep6.
Many of the slapstick gags had me chuckling, they're way funnier than the dialog/non-sequitur based jokes.
Even so, a rare few dialog jokes had me laughing out loud [the talking corpse from Ep 3]
The game/adventure sequences from the early episodes can be really fun [especially in Ep 3], and there's some decent stuff in later episodes [the gun battle in Ep 6]
Animation is pretty good and gets better over the course of the show. Lends itself to some entertaining set-pieces.
Many of the slapstick gags had me chuckling, they're way funnier than the dialog/non-sequitur based jokes.
Even so, a rare few dialog jokes had me laughing out loud [the talking corpse from Ep 3]
The game/adventure sequences from the early episodes can be really fun [especially in Ep 3], and there's some decent stuff in later episodes [the gun battle in Ep 6]
Animation is pretty good and gets better over the course of the show. Lends itself to some entertaining set-pieces.
The banter feels so forced, it isn't funny or charming at all. It just feels like bad teenage fanfic dialog, where characters will just bicker and say shit for the sake of saying it with no real reason to do so [the Jax/Ragatha squabbles come to mind here]
Character development is very inconsistent - several characters feel either underdeveloped or plain unnecessary. Zooble and Gangle get a lot of time dedicated to them [despite not adding anything to the story], whereas Ragatha gets barely any at all aside from a pep talk. Zooble and Gangle could probably just be cut entirely, and the show would benefit as a result.
Caine is just underwhelming. I get he's not supposed to be the same as AM, but to me he feels like a modern Disney "villain" who's motivated by generational trauma or some shit. Doesn't pose any real threat to anyone until Ep 8, but even that is negligible. Of course, we all know he goes softy in the finale so it's all pointless anyway.
"Horror" elements are incredibly weak.
This show does a TERRIBLE job balancing it's comedy and drama elements. The comedy is too juvenile and the drama is too somber, they just don't mix. Oil and Water. Honestly reminds me of shit like Loonatics Unleashed [tried to be both a badass intense action show and a goofy slapstick Looney Tunes show at the same time] with how scuffed it is.
Oh dear God, the therapy/trauma dump scenes. Ugggghhh...after Episode 3, I couldn't help but notice that the therapyspeak scenes were all structured the same. They all open with "Hey, wanna talk?" and have the characters sitting down against the wall in the EXACT SAME WAY EVERY SINGLE TIME. Once you notice, you cannot unnotice.
Much of the personal character drama just comes across to me as glorified self-pity. Yeah Zooble, it sucks that you're a hideous abstract triangle person with detachable limbs. But for the love of God, why do you always go out of your way to attach your limbs in the most mismatched and inconveniant manner possible? Do you really need to have only one wing hanging off your shoulder at all times? Do you really need to always pick the most awkward pair of legs imaginable? [wheel foot, peg leg, squiggly leg thing, etc.] You seriously can't find a pair of legs from your Infinite Spare Parts Box that both have functioning feet? It just seems like you enjoy making your situation far worse than it needs to be, so you can complain about it.
This show is so goddamn pretentious. There are many moments where you can clearly tell that Gooseworx was thinking "this is gonna be CINEMA!" "This will be featured in youtube compilations of the best CINEMA moments in animation for centuries to come!". The biggest eyeroll I made was with Gangle dancing outside the McDonalds under the streetlight. It's clearly trying to be this cathartic emotional moment like the rain scene from Shawshank Redemption, but it simply hasn't earned any of that catharsis like Shawshank did.
Character development is very inconsistent - several characters feel either underdeveloped or plain unnecessary. Zooble and Gangle get a lot of time dedicated to them [despite not adding anything to the story], whereas Ragatha gets barely any at all aside from a pep talk. Zooble and Gangle could probably just be cut entirely, and the show would benefit as a result.
Caine is just underwhelming. I get he's not supposed to be the same as AM, but to me he feels like a modern Disney "villain" who's motivated by generational trauma or some shit. Doesn't pose any real threat to anyone until Ep 8, but even that is negligible. Of course, we all know he goes softy in the finale so it's all pointless anyway.
"Horror" elements are incredibly weak.
This show does a TERRIBLE job balancing it's comedy and drama elements. The comedy is too juvenile and the drama is too somber, they just don't mix. Oil and Water. Honestly reminds me of shit like Loonatics Unleashed [tried to be both a badass intense action show and a goofy slapstick Looney Tunes show at the same time] with how scuffed it is.
Oh dear God, the therapy/trauma dump scenes. Ugggghhh...after Episode 3, I couldn't help but notice that the therapyspeak scenes were all structured the same. They all open with "Hey, wanna talk?" and have the characters sitting down against the wall in the EXACT SAME WAY EVERY SINGLE TIME. Once you notice, you cannot unnotice.
Much of the personal character drama just comes across to me as glorified self-pity. Yeah Zooble, it sucks that you're a hideous abstract triangle person with detachable limbs. But for the love of God, why do you always go out of your way to attach your limbs in the most mismatched and inconveniant manner possible? Do you really need to have only one wing hanging off your shoulder at all times? Do you really need to always pick the most awkward pair of legs imaginable? [wheel foot, peg leg, squiggly leg thing, etc.] You seriously can't find a pair of legs from your Infinite Spare Parts Box that both have functioning feet? It just seems like you enjoy making your situation far worse than it needs to be, so you can complain about it.
This show is so goddamn pretentious. There are many moments where you can clearly tell that Gooseworx was thinking "this is gonna be CINEMA!" "This will be featured in youtube compilations of the best CINEMA moments in animation for centuries to come!". The biggest eyeroll I made was with Gangle dancing outside the McDonalds under the streetlight. It's clearly trying to be this cathartic emotional moment like the rain scene from Shawshank Redemption, but it simply hasn't earned any of that catharsis like Shawshank did.
The show peaked at Episode 3, and it went to shit from Episode 4 onward. Episode 3 came the closest to having a good balance of humor and drama. Wasn't perfect, but it was getting somewhere. Then Episode 4 threw that out the window by officially turning the show into Gooseworx's personal vent piece, which in turn ruins all it's potential for imaginative storytelling.
I still watched the rest cause I wanted to see if the show could redeem itself, and to be fair there were a handful of good moments. But that's the problem...they're just MOMENTS. They seem neat in isolation, but in the grand scheme they barely add up to anything.
Flawed At It's Core
I seriously believe that Gooseworx should have reworked his entire concept in the beginning. It was flawed from the get-go. Why? Because it seems like Cooper was so clearly confused about what show he wanted to make - he clearly wanted TADC to be this super DEEP and PSYCHOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHICAL experience that plunges DEEP into the PSYCHE and is on par with great LITERATURE or something. But at the same time, he also wants to make this colorful goofy loopy slapstick cartoon that'll sell a lot of toys that the kids/manchildren will eat up. What the fuck man? You can't have it both ways, it was never going to work like you hoped it would.
Cooper would've absolutely benefitted from having some people working alongside him who were willing to constructively criticize his ideas at their very core. Those people could've been instrumental in helping Cooper hone and refine his ideas into something genuinely good. But unfortunately, that didn't happen because Cooper really really wants to be this epic standalone Auteur Artiste just like David Lynch and Tim Burton, who does EVERYTHING by himself because he is a BIG BOY and he's gonna show the world how AMAZING and TALENTED he is. Cooper never realized that those epic auteurs actually had a lot of help from numerous other talented people, and without their cooperation they never would've made anything of value.
I think that TADC would've been way better if Cooper just picked a lane and stuck with it.
1.) Colorful, light-hearted slapstick comedy for kids, about wacky characters going on zany digital adventures. Basically like Reboot mixed with Looney Tunes, forget all the existentialist trauma shit and just make it fun.
2.) An edgier and more off-putting [but still fun] surrealist comedy with lots of dark humor. Basically like Popee The Performer or an Adult Swim show. Once again, don't even bother with any serious soap-opera nonsense, just focus on the comedy.
3.) Go all in with the IHMAIMS influence and just make a digital horror show for adults. No sappy therapy shit or fake softie "horror", instead put some effort into actually making the show disturbing. Use the "trapped in a VR world" horror premise to it's full potential. Kill/maim your characters, provide some legitimate stakes to keep them on their toes. Have STUFF ACTUALLY HAPPEN.
A Possible Fan-Made Alternative?
I stumbled upon this channel called "Duffy's Digital Circus", which is this fan-made Bizarro horror version of TADC. It's cheesy, but I also kind of like it because it's far more commited to the show's horror premise than Cooper could've ever bothered to do.
My favorite part is the visuals/art style - it leans more into the realm of crude, ugly, low-budget 90's 3d animation, resulting in an unsettling atmosphere. It looks like a truly miserable, horrid little realm that I would never want to be transported to, and it's far easier to imagine how Abstraction could be a legitimate threat - I wouldn't blame anyone for going insane in there at all!
It seems like Duffy's take on TADC has spawned some fan projects of it's own, as well!
With this in mind, there is some hope that we will see an abundance of superior TADC retellings in the future. I see this as being equal parts a good omen and a bad omen.
