THE AMAZING DIGITAL CIRCUS: PILOT

PILOT is the first and trial episode of The Amazing Digital Circus.
The Pilot has accumulated over 300 million views since its release, surpassing the Murder Drones pilot episode, becoming the most viewed video on GLITCH's channel and the most viewed independent animation pilot on YouTube to date.
== Synopsis ==
Pomni, a member now held in the "The Amazing Digital Circus" is met with other unfamiliar characters as well as Caine, the ringmaster, who sets them on an adventure to capture the mischievous Gloinks. However, tensions arise once the characters realize that one of their absent members is found having turned into a raving monster.
== Plot ==
The Amazing Digital Circus takes place within an old computer game. 
Following the title screen, we are presented to the show by Caine (an AI ringmaster that takes the form of chattering teeth with eyes and a body) who welcomes the viewers to the Circus along with Bubble, his AI companion. We are then introduced to the rest of the characters and the theme song: Gangle (who takes the form of a theatre mask with 5 red ribbons), Zooble (who takes the form of an entity made out of parts from those Mix & Match toys), Kinger (who takes the form of a white king chess piece wearing a purple robe), Ragatha (an optimistic rag doll with a button eye), Jax (a mischievous purple cartoon rabbit in fuchsia overalls), and the absentee Kaufmo (who takes the form of a cartoonish clown, only his cardboard cutout is seen). During all this, a new jester character suddenly appears in the Circus and disrupts the song (and also breaking Gangle's comedy mask by accident). It's quickly revealed the jester was once a human from Earth (implying to be wearing a headset the entire time when she gets transported), however she is informed by the other characters that she wasn't the first, as the other characters were also from Earth before teleporting to the Circus (Kinger is currently the one who stayed the longest and went crazy), and also reassures her that she will get used to her new home and body after she gets panicky.
Still fearful, confused and desiring to leave, Caine starts introducing the new jester to The Tent where everyone lives, The Grounds for adventures outside of the tent, and The "mysterious" Void (which Caine advises her to not venture to) by teleportation. The jester briefly notices an exit door but Caine changes the subject to her name (he brushes it off as a "digital hallucination"). After the jester becomes disoriented again because of forgetting her name, Caine shows some powers limit and decides to give her a new name, that being Pomni. Caine declares a brand new in-house adventure, to help Pomni get used to the place, that being to gather the Gloinks infested in The Tent, small critters that stick to anything they bump into.
Not long after the adventure starts, Zooble decides to quit it early but gets disjointed and captured by the Gloinks. Back to the rest of the members, Ragatha suggests to go check on Kaufmo with Pomni since he is unaware of the newbie's appearance. Kinger reports of him going insane, rambling of some form of exit like Pomni. Pomni herself takes this as a sign that there is an exit with another person talking about it, agreeing to meet Kaufmo to ask him what he knows. After getting hit by a gloink, Jax proclaims he will join Ragatha and Pomni in going to check on Kaufmo, leaving Kinger and Gangle to save Zooble. Ragatha is concerned about them being paired together, but Jax doesn't seem to mind. While walking down the hallway of rooms, Ragatha introduces Pomni to their dormitory & quarters where they sleep, but since they aren't human, they don't need human essentials to live on. Pomni asks why they decide to stick around for the adventures instead of attempting to escape, which Ragatha responds by saying they often try to at first only to eventually get hit with the fact that there is no escape. Any further obsessing about it just might cause a character to go insane, at which point "something really bad" will happen to them, which traumatizes Pomni.
They reach Kaufmo's room, and after an aggressive exchange between Ragatha and Jax, they open the door to see Kaufmo now horribly disfigured into a monstrous black mass creature with rainbow eyes all over him. Jax runs away with a bowling ball, leaving Pomni and Ragatha at the mercy of the being. Ragatha explains that Kaufmo has abstracted (the "something really bad" she had just mentioned), who then picks her up and slams her against each wall. This damages Ragatha to the point of her glitching up, with it spreading to Pomni's hand after trying to help her out. Pomni then runs with Kaufmo chasing after her, though she manages to dodge the monster, which crashes through the railings and chases a Gloink next, allowing Pomni to run back to Ragatha. Meanwhile Kinger and Gangle find where Zooble has gone to, which just so happens to be a giant hole in the ground. When Jax came by to keep a short distance from the beast, he lies about Kaufmo being alright and goes with the other 2 through the hole. All 3 then encounter the Gloink Queen, who Jax insults with an ugly comment. Kinger also finds Zooble's head, and fails at saving it from being devoured by the queen.
Back to Pomni, she talks with a glitching Ragatha and they conclude that only Caine can help them. She goes off to find him, opening a bunch of doors leading to random and surreal looking rooms while avoiding monster Kaufmo, before finding the exit door which generated out of thin air. She enters the door only to find herself trapped in an almost realistic looking office labyrinth that she gets lost in, a place that is oddly out of place from the more colorful environment she found herself in. The exit door then disappears out of thin air. The scene cuts back to the nest, the Gloink Queen expresses her plans to turn anything and everything into all Gloinks like herself and the rest of her nest when Kaufmo crashes down and begins attacking the Gloink Queen, releasing Zooble and allowing the other characters to leave. Pomni meanwhile still tries to find the end of this labyrinth, coming across an old computer along with a rusted out VR headset before going through a door with the logo of a company called "C&A" marked above (presumably the company that developed the game or warping technology). She is then led to the Void and falls into a state of trance by it.
Caine and Bubble were in a restaurant when Caine sees on his Wacky Watch that someone is now in the void and rushes to take Pomni back to the tent. He is then told by Kinger that Kaufmo became abstracted and casually drops him through a custom made hole that leads him to "The Cellar", a place where those abstracted ended up. Caine then reverts Ragatha's glitched state back to normal. He apologizes for lying about the exit door and that he wasn't capable of thinking on what to put on the other side of it, he warns the group that the Void could be disastrous for them. As a reward for finishing their adventure, Bubbles has made them a feast to feel more like they're at home. Pomni, still in awe and disbelief from today, tries to keep her cool as she's about to lose sanity while on the dinner table with the rest. The episode ends as the shot zooms out into the Void and beyond, and finally into the old computer from before (suggesting that the Void might actually be their way out of the circus).
== Characters ==
* Pomni (debut)
* Ragatha (debut)
* Jax (debut)
* Kinger (debut)
* Gangle (debut)
* Zooble (debut)
* Kaufmo (Abstracted) (debut)
* Gloinks (debut)
* Gloink Queen (debut)
* Caine (debut)
* Bubble (debut)
* Moon (debut)
* Sun (debut)
* Mannequins (debut)
* Dr. Football (debut)
* Queenie (debut)
* Dog (debut)
* Worm on a String (debut)
* Clown Creature (debut)
* Pink Cyclops (debut)
* Yellow Clown (debut)
* Purple Dinosaur (debut)
* Sock Puppet (debut)
* Blue Wizard (debut)
* Pale Green Clown (debut)
== Locations ==
* The Amazing Digital Circus (first appearance)
* The Tent (first appearance)
* The Grounds (first appearance)
* The Void (first appearance)
* The Computer (first appearance)
== Trivia ==
* The pilot reached 100 million views within the first 30 days of its release, and continued to increase its viewcount, reaching 200 million before the end of 2023.
** This episode now sits at 300 million viewers as of April 6th, 2024.
* The pilot was nominated at the 2024 Annie Awards for Best Character Animation in TV/Media.
* Multiple characters can be seen with their faces crossed out in the hallway containing everyone’s rooms, including a dog and a queen chess piece. It is implied that these are characters had also abstracted.
* The scene where Pomni opens a door revealing a screaming mannequin face was added because Gooseworx thought it was funny.Damn, I put that in because I thought it was funny -GooseworxMusic, 11/16/2023, Twitter (accessed 2023-02-14)
* In the swearing scene, it is actually Gooseworx's sister who voiced Pomni, due to having forgotten to record the scene with Lizzie Freeman, the actual voice actor."I actually forgot to record this scene with Lizzie [...] I had a recording of my sister saying these lines for an early test. All I did was pitch it up slightly." -GooseworxMusic, 11/22/2023, Twitter (accessed 2023-02-14)
* The ending scene with all of the humans at the digital feast is framed in a similar way to a Christian painting titled "The Last Supper," with Pomni taking Jesus's place. Gooseworx has since confirmed that this is intentional.GLITCHX 2023 @ 2:58:22
** Additionally, it has been confirmed by Gooseworx that the conversation they were having was about compost."[They were talking about] compost" -gooseworx, 10/16/2023, Tumblr (accessed 2024-05-18)
* Kinger asks Zooble about seeing a gameshow in the stomach of the Gloink Queen. This is a reference to two of Gooseworx's other projects, "Little Runmo"https://youtu.be/ErQHVUQ6QCk?si=CZoTbKUnBgwMyE2R&t=552 and "Elain The Bounty Hunter"https://youtu.be/6XC-9s0XaBo?si=zU-XpSGzLaeVPYwf&t=201.
**In the Latin American dub, Kinger instead asks Zooble about seeing a Turkish novel.
==Errors== 
*Kaufmo's doorbell is rung by Ragatha, and then disappears in the next scene when Jax goes to open Kaufmo's door with the key. 
**Also of note is that none of the other circus members' doors have a doorbell; Kaufmo's door is the only one with one, and it's only present in the scenes in which Ragatha rings it.
==Videos==
THE AMAZING DIGITAL CIRCUS- PILOT
==References==
id:Pilot
pl:Pilot
ru:Пилотный Эпизод
es:EL ASOMBROSO CIRCO DIGITAL: PILOTO
uk:Пілот