Story:
In an old 90's computer game, Caine, an AI ringmaster that takes the form of chattering teeth with eyes and a body (Alex Rochon) and his assistant Bubble (Gooseworx) welcomes the viewers to The Amazing Digital Circus. The rest of the performers are introduced through the theme song:
- Gangle, a depressed and timid girl made of red ribbons and a drama mask (Marissa Lenti)
- Zooble, a moody person made out of Mix & Match parts (Ashley Nichols)
- Kinger, a rather kooky person who takes the form of a white king chess piece wearing a purple robe (Sean Chiplock)
- Ragatha, an optimistic and friendly Raggedy Ann doll (Amanda Hufford)
- Jax, a mischievous and rebellious purple rabbit in red overalls (Michael Kovach)
- Kaufmo, a cartoonish clown who is absent from the theme song
As the theme song progresses, a new jester character (Lizzie Freeman) suddenly appears in the Circus and disrupts the song. The jester begins panicking as she attempts to take off her headset, revealing that she is a human from the outside world. The other performers inform her that she cannot leave, revealing that they are also humans that teleported to the Circus, with Kinger the one who stayed the longest. Still fearful, confused and desiring to leave, Caine starts introducing the new jester to the areas of the Digital Circus: 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. The jester briefly notices an exit door and inquires about it, but Caine brushes it off as a "digital hallucination".
Caine asks the jester for her name, and she panics as she realizes she can't remember it. Caine reveals that all new arrivals forget their name, and uses a slot machine to grant her the new name Pomni. With the introduction done, Caine declares a brand new in-house adventure for Pomni and the rest of the gang. He instructs them to gather the Gloinks, small critters that stick to anything they bump into and have infested the tent.
Not long after the adventure starts, Zooble decides to quit it early but gets disjointed and captured by the Gloinks. Ragatha suggests to check on Kaufmo with Pomni since he wasn't at the theme song, but Kinger remarks he might have gone insane as he was rambling about an exit like Pomni. Jax proclaims that he, Ragatha and Pomni will go check on Kaufmo while Kinger and Gangle help save Zooble. Ragatha introduces Pomni to their dormitory & quarters where they sleep, but remarks that since they aren't human, they don't need human essentials to live. When Pomni asks why no one has tried to escape, Ragatha tells her that most people who try to leave the Circus eventually go insane, in which case "something really bad" happens to them.
Reaching Kaufmo's room, Ragatha rings his doorbell, but he doesn't answer. Jax uses a key to open the door, and the three discover that Kaufmo has horribly mutated into a monstrous black mass creature with rainbow eyes. Jax runs away, leaving the two girls at the mercy of the creature. Ragatha explains to a horrified and confused Pomni that Kaufmo has "abstracted", the just hinted at "really bad" result of someone in the Circus reaching their breaking point. Kaufmo attacks Ragatha and causes her to start glitching out, and Pomni's hand begins to glitch when she reaches out to help. Kaufmo chases after Pomni before crashing through the railings and chasing a Gloink next, allowing Pomni to reunite with Ragatha. Jax meets up with Kinger and Gangle, who have found where Zooble has gone to: a giant hole in the ground. Jax lies about Kaufmo's current state and goes with the other two through the hole. Inside, all three encounter the Gloink Queen (Elsie Lovelock), who is being fed the objects taken by the Gloinks. Kinger also finds Zooble's head, but fails at saving it from being devoured by the queen.
Pomni meets with a glitching Ragatha, who instructs her to get Caine in order to help them. She goes off to find him, opening a bunch of doors leading to random and surreal looking rooms while avoiding Kaufmo. Pomni comes across the exit door she saw earlier and enters it, only to find herself trapped in an almost realistic looking office labyrinth that she gets lost in. Back at the nest, the Gloink Queen expresses her plans to turn anything and everything into all Gloinks like herself and her kin when Kaufmo crashes down and beats the crap out of her, releasing Zooble and allowing the other characters to leave. Meanwhile, Pomni is still trying to find the end of the labyrinth, at one point coming across an old computer with a VR headset next to it. She goes through a door, with the logo C&A marked above it, and is led into the Void, falling into a trance state.
Caine and Bubble are at a restaurant when Caine sees on his Wacky Watch that someone has gotten to the Void, quickly rushing to take Pomni back to the tent. He sees that Kaufmo has abstracted and casually drops him into the "Cellar", which is populated by other abstracted creatures. Caine reverts Ragatha and Pomni's glitched states back to normal and apologizes for lying about the exit door, revealing that he made it because many people were asking for one but could not finish it in time. As a reward for finishing their adventure, Bubble has made them a feast for them to feel more like they're at home. Pomni, still in awe and disbelief from today, stares blankly in shock before cracking a broken smile as she sits on the dinner table with the rest. The shot zooms out of the tent into the void and beyond, before finally reaching the old computer that Pomni had seen before.
The Amazing Digital Circus pilot has examples of:
- Accidental Hero: Pomni finds Caine like Ragatha told her to do, and he indeed fixes everything, but only because Pomni alerted him when she stumbled into the Void. She was otherwise trying to escape the Circus and was ready to leave Ragatha to her fate again.
- All for Nothing: Caine set up the "Gather the Gloinks" adventure so Pomni could get settled into the status quo, but Ragatha decides to introduce her to Kaufmo, leaving Kinger and Gangle to do the adventure for them. Pomni never actually engages with the adventure, being more preoccupied with a rampaging Kaufmo, a glitching Ragatha, and the exit door. Zooble notes this after the Gloink Queen is defeated.Zooble: Wait, Pomni's not even here? Wasn't this whole thing for her?
- And Here He Comes Now: Jax casually replies to the Gloink Queen "I'm just here to hide from the-" right before the abstracted Kaufmo (who Jax was fleeing from earlier) crashes through the cave ceiling and onto the Gloink Queen.
- Bait-and-Switch: A bowling ball sends Kinger and Gangle rolling down a slide, and some bowling pins appear onscreen... only for the bowling ball to miss the pins, which Kinger and Gangle knock out instead (with Jax landing softly and kicking the last pin away).
- Bait the Dog: As Jax, Zooble, Gangle, and Kinger leave the Gloink Queen's domain, Jax lets Gangle go first, but then wonders why the heck he should do that and pushes her aside so he can enter the escalator.
- Big Ball of Violence: Happens when Zooble gets attacked and pulled apart by the gloinks.
- Dark Reprise: The ending of the Pilot has the last minute of the episode play a darker remix of the show's main theme that played at the beginning of the episode. This happens right after Pomni learns that the exit door she and Kaufmo were searching for was just a fake made by Caine and that Kaufmo "abstracted" over a false hope of escape before being put in the cellar of the circus by Caine. As the music plays over the other residents talking about how they can only feel the sensation of eating, the shot zooms in on Pomni until she and the others are all at the dinner table and she looks at the food. The very next shot shows the others conversing with each other as the camera zooms in on Pomni again with her now sporting a Broken Smile as she breaks down and finally realized that she wasn't dreaming and that she has entered a nightmarish experience.
- Disappointed by the Motive: Caine casually admits he was just hiding the exit door, despite it not working, because he was too proud to show an unfinished project. Pomni is clearly displeased that was why she got her hopes up.
- Downer Ending: Pomni ends up driving herself insane going through the labyrinth of exits, and upon realizing there is truly no way back to her old life, develops a crazed grin on her face as the pilot draws to a close. While Caine manages to patch up Ragatha, Kaufmo is just too far gone and is locked away with other abstracted creatures, who are most likely other performers who also "abstracted" in their desperate desire to escape.
- Epic Fail: When the Gloinks carry Zooble's head to feed it to their queen, Kinger comes to their help by attempting to grab it. It results in Kinger's hands being simply taken along, and the Gloink Queen eats Zooble while they curse at Kinger.
- Everyone Has Standards: Caine can only stare in disgusted awe at Bubble licking Pomni's vomit off the floor.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: If one looks closely, in the hallway on the way to Kaufmo's room, the doors have icons of avatars we haven't seen who have been crossed out. It isn't until the characters enter Kaufmo's room a little while later that we find out why. Likewise, Ragatha's explanation to Pomni on why no one attempts to escape during said walk is given complete context upon opening the door.
- Flash Step: Caine's teleportation (as the thumbnail above shows) looks and feels like this, as Pomni's rolling eyes show every time he stops.
- Foreshadowing: Kaufmo only appears as a cardboard cutout in the opening, which promptly falls over before a disclaimer states he "did not show up today." It's the first hint that something is not right with the clown.
- Hope Is Scary: Hope to escape from the circus only has negative consequences. Ragatha says the idea is just an unobtainable goal that will lead to ruin, Kaufmo proving her point by getting abstracted from thinking Caine is hiding an exit. Pomni searching for it causes her to abandon an injured Ragatha and discover it isn't real, making her fate that much more painful to face.
- In the Dreaming Stage of Grief: Pomni initially believes her entry to the Circus is a dream. Despite Jax reminding her multiple times that this is not the case, she still hopelessly tries to believe it. Needless to say, once she fully realizes it's all real and that she's actually trapped likely forever, she doesn't take it very well.
- Letting the Air out of the Band: This is done in the first few seconds of the episode when Pomni bumps into the gang, triggering the theme tune to slow down to a halt.
- Nice Mean And In Between: When Pomni asks how to leave the circus, Ragatha searches her words to tell her she can't leave, Jax interrupts to say it to her face to drive her insane, and Zooble scolds him before bluntly telling Pomni that the game is her new home because at this point, honesty is the best way to preserve her fragile mind.
- Ninja Prop: After Jax kicks away the last standing bowling pin, a sign with the words "SPARE" floats above where the pins once stood. Jax returns to snap the sign in half on his knee.
- Rewatch Bonus: Knowing Kaufmo's ultimate fate, you'll notice the audio glitch in one of Ragatha's lines concealed a Last-Second Word Swap.Ragatha: [Caine] can fix me up and fi—take care of Kaufmo.
- Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: None of the performers (not even the four who actually took part to the adventure) did anything of note against the Gloink Queen (the abstracted Kaufmo was the one who beat her up after falling on top of her through the ceiling). Nonetheless, Caine rewards them with a "delicious digital feast" for defeating her. Gangle lampshades it when Jax says the adventure made him hungry.
