There’s a famous theory in the Amazing Digital Circus lore, a dark theory that twists the story of this dark animated series even more.
Jax is a liar.
An NPC character designed to accomplish the purpose of torturing the people who are trapped in this virtual hell. Is designed for that?
There are plenty of hints that lead the community to this strong hypothesis.
Like the ability that Jax has to be somewhat immune to the laws of physics, his desire to eat (even though, as Kinger, one of the main characters of the film, points out, is not a need for the human player to eat or sleep), and most important and evident, his way of abusing physical, verbally and psychologically in the others character.
But I have a theory that goes beyond Jax being a mischievous NPC, designed by Caine for torturing others. A theory that changes the hierarchy between that hypothesis, one that puts Jax as the mastermind behind all, and I have evidence. So let’s do the trial for Jax, and you will be the jury to decide if he’s innocent…or guilty.
Caine is not the boss.
Before going to Jax, let’s discuss our favorite character, Caine. At first glance, Caine is the main antagonist of the series; he can control everything, and he’s irresponsible and somewhat cruel; remember how he disintegrated Gumigoo, but we need to remember that he’s always following his code; there are a few times that we can see that there’s something wrong with the code of Caine and even the structure of the world.
In the first episode’s intro, we can clearly see that when the song says, “Day after, day after, day after…” it glitches. Also, a little while after that, Caine explains everything they can do to Ponmi and crashes for a few seconds because the data is corrupted.
That suggests that the primary goal of Caine’s IA has been altered, not by a human but by another IA.
Also, when Ponmi asks how to leave, Caine is about to tell her, like part of his program needs to obey the question and help her to take her out of the simulation, but suddenly, it gets quiet, and there’s another crash, so he’s unable to continue that dialogue.
Also, when Ponmi insists on the exit door, he gets very anxious and insists that she may be experiencing virtual hallucinations.
Caine is not strictly evil; he helps the characters multiple times from danger, and he doesn’t kill any player, never; when a character gets corrupted, he moves them to a safe location, where they can be more relaxed (as we were shown in the third episode with Queenie, the wife of Kinger).
Caine’s goal is to entertain the characters with his multiple adventures. In the third episode, we have an intriguing dialogue in Caine’s psychological therapy, which succeeds more intriguingly.
When he realizes no one likes his adventures, he gets anxious and even glitches the whole scenario.
We can see that sometimes Caine’s programming fails, showing erratic glitchy reactions that seem more like code errors than a psychological breakdown.
To conclude with Caine, I will point out a phrase he said in the third episode. He tells us explicitly that he’s not the one in charge but changes his mind quickly.
Caine: How should I know? I’m not the boss. Oh, wait, yes, I am! HAHAHAHAHAHA! Anyways…
Is this a slip? Maybe he is foreshadowing that he’s not the actual ruler of the world, that he’s under the control of someone else?
Let’s go to the next point; everything will make more sense.
Jax and Kinger.
As we said in another post, Kinger is most likely to be a developer (or even the main developer) of the Digital Circus. I’m not going into that in this post, but you can check the theory of Kinger being more than it’s shown and how he’s an important piece of this puzzle here.
Kinger and Jax have this strange relationship. Well, Jax has this aggressive treatment with everyone, but with Kinger, it is different. He enjoys seeing Kinger as an unfortunate, crazy person. And mocks him every time he has the chance; in the first episode, he attacks Kinger directly several times, not only verbally, stating that no one can trust Kinger for nothing or even feeling happy about his madness, but in the last episode, he gets angry when Ponmi told him that being with Kinger in the cellar and talking with him was not that bad.
Maybe Jax knows that Kinger recovers his memories in darkness, wants to know what Kinger told Ponmi, and gets angry because he hates it when Kinger regains his lucidity. But why?
And here’s the big crazy part of the theory
What did Jax do?
From this point to the end, I will be theorizing, being a little bit creative, and following my ideas with things that I recognize as possible clues. I may be wrong when we all discover the truth, but I am confident with the proof.
Jax assaulted Caine’s program. But why? If Jax is really an NPC, he has code, and maybe his code had an error, and that’s why he’s like that.
If you are creating a virtual world for people to enjoy and play in, you can add a few NPCs that follow you and help you understand the environment.
Caine is programmed to introduce and create the adventures; we know that. But what about Jax’s role? If he’s an NPC. He enjoys adventures a lot, which gives me the idea that he was programmed to be a companion. Just like he does in the series, Jax plays the role of the cool side character who helps you beat levels and explore the world with you.
But what happened when people finished their session on the game? Jax was utterly alone and bored. He can’t follow his role because there are no players to accompany him, and Caine doesn’t recognize him as a player, so it’s not going to create new adventures for him, which is not his directive.
So, what’s the solution to his problem? Change the code. How? We can see that Jax has access to all the circus rooms. Jax has keys for everything, like an admin program, so he could modify Caine from the inside and trap Kinger and Queenie once they were testing the game.
Kinger is the King because he’s the creator, the legitimate King of the Digital World, a powerful entity that knows all the details of the code, as we could see before, and has a deep understanding of all the features that build the world.
A figure like this threatens Jax because he’s incapable of being ahead of Kinger forever, so what did he do? Make Kinger unuseful, how? Pushing Queenie to corruption, and like chess, without the Queen, the King loses half of his power or the whole match.
Kaufmo could be pushed by Jax, too; remember that when Ponmi talks about the exit door at the beginning of the series, Jax always denies its existence.
Jax is more than a regular NPC. He’s the reason Kinger is crazy, the reason for Caine’s glitches, and the torturer of the whole crew. He always enjoys the adventures not as a side character but as the real antagonist.
Jax is…guilty. alledgedly.
If you want to know more about this topic, support me with a comment and a share. That will help me a lot in continuing to produce this kind of content..
Also, I will post more theory articles here about The Amazing Digital Circus, like this one that we have explaining the hidden truth of Kinger.
And the possible creation of Two-Face in the new movie Joker 2. Have a nice day or night, and thank you for Reading!
The Third Episode Of The Amazing Digital Circus is out, and you can watch it on YouTube or Netflix.
Special Thanks!
Also, I wanted to give a shout-out to The Smg4 Wiki for making the transcription of the episodes.
And to the Film Theories for providing the basis for this theory, with their episode of Jax being an NPC.
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