#then I'm exclusively posting Jax content

[alichan-the-witch]

*sigh*... I guess this is my life now

[aquamarine-oceanfront]

Details about the Amazing Digital Circus pop-up shop in Japan (and the exclusive premiere of episode 2 associated with it)

This post's title kind of sums up the basics, but here's some background: in early March of this year, a Japanese company called InfoLens entered a licensing agreement with Glitch Productions to sell products based on The Amazing Digital Circus. The same press release also announced that they would open a pop-up store in Tokyo, which would operate from April 26th to May 12th. (If I'm not mistaken, InfoLens seems to specialize in these sorts of agreements - they've made similar deals and pop-up shops for everything from Apex Legends to Garten of Banban.) Around this time, they also started up an official Japanese Twitter account devoted to the series.

Close to a month later, they would announce more details about the shop, including what goods they would sell (a mixture of existing merchandise from Glitch's online store and newly-made ones) and plans for a second location in Osaka (running June 7-23). This also coincided with the first time Glitch Productions' main Twitter account publicly acknowledged any of this (as far as I know).

Not long after this came another announcement: they would be holding a raffle where the winners would attend the world premiere of the series' second episode on April 25th, the day before the Tokyo store opened to the public.

So how'd all this pan out? I'll elaborate below the jump, but here's a picture to set the scene:

(Source: Reika Ō, Japanese VA for Gangle and Zooble)

To start with, the Pop-Up Store itself has a number of things aside from merchandise - like the life-size Pomni statue seen above. (The design was the work of Zachary Preciado - it bears a resemblance to her AniMatez figure.)

There's also a corner decorated to look like Kaufmo's room, with a Ragatha (and, at least sometimes, Jax) cutout & oversized die (for sitting on). I believe it's meant to be used for photographs.

(Sources, from left to right: IshiiNaki and the official Japanese Amazing Digital Circus Twitter account)

Other decorations include curtains, TVs displaying promotional clips (seemingly just existing ones on Glitch's YouTube channel), a floating inflatable replica of Bubble, an equally inflatable kiddie pool holding a whole bunch of plushies for sale, and some giant pseudo-toy blocks. The following pictures collectively show all of these:

(Sources, from left to right: Soichiro Sugawara - Japanese VA of Caine & Jax - Shiori Honma - Japanese VA of Ragatha - and Columbo-san Games)

Also, while I'm not currently aware of any recordings of this, according to Arran (Pomni's Japanese VA), the store plays specially-recorded audio of Pomni and Caine. She also mentions "treasured materials" (秘蔵資料) as another point of interest, which segues into my next topic:

(Sources, from top to bottom: Reika Ō, Columbo-san Games again, Glitch Productions, and Shiori Honma)

Several photographs have a glass display in the background. Thus far, I haven't seen any closer pictures of it - given that there appears to be a "no photography/video recording" placard nearby, that'd explain why. The actual contents aren't especially clear - there's a picture of the main cast doing their bind poses at the back of the case, but the sheets of paper(?) underneath look like they could be concept art or something similar. I'm not sure. Hopefully this gets released later down the line.

With all that said, what about the advance screening? Well, as seen in Glitch's photos of the event, Kevin and Luke made a surprise appearance in person to talk about the series. While the attendees have been told not to reveal anything about the new episode until its wider release on May 3rd, one of them took notes on the experience as a personal reminder and revealed some interesting tidbits in the process. I'm not the best at Japanese, but here's my rough, sometimes rather loose translation of what they wrote:

★ The episode, as well as the announcements before and after it, were dubbed in Japanese. Furthermore, the announcement before the screening was recorded specifically for the occasion. Pretty wild.¹ ∙ Before the show: Caine + Pomni ∙ After the show: Jax ("Good to know it was just a dream"² - this elicited shrieks in the venue) ★ Before the main event began, they played the existing promo videos on a loop in both English & Japanese. ★ I expected the audience to be overwhelmingly female, but in reality there were quite a lot of men in attendance, too. ★ Kevin (the CEO) and Luke frequently said things in Japanese, like "arigatō (thank you)" and "surimasen (excuse me)." The one that made me laugh the most was Kevin saying "…Sō desu ne (Yes, indeed)… (thoughtful)" ★ The reason they held the screening in Japan was twofold: they wanted to help spread Western animation to the country & they simply love Japan. ★ Episode 2 really is good, but my brain hasn't fully processed it right now, so it's better not to get your hopes too high.³ 🥲✨✊

¹ Originally "やば" (yaba), which appears to be a variant of "やばい" (yabai). This word can mean many different things - literally "terrible" or "very bad," but also used as slang for "great" or "far-out" - and I felt that "wild" was a reasonably apt choice for this context. ² Another attendee's comments on Twitter reference this quote as well. ³ To be absolutely clear: this appears to be a warning against unreasonably high expectations (since the OP hadn't quite digested the episode at the time of writing), not discouraging getting hyped to any degree.

Another attendee had a shorter account of the experience, summed up in two tweets. (Again, please forgive me if there are any errors in these translations!)

I was chosen and went to the advance screening…! I definitely didn't expect there to be specially-recorded voice work and art (to remind people of their manners) before the show… Especially Jax's closing remarks: "'You all can leave through the exit. Ah, [but] that's none of my business." It was way too crazy, hearing the voices of the agonized nerds in the venue. It was great lol Two producers made a surprise trip to Japan and took part in a Q&A session. They said that Popee the Performer was one of the show's influences!

(It's worth noting that Gooseworx herself has mentioned Popee as an influence in the past before, specifically saying Jax and Gangle were respectively inspired by Popee and Kedamono - though, in both cases, she also mentioned that there was more to her characters than just resembling the latter two.)

To finish this post off, here's a couple more images (both posted on Twitter by Shiori Honma) I wanted to share:

Honma posts with her character's standee.

All five of the Japanese dub's primary voice actors, together with Pomni. (If I'm not mistaken, the tweet's text says none of them knew in advance that the screening of episode 2 would be in Japanese.)

[oramafau]

My project - overview

Hey guys! I think it's about time I say a little more about my project. I'd like to study the influence of Tiktok as a mediation tool. 

I’ve been following and diving into Jax’s use of the app, noticing use of trends and use of initiated trends and other phenomena that can arise. 

Jax was first known through her participation in American Idol. Following this, she released a couple of songs, but she never went on the charts and her audience was very little. I don’t think I’m going to talk about her past because I’m focusing on her use of TikTok. And it's only showing that she has had exposure implying a potential existence of an audience. I could compare her mediation process, back then but I don’t think her time on American Idol is relevant. 

How is Jax using TikTok to promote her music? How is being a full-time artist through Tiktok different from regular artist?

hopefully, my inquiry line makes sens.. if not, please hit me up..

Since I'm talking about her use of TikTok, it's only logical that I keep my timeframe from 2020 to 2022 (today)

Primary sources: 

Her TikTok account, 

Youtube account (which doesn’t have much more content as TikTok is her main tool of mediation)

Since lockdown, and the pandemic, she has been posting, as I categorized it, 3 types of videos on Tiktok:

original compositions on diverse (personal) subjects

parodies of hits: Adele songs, Olivia Rodrigo’s song, … (changing lyrics usually as answer, or extension of the original songs meant to make people laugh)

Promotion to her release: Victoria’s Secret which wen on the 100 Billboard chart this year. 

I’ll also dive into her interviews I can find and the ones published on youtube or any other platforms, like the following: 

Jax Talks Victoria’s Secret, Battling Cancer & TikTok (JaxWritesSongs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07ysYP9rhw8&t=2342s

she talks about her use of social media and how she tries to get a bigger audience and tries to be constant in her posts

Jax Exclusive Interview : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTeejBufdqc

she talks about the musical choices of the writing of Victoria’s Secret

Secondary sources:

I have 3. I hesitated too much, so I'd like to study them more deeply to see which I may or may not discard.

Parodies for a pandemic: coronavirus songs, creativity and lockdown, by Stratton I found on Humanities International Complete. The author talks about the phenomenon of remixing and, editing and the remaking of existing songs and define a new role for the audience to also be creator content instead of being passive listeners. I would add, that it is also a promotion for new artist aside their production. Jax draws the audience to her with the parodic songs she makes. 

“TikTok 'has given new artists a chance’” article

“Something we should look at in the future is how we can fully reflect the creations and the time spent on the platform from users in making videos.”

https://pudding.cool/2022/07/tiktok-story/

This website display information on an investigation of new artists at the beginning of Tiktok and studies whether they signed with record labels if they had only one hit if they became very famous afterward. It is a quantitative study of new artists and their interpretation of the numbers. 

Thank you!

Keep up the good work!