Draft:Pomni

In the first episode, Pomni is trapped in The Amazing Digital Circus, meeting other humans who have been trapped in the circus. Pomni ends up forgetting her name, but Caine, the circus' artificial intelligence ringleader, decides to help and name her "Pomni". She asks for a way out of the circus and thinks she's dreaming.^[7][8] Caine sets up an introductory adventure for Pomni but Jax brings her with him to check up on Kaufmo alongside Ragatha only to find him abstracted which leads him to run away. When Ragatha ends up being left at a glitched state by Kaufmo, Ragatha asks Pomni to ask Caine for help, she agrees, but upon seeing the exit door, ignores Ragatha's plea and tries to escape the circus, she passes through several doors until she reaches the digital void that alerts Caine and rescues her from there and fixes Ragatha.^[8] Afterwards, Caine has Pomni and the group eat the food from the circus, which makes Pomni realise that she is not dreaming and is in reality, stuck in the circus.^[8]

In the second episode, the day after Pomni's arrival, Pomni has a nightmare about being abstracted much to the pleasure of Caine, Jax and Ragatha. Ragatha wakes up her up and checks on her, explaining she doesn't hold anything against Pomni from leaving her behind due her understanding of Pomni's severe mental state and tells her to get ready for the Caine's latest adventure. Pomni and the group are sent towards a new adventure called Candy Canyon Kingdom.^[7] Upon attempting to hunt down the three bandits NPCs to retrieve the stolen maple syrup, Jax throws Pomni above the group's syrup tanker which leads to Pomni and one of the bandits: Gummigoo to be ejected by a collision detection glitch into the map's out-of-bounds asset storage.^[9]

She spots Gummigoo in an existential crisis upon seeing his model in T-Pose, not remembering his mother and figures out he's a NPC from Pomni. Relating to Gummigoo over his own experience of feeling like he's nothing, Pomni convinces him to join her in the circus to find new meaning in his life.^[9] Pomni invites him to live with the group in the Digital Circus, The two return to the map by performing another collision glitch with a replica syrup tanker. Upon Gummigoo's arrival to the circus, Caine suddenly erases him from the Digital Circus map, prompting Pomni to be distraught.^[9] Pomni is invited by the group to watch Kaufmo's funeral and upon seeing everyone talking about how important he was, Pomni begins to smile at the group's mourning over Kaufmo as she realises that the group does care about her.^[7][9]

Afterwards, Pomni becomes more open to people but is still cynical and shy. In episode three, Pomni and her group goes to Mildenhall Manor, where Kinger ends up pulling her into the adult-rated section of the game, embarking on a mission to return there, following the recorded messages and trying to get rid of a creature that, after being shot, turns out to be an angel, and is condemned to be dragged to hell.^[10] Pomni, angry and anxious, tries to run through the corridor where thousands of spirits were passing by. As she passes by, she ends up being sucked in and becoming demonic, but thanks to Kinger, he saves her by punching her with a shotgun. Pomni speaks out her hatred for Caine's adventures and cries after Kinger insists on taking a break from escaping. Kinger comforts her and tells her of his wife's abstraction.^[10] He advises Pomni to value the people and memories in the circus, Pomni and Kinger resume their attempt to leave hell where Kinger tells her to hold her breath to avoid being possessed, she obliges and manages leave the place together.^[10] She apologizes to Ragatha for not being thankful of her worrying about her safety.^[10]

In the fourth episode, Caine sends the group to a fast food restaurant themed adventure at Spudsy's, a burger joint. Pomni works as a cashier with Gangle in charge of the joint as a shift manager.^[11] Gummigoo shows up to Spudsy's as a customer and Pomni delighted to see him alive, she attempts have a conversation with him, but he appears as an NPC with no memory.^[11] Jax briefly interacts with Pomni and asks about her day in the restaurant in polite tone which surprises and confuses her. She tells him that the day is going fine while Jax tells her how awful the adventure is, then Gangle calls Jax to help her out and Jax leaves while politely saying "see you later" to Pomni, further confusing her. Later, upon witnessing Gangle going through a mental breakdown while taking out the rubbish, Pomni asks Gangle to open up about her problems, only for Gangle to pretend she's okay. Later, Pomni notices Gangle's mental state worsening and takes her place to watch the restaurant close.^[11]

In episode five, Pomni and the group return from an unknown adventure, Ragatha attempts to cheer up her only for it to fail, Jax comments how she must be tired of Ragatha's constant positivity.^{[‡ 4]} Caine sends the group to a lightning round of brief adventures to find out what the group likes within an adventure.^{[‡ 4]} In one of Jax's suggestions, Pomni becomes a president and is tasked to detonate a bomb from New Zealand due to an ongoing war between Australia and New Zealand.^{[‡ 4]} During a stargazing adventure, Pomni is ecstatic to be able to finally rest for the first time since she arrived in the circus, Jax refrains from his usual bullying of Pomni, he asks her if Gangle is truly happy and vents over Ragatha's extreme positivity after Ragatha remarks over Jax's lack of friends, Pomni is delighted to see a more softer side of Jax and starts to bond with him.^{[‡ 4]}

In the noir adventure at a bar, Pomni reveals to the group that she worked as an accountant at a supermarket chain and that she ended up in the circus due to getting bored from her job, she would seek mild thrills like exploring abandoned buildings and posting videos about it on Youtube with little viewership.^{[‡ 4]} Jax apologies to Pomni for stressing her during the president adventure, explaining he did it as a joke.^{[‡ 4]} Pomni accepts his apology and Jax befriends Pomni much to Ragatha's determent.^{[‡ 4]} During the softball game, she tells Ragatha that it's fine to be a jerk sometimes and allows her to play in her place only for her team to abruptly win, before the adventure ends, Pomni sees Jax violently bite Evil Jax and laughs to the displeasure of Ragatha.^{[‡ 4]} After they return to the circus, Jax shows Pomni something that's unknown to the audience.^{[‡ 4]}

In episode six, Caine setups a gun adventure where the group is separated into teams of two with the goal of shooting each other's team till one team remains.^[12] Pomni teams up with Jax but tells Jax, she'll be the one giving guns to Jax for him to shoot everyone since she doesn't want to hurt her friends.^{[‡ 5]} Jax convinces Pomni to have the confidence to shoot her her opposing teammates to release all the anger since her arrival to the circus, he tells her about his world view of treating the group of being cartoon characters following their archetypes, with him declaring himself as the "funny" one.^{[‡ 5]} Pomni responds by proclaiming that her archetype for the adventure is the "evil" one. Pomni and Jax manage to eliminate all of the opposing teammates besides Zooble, during this period, they start to bond further with Pomni enjoys being able to be chaotic and having fun with the adventure as well as learning more about Jax.^{[‡ 5]} They sing Daisy Bell to annoy Zooble, but get attacked by fury of gun shots by Zooble reducing the two to one health point, Pomni and Jax eliminate Zooble from the adventure which leads to their victory.^[13]

Pomni hugs Jax in celebration only for him to push her away, Pomni jokingly decides to betray Jax by pointing her gun to him only for him to request her to shoot him, Pomni asks if they'll still be friends, if she shoots him.^{[‡ 5]} Jax lies about them never being friends and the two argue about the matter, after noticing how upset Pomni is, he attempts to play it as a joke only for Pomni to suddenly fight Jax to out of anger.^{[‡ 5]} She questions why Jax didn't fight back, she figures out and tells Jax that he's pushing her away from him due to him being scared of being close to people, Jax snaps and tells her that he does not care for her or anyone in the circus but ends up swearing and kicking a Rubix's Cube out of frustration and regret, he leaves before telling her to leave him alone, claiming that there's nothing more to him.^{[‡ 5]} Later, Pomni and Ragatha meet up at Caine's award show and agree to talk to each other after the show.^{[‡ 5]} Pomni notices Jax isn't at his seat next to them and thinks about looking for him only for Jax to show up, smiling as he goes to his seat far away from Pomni.^{[‡ 5]}

In episode seven, Pomni and the group go to a beach themed adventure where they are seen enjoying themselves besides Jax.^[14] Later, Pomni, Ragatha and Abel go to Jax's room to get his bucket of miscellaneous keys since they believe Abel (a human with an appearance of a NPC mannequin that has hidden from Caine) found an escape from the circus. Jax gives the group, the keys to attempt to open the door to the chinese room for Abel to explain his plan to the group but before he could go back to his room, Pomni convinces Jax to join their efforts to escape.^{[‡ 6]} Abel gets the group together with the exception of Kinger to further discuss his plans and selects Jax to get the hidden key from Caine. Pomni, Ragatha and Abel walk towards the administrator zone, where the two women discuss their trust in Kinger with Pomni suggests he knows more than he lets on while Ragatha suspects Abel's tendency to avoid Kinger.^{[‡ 6]} Jax returns to the group with the keycard, Pomni hands out then distributes administrator passes to each member, Abel launches everyone to the entrance of Caine's office, Jax is hesitant to join but Pomni reassures him that everything will be okay and before her turn, she asks how Abel will follow, only for him to reveal that he isn't coming. He leaves her with a cryptic final instruction to "make the right choice".^{[‡ 6]}

Pomni and the group hold hands in a line, walking towards the console room and preparing to leave the circus. She offers Jax, her hand only for him to refuse.^{[‡ 6]} Upon reaching the console room, they see a large screen with two buttons on a console.^{[‡ 6]} The screen displays a message saying that if they press the red button, the console will close and they will remain in the circus, whereas the blue button will end the game and disconnect the circus members.^{[‡ 6]} She questions the validity of situation and asks Kinger for help on which button to press.^{[‡ 6]} Zooble argues with Pomni, panicking that Caine might appear any moment while Pomni is worried that it could be a trap.^{[‡ 6]} Jax upon suffering a severe panic attack, haunted by memories of his life prior to the circus, sprints to slam the red button.^[14] Caine shows up to congratulate the group for choosing the "good ending", he reveals the whole escape was scripted and that Able is a NPC.^{[‡ 6]} Jax accuses of Caine of lying about the ability to not being able to control the group's minds, Pomni mentions about them not knowing their real names and Kinger mentions Scratch, the first person to abstract upon Caine explaining he only adds temporary modifiers to make things interesting, and that if he did any more, it "would not end well".^{[‡ 6]} Caine starts to get nervous and leaves the group silent and outraged.^{[‡ 6]}

Reception and Cultural impact

Pomni's character was received positively

Following the premiere of The Amazing Digital Circus, Pomni has become a widespread internet phenomenon, with notable amounts of fan creations and memes.^[21][22] One of the most notable memes is the "Pomni Dread Zoom‑In" meme: the final scene of the pilot, in which the camera zooms into Pomni's increasingly anxious expression, rapidly became a viral caption‑meme format across social media.^[21][22] Costumes of Pomni was considered to be one of most popular and trending costumes for Halloween alongside Jax and Caine in 2024.^[23][24][25] Pomni is the main protagonist of a manga adaptation of The Amazing Digital Circus, serialised in CoroCoro Comic and CoroCoro Ichiban! [jp] starting October 21, 2024.^[26][27][28] Pomni is one of four playable characters in a 2025 racing web game titled Glitch Karts alongside a crossover between characters from other Glitch Production characters: Uzi from Murder Drones and Gwen from Knights of Guinevere.^[29][30]

Pomni is often likened to Kobeni Higashiyama, a character from Chainsaw Man due to perceived similarities in their anxious and distressed personalities.^[31][32] This parallel has led to a notable amount of crossover fan art featuring the characters paired together.^[31][32]