English Dub Season Review: My Two Cents

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Zero (Zerocalcare) and Wild Boar (Valerio Mastandrea) are trying to manage a small business while dealing with increasingly complicated personal lives.  The return of a figure from Zero’s past forces them all to confront difficult choices.

Our Take:

Life as an adult can be a challenge if one is not fully prepared for what lies ahead.  But with friends by their side, especially a giant armadillo-like creature, it can also be one heck of an adventure.  This sums up the Netflix animated comedy-drama series “Tear Along the Dotted Line,” created by Italian cartoonist Zerocalcare, which depicts a fictionalized version of himself as he navigates the complexities of adulthood.  Oh, and he also has an armadillo buddy who acts as his conscience.  The series was well-received for its animation, humor, and coming-of-age tropes, resulting in it spawning a second series two years later with the same characters, titled “This World Can’t Tear Me Down”, which received similar praise.  Three years later, Zero and his friends returned once more with another installment of the “Zerocalcare’s adulthood” trilogy, this time dealing with more of life’s biggest problems.  This includes helping his friend, Wild Boar, escape from the massive debt he’s in and dealing with a girl from his past staying at his place.

Now, allow me to get something off my chest.  I had not watched the previous two shows by Zerocalcare before watching My Two Cents.  They haven’t really caught my attention that much until I heard there was another series based on those characters on the streaming service.  I know that plenty of fans of Zerocalcare’s previous shows are left flabbergasted by this truth right about now, but they didn’t just catch my interest as other animated shows on Netflix.  Upon viewing My Two Cents, I was concerned that I would be lost about what’s going on with the characters and tone without watching the previous installments first.  Fortunately, that doesn’t appear to be the case, as it offered just enough information about the concept that I needed without watching Zerocalcare’s first two shows beforehand.  But does it also provide some entertainment and wit in the process?  That’s the only question worth answering when it comes to shows like this, and that answer is a surprising yes.

If you’ve watched the previous two shows, you’ll immediately realize how My Two Cents functions in its tone, coming-of-age tropes, and humor.  Right off the bat, I was treated to Zero’s crazy imagination running wild amid his confrontations with adulthood, ranging from his imitations of people around him to rapid-fire gags conceived as literal metaphors, fourth wall breaks, and pop culture references.  Every part of the show has been thrown at me left and right without taking a single moment to slow down and smell the flowers.  Some may see it as another standard adult animated sitcom that focuses more on R-rated humor and sexual references to generate laughs or carry a plot.  However, it’s actually a series that balances its icky, relentless comedy with mature themes of domestic violence and toxic relationships, a blend most adult animated shows struggle to achieve.  What we got is a fast-paced merry-go-round we call life that I didn’t want to get off.  

It also helped that the jokes presented were surprisingly funny and somehow relatable, even if most of the gags dragged on a bit too long.  A couple of episodes in the eight-episode structure ran the usual 24 minutes, but others lasted for around 35 to 50 minutes, with most of the time spent on their overlong stand-up-like gags.  Some of them are lucky enough to be amusingly charismatic and well-portrayed through visuals and references, but others made me want them to go straight to the point already.  Besides that, these jokes, whether overlong or short, were carried by Zerocalcare’s diverting, intentionally corny vocal performance and the show’s animation style.  The presentation easily resembles a graphic novel coming to life, giving the animators a clear advantage of going all out with its visuals, cartoony designs, various styles, and adult humor.  At the same time, it provided some decent shading and lighting effects to prevent it from looking overly cheap and stale.

I was a tad worried that my lack of experience with Zerocalcare’s previous adult-animated misadventures would leave me lost in his latest chapter, My Two Cents.  But here’s my two cents: I was surprised by how accessible and even entertaining it was.  You can go into this show blind and still feel satisfied with the journey and the life’s bizarre yet heartfelt challenges it presents.  It’s a fast-paced, humorous, and consistently enjoyable continuation of Zero’s coming-of-age misadventures that’s as weirdly charismatic as his imagination.  Most of the metaphorical jokes overstayed their welcome a bit despite the show’s swiftness and tone, but they’re charmingly witty enough to excuse Zero’s over-explanations of his encounters.  As a part of Zero’s multi-series epic, My Two Cents is a suitable continuation that’ll likely satisfy fans of the cartoonist’s surreal mind.  As its own show, it’s a diverting and surprisingly accessible series that follows the usual adult animation standards but adds enough heart and wit to its themes to make this hectic life bearable.