A character page for the characters from Tear Along the Dotted Line and its follow-up This World Can't Tear Me Down.
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Main characters:
Zerocalcare
Michele Rech "Zerocalcare"
Voiced by: Zerocalcare
Zerocalcare, pen name of Michele Rech, is an anxious and socially awkward cartoonist from Rome who reflects on his path in life and a would-be love as he travels outside the city with his friends Sarah and Secco and his armadillo-for-a-conscience.
- Acting for Two: Utilized In-Universe to establish that he sees the world as all about him. Rech voices everyone except for the Armadillo, and other international editions also have two people, or even just one actor, voicing everyone. The second half of the final episode suddenly averts this, with Sarah, Secco, Alice and her parents getting different voice actors. A clever way to show that they're based on real people and not just cartoon caricatures, meaning that Zero finally understands that people are more complex than the image he has of them and that he needs to get outside of his own head - also represented by the Armadillo momentarily leaving him.
- Baldness Angst: He has a receding hairline and clearly minds it since he thinks that "You're losing hair, you're starting to look like your father" is one of the evilest things a person could ever say.
- Berserk Button: If he's worrying he'll miss a flight or a train, do not tell him you can "still make it": all that will do is make him go from agitated to pissed that you would dismiss "Carmen's curse" so arrogantly.
- Big Ol' Eyebrows: Unlike his real life counterpart, he has bushy eyebrows. Hilariously, in one scene depicting him as an Animated actor, it turns out said eyebrows are painted on.
- Blank White Eyes: His eyes go completely white whenever something shocks him.
- Cannot Spit It Out: The ultimate cause of everything bad in Zero's life and beyond.
- Zero lives a cheerful, friendly relationship with Alice. He's able to be somewhat affectionate only by text messages, and even so he goes to great lenghts to avoid spilling his true feelings. In the end it becomes his greatest regret.
- Also Zero is shown unable to tell everyone else what's hurting him, hiding his feeling on a goofy facade. His own antropomorphic consciousness (a talking Armadillo) goes so far to make him admit he has problems, but telling him he doesn't have to voice them to other people if he doesn't want to.
- Character Catch Phrase: "È andata così" ("It was bound to happen").
- Classical Anti-Hero: Zero is plagued with self-doubt, anxiety and Guilt Complex, even to the point he follows the logic of an egomaniac in thinking he's the cause of everyone's troubles and everything happens due to him.
- Crazy-Prepared: He’s willing to go to an airport 3 hours before the check-in to make sure nothing bad will happen to him, as he's paranoid he'll become a Doom Magnet and potentially lose the flight because of a "curse" a romani classmate, Carmen, "placed on him" back in elementary school.
- Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of The Protagonist itself, no less! Zero's the narrator of both series, which are told from his perspective, yet a lesson he has to learn is that he is not the centre of the world like protagonists are in actual fictional stories. At the end of Tear Along the Dotted Line Sara has to reiterate to him that same "one blade in a field of grass" lesson she taught him as a kid when Zero still believes he has so much influence over the lives and decisions of others that he blames himself for Alice's suicide, which was actually the result of plenty of factors in her life piling up and overwhelming her. He ends the series having learned that everyone is the protagonist of their own lives, making their own decisions due to a lot of ups and downs they go through. In This World Can't Tear Me Down, Secco even tells Zero that everyone around him has enough stuff going on in their lives to fill a whole comic series with each.
- The deconstruction is explored a step further at the end of This World Can't Tear Me Down where Zero joins a street-fight against the Nazi to defend the immigrants in the centre like some Big Damn Hero...but later finds out that said immigrants were very much capable of defending themselves and fighting back if things got way out of hand. Zero proceeds to look at his teammates, a bunch of regular folk with only a few paper bombs as weaponry, and sees how the immigrants wouldn't really see them as a cavalry of knights in shining armour.
- Everybody Hates Mathematics: He at first subverted this and loved it back in elementary school, as he actually was good at it...but then came divisions and it all spiraled down for him.
- Four-Philosophy Ensemble: The Cynic, as he's generally very pessimistic and anxious, has many worries and has trouble facing others' feelings.
- Growing Up Sucks: Zero is well in his thirties, yet he claims he mastered the art of dodging life, choosing to live as an awkward manchild because he feels unwilling to lose the simple life he managed to build for himself and fighting an universe of constant change. Eventually, he has to find a precarious equilibrium between change and status quo, learning a few lessons along the way
- Guilt Complex: A huge deal of Zero's mindset. Zero is shown as easy feeling guilt for basically everything to the point of of self-deprecation. Kid!Zero is shown beating himself up over bad grades, as he truly believes he failed his teachers causing them to suffer, Young Adult!Zero feels guilt wherever he fails to be a good example and an outstanding member of his community, and Adult!Zero actively blames himself for Alice's suicide. It takes the combined efforts of everyone of his friends to make him stop claiming It's All My Fault with every breath he has.
- Hollywood Atheist: Though it's not stated if he believes in a superior force or not, he states in the last episode he doesn't believe in the afterlife.
- Imagine Spot: He has several moments of these, using metaphors to describe his life in a specific situation, which makes sense since he’s a cartoonist.
- It's All About Me: Zero truly believes himself the center of everyone's else attention, going so far to shoulder everything bad happening around him and people he even barely knows. Sara eventually calls him out as she tells him that not everything that happens has a reason, and one mistake is not the end of the world.
- Madness Mantra: When he thinks he lost the train: “È andata così” (It was bound to happen). Sara shuts him off when she points out that they managed to get the train.
- My Greatest Failure: Even for the master of Martyr Complex, Zero believes there's a sin in his life that may never be forgiven: Alice's suicide, because he never confessed his feeling to her and, when Alice was at her lowest, he choose to avoid hearing her out and sent her away with a hug and some ice cream.
- The Night Owl: Most of the times he stays awake in the nights whether because he’s watching TV or he’s hanging out with his friends, giving him Exhausted Eye Bags.
- Self-Deprecation: He has a very low opinion of himself, thinking that everything that goes wrong is his fault only, even if it’s involved someone he barely knows.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: He has a very foul mouth and will somehow insert a cuss word in at least every two sentences.
- This Loser Is You: What makes Zero even more relatable to the audience is that he’s always put into unfortunate situations, such as breaking his car or being frozen by the train’s AC.
- Trash of the Titans: His house is so messy that the entire objects in it literally come to life and he even gives names to the various points of it in Game Of Thrones style.
- Trauma Conga Line: Played for Laughs. On his journey to Biella, Zero accidentally dropped his jeans in the WC of an unclean public bathroom, broke his car wheel and his hydraulic jack got stuck in the car, has a near mental breakdown because his friend Secco took too much time to go out of his house and freezes inside the train.
- The Unintelligible: At least from an Italian’s prospective, his Roman accent and dialect can be hard to understand. This is lampshaded by Sara in “This World Can’t Tear Me Down”, who thought that Zero’s biggest step would be an elocution school. When Zero denies that people ever complained about the way he talks, many real-life article title about how people say that his accent is too hard to understand during the first series suddenly pop out, covering the screen
Secco
Secco
Voiced by: Zerocalcare
Secco is one of Zero's best friends since elementary school. He's a simple person with a few pleasures in life, he looks awkward and apathetic but will still follow Zero no matter what.
- Bomb Throwing Anarchist: He has a passion for paper bombs and using them in streetfights. He outright claims bomb-throwing is a way for him to "express himself".
- Character Catch Phrase: "A me non me ne frega 'n cazzo. Annamo a pijà 'n gelato?" ("I don't give a shit. Shall we go get some ice cream?")
- Flanderization: He was a more well-rounded character in the comics, but since the animated series is only six episodes long and centered on Zero anyway, he was flanderized into an apathetic, useless slacker who only cares about ice cream (a trait that came up a couple times at best in the comics). Come This World Can't Tear Me Down and Secco starts becoming Truer To Text with some real Hidden Depths explored, including one profound speech!
- Flat Character: In the series he's only defined by his apathy and almost obsessive passion for ice cream, making him a main contributor in how Zero sees other people as less complex than they actually are. Then, this is subverted even for Secco, who shows Hidden Depths in This World Can't Tear Me Down and even a tragic backstory.
- Four-Philosophy Ensemble: The Apathetic, to absurd levels, since he doesn't give a fuck about anything and just wants to eat ice cream. Even at Alice's funeral, he proposes to go for some ice cream.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: He is a firm believer of this since he had his own shitty childhood of a Freudian Excuse yet never really harmed anyone for it. Therefore, if you use your shitty life as an excuse to bully those more unfortunate than you, Secco will see you as an asshole and nothing more.
- Hidden Depths: He may be an apathetic, unemployed sloth no-one has any real expectations for, and that's all he amounted to in Tear Along the Dotted Line, but then came This World Can't Tear Me Down:
- Shortly before they all set out to fight the Nazi, Secco actually has a deep speech you would expect from Sara rather than him: he explains that, while his life may be kinda lacking, everything he has he got all on his own, without leeching off anyone else and certainly not with help from his parents, who he lost at a young age. Therefore, he feels no sympathy at all for people like Cesare who feel entitled to punch down at others just because their own lives sucked.
- During the fight itself, Secco of all people turns out to be a One-Man Army who wipes the floor with several Nazis at startling speeds and even rescues Zero from a bunch of them ganging up on him. Zero points out this is the first time he saw Secco with what looked like lucidity in his eyes.
- The Load: Judging by his behavior in the cartoon, it's unclear why Zero and Sarah still want him to be around, as he's apathetic, insensitive and can't run on time to save his life. However, he is also undyingly loyal and can really get you out of a nasty situation by either bombing the place with a diversion or kick the shit out of your attackers.
- Meaningful Name: "Secco" is Italian for "dry", but also an informal way to say "skinny" in some regions like Lazio, fitting his slender frame.
- Perpetual Frowner: As a result of his constant apathy and lack of interest in anything.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Just like his best friend, if not even moreso somehow.
- Skewed Priorities: Here is a series of different situations: failing miserably at a maths test, running late for a train to get to a funeral, being at said funeral and fighting in a street war. What do all of these have in common? The fact that Secco, in all of these, will still be thinking only about getting some ice cream.
- The Slacker: He's never seen doing anything else than playing online poker and will get out of his house only to gossip, to fight or to go get some... Well, you know the rest already.
- Too Dumb to Fool: Zero may try using "Jedi mind tricks" on Secco such as lying to him that him and Sara are already at Secco's apartment complex to pick him up, when they're actually a good half-hour away, so that Secco will hurry up and actually be there to meet them in time. However, these stratagems are all for naught on Secco because he gives that little of a shit about punctuality.
- The Stoic: He must be the single easiest character to rig in the whole animation, considering how you can count the times his apathetic expression changes on the fingers of one hand.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Ice cream, duh. In particular, dark chocolate seems to be his favourite flavor.
- Undying Loyalty: To Zero, no matter how apathetic he is, he'll always follow him strictly. He is someone who, in general, will not change his mind on a person on a whim and, on the contrary, admits it takes him 200 years to change his mind on someone, for loyal better or for begrudging worse.
Sarah
Sarah
Voiced by: Zerocalcare
Another one of Zero's best friends since elementary school, Sarah is the daughter of two teachers who wants to become a teacher herself, but reality forces her to endure humiliating jobs.
- Bad Job, Worse Uniform: She's forced to wear a cap shaped as a toilet brush during one of her part-time jobs.
- Broken Pedestal: As a Nice Girl and easily the Only Sane Man among Zero's acquaintances, Zero always saw her as a beacon of common sense and morality he could always fall back on since they were kids. So when, in "This World Can't Tear Me Down", she admitted on live TV that the refugee centre was worth closing down if it meant saving the local school (so that she had a chance to be a teacher in it), basically supporting the Nazi's bull, Zero saw that beacon crumble before his eyes, as is literally visually depicted in an Imagine Spot.
- Rebuilt Pedestal: While Zero disagreed with her decision still and sadly saw her as an enemy he'd have to fight in the upcoming street war, it at least helped her case when she explained how she needed this potential job at the school. The pedestal (or, in this case, beacon), however, is truly rebuilt when Sara pulls a Big Damn Heroes at the fight and interrupts it to pass the megaphone to Domenica, who proceeds to burn the Nazi's whole argument to the ground and saves the day.
- Four-Philosophy Ensemble: The Realist, as she's well-balanced and grounded, not cynical as Zero neither apathetic as Secco by any means.
- Good Is Not Nice: Downplayed. She genuinely is a nice person most of the time, but while she wants to help Zero, she does not mince words while talking with him and will throw a slap or two to get him out of a particularly misguided trance.
- Nice Girl: She's friendly, kind, affable, cares for her friends and helps them in the best way she can.
- Only Sane Man: If compared with Zero, who overreacts and is worried about everything, and Secco, who never cares about anything, Sarah is the most realistic, grounded and well-balanced member overall.
- Straight Gay: Sarah has a girlfriend, but is not presented as either a "girly girl" or a masculine tomboy, just a girl.
- Women Are Wiser: She's a reasonable, sweet but pragmatic woman who spends most of her screentime right beside her two not-so-wise male friends: the paranoid wreck that is Zero and the...Secco that is Secco.
