The animals are funny, the show not so much.
This World Can't Tear Me Down (Italian title: Questo mondo non mi renderà cattivo) is the second animated series written, produced and directed by Italian comic book author Zerocalcare (Michele Rech) and Italy's second animated series overall on the Netflix streaming platform. It was released on June 9, 2023 as a six-episode season. Much like Zerocalcare's previous effort Tear Along the Dotted Line, it's loosely based on his personal life and experiences, starring the same cast of characters, almost all voiced by Rech himself, and set in the same real-life places he lives in, though with slightly modified names; despite this, it's not considered a direct sequel to Dotted Line.
The main conflict of the story revolves around the opening of a refugee center in a Roman neighborhood, causing tensions between the local neo-Nazis and anti-Fascists, which include Zero and his friends. Meanwhile, Cesare, an old friend of Zero's, comes back to Rome after a two decades absence, and Zero finds out to his dismay that they don't have much in common anymore. Just as Dotted Line, the series is narrated as a six-episode flashback that explains why Zero and friends are being held in a police station, and reveals what happened between Zero and Cesare in the meantime.
This World Can't Tear Me Down provides examples of:
- Abandoned Catchphrase: Zero says "È andata così" ("It was bound to happen") only once in the entire series, instead of being a sort of mantra for him like in Dotted Line, and Secco's catchphrase is similarly never said in full.
- Ambiguously Bi: When he was a teen, Cesare had a dream where a crowd of men masturbated on him, and it's shown he was actually more sensible than he acted. On the other hand, he quickly denies being gay (Or maybe he is afraid to come out), uses homophobic slurs and as Zero pointed out, maybe the dream was symbolic, or maybe it didn't necessarily mean he wanted to be in that situation. Interestingly, Cesare had a crush on Sarah, who turned out to be lesbian.
- Animal Stereotypes:
- Tabloid journalists are depicted as hyenas, jackals and other scavenging animals.
- The TV personality who wants to interview Zero on his rage-bait show is a crocodile.
- Used in an interesting way to describe conservatives, leftists and populists. Conservatives are walruses (stout, uncaring and immovable in their beliefs), leftists are giraffes (wanting to stand above everyone from a position of moral superiority), populists are platypuses (Mix-and-Match Critters that take their talking points from the whole political spectrum so it's not clear what they actually stand for).
- The Artifact: Michele Rech voicing all the characters in both series is because Zero is the one telling the story but it also had a narrative reason back in Tear Along the Dotted Line. In that series, Zero is suffering from a major Guilt Complex where he believes that many of the many bad things happening to people around him (including Alice's suicide) are to some degree his fault for not interfering, in the moment where all of his friends make him understand the world doesn't revolve around him is that his friends finally gain real voices and he is not truly the protagonist of their lives. In comparison, there's no really any narrative significance in the characters still being voiced by Rech and the characters gaining real voices when the Framing Device is over doesn't have any impact beyond the characters suddenly gaining different voices.
- Art Shift: Like in the previous series, there's a few moments animated in different styles. Most notable is the 3D-animated cardboard puppet style that shows the "package" (representing the refugees that nobody wants near their home) being pushed around Rome's neighborhoods.
- Bland-Name Product: Several examples, most notably the comic books that adolescent Zero sells at the beginning of episode 2 to buy coins at the local arcade, including "Spaid-Erman", "Svuachmen" and "GK" among others.
- Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: This part of Secco's characterization has been restored from the comics, after having been almost completely removed from the previous series. In a flashback he even throws a paper bomb at a friend's wedding!
- Breaking the Fourth Wall:
- Near the end Zero as Rech's Author Avatar goes to the workshop of the company who made the cartoon and asks the artists to redraw almost everything, because he forgot to tell them to draw all the scars and bruises he sustained during the climactic fight scene (almost the whole series is a flashback, so it happened chronologically at the beginning of the story). They are understandably pissed and animate him being mauled by a wild animal.
- In general, Michele Rech in the guise of Zero (and the Armadillo) answers to some of the criticisms thrown at Tear Along the Dotted Line, even including some of the actual headlines talking about it.
- The Cameo: Much like in his previous animated work, this series has several cameos of characters from Zerocalcare's whole production, including but not limited to:
- French girl Camille from "The Armadillo Prophecy" in the house party scenes.
- Arloc, Paturnia and Osso from "Scheletri" during the punk rock concert scene.
- Several characters including Lemur, Supplì, Depreciable among the antifa members.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The lizard-boy Zero gave remedial classes to in Dotted Line comes back, turned into a full-blown Fascist. Almost the whole show happens because of him since he was present at the clash between far-right extremists and antifas, got lightly injuried and, being the son of an important politician, an investigation occurred. So Zero and friends had to spend the night at a police station, triggering the flashback that shows everything that happened up to that point.
- Darker and Edgier: Dotted Line wasn't exactly a walk in the park, but This World's themes include violence, racism, drug abuse, far-right politics, the humor is slightly less wacky and overall the tone is more somber. Oh, and No Swastikas is utterly averted this time.
- Evil Counterpart: One of the neo-Nazis is almost identical to Secco and shares with him the same passion for paper bombs. The only differences are his buck teeth, SS tattoos and full-black fashion style. They even both have a chemical formula on their sweatshirts: H2O for Secco and NaCl for "Nazi Secco".
- Expy: Sarah's girlfriend is no longer based wholesale on Sailor Uranus, the only remainders of that design are a shirt that kind of looks like a sailor fuku and her Big Anime Eyes, the only character in the series to have them.
- Fictional Video Game: The game that Teenager!Zero and Cesare are seen playing together at the arcade is a fictitious one, but the backgrounds and the game over/continue screen are lifted from Cadillacs and Dinosaurs , while the two player characters are unmistakably Marco and Tarma from the Metal Slug series.
- Hidden Depths: Secco's characterization is much more in line with the comic books than with the Flanderized version of him as an useless lazy bum seen in Tear Along the Dotted Line. He's still The Slacker but has moments of clarity, is capable of making serious speeches and is surprisingly agile when push comes to shove.
- Kids Are Cruel: Played for laughs. When Zero visits a children's library, the kids start ganging up on him psychologically because he's unable to draw them a sheep right. Sandrina distracts the kids by serving them pie, before menacingly warning Zero that he must master his emotions because kids can sense when someone is afraid of them.
- Limited Wardrobe: Like in Zerocalcare's comics, everyone always wears the same clothes. Funnily averted by the Armadillo who is seen in a variety of costumes and disguises.
- Medium Awareness: Much more so than in Dotted Line, characters interact with the Netflix interface, pausing the scenes or rewinding them, among other fourth-wall-breaking things.
- Mighty Whitey: Basically defied when, during the climactic brawl between the far-righters and the antifas, Zero realizes that the refugees holed up in the center are more than capable to defend themselves (because of all the hardships they endured), while he and his friends come off as "white saviors" while in reality are just a bunch of well-meaning but unprepared and outnumbered regular people.
- A Nazi by Any Other Name: Averted. The far-right militants are pretty clearly identified as Nazis and Fascists thanks to the emblems, tattoos and flags they sport.
- Nazi Zombies: One of the background characters is a neo-Nazi seen as a grey-skinned zombie (he can be seen in the top-left corner of the page image), in what is probably a reference to this trope.
- Reference Overdosed: A staple of Rech's works, the references are even more rapid-fire this time and include everything from Fritz Lang's M to Capcom's Cadillacs and Dinosaurs arcade game.
- Shown Their Work: Unlike in the previous series, online poker is depicted correctly when characters enter the police station and see a cop playing it on his computer. As a nod to that, Secco briefly stops to look at it.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: The climactic fight between Neo-Nazis and Antifas in episode 6 is underscored in the beginning by Ricchi e Poveri's "Sarà perché ti amo
", the pinnacle of Italian uber-cheesy 80s pop music. - Titled After the Song: The Italian title "Questo mondo non mi renderà cattivo" is taken from Roman folksinger Path's song of the same name, that is also included in the show's soundtrack at one point.
