A wacky Italian comic book about an obese teenager called Rocco Bonetti trying to lose some pounds. He's also in love with his magical scales, which turn into a beautiful blonde girl.
Its title can be translated as either Fat Hearts or Fatty Hearts. It was written by Mauro Talarico and published in monthly issues since 1992.
Tropes:
- Animal Motifs: Rocco is frequently associated with pigs due to his gluttony. For example, he has pig prints on his boxers. His personal Grim Reaper has a noticeable pig snout poking out from its hood. Heck, one cover elevates it to irony as a widowed pig mother and her piglets mourn the father pig in front of Rocco, who is eating a ham sandwich.
- Charlie Brown Baldness: Rocco's appearance during The '90s was that of an apparently bald teenager with three blond Idiot Hairs protruding from his head. Later issues portray him as having normal blond hair, so it's kinda implied he's always had it like that and his baldness was merely a stylistic choice.
- Classical Antihero: Rocco is not a bad lad but, for the life of him, he can't bring himself to bear a healthier lifestyle. Time and time again he's shown as too lazy and too much of a glutton to ever accomplish that goal. As a result, the plot revolves around his many failed attempts at losing weight. It's all Played for Laughs, though.
- Implausible Synchrony: Subverted for the sake of a joke. The protagonist—an overweight teenager—tries to psych himself up for a diet and tells his friends to take note of the time because it'll go down in history. All of his friends' watches read different times and one is broken.Friend #1: My watch says it's five o'clock.
Friend #2: Mine says four-thirty.
Friend #3: Mine's stopped.
Rocco: This is not a good start. - A Weighty Aesop: Subverted. In each issue, Rocco comes to the epiphany that he ought to eat healthier foods, do some exercise, and lose more than a few pounds. This sends him to some sort of diet or hare-brained scheme. Yet, come the end of the storyline, he succumbs to the temptation presented by fatty or high-carb foods.
