Big Teddy Bear Football Player Meets Alt City Boy
Sections:
About
Tags
Warnings
Synopsis
Review
Results
About:
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Artist(s)
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Tags:
Tropes
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Relationships
Jobs/Professions
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Unique Character Types
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Explicitness
Warning:
There will be spoilers for the OEL comic series Cuckoos Three.
Content Warning: There may be references to underage drinking, excessive drinking, mental illness, mentions of drug use, blood, violence, memory loss, mentions of self-harm, claustrophobia, nyctophobia, mentions of religion, PTSD, mentions of child abuse, implied alcoholism, homomisia, ableism, bullying, and prejudice, as they appear in the comic.
Synopsis:
Murry has lived out in the country his whole life. When he’s not at school, he spends his day taking care of animals on the farm or out at football practice. But things are about to change. Next door, some city folk are moving in, including a fellow teenager. This teenager is Jacob. He’s everything Jacon isn’t, wearing dark clothes, pierced, and donning a ton of jewelry. He is so unlike everyone in Murry’s small town that Murry is all the more interested in him.
Jacob turns out to be an artist, and he and Murry spend their days together sharing their most intimate thoughts and feelings with one another. But there is something else about Jacob that leads to a few chaotic and violent moments. Murry isn’t sure what it is, but he is sure that he wants to be by Jacob’s side no matter what.
Review:
The art in this is very unique. The bigger, bulkier characters have very square faces, which wasn’t my favorite thing in the world, but the overall designs were great. Archetypally, Jacob is very cat-like, while Murry is much more dog-like, and their designs perfectly reflect that. But maybe even better is how Jacob is depicted when he dissociates. There are very small, subtle details in his features that change when he makes the switch, giving us the cue that something has changed. Much of the story is dedicated to figuring out what is up with Jacob, so these small design choices make a huge difference in how we slowly discover that Jacob has DID, which I really like. It is worth noting that the Webtoon version of this title is in black and white, while the Yen Press version is in full color, so keep that in mind.
The narrative, though, feels pretty disjointed, which is unfortunate. It feels more like a collection of vignettes rather than a cohesive story. There isn’t much of anything regarding a story until much later. Until then, it’s a lot of fluff, which is cute, but doesn’t feel like it has much purpose or meaning. It’s very much a slice of life with lots of meandering. Sometimes it works, but for me, in this title, it just didn’t. I think part of it is because of the lack of time. I have no idea how much time has passed since the beginning, making it hard to discern the flow of time and the characters’ growth.
It’s also very surface-level. It’s cute, sure, but beyond DID, I don’t know much about these characters. I mentioned the archetypes before, with Jacob being cat-like and Murry being dog-like. That’s pretty much all these characters are. We do get hints of deeper things, like Murry’s parents’ prejudice against Jacob and Jacob’s DID, but overall, it’s very superficial. A lot of this stuff is revealed toward the end of the story, so it all feels very bottom-heavy. I wish the beginning had more of that information sprinkled in so it felt more balanced and less superficial, but here we are.
But I have to say that the representation of dissociative identity disorder is quite powerful. There are plenty of works that feature this disorder, but most of them use it as if the other identity is either a separate love interest, an antagonist of some sort, or just another whole person that appears at random or whenever they want to appear. This, however, leverages it as a true response to trauma. That’s not to say we don’t see it as a trauma response in other titles (Perfectly Broken Love comes to mind), but it’s still used as a sexual tool or something similar. This is an almost primal representation, with Jacob reacting to things that trigger trauma in a cat-like manner, and I really enjoyed it.
Results:
This was interesting. It seemed like it was trying really hard to represent a more honest and realistic depiction of DID, which I think it achieves, but it tries to do so through a romance. Unfortunately, the romance doesn’t feel as successful. It’s nice, but there isn’t as much substance as I would hope for. It’s a bit of a miss for me.
Have you read Cuckoos Three? If so, what do you think? Do you agree with my assessment? Do you not? Let me know, and comment below!
