General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Tear Along the Dotted Line

Tear Along the Dotted Line (Strappare lungo i bordi) is a 2021 Italian adult animated miniseries written and directed by the cartoonist Michele Rech, known professionally as Zerocalcare, and released on Netflix on November 17, 2021.¹^•² It was Zerocalcare's first animated series and is set in his established narrative universe, following the cartoonist Zero, his friends Secco and Sarah, and the talking armadillo who embodies his conscience, voiced by the actor Valerio Mastandrea.¹

Key fact	Detail
Original title	Strappare lungo i bordi; English title Tear Along the Dotted Line³
Creator	Michele Rech (Zerocalcare), who wrote, directed, and voiced much of the series¹^•⁴
Format	Six interconnected episodes of roughly 15 to 20 minutes each, released November 17, 2021²^•⁵
Production	Movimenti Production with BAO Publishing; DogHead Animation Studio; technical directors Giorgio Scorza and Davide Rosio¹^•⁶
Voice cast	Zerocalcare (Zero), Valerio Mastandrea (Armadillo), Paolo Vivio, Chiara Gioncardi²
Reception	100% Tomatometer from 5 critics and 97% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes; 8.5/10 on IMDb from about 18,000 votes²^•⁷
Follow-up	This World Can't Tear Me Down, a new series with the same characters, premiered on Netflix in 2023⁸

Spoilers

Story and structure

The six episodes follow Zero, a comics writer and artist in Rome who imagines his conscience as an armadillo only he can see, as he travels with his friends Secco and Sarah to Biella for the funeral of their mutual friend Alice.⁹^•² The Netflix logline frames the title as a metaphor: life is like a shape you should tear along the dotted lines, but sometimes you tear it wrong, and from that moment it becomes increasingly difficult to get it into a reasonable form; the pieces you lose along the way teach you to accept yourself for who you are.¹¹

Each episode mixes the present-day journey with flashbacks to Zero's past, including his first meeting with Alice at age 17, a stint as a teacher's pet, nightmarish experiences tutoring children, and the struggle to find work.² Reviewers describe the pacing as fast and demanding, with Zero's anxious overthinking driving both the comedy and the drama; one recurring gag has him leaving home three hours early for a one-hour journey in case something happens.¹² The series is rated TV-MA in the United States and carries comparable adult ratings across most territories, reflecting frequent profanity, drug references, and dark treatment of anxiety and suicide.¹³^•¹⁴

The dialogue is written in a mixture of standard Italian and the Romanesco dialect, consistent with the author's stated principle of writing as he speaks, and the Italian version's rapid, stream-of-consciousness narration is dense enough that subtitle readers may struggle to keep pace; a British English dub is also available.¹⁴^•¹⁵

Origin and production

Netflix announced the start of production on December 21, 2020, describing the project as an Italian original written and directed by Zerocalcare, pseudonym of the cartoonist Michele Rech, and produced by Movimenti Production in collaboration with BAO Publishing, the publisher of his comics.¹ In the announcement, Zerocalcare said he had long experimented with animation on his own and wanted to raise the bar by using the video medium more fully for direction and movement while keeping his own language and themes and total control over the story.¹

The path to the series ran through the COVID lockdown of 2020, when Zerocalcare self-produced his first animated cartoon, Rebibbia Quarantine, broadcast on the TV channel La7. Having tested the limits of working alone, he brought in collaborators to make a more cinematic program.⁹ The technical directors Giorgio Scorza and Davide Rosio of Movimenti Production and DogHead Animation Studio recalled that Rech had begun studying animation at their studios during the quarantine, producing the short pieces that led to the Netflix series.⁶ The animation is two-dimensional, with a higher level of detail and color than the author's earlier experiments.¹⁰

The series draws on the autobiographical world Zerocalcare had built in comics, established in his first graphic novel The Armadillo Prophecy (2011), which is set in Rebibbia, the working-class Roman neighborhood where he lives. He has described the armadillo as his imaginary friend and rational side, who helps him untangle his convoluted thoughts.⁹

Reception

A few days after its release, the series became the most viewed title on Netflix Italy, surpassing Squid Game, and it brought an author who had long inhabited a niche of Italian pop culture into the mainstream.¹⁶ It premiered at the Rome Film Festival on October 17, 2021, before its international Netflix debut on November 17.⁹

Critical response was strongly positive. Rotten Tomatoes recorded a 100% Tomatometer from five critics and a 97% audience score from more than 50 ratings.² Critics highlighted the personal visual style, the balance of humor and drama, and a tactful approach to depicting anxiety and suicide.² On IMDb the series holds 8.5/10 from about 18,000 votes, with per-episode ratings rising steadily from 7.8 for the first episode to 9.2 for the finale, a pattern consistent with the story building to its final revelation.⁷

Follow-up

In May 2022, at the opening of Netflix's first Italian office in Rome, Zerocalcare announced a new series, stressing that it would be an entirely new story rather than a second season, though it would again have six episodes, this time longer.⁴ The result, This World Can't Tear Me Down, premiered on Netflix in 2023 with the same characters and setting, following Zero as he tries to help an old friend rebuild his life.⁸^•¹⁷ A third Zerocalcare series for Netflix was announced for 2026.¹⁸

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026