Live-read: Dofus Heroes - Kerubim Tome 1 (part 1)
You can find this comic's physical version on Ankama's site, webtoon version on Allskreen, and Free Scans on various file-hosting websites that shall not be named.
Quick disclaimer: While I will be including french screenshots here, because it is a language that uses the latin alphabet, and everyone has that on their keyboards, all ready to type up in DeepL and Google translators — what I will actually be reading is a new fan translation in my native language, which does not use latin alphabet.
Time to quickly switch between two tabs because nobody has translated this comic into English. Yaay...
This comic has, as my fellow crepinjurgenology studies colleague @dullard put it, "thin god Ecaflip jumpscare"
Ecaflip looks a lot like Ush here, and I think it's way too malevolent. Part of the fun of him to me, is that he is an Evil Fucking Cat that looks like a cute cat. It makes his despicable actions more funny & interesting.
...Anyway, this comic came out during the run of the show, in 2013, and its sheer existence, — including its negative portrayal of ecaflip, its inclusion of blood and Kerubim's 20 mental illnesses, — is a direct confirmation of the show being an unreliable narrator story. (Though, we've been knew.)
This comic's most important function for this blog is that it will provide us with a well-needed glimpse at what Kerubim's adventures are like when he isn't retelling them to a 7-year-old child whose respect and approval he desperately craves.
The second Kerubim is fatally wounded, he gives up. Yet, Ecaflip saves him, without using one of his nine lives, just as he did in the Wheel of Destiny article.
I suppose it's one of his trump cards, isn't it?
But I am more interested in how at peace Kerubim is with death... It does make sense for Kerubim to hide some rather morbid feelings about his life behind his cheery facade, doesn't it?
It must be tiring. Losing your family, being a god's plaything, losing your brother, feeling like you have to constantly play the role of the cool womanizing warrior, and never unpacking your emotions about any of it. Death would feel like a relief from such weight.
Which makes Ecaflip's grip on his life feel more malicious.
I know, chances are, this comic, as well as most of the show, were made well before Kerubim's demigod status was thought of as a plot-point.
But even in terms of him being a demigod... I think that death would seem relaxing, despite its temporary nature, wouldn't it?
One of the main things of this whole comic is that Kerubim gets amnesia.
Harry Du Bois-ass character. Not only is he mentally ill, divorced, and has 20 layers of sad backstory, but also he got amnesia. God bless.
Yeah, this comic is more realistic and gritty than the show, but the cartoon shenanigans are still real. Thank god.
There's a reason why I think that a big part of Kerubim's character is his experiences with loneliness and isolation, and the way it makes him crave being loved and cared for, as well as how it makes him act out to get attention and popularity.
It's telling that while completely amnesiac, he identifies immediately with a small kitten, whom he immediately assumes is a "he" and "an orphan", and wants to take care of it.
It may seem like an innocuous moment at first, but "he is all alone" will become a reoccurring motif for Kerubim's mental state and subconscious in this comic, and it is the comic where we get the Orphan Kerubim reveal.
I already discussed the fact that I think Kerubim kept and adopted Joris due to Atcham-related guilt earlier on the blog, but I will take this moment to voice 2 other reasons:
Kerubim identifies with orphans and children easily. He would never leave Joris alone after looking at him and thinking "You're all alone. Like I was."
The idea of having a child would be very pleasant to someone as lonely as him. He struggles a lot with wanting to act in a way that will make people like him, and children are, by nature, inclined to like their parents even if they're complete losers.
Btw, if you follow my main, @joris-jurgen , you probably know that I headcanon Kerubim as having comorbid HPD and BPD. Because it fits. And because personality disorders are usually the result of insane levels of childhood trauma. And... my experience running this blog has so far not swayed me from this opinion in any way. This little paragraph was your Armchair Fictional Psychology Corner. This man can fit a lot of sadness and wanting to be loved in him.
Ecaflips confirmed to, just like real cats, have very good night vision.
...Aaand now I'm thinking about cute scenarios of Kerubim, Atcham, and Joris travelling at night, or navigating their home in the darkness.
(Because Joris doesn't have human eyes, as we've seen from the movie. And considering the way Grougaloragran's eyes reflect light in the Oropo ova, chances are, dragon eyes glow in the dark, the same way cats do. Which brings me to the point that, Joris's dragon-ish eyes would probably glow in the dark. Like a cat. Yeah, I am very sane, and should not be sedated in any way, readers.)
Crocosec has always wanted to have a butcher's shop and feed people with delicious food...
Ah, I don't know why, but my silly little detail-noticing from the first eps, where I pointed out that he has a meat shop, paying off? It makes me feel fuzzy. It's nice to know that the person who wrote this comic cared enough, and that it's something that was put in here with intent.
Anyway, I am about to be very normal about the next few pages.
*jumpscaring you by including a screenshot from the high-quality scanlation I am reading. Because this moment would be too blurry if I didn't.
He isn't even playing with any other kids... This is going to kill me, and not in a fun way.
The translation I am reading interprets the last line as "I would return to..." but it seems a bit wrong to me, especially considering my own research on language sentence-comparing sites.
What Kerubim pretty much says here, is that, he'd like to become a huppermage, and use magic to bring back his parents, sisters, and brothers.
While one could interpret that as Kerubim being lonely while being raised in an orphanage all his life without a family, I have a couple of counterpoints:
He calls the kitten "orphaned" specifically, which implies that there were parents, and that they aren't there anymore.
If it were just a family he wanted, he wouldn't be as specific as to say "sisters and brothers," besides just "parents," which leads me to assume that Kerubim means specific people he used to know (before they died).
3. Atcham is a Crepin too, as was revealed in the Dofus Movie. Logically speaking, if they were both given to the temple after being born, (and as we know, Atcham was at the temple, because Bashi knew him, according to Wheel of Destiny #8) they probably wouldn't have surnames, especially the same one.
4. Kerubim's unfunny joke about being the last in his family.
5. Wakfu: One More Gate's shopkeep being an ancestor of the Crepin family implies that Crepins are a real family that existed, and that, perhaps, Kerubim's affinity for selling stuff has to do with his early upbringing, before he was orphaned.
6. In the Dofus manga, Atcham says that a sword he owned, which was stolen from him, has been "passed in his family for generations", which yet again, points to them having a family to begin with.
All of this to say... What I think happened was far more devastating.
He had sisters and brothers, and two parents — it doesn't matter if the Crepin family was an adoptive one, or if it was made up of their biological mother, her husband, and half-siblings. Because they're all dead, and that's just... horrible.
A whole family, at the very least 6 people (if we assume that by "sisters and brothers", he means just two sisters and two brothers), wiped out.
...Oh, and one last thing.
7. I think that, as an adult, Kerubim did put some research into dark magic, with a hope of bringing his family back.
Just as he said he would.
....Though, as always, that might just be me reading too much into things. ╮(￣ ▽ ￣)╭
These aren't the tears of an orphan who wishes he had a family. These are tears of grief of a child who used to have one.
And Ecaflip, his biological father and God, is taunting him about it.
...I would speak on my deeplore conspiracy theory that perhaps Ecaflip himself is to blame for whatever happened to Kerubim and Atcham's family, — to get Kerubim, or both of them, isolated, and under his thumb, — but perhaps it's just me being actually clinically insane.
