Today's Cerberus

[pluralsinmedia]

Clearing out the to-read manga blacklog of ours, its time for Today’s Cerberus!

Spoiler-Free Overview:

• Number of canon plural systems: 2
• System types: Unknown, Traumagenic
• Personhood: 10/10
• Dynamic: 8/10
• Narrative Sympathy: 8/10
• Consistency: 6/10
• Edge: 5/10
• Singlet Nonsense: 8/10
• Overall series grade: 6.5/10

Full Spoiler Overview Below Cut:

Cerberus, the title character of ‘Today’s Cerberus’ is a cute anime girl version of the same entity from Greek mythology. Our main character Chiaki is unable to feel proper joy and happiness because his soul is damaged. One day a strange girl shows up at his house and announces herself as the legendary Cerberus, who is three people in one. Cerberus wants to help him restore his soul, of which it is their fault that it is damaged. The situation then proceeds to develop into a standard harem manga love quadrangle as Chiaki begins attempts to heal himself with Cerberus’ help.

Gonna spoil the whole manga, so buckle up.

Plural Characters: Cerberus (Kero, Shirogane, Roze), and Orthros&Hikari

System type: Traumagenic for Cerberus, and unknown for Orthros

Personhood: Every headmate in both systems is unambiguously treated as their own person by the narrative and by other characters. MC recognizes Cerberus each as separate people long before the unfortunate splitting occurs, “with the two of us, no.. the four of us”. All of them get character development as well. 10/10

Dynamic: The dynamic shown while Cerberus is still plural is particularly good. They call switching ‘switching’ on multiple occasions. Kero(who acts as the host) cannot access the inner world because Roze(the original) has blocked her access to their memories and she has amnesia barriers from the other two, who do not. Roze and Shirogane talk internally on several occasions. They can be triggered in and out, and Roze and Shirogane can override Kero usually. There is even an occasion or rapid switching leaving Kero reporting that she feels like she is ‘floating’. While switching is usually used as a source of humor, it manages to be surprisingly well done despite this.

Orthrus on the other hand, are dysfunctional and antagonistic. Hikari and Orthrus communicate poorly and Hikari can keep memories and information from Orthrus and it causes a mess when Hikari goes and tries to kill Cerberus and steal the item that is supposed to restore the main character’s soul because he wants that healing too. Hikari doesnt want to go back under Hade’s abusive thumb, so he is willing to lash out to make that happen the second he spies a true way out. Orthus doesnt begin to understand he needs to repair his and Hikari’s relationship and why he chose to try to kill their sisters until Hikari seems to be gone, and the ending being ambiguous if its going to be forever or not. This is a reasonable, if dysfunctional setup.

Overall, while the plural characters are plural and obviously so in the story, their dynamic is well thought out, especially for a horny gimmick harem manga. Points off for it not lasting long and us not getting very much on Orthrus and Hikari. 8/10

Narrative Sympathy: Cerberus is given full narrative sympathy, to Shirogane- the aggressive one that lashes out, to Kero- the oblivious ‘childlike’ host, to Roze, who is why the main character’s soul has a piece missing out of it(as she bit him in fear and damaged his soul). You get to spend time with each character and the narrative really shows you they all deserve love and care.

Orthrus and Hikari are less sympathetic, but they are antagonists. They do have the potential at the end to heal and develop dangled in front of us. Hikari may do terrible things in the story, but he has reasonable motive (getting away from an abuser) so you can feel for him, even if his actions are inexcusable. After getting power of friendshipped, he also seems to show remorse before the end. Orthrus in particular seems to trend towards getting Vetaga-ed into a decent person by the end.

Generally good, but points off for Hikari 8/10

Consistency: In short- not super great. We only learn of Hikari way late in the manga despite Orthrus showing up very early, and the physical splitting happens about a third into the manga, with a brief fusion into one body again in the climax before splitting again. While Cerberus is plural, its fine, and once Hikari shows up through till he disappears, its fine in terms of consistent portrayal, but everything else is less so. 6/10

Edge: There is some edge. They are both supernatural creatures with magic powers and Kero has a berserk state. Hikari is willing to have a lot of people die to be free and behaves in quite a malnevolent way once he sees a way to do that. Roze took a bite out of the main character’s soul, so there is that too. 5/10

Singlet Nonsense: There is shapeshifting but Cerberus is supernatural so thats somewhat excusable with magic. What is not, however, is the splitting into separate bodies for essentially the rest of the story. Its ambiguous if they can refuse into one body now that Kero is a human or not. It IS acknowledged that its a massively lifechanging event and Shirogane and Roze want to go back to how they were and that they have to learn how to live lives without relying on one another, but its still very much a thing. Hikari also ‘dies’/gets tossed into this void between worlds thing. So no characters get to be confirmed plural by the end, and the majority of the manga is them not being plural. Its a shame because the were doing so well for that first while. Aside note, some real monogamous nonsense too in regards to plural characters and dating, but thats par for the course in harem mangas. 8/10

Possible Upsetting Tropes Present: Shapeshifting alters, nonhuman neurodivergent, singletification through alter death, singletification through separate bodies, superpowered evil side, violent alter, alters as comedy prop

Overall series grade: While it starts so well, it rapidly goes off the rails and never gets back on the rails proper in terms of plural rep. The singlet nonsense really drags it down and despite its best efforts, it never regains footing in that respect. When taken just as those first chapters, it would be something like 8-9/10, but as its a whole work in which the plural characters feature, it gets a 6.5/10