Do These Music Videos Feature The Same People?

Or cartoon characters, if you prefer.

These videos include some edgy humor. If that’s your thing, go ahead and click “play”; if not, you can stick to the summaries.

Yesterday, I mentioned song sequels that seemed to reverse course on the ideas of their predecessors. Last year, I mentioned “Red Flags,” a music video with an absurd and taste-challenging premise. The singer finds himself on what seems like a great date with an amazing woman—until she launches into discussing her favorite film.

The creepiness of the film itself is matched only by the creepiness of her obsession with it, and he has to choose between running for his life—or suspending all critical thinking and just embracing the insanity.

Tom Cardy is the main singer here (with backup vocals from Montaigne). The animation artist goes by Galoo. And this is Cardy and Galoo’s most popular collaboration—but not their first.

In “Mixed Messages” the singer is the transgressor in the relationship, not the other way around. The mixed messages he sends his love get more and more mixed—and wilder and wilder, until he’s a threat to everyone she cares about (but in a sort of cartoony way). At first confused and annoyed, she finds his “mysterious” nature an irresistible turn-on.

Galoo makes the two main characters look close to identical in both videos—though I think there’s a slight difference; more on that in a bit. But are they the same characters?

If so, there’s a big attitude shift between the videos—and though “Mixed Messages” was released first, it’d have to come after “Red Flags,” because “Red Flags” focuses on the first date and “Mixed Messages” picks up the night after the first date. If that’s the case, the singer not only loses his fear of the woman but risks her wrath, confident that his seductive strategy won’t backfire in any way.

For me, that’s too much of a leap. The woman in “Red Flags” is not quite too intimidating for the singer to risk a relationship with, but she seems too intimidating to pull “Mixed Messages”-style shenanigans on. She seems taller and stronger in “Red Flags,” and she’s more assertive for sure.

Some of my friends disagree, though, and so do some of the videos’ commenters. To paraphrase a few different opinions I found: “The one song shows he’s crazy, the other shows she’s crazy, and they’re just the kind of crazy that fits together and works.”

I might be more used to the idea of different characters being played by the same cartoon “actors” than the average person, though. Some cartoonists, whatever their other virtues, have a few character model sheets they end up using over and over. Joe Shuster, the first Superman artist, was like that. Dan DeCarlo’s models for Betty and Veronica would’ve looked the same if not for their hair.

And then there’s Gisele Lagace, the cartoonist I work with, who’s “reincarnated” a number of characters over the years. The fire-and-ice-powered teenagers Cess and Laura from Eerie Cuties, a series about a monster high school…

…evolved into human wrestlers Tess and Maura in Gisele’s (somewhat) more realistic features.

So are these videos two songs that clash with each other, or just two different performances by the same “actors”? I’ve told you what I think—but I also think it’s fascinating that we can debate the question!