Jo doesn't take crap from no one. Being fat as a teenager isn't easy, even when you know you're awesome. Watch as the clever Joan Rodriguez deals with school, bullies and all the people trying to change her.
— The webcomic's description
Big Jo
is a webcomic by Jungle Julia on Webtoon about a teenager, Joan Rodriguez, as she deals with the pains of growing up. Along the way, she's offered help by Tom Adams to see if he can help the rather chubby Jo lose some weight via exercising.
…but what he hasn't told her is that he's got ulterior motives in training her. He entered her without her knowledge on the reality show Boo, You're Fat in the hopes of winning by helping her lose the most weight. Both of their worlds get complicated from there.
Oh, and there are fairies.
The series concluded in July 2020.
Big Jo features the following tropes:
- Alpha Bitch: Tiffany, who for the most part is a stereotypical high school one. She has a few hidden depths, though.
- Arc Villain: The Godmother for Season 2, who is blackmailing Jo and several of the other contestants into appearing on a Reality TV show. Turns out it's Aisha, the one who's running it anyway.
- Author Avatar: Granny.
- Beach Episode: During the Odd Couples segment, the couples all get stuck on the beach for a while.
- Big Beautiful Woman: Jo herself is a young variation of this after she starts gaining a bit of confidence and dressing a bit differently.
- Big Damn Kiss: Between Tom and Jo in Episode 60.
- And then in Episode 61, there's Candy and Trisha and Arthur and Justin one right after the other.
- Brainy Brunette: Jo.
- Camp Gay: Justin Gray, who is described in his introduction on Odd Couples as "power Twink party queen".
- Cast Full of Gay: A lot of the cast is gay or bisexual, including all of the main characters.
- Character Development: Tom, who realizes that by lying to Jo in the first arc, he's actually seriously hurt her, and takes steps to both atone for it and to not do something so boneheaded again.
- Clueless Dude Magnet: Jo has a fair array of admirers of both genders, including fellow students, famous actors, and competitors in fitness competitions.
- CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Played with when Art has to do this for Jo. There's some focus on the mouth-to-mouth aspects, though this can be chalked up to the fact that these are a bunch of teenagers, one of whom is attracted to the other. Furthermore, while there are no broken ribs or anything of the sort and the method is shown to work pretty quickly, Jo still throws up a bunch of sea water immediately upon waking up.
- Cross-Cast Role: In the school's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hermia ends up being this.
- First Kiss: Given this focuses on high school students, first kisses are a fairly big deal. Thus, the fact that Arthur's first kiss is onstage with a guy is a point of minor angst for him, though it's played for laughs for the most part.
- Genius Bruiser: The super strong, very intelligent Jo.
- He Is All Grown Up: Puberty is nice to Arthur.
- Hidden Depths: Tiffany, who briefly makes an alliance with Jo.
- Chrissy Smith, who at first appears to be a nice but relatively uninteresting character who's just on Odd Couples as a foil to Robert Stone, as a Christian teenager who occasionally says "praise his name" and complains about "saving herself for marriage" in the spooning scene. Then you find out why she's there, and it's a doozy: Robert is being blackmailed by "The Godmother", and Chrissy wants to help her friend even though it technically means she's being dishonest. In light of this reveal, it turns out she's actually a deeply caring individual who has put a lot of thought into her faith.
- Innocently Insensitive: What the Barrs turn out to be in the end with regards to Candy's sexuality. They just were really clueless, and accept her just fine at the end...for the wrong reasons.
- Hot Teacher: Mr. H.
- Karma Houdini: The Godmother faces absolutely no retribution for blackmailing teenagers. Aisha also faces no consequences for the way Odd Couples is run.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Trisha Myers, who specifically identifies as a femme lesbian.
- Love Dodecahedron: There's a serious one among the main cast. Candy, Tom and Arthur have all shown attraction to Jo. Jo seems at least mildly attracted to Candy and has confused feelings towards Tom. Tom and Arthur, meanwhile, shared a kiss and seem to be mildly attracted to each other. It's notable that when Tom talks to Justin at night at one point about being attracted to someone in the house, he keeps his words in gender-neutral terms.
- Candy also is very...flustered around Trisha.
- Discussed in-story between Tom and Jo at one point.
Tom: I guess we're young and it's really easy to fall for people, isn't it...? - Magical Realism: The aforementioned fairies, the only magical element within the story. Apparently everybody has one.
- Meaningful Name: Bully McFry.
- Odd Couple: There's a whole show about them in Season 2! Jo and Tom are roped in and forced to pretend, though, as is everyone else.
- Odd Friendship: A few form during the run of Odd Couples. Notably, Oscar and Robert are often shown to be having tea in the background.
- Precocious Crush: Jo on Mr. H, the attractive English teacher. It's not reciprocated, thankfully, though he considers her one of his favorite students.
- Punny Name: Candy Barr.
- Show Within a Show: Mostly the reality tv variant. Boo, You're Fat, Prince and the Frog, and Odd Couples.
- Straight Gay: Miss Hendricks and Mr. H. Mr. H's fiancee as well.
- Worthy Opponent: Candy Barr views Jo as this on Boo, You're Fat. She's so disgusted with the way Jo is treated during the beauty portion of the show that she refuses to accept the trophy despite winning.
- Unlucky Childhood Friend: Art to Jo.
- Would Hurt a Child: Bully McFry hurts Jo's wrist to beat her at an arm-wrestling match.
- In a more abstract sense, The Godmother is blackmailing teenagers. At least one threat involves outing a girl to her intolerant parents; while the Godmother wouldn't be hurting the girl, there's a chance her parents could.
