Anime Review: Dandadan

Strange but addictive storytelling wrapped in stunning animation

Dandadan debuted with much hype and anticipation this year and has quickly become one of the most talked-about fall anime. With its addictive opening song and quirky, opposites-attract friendship vibe, Dandadan’s strange upbeat feel draws viewers in. But underneath is a strange tale of sexual assault, angry demons, and dysfunctional relationships. The show combines the vibrant, violent demon-fighting of Jujutsu Kaisen with the tortured, shapeshifting, slow-burn, romance/friendship (?) of Fruits Basket. In the end, it’s hard to know what to make of this anime debut. But, since it’s based on a manga, we know much more is yet to come.

Summary: Orphaned high schooler Momo is raised by her ghost-aware grandma. As a result, Momo has a deep awareness of the occult, although she tries to avoid it. She is also obsessed with movie star Ken Takakura. The first episode opens with Momo breaking up with her obnoxious, older boyfriend, whom she only dated because his tough guy attitude reminded her of her beloved movie star. Later, she intercepts a group of students tormenting a quiet, nerdy boy at school. She discovers that the boy’s name is also Ken Takakura. Momo and Ken become embroiled in a debate about the existence of aliens versus the existence of ghosts and agree to a dangerous bet. Momo sends Ken alone to a haunted area and Ken sends Momo alone to an abandoned hospital allegedly frequented by aliens. What could go wrong? It doesn’t take long before Momo gets kidnapped by aliens who take most of her clothes and threaten to assault her. Meanwhile, Ken gets a beatdown from a demon ghost who steals an essential sexual body part. The aliens’ attack on Momo releases her latent psychic abilities, and Ken’s demon possession leaves him with intense powers and, ultimately, an alter ego demon personality. Momo’s youthful grandmother helps the teens after they escape from both the aliens and the demon and then embark on a quest to get all of Ken’s body parts back. Eventually they connect with a popular girl, Aira, who, in a tragic episode, has her own supernatural experience and unlocking of power. From the opening sequence, we know there will be another person joining their crew.

I will admit I had mixed feelings about this anime despite the enthusiastic recommendations. The animation, character design, and music are all top notch and highly engaging. However, the plot, particularly of the opening episode, was problematic. A high school girl is dragged into a sexual assault situation by creepy alien men and the entire scene is played for laughs or at least flippantly. It was troubling and distasteful enough for me to want to stop watching. And the boy (also a minor) having his body parts stripped from him by an old woman was likewise distasteful. The other element that’s vaguely annoying is the constant potty humor. It’s meant to fit the farcical vibe, but ultimately feels distracting. There are many anime that deal with tough subjects or lean into low humor. Dandadan stands out in the way the disturbing content is merged into brightly colored, murderous teen angst.

Fortunately, the more you watch, the more the pieces fit together. It took a few episodes for me to realize the theme of sexual assault and violence against women was intentional. The demon who assaults Ken is nicknamed Turbo Granny. She is monstrous, hideous, violent, and vulgar. However, we later find out she was an assault victim, and she haunts areas where other girls were assaulted and murdered. The vibes are similar to Jujutsu Kaisen with its themes of sorrow leading to rage then leading to demon creation. In a later episode, we meet another victim whose unimaginable loss leads to a monstrous transformation. In that particular episode, the animation style changes, gradually becoming more realistic and dreamlike at times. Stunning moments like that make the show worth watching despite the juvenile hijinks happening elsewhere.

In addition to the quirky plot, Dandadan has two memorable protagonists. Momo is loud, bossy, and opinionated. She dominates the show with both personality and screen time. She refuses to call Ken by his real name, and instead gives him the nickname Okarun. Still, Ken is the more interesting character. Despite having strong opinions, he is insecure, soft-spoken, and passive, and he is the complete opposite of the tough guy movie star who shares his name. He has little backstory so far, and we don’t really see his parents or his home. However, when he becomes cursed, his demon form is powerful, cynical, and disinterested, while still being reluctantly heroic. The character design of Ken’s demon form is intense, and the animation is intriguing and addictive. And it brings a nice bit of irony to the story. I find myself feeling almost relieved when he finally transforms in each episode. Another intriguing character is Momo’s grandmother, who looks almost as young as Momo. She is gruff and cynical, and is obviously hiding a lot of information from the two protagonists. The story initially feels limited with the sole focus on Momo and Ken rather than a more traditional anime ensemble cast. However, the opening sequences foreshadow the others who will expand the story to more of a team adventure.

Dandadan is quirky, irreverent, and exhausting at times, but the core story provides a good payoff and the animation is stunning. If you can get past the strange plot elements and the weird combination of very adult and very juvenile content, Dandadan can be a good weekly fix of unique storytelling.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Highlights:

• Stunning animation
• Weird, flippant treatment of adult themes
• Quirky, innovative storytelling

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Microreview [book]: Mimi and Ky: the Beginning by Yves Corbiere

The best kind of debut novel: already better than most, and hinting at further greatness to come!

Corbiere, Yves. Mimi and Ky: The Beginning. Amazon: 2016.

Buy it here.

Short and sweet, Mimi and Ky was thoroughly engrossing, if not quite from page one, then at least from when things started to get magical. Mimi, at first, seemed on the surface to be quite an unlikely character upon which to hang the sturdy mantle of hero(ine), but her TV series and her celebutante lifestyle notwithstanding, what the reader eventually discovers in her is an unexpected depth--and that, in the end, is what justifies her magical (in more ways than one) boyfriend-to-be Ky's interest in her.

Based partly on the author's own debilitating experiences of suddenly becoming sick, that feeling of being betrayed by one's own body, Mimi's high-profile life quickly falls apart when her health abandons her. It is in watching Mimi suffer that we forget about her empty life and start to empathize. Trial by suffering--it breaks most, but tempers some, and Mimi is certainly one of the latter, rising to the occasion again and again with her own special brand of courage.

Romances between a magical man and an 'ordinary' woman are not new, of course, but not all such stories really sell the central conceit: the idea that a person of extraordinary power would fall for someone who seemingly possesses none at all. I'm happy to report that Mimi and Ky manages to convince on that score, thanks to Mimi's evolution as a person (in fact, in a cruel way, perhaps the illness she suffers is actually the best thing that has happened to her, because it forces her into a painful yet, as it turns out, all too necessary refinement). 

It's written with something that I'd call "unpretentious flair", by which I mean it is skillfully, but not ostentatiously or floridly, written. One somewhat inconsistent portion was the dialogue, which ranges from snappy to a tad clumsy, but it won't distract too much from the engaging story.

Mimi and Ky sets up the multi-world mythology quite well, having a sort of 'magical anthropology' feel to it given the interactions with different groups, not all of them of this earth. It also ends on a decidedly unfinished note, the seeds sown for at least one sequel, possibly many. I, for one, hope it's 'many'!

The Math:

Objective assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for developing a 'magical anthropology' approach, and +1 for creating a more believable magical man<-->ordinary woman romance than most (here's looking at you, Meyer!)

Penalties: -1 for moments where the dialogue felt a bit awkward

Nerd coefficient: 8/10 "well worth your time and attention"

[Actually, an 8/10 is very high for us; see details of our no-tolerance policy on grade inflation here.]

This review brought to you by Zhaoyun, lover of unlikely romances between magical and ordinary people since time immemorial and stalwart reviewer at NOAF since 2013. 

Microreview [book]: Jinn and Juice by Nicole Peeler

Add one part urban fantasy to one part paranormal romance. Stir well. Serve over ice.

I will admit to being drawn to this book because of the alcohol pun on the cover. And make no mistake, the characters in this book certainly know how to drink (really expensive booze), so I was not disappointed. Nor was I disappointed in the premise, that a thousand-year-old human-turned-jinni named Lyla who works as a dancer at the world's coolest burlesque club gets drawn into some dangerous and dramatic intrigue just as the curse that turned her into a jinni is set to expire. Of course, the curse is only lifted if she can manage to stay un-Bound when the curse expires.

On the surface this is a story that seems...problematic at best. Most of the conflict, after all, centers around the fact that Lyla can and does become enslaved by a Magi, a special kind of human who are the paper to the Jinn's rock. However, the book does take a lot of care to take a story-line fraught with consent issues and...actually deal with consent in an open and forthright manner. With a very diverse cast of characters and a story that provides plenty of action and huge stakes, the book managed to succeed in convincing me, at least, that it could deal with sexuality, consent, and attraction in a way that, while not perfect, was still much better than most paranormal romances I've read.

And I suppose I should talk about genre a little bit here. Jinn and Juice is obviously playing with genre in a lot of ways. Just look at the cover. I look at that and I don't know what to think. The color and title make me think paranormal romance. But the image leans a bit more urban fantasy (ASIDE: UF works tend to feature women on the covers while PR works tend to focus more on men but appealing to the female gaze. The general message being that PR books are more about the man as sexual creature and the UF books more about the woman as an active and sexy badass. Obviously this is just my impression, and based solely on my own reading experiences, but it is what I've observed). What's inside is a nice blend of the two (and here I would say that most UF and PR books are blends of similar plot elements and tropes but this book seems more consciously a blend). There is the focus on the relationship between Lyla and the man who effectively enslaves her, Oz, and yet there is no sex. Yes, the book subverts expectations enough to have a book that features a woman who works as a dancer in a burlesque club not having any sex while being completely sex positive. Not to say there is no sexual tension (there is plenty), but the book does more than pay lip service (absolutely no pun intended) to consent (okay, maybe a little pun intended).

And the cast, as said, is quite diverse. Aside from Lyla herself, who is from the Middle East of a thousand years ago, there is an entire cast of great characters who make up the rest of the staff at Purgatory, the burlesque where Lyla works. Not that all of the depictions completely escape feeling a bit cliche, but I think that at the very least a great deal of care was put into the depictions of the characters and I think the author did a good job of making them all complicated, giving them all more than just a surface coat. The world building is also very well done, revealing a world with paranormal forces boiling just below the surface. There is a unique and clever use of setting with Pittsburgh, and while there isn't a great sense of the place beyond a few locations, there is definitely a sense of its mood, its presence. I might not really know what the place looks like, but the book does show how it might feel to have an enormous source of tainted magic coursing through the rivers and streets.

The story, too, has its moments. There is a nice mystery to the whole affair, and though Oz comes across as a bit impossible at times, he at least is not shown to be always right, always the one saving the day. Lyla is still the most active agent, and though she is helped by her friends and by Oz, the book takes care to have her retain her agency. Of course, the villains of the book are a little...obvious and while some attempt was made to give at least one of them a little depth, mostly they are cardboard cutout villains, bad guys who are angry and lashing out and not really willing to listen to reason at all. So that aspect of the book was rather a let down, having Lyla and Oz's complicated relationship pick up the slack.

And in the end I think that the book mostly succeeds at being fun while trying to be more diverse and subversive. Certainly it's better than most of the paranormal romances I've read in how it treats consent and sex and attraction. And the setting and world building are solid and there is a lot to enjoy about the story. At the same time, while it subverts the Master/slave dynamic that make a great many paranormal romances incredibly problematic, I was still uncomfortable at times with the set up. Yes, Oz is a "good" guy. He doesn't use his power for sex or abuse. But the story can still be read that he should be rewarded (with Lyla) for being "good." And there really should be no expectation of reward for that good behavior. So it's not quite as subversive as it could be. Still, it does manage to do a lot right and it was quite fun to read (also, I love all the drinking that goes on). So that's something. 

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 for managing an artful mix of urban fantasy and paranormal romance, +1 for dealing with consent in an open manner

Negatives: -1 for some rather flat villains

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10 "A mostly enjoyable experience"

(check out our scoring system to see why a 7/10 is quite good indeed)

POSTED BY: Charles, avid reader, reviewer, and sometimes writer of speculative fiction. Contributor to Nerds of a Feather since 2014.

Reference: Peeler, Nicole. Jinn and Juice [Orbit, 2015]