Dandadan: A pulpy, genre-bending shonen that will move you

The current landscape of shonen anime feels depressing. Overdone tropes, uninteresting power systems, and storylines that are so jam-packed with action that they forget to humanise their characters have gotten us to the point where people are starting to believe Demon Slayer is actually good. It was, therefore, with a certain level of scepticism that we started the latest Jump+ adaptation, Dandadan.

Okarun and Momo are two high school students who have a chance encounter. Okarun believes in aliens but not ghosts, and Momo believes in ghosts but not aliens. The logical thing for them to do would be to part ways. Instead, they embark upon a wild adventure that pulls them into a world of ghosts, aliens, psychics, and every other irreverent thing you can possibly think of.

On the surface, Dandadan's plot can be a bit much. Filled with crazy, random elements and driven by a character motivation that frankly neither of us could have imagined in our wildest dreams, the story seems nonsensical and might be off-putting to many viewers. However, at its core, Dandadan is just a simple story about two people going on an adventure and falling in love.

The romance is, perhaps, the best we have seen in shonen battle anime in a pretty long time. The character interactions feel fresh and reflect real human experiences. While the side characters are certainly written to be very trope-y, it is in Momo and Okarun's constantly evolving dynamic and relatability where the real strength of the show lies. The show employs a monster-of-the-week format, but each individual episode is so well-written and fits into the overarching theme of the story so well that it never feels stale or monotonous.

From the get-go, what makes Dandadan stand out is its striking visual presentation. The simplistic use of primary, saturated colours is used to highlight the contrast between different scenes, and sometimes even between different characters or episodes. This holds true even for the opening which lays out the visual vocabulary quite effectively. It's a masterful use of visual imagery that heightens the storytelling, making it all the more palatable for the audience.

Yukinobu Tatsu, the creator of the manga that Dandadan is based on, worked as an assistant for Tatsuki Fujimoto, the creator of Chainsaw Man. With its chaotic and random storytelling, the inspiration the anime draws from Chainsaw Man can be very clearly felt. Like Chainsaw Man, Dandadan is incredibly pulpy, centering its narrative around encounters with the occult, the supernatural, and the extraterrestrial. The designs for these monsters are – at once – wild and goofy, making clever use of CG animation here and there to make wonderfully smooth transitions and stellar action sequences.

Studio Science SARU, known for their brilliant work on Devilman Crybaby, Ping Pong the Animation, and Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, is the perfect fit for a project like Dandadan. With a back catalogue packed with projects incorporating imaginative visuals with dynamic plots, no other studio could possibly have done justice to Dandadan's essence as they have.

There is also the music, done by industry heavyweight Kensuke Ushio, that helps set the scenes very effectively. One particular favourite piece of score comes from episode five, which combines Mozart with synth-wave to play on top of a running scene that will go down as one of the most stylistically impressive bits in any action anime to have come out in a while.

A genre-bending melting pot of comedy, romance, action, and sci-fi, Dandadan feels like the beginning of something fresh in the world of shonen anime.

The authors actually really like Demon Slayer.