Review of Dan Da Dan

In my review of the Chainsaw Man anime I mentioned that Dandadan, which I was still watching at the time, seemed to borrow tonal cues from Chainsaw Man's irreverence. The main point of comparison, and what caused me to make that claim, is the emphasis both works have on the literal and figurative emasculation of their protagonists. Not only do CSM's Denji and DDD's Ken lose part or all of their penises, they are both surrounded by forceful, controlling, or outright aggressive female figures who propel the plot. And could there be a more irreverent take on shounen, a genre literally called "Boy," than emasculation, theelimination of its maleness? Both shows may cleave to certain shounen tropes to the letter (especially in their fight scenes), but in this way they set themselves apart. It's certainly a far cry from, say, My Hero Academia, where female characters are relegated to minor supportive roles.

In Dandandan, the purpose of this emasculated hero is much more clear. DDD uses a familiar nerd-to-coolguy storyline for its protagonist. He begins friendless, isolated, defined by his nerd hobbies. As a symbolic representation of his situation, he not only loses his penis, but his name; Momo, the female lead, refuses to call him "Ken Takakura" due to it also being the name of her favorite actor/celebrity crush, and refers to him instead as "Okarun," a play on "occult," which his otaku interest centers around. The real-life Ken Takakura was known as a stoic, tough, and thus stereotypically masculine figure, the opposite of DDD's Ken Takakura; the suggestion of the narrative arc is that Okarun will gradually develop into a character more deserving of the name, at which point Momo will call him by it. Then he'll also get his balls back.

The emasculated hero also stands in foil to the Serpo, the all-male alien race who serve as the show's recurring villains, and who are the only other male characters in the show until its last couple of episodes. The Serpo are, like the hero, depicted as emasculated, with high-pitched effeminate voices and a lack of sexual organs. Also like the hero, they're depicted as nerds, wearing stiff tucked-in white shirts buttoned up to the neck and spouting sci-fi technobabble. The difference is that they cannot "evolve," as they claim. This is explained as a byproduct of their reliance on cloning for reproduction (and is the reason why they want to harvest human sexual organs), but symbolically suggests a state of perpetual manchildness, the otaku who never develops or grows, compared to Ken, who does. Meanwhile, for lack of a better word, the Serpo are rapey. An involuntarily celibate failure state of otaku-ness, and by the implication of the foil what Ken must work to avoid. After all, the Serpo also have no penises. They have replaced them with whirring phallic probes, a literally weaponized masculinity. They introduce themselves to Momo as simply wanting to be friends, before revealing their nefarious sexual ulterior motives; this contrasts Ken who first sees Momo legitimately as a friend before he even begins to develop romantic feelings for her.

It's in Dandandan's simple, unified clarity of purpose that I find my comparison to Chainsaw Man to be ultimately flawed. As it goes on, this simplicity starts to make DDD saccharine, treacly. The same dramatic loop is wrung again and again: Ken or Momo say something mean to one another, or lie, or make a mistake, then they mentally kick themselves over it ("I was such a jerk!"), and lastly give an earnest apology for their behavior. This happens countless times, sometimes rooted around the flimsiest, most obnoxious of misunderstandings. The show pulls the same bullshit as Parasyte (another nerd-to-coolguy story!) where Girl A sees Boy A touching Girl B, and assumes that means Boy A is being unfaithful, but really Girl B was being forcefully sexually aggressive and Boy A didn't like it and was trying to get away, but Girl A doesn't know this, and it becomes this whole big thing despite nobody (except Girl B, morality's sacrificial lamb) actually having done anything wrong. I hate "misunderstanding" plots like this. They're complete contrivances for the sake of drama.

But that's more-or-less the level DDD is operating at. There's a part near the end, when the show's only other human male character shows up. He's Momo's childhood friend, he has a rapport with her, and even though it's clear to the audience Momo has no romantic interest in him, Ken gets jealous, which the audience knows because he stews over it in class while the teacher lectures about the word "jealousy." It's facile. If Chainsaw Man invited the audience to turn its brain off, DDD is doing something much more annoying by inviting its audience to turn its brain down to the level of a 10-year-old.

Meanwhile, the supporting cast doesn't have much going on. Momo is ostensibly at least a deuteragonist and is in some ways framed as the main character, and while she is certainly active in the story and its battles, she is also a much flatter character than Ken. The basic conceit of the show seems to be what happens when an otaku meets a gyaru, with the indication that this unlikely combination will somehow improve them both, but the onus for improvement is placed entirely on Ken, other than a few instances where Momo says something mean and then immediately apologizes for it. She is introduced as getting romantically involved with a series of dirtbag guys who she mistook as masculine ideals due to their superficial similarities to the actor Ken Takakura; but the moment she meets the character Ken Takakura, she ceases to have any romantic interest in anyone else and is essentially waiting around for the character Ken to develop into something akin to the actor Ken. She's quite patient about it, too.

Momo is not defined by her gyaru-ness the way Ken is defined by his otaku-ness. There isn't a suggestion, say, that she is stereotypically superficial or vain, the way Ken is stereotypically awkward and monomaniacal. (In fact, the show introduces Aira as superficial and vain, which only makes Momo look more put-together by contrast.) She is, at most, prone to emotional outbursts, which can always be papered over by an "I'm sorry." She even has her own friends! There are significantly lower emotional stakes in her relationship with Ken compared to Ken's relationship with her.

Because of this, while Ken is emasculated by the story, he is also centered within it, core to its foundation. This is in contrast to CSM's Denji, who increasingly comes across as a minor part of his own show, a pawn in the schemes of others who is emotionally divorced from the consequences of anything that happens. It creates a narrative that is doing one thing and devoting all of its energy to that one thing, but it doesn't give the show much breadth, or much to think about. Ultimately, where forcing myself to think more deeply about Chainsaw Man improved the experience and led me to some insights I otherwise wouldn't have made, thinking about Dandadan didn't lead to a similar result. It doesn't help that Dandadan's story is far more episodic than Chainsaw Man's, rarely compounding upon itself. This episodic nature is emphasized by how the studio didn't even bother to end the season at a logical place, instead cutting its current episodic arc right down the middle.

Lastly, I suppose I should mention that, like Chainsaw Man, this show looks amazing. The production values are all excellent, especially the OP. It feels like any flavor-of-the-month anime is going to look great, but I am currently trudging my way through a rewatch of Sword Art Online, and it's staggering how cheap that show looks, how it cuts corners at every conceivable opportunity. Can't take "looking good" for granted in this racket.