After the broadcast of Dandadan‘s first episode, it’s time to explore the team behind this work: not just the personnel and their creative choices, but the easily misunderstood directorial philosophy behind such bombastic fun.
There are works you must let simmer before you get a good read on them. In the case of an inspired adaptation, that process may take even longer; after all, the interaction between the original author’s vision and the team reinterpreting it can be even more complex to disentangle. If you’ve given Dandadan a try already, then you must know that absolutely none of this applies to this series. Following a densely packed, snazzy opening sequence with a roundhouse kick that lands before you’ve had time to breathe once is as clear as statements can be. You’re in for a wild ride.
In an interview with Alu, its original author Yukinobu Tatsu and editor Shihei Lin explained how they arrived at an already straightforward source material. For as successful as it now is, the truth is that Dandadan is the result of repeated failures to get serialized. After seeing the projects he had carefully arranged being dismissed, culminating in another rejection for a potential series about jiangshi, Tatsu was completely deflated. His equally dejected and upset editor’s advice was simple: just draw whatever you please without overthinking it. The series he immediately put into paper with no real planning would aim for pure, uplifting entertainment, coming from an author who was cheering himself up with it too. Despite dealing with themes that have dark associations like the occult, and certainly not shying away from tragedy in backstories, Tatsu understandably wanted to create an uplifting series.
As he has since then explained multiple times, the plot was born from the trope of crossovers between fantastical foes, which he then incremented the chaos of by increasing the number of parties and the genres being thrown into the blender; supernatural old and new, science fiction as filtered through classic tokusatsu lenses, and why not ground it in a familiar romcom scenario? The reason was, again, quite simple: he’d seen his own note about the goofy horror crossover Sadako vs Kayako being a blast. The way it crammed together shadowy elements into a fun package resonated with needs at the time, so he marched forward with what would quickly become Dandadan. Incidentally, that film is one of the many parodies in Shingo Yamashita’s opening for CSM—another series with Lin as the editor. The agenda to get shonenheads into J-Horror is on display.
You know what is real cinema as well? Dandadan‘s opening sequence, directed/storyboarded by Abel Gongora—who also provided animation, backgrounds, while handling compositing and editing duties. Another certified banger by Creepy Nuts too, embodying the eclectic feeling of the series.
The team in charge of adapting that eclectic mix is an interesting one, though it’s prone to misunderstandings as well. If you’re a fan of animation, chances are that your eyes were immediately glued to the name behind the alien and youkai designs: the one and only Yoshimichi Kameda. He’s widely known for his snappy animation and dynamic posing, qualities that make him a leading voice among modern Kanada-style artists. Despite his overwhelming sense of presence when acting as an animation director, projects like Mob Psycho have also proved his willingness to carve out a space for other artists to showcase their individual voices—even if they’re ultimately slotted within his stylistic framework. He’s an exceptionally good animator to lead your production at any level, which is… not what he’s doing here.
Having moved on to the project he’s leading instead, Kameda has left behind some neat design work. It’s worth noting that this is a strength of the series for starters. When attending the pre-screening event for the first three episodes, one of the aspects that immediately stood out was the clear toku inspiration when it came to the aliens; reading up on interviews later, like this recent one for Mantan Web, Tatsu himself confirmed that by citing legendary Ultra designer Tohl Narita as a massive influence. When combining those with his tendency towards extreme deformations for dramatization, the crafty linework when he’s going for an illustrative punch, and an anime that is happy to embrace purposeful low drawing counts, you get a cocktail that matches Kameda’s taste quite well. Even without him around as an active contributor, Dandadan will undoubtedly be in a better position because of his work.
Right about every aesthetic department is in similarly luxurious hands. We have none other than Naoyuki Onda as the character designer and as a—though not the—chief animation director. The implied three-dimensionality of Onda’s designs can be a poison pill for unprepared productions, though rather than his own fault, consider this as praise; he’s quite literally too good sometimes. The art directorArt Director (美術監督, bijutsu kantoku): The person in charge of the background art for the series. They draw many artboards that once approved by the series director serve as reference for the backgrounds throughout the series. Coordination within the art department is a must – setting and color designers must work together to craft a coherent world. is Studio Easter president Junichi Higashi, who is more prone to merely supervising the work of others at this stage in his illustrious career. This time around, he has that more direct involvement, with Yusuke Mizuno as his second in command and the assistance of exceptional art designers like Anime Kobo Basara’s Seiki Tamura. Trustworthy veteran Satoshi Hashimoto has designed the palette alongside Makiho Kondo; both of them currently affiliated with WIT just like Kameda, though I’ll spare you the rant about the contractual situation in the industry shifting as a desperate attempt to secure talent amidst the overproduction. Wrapping everything together will be photographyPhotography (撮影, Satsuei): The marriage of elements produced by different departments into a finished picture, involving filtering to make it more harmonious. A name inherited from the past, when cameras were actually used during this process. director Kazuto Izumita, who is collecting works by directors with exceptional stylistic sensibilities like they’re his own infinity stones.
Among all those names, composer Kensuke Ushio stands out as a particularly interesting one. In his interview for SWITCH’s Dandadan feature, Ushio explains that the appeal of the work in his eyes was the feeling that anything goes, so he wanted to express that freedom and width of expression through the soundtrack too. His vehicle for doing so would be Big Beat, an electronic genre that among other things is defined by its diverse usage of sampling. Given that incorporating preexisting materials into a commercial work is a copyright nightmare, Ushio instead recorded his own fake tunes and assorted sounds to sample into the soundtrack. Although he kept the many genres mixed into Dandadan in mind, the multiple layers of fictional creation add up to a sound that feels unknown even to a unique composer like him.
As he moved forward, that subjective lack of reality proved an asset. Being too much of a scaredy-cat to watch horror stuff himself, he would base songs on perceived spookiness that drew from things he imagined and his actual experiences elsewhere; to introduce a particularly vain character, for example, he based his composition on a song he recalled as being used for a cosmetics commercial… which turned out not to exist in the end. This mix of genres, audio sources, real elements and misunderstandings became the energetic yet disconcerting sound that Dandadan needed. Though he noted that he was merely the composer, in contrast to the theatrical works of Naoko Yamada where visuals and sound are formulated in unison, there’s no denying that the inclusion of Ushio enrichens the flavor of right about any work.
Given how many people in leadership roles we’ve introduced, you may have noticed that one name in particular is conspicuously missing. While we’ve yet to shout out Fuga Yamashiro in this article, he’s someone we’ve written about before. Back in 2019, studio Science Saru was preparing for the impending departure of their founder and leader Masaaki Yuasa—who’d still release works with them after that—by recruiting outside stars and also mentoring their own. During the production of Yuasa’s Eizouken, they attempted to maximize the latter strategy by placing two youngsters with contrasting backgrounds under the guidance of their veteran leader; a strategy that aimed not just to train them from an overarching position that newcomers don’t usually experience, but also to exploit the difference in their viewpoints during the production process. Those two individuals were animator Mari Motohashi, whom you may have known as the illustrator Nemuri, and a production assistantProduction Assistant (制作進行, Seisaku Shinkou): Effectively the lowest ranking ‘producer’ role, and yet an essential cog in the system. They check and carry around the materials, and contact the dozens upon dozens of artists required to get an episode finished. Usually handling multiple episodes of the shows they’re involved with. with little to no directorial experience by the name of Fuga Yamashiro.
Speaking to Gigazine at the time, Yamashiro exposed how he approached his role—effectively a secretary for Yuasa—and the creative act altogether. His struggles were relatable for rookie directors who don’t have a background in animation; which is to say, he had a hard time figuring out how to convey exactly what he wanted to the rest of the staff, a challenge that animators-turned-directors heavily rely on their drawings to solve. Similarly, his troubles when it comes to shot composition are common among those who don’t have traditional training in animation. To make up for that, he doubled down in individual qualities that were already noticeable back then and have now become the backbone of his series direction. As if to summarize that approach, Dandadan’s author has taken a liking to calling him an enshutsu otaku, a nerd about the act of technical direction itself.
Back when he was looking to get hired by Saru, Yamashiro caught Yuasa’s attention by pulling out a thick notebook where he had been recreating sequences that caught his eye from various pieces of media (especially live-action films) ever since he was a student. To this day, he still ambushes interviewers on the regular by pulling it out and showing them his dictionary of techniques—something he identified as his unique weapon, one to make up for his weaknesses when compared to animators with better drawing skills. Such studies would be somewhat natural for artists like them, but Yamashiro’s nerdy passion takes it to the next level and surprises every veteran he comes across. Speaking to Switch, renowned series composer Hiroshi Seko admitted he had never seen anyone extensively scrawling their directorial choices for every scene on the corners of the original manga. Rather than being just a curiosity, that obsessive approach allowed them to incorporate many of those choices into the scripts already, solidifying the vision for the series at an early stage.
Again, Yamashiro’s approach was a point of interest we highlighted when he was a complete newcomer, as it was that obvious already. Eizouken #04 deals precisely with the protagonist’s database-like knowledge of specific production methods, allowing her to give new life to their own animation project by borrowing what she’d learned from others. Yamashiro’s love for film is channeled in spirit when they screen their work to an audience who get immersed like in the myth surrounding the Lumiere brothers’ L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat, and also in more material form in his familiar usage of techniques like match cutting to convey that. His methodical approach is sustained by two pillars that those who work with him even for a little bit quickly notice: he’s got a broader pool of influences to pull from than is the norm, and when it comes to facing his work, he’s able to reconvert those archived nuggets of knowledge into ideas that fit the holes he finds in his path. More succinctly: he’s a nerd and he’s got many ideas—the words of his peers, not mine!
A reason why it feels particularly important to point out Yamashiro’s philosophy is that, whenever a colorful anime makes the rounds, fans are quick to brand the director as a radical auteur. In this case, that’s not only a misguided view that might prevent you from getting the most out of his work, but also a claim that Dandadan’s series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario. has already refuted. During the interview that preceded the prescreening, Yamashiro explained the process of storing techniques he has previously seen before, directly pushing back against this type of profiling and calling himself a technical director instead. If I were to sum up his approach in a single word, it might be logical.
Those stylistic choices that may appear eccentric on the surface can be easily decrypted and turned into simple, purposeful statements. Look no further than those vivid colors, reminiscent of the energy in the manga covers and employed within context for narrative purposes. The show makes use of Sophie Li’s color scripts to keep everyone on the same page as the director and enable evocative mise en scene, but fundamentally, it’s regulated by strict rules. A certain malicious grandma is associated with red, while the first aliens we see are blue—and the power awakened to combat the two, a beautiful turquoise. Things get monochromatic for the following extraterrestrial being, while future episodes will have pinks, oranges, and greens specifically tied to one supernatural creature. By combining them all together, they paint the type of chaotic picture everyone imagined Dandadan to be, but the director’s process to get there is an extremely logical one. Conflating art analysis with the idea of “solving” it is a mistake that might lead to missing out on lots of exceptional instinct-driven creations, but if you enjoy figuring out the specific reasoning behind directorial choices, Dandadan might be the show for you.
During the process of editing this piece, a new Yamashiro interview for Animate Times surfaced. There, the director summarizes his directorial ideal as one where shots without a precise meaning have no place, where anything that doesn’t further the narrative or tells us something specific about its characters and world is an extraneous element that should be shaved away. Additionally, he notes that he would never use a particular technique for vague reasons like coolness or because it simply feels right—everything must make sense to him, and to achieve that, it needs a tangible reason. This mindset is exactly what we’ve been referring to when talking about him as an extremely logical creator, and why approaching him as an experimental auteur is, by his own admission, a bad idea; if there’s anything radical about Yamashiro as a director, it’s these utilitarian, orderly views on storytelling.
By comparing the first episode—directed and storyboarded by Yamashiro himself—with its manga counterpart, we can get a better read on how those ideas manifest. The Dandadan anime wastes no time in showcasing its first principle when it comes to adapting Tatsu’s work, precisely because it has a lot to do with time itself. The manga is a brisk read with a very characteristic tempo, and in the director’s eye, that merrily swinging between registers wasn’t a mere quirk but its whole identity. Consequently, the Dandadan anime has an allergy to establishing shots, kept to a minimum in the way that someone with lactose intolerance would shamefully engage in their weakness but only every now and then. The only pillow you’ll see in this show, however, will be the one on the bed you’ll pass out after such a confidently exhausting viewing experience. Yes, this is a positive assessment.
As we noted at the start of this piece, there is no break whatsoever between the opening and the fight between feisty protagonist Momo and her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend. That rhythm is maintained for the entire duration of his episode, and to a slightly lesser extent, will remain for the whole show. To further accelerate the manga and ideally match its impact in anime form, Yamashiro opted to increase the density of the portrayal. This is to say that, for example, the small panels that set the stage in the source material are incorporated into the action in anime form, allowing the adaptation to constantly keep moving forward. That constant jumping certainly makes it funnier at points, like the immediate switch between Momo’s aggressive stance and her deflated one.
Of course, there is more to Dandadan’s enchanting rhythm than just being fast, and that was a challenge for the anime team as well. Tatsu relies on one specific formula for his illustrative punches that he has no reason to change; multiple times during every single volume you’ll find a sequence that either builds up dread for a handful of panels or deflates it similarly before an obvious subversion, at which point the author hits you with a stunning full-page illustration. He can get away with constantly pulling this off because he’s an exceptional artist, but even with a solid team, the adaptation simply can’t compete with the sheer drawing skill. Instead, Yamashiro opts to use lighting and limited visibility to make the Turbo Granny reveal a shocking moment, incorporating that color-coding we talked about earlier into the direction of the scene. Somewhat in reverse, Momo being assaulted by the aliens also uses the rhythmic limitation of the visibility to increase the discomfort. As a less fortunate side note, the sexual violence in this first episode/chapter feels like it doesn’t belong in a series Tatsu wants to be uplifting—and he seems to agree because he quickly moved away from it. This may very well be an awkward artifact from those unplanned early stages, though it’s a shame that it happens to be in the first episode.
Thankfully, Momo’s captivity exemplifies some other interesting qualities as well. If we return to the idea that Yamashiro pulls out ideas previously stored in his directorial hat, it’s important to add an interesting wrinkle: he tries to do so in ways that thematically fit a particular scene. An obvious example here would be the depiction of brainwashing powers, which is meant to have the flair of the effects in an old tokusatsu series; after all, we’ve already established that all these creators are very mindful of those works being the inspiration for the sci-fi, alien side of Dandadan.
The director’s color-coding is perhaps more obvious than ever as a now possessed Okarun, the nerdy co-protagonist of the series, barges in to save the day; or rather to amusingly fail at that. As had been previously hinted when Momo was on the phone with him and a red glow emanated from her phone, this fight between supernatural beings is also a fight between colors. The blue spaceship is contaminated with this red youkai, whose violence sets an alarm that diegetically flares this color in the scene. As he’s defeated, Okarun is smashed into those panels, which turns off the lights in an organic way as well. And yet, that eventually leads to another color smashing through space and time to dominate the scene: the turquoise of Momo, awakened as a psychic user. When she defeats the aliens—with a kick that matches the one at the start of the episode—and her special powers die down, we’re back to a greyscale spaceship… until youkai trouble tints it red for a second again.
We should note that all of this is propped up by plain great storyboarding, which thanks to Yamashiro’s obsession with meaningful delivery, is always quite readable too. Okarun’s desire to save Momo, for example, is conveyed through his glasses in a straightforward yet elegant way; when he’s explaining that no aliens came to his desperate request for a friend, an empty sky is reflected on them, but that changes when the one person who defended him at school is shown through them. Earlier in the episode, Momo opening up about herself to him relies on imagery we often see in such situations: literally coming into the light, reflections, and in a bitter moment of introspection, her facing her shadow. In her moment of greatest need during the climax, what is used to transition in and out of the memories that unlock her new powers? Once again, the shadows cast by her grandma and her.
As the episode wraps up, we get the last few interesting tidbits about Yamashiro’s approach. In their Switch interviews, both the director and writer expressed their desire not to stray from the source material’s worldview, but instead to complement it through additions to its gaps. They pointed at, for example, the anime’s new idea that the Serpoians’ spaceship had been camouflaging as the moon; something not mentioned in the source material, but that would logically fit in its world, and that also allows it to be built into the show’s fun setpieces.
Although earlier we talked about storyboarding that increases the density as a means to control the pacing, Yamashiro also saw that approach as a way to keep viewers immersed. Look no further than the moment when Momo finds out that her new friend has the same name as the badass actor she idolizes. This punchline originally relied on the author’s illustrative power to sell it as a traditional romcom moment through the wind blowing by. A literal interpretation of that might have not had as much impact in anime form, while cutting out to a more dramatic, farcical presentation would incur the risk of breaking the natural flow. So instead, the anime made sure to keep the spaceship that had crashed in an indistinct place in the original right behind them—and bang, the heart-fluttering moment is now an explosion. Though there will be more to explore in future episodes (and we’ll be here to do so, perhaps at the end of this first arc) I believe this should be more than enough to tell whether you want to join this wild ride or not.
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