The first rule of Dandadan, I think, is don’t expect it to make sense. Okarun will try and explain it but in truth, things just happen for entertainment value. Fortunately, when the series is clicking that entertainment value is off the charts. That feeds into the second rule, which is to just sit back and let the crazy wash over you. This is a series best experienced viscerally rather than intellectually (like gossamer, if you will). It needed the right sort of adaptation that make that work as well (or better, potentially) in anime form. So far the returns are pretty positive on that score.
This ep (they all will be) was filled with weirdness and fantastical creatures. But it starts and ends with Takakura Ken and Ayase Momo, as Dandadan generally does. In the first place, the idea of calling this bespectacled geek Takakura Ken is too much for Momo’s brain. She decides on “Okarun” (because he’s an occult otaku), and forbids him from ever using his own name in her presence. She invites him back to her her place (with a warning about her boy-hating grandma) for a reset and change of clothes. But that gets distinctly uncomfortable for Okarun after trying to pass through the torii gate (yes, Momo and her grandma live inside a torii).
Momo must hold back the curse or Okarun will transfer into Turbo Granny mode. She theorizes that (like a ghost) Granny won’t be able to come out after dawn. But that’s soon disproved in no uncertain terms. There’s a fair bit of adolescent bickering between the two, and Okarun soon opines that once all this is over, Momo never needs to talk to him again. He didn’t want to miss his chance to talk to someone about his passion, never having had a real friend. But she, he says, is out of his social league. But Momo isn’t the sort to take that sort of thing lying down.
This, essentially, is what saves Dandadan from just being an acid trip with the occult. Okarun and Momo are both good people, and fit together in an opposites attract sort of way. When they fight you want to root for them, and indeed that was the case with me from the beginning. It’s already been a rough day for Okarun – possessed, missing his schlong, and the unwilling recipient of a new hairstyle. But the worst is yet to come. The “other” doorbell at the Ayase house – the one for evil spirits – rings. And this is now a welcome guest, especially with Grandma not at home.
I admit I’d never heard of the “Flatwoods Monster” incident before Okarun brought it up in the manga. But like all the occult Easter eggs in this series it’s based on a real thing – a supposed incident in West Virginia in 1952 (right down to the toxic fog). Ken’s Okarun’s hypothesis that aliens and youkai might be connected certainly feels relevant. This one is a nasty piece of work, too. The kids seem no match for him until Okarun suggests that Momo let Turbo Granny out – the physical part anyway – so he can use her power to fight the alien (who, like all alien, is after their bananas). Problem is Momo is a novice at controlling her spirit powers, and this is hardly a seamless process for Okarun.
This is a fun fight to be sure (I actually spotted the sumo thing before Momo pointed it out). The kids don’t win out until Momo gets punched so hard she’s embedded in the alien’s stone wall – outside the torii gate. This allows her to restore Grandma’s talisman to its rightful place, and put a stop to this particular skirmish. But Okarun is still dickless, and Momo is out on her feet until even the on her feet part checks out. That leaves Granny free to emerge in all her glory. If ever a series depended on the “never a dull moment” principle to succeed, it’s Dandadan. But fortunately it manages to live up to it a surprising percentage of the time.
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