A Few Thoughts on Dandadan and the Fun of Writing Freely

28 Nov, 2024

There was a time in my life when the idea of writing a story filled me with pure excitement.

I remember in third grade we learned about the concept of writing a strong opening sentence, and we had to try it out. After pondering on this for a moment, I figured it would be exciting if this was a story about a monster, so I went with that. Even though I only had to write one sentence for that assignment, I was intrigued with that beginning and felt like I had to continue that story. If there was work time during class, I would try to finish as quick as I could so I could continue writing.

When I was in fourth grade, I remember being at home one day, super bored, when I decided to grab a fresh composition notebook and see if I could write something. With my opening lines, if I remember right, I was sort of hyping up the story, promising it was super exciting, even though I barely knew what it was about yet. But with a couple more sentences, I had decided: this was a comedic story told from the perspective of an alien whose planet is visited by astronauts from Earth. I really committed to this story, filling up dozens of pages in that composition notebook (it wasn’t college ruled so I assume the actual word count would be fairly small). Writing some parts of the story felt like a chore, (like where I felt I needed to describe the protagonist taking off in a spaceship, which I found dull) but I just breezed through those to get back to whatever fun idea I had next.

But at some point, the joy I found in writing fiction started to die. I was still interested in writing about aliens and whatever. But so many things kept me from writing as often or with such enthusiasm. I think there were more distractions available compared to when I was a younger kid, of course. But I also think I just started worrying too much about whether I could write something good to the point where I took the fun out of it. I was no longer just seeing a silly idea and running with it.

At the end of 2019, manga artist Yukinobu Tatsu was at a low point. His past manga series were cut short, and more recently, he had worked on two pitches that were both rejected. He now felt like he couldn’t draw anymore. He expressed this to his editor, who responded with a simple suggestion: try drawing freely, even if it’s just one page. Following this advice, Tatsu began drawing with a somewhat silly source of inspiration in mind: the movie Sadako vs. Kayako. He thought he might be able to bring that sort of energy into a manga. The eventual result was Dandadan, which began serialization in 2021 and became a big hit.¹

Now if I didn’t know anything about Dandadan, I might say “that’s an inspiring story” and then forget about it forever. But having seen Dandadan, Tatsu’s story really resonates with me. If you’re unfamiliar, Dandadan is a story where a UFO-obsessed boy meets a girl who denies UFOs but does believe in ghosts—and it turns out both of them are right. This leads to a whole lot of crazy encounters with strange beings—often frightening, sometimes super weird. The story absolutely feels like a work where the writer let himself have fun and entertain all sorts of ideas, no matter how silly—and believe me, they get very silly. This full commitment to silliness and absurdity is a huge part of what makes Dandadan feel so fresh and fun.

But what really hooked me on Dandadan is the characters (of course I will say that about most of my favorite series). Right in the first scene, we meet Momo Ayase, a loudmouth gyaru who has a good heart and doesn’t hesitate to fight against the jerks of the world. She soon encounters a shy otaku who she’ll later nickname Okarun. Okarun has no trouble speaking his mind on the occult, and he and Momo end up getting into an argument, which ultimately leads them to become friends (and get into some serious trouble with ghosts and aliens of course).

Okarun and Momo’s interactions together are fun to watch from the first moment, but I was not prepared for how invested I would get in their evolving relationship. In between all the insane battles with scary stuff, Dandadan is a better romcom than a whole lot of romcoms.

It’s what amazes me about the series: how does it do so many things so well? It surprises me and keeps me on the edge of my seat with the sudden appearances of monsters and yōkai, and the battles against them are so smartly written. And then the next moment, we got the whole ensemble cast just goofing around. And then we dial in on the sweet feelings between Momo and Okarun? I seriously couldn’t put the series down!

Oh, and I didn’t even mention those parts where we see the tragic pasts of certain characters. This series got me tearing up multiple times with these poignant scenes that use as few words as possible.

There’s a lot more I could say if I were to get into the details of Dandadan, but I’m not going to take that much time right now. Hopefully in the future I will get back to it. Right now, though, I just barely caught up on the manga, after getting super into the anime (which is incredibly well-made and still has a few more episodes to go), and I am just thrilled with the series.

Knowing how the idea for Dandadan came about, it really makes me believe that even if you think you have a really stupid idea, you can pursue it anyway and potentially make something really special out of it. What people say is to just write and don’t worry so much if what you write initially is garbage. And sometimes even if I think I want to write, I forget that advice and am just staring at a blank page anyway. It’s not easy to create. Sometimes it’s not easy to get ideas from your brain to a page, and sometimes it feels like you don’t even have any ideas to give. I don’t know man, none of this seems easy. But maybe if we’re just able to find time to create without the fear of failure, to have that freedom. Maybe that’ll lead to some real good stuff.