She’s into ghosts - he’s into aliens. Together, the two social outcasts at school form an unexpected friendship as they challenge one another to prove that their thing is real - and wouldn’t ya know it, they both are! But now they got both ghosts and aliens chasing them and ankfdndsfkjnfjgfhuusfjsd…
I wasn’t that impressed with the first volume of Yukinobu Tatsu’s Dandadan (the title is apparently a word soup of the Japanese words for story, ghost story, and comedy story smooshed together). The main characters are cute and the premise is intriguing but the story didn’t really grab me or make me want to follow the series any further.
The art is really excellent - the monster designs look genuinely creepy, maybe the creepiest designs outside of Junji Ito’s work - and the physical comedy of Ken is quite amusing. Tatsu used to be Chainsaw Man creator Tatsuki Fujimoto’s assistant and, knowing that, you can see some similarities in how he draws the human characters.
But then we have the eye-rollingly predictable sleaze of a Shonen Jump manga (ie. comics for boys) with Momo - a teenage girl - being stripped and threatened with gang rape early on, along with gratuitous upskirt shots being thrown in every now and then. And her grandma is easily the youngest looking grandmother ever - honestly, she looks 30 at most! I’m sure the reason why will probably be some magic/illusion thingy.
Both Ken and Momo are likeable leads and they have fun chemistry between them. But Momo develops and is able to control her psychic powers way too quickly and easily. And how is she able to get repeatedly punched into concrete by a giant monster and not be reduced to red pulp?! Lotta convenience here.
Yukinobu Tatsu is a fine artist, he has a strong grasp of sequential storytelling and I liked his protagonists but ultimately his vague story of teenagers being endlessly chased by aliens and ghosts didn’t make for a compelling narrative in this forgettable first volume, and didn’t hook me into wanting to keep reading the series.
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