Let's Talk About Dandadan
Monsters, cryptids and just random weirdness
I recently watched both seasons of the “Dandadan” anime for the first time, and it felt like the perfect opportunity to write an article about it. This will be a part review and a part of jumping-off point for a fun discussion about mythical creatures from around the world. In other words, let’s just have some fun talking about the weird stuff.
What Is Dandadan About?
This anime is as weird as it gets. The best way to watch it is to just turn off your skepticism and just enjoy the pure craziness, where seeing a ghost, aliens, or cryptid’s (a mythical creature people believe in, but science hasn’t confirmed) is an almost daily occurrence for the main characters.
The story starts with Momo Ayase—a girl who believes in ghosts because of her upbringing, but doesn’t believe in aliens—and Ken Takakura—a boy who believes in aliens and other mythical creatures, but not ghosts. When they meet at school, they immediately start arguing over whether ghosts or aliens actually exist. Both decide to prove the other wrong: Ken goes to a haunted tunnel in Shono City where the famous Turbo Granny resides, and Momo goes alien hunting at an abandoned hospital where UFO sightings have been reported.
You can probably already guess the result. Momo gets kidnapped by aliens who need her for reproduction, and Ken runs into a massive ghost problem. After an intense battle that even includes ghost-versus-alien fight (more like Ken with ghost powers vs aliens), both manage to escape, but the damage is done. Momo loses her clothes, wallet, and phone, but discovers she has awakened her telekinetic powers. Meanwhile, Ken loses his genitals and gets cursed, resulting in him constantly transforming into a ghost-monster, a transformation Momo can temporarily block using her newfound powers.
As the show continues, they combine their forces to recover Ken’s missing body parts and handle a nonstop alien, ghost, and other supernatural threats. It’s a wildly entertaining watch, packed with bizarre humor, great fights, and interesting allies—both human and non-human—who step up to help them along the way.
My Thoughts on the Show
First of all, Ken Takakura reminds me so much of my best friend. I just can’t unsee it! Here are the striking similarities:
Alien Ambitions: Ken has always wanted to be abducted by aliens, and my friend is the exact same way. He actively dreams about being snatched up by a UFO one day. So, if any aliens are reading this, I know a guy who would gladly volunteer to join your spaceship. 😂
Endless Curiosity: Ken loves reading about a wide variety of random things, just like my friend, who is basically a walking encyclopedia of everything.
Episode 2 Event: The scene at the beginning of Season 1, Episode 2 is something I would expect from my friend. If you’re curious, take a look at what happens before the opening starts. If you know, you know. 😂
The show also does a fantastic job of highlighting different legends and myths, including Turbo Granny (a Japanese urban legend), the Flatwoods Monster (a US cryptid), the Loch Ness Monster (Scottish folklore), the Mongolian Death Worm, Kaiju, and the Dover Demon (aka Mr. Mantis Shrimp in the show).
On top of all the chaos, we get to see a romance develop between the main characters, which is a huge win for a romance junkie like me. Aira Shiratori serves as a romantic rival to Momo, and it’s genuinely interesting to see the contrast between the two girls. In one Season 2 episode, they wake up in the same room. Aira immediately goes into full makeup mode to ensure Ken sees her as a perfect princess, while Momo just grabs breakfast in her natural morning look (though she definitely fixes up before actually heading out to school). That little moment lived rent-free in my mind for a while, it’s such a great illustration of entirely different types of personalities.
When it comes to things I don’t like in this show, I really only have one. Sorry, but I just can’t stand Jin Enjouji as a character, his personality drives me nuts. Aside from him, I like the characters, especially Seiko Ayase, Momo Ayase, and Mr. Mantis Shrimp.
Overall, I give this anime an 8/10. It’s incredibly unique, refuses to take itself too seriously, and isn’t afraid to go completely off the rails, which is fantastic. If Jin didn’t constantly annoy me, the score would have been even higher! 😅
This concludes the review portion of our journey. Next up, we’re going to dive into the fun world of cryptozoology, since it fits right in with the spirit of “Dandadan”.
Part 2: Legends People Believe In
All over the world, people share stories about strange creatures that science has never found evidence for. Some of these stories have been passed down from generation to generation, while others originated from people seeing things they can’t explain. They range from the somewhat realistic—like the Thylacine (Tasmanian tiger), an animal that went extinct in 1936 when the last known member died in a zoo, meaning it could theoretically still be around—to completely crazy tales, like the existence of actual leprechauns. I have seen documentaries where people try to catch a real one, though no one takes that too seriously since it’s too wild. Although, if someone claims to me they’ve seen one, I will probably believe them just on the assumption that they got insanely drunk and mistook something small for a tiny humanoid creature. 😄
Personally, I don’t believe in these kinds of legends, but I’m just having fun talking about them. So, let me highlight some of these creatures.
Loch Ness Monster
Pictures I added: On the left is a “Dandadan’s” version of the monster. The real one, obviously, doesn’t shoot lasers from its mouth. Although, that would have been a cool legend. On the right is a famous “surgeon’s photograph” of 1934.
The Legend of the Loch Ness Monster
Many people believe a large creature lives in Loch Ness - a deep lake in the Scottish Highlands. Eyewitnesses typically describe something similar to a plesiosaur (a marine reptile that went extinct about 66 million years ago). In short, it is supposedly a large, long-necked creature with one or more humps living in the water.
This legend exploded in popularity in 1933, especially after the famous “surgeon’s photograph” (1934) was published, depicting a plesiosaur like silhouette in the waters of Loch Ness.
Why Do People Believe This Creature Exists?
It’s a combination of eyewitness accounts, photographs and videos depicting mysterious shapes in the water, sonar anomalies, and the speculation that a plesiosaur might have survived and is living in this 226.96-meter-deep lake (that’s the maximum depth and the average is around 132 meters).
This legend has inspired a massive amount of documentaries, books, and even works of fiction, like the 2007 movie “The Water Horse” and the 2004 animated film “Scooby-Doo and the Loch Ness Monster”.
So, Is It Real?
In 2018, scientists tested environmental DNA from Loch Ness to look for unusual species living there. By taking water samples, they could map out the species inhabiting the lake based on leftover DNA traces. In 2019, the results came in: there was zero evidence of any large, unknown creatures. Therefore, there is no reason to believe a plesiosaur is swimming around down there.
They did, however, find a large amount of eel DNA. While giant eels are theoretically possible, the largest known eel on record was only about 3 meters (9.8 feet) long, not even close to the giant monster described by eyewitnesses. Scientists can’t completely rule out the existence of an unusually large eel, but one hasn’t been found. More realistically, a high concentration of eel DNA simply means there are a lot of regular-sized eels living in the lake.
As for the famous 1934 “surgeon’s photograph,” it is now known to be a complete hoax created using a toy submarine combined with tricky photographing angle.
In short, if the famous Nessie actually exists, it’s likely just an abnormally large eel, though even that would require solid evidence for such a claim. Sightings are probably a combination of hoaxes, misidentified animals, floating logs, or just wind and waves playing tricks on people’s eyes.
Additionally, I must ask people who believe in such a massive create living there: Do you realize that it can’t just be one creature, it needs to reproduce, that means we are dealing with a population of them living in this lake. This lake may be deep for a lake and 36.2 km long, but believing that a large group of plesiosaur’s living there with weak food supply is a large squeeze. Don’t think so?
So, enough about Nessie, let’s talk about the next legend.
Flatwoods Monster
Now, let’s talk about an American legend. On the left picture you can see Flatwoods Monster depicted in “Dandadan” and on the right you can see how eyewitnesses had depicted it in real life. The legend of Flatwoods Monster: It all started in 1952 when two brothers, Edward and Fred May, and their friend said that they saw a bright object and red light in the sky which landed on local farmer G. Bailey Fisher’s property. They told their parents, and a group of people went to check it out. When they arrived there, they saw a pulsing red light, and when they aimed a flashlight in that direction, they momentarily saw a tall, humanlike creature with a round, red face surrounded by a hood-like shape. When the creature made a hissing sound, it glided toward them, which caused them to drop the flashlight.
Eyewitnesses reported a “pungent mist” and were nauseated. And after the encounter, there supposedly was an oily film on the boys’ faces, and their throats were swollen. Doctors couldn’t find a cause for that, and police who later investigated found nothing in that territory. Skid marks and an “odd, gummy deposit” were found by Lee Stewart Jr.
So, was it an alien?
I don’t believe that. First of all, let’s talk about the existence of aliens in general, as this is a perfect opportunity. We should split this question into two different questions:
How likely is it for some kind of life to exist outside planet Earth? A very short answer: Very likely, especially if we are simply talking about simple microbial life, but intelligent life is insanely rare by comparison, though it is perfectly possible knowing that the universe is incredibly huge (The Milky Way galaxy alone contains billions of stars). Just pure statistics estimate that intelligent life is likely somewhere else.
How likely is it for aliens to know about us and visit? My answer: Very unlikely, sorry. For that to happen, there has to be intelligent life which is insanely more advanced than us technologically, they would have to find us in all this incredibly large universe, especially noting that humans are very young beings overall, so not much time has passed for them to find us. And additionally, it’s questionable if primitive beings like us would even spark their interest, we would probably be like primitive animals for them. So, I don’t believe it, sorry. The only scenario I can imagine is for aliens to help develop life on Earth for some scientific reason and just observe it develop, but again, why not use some highly advanced simulators? It’s quicker and more practical.
So, if I don’t believe the Flatwoods Monster was an alien, then what? It was a combination of a meteor, a regular owl, and possibly an aircraft’s red navigation light. On the same night, a meteor was observed in three US states, that’s probably what they saw in the sky. Red aircraft beacons were also visible that night, so that could explain the red light. When it comes to the monster - well, it’s a very good description of running into an owl at night combined with human fear. The shape of the monster’s head is how an owl looks, and that also explains it flying away when humans disturbed her, that also explains the sound. The body of the monster could easily have simply been foliage. When they entered the territory where the “light crashed,” they expected something weird, and that’s what their mind created. Human psyche naturally is trying to find human like shapes in nature - our natural defense mechanism - so it’s no wounder they saw something human like in all that. Nausea is simply a symptom of hysteria. Yes, there are still some small questions, but pretty much everything can be explained logically, and there is no reason to believe anything abnormal happened here. Also, eyewitnesses couldn’t agree on many things.
I don’t want to make this article too long, so It’s time to end it here.
I hope you enjoyed this weird article. 😁
If you enjoy my work, please consider a free or paid subscription. By choosing a paid subscription, you directly support my work and gain full access to my entire library of articles. Thank you so much for your support!
Very cool post, Dan da Dan is a must watch!