An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Seasonal Selection – DanDaDan Episode 11

Hey, this is just a thought, but maybe the show’s not going out on its highest note.

Don’t get me wrong, this episode is still fun, but it’s setting up for continuation well past the season so it’s pretty clear we won’t really be launching into it.

After much teasing from the flamboyant and goofy pretty boy Jiji, we finally get the reason for his visit and, really, his moving in: his parents are hospitalized not for normal reasons but because of something supernatural and evil in their new home, meaning that the boy who once kind of bullied Momo as we saw in very short shots early on now regrets it, as he’s able to see spooks, and one really terrible one in particular who seems to be the source of his woes.

Exorcists have tried and failed to deal with the problem, leading him back to Momo’s grandma. However, as her powers are (as have been mentioned) geographically locked, Momo is asked to ultimately take on the task.

Meanwhile, Jiji transfers into school, causing Okarun a fit of depressed jealousy and Momo no end of grief with his wacky antics, basically hitting on all the girls in class and also causing a deliberate misunderstanding regarding his place in the show. The annoyance for Momo and depression for Okarun peaks as they all run into each other at lunch, but this is put on hold as an animate anatomical model comes charging through the scene.

The rest of the episode is a grand chase sequence. Momo has grabbed the model (and Jiji holds on to Momo trying to “protect her”) resulting in getting flown like a kite, while Okarun transforms to give chase. The pursuit leads to a hectic charge through the city, until the model seemingly gets away. Momo, however, managed to grab a part of it and uses that to find it at a local dump, where the model dig up its beloved fellow haunted anatomical model, who had clearly been thrown away.

On the whole, I’d say that this episode was already one of the weaker ones in the series, and it does few favors to know we’re not really going to get into the rising action for the next big arc, much less through it – hence why I don’t have a great deal to recount this week. I normally like these things to be a little longer, but we know DanDaDan by now, we know what a comedy episode is like and we’ve already seen all these emotions in Okarun and Momo’s kind-of-a-romance. The story moves forward, but nothing particularly new or interesting is here to be had at the moment. Next.


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