#even though I haven't picked up Dandadan yet

[kcuf-ad]

I swear to fuck if I see another girl character being hated because they "get in the way", I am going to throw their bodies off a building.

[yurisorcerer]

Tons to be said about every arc of this story, especially since it seems like we're only just now rounding the bend into having a main villain and such. Some stray observations though:

The series clearly revels in having a large ensemble cast (in ch. 165 there's an apparent crack about this, as there are now enough named characters to credibly field a baseball team), and it's kind of impressive how good all of them are, there's not a single miss in the entire cast. There are enough parallels between its many characters that I think there's some central crux being used to make all of them that I haven't picked up on yet. It definitely seems intentional that Okarun is the only character whose backstory we don't know yet, though.

Going way back to Vamola's backstory I was initially not particularly fond of it because it scans as kind of nationalistic. (Not to mention the inherent problematica of using ancient Sumer as a lost civlization, though this is a better choice than say, Egypt, for sure.) However, upon further reflection I think the intended parallel might be more along the lines of Spain invading the Aztec Empire or something of that sort. I might of course be wrong. I did see someone else on tumblr say that the main thing with Dandadan is that when it's talking about spirits it's usually talking about cycles of pain, and when it talks about aliens it's usually talking about exploitation. If that's true---and I think there's ample evidence for it, although later on it begins to play with this dichotomy---then Vamola as being from a destroyed native culture makes sense, although I'm still struggling with putting the pieces together with this one. (Even if it is nationalistic, it is so in a very strange way. Also making the girl in this situation a pale blondie is silly but that's nothing tons of other mangaka haven't done just as uncritically, unfortunately.)

It's interesting that the police officier is only really presented sympathetically when he's not acting as one. It's a common critical trap to assume the authors of everything you like must have similar politics to yours, so I don't want to take this as a criticism of police as an institution, but rather that it seems like he can only really be himself when he's outside of his role as a cop. A role which he places a lot of importance on because his dead daughter aspired to be an officer too, and called him a "hero of justice." This is happening at the same time as Rin is being very literally haunted by her own dead childhood friend, so I think the parallel between a literal and metaphorical haunting is intentional, though to what end I don't yet know.

The Comte de St. Germain, who might be our overall villain given that he's given us our first title drop, feels like a dark mirror of Okarun. An interest in the supernatural and the alien but not a respect of it. Hence, he is a collector of the supernatural, rather than an appreciator of it. This certainly seems to square with his behavior in the following arc, where he's getting this new girl, Kouki, to try to steal Momo's powers. Kouki having power over what the story calls 'pygmies' is surely intentional, too. The rundown given here defines these 'pygmies' as those forgotten by the surface world and driven underground, literally diminished in both body and spirit until they vanish beneath the earth. As a person forgotten by society herself, there's an explicit link between her abilities and her state of existence. I will say the way this arc seems to tie up is a little on the simplistic side from what I've come to expect from this manga, and I don't love the design change for Kouki, even if her new design is also good I would've liked her to remain somewhat creepy looking.

All told though despite some nitpicks and some places where the author and I just clearly have somewhat different views of the world, this is one of my favorite manga I've read recently. Very freewheeling, feels like anything can happen, and it really feels like we're only maybe like halfway through the whole thing. Really hoping the anime inspires people to check the manga out because not unlike Chainsaw Man (which Dandadan mangaka Tatsu Yukinobu was an assistant on at one point), the anime really only shows you the tip of the iceberg, and while it was very successful it does seem like it'll probably be AT LEAST a few years until the anime catches up with where the manga is right now.