While fans dubbed Dandadan as the next big obsession following its recent world premiere at Anime Expo 2024, the creative process, vision and challenges that went into in order to bring the manga to the big screen remained largely unknown.
However, recent interviews with the director of the anime (at Anime Expo 2024) shed some light into this, giving fans a glimpse into what went behind the scenes during the production.
For director Fuga Yamashiro, the biggest challenge was to find a way to translate Dandadan manga faithfully into anime.
Often, a good anime adaptation is equated with the quality of visuals. However, for Yamashiro, adapting Dandadan didn’t just mean to have a beautiful looking anime.
When Yamashiro first read the manga, he was impressed by what Dandadan had to offer. And he was aware that this feeling might get diluted as the manga got adapted into the anime – something he was not ready to let happen.
The director’s concerns are valid. Dandadan doesn’t stick to a single genre. It combines paranormal with aliens and manages to eek in elements of a rom-com in between. On top of that, it quickly shifts between these three, giving a feeling of high tempo/rhythm to the readers.
For Yamashiro, tackling this blend of genres successfully was necessary to retain the manga’s unique atmosphere and appeal.
“This manga has a great rhythm and lots of gaps. Sudden turns from comedy to serious scenes. There’s slice of life scenes, which quickly become battle scenes. It’s rare to see a manga series with solid pillars of both action and rom-com, and the going back and forth between these genres are quite fast, which creates this sense of gap. So the question was how we could express that in animation.“
This meant he had to highlight the contrasting elements of the different genres in each scene and make sure that the anime watchers did not miss out on anything.
And so, in order to stay true to the mood and emotions invoked while reading the manga, the director made sure to put some extra efforts into the animation style.
The visual differentiation between daily life scenes and those of the aliens and ghosts in Dandadan came from this aspect of the director’s vision.
Additionally, Yamashiro revealed that aliens are rendered in 3D in the anime to appear cold and inorganic, while ghosts are hand-drawn to convey warmth and relatability.
Colors also played a crucial role in this differentiation. For instance, aliens, seen as cold and distant, were primarily rendered in blue hues, while ghosts and yokai, were depicted in warmer tones to reflect their past lives and emotions.
Color Designer Satoshi Hashimoto was responsible for choosing the colors for the characters and the scenes.
“I really think that for ghosts and yokai, they’ve lived before, they had emotions, and some of them were humans before. So they’re not really quite the killer machines like how the aliens are. That’s why I thought the warm colors would really fit into their characteristic as a whole. Because some of these aliens, they really just come to kill you. I thought having colder colors, blue etc, would make it easier to understand for the viewers. When you continue reading on in the manga, you might think “Oh is it humans vs aliens vs yokai and ghosts, is it a battle royale between them?” But no, its really more that yokai and ghosts tend to be on the human side. So I wanted to make sure that anything that used to be from the Earth really had warm colors.“
Along with the distinct visual representation, Yamashiro also wanted to maintain the high tempo nature of the manga.
According to the director, comedy was the essence of Dandadan, and the pacing and timing played a huge role in perfecting it. Naturally, getting the tempo right was of utmost importance.
He noted that the manga followed a “hard and soft”, or “fast and slow” approach (as highlighted in his above quotes). This meant the production team really had to plan out which scenes needed to be adapted in a “quick-quick-quick-show-show-show” manner and which needed to be slow.
So, when it came to the production, Yamashiro’s primary goal was to find a way to recreate the dynamic panels of the manga within the constraints of an animation frame.
He aimed to keep the panels as interesting as possible and ensure smooth transitions between scenes.
One of the key challenges, according to Yamashiro, was the difference in format. Manga, in general, had the leeway to use a variety of panel sizes to create dramatic effects. In contrast, animation required a consistent frame size.
To overcome this, Yamashiro replicated this effect in animation by pacing scenes with rapid cuts leading up to a major reveal, thereby enhancing the impact of key moments.
According to him, the ability to control timing and scene cuts in animation allowed for a more controlled and impactful presentation of these reveals.
“I also wanted to naturally connect the panels, because I think the manga omits some things since there’s no movement in manga. So then we tried to fill in the blanks between the manga panels to make it so the viewers could watch it more smoothly. Obviously, we do try to recreate the manga as much as possible, but there are differences from manga. So we wanted to make sure we showcased every single important scene in the best way possible. And that goes both for action scenes and even everyday, normal life scenes.”
Along with the careful adaptation of scenes, efforts were also put in voice acting to make sure that the mood of the manga is captured perfectly. The VAs were asked to shift from being funny to emotional real quick in order to add to the rhythm of the show.
Yamashiro also gave an interesting tid-bit about the soundtracks that were used in the anime. He revealed that Dandadan’s author Yukinobu Tatsu was a fan of the old Ultraman, and Yamashiro wanted to include elements from that in order to make it more interesting.
“ I also want to talk about the sound and soundtrack! The manga artist, Yukinobu Tatsu-sensei, is a fan of the old Ultraman. I wanted to incorporate that element so we would have some nostalgic sounds in the anime, similar to old tokusatsu sounds with modern sounds. The range of the sound components is very wide, so if the viewers can focus on that, that would be great.“
The director also revealed that extra elements were added to the anime whenever they felt the manga was too thin or light.
The efforts that were put into the anime seems to have paid off well based on the fan reactions from the world premiere of the anime held at Anime Expo 2024 on July 6.
Meanwhile, a world premiere of the anime’s English Dub is set take place at the Main Stage of Anime NYC on Aug 24.
Dandadan anime, animated by Science Saru, will officially released on October 2024, and will be streaming on both Netflix & Crunchyroll.
Source: Anime Corner, Crunchyroll, AniTrendz
