DAN DA DAN is set to be one of the most exciting premieres of the fall season, blending elements of sci-fi, horror, mystery, comedy, and even romance. The story follows high schoolers Momo Ayase, a girl from a family of spirit mediums, and Ken Takakura, a boy who is extremely into aliens and whom Momo nicknames Okarun. After Momo saves Okarun from some bullies, the two begin to argue about whether aliens exist or ghosts exist and challenge each other to venture out into places where either aliens or ghosts are claimed to visit. The result is the both of them encountering paranormal activity that neither of them would have ever expected to find, launching them into a journey to challenge and contend with paranormal forces.
We had the opportunity to watch episode 1 during Anime Expo and found it to be an incredible premiere, doing everything a first episode is meant to do and instantly capturing the attention of the audience. On top of that though, we also got to interview two of the people that made such a spectacular premiere possible in the first place: Fuga Yamashiro, Director of DAN DA DAN, and Shion Wakayama, voice of Momo.
First Impressions
First, I wanted to understand how the two of them were first approached to work on DAN DA DAN and if they had heard of the series prior to being approached to work on it. Both of them shared that, as well as their initial impressions of the work and how their roles would be shaped. For Director Yamashiro-san, this meant thinking about how he would adapt the story, art, and style of the manga in animation. For Wakayama-san, this meant conceptualizing Momo as a character and thinking about how to formulate her voice while acting as her.
Yamashiro-san: In regard to whether I had heard of DAN DA DAN before, I actually don’t read manga a lot. I watch a lot of drama and movies, but I’m not an avid manga reader. And when I like something, I tend to just be blindly focused on that one thing, such that I’m not aware of what’s popular, what’s not, etc. So I didn’t know about this manga. The first time I read DAN DA DAN was when I was handed it as I was approached with this project. But when I read the manga, I was really impressed and I thought the manga had a very unique sense of atmosphere and appeal. So, then I thought, “Okay, so how do I translate this into animation?” Because I think with manga, it’s only one person working on the manga; it’s really like their child. But with anime, so many people work on this. I think that density of what the manga artist has put into the manga, it tends to get spread out. And so sometimes the atmosphere of that manga tends to lose its taste.
I worked hard on trying to make that not happen. I wanted to stay true to the emotions that are evoked when someone reads the manga. So I tried to put in a little playfulness and maybe some effort into the animation style so that the core of the atmosphere of the manga stays intact. The emotions that get evoked when a manga reader first reads DAN DA DAN, I wanted the anime watchers to feel the same way. I think in every single scene, there’s so many genres just mixed into this title. And, it quickly shifts from one genre to another. I wanted to keep that, and I really wanted that juxtaposition of the different elements to be intact. And then really stay with that energetic feel of the manga.
Wakayama-san: I knew DAN DA DAN before the audition. But then, when I submitted my audition tape for DAN DA DAN was when I really read it further. It was very interesting, very entertaining, and very fun. So, I was really nervous when I was creating the audition tape. But I think what I strived for was just not to act too cleanly or very politely, if that makes sense. I think the way she [Momo] speaks is more on shaky ground, or it’s not clearly planned. It’s not polished, basically. I think that was really important to Momo’s characteristics. So, I tried to incorporate differences in her intonation, or the rhythm or tempo of her conversation. Even when she’s reacting to something, it would really sound like it’s not planned. I wanted to try to make my version of Momo in the audition tape different from the other actors. It’s not usually okay to think like that. I try not to be too different from the others. But I think with Momo, it really fit with her character. And then I also try to find similarities within myself with Momo and incorporate that into my acting.
Blending Many Genres
Blending the best aspects of different genres is one of the most notable special aspects to DAN DA DAN. This came in different forms for each of our two guests; a director has to think about the form and presentation of the genres as they exist on screen while a voice actor needs to think about how they weave responses and engagement with those genres into the voice they present for a character. I asked both how they incorporate different genres related to the occult into their roles. Wakayama-san explained her perspective on how Momo encounters these shifting and varied genres.
Wakayama-san: As Momo, whether it was aliens or ghosts didn’t really matter. It was just something that was threatening to her. Her thought was, “I just have to defeat them.” Now that I look back at it, maybe when she was fighting yokai, she was remembering her grandma a little bit more. No matter what, she’s not clearly understanding what exactly is attacking her. I think she tends to lean on Okarun to interpret what is attacking her. I think Momo, whenever she’s in a battle, she really comes up with a strategy on how to defeat them quickly. I really thought that was pretty amazing. She’s a really quick thinker.
As for Yamashiro-san, he gave us some critical insight into how exactly he made sure that juxtaposition came through on screen from scene to scene.
Yamashiro-san: I really wanted to make sure there’s that juxtaposition. Actually, aliens are rendered in 3D, and ghosts are hand-drawn. I wanted the aliens to be more cold and inorganic, and the ghosts to be more warm and more relatable to humans. That was the original plan. Although later in the anime series, they tend to get mixed. I also thought about the theme of colors to incorporate. When it’s a battle scene with an alien or a ghost, the colors change drastically from an everyday life. I assigned different colors to each of the different characters. If it’s this alien, it’ll be blue. If it’s this ghost, it’ll be red, etc. When that character appeared, I would flush the screen with their theme colors. Just like on a stage, we would change the stage lights for different characters or get a different spotlight. But I also thought that yokai would have warm colors, and aliens would have cold colors. I really tried to incorporate that into the mixing of the subjects.
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.
Action Scenes in Dan Da Dan
Finally, I wanted to dive into one of the most visually spectacular aspects of DAN DA DAN, its action scenes. Science SARU did a fantastic job bringing these often flashy and always solid action scenes to life, and things are quite fast paced. The animation style is distinct with a lot of very quick movements. I wanted to ask Director Yamashiro-san about the direction during action scenes and scenes with a lot of movement, as well as what he was focused on during those.
Yamashiro-san: I wanted to create something that the readers would probably want to see — what they saw in the manga — and try to recreate that and keep the dynamic panels as interesting as possible. What manga’s strength is that it can show huge panels and then have smaller panels on the next page. In animation, you can’t do that; it has to be in a certain frame. So then I tried to recreate, within the restrictions of an animation frame, how to make those distinct changes from panel to panel into an animation. But 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.
For example, I think with manga, the biggest impact is when they have a widespread. It’s really like a “boom!” But when you look at a manga, what leads up to the spread is smaller panels, and then building up to that big spread. So then I really thought about how I would recreate that in animation. I think it was really the tempo of the scenes that lead to the big thing. So I tried to do quick, quick, quick, quick scenes, and then that big reveal that would recreate the moment someone would read the big spread in a manga. The good thing about anime is that you can control the timing, and how much time a scene would have and how many cuts there would be. I really tried to adjust that to make sure the reveal at the end would be impactful.
We’d like to thank both Fuga Yamashiro and Shion Wakayama for taking the time to speak with us during Anime Expo. Dan Da Dan is set to premiere with a 3-episode theatrical release (titled Dan Da Dan: First Encounter) in North American theaters on September 13th ahead of the series’ official debut in October. Additionally, conventions such as Anime NYC will be hosting screenings of the first episode ahead of even the theatrical release.
© Yukinobu Tatsu/SHUEISHA/DANDADAN Production Committee
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