when you embrace the weird, the weird embraces back
Let me quote a few statistics to you. According to PBS News, manga sales in the US have quadrupled from 2019 to 2022 reaching a record high with 28.4 million volumes sold making manga one of the highest fiction categories as far as book sales go. In an article by The Hollywood Reporter, consultancy Parrot Analytics noted that global demand for anime content grew 118 percent from 2020 to 2022 making it one of the fastest-growing content genres during the COVID pandemic. These are outstanding numbers just to note how anime and manga have just exploded with new enjoyers in that short of a time. It’s a wonderful explosion for the popularity of otaku culture but with it has brought what many fans have considered “undesirables” in the form of the new anime fans which have been coined as “anime tourists”.
For those unaware, an anime tourist is essentially a derogatory term for an anime fan who is newer or who has characteristics that are seen as annoying with qualities befitting a “fake fan”. The picture below contains a screencap of a meme from a Twitter user identifying ways to spot an anime tourist to give a better grasp on what some of the pinpoint signs some users feel determine an anime tourist.
I’ll let it be known: I don’t hate or try to spread hate on anyone for enjoying anime in a way that I do not. If you don’t enjoy fanservice then that is your given right as a consumer of media. If you’re not someone who finds comfort in shows with certain “interesting” plot elements then that’s your prerogative as a viewer. You’re entitled to sit down and watch what you want to invest your time in. That said, I myself have bared witness to a few anime fans who have traits as listed in this meme above who scorn those who do enjoy certain niche titles. I’ve also seen diehard anime fans who cruelly inflict harsh judgments on folks who don’t want to watch the same kind of entertainment as them. It’s ridiculous regardless of who is gatekeeping and what way the gate is swinging and I’m exhausted with the parties who do it relentlessly. My piece has been said.
With that, Dandadan’s first episode just dropped yesterday! Hooray and jubilant noises all around for anime enjoyers everywhere. For the uninitiated, Dandadan is a manga by mangaka Yukinobu Tatsu (who was formerly an assistant to Tatsuki Fujimoto of Chainsaw Man renown) that tells the story of two high school students, one a girl who vehemently believes in spirits and ghosts and the other a boy who is deeply into aliens and the occult. They meet and hilarity ensues as they seek to prove their respective interests to be real but wild wacky action bike (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc4bvrH6blM for reference) shenanigans occur and the guy has his testicles stolen by a yokai. It’s a uniquely anime premise and the manga, in my reading, has excelled in being consistently well drawn and unexpected in how the story unfolds. The first episode has dropped to critical acclaim and it, at the time of my writing, sitting at a crispy 8.8 on MyAnimeList making it around the mid 30s for highest rated anime of all time on the website. Seems like no one would have any serious reasons to complain, right? Not exactly.
Half way through the episode, the girl character, Momo Ayase, is abducted by aliens who seek to reproduce and strip her down to her underwear while pulling out a very large and very menacing mechanical impregnation device. They then use their ESP powers to relax here and begin to introduce the large Xenomorphic impregnation device to her unwitting privates before they’re interrupted and a fight breaks out. It’s a scene that isn’t exactly played in a harrowing manner befitting of the sexual violence that may be about to unfold but it isn’t exactly a jovial matter either. The aliens are clearly portrayed to be exuding excess amounts of the CREEP factor and the colors and shadows of the animation show the audience that this shouldn’t exactly be something for your sexual arousal (but someone always has a fetish, I suppose). It’s a scene that made me uncomfortable on my first read of the manga and it elicited the same response in animated form as well. Some people, as seen on Tiktok and Twitter, have become up in arms over this scene and this instance of sexual violence seemingly trying to damn Dandadan. As a result, a counterargument calling those parties “anime tourists” have once again sprung up and hey. War never changes.
Here’s where I’m finally going to get to the damn point though. Dandadan is so close to giving me FLCL energy in just how strange and delightful in dwells in the absurd. Dandadan has a more concrete plot for sure but it’s welcoming in how whimsically weird it can be just in that first episode. It reminds me of that old feeling of watching FLCL as a kid when I could be considered new to anime when I could’ve possibly been just an “anime tourist” myself. I know there are more connotations to the term “anime tourist” but hear me out. If you don’t know, FLCL is a hugely formative anime for me with that strange reverie that it possesses. It doesn’t want to make sense and it rightly doesn’t try usually. Dandadan is giving the same vibes and unrelentingly so. FLCL even has a few sexual scenes that aren’t exactly wholly kosher just like Dandadan in my opinion. The connection is there and the temples are everywhere if you have eyes to see.
So why can’t Dandadan be the FLCL for this new generation of anime fans? What is stopping it from resonating in the same way? Like FLCL, Dandadan is set to be a popular show for the near future and it undoubtedly will have staying power as the anime serves to bring even more attention to the source material. It’s a weird show and it deserves every right to exist in that spectrum of “anime for anime’s sake”. I think the scene I mentioned isn’t supposed to be a fetish moment but one to highlight the interesting world that Dandadan is creating for itself. I absolutely didn’t have my pants down for it just as I’m not readying myself for alone time after watching Haruko try to seduce Naota in FLCL. We can’t always be 100% comfortable in the media we eat up because sometimes what we’re watching is meant to challenge us and world build by displaying things we may not be comfortable with. FLCL achieves the same thing albeit in smaller doses and I think that’s a promising thing in Dandadan’s favor. Dandadan will hopefully have that momentum and push to give newer anime fan’s a taste of something truly unique and allow them to see the full spectrum of anime’s bountiful content. It has every capacity to be that if some folks just give it that time to sit down and maybe embrace the chaos and discomfort. FLCL was extremely wacky and difficult to process as a kid but it let me see that there was a greater rainbow of color to anime. It could be the action packed romp of Dragon Ball Z and the slow romantic fantasy of InuYasha… but it could also be just absolutely freaking weird like FLCL.
My point is this: if you’re a new anime fan, give yourself more to explore. FLCL is out there for you to sample but there’s never a better time to jump on to some brand new anime and hang out with the rest of us. Dandadan could be that for you if you take the chance on it with the rest of the party. I don’t blame you if you can’t though. If the thought of that scene and more is just too much then I respect your choices. After all, anime is all about decisions. It’s an art form of options. Just don’t limit yourself to a few.
Works used in this blog post:
“What’s Behind the Growing Popularity of Japanese Comics and Animation in the US?” from PBS News Weekend
“How Japanese Anime Became the World’s Most Bankable Genre” by Patrick Brzeski from The Hollywood Reporter
Animisery - A Blog About Living Miserably with Anime (Among Other Things) 
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