DAN DA DAN

Episode 7

What is there to even say? I reread this early section of the DAN DA DAN manga recently to brush up on the material that I knew would be covered in this adaptation, so I knew that the Acrobatic Silky's backstory episode was coming, but sweet Jesus, I never expected it to hit like a goddamned diesel truck. Director Kōtarō Matsunaga and storyboarder Shūto Enomoto have taken a shockingly heartfelt and melancholy story and elevated it into one of the finest pieces of animated artistry I've seen in ages. This is a perfect episode of television. That is to say, it is somehow even more perfect than every episode of DAN DA DAN has already been.

Even before the episode shifts into gear and begins pummeling us in our metaphorical feelings-guts, To a Kinder World still represents DAN DA DAN in its more typical peak form. It is funny, thrilling, and spectacularly animated from frame one. Even though the gang has worked their way out of Acrobatic Silky's belly, the fight is far from over. The show goes the extra mile to slather the scene in gorgeous neon pink lighting that perfectly highlights the surreal action going down in this abandoned factory shed, or wherever Aira dragged Momo to try and exorcise her. Despite taking a back seat for the most critical second half of the episode, our heroes get plenty of moments to shine, with my favorite cut being the impressive protective dive that Okarun makes to shield Momo from Acrobatic Silky's fury.

If this were any other episode of DAN DA DAN, things would continue apace with the exciting spectacle and lovely MomOkarun antics, with me just smiling along giddily and wondering if I'll be able to continue to find fresh new ways to justify giving this show a perfect score every week. It quickly becomes clear that this is not a normal episode of DAN DA DAN when Turbo Granny announces that Aira is quite dead. Even knowing what was coming, I was still riveted by how Momo and Okarun's desperate attempts to revive Aira played out, because this show is just so casually brilliant at depicting every single emotion of its characters with effortless style and substance. It's not just the excellent character acting given to our heroes that sells the drama of the scene either; the scene where Acrobatic Silky eviscerates her jaw and teeth to prove that she can be trusted to help bring Aira back to life is, well…no, not even I am hacky enough to make a “jaw dropping” pun right now…

“Jaw dropping” is the only way I can adequately describe my reaction to the eight-minute reverie that DAN DA DAN produces to bring us into the heart of Acrobatic Silky and relive those greatest and most terrible moments that turned her into the monster that gobbled Aira up and spit back out a corpse. The manga covers the same material for about eighteen pages between Chapters 16 and 17, and it's plenty damned affecting all on its own. It was always a blind-side kick to the head from the manga that had mostly been obsessed with dick jokes and kickass fight scenes to be watching the poor, loving single mother of an impossibly sweet little girl getting beaten, abused, and then driven to suicide in the wake of her child's kidnapping.

It is another experience to see the team of artists at Science SARU take this slice of a tragic monster's life and turn it into something utterly transcendent in its aching humanity. The careful, naturalistic drawings pair with the painstaking cinematography and haunting music to give us a movie-in-miniature that is impossible to look away from, even when it refuses to spare us from the ugliest pits of violence and despair that the Acrobatic Silky was forced into when her love for her daughter became her undoing at the hands of a gang of impossibly cruel loan sharks. Likely, the only recent production that could surpass this one episode of DAN DA DAN in terms of bone-shattering emotionality is the film adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto's Look Back that recently debuted in theaters.

It's an apt comparison, too, because it isn't the suffering present in both stories that makes them so revelatory, but the depths of humanity that spring from that pain despite it all. Here, in DAN DA DAN, we are given the moment that singlehandedly transforms Aira from a delusional idiot into a superhero on par with either of our stars. It has nothing to do with any of the spirit-infused magic that brought her back from the dead, either. Rather, Aira's heroic act comes down to the simplest gestures: She gives Silky one last hug, just like she did all those years ago when she first mistook the creature for her recently deceased mother. Earlier, Turbo Granny callously declared that Silky's despair and self-loathing would damn her to an eternity of nothingness in the void, where not even the memory of her would be allowed to escape. Aira refuses this. Instead, she embraces the monster that almost snuffed the light of her soul out for good and prays to whatever gods might be listening that this poor mother be allowed the peace of her daughter's smile once more. She wills the lost spirits along to what we can only hope is a kinder world, and she promises to remember their story.

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DAN DA DAN is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Netflix.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.