Dandadan – Episode 04 Review

「ターボババアをぶっ飛ばそう」 (Tābo Babā o Buttobasō)
“Kicking Turbo Granny’s Ass”

I found it highly entertaining to watch the two of them bicker even while they’re on the doorstep of a spooky tunnel with a freaky ass spirit. And they thought the alien was huge. A Flatwoods Monster Sumo Wrestler seems pretty tame compared to ginormous old lady heads. LOL. I had to laugh at how loudly the pair talk about their plans to lure granny out, right where she can hear them. Not that it made any difference, they still reeled her in hook, line, and sinker.

The devil is in the details they say, and Turbo Granny sure is an example of that, deciding that counting to 10 minutes could mean just saying “minute” instead of a full 60 seconds. She isn’t wrong, I’ll give her that. Momo didn’t specify, but who on earth would think there was a need to?

Okarun’s got balls there, in every sense of the word now that Granny’s returned them. He actually goes for the teats- wow. Right on the heels of that one, we get another surprise. Apparently, the location bound spirit is… a crab??? And this is all within the first 6 minutes. Dandadan is wild ride- but one without the safety belt, hell, maybe even without the cart- just a free fall. No rules, except that you can expect anything and everything out of the ordinary.

According to Momo and Grandma, the location bound spirit takes such an unconventional form because the spirits of the dead turn into crabs to cross to the other side. Actually, interestingly, there is a RL crab called “Heikegani” or “Heike Crab” here in Japan. So called, because legend says contain the spirits of the Heike clan who perished in a battle by sea at the end of the Gempei wars.

Trapping and boiling the crab in an onsen was a clever move. The question running through my mind was- can you eat a spirit crab? What would that even taste like? I guess if you can see it, you can eat it.

I want to give a shout out to the music staff for the OST in this ep- classical music overture while Momo and Okarun hotfooted it out of the city was very slick. The soundtrack just fits the groove of the series- funky sounding and grooving.

I found the conversation between Momo and Granny at the edge of Shono City where Granny nags her about respect interesting. Interesting because of the way it was translated. In the subtitles, Granny gives Momo shit for using “modern language” rather than good old fashioned Japanese. However, in the Japanese dialogue, Granny admonishes Momo for using the English word for respect, griping about how much she hates English and Momo needs to use Japanese. It makes sense, I suppose, that “stop using English” would get changed to “stop using modern words” and “hating English” would get changed to “hating those words” in order to not offend the target English language audience, though it does deviate some from the original meaning, seeing as English “respect” has been in the Japanese vocabulary for quite a while and is not considered a “young people’s lingo”. It also loses out on the hilarity of the scene. It was supremely amusing that Granny bitches about Momo using English, when Granny uses the same exact “respect” Momo does, and then later on, pulls out “Son of a bitch”.

The ending was rather sobering. Granny was actually just that- a grandmother to the spirits of girls who were brutally killed, comforting them. You can see how hard it hits Momo from the moment when the crab is released and she sees who the spirits were. Yes, this was a kill or be killed situation, but I couldn’t help but feel sad that there’s no more grandmotherly spirit to console any spirits of young girls in the future.

Respect goes both ways. I liked what Grandma said about how the living and the dead have to respect each other. This element paints the spirit world like any other part of living creatures in nature- if you leave it alone, it’ll leave you alone. Which includes NOT doing what Momo and Okarun did in trampling on Granny’s territory. Momo and Okarun didn’t know the backstory behind the spirit of the tunnel, though in hindsight, now that they do know, it was pretty disrespectful to be treating it as fun and games. That was a pretty big lesson for them to learn.

This series switches tones with astonishing ease- going from the solemn moment at the tunnel to Grandma and Momo arguing over crab and threatening each other with holding Ken Takakura and Bakatono hostage, respectively. Meanwhile, poor Okarun is caught in the middle of it all. I find it so funny that the girls get in the mood for crab right after that whole ordeal. Okarun is right, they are one crazy house. I love that the two of them at the end got all awkward over “goodbye” until they figured out something else to say that precluded a future meeting. This certainly isn’t goodbye for them or for me- I’m looking forward to next week!

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