‘Dandadan’ Chapter 153 Is Depressing But Expertly Accomplished

Jeez, Chapter 153 of Dandadan was depressing–but done so well. 

Dandadan Chapter 153 is available at viz.com. The series is written and illustrated by Yukinobu Tatsu, with an English translation by Kumar Sivasubramanian and lettering by Kyla Aiko

It’s almost as if one chapter can take so much of what works in other currently published manga or other popular concluded manga–and combine those elements into an effective chapter. 

And, at the same time, Dandadan is perfecting upon what works in Chainsaw Man at a time where that series’ latest chapter is potentially collapsing in on itself. 

Shortly after I read Chapter 153 of Dandadan, I wrote something to a friend. I’m going to read a slightly expanded version of what I wrote to my friend: 

If you want to increase depression, read Chapter 153 of Dandadan.

This chapter combines what has worked in so many other shonen series, distilled into a weekly series that, by releasing on Mondays in the US, both stands out on its own, and gets overshadowed because it’s not released with the Sunday stuff. 

And given how well Yukinobu Tatsu and his staff can keep up the story and artwork on a weekly basis, it is shocking how good the result is, perhaps due to a lot of pre-planning so that this weekly release schedule maintains quality–but which unfortunately is very likely still overworking the creators and only emphasizes yet again why the manga-release pipeline needs a massive overhaul for the sake of creators’ health, productivity, and financial support, not to mention, to a far lesser degree, how all of that would allow the story to be in far better shape narratively and visually. 

(And, yeah, this is also why My Hero Academia needed a year-long break, overwhelmingly for Horikoshi’s sake, and to a far lesser extent so that story didn’t fall apart narratively and visually, because it has.) 

But to go back to my point (and to stop whining for a few seconds about My Hero Academia), I want to talk about how Dandadan does such a great job, in part because it manages to accomplish what so many other really good manga accomplish on their weekly or biweekly release schedule, and does far better than what other comics are doing badly. 

What does Dandadan do well that we have also seen in other comics? 

Dandadan and Spy x Family 

Dandadan Chapter 153 has the action line art of Spy x Family, depending on minimal lines and a lot of white space when needed to communicate an effect–often to indicate when emotions are complicated and overwhelming, hence a lot of dark lines getting in the way, or when an emotion is clearly communicate to the reader, which tends to be a lot of white space so the eye focuses only on where the dark lines are for the sake of action. 

Dandadan and RuriDragon and Akane-banashi

It’s similar to what I said a few weeks ago, about how RuriDragon and Akane-banashi does so well with so few lines in one illustration, to boil down an emotional moment to only the lines needed. That is what we get in that last panel of Dandadan Chapter 153–and it makes the emotional gut-punch land that much harder when reducing the scene to just the colors and the lines needed. I do not envy how Sansu is going to animate any of this for television, because I’m increasingly of the opinion that comics tend to do far better than animated stories at letting a moment linger through to the reader. 

Dandadan and Gintama

What else does Dandadan have that makes it stand out so well? It has Gintama backstory levels of tragedy. But whereas Gintama waited until the bad guy was defeated to make you sympathize with them, we already know who Zuma is in Dandadan, so we already like him and know him, whereas the backstory we get right now is superfluous and doesn’t undermine our appreciation of Zuma and, in fact, makes us like him more. 

Chapter 153 is a backstory to fill in details that I wasn’t asking for, and to fill in gaps that I wasn’t noticing. But I appreciate that this is all backstory filling in gaps I didn’t notice, because that gives me an incentive to re-read and see what I was overlooking. The best backstories reward you for paying attention or incentivize you to re-read. 

Dandadan vs My Hero Academia Vigilantes

And Dandadan does this so well, filling in details about Zuma’s backstory without, to repeat the same complaint I keep making, having the “Aizawa back story problem” of My Hero Academia Vigilantes, where the back story doesn’t change what we know about the character, how he got to this point, and exists only to tease out a completely different mystery that also won’t get a good payoff, and, potentially–and I say this as an Aizawa fan–giving you more details that may actively make you dislike the character. 

Boy, that was a longer digression than I wanted. Let me get back to what I actually wrote to my friend: 

Dandadan and One Piece

Chapter 153 of Dandadan also has One Piece levels of “here’s this wacky item that actually has traumatic implications going back to the past.” I think One Piece fans can fill in the information better than I can. 

Dandadan vs Chainsaw Man

And I’m not sure the chapter speaks to real-world conditions like Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Chainsaw Man, but Tatsu’s paneling, the readability of his art, and his refusal to undermine the point with grossness and snark means the characterization and emotional punch land far better here in Dandandan than in Chainsaw Man.

I mean, it’s not as if Dandadan is not just as immature as Chainsaw Man can be. Dandadan started with and perpetuates its story on the basis of a boy losing his, ahem, “family jewels.” This is a manga that is absolutely immature. 

But whereas Chainsaw Man just seems gross for gross sake, Dandadan feels like it is able to keep hitting you with emotional impact. 

I think Chainsaw Man is the more ambitious story, whereas Dandadan is the safer story. 

But for me, Dandadan has done better at a Rabelais-like type of gross story with some heart or sophistication or at least competency at its craft, while Chainsaw Man keeps seeming like throwing anything at the wall without it sticking–which, again, just makes Dandadan seem more appealing, because it’s not as if that series doesn’t just keep throwing stuff at the wall–between ghosts, monsters, aliens–and somehow making it all fit together a lot better than the mess that Chainsaw Man comes across to me. 

Also, as a disclaimer: everything I said up to now, I wrote the outline of that before reading the new Chainsaw Man chapter this week. 

And after reading that new chapter of Chainsaw Man…I expanded what came above just on some points about the artwork in Dandadan and threw in the complaints about Aizawa’s back story again and, yeah, I expanded the comparisons I made about Chainsaw Man and Dandadan. 

But that stuff I just said about Dandadan being more readable and not letting crassness and snark undermine characterization and emotional punch? I wrote that before I read this week’s Chainsaw Man. I meant those remarks with absolute sincerity before I read this week’s chapter of Chainsaw Man…and I mean those remarks with even more sincerity right now after reading this week’s chapter of Chainsaw Man–because, holy shit, that chapter of Chainsaw Man did not work for me. 

And one other disclaimer: there is no way any of what I said is going to make me look smarter–because it was only this week that I learned or remembered that Dandadan creator Tatsu was an assistant on Chainsaw Man, so of course there are enough similarities in narrative and visual choices between Dandadan and Chainsaw Man. 

But, to repeat myself, Dandadan is like a polished, perfected version of Chainsaw Man, but perhaps less ambitious, more archetype, more cliche, but damn if it isn’t expertly done crafted work. 

Depending on where the next chapter of Chainsaw Man goes, either Dandadan is still doing a better job, or Chainsaw Man is doing a really bad job and is just bad writing. And I say all of that trying to get at what Chainsaw Man may be doing a good job of doing in that cliffhanger–but which could just as easily collapse out of its failure to meet where other people online have thought the story could go and which I didn’t anticipate, but, hey, if those people online end up anticipating correctly and the story goes where they think it’s going, I think that could go really well or really poorly. 

I mean…Chainsaw Man has a moment in front of itself that could be really powerful. It’s something I didn’t see coming–someone else did. And I won’t talk about what that potential moment is unless the manga goes in that direction because I don’t want to build up anticipation for the story going in a direction that it turns out it doesn’t and hence I end up judging the work only on the basis of what it could have done rather than what it did do. “The road not taken” is a valid form of criticism, but it is a form of criticism that still has to be in context with what else in the story does work or doesn’t work. 

So, instead of committing to that moment, and what that does for character, it is possible that Fujimoto just can’t get out of his own way and will indulge in crass humor that reverses character progression. Like, what happened in that most recent chapter to me didn’t come across as momentary regression for the sake of believability, for the sake of narrative conflict to perpetuate the plot, or for the sake of realism–it just came off as trolling by Fujimoto, to let the typical crass humor of the series overwhelm any point that the story is trying to make, less as an exercise to force readers to understand nuance and more as Fujimoto’s own self-indulgence, which is all the more annoying because this chapter is about a character wanting to get sexual gratification so Fujimoto’s own self-indulgence comes off as masturbatory and memorable but not compelling or meaningful. 

So, what follows is the last I’ll say about that Chainsaw Man cliffhanger until I see how that plays out: 

Either the next chapter is going to be really progressive and thoughtful in order to take a character in a surprising direction that I didn’t see coming and I’m not sure it is really there in the text but which as a surprise could speak to a large segment of the audience to provide inclusion and representation along with actually addressing difficulties for many people trying to live as they want to live…

…Or the next chapter of Chainsaw Man is going to be a swerve and a joke on you the reader for thinking that cliffhanger was going in that direction, just a regressive “take that,” rather than an opportunity to expand inclusiveness and representation, hence becoming frustratingly regressive, as it essentializes boys and men as only sex-obsessed, a harmful stereotype that is not helping us combat toxic masculinity. And, to make matters worse, it may become a lazy and potentially offensive approach to complexities about gender and…yeah, let’s see where that chapter goes before I say anything more that is going to plagiarize other people’s thoughts or bring up an interpretation that then never comes to be because Fujimoto’s cliffhanger goes nowhere.