Dandadan Creator Reveals How Momo and Okarun Came to Be

Dandadan creator Yukinobu Tatsu reveals how Okarun and Momo hit the manga scene.

By Evan Valentine

Dandadan is preparing to take the anime world by storm. Already gaining quite a following thanks to its manga run in Weekly Shonen Jump, the anime adaptation will arrive this fall thanks to studio Science SARU. Before anime fans witness the animated adventures of Momo and Okarun, series creator Yukinobu Tatsu recently took the chance to discuss the franchise and its characters. In breaking down the series that mixes the occult with the extraterrestrial, Tatsu revealed how Momo and Okarun came to be. With some major shonen franchises such as My Hero Academia, Demon Slayer, One Piece, and Jujutsu Kaisen either coming to their end or having already ended, Dandadan might just become one of Weekly Shonen Jump's big new things. 

When asked in the new interview why Tatsu decided to go with Momo and Okarun as the protagonists of Dandadan, here's how the mangaka explained his reasoning, "I had always wanted to draw a boys' manga with a girl as the main character but it kept failing in serialization meetings, so I thought it would be better to have a boy next to her." Expanding on this quote, Yukinobu stated that having Momo in the driver's seat was essential, "I thought that there has never been a boys' manga with a girl as the main character, and I thought that just by having a girl as the main character, the conflicts would change in many ways and patterns."

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(Photo: Shueisha)

Anime's New Dynamic Duo

Tatsu then explained that never having drawn a girl as a main character presented a challenge to him initially and that it worked in pushing him to forge Momo as Dandadan's protagonist, "I had never drawn a main character who was a girl so I thought it would be more imaginative to draw something I didn't know so maybe that's why I made her a girl." Yukinobu then explained that his love for the 1980s helped forge the style of the shonen manga series, "I like the 1980s and other times when people were still energetic. I think the social situation is still bad these days and it's so dark and gloomy and I don't like it. I want people who read my manga to be energized, to laugh, and to enjoy themselves. That is my premise so somewhere in me I want to bring back the energetic feeling I had back then."

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Dandadan is set to hit the small screen on October 3rd this fall and will be made available on Crunchyroll, Netflix, and Hulu. Here's how the shonen franchise describes its wild tale, "Momo Ayase strikes up an unusual friendship with her school's UFO fanatic, whom she nicknames "Okarun" because he has a name that is not to be said aloud. While Momo believes in spirits, she thinks aliens are nothing but nonsense. Her new friend, meanwhile, thinks the exact opposite. To settle matters, the two set out to prove each other wrong – Momo to a UFO hotspot and Okarun to a haunted tunnel! What unfolds next is a beautiful story of young love...and oddly horny aliens and spirits?"  

Via DandaDan Verse

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