I had a friend call me this morning to tell me how he was sobbing over the acro silky backstory. We are both dads. It is genuinely so well done.

I’m going to gently push back a little on Okarun being a Nice Guy- he’s not Kirito or a generic isekai protagonist where he’s a generic not-asshole that inexplicably makes women fall for him, to act as a vehicle for audiences to self-insert into. He’s a socially isolated kid with low self-esteem who retreated into a niche hobby as a coping mechanism, his sole motivation at the start of the show was to make even one friend and he’s only now grappling with the fact that his first genuine friend is someone of the opposite sex and that he might be attracted to her (<---- Episode 5, for those keeping score at home).

Also he has to deal with the absurdist situation that a ghost ate his balls.

Neat little thing about his character: the meta joke that Okarun’s real name is the same as Momo’s celebrity crush, Takakura Ken (think of the real life celebrity as Japanese John Wayne) is that his catch phrase “I’m an awkward fellow, after all” came from a commercial for family insurance, where the father figure played by the actor keeps failing to express his true emotions but it’s obvious to the audience that he cares about his family (because he bought insurance). That’s more his character’s deal (rather straightforwardly being bad at expressing himself), rather than some Chainsaw Man style bait-and-switch Shonen character deconstruction.

Edit: But also also the general levity of the show seems to be at odds with some of the topics it handles (like SA) and I’m not sure it’s a good idea to proselytize to anyone who watched ep 1 and decided it’s not for them because people are definitely going to have strong reactions that are entirely justified, I just feel like doing so can come off as insensitive

not gonna excuse the SA, it’s egregious and even if it is supposed to be a thematic thing w/rt Turbo Granny-possessed Okarun jumping through the phone to save Momo given Turbo Granny essentially being a wrathful spirit carrying out the rage of women who’d been SA’d and murdered, it’s still very fucking tasteless and isn’t handled well, nor is it CW’d at all properly. Relatively, Chainsaw Man handles the portrayal of sexual abuse infinitely better, and even then it’s still a bit iffy by nature of it, but I digress. My recommendation of Dandadan is very much in spite of the first ep/chapter.

However, Okarun isn’t really the nice guy archetype, if we’re thinking the same thing w/rt what that consists? he’s just kinda dorky and stilted, so it can read like that initially. It’s not really the direction they take him at all. His whole characterization is more about self-isolation, if anything.

I’ve been meaning to write an analysis about how one of Dandadan’s major running threads is the consistent and very intentional subversion of first impressions w/rt characters. I should probably get to it sometime.