Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction (Japanese: デッドデッドデーモンズデデデデデストラクション, Hepburn: Deddo Deddo Dēmonzu Dededede Desutorakushon), also abbreviated as DDDD
Genre Post-apocalyptic, Science fiction, Slice of life
based on Manga Written by Inio Asano
Written by Reiko Yoshida, Takaaki Suzuki
Music by Taro Umebayashi
Studio Production +h. Licensed by Crunchyroll
Released May 24, 2024 – September 20, 2024
Episodes 18
With a name like Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction, this anime promised to be either very silly, or something truly remarkable and original. It begins with the interaction of several tweener schoolgirls, and I very nearly stopped watching right then. Schoolgirl histrionics and crushes are a wildly popular trope, and almost always utterly dreadful. It’s possible to have a hilarious and profound story in which the characters struggle with a mixture of Victorian morals and unbridled lust, but the nuances required seem to escape most anime creators. Only anime could make sex boring.
But the faces caught my attention. Each girl had an utterly unique, but very human face. Taking a second glance, I realized that each was drawn, not as middle-school stereotypes, but as actual persons. Someone was putting in significant effort into giving the characters depth.
I started looking at the background. Superb art is common in anime, of course, but usually lacking in this particular subgenre. Someone wanted this to be taken seriously.
Then we see the UFO, and the tone suddenly becomes darker and deeper. The craft in question is 3.2 kilometers in diameter (two miles) and is hovering with a faint hum about a kilometer above downtown Tokyo. We learn it’s been there for about three years. Further, we learn that considerable damage occurred several days after it arrived, not from the craft itself, but from the Americans, who preemptively dropped an “A-Ray bomb” on the craft, something suspiciously resembling a nuclear weapon. (Lest anyone miss the allusion, the craft dropping the bomb was a B-52). It seemingly did little damage to the craft, but left entire neighborhoods below uninhabitable.
This puts the behavior and attitudes of the characters in perspective. Between the unimaginable power and mystery of the visitors, and the panicked overreaction of authorities, everyone is suffering from a form of PTSD. We finally do get to meet the visitors (uniformly referred by authorities as “the invaders”), who remain mysterious, hidden in spacesuits, but seemingly unaggressive and even friendly.
In all this, the girls are facing the routine struggles of pubescents, layered over with pervasive pollutants, both physical and psychological. It gives them an unexpected edge.
In one early sequence, one of the girls has a crush on her homeroom teacher. He meets with her after class to discuss her poor test performance, and the conversation grows awkward and shifts to a discussion of her backpack, which is like a favorite child’s toy in Japan. Like much in this story, even that trivial element isn’t happenstance.
Meeting her friend afterward, her friend asks, “How did it go? I bet his discomfort was hilarious.” “What are you talking about?” “Didn’t you vow that today was the day you would lick Mister Watarase’s cute pink nipples?” “No, I didn’t. As usual, I didn’t do anything.” “Ever try flashing your boobs?”
Um, these are pre-adolescents. May as well show the teacher a map of Kansas. But it quickly establishes that it’s several layers beyond the silly, coy sexual tension of standard anime fare and that there’s a lot more going on, both superficially and in greater depth. These girls, through no fault of their own, carry with them a continual dark cloud figuratively as big as the craft over their heads.
As a result, fear, loss, suicide and other forms of death are a part of their day-to-day lives, and they are just trying to get on as best they can. They are deeply human, and the viewer ends up forming emotional bonds with them and some of the other characters in the story, including, eventually some of the visitors.
It’s not an easy viewing. I had to go back to the beginning and start over because I didn’t have a clear idea of everything that was going on (the show jumps back and forth over three years and there are other plot discontinuities—purposeful, but confusing at first.)
It’s a dark, mature anime and is also science fiction as good as it gets and an unblinking look at the rifts and vulnerabilities of human culture when faced with unknown powers.
Now on Netflix.
NB: I got volume one of the original manga by Inio Asano. The anime is true to the original storyline. The art is black and white line drawing, and the amount of detail is absolutely astonishing. There are panels that by themselves had to take an entire day to draw. Yes, this is a serious work.