Dandadan: Asking the Right Story Questions
Amidst the manic brouhaha of Dandadan is a huge missing piece but... is it really missing?
Preface
I didn’t know Dandadan was a thing until New York Comic Con 2023. Thanks to it being dubbed “explicit content” (they cuss? a lot?), it didn’t show in the Viz or Shonen Jump app, and oh, what I had been missing.
Dandadan is manga for Ryan Brown (God Hates Astronauts) fans. It’s sheer chaos, with just enough grounding to not make you feel like you’re plummeting through a black hole of complete confusion.
It’s fun. So much fun. And I’m going to prove it with far too many out of context panels. You’re welcome.
Preface over!
There’s this old discourse that compares C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia) and J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings… duh) and the level of detail they put into their worlds. For Tolkien, he could give you the etymology of every plant in Middle-Earth, the lineage of every king and he wasn’t even done yet. For Lewis, he gave the faun Mr. Tumnus an umbrella and there’s pretty much nowhere he could have gotten that umbrella from, barring the existence of technology and feasible production measures to make an umbrella in Narnia.
Not impossible, seeing as how umbrellas were around 3500 years ago in China. Narnia is magic, after all, and it is only an umbrella which isn’t that complicated of a contraption. But no one else has one. Is there a corner store? If there are umbrellas, do they have other similar technology? This places seems pretty medieval. Was it more a parasol or a full weatherproof umbrella? Tolkien would know if the situation was reversed and it was Gollum with an umbrella.
You may be wondering why I’m asking so many stupid questions. It’s just an umbrella. But for the sake of world-building, is this not a question you should be asking? Everything has to make sense. The slightest hiccup in the formula and you lose all credibility—right?
Nah.
At least, not always.
It’s not a matter of having answers to every question, but having answers to the right questions. Did Narnia suffer because of Tumnus’ umbrella? Absolutely not.
In Dandadan, amidst the madness, there is one pressingly realistic question that remains unanswered—where the hell are Okarun’s parents? Okarun, a young teen fighting the deadly paranormal alongside new friends, apparently has no parents whatsoever. He goes to school, hangs with his friends, battles baddies and then, every so often, goes somewhere other than right in front of us. Presumably home, yeah? Because where else would a high schooler go? He’s never gone long. He is, after all, one half of the protagonist duo.
Out of the mayhem though, we pull that one umbrella-shaped question—where are his parents? There’s a whole Reddit discussion about this. Theories about his parents being special in some way, perhaps connected to the paranormal or otherwise extraordinary. But there are no imminent answers. No hints or breadcrumbs. And, most importantly (or not?), no parents. There may be at some point, but right now? Nothing.
And it must be said that we do see the parents of another character, Jiji. In fact, Jiji’s introductory quest is saving his parents. So we can rest assured that in this supernatural yet real-life Japan, parents do exist.
This whole scenario also reminds me a bit (unfortunately) of Rey, in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. The great question in the early going was…? Who were her parents. The better answer would’ve been what Dandadan has done with Okarun thus far. It wasn’t a pertinent question and I’d argue that the answer they gave ruined the story. Another detriment to answering questions—what if you answer them wrong? Stories answer question wrong all the time. Subjectively, anyway. Wrong for you may be right for someone else, but such is the trouble with trying to answer every single question.
Anyway, I digress. Let’s backtrack to the question of where Okarun’s parents are. Because we need to know, right? Every high schooler has parents or guardians, right? How can a high schooler function without their guardians? Surely, surely the story suffers because of this apparent oversight.
Nope. You really don’t even think about it. We do not need to know where his parents are for the same reason we don’t need to know about Mr. Tumnus’ umbrella. Because it just doesn’t matter and doesn’t interfere with the story in anyway. Instead, of asking “where are his parents?” we should be asking “why do we need to know?”
Why do we need to know where Mr. Tumnus’ umbrella comes from?
Why do we need to know where Okarun’s parents are?
Okarun lives in the real world. It’s a real, modern Japan. Sure, there are aliens and monsters and all manner of supernatural, but it is the real world. So why isn’t it important to know where one of our protagonist’s parents are? I’ll admit, early on, I re-read a good deal of Dandadan, looking for any mention of parents before giving up the question because there were so many ridiculous aliens to fight.
Dandadan could have even gone further into the absurd than they already did, to distance themselves from pesky, realistic questions. But by having frequent pit stops in a perfectly ordinary school with perfectly ordinary classmates, we’re reminded that this is, in fact, the real world. And again, we meet Jiji’s parents, so parents are a thing in this real world.
Let me say it again—it just doesn’t matter.
You don’t need to tie up every loose end just for the sake of doing it. You cannot possibly answer every single question that’s going to pop up in your story, and by cannot, I also mean should not. Big or small, questions abound. And if you try to answer them all, you’ll be frustrated. Worse, even.
Rather, ask the right questions. Don’t ask where Okarun’s parents are, ask why you need to know where they are. In general, who, what, when, and where questions are secondary to the accompanying ‘why’ question. Before you start ticking all the who, what, when, and where boxes, add the ‘why’ and start crossing off the questions that don’t have a substantial ‘why’ answer.
If it worked for Dandadan, which is complete and total madness, it will work for much simpler and more straightforward stories.
To creative writers: what questions do you want your readers to ask? And are there any questions you don’t want them to ask?
To Dandadan fans—Dandafans?—how is it possible that every new character is more ridiculous than the last?