DandaDan: Character First Impressions

You only get one, make it count.

Preface!

DandaDan legit changed my life. The sense of humor is so perfect, I can’t even make jokes about how perfect it is, because my jokes never stack up. It’s perfectly wielded chaos with characters you will never forget. Each character, something special.

Further proof that DandaDan is an extension of my very soul—with the announcement of the anime, so too came the announcement of the music group doing the theme. And that music group is Creepy Nuts which, in case you didn’t know, is my favorite. So much so that when Spotify wraps my 2024, I reckon I’ll be in the like, 0.0001% of Creepy Nuts fans.

All this to say, DandaDan is a vibe. A whole vibe. And I could talk about that whole vibe, but that’s a bit macro for MangaCraft. Instead, let’s get micro.

Preface over!

There are two scenes in Lord of the Rings that always make me laugh. The first—Rivendell, when every noble from every land is arriving one at a time. We see Gimli, Legolas, Boromir, everyone is here, arriving one after another.

The second—when Frodo is recovering (also in Rivendell) and Gandalf is sitting at the foot of his bed, he’s joined one at a time by every member of the fellowship. Well, every living member, I should say (RIP Boromir).

Why do these scenes make me laugh? Thanks for asking. Because the way it’s presented makes it seem like everyone was waiting in a line outside the door to enter one at a time. You know those signs that say “guests must be announced”? Same vibe. Like every entrance has to be its own thing. It’s own moment to meet the next bachelor.

Okay, so why bring up these two scenes at all? First impressions. Now granted in each scene, those are not the first impressions, but for the sake of imagining what first impressions feel like, those two scenes do the trick.

In life, there are lots of philosophies on first impressions, all of them amount to one big thing—they’re important. Damn important. When you’re introducing yourself to someone for the first time, there’s a lot at play. It’s the first piece of a relationship. At a job interview, you want to put your best self forward, so they say, because you only get one chance to make a dynamic first impression.

The same applies to characters. When a character first introduces themselves to the reader, the goal is to get them to stick in the readers craw with as little effort as possible. That’s not easy. What do you want the reader to think? Do you intend it to be misleading? Is what they do when entering the stage important to how they’re going to present themselves for the duration of the story?

The old rule I used to challenge my students to try: Give every character one unique physical trait and one unique mental trait and present that as their first impression. And bonus if you can fit a conflict in there too, or a hint of a conflict.

With that, at long last, let’s talk about DandaDan, my muse for the day and, hopefully, forever.

Among the many remarkable things DandaDan does, the most remarkable is how each and every character can carry the story on their own, and in small groups. There is no combination of characters that is unappealing.

When Okarun was knocked out for a few chapters, he wasn’t missed. But that sentence is misleading, because you could put any character name in and say the same. No one is ever missed because every character has made such a strong impression.

To be totally transparent, most manga does this very well. Gachiakuta was actually going to be the focus for this subject, because every character that steps onto the page is unique and aesthetically original. But DandaDan took over at the last moment when Rin was introduced to the story. With a cast full of unique and outrageous characters, how do you fit in a new outrageous character?

Same deal—one unique physical trait, one unique mental trait. Physically, she’s prim and proper. Mentally, she’s pining for a boy to secretly be a vampire and turn her.

Which begs for a review—let’s look at how each character is presented when we first meet them.

Momo Ayase: She gets kicked around by her gross boyfriend, then proceeds to call him fish brain, squid, and octopus. It establishes her sense of humor and her romantic frustrations.

Okarun: He’s getting picked on in class while reading what was essentially the National Enquirer. He proceeds to have a silly little fight with Momo about the supernatural.

Aira: Bumps into Okarun, remarks how polite he is, proceeds to make fun of him behind his beck before Momo drops a washbasin on her head. Is obsessed with her own prettiness, early rivals with Momo.

Jiji: Essentially serving the opposite role of Aira, Jiji and Momo have a history together, which complicates Okarun and Momo’s partnership when Jiji enrolls in their school with his muscular, hyperactive self. He’s a prime-time goober, which endears him to Okarun.

Sakata: Is an absolute dweeb, but he’s so outwardly self-assured. He has a complicated love/hate relationship with himself.

Then Rin enters the story. Not going to lie, when she first entered the story, I had my doubts. I was so chuffed with the cast and how well balanced it was that the idea of adding a new personality felt… unattainable. Impossible. No way they wouldn’t upset the balance.

Yet she didn’t. She fit in immediately. She had a unique look, a unique supernatural shtick, all the things everyone else in the group had, and I couldn’t wait to see how she would continue to up the ante of the group.

And then Zuma enters the story. Same deal. It’s always the same. Dynamic first impressions, unforgettable characters, one after another.

With any of these characters, I could trace how these first impressions build and develop into full and complex relationships. How Aira and Momo become friends, and how Jiji and Okarun do the same. How Sakata fits in, how Chiquitita and Serpo go from villains to heroes. There’s so much there to build off of, but nothing gets done, nothing works as well as it does, without resounding first impressions.

The worst, and I’ll say this as a generality so as not to throw any books/series under the bus, but the worst is when characters leave such a limp first impression that when they come back around, you don’t remember them.

With DandaDan, I can pick up the series after months of not reading it and know exactly who everyone is because I could never forget. Sakata and Jiji doing axolotl faces? Never forgetting that.

A first impression is the starting block of a character arc. It’s the very first dot on the graph. It sets up everywhere the arc goes from that moment.

Let’s step back from DandaDan for a second and go back to Lord of the Rings. One of my favorite first impressions of all time is Aragorn. Sitting in a pub, hood hiding his face, pipe in his mouth, glaring at our beloved hobbits. Clearly a sketch ball.

That’s his starting block. He’s mysterious and dangerous. And what that allows Tolkien to do is build his character out in all different directions, never losing that initial starting block. It’s a misleading starting block too, because there’s an assumption that he’s dangerous in a bad way. He does more or less abduct Frodo for all of a couple minutes after all.

The other thing about first impressions is that there are essentially two happening at the same time—the readers first impression of a character, and the protagonist’s first impression of another character. Aragorn’s works the same for readers and to Frodo. Same with characters like Faramir—as readers, we react to the first impression the same way Frodo does. And most of the time, the two do work together in synchrony, but it’s when they don’t work together that things can be even more fun.

DandaDan gives us that too. When Jiji enters the story, he is a major conflict point for Okarun. After all, Jiji is tall and handsome and has a history with Momo. But as readers, Jiji is sheer joy the moment he hits the page. It creates a fun dynamic where, as readers, we can’t wait for Okarun to see in Jiji what we see in Jiji. And he does, in time, which makes the wait so worth it.

There is very much a limit to how many characters a story can and should have, and that limit can largely be sussed out by how uniquely they can make a first impression. When characters start hitting the page the same way as other characters, it’s a good sign that you might want to dial it back.

DandaDan is not having that problem.

They will never have that problem.

Hey, creatives—take a look at how each of your characters introduces themselves to the story and consider how this serves both them as a character, and the story as a whole. Now here’s an exercise: Rewrite their introduction scene in two ways—

1. Hyper fixate on their biggest personality trait and make it the centerpiece of their introductory scene. Go BIG with it, be obnoxious if you must, it’s just an exercise.

2. Do the opposite, and mislead the reader. Think of Aragorn. If you have a very nice character, show them being really rude to someone.

Hey, fans of DandaDan—when you think about the series, what character do you think of first? What is it about them that stands out?