Dandadan: Writing Romantic Undercurrents

What's love got to do with it?

Preface!

You may find this hard to believe, but as I write this post about Dandadan, I’m listening to Creepy Nuts theme for Dandadan. That was sarcastic, by the way. The “you may find this hard to believe” bit, not the fact that I’m listening to it.

Equally unsurprising—I’m finally watching the Dandadan anime now that the episodes are piling up. It’s fun to revisit the early goings of the series and revel in the absurdity as I await the arrivals of Jiji, Sakata and the rest of the gang.

This always happens when I start watching a series after having read through the majority of it—new things arise, pieces connect, and I have a new post to write. Legit though, never thought I’d write about romance here.

Preface over.

There’s no reason you need to know this other than for my want to say it, but I’m not a huge fan of reading romances. By romances, I mean stories propelled by romance as the primary drive. When it’s attach to a horror, a comedy, an epic fantasy, it’s fine as long as it doesn’t get in the way.

I’m going to be drawing from two non-manga sources in this post—Scooby Doo: Mystery Inc. and Black Doves, both Netflix shows, both well worth watching.

There’s a scene in Black Doves where this hitman, who is literally on the job, takes time to have a belabored phone conversation with his ex about his conflicted feelings. It was the first time in the show that my wife and I felt annoyed. We even skipped ahead a bit. It got in the way of the intense spy thrills we’d come for. This was romance getting in the way.

Similarly, there’s an element to Scooby Doo: Mystery Inc. that never sat right with us. Throughout the course of the show, there are two romantic undercurrents: Daphne and Fred, and Velma and Shaggy. Both lead to frustration and romantic tension, but the former—Fred and Daphne—never really gets in the way or becomes belabored. Velma and Shaggy’s does. Especially when Velma literally tells Shaggy it’s her or Scooby, he can’t have both.

I didn’t put together the pieces until I got back into the romantic tension of Okarun and Momo in the early goings of Dandadan.

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Before we get into Dandadan, here’s what you need to know

Okarun is into aliens. Momo is into ghosts. Okarun is a nerd, Momo is pretty and popular. This is the basis of an unlikely friendship with some muddled romantic feelings in between. It leads to bouts of jealousy when a new girl (Aira) and a new guy (Jiji) enter the mix, with Jiji and Momo having a past, and Aira and Okarun having a present, but everything ties back to the big question—are Okarun and Momo more than friends?

Throughout their misadventures combatting aliens, ghosts, demons and more, that romantic undercurrent is there, and it is another source of tension.

And that’s all you need to know.

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Momo and Okarun form an incredible duo. Their conflicting views of the supernatural lead to immensely entertaining banter, and their friendship is quite charming, seeing two characters from opposite ends of the social hierarchy finding common ground and learning to care for each other.

But the more they save each other’s lives, the more their prepubescence begins to flare up. Do they care about each other as more than just friends?

This all comes to a head when Okarun literally trips over Aira, the third member added to their party, and Momo sees this and thinks they’re doing the hanky-panky. Spoiler: they aren’t. Still though, it fuels some romantic tension for the series and, as readers/viewers, it’s frustrating because we just want Okarun and Momo to be honest with each other.

This continues throughout the series, as mentioned, with Jiji, a hunky sporty dude who has known Momo for quite some time, entering the picture.

And yet, throughout the course of these romantic tensions and frustrations, my low tolerance for romance never made me skip ahead, roll my eyes, groan audibly, or show frustration in any other way.

This lack of frustration made me investigate—what’s the difference between romantic undercurrents that interrupt the story in a bad way vs romantic undercurrents that still interrupt the story, but don’t stop the flow?

I think of it like this. Bad romantic undercurrents completely dam up and stop the story. Good romantic undercurrents may slow the primary flow of the story, but they never stop it outright.

Case in point: when Velma tells Shaggy it’s her or Scooby Doo, the story cannot properly proceed without an answer. Not just that, but it’s wildly out of character for Velma, and for a gang that requires every member to function properly. How can Velma step up and force Shaggy to tear them apart? The story stops.

Contrarily, in the very same story, Daphne and Fred’s romantic tension intersects the primary drive of the story as well. Fred is hilariously infatuated with traps, both creating absurd traps, as well as sniffing out equally absurd traps. Daphne longs for his attention and vies for it, having a few other romantic interests herself. But never does Daphne’s vying for Fred’s attention stop the story. It causes complications and frustrations, sure, but it never takes over the story. And when the script flips and Fred starts liking her, this holds true still. Their romantic relationship does not interfere with the story.

Romantic undercurrents, when used properly, should enhance the story, not detract from it. That’s the difference between Velma and Daphne.

Dandadan does the exact same. They use the romantic elements to enhance the comedy of the story, just like Fred and Daphne. If, all of a sudden, Momo told Okarun that he had to choose between Aira and her, we may run into a Velma situation, but that hasn’t happened as of writing.

Which feeds into another key reminder—of the three storytelling universes being covered here (in case you forgot, those three being Dandadan, Scooby Doo: Mystery Inc., and Black Doves), not one of them is a romance first. On the flip side, the quite popular new manga from Yen Press, The Guy She Was Into Wasn’t A Guy At All is a romance first, meaning that when those romantic frustrations pile up and derail the story, it’s great, nay fantastic storytelling. That’s the whole point, after all.

This is when I get more into my opinion than anything else, but when you’re writing a spy thriller, a quirky mystery or an absurd paranormal horror, those should be your primary drivers, respectively. Not romance. But not just ‘not romance’ but also any other attached elements. It wouldn’t work if Black Doves suddenly abandoned its spy thriller realism to interrupt the plot with some absurdist comedy that derails everything. Nor would it make sense if Black Doves suddenly incorporated alien invaders.

The only other portion of Black Doves that got my wife and I slightly agitated was when the lead character (played by Keira Knightly) makes a rather poor decision in the end, all in the name of romance. Spoiler free, so I won’t get more detailed than that, but the point remains—it really didn’t make sense in the context of her character, or in the context of the story as a whole. This isn’t a romance, so romance should not be driving the car.

There’s that old adage to know your lane and stay in your lane. I hate that adage in the context of how it’s normally used. But in the spirit of knowing the lane of your story and staying in it, well, maybe there’s something there. Not that you can’t leave the lane from time to time to veer into other genres, but major moments in the story, hinge points if you will, should be in line with the genre(s) you’re in.

Romantic undercurrents are fantastic ways to enhance stories. Especially macro stories. Black Doves is about literally the security of the world in the face of two nuclear superpowers at each other’s throats. Dandadan is about intergalactic and supernatural conquests and defending Earth from said conquests. Those are big concepts. It absolutely helps to have universally human connection points in macro plots like that, and nothing is more universal than love.

Just don’t let love get in the way. That’s all I’m saying.