Dandadan Episode 7 Discussion

Heres comes the crybait.

The worst influence Kimetsu had on the manga industry was making authors believe cramping some hyper melodramatic backstory to a side villain from absolutely nowhere was good writing. Nevermind the worst thing is that they are absolutely right and people will eat that up completely without even considering it.
For sure I'm really buying this sudden surge of extreme violence with the murder of a poor woman and the kidnapping of her kid for a bit of money from 2 completely unnamed dudes with not even their faces shown. Did she fucked over the yakuzas? Did she had debt so insane someone threaten to take her child if she didn't paid? That's what I choose to believe because for all we know this is the most brutal and uncalled for payoff with a total absence of setup.
Obviously the emotion conveyed here is "look how unlucky she is, she didn't deserve any of this", but I don't think fictionnal characters as people, they are merely writing devices, and in this case putting such an amount of brutality just for the sake of making the audience cry without any justification is quite frankly, pretty cliche and cheap.
However what I will not deny is that beautiful directing and that magnificent piano track, didn't expect less from Kensuke Ushio, composer of Ping Pong's ost, one of the greatest soundtrack of all time, but still top notch.

My biggest concern for sure is this will be praised so highly that even people saying it's the best episode ever created wouldn't even be hyperbolic. Unfortunately for me, I have grown up of only having emotional response towards art and media and I can only conclude this was wildly incoherent tone shift for an action/romance shonen to switch from fighting wacky ghosts/aliens and finding the main dude's balls to the painful life of a single mom trying to raise her child while crippling in debt.
You could just write one shots if you want to do this kind of tragic silent short movies with overlaying music, insert them in a shonen which will switch to crude comedy next episode feels more of a petty attempt to catch an unsuspecting audience than anything else. But what do I now anyway, this episode will make the show go from 8.60 to 9.05 I guess lmao.

Overindulgent and unnecessarily bleak for a comedy anime. I mean, we saw a girl get HUMAN TRAFFICKED and not only do we NOT get closure on that, but the episode ends on an almost joyful note.

Frankly, it came off as lazy writing, like "I cant write compelling characters with well-developed arcs so I'll just make a character with the darkest backstory I can conjure up for the sole purpose of getting a reaction out of the viewer. "

I've absolutely LOVED the show thus far, so I can only hope this is not the direction the rest of the show takes because damn I miss when we were just looking for my man's balls.

@James-LastOmnic How can you watch this episode and seriously conclude that it was JUST crybait? It literally does not matter who the men are or why they took the daughter because it simply isn't relevant. Regardless if they were Yakuza or a client of her's, it changes nothing about the narrative. Though, because you don't think of fictional characters as people and merely as writing devices, I think that's where you have a disconnect. Like, of course you aren't going to have the emotional reaction intended but that just means it wasn't made for you.

I think this was a wonderful turning point in the series, showing the audience that this isn't just a silly goofy time but actually to be taken seriously at times. This episode also gives us much more information on how the spirits work in this universe. I haven't read the manga but I believe there'll be a lot more ethical consideration after this in terms of fighting spirits. I love the direction this series is going as there's much more substance other than "lol his balls are gone we have to find them". If you want mindless shonen there are thousands just like that, it's odd of you to complain about "random" depth.

Holy Mother of Jesus Christ, what did I just watch? I'd never expect me to almost cry in an wacky action/comedy like this. The animation, the art, the VA, the music, just....Wow. 5/5 stars wont do it justice, I'll give it a 6/5. If there are more mini arcs like this one, I think I should start reading the manga...

@EzioMorte Yes, there are lots of heart breaking moments throughout the series.

I'm not really sure if I'm feeling this anime as a whole, but I respect the art direction in this episode specifically. Besides how beautiful it looks, I guess I'm also feeling a little miffed that the creator conveniently portrays the tragedy of one woman's life in this episode, and then will probably show a panty shot in the next lol. But whatever, male gaze and all that. I suppose it is a shounen.

@ZXEAN Now i understand why this series has to be a comedy/ shonen action instead of a true horror show.
If it's true horror show, it's hard to execute sad backstory like this.

For example , Dark Gathering has a child ghost who has even sadder backstory than the mother this episode, but because the vibe of the show focus way more on the horror/ revenge/ brutality, you don't get as much feeling / sympathy out of it. Not to mention the production/ direction of Dark Gathering is pretty meh despite some of those ghosts have sad backstory too.

@NoelleIsSleepy Yeah this might be the biggest factor why it's hard to draw none anime fan into Dandadan.
They'd drop it at ep1 cuz of all the sexual innuendo / jokes and call you a pervert/ freak.
For us anime fan, we're quite used to it, but there's no way I can tell my parents to watch this show lolz..