Everyone loves a meet cute; its a tale as old as time.
Boy meets girl, girl hates boy.
But theres something there, just beneath the surface.
Dan Da DanGKIDS; Netflix
Through a series of mishaps and mixed signals, the two eventually grow on each other.
Then a turbo-charged granny demon steals the boys genitals.
Okay, so not all meets cutes areexactlythe same.
But its the core dynamic of clashing personalities that ultimately attract which hooks people of all ages.
Adapted from theShonen Jump+manga series (i.e.
And some skepticism is warranted.
Momo believes in the supernatural but doesnt think aliens exist.
Okarun doesnt buy into the idea of ghosts but is a believer in the extraterrestrial.
In its simplest form,Dan Da Danis a love story.
From there, its all about solving the mysteries of whats happened to them both.
Think of it as the animated equivalent of shows likeThe X-FilesorEvil,but cranked up to 11.
He points toward the source material, which hooked him instantly, as proof.
And its not a mess!
It makes it all really lively, very exciting.
He really tied everything together super well, I think.
Again, Yamashiro believes that the key ingredients for that balance were fully present in the manga.
And it would go really fast back and forth between those two things.
It created this sense of a gap, a difference between those two things.
It created a really good tempo to it; its just really fun.
That is the key to opening it up to a larger audience.
I take a stab at make the characters human, he says.
I think that people can find relevance in that.
But like with most pop culture, trends come and go.
Keeping the tempo fast, not having a lot of breaks in between dialogue.
When we have a real emotional, impactful scene, then we have a lot of breaks.
One of the key differences between manga and anime is the level of detail that each medium allows for.
Its super dense, takes your breath away.
I wanted to, of course, replicate that in the anime.
You have limits to it.
The director says he hoped to trick viewers into thinking the anime was as detailed as the manga.
The best way to do that?
Stick to the emotion.
People might think that anime is just drawing, but the drawing isnt everything, right?
Its really multiple disciplines within one.
How much emotional depth and development is packed into the scene?
But theres another connection there, too.
Wright directed the 2007 the comic book adaptationScott Pilgrim vs.
The opening of an anime is like the face of the show, Yamashiro explains.
You have to do it very efficiently and smartly.
Combining his own sensibilities with those of Gongora, the result falls perfectly somewhere in the middle.
[Gongora] has amazing timing, Yamashiro says.
I first proposed the silhouette scenes in the opening [as] an homage to the originalUltramans opening.
It uses silhouettes against colored backgrounds.
I think if I had just done it myself, it would have just been parody or homage.
But he took that idea, and he built on it.
But we were looking for more retro stuff, like Showa style, old Japan.
Warmer stuff, like old tokusatsu [special effects] that was done by people in costumes.
TheTetris-y look of the font was inspired by Kon Ichikawas films likeThe Inugami Family(1976).
I would recommend a very old Tsuburaya Productions show calledKaiki Daisakusen, he says.
I believe the English title isOperation: Mystery.
For all we know, it could be the future of anime.
