Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction

Entry updated 7 October 2024. Tagged: Film, TV.

Japanese animated film and web series (2024; vt DDDD). Production +h. Based on the Manga by Inio Asano. Directed by Tomoyuki Kurokawa. Written by Reiko Yoshida and Takaaki Suzuki. Voice cast includes Ano, Lilas Ikuta, Miyu Irino, Ryoko Shiraishi, Kenjiro Tsuda and Azumi Waki. Initially released as two 120-minute films with script credit to Reiko Yoshida only; then (with additional material) as a web series of eighteen 24-minute episodes. Colour.

An immense Spaceship arrives and hangs above Tokyo, with a part detaching and crashing below; later small craft occasionally leave and fly around the city. Eventually the US military drops a new type of bomb on what is now called the "Mothership", to no obvious effect; but the radiation means parts of Tokyo must be evacuated. Nothing much happens for the next few years, but the Japanese government grows increasingly frustrated over the USA's overbearing involvement (see Politics), whilst seeing the Alien Technology as a potential asset they do not wish to share. Weaponry is designed that can shoot down the small craft, and is eventually turned on the Mothership itself: though it stays airborne, thousands of aliens rain down from it. Small and peaceable, they try to settle in the evacuated areas, only to be murdered by army death squads and vigilantes. We are also told the end of humanity is imminent.

This is but a subplot to the main story, which concerns friends Kadode Koyama (Ikuta) and Ouran "Ontan" Nakagawa (Ano) as we follow them from high school to university. Ontan is melodramatic; Kadode is sensible with a strong sense of justice, but is also trying to have an affair with her teacher, and believes her father Nobuo (Tsuda) is dead. However, in the prologue episode we have seen him eight years in the future searching for his daughter, in a post-Disaster Japan of rogue AI piloted Mecha, armed militias and floating spheres called "asterisks" that kill those they touch. Back in the present, Kadode and Ontan are like most people getting on with their lives; the looming Mothership is now part of daily life, as are the conspiracy theories it generates (see Paranoia).

At one point there is a flashback to a few years earlier: Kadode and Ontan rescued an alien "Investigator", who tells them that not long ago "Your species had absolutely no sign of civilisation. However, looking at the discrepancy between your technology and your ethics, there might have been some kind of intervention in your Evolution." (See Uplift.) He also says his people are formerly from earth, but a "deadly light shower" meant they had to flee until they considered it safe to return (they have human faces, albeit blue-skinned, so might be considered a Lost Race). Kadode decides to use some of the Investigator's tools, such as an Invisibility cloak and a "space distortion" device, to fight evil, but becomes a murderous vigilante. When Ontan – whom she adores – rebukes her, she has a nervous breakdown and commits Suicide. We learn later that, faced with the grieving Ontan, the Investigator offered to shift her consciousness to a new timeline (see Parallel Worlds): but warns her that whilst in this world his reports led to the alien "invasion" being called off, this might not be the case in the newly created timeline; and so it proves (see Alternate History). Ontan, wanting to be with her friend again, accepts this. It is not clear how much memory of this Ontan has.

Kadode and Ontan begin university, befriending Futuba Takemoto (Waki) and the crossdressing (see Gender) Makoto Tainuma (Shiraishi); Ontan discovers that another friend, Oba (Irino), is an alien who, fatally injured, had their consciousness uploaded (see Identity Transfer) into a recently dead human. He confesses that his people, believing humans unintelligent, had originally planned to use them for labour (Slavery might be inferred). Also, the Mothership's energy reactor is out of control and will soon explode, wiping humanity and the colonists (it is posited that this is a deliberate ploy on the part of the "home country" as a means of getting rid of their excess population). Matters come to a head: bands of light appear, crossing the sky all over the world, from which the asterisks float down. Oba stops the core exploding, but only temporarily, as the government now shoots the Mothership down. Destroyed in the explosion, a pillar of light rises from Tokyo, pushing most of the asterisks into space, preventing the foretold extinction of humanity. Also, Oran and Kadode kiss. The final episode returns to Nobuo: he meets Makoto, who explains they have not seen Kadode for years (there is a suggestion she and Ontan are dead). Makoto and Futaba have access to the shift device that had brought Ontan's consciousness to this timeline: they do not wish to use it themselves, but offer to move Nobuo's consciousness to a different timeline, twelve years earlier: he accepts. This is a world where no mothership arrives and his life, and those of Oran and Kadode, progress happily.

At one point the Investigator wonders if they are being watched by another parallel world, and certainly there are events that suggest the involvement of another party. The colonists are shown as only wanting a place to live in peace, though their government appears no less self-seeking and cold-blooded as that of the Japanese; politicians, senior military, the industrial complex and the media are mostly cast in a very hostile light. The public does not come out too well either: there are brutal anti-alien gangs, whilst alien supporters despair of their impotence and attempt to assassinate opponents. Even the likeable main characters show flaws: when given power Kadode becomes a murderer, whilst Ontan's selfish choice leads to the creation of this brutal timeline.

Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction is a thoughtful, cynical and impressive work, often light in tone – though mainly in the earlier episodes, excepting the prologue – with the Horror increasing as it proceeds: a slice-of-life Anime gradually overwhelmed by aliens, paranoia, societal collapse (see Sociology) and very nearly the End of the World. Analogies with the lives of those displaced and marginalized by conflicts, and their demonization by others, can be readily drawn. There are also ironic references to the beloved manga and anime Doraemon written by Fujiko F Fujio, about a child given advanced technology by a Robot Cat from the future, enabling him to enact – or rather, bungle – his revenge fantasies with comical consequences (see Humour). [SP]

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