I have heard very good things for quite some time about mangaka Inio Asano’s work – and I’ve also heard it’s tremendously bleak to the point of absolute nihilism, so for a while, I’ve been hesitant to read his stuff. When I learned his manga Dead Dead Demon’s DeDeDeDe Destruction (henceforth DeDeDeDe) was getting an anime adaptation and that it was one of his more… approachable works, I figured I would give the show a watch. The resulting show is interesting and messy – messy in some intentional ways, and some ways that may not be (and if those other ways are intentional it doesn’t reflect well on him).

DeDeDeDe is kind of an alien first contact + time travel story. The premise is that an alien spacecraft has appeared over Tokyo, and society is reacting poorly to the spacecraft’s presence and seeming inaction (before the aliens do make their first hesitant actions). We see humanity’s reactions occasionally through members of the Japanese government and scientists and military officers brought in to carry out the response, but mainly from the on-the-ground perspectives of ordinary people on the street, particularly teenagers Ouran Nakagawa and her friend Kadode Koyama, and their general circle of friends through High School and into college, over a couple years.

We see how society changes in various degrees as governments react, and then over-react, and then over-react even harder, and how the characters are impacted. Some are ambivalent, some are politically active, and many become increasingly radicalized. They’re radicalized by social media, regular media, and by general events and how the consequences of the actions of the aliens and governments impact them. This also leads to how the series gets messy.

Asano’s worldview, as conveyed through his work, is very bleak, with profoundly negative views of humanity, both writ large and at the small individual scale. This makes for issues with the various individual aspects of the story. Some parts feel right – one of Ouran and Kadode’s classmates is killed when an alien landing craft that the government has shot down crashes where she is. That classmate’s ex-boyfriend becomes radicalized both against the government and the aliens – wanting to commit genocide against the aliens, and overthrow the government (and all governments in general) in retaliation, seeking to ultimately put himself in charge, to the point of being happy with the deaths of trillions of people if that’s what it takes. It’s an immature edgelord worldview, but it’s expressed by a high schooler who slowly gets various things to try to carry that out.

The Japanese government takes the Warhawk perspective that the US government is hiding information about the alien spacecraft from them (which, admittedly, is not an unreasonable view to take). However, their response is to kill all the aliens and take their stuff to return to being a global world superpower – which fits with some very vocal warhawk elements of the Japanese NDP, who helped bring Shizuo Abe to power (as he was PM when the manga was coming out) – including building floating arcs with orbital death rays to turn against anyone who they deem to be a threat to Japan.

Then some cynicism feels somewhat natural. For example, the Japanese Prime Minister is chosen by the higher-ups of the party because he looks like Off-Brand Doraemon (no, really, there are Doraemon references all over the place). When the PM starts growing some ethics and a backbone, he’s threatened with replacement and ultimately ends up walking out of the story. There’s some discussion through Ouran’s NEET brother over how internet trolls can radicalize people, and the ways that they can be callous and cruel. There’s discussion of the ways that the Japanese news media can uncritically parrot the views fed to them by the government and by industry, and often when they aren’t, it’s exploitative muckraking, with actual investigative journalism being in the minority.

The problem becomes that outside of Ouran’s group of friends, we rarely see people actually care for each other. Even worse, people shown in positions where they need help are shown as cynically exploiting it for their own gain. For example, early in the series an area of Tokyo is rendered mostly uninhabitable due to radiation contamination – later on we have a side episode about some of the people living on the periphery of that area who are receiving stipends from the government, but can’t relocate – either due to lack of resources or familial connections to that area. However, our perspective is a documentary filmmaker who is trying to make exploitative crap and an interview subject who is trying to exploit the filmmaker for financial gain and is depicted as trying to leech money from the government. On its own, it’s messy. In context of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, it’s reprehensibly shitty. Even if, yes, people like that exist, it’s still runs into the same thematic issues as Rising of the Shield Hero having the inciting event of the plot being false rape allegations against the title character. This was actively enraging enough that, honestly, I nearly rage-quit the show.

That said, the animation of DeDeDeDe is excellent, as is the voice acting. While DeDeDeDe does ultimately come to a hopeful end that feels kind of earned, but the series just has such a reek of cynical nihilism when it comes to the fundamental concept of human empathy – treating it as being nearly nonexistent. Part of me wonders if the hopeful elements of the series ending I observed were based strictly on the nihilistic nadir the show was at before. It has an ending that feels like it wants to say that human salvation is making the effort to reach out and make friends with our fellow humans, but the lack of empathy and nonexistence of kindred spirits for so much of the rest of the series gives that aspect of the ending, with only just a day of distance and consideration from when I finished watching it, ring false.

Probably the best thing I can say for it is the series is it has what feels like (to my cis self) a well-written Trans/Genderfluid character.

Dead Dead Demon’s DeDeDeDe Destruction is available for streaming on Crunchyroll.

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