Alien Invasion Meets Teen Drama in Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction
High school girls Kadode and Ouran navigate love, friendship, and alien invasions in this anime epic.
For a group of high school girls in Tokyo, the impending doom of an alien invasion is just a backdrop to their own personal dramas. In the anime epic Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction, director Tomoyuki Kurokawa masterfully balances science fiction and soap opera, creating a compelling hybrid that defies categorization.
The story takes place three years after a giant spacecraft appeared over Tokyo, triggering government action, political activism, and violence. But for best friends Kadode and Ouran, voiced by J-pop starlets Lilas Ikuta and Ano respectively, the fate of the world is secondary to their own adolescent struggles.
“The mastery of Asano’s writing is in how he deftly balances these two seemingly incompatible themes.”
Kadode’s father disappeared on the day the aliens arrived, and her mother has since become a paranoid germaphobe determined to move to the countryside with her new boyfriend. Kadode is also infatuated with her teacher Watarase, applying to his alma mater and insisting they start dating as soon as she graduates. Ouran actively supports this proposal, and even Watarase seems far from averse to it.
Through a series of flashbacks, we learn about the origins of Kadode and Ouran’s friendship, including how they came to adopt a stranded alien, which they hid inside a plush toy. However, their actions have destructive consequences, and the encroaching threat of Armageddon inevitably takes center stage.
The anime’s Independence Day-style premise is grand in scale, but it’s the fully realized characters that make the drama truly compelling. The alien invasion serves as a metaphor for the looming threat of adulthood that awaits our heroines, evoking memories of the September 11 attacks and the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami.
As the military and government are at loggerheads over how to respond to the alien threat, we learn that the aliens also fall into feuding factions. The cliffhanger ending of Part 1 will leave audiences clamoring for explanations, which they will have to wait two weeks to receive in Part 2.
The anime’s Independence Day-style premise is grand in scale, but it’s the fully realized characters that make the drama truly compelling.
A Brilliant Hybrid of Science Fiction and Soap Opera
Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction is a masterclass in balancing tone and genre. It’s a testament to the power of anime to tackle complex themes and emotions, and to the enduring appeal of science fiction as a metaphor for our own human struggles.
The anime’s cliffhanger ending will leave audiences clamoring for explanations in Part 2.
