DanDaDan is magnificent ; in other news, they discovered the wheel.
We certainly won’t be the first to tell you, and this is not intended to be a review but rather a praise of the technique, direction, composition and all those tiny details that make this an amazing anime.
First of all, obviously the different coloring between aliens and yokai catches the eye. The former are governed by cold tones and colors, while the yokai have a warm tone. This contrasts them, but also compliments them.
Continuing to analyze the scenes with the Serpoians, we note that they are static and with dolly camera movements ; often these scenes imitate telephoto lenses (cinematic and photographic lenses with a focal length of at least 200mm), creating a squashed effect. In contrast, the scenes with the yokai are kinetic and jerky with wide-angle shots (lenses with a very low focal length that sometimes create the fisheye effect) where the Yokai almost comes out of the 2D boundaries of the screen.
Let’s use a scene as an example. Okarun, possessed by the turbo grandmother, is momentarily knocked out by the Serpoian ray ; the colors of the mask go from a bright red to a dull red, almost overwhelmed by the blue. The image is telephoto and cold. When the yokai spirit recovers, it gives new strength and the mask recomposes itself and lights up again, and consequently, the shot goes from a telephoto to a wide-angle to emphasize the fact that now it is the yokai who rules the scene.
It is all this attention to detail that makes DanDaDan an unmissable anime.
