Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction vol. 9
Whenever this series makes the news over at “Anime News Network” it’s usually because it’s either going on hiatus or coming off of hiatus. Inio Asano has stopped and started his current series multiple times over the past few years and there’s never really been an explanation regarding why this is the case. I’ve got a theory after reading this volume, though. The reason Asano has taken so many breaks while writing this series is because it requires him to get his head into some really dark places in order to write it.
The mangaka is no stranger to darkness, as anyone who has read “Goodnight Punpun,” “Nijigahara Holograph,” or “A Girl on the Shore” can attest to. “Demon” was already living in some pretty dark places before we got this volume. Seeing how the humans treated the aliens could always be counted on to bring anyone down, and this was before it was revealed a few volumes back that their ship is set to explode and take the Earth with it in a few months’ time. That might sound pretty bad, but vol. 9 is some next-level depression as we get to find out how things got to this point.
We’re still in flashback territory as Oba and Makoto continue their journey through Oran’s memories to find out how she got to this timeline. The answer we get… is not for the faint of heart. To put it in the least spoiler-y terms: After accidentally causing the train derailment in the previous volume, Kadode uses the alien tech she was given to make the world a better place and winds up losing her soul in the process. When all is said and done, Oran doesn’t want to be in this world anymore. Fortunately, the alien has a way to fix that too.
I was going to put “non-lethal” in front of “a way to fix that too,” but I don’t think I can do it in good conscience knowing how things are in the main timeline. Oran’s plans for the timeline she jumps into involves making one minor change that has dire ramifications for the Earth as a whole. I’ve seen plenty of characters say that they don’t care what happens to the world if it means that their dreams will come true. Oran is unique in the sense that not only does she go through with it and get what she wants, but we’ve been getting to see how she’s been living with the consequences of her actions all this time.
The events of this volume should be painfully depressing by any standard and it wouldn’t surprise me if people stopped reading this series after vol. 9 because of what happens in it. What keeps me reading it is twofold. The first is that Asano has done an incredible job of getting into his characters’ heads up to this point and I can see how their actions remain true to themselves rather than explicitly serve the plot. Oran’s actions may come off as unforgivably selfish here, but I can understand why she’s doing these things.
The other reason is that it’s never immediately obvious how bad things are going to get. That light at the end of the tunnel? It’s not an oncoming train in this series. When you get to it, though, that’s when you find out that the world outside has been nuked into a wasteland while you were in the tunnel. Asano goes to plenty of dark places here, but there’s always some kind of surprise waiting for the reader in terms of how bad things will get. That’s especially true here as we find out why the cast of this series has been living in the worst timeline for the past eight volumes.
If you think this sounds depressing as hell to read, just imagine how much worse it is for the mangaka who comes up with it in the first place. Asano may be delivering this series on an irregular schedule as he takes these breaks, but if that’s what he needs in order to keep himself on an even keel then he should take as many breaks as he needs to finish this series. As dark as “Dead Dead Demon’s” gets here, it still has its hooks in me something fierce and I need to see how it ends. Because maybe, just maybe, things will work out for Oran in the end.
(Oh, and if you thought that this volume’s installment of “Doraemon” parody “Isobeyan” would add just a little whimsy to offset the darkness of the main story, YOU’RE WRONG! I found the story contained in the color pages which open vol. 9 was so bleak and upsetting to me that I turned to the final pages to see how it ended. Guess what? IT DIDN’T GET ANY BETTER! It’s also implied that this may be the last of these strips, and I would be totally fine with that after this one.)