映画『Evil Eye』の感想
If anybody at GKIDS is hearing this, god damn it, put the freaking opening and ending in these movies, man! You're killing me!
Welcome back to 2AM OTTACK! I'm your host Mayu, a born and raised Japanese non-Ottaku, and...
I'm Sisko, an American Ottaku.
In this podcast, we share our reviews of anime and manga through our distinct perspectives with commentary on Japanese culture, history, and language.
Sisko?
Yeah?
You just watched the first new three episodes of DanDaDan in the theater today.
I sure did. I went to the Evil Eye movie.
Describe your thoughts on it with three syllables like DanDaDan.
Well, yeah. There we go.
Perfect.
We are all excited about the second quarter of the first season, which will be aired on Japanese TV starting from July 3rd, and then it'll be streaming from then.
So today, we're going to talk all about new DanDaDan.
Before we start, we would like to hear from you. Share your thoughts, ideas, questions, or even suggestions that we should talk about.
Send us a message to the email in the description, or you can use Spotify and the YouTube comments section as well.
Also, we talked about DanDaDan twice in the past.
One is called DanDaDam Otonoke is Fire, which is all about opening theme song, and we broke down the lyrics meanings and some Japanese lessons.
Another one is called Did You Get It? DanDaDan Secret Reveals.
In this episode, we explain the jokes and the gags you might have missed unless you grew up in Japan in the 80s or 90s, which were right spot on for me personally.
So check those episodes out from the links in the description.
All right, let's go. Tell us everything. Tell us like your experience at the theater.
Where did you go watch DanDaDan? How was the crowd? Was it amazing?
Okay, so today is Juneteenth in America, which means it's a new national holiday.
And I won't get into the history of Juneteenth because it's not what we're here to talk about.
But it being a day off, I was able to go in the morning to go see this.
I think it's also the last day that DanDaDan seems to be playing in most theaters in this area.
So I caught it just before it left.
And opposed to Witch Watch, which do we see it on a Sunday?
I think it was on the weekend. Yeah.
It was like a weekend. Yeah. And it was right at the beginning, I think.
This had more people than the Witch Watch watch party that we went to.
So I would say there were probably about maybe seven, six, seven, eight, something like that, people in the theater.
It was a much bigger theater than the one where we saw Witch Watch.
They had given it, I think, like an older theater.
It didn't have like the nicer seats, but it had like lots of seats.
But 1030 is not a time when a lot of movies get a big audience anyway.
And so seven or eight felt like a lot of people for the time of day that it was.
It was like Witch Watch. It started with an interview with the directors.
And season two is actually being directed by, co-directed by two guys.
One is a Japanese director and the other is a director who's definitely not from Japan.
They don't say where he's from specifically, but it seems like he's from a Spanish-speaking country, would be my guess, based on his name and like his accent.
In the interview, the Japanese director only spoke Japanese and everything was subtitled.
映画の内容とストーリー展開
But the other guy spoke English the whole time.
So that was kind of nice for him to have like a direct line of communication to the American audience that was watching this in theaters.
And I think the second director, the non-Japanese director, helped to direct the opening of season one and then got invited to help direct the entire season two.
So they have some back and forth, both at the beginning and the end of this like quote unquote movie.
But just like Witch Watch, there was no opening theme song and no ending theme song, which drove me nuts.
Like how can you say you're going to show us the new season and then not give us the theme songs?
That's the most important part.
So I was disappointed by that again, but the actual content of the first three episodes is pretty good.
They are very action packed.
And although you get a certain amount of resolution of what's happening in the story by the end of the third episode, it ends on another cliffhanger.
Of course.
You can't tell really exactly where the three episodes are split, but I have a feeling that they're split in moments in the action that's happening that are also cliffhangers.
So probably a lot of cliffhangers.
The story is mostly about a battle that unfolds at the house where Okarun and Gigi are and develops Gigi's character in particular quite a lot, as well as introducing a bunch of new characters, some new villains essentially, and showing a lot of fighting.
Like that's there's this is not like a slow or funny set of episodes.
It's just fighting from the not at the very beginning, I guess, but from the beginning to the end.
The movie also made the interesting decision to put in a lot of backstory.
So they showed like highlights of the entire first season and then like almost all of at least the second half of the episode that came right before this season.
So it felt like there was a lot of like catch up backstory, I guess, maybe to prepare people who like didn't watch the original season of the show or something, or just to sort of like jog your memory and be like, this is kind of what happened in the first season.
Okay.
So that was the that was the experience.
共同監督アベル・ゴンゴラの紹介
I just Googled about the co-director Abel Gongora.
Yeah, that's right.
He was born in 1983 and he's from Spain.
There you go.
That would have actually been my guess.
But yeah, he seems really cool.
I liked that you have like a non-Japanese guy deeply involved in the production of an anime.
Like this is the dream of, you know, everybody from my generation.
And this guy from Spain like made it happen.
You go, Abel Gongora.
He's worked on Scott Pilgrim Takes Off.
He's also worked on Star Wars Visions.
Also Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken.
Wow, that's cool.
That's so cool.
And good for him.
All right.
観客の反応と前回のイベントとの比較
So there are more people than when we went to Witch Watch Watch Party.
Yeah, substantially more.
Yeah.
I mean, Witch Watch Party, like it could have been just one person on that day because like we were thinking, you know, well, maybe go, maybe not go.
Yeah, we were four fifths of the audience.
This one, I mean, I think like the success of the first season of Dandanon laid a better like foundation for getting people to actually come to this.
In talking to at least one friend, they were interested in seeing it and just kind of missed it because it was only out for a week.
And I don't know that I saw like a ton of ads for this outside of like anime related stuff.
I didn't run into anyone I knew at this screening, which sometimes happens because of the smallness of the anime community still.
But in a way, that's a good thing.
It means it's getting bigger.
How was the audience reaction while they were watching?
There were two people seated a little bit in front of me who talked a little bit at one part of the movie where it seemed like one person was like explaining some stuff or reacting to some stuff to another person.
But it wasn't really like big audience reactions.
Nobody was like, oh, like, you know, there was not a lot of vocalization.
People didn't really say a lot.
But there was at least one part where someone was like, that's so cool or something.
So, you know, it was OK.
So it was subtitled, right?
Yeah, I picked one of the subtitled shows.
I actually have a feeling that the dubbed shows might have a bigger audience, but that's just a hunch.
Was there an option for a dub?
Yeah.
The dub showings tended to be at like more prime time for movies.
Like when I was looking at the times at this particular theater, the dub was at like 6 p.m. and the subs were at like, I don't know, 2 or something.
So it seems like maybe it depends on the location.
Maybe it's kind of random.
But it felt like when I looked at different theaters, the dub time like showtimes were kind of the better showtimes.
Right.
And the sub showtimes were like more niche showtimes, either really late or kind of too early.
ディレクターの協力と競争
So during the interview, what was the most interesting thing you learned?
Hmm.
They talked a lot about the interplay between the two directors in designing the original opening.
And the Japanese director gave a lot of credit to Abel Gongora about introducing use of color in sort of more vibrant ways than the Japanese director was going to use it.
Also, the vibe between them was a little bit weird.
It's not totally clear to me how much Japanese the Spanish director speaks.
He hit a couple of lines in Japanese occasionally, but because he's speaking English the whole time, that just came up as sort of a question mark.
What are they saying and how are they saying?
The Japanese director is like, yeah, I have strong opinions.
So he mostly goes along with what I want.
And so I was kind of like, I wonder whether he still feels like he's establishing himself as a director.
He can't really be like, I'm running the show.
It felt like a little bit like a junior-senior kind of partnership.
So that was interesting, but also made me feel kind of bad for the Spanish director.
You were like, oh, this seems like you've probably had to bite your tongue a lot.
And the Japanese director said when they decided the color palette for the town that they're in in this arc that they decided that in the first season.
And so the second director didn't get to say a lot about some of the things that the Japanese director assumed he wanted to change or something.
I don't know.
The vibe was a little off.
But they clearly have made something very good together.
Also, Abel Gongora's name shows up in a lot of the credits.
So he clearly did some of the animation as well as the directing.
エピソードの概観
But one of the things that stood out actually wasn't from the interviews.
It was from the credits, which I stayed to watch all of.
This is a really international production.
And I guess that's true for a lot of anime now.
There's often animators from Korea or from China or from Vietnam who are working on the project.
But this one had a number of names that weren't just non-Japanese but Asian.
But names that seemed like they were English or American or whatever, Australian, who knows.
And the main guy being from Spain.
That's a huge deal.
So I like that about the show.
But I would say that this particular arc doesn't really have as many callbacks to other things in 80s Japanese culture the way that the first season did.
Although there was an interesting part where Abel Gongora was talking about preparing to direct the show.
Saying he watched a lot of horror and thriller movies.
Not just Japanese ones, but worldwide.
To get a sense of how to direct that type of story.
And that he also watched a lot of movies that the other directors suggested.
To be like, this is kind of the vibe that we're going for with this particular town.
I actually want to talk about the town.
I don't know if we mentioned this in our last episode.
But the Hot Springs town that they're in is very clearly modeled on a town we went to last year.
Kusatsu?
Kusatsu, yeah.
Some of the shots feel like actual locations in that town.
In particular, the stairway that they're going up.
We walked down that stairway when we were in the town.
And one of the first establishing shots has a couple of different things that really make it look like it's meant to be almost just exactly that place.
And there might be more Hot Springs towns in Japan that I haven't been to.
Also, it could be.
But there's a huge volcano really close by.
I mean, I guess it's all hot.
But whatever.
It really felt like Kusatsu to me.
And watching it a second time strengthened that conviction for me.
Oh, I feel like I know this place.
Is the volcano one of the key parts in the show?
Yeah, the volcano is important.
Okay.
Is it a really dangerous one?
An active volcano?
Yes, it's a very active volcano.
Okay, we've been there.
That's what I'm saying!
If that's true, what was the name of the mountain?
In the show?
No, the one we went to.
Oh god, I don't remember.
It's whatever massive volcano is next to Kusatsu.
But yeah, there's a whole thing of somebody's parents are there studying volcanoes of the universe.
It's like, okay, yeah.
This really feels like it's that place.
You can go all the way to the top by car.
Yes.
And then as you drive down towards Kusatsu area, there are a bunch of signs,
Don't stop.
Like, don't stop driving.
Just keep going.
Roll your windows up or toxic gas will kill you.
Yeah, exactly.
And then there are shelters in case a volcano erupts.
You can just hide in them.
Yeah.
I mean, I feel like if the magma comes out, you're like cooked either way.
Like very literally cooked.
But if it's just raining fireballs, the concrete tube might protect you.
Yeah, it was so casual.
So I was scared.
Yeah.
オープニングテーマの紹介
Anyway, so that was an aspect of this particular set of episodes that I got a lot out of personally.
I see.
I see.
All right.
So you didn't get to watch opening and ending, which is a huge bummer again.
Yeah.
Like if anybody involved in these, like if anybody at G Kids is hearing this,
God damn it.
Put the freaking opening and ending in these movies, man.
You're killing me.
So there's not even songs?
No, I don't think so.
Really?
I mean, it would be a bold choice.
Like they played the credits, right?
And there was like music over the credits.
But I think the music was just like some of the background music from one of the episodes,
which is like pretty techno.
Like it's, I don't remember the background music of the first season.
I remember.
But this one is like, is like really like, it's like very techno inspired.
And it's like, I mean, that's the right vibe for a battle, you know,
like to be like intense and like throbbing and bassy and stuff.
But yeah, it's a, it feels like retro techno, you know, like listening to it.
I'm like, oh, this is like what techno sounded like in like the late 90s,
like early 2000s, you know?
Like, I feel like I had a lot of friends who were like into it back then.
And like, it reminds me of like that era of like electronic music.
So whatever.
It's good.
Okay.
Why don't we talk about opening and ending theme songs?
Because I got some information and I actually got to listen through YouTube.
God damn it.
Okay, go ahead.
So the opening theme song is called On The Way by Aina Jiendo.
I'm interested.
I want to know what it's going to be like.
Yeah.
It sounds amazing already.
I really like it.
And in Japanese, it's called Kakumei Douchuu.
So it's kind of right translation, I guess.
Kakumei Douchuu.
Kakumei like revolution?
No, Douchuu.
In the middle.
On the way, I guess.
On the way to revolution.
Revolution, yeah.
Why'd they take that out of the English title?
I don't know.
Okay.
All right, whatever.
Like if it was just Douchuu and it was On The Way, I'd be like, okay, yeah, sure.
You know, we just talked about Witch Watch's ending theme song,
Mahou wa Spaisu.
And it's translated that Mahou wa Spaisu is like magic spice,
but it was translated, find your magic.
Yeah, that's nonsense.
Sorry.
I don't know what, like, it's so simplified.
Maybe it's not a translation.
Maybe they just gave it a different title in another language.
Maybe.
But like, I like Japanese titles better.
Yeah.
Anyway, so we talked about Aina Jiendo on the episode of, what is it called?
Moonrise.
Moonrise.
Moonrise.
Wow, you really didn't like Moonrise that much.
It was like Star Wars.
Okay, got it.
Anyway, but yeah, it was not my, like, best anime of the year.
But yeah, she did the ending theme song for Moonrise,
and she was one of the main characters in the show.
So that's how we got to know her.
And then the song for Dandan Dan sounds amazing.
Great.
So everybody should listen to it.
All right.
High bar to live up to, given that they're trying to replace Otonoke.
But yeah, all right.
Yeah, Otonoke was great and awesome.
But, like, this one is really good.
Like, it really fits to Dandan Dan's, like, world and the music
and self-prism and everything.
Like, it won't disappoint you.
Okay, cool.
And the ending theme song I listened, which is called Douka Shiteru by Worts.
And then it was like—
Can you spell that?
Or is it in, like, Katakana?
It's capitalized W, lowercase, U-R-T, uppercase S.
Okay, weird.
Very weird.
And I Googled, of course, because I wanted to know the reason why.
It's because when he was trying to give himself an artist name,
he was so embarrassed he couldn't do it.
So he closed his eyes and typed randomly, and that word came up.
Dude, okay.
Why don't you, like, research about what it means in Japanese?
Okay, all right.
Well, all right.
Maybe it's like a—I don't know.
It might be—it definitely draws your attention if you're an English speaker.
Yeah, that's fair.
Wait, what?
What?
Why?
All right.
Okay, okay.
It's a solo artist.
All right.
Is it a good song?
It sounds good.
All right.
Then I'll forgive the weird name.
Creepy Nuts is weird, too.
Yeah, Creepy Nuts is not—
Not what I would choose, either.
I feel like if you type randomly on a keyboard, though,
you don't end up with something that sounds like a real word.
It's always like A-K-S-D-F-J, you know?
Well, for him, it was like Destiny.
Like, hey, like—
Words.
Words.
Okay.
All right.
邪視の意味
So let's do today's word of the day.
Do you have any suggestions?
I would say the good word of the day would be jashi.
So what does jashi mean?
I think it's a made-up word.
Okay.
Yeah.
But a ja means evil, and a shi is eye or look.
Okay.
So they use this for—
It's represented in English in the subtitle version as Evil Eye.
And the subtitle of this movie is Dandan Evil Eye.
So that felt like an appropriate place to start.
Do you also read snake as ja sometimes?
Yeah.
Okay.
So there is both a lot of, like, snake stuff in this.
So, like, daija is, like, great serpent is, I think, the translation.
And then jashi is a different character, meaning evil eye.
But they both have the ja sound.
And so there's, like, a—
Yeah, ja itself means evil.
Shi means look.
Right.
And then in daija, it means snake, right?
Big snake, yeah.
Big snake, yeah.
So there's a lot of ja going on in this particular one,
and I thought those two words might be useful to kind of be like,
oh, okay, like, that's what they're talking about,
or this is where this is coming out.
And it's, you know, it's notable that Evil Eye is written jashi,
not akushi, right, or some other, like, way of reading evil.
It's, like, a different character than aku, yeah?
Mm-hmm.
So that's—anyway, I thought that might be, like, a useful one
for understanding this particular set of episodes.
I wonder if they make any, like, jokes about ja,
nantoka bla bla jan,
because, like, I remember in the first core,
Okarun and Momo kept saying bla bla jan in Japanese.
Right, right, right.
Sounds like something, like, wrong, right?
Yeah.
This one doesn't really have jokes.
It does have callbacks, and, like, the, you know,
アニメとマンガの連動
Abel Gongora actually talked about watching a lot of kung fu movies
for one particular part of this set of episodes.
Okay.
Where a character does a lot of kung fu.
And so there's, like, that, and it, like, you know,
feels like a callback to, you know, older movies from that particular genre,
but it's not actually that—I mean, it's a little bit funny,
but, like, a lot of it is, like, action.
There's not a lot of, like, slow moments
where, like, people just, like, talking or playing around.
It's, like, action from the beginning of the first episode
to the end of the last episode.
And so this particular one doesn't have, like, a ton of jokes in it.
There is a reference to Itsuchinoko,
and that part is a little bit funny,
but, like, huge, actually.
Itsuchinoko might be another good thing to explain
to, like, non-Japanese viewers,
because I still don't really understand the idea of Itsuchinoko
other than it's, like, a weird fat snake.
It doesn't exist.
It's, like, a maboroshi no ikimono.
Yeah, it's a cryptid.
But, like, it's not, like, a cool cryptid.
It's just, like, a slightly fatter snake, right?
Is there anything special about Itsuchinoko other than it's rare?
I don't know.
Yeah.
Okay.
There's, like, a story about it or legendary.
Like, nobody has seen it.
Sure.
Isn't it supposed to be, like, connected to earthquakes or something?
I feel like every rare thing in Japan is connected to earthquakes.
Don't know about that.
I feel like that was in the yokai book that I read.
There's a reference to Itsuchinoko,
and I guess it's enough to just say it's a cryptid,
and so that's why, you know,
Okarun would be potentially very interested in it.
Oh, that makes sense.
There's another rare living thing that's referred to in this
that I'm also pretty sure is made up
called a Mongolian death worm, but...
What?
We'll look that up later, and maybe we'll talk about it in a future episode.
Okay.
Sounds good.
So, what is your expectation for the second core of first season of Dandodan?
So, one of the weird things about Dandodan for me is
I started reading the manga of Dandodan in, like, chapter 150 or something.
So, weirdly, in the manga right now,
some of the characters that get introduced in this arc
have, like, just come back, like, ostensibly kind of out of nowhere.
So, it's really weird that I'm, like, getting introduced to them
in both the manga and the anime at the same time
at really random parts of the story.
I don't know where the story is going to go from here.
I assume they will wrap up this arc after the first three episodes.
It'll take more, I think, another...
Up to another three episodes to wrap this arc, actually.
Like, you know, based on what the director said.
So, I think there will be a couple more episodes
that are really about the same story revolving around Gigi and Gigi's house.
And then, I'm curious to see where it goes from there.
I wonder if we're going to get additional characters.
There are a lot more sort of quote-unquote main characters in the manga now.
It really seems like it's almost like an ensemble cast at this point.
So, I think we should expect the introduction of, like,
映画とアニメの予告編
maybe one more main character or something.
But, yeah, I wonder whether it'll start being, like, more action all the time
or whether it'll go back and have some sort of, like, lighter episodes
that are kind of jokes or a little bit more feelings like one-offs
as opposed to, like, these longer arcs.
All right. Thank you so much.
I can't wait to watch.
We can watch from July and the other streaming services.
So, we'll definitely talk about it once it comes out for sure.
Nice. It was also cool to see an in-theater preview
for the next Demon Slayer movie, Infinity Castle,
which I guess is coming out in America in early September.
So, it got me pumped to see that as, like, a preview.
Do you want to watch it?
Hell yeah.
Okay. You can go.
You're not going to go?
You're just, like, done with Demon Slayer?
I've read the whole thing.
I'm going to drag you to it.
And I was falling asleep the last season.
So, I don't know.
I don't know.
Okay.
You can report.
Yeah. Very fun.
I'm looking forward to that one.
All right. Whatever.
We'll see.
Yeah. All right.
ポッドキャストの情報
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