Japanese Folklore From Show, Explained

Key Takeaways

• Dandadan merges Japanese mythology with urban legends in a fresh way, blurring the lines between spirits, aliens, and yokai.
• Turbo Granny is inspired by Japan’s cryptid lore and possesses characters, showcasing the unique origins of yokai in the series.
• Dandadan references American alien lore through Serpos and explores infamous Japanese urban legends such as the Slit-Mouthed Woman.

WARNING: The following content contains spoilers for the Dandadan anime and manga up until the point of this article’s publication date.

Japanese folklore has been a mainstay in anime for ages. Inuyasha, Natsume’s Book of Friends, and Mushishi are some of the many anime shows that showcase yokai from Japanese mythology. But Dandadan has found a way to make it feel fresh using urban legends from around Japan instead of traditional yokai, to create their own unique yokai in the manga and the anime. The franchise plays with everything, from the fascinating origins of Turbo Granny, to name-dropping the Loch Ness Monster; Dandadan is no stranger to mixing and matching myths and legends from all over.

The story of Dandadan begins with the protagonists discussing which supernatural phenomenon they believe is real; aliens, or spirits. By the end of the first episode, we discover they’re both correct, leading to the inciting incident that both introduces the plot and supernaturally binds the characters together for the foreseeable future. The same incident our protagonists find themselves in also reveals that aliens and spirits are the same entities, initiating the first time the watchers experience the blurring of lines between Japanese mythology and local folklore we’ve come to associate Dandadan with in recent days.

Turbo Granny

From The Highways of Hyogo Prefecture

Turbo Granny is the first yokai we encounter, and one of the most fascinating. In the anime, she is a yokai found in an abandoned tunnel in Shono City. Momo Ayase dares Okarun to go the tunnel she’s rumored to reside in, as an exchange for going to a famous alien hotspot, as a part of their deal to prove to each other whether aliens or spirits exist. She ends up possessing Okarun when he can’t outrun her, and becomes the source of his initially uncontrollable powers.

Her mythological origins are found on the highways of Hyogo Prefecture in Japan, where an infamous cryptid known as ターボばあちゃん (Turbo Baachan, literally “Turbo Grandma”) appears as an elderly woman and patrols the road in search of reckless driving. Some versions of the myth say she intentionally causes reckless drivers to crash, but others claim she is trying to warn them of the fate they will meet if they continue to drive dangerously. She’s known to chase cars going over the speed limit, which is why there are some iterations of the myth where a Turbo Grandma is associated with and named after a certain speed based on the speed limits of the highway she resides on. Because of this, in the manga, Turbo Granny is later known as 100kph Granny once the characters discover other Turbo Grannies, also named after their associated speed limits, during their quest.

Acrobatic Silky

Japan’s Version of Slenderman

This might be one of the saddest origins for a yokai in Dandadan so far. In the manga, she is unnaturally tall, wears a red dress and red wide-brimmed hat, and follows the character Aira Shiratori around due to her delusion of believing Shiratori was the child stolen from her. In a past life, Acrobatic Silky was working multiple jobs to provide for her child, before men she owed money to showed up to beat her into a bloody mess and kidnapped her daughter before she regained consciousness. Unable to locate her child, she ended her own life by jumping off a building, and became the Acrobatic Silky we know in the manga.

As another modern cryptid, her origins come from a college student’s online story in a 2-chan forum in 2008. Her appearance in the anime is fairly accurate to reported sightings between Fukishima and Hiroshima, where she can be seen jumping off buildings but disappearing before touching the ground. Notably, people who have claimed to see her, or are simply writing stories to keep the creepypasta alive, have reported hallowed-out eye sockets and scars on her left arm.

Serpos

A Reference To American Alien Lore

In Dandadan, a Serpo is an exclusively male creature of the alien species, who self-categorizes themselves as yokai after meeting Ayase. They come from Planet Serpo in the Zeta Reticuli system, and are unable to reproduce naturally due to their alien race being exclusively male, and take to cloning while they search for a human to take reproductive organs from. This is why they initially take the form of regular Japanese businessmen, as they believe they can blend in with humans this way.

While there is no folklore counterpart to the Serpos in Japan, the name is an explicit reference to planet Serpo, where modern alien believers claim that Grays (gray humanoid aliens) come from. A movement called Project Serpo created by Victor Martinez aimed to educate the public on UFOS and claims to be a “top-secret exchange program of twelve U.S. military personnel to Serpo, planet Zeta Reticuli, between 1965 and 1978” according to their own website. In the manga, they often make subtle references to different alien controversies in the USA, including conspiracies surrounding Area 51.

Slit-Mouthed Woman

Do You Wanna Know How She Got These Scars?

Reiko Kashima is known as the Slit-Mouthed Woman in the Dandadan manga. She harbored a grudge over Ayase after she was beaten by the psychic co-protagonist, and vowed to get her revenge the next time they met. She is insanely tall and muscular, but her main attention is her wide, thin mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. While we don’t know much about her background in the manga yet, her Japanese urban legend counterpart is one of the most infamous urban legends in Japan, even having popular horror films based around her.

While there is references to similar yokai during the Edo period, the interpretation of the manga references, 口裂け女 (Kuchisake Onna, literally “Slit-Mouthed Woman”), came about in the 70s according to Japanese literature professor Iikura Yoshiyuki. According to modern folklore, she asks her victims if they think she’s beautiful. If they say “no”, she will either kill them on the spot with her scissors or wait until they fall asleep to murder their victims while they’re unconscious. If they say “yes”, she will show off her wide, thin, sharp-toothed smile before asking again. If her victim says “no”, they will be killed. If they say “yes” a second time, she cuts the corners of their mouth with her scissors so they can look like her.

Dandadan is already chock-full of urban legends and creepypasta references, with only 4 anime episodes and 3 years of serialized manga under its belt so far. While this article went over the major contenders, the manga has referenced or riffed on creatures from folklore and cryptids around the world as well. If it’s anything like its Shonen Jump-published siblings, the story has only just begun, which begs the question… what creatures will we see next?

Dandadan is airing on Netflix and Crunchyroll, with new episodes premiering every Thursday.