When I was in Japan this winter, heading to the theater to witness the likes of Haikyuu!!: Decisive Battle at the Garbage Dump or Dune: Part 2, I was regularly greeted with a peculiar trailer for DEAD DEAD DEMONS DEDEDEDE DESTRUCTION.
The trailer showed some teens with distinctive eyebrows, a very large and impressive-looking UFO, and an obviously high production quality. I didn’t see it in Japan, but ads and tie-ins for it were everywhere. It was obvious that the film was a big deal. DEAD DEAD DEMONS, better known to fans by the merciful abbreviation DDDD, is based on Inio Asano’s Eisner Award-winning manga series, which ran from 2014 to 2022. It’s the kind of series where you can’t say too much about the plot, but suffice it to say that we experience the long-term, looming existence of a UFO through the eyes of two teenage girls. It’s more about humanity than the aliens.
In Japan, the DDDD adaptation is taking the form of a two-part film, the first of which premiered in March. The second part is slated to come out this Friday, May 24, 2024. Crunchyroll’s announcement on Monday, May 20, that it acquired the distribution rights to DDDD wasn’t surprising in and of itself. What is surprising is that instead of bringing the two movies to worldwide theaters, Crunchyroll is slicing up the films into an anime series.
And that series will be premiering on Crunchyroll imminently. I truly do mean imminently.
What form will DDDD take outside Japan?
DEAD DEAD DEMONS DEDEDEDE DESTRUCTION is coming really, really soon. Crunchyroll announced the acquisition on Monday, May 20. The first episode premieres Thursday, May 23.
Yes, “episode.” DDDD is being released in Japan as two films, the second of which premieres on Friday, May 24. When you take Japan time into account, that’s essentially simultaneous with the Crunchyroll series premiere. In fact, Crunchyroll’s trailer is the exact same trailer that showed for Japanese audiences ahead of the first film.
However, our experience worldwide will be markedly different. We’ll be experiencing DDDD as an 18-episode anime series, watched through a weekly drip. However, to make this difference more enticing, in its press release, Crunchyroll promised that the series version will include “brand new footage never before seen in theaters.”
The addition of new scenes makes the series version of DDDD essentially analogous to the series version of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba‘s Mugen Train arc. Mugen Train was famously initially released as a film, but was later sliced up to air as part of the anime series. That series version also contained new scenes. Perhaps this is a hot take, but as a result, I personally found the added context within the series version to make the whole thing more engaging and grounded.
Then again, the key difference is that we’d all already had the chance to see Mugen Train, whereas non-Japanese audiences are being presented the series version of DDDD from the get-go. This makes it more similar to Tatami Time Machine Blues, the film sequel to The Tatami Galaxy, which was sliced up and put on Hulu for American audiences (rather unceremoniously, I must add).
Still, DDDD will likely make for incredibly compelling week-to-week viewing.
Who’s the crew involved with DDDD?
The studio behind DEAD DEAD DEMONS DEDEDEDE DESTRUCTION is Production +h, a relatively new studio founded in 2020. But the cast and crew of are a clear marker of the film’s/series’ high caliber.
DDDD is directed by Tomoyuki Kurokawa, whose most notable work is as an animation director on the Pscyho-Pass movie and an episode director for some of Psycho-Pass 3. Reiko Yoshida (girl power!) wrote the screenplay. Yoshida’s incredible career includes The Cat Returns (yes, the Ghibli movie!), Violet Evergarden, A Silent Voice: The Movie, and Pokémon Journeys. Nobutaka Ito, the character designer and animation director, worked the same roles on Inu-Oh and has a long history with Studio Chizu on films like Summer Wars and Wolf Children.
The composer, Taro Umebayashi, is best known for his work on Yuri!!! On Ice and Space Dandy. The theme song (for the first half) is “ZeZeZeZettai Seiiki” by ano, featuring Lilas Ikuta. ano is perhaps known for “Chu, Tayousei,” a.k.a. the “vomit kiss” song from Chainsaw Man. Meanwhile, Ikuta is best known as the singer of the immortal YOASOBI. Because the first film premiered in Japan a couple months ago, “ZeZeZeZettai Seiiki” already has a The First Take video. And if you’re an anisong fan who’s not already familiar with The First Take, please enjoy losing many hours of your life to arguably the best music performance series on YouTube.
What’s up with DDDD‘s cast?
Just like the people making DEAD DEAD DEMONS DEDEDEDE DESTRUCTION behind the scenes, the voice cast of DDDD also contains talent whose work most anime fans are familiar with. In fact, the two main characters are played by the singers of the aforementioned theme song, ano and Lilas Ikuta. Both have taken prominent voice acting gigs before—ano as Hiro in Studio Chizu’s BELLE, and Ikuta as Memocho in Oshi No Ko.
The supporting cast pulls from basically every hot anime from recent memory. It includes such notable talent as Atsumi Tanezaki (Anya Forger in Spy x Family), Miyuri Shimabukuro (Carole in Carole & Tuesday), Azumi Waki (Hinata Tachibana in Tokyo Revengers), Miyu Irino (Ritsu Kageyama in Mob Psycho 100), Koki Uchiyama (Tomura Shigaraki in My Hero Academia), Taito Ban (Jinwoo Sung in Solo Leveling), Kenjiro Tsuda (Kento Nanami in JUJUTSU KAISEN), and much, much more. And we all know we’re still not over Nanami, so maybe we can all just pretend through his voice actor that everything’s okay.
When and where can you watch DDDD?
The first episode drops on May 23, 2024, with new episodes every following Thursday at 8PM Pacific/11PM eastern. DDDD will be exclusively streamable on Crunchyroll.
