Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction: Volume 7 manga review

Dead Dead Demon's Dedede Destruction Graphic Novel Volume 7 cover image

An alien mothership arrived on Earth August 31st – also known as 8/31 – and parked itself above Tokyo.  Now, after five years, the impending doom of an alien invasion is causing panic around the entire world, but for a certain group of girls, it all feels mundane.  Kadode Koyama and her friends, including her best friend-girl, Ontan “Oran” Nakagawa, track the diminutive alien “Invaders'” movements with enthusiasm as they begin college.

As Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction, Vol. 7 (Chapters 49 to 56) opens, U.S. President Padron (a caricature/stand-in for Donald Trump) rants and raves about Japan monopolizing the aliens.  However, the United States has missiles on Okinawa that are pointed at Tokyo.

Kadode, Oran, and their friends in the “Occult Club” follow club leaders, Ojiro and Kentaro, to “Occult Club summer camp.”  The members of the club are gathering for some “field work” in a small coastal town.  There, they will meet two young women who claim that they encountered an alien eight years earlier.  What would these two women say if they knew that among these city kids is Oba Keita, an Invader disguised as a human?  Surrounded by the beautiful scenery, however, some of them will discover a secret about Oran that is beyond shocking!

[This volume includes two “Isobeyan” installments.  Isobeyan gives Debeko “interpreter rings,” and hilarity ensues.]

THE LOWDOWN:  The Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction manga, is like much of Inio Asano's manga, eccentric and strangely mesmerizing.  Plus, this inventive and often mercurial drama gets darker with each volume.

Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction Graphic Novel Volume 7, even at under 160 pages of narrative, finds Asano really showing off this series' exceptional and exceptionally large cast (which seems to keep growing).  This is one of the volumes in which there are so many shocking reveals that I have to be careful to not spoil them.  I can say that John Werry does some of his best translation work in Vol. 7, as this volume is a high point in the series.

I think readers will enjoy Donald Trump's “appearance” twice in this volume, which serves as a reminder that Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction is filled with a lot of pointed commentary about the modern world.  Allegorical and satirical, this series also offers an ever growing conspiracy that threatens to send chills up readers' spines.  By the way, the manga-within-a-manga, “Isobeyan,” continues to be a delight.  It reminds me of Urusei Yatsura.

I READS YOU RECOMMENDS:  Fans of the manga of Inio Asano will want to read the VIZ Signature title, Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction.

A+
10 out of 10