Character · Dandadan
Momo Ayase
She inherited a spirit medium's bloodline and used it mostly to win an argument about which half of the paranormal is fake.
In Otakana the clue reads: Girl who believes in ghosts but not aliens
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Dandadan
- Letters
- 4 · Normal
Momo Ayase grew up in a house where her grandmother takes paying clients for exorcisms, so ghosts are household furniture to her. Aliens are the ridiculous part. She says so to a classmate who believes the exact opposite, and the pair settle it the stupidest way available. He goes to a haunted tunnel, she goes to an abandoned hospital, and both of them are proved right before the afternoon is over.
What she comes away with is psychic power, enough to shove a truck sideways or throw a punch without moving her arm, plus a permanent obligation to the boy she had been mocking. Momo is blunt, quick to anger, and reliably the one who acts while everyone else is still explaining. She also spends a lot of the series mortified, which the story treats as about as dangerous as the monsters.
Yukinobu Tatsu started Dandadan on Shonen Jump+ in 2021, after working as an assistant on Chainsaw Man and Fire Punch. Publishing digitally rather than in print let the art get much stranger than a weekly magazine usually allows. Science Saru animated the first season in 2024. The engine of the whole thing is two teenagers refusing to concede an argument the universe keeps settling for them.
Spelling MOMO
MOMO is four letters and two kana, and the back half copies the front. The word is 桃, peach, which is where the name comes from and why it repeats. Otakana wants the given name rather than Ayase. Two beats, mo-mo, no long vowels and nothing hiding in it.