Dandadan Chapter 156

This dandadan chapter reframes Unji Zuma’s relationship with the yokai known as Umbrella Boy through one pivotal act on a riverbank. As Unji prepares to leave town, he spots kids tormenting a boy and tossing his homemade lunch—an image that detonates memories of his own childhood: a dead frog, a mother he loved and lost, and the brother whose death cleaved his life in two. When the bullied boy leaps into the river after his lunch, Masamichi Bega dives in on instinct and immediately begins to fade in the current.

The river becomes a crossroads of past and present. Unji, who once survived by turning away, is pulled back by the echo of Futa’s drowning. At that instant the yokai materializes in the form that hurts most—his little brother’s—and offers an umbrella. Unji accepts. Wind gathers, the umbrella howls, and with power that is not fully his, he drags Bega and the boy from the water. The rescue is not triumphalist; it is relief, and it is grief given hands.

'Brella Boy crystalizes the moral geometry of dandadan: power is never neutral. Unji’s first true grasp of the umbrella is not for vengeance or chaos but for saving a life. The chapter’s quiet ending—Unji and Bega, both alive, both wordless—sets the tone for everything that follows in the Danmara arc: a delinquent who still wants to be good, a cop who still refuses to give up, and a yokai that understands exactly where to press.