In Dandadan, supernatural power is rarely handed to anyone without a price.
Its students do not simply wake up one morning with a convenient new ability. They are cursed, possessed, swallowed, killed, revived, haunted or pulled into a family tragedy before the power ever becomes theirs.
That is what makes the series’ human power users so compelling. Their transformations are not isolated upgrades. Each one carries the personality, sorrow and unfinished desire of the yokai connected to it.
This article explores four Dandadan characters with yokai powers: Okarun, Aira Shiratori, Unji Zuma and Rin Sawaki. It explains how each student gained those abilities, how their appearance and personality changed, what the powers can do and which limitations prevent them from becoming effortless solutions to every battle.
This is not a power ranking. The four characters are presented in the same order as the original source material.
Manga spoiler warning: This article discusses major events involving Turbo Granny, Acrobatic Silky, Futa Zuma, Umbrella Boy, Mai Kawabanga and the origins of each character’s supernatural abilities.
Scope note: The article focuses on the periods in which these four students inherited or wielded yokai power. Later manga developments may change whether a particular character currently retains the same abilities.
How Humans Inherit Yokai Powers in Dandadan
Anime and manga use countless methods to transform an ordinary person into someone extraordinary.
Some protagonists receive power after entering another world. Others form a contract with a supernatural being. A few are born with an ability that everyone else can only dream of possessing.
Dandadan usually chooses the most dangerous route.
Its human characters must first survive contact with the paranormal. The resulting ability may come from a curse, an aura transfer, a guardian spirit or a family bond that continues after death.
Within the series, a person can inherit a yokai’s spiritual power when that power becomes integrated with the human’s aura. The human body then acts as the vessel, but it does not automatically become as durable as a yokai.
That distinction explains why these powers always have consequences.
- Okarun’s body suffers when he exceeds the limits of Turbo Granny’s speed.
- Aira’s form changes both her physical abilities and aspects of her personality.
- Unji’s umbrellas are powerful but severely limited in number.
- Rin’s gravity manipulation depends on uninterrupted singing and stamina.
The powers are spectacular, but none of them are free.
In Dandadan, inheriting yokai power usually means surviving the yokai first—and then learning how much strain a human body can endure.
1. Okarun: Turbo Granny’s Speed Inside a Human Body
The first character on the list is Ken Takakura, better known as Okarun.
As one of the series’ two central protagonists, Okarun begins as a quiet, physically unimposing and socially anxious student. He is earnest and enthusiastic about the occult, but he does not look like someone built to survive a direct encounter with a notorious yokai.
That encounter changes everything.
How Okarun Gained Turbo Granny’s Power
Okarun encounters Turbo Granny inside a tunnel in Shono City.
The yokai appears as an elderly woman, but her harmless-looking form hides extreme speed, aggression and a curse capable of stealing a victim’s genitals.
After the confrontation, Turbo Granny’s power is sealed inside Okarun. Seiko and Momo later extract the yokai’s consciousness, but the spiritual power remains integrated with Okarun’s aura.
Turbo Granny’s consciousness becomes trapped inside a maneki-neko doll.
That unusual separation creates the arrangement at the center of the early story. Turbo Granny wants her power returned. Momo and Okarun need her help locating Okarun’s missing kintama. Cooperation becomes necessary even though neither side fully trusts the other.
What Okarun Looks Like After Transforming
Once Okarun learns to activate Turbo Granny’s power willingly, his appearance changes dramatically.
- His hair turns white and sweeps backward.
- Red markings extend across the area around his eyes.
- A mask covers the lower half of his face and exposes large teeth.
- His physique becomes visibly stronger.
- His fingernails and toenails turn black.
The transformation makes the shy student look far more intimidating, but it also affects his mood. His speech becomes gloomy and lethargic, creating a strange contrast between overwhelming speed and an almost exhausted personality.
Okarun’s Main Yokai Abilities
Extreme Speed and Reflexes
Turbo Granny’s defining trait allows Okarun to move and respond at a level far beyond an ordinary human.
Enhanced Endurance and Bite Force
His transformed body withstands heavier impacts, while the mask gives him a powerful bite capable of becoming a close-range weapon.
Astral Projection
Okarun can separate his consciousness from his physical body and move through the world in an astral state.
Telephone-Wire Travel
By following the spiral-shaped magnetic field surrounding an electrical current, he can use Turbo Granny’s speed to travel through telephone wires.
The Limits of Okarun’s Transformation
Turbo Granny’s spiritual power may belong to a yokai, but the body using it remains human.
Okarun cannot repeatedly push his maximum output without consequences. When he forces the transformation beyond its safe limit, severe pain and physical shutdown can follow. At one point, overuse leaves him unable to move normally after the battle.
Training allows him to improve his stamina and expand what his body can tolerate, but it does not erase the cost.
Okarun’s central limitation: the power can move faster than his human body can safely sustain. Mastery therefore depends as much on conditioning and restraint as on raw speed.
2. Aira Shiratori: The Legacy of Acrobatic Silky
Aira Shiratori is one of Momo and Okarun’s most important allies in conflicts involving the paranormal.
She is beautiful, popular and fully aware of the effect she has on the students around her. Unlike the familiar manga heroine who somehow fails to notice her own popularity, Aira understands that she stands at the center of attention—and initially treats that position as proof of her special destiny.
Why Acrobatic Silky Followed Aira
Acrobatic Silky had followed Aira since childhood.
As a young girl, Aira briefly saw the spirit and mistook her for her deceased mother. That moment caused Acrobatic Silky to confuse Aira with the daughter she had lost during her human life.
The yokai’s appearance is terrifying: an emaciated face, empty dark eyes, long teeth and an unnaturally tall body capable of graceful but disturbing movement.
Her motive, however, is rooted in grief rather than simple cruelty.
She wants a daughter to love and becomes obsessed with hearing Aira call her “mother.”
How Aira Inherited Her Power
Aira possessed spiritual awareness as a child, lost it while growing older and later regained the ability to see supernatural beings.
Once Acrobatic Silky realizes Aira can see her again, she approaches and demands recognition. Aira refuses and insults the spirit. The confrontation escalates until Acrobatic Silky swallows Aira, Momo and Okarun.
The group escapes, but Aira dies.
Acrobatic Silky then makes the decision that defines both characters. She offers her remaining life force and aura to revive Aira.
As the yokai disintegrates, memories of her real daughter return. Aira finally comforts the spirit and gives her the emotional peace she had been searching for.
The transfer revives Aira and leaves Acrobatic Silky’s spiritual power inside her.
Aira’s Acrobatic Silky Transformation
When Aira activates the inherited power, her hair increases dramatically in volume and a mask resembling Acrobatic Silky’s face covers the lower portion of her own.
The transformation also influences her behavior. Aira becomes harsher, more confrontational and more willing to use vulgar language than she normally would.
Her main abilities include:
- Exceptional balance, flexibility and bodily coordination.
- Greater speed, endurance and durability.
- Powerful legs suited to acrobatic kicks.
- Prehensile hair that can extend, bind enemies and lift heavy objects.
- The ability to use her hair for movement, defense and improvised attacks.
Aira’s power is especially versatile because it combines mobility with control. She can fight at close range, restrain an enemy from a distance and use her hair to reshape the battlefield around her.
What makes Aira different: Acrobatic Silky’s power does not merely increase her physical statistics. It gives her an additional controllable limb system through her hair, making every movement part of her offense.
3. Unji Zuma: Umbrella Boy Was His Younger Brother
Unji Zuma enters the story with the presence of a hardened delinquent leader.
He has eyebrow and ear piercings, a cold expression and the authority of someone used to being followed. His group is formed from students rejected by other schools, giving him the appearance of a dangerous gang leader.
Yet Unji is not cruel or arrogant.
He is deeply compassionate and repeatedly places himself in danger to protect people weaker than himself.
The Tragedy of Futa Zuma
Umbrella Boy is different from the previous yokai because the spirit already belonged to Unji’s family.
Before becoming a yokai, he was Futa Zuma, Unji’s younger brother.
Futa treasured the rain boots and umbrella his mother had given him. He promised to carry them wherever he went.
During a rainy day, the umbrella slipped from his hand and blew away. Futa chased the precious gift toward a river, fell into the water and drowned.
His spirit later became Umbrella Boy.
Years afterward, Unji encounters the yokai near the same river while trying to save children in danger. The meeting reconnects the brothers through a supernatural power neither of them had chosen.
Unji’s Umbrella Boy Transformation
When Unji activates the power, a dark mask covers most of his face. His hair turns white, his nails become black and stripes appear over his eyes.
The transformation also affects his personality, but in a surprising direction. Unji becomes even more noble and protective toward his allies.
His physical strength and speed increase sharply, allowing him to reach people in danger and confront enemies that ordinary humans could not approach.
How the Umbrellas Work
Unji materializes two oil-paper umbrellas as weapons.
Opening an umbrella releases a devastating shockwave capable of destroying obstacles in its path. The recoil also serves as propulsion, launching Unji through the air and allowing him to cover large distances quickly.
The power is formidable, but its limitation is unusually strict.
Only two umbrellas can normally be created. Once one is opened and its blast is released, that umbrella disappears and cannot immediately be summoned again.
Unji’s tactical problem: every blast spends one of a tiny number of available attacks. He must decide whether an umbrella is more valuable as a weapon, a shield, a rescue tool or a source of propulsion.
4. Rin Sawaki: Singing With Mai Kawabanga to Control Gravity
Rin Sawaki, usually called Class Rep, looks like the most conventional student in the group.
She wears glasses, braids her hair and takes her responsibilities seriously. Rin is thoughtful, attentive and determined to behave like the dependable class representative everyone expects her to be.
Beneath that disciplined exterior is an intense fascination with vampires and a dream of writing romantic vampire fiction.
Her supernatural partner is just as different from the other yokai as Rin is from the other power users.
Who Is Mai Kawabanga?
Mai Kawabanga was Rin’s childhood friend.
Mai recognized Rin’s singing talent and dreamed that the two of them could become idols together. Their future ended when Mai died in a traffic accident.
Her spirit became an Onbusuman-type yokai bound to Rin. After being cleansed, Mai remained beside her as a guardian spirit.
In that form, Mai can appear as a tiny, almost plush-like creature. Her appearance is far less threatening than Turbo Granny, Acrobatic Silky or Umbrella Boy, but the power she provides is no less extraordinary.
Rin’s Idol Transformation and Gravity Manipulation
When Rin and Mai combine their abilities, Mai forms a flamboyant idol outfit around her.
The transformation looks completely different from the masks used by Okarun, Aira and Unji. Instead of becoming monstrous, Rin is pushed into the stage persona Mai always wanted her to embrace.
By singing, Rin can manipulate gravity within a limited field.
She can:
- Push enemies and objects away with repulsive gravity.
- Increase downward force to stop an incoming threat.
- Lift people and physical objects into the air.
- Change the direction in which gravitational force acts.
The ability depends entirely on her performance.
If an opponent silences Rin, blocks her mouth or otherwise prevents her from singing, the gravity field disappears. The field also consumes stamina and becomes harder to maintain as she grows tired.
That limitation makes the power both charming and dangerous. Rin can reshape the battlefield with her voice, but the same voice becomes an obvious target.
Why Rin’s ability fits her story: Mai turns the singing talent Rin once abandoned into the condition for using supernatural power. Combat forces her to reclaim the dream the two girls were supposed to share.
How the Four Yokai Power Users Differ
These four characters may all wield yokai power, but the abilities do not follow one universal system.
Okarun: Power Left Behind
Turbo Granny’s consciousness is separated from the spiritual power integrated with Okarun’s aura.
Aira: Power Given Through Sacrifice
Acrobatic Silky transfers her life force and aura to revive Aira, leaving her supernatural abilities as a final legacy.
Unji: Power Formed Through Family
Umbrella Boy is the spirit of Futa Zuma, making Unji’s transformation inseparable from the loss of his younger brother.
Rin: Power Shared With a Guardian Spirit
Mai remains beside Rin and actively enables the idol transformation and gravity manipulation through song.
Their limitations are equally personal.
- Okarun must protect a human body from speed it was never designed to endure.
- Aira carries the emotional and behavioral influence of Acrobatic Silky.
- Unji has only two umbrellas and must use each one carefully.
- Rin loses her entire combat advantage when she cannot sing.
That balance keeps the transformations exciting.
None of these students becomes powerful because the story simply rewards them. Every ability is connected to a frightening encounter, a death, an unresolved relationship or a responsibility that continues long after the original yokai has changed.