Sometimes, it is really hard to hop into anime, as currently, all the shows & movies being made are all manga adaptations of action Shōnen. That’s fine, but none of them are as good as One Piece, so I always hope for a fun little outlier to gain popularity. Last year saw a bunch, with shows like Delicious in Dungeon, Go! Go! Loser Ranger, and the show I want to talk about today, which is Dan da Dan. DDD is an action rom com with a fairly simple premise: a boy who believes in aliens and a girl who knows ghosts are real dare each other to prove which one is true, only to find they’re both right. With its run on Toonami just ending, a 2nd season on Netflix wrapping up, and a 3rd season confirmed to be in production, now’s a perfect time to hop back into the first season of Dan da Dan.
The easiest pros, in my opinion, is that for both sub and dub, the main characters Okarun and Momo are actually some of the most refreshing and emotionally complex voice acting performances from anime that year. The great voice direction and the excellent translation for the dub honestly made it so you can tell exactly what the characters are feeling during certain scenes; the writing of the two characters in general is perfect as well. Okarun and Momo riff off each other beautifully, making scenes of any tone a blast to watch, whether it be action scenes where they are bickering or saying goodbye, wondering if they’ll talk to each other the next day. Really great stuff.
I have been watching the dub and the actors playing the two leads are fantastic. A.J. Beckles plays Okarun, who’s known for playing Hop in the Pokémon series, Takemichi Hanagaki in Tokyo Revengers, and being Swiper in this Dora reboot series I just found out existed while writing this. Momo is played by Abby Trott who is known for playing a lot of characters, including Nezuko from Demon Slayer, Machi in Hunter X Hunter, and fun fact, she sung the main theme for Super Smash Bros: Ultimate. And these two, even with their eclectic range of roles, have the most synergy together I’ve seen in a main cast in an anime in a good minute.
The animation is fantastic. It ever felt rushed and it’s still expressive and bouncy. Since it’s a rom com, essentially everyone is doing hyper expressive, cartoonish faces that really bring a charm to the characters and life into usually dull scenes. There’s so much love and attention put into every scene, and with how expressive the characters are, they feel lifelike at points. The episode “To a Kinder World” was probably one of the best episodes of animation produced in 2024. It features a flashback as its main climax that shows how one of the Yokai became this spirit, and it’s one of the most heartbreaking scenes.
It’s so expertly crafted, that if you showed it out of context, I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought it was some random movie that flew under the radar. I literally saw in real time on social media sites this scene going around with no context and generating buzz, positive buzz at that, about how great it is. It really is so nice to see people like things in an organic way, and this episode was proof that it is possible.
The music is also great, as we have Kensuke Ushio (Chainsaw Man, and Devil May Crybaby), one of my favorite recent composers for animations doing the music for this. He is able to match the tone for each scene perfectly, whether it’s swooning background noise for a love scene or high tension for the fights. And we cannot forget that the anime opening of “Otonoke” by Creepy Nuts. That was objectively the best opening that year, potentially Hall of Fame status with how different it sounds. It’s a great blend of being a Jersey Club-type banger and with unique imagery during the animation…along with it just being a pretty good song in general.
The major gripe I have for Season 1 is that THEY ENDED IT IN THE MIDDLE OF AN ARC. The final episode of Season 1 is Okarun, Momo, and the newly introduced character Jiji going to his new house to find a spirit. Okarun is jealous and does immature fights with Jiji in contests created from insecurity while Momo takes a bath in a hot spring. One thing leads to another and Jiji and Okarun find a hidden room in the house filled with talismans while Momo’s bath is ruined by a bunch of “possessed” guys… and IT HARD CUTS THERE. It was a 3 episode setup that you had to wait almost a YEAR for it to conclude. This is honestly insane, as most anime kind of plans to end a season at the end of an arc. This left everyone, including myself, kind of jarred, since we as audiences were expecting this to end…at the end of a story it was telling, which is odd as we could have ended it at Episode 11 with Jiji’s introduction being the cliffhanger for the next season. Nope, instead we have Season 2, Episode 1 that acts like a regular episode continuing the story.
One additional minor peeve is that while the designs for the manga are amazing and the studio does an amazing job translating them, there’s some designs like Turbo Granny’s Crab Form and Nessie, where they made the characters animated in 3D. I get it, every anime does this, and these designs are hard to transfer, but why is it always lit different and moving at a different framerate than the rest of the animation EVERY TIME? It makes it seem less like a art style choice and more of a cheap time save. And it may be a me thing, but it’s not special to Dan da Dan. The past few years alone had Demon Slayer, Attack on Titan, Chainsaw Man, and Golden Kamui feature awkward 3D to save money, and it really never looks good. These choices make it go from a near perfect adaptation of a manga panel to a cheap episode of The Amazing World of Gumball.
Overall, while there’s an odd quirk here and there, Dan da Dan felt like a wave of fresh air in an action, male-dominated genre of animation. This anime brought love, hope, and kindness to the table with enjoyable characters, interesting puzzle-like fights, and wholesome vibes. In an artform where people usually just want to see cool characters aura farming instead of being interesting, this was such a wonderfully welcome choice. If you haven’t already, give Season 1 of Dan da Dan a watch. It’s a solid 8/10 and definitely worth your time amongst the sea of so much anime out there. Trust me on this one, it’s quite unique and different.
