Anime Review: Dan Da Dan

Dan Da Dan wasn’t originally on my watch list but after I heard some rumblings about it, I decided to check it out. After I watched the first episode, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it but I decided to carry on and see if the show had anything redeeming about it outside of off-the-wall humor. After watching twelve episodes, I have my answer.

Let’s Jam!

The Story

Ken is a boy who loves the occult, namely aliens. Momo is a girl who loves spirits. One day, Ken is being bullied and Momo notices it. She steps in to stop it and Ken gets the wrong idea and chases after her. After a rather raucous conversation, they challenge one another. Momo is to go to a place where UFOs are normally seen while Ken is to go to a well-known haunted location since neither of them believes in each other’s love of the occult and wants to prove that aliens and spirits exist, respectively.

Momo learns aliens do exist as they want to mate with her and then steal her banana organ (yes, you read that right.) Ken then learns spirits exist as one named Turbo Granny wants to eat his weenie (yes, you read that right as well.) Turbo Granny ends up possessing Ken who then uses his newfound power to track down and rescue Momo who awakens psychic powers of her own. Once the aliens are dealt with, they learn that Turbo Granny stole Ken’s weenie and so they want to track her down and get it back. Once they defeat Turbo Granny, Ken gets his weenie back but not his balls… turns out Turbo Granny dropped them!

Now sealed inside a cat doll and powerless, Turbo Granny agrees to help Ken and Momo track down Ken’s missing testicles which have turned into little golden orbs.

The Characters

Momo Ayase

Momo is a rambunctious girl who definitely has a tomboyish edge to her. Despite being quite popular, she has an affinity for spirits but doesn’t like to admit it because she used to be made fun of for it. Her grandmother is a spirit medium and she used to teach her how to ward off spirits by making an L with her fingers and placing it against her forehead. Once you get to know the grandmother, you question the legitimacy of this technique. Be that as it may, Momo learns to accept all things spiritual when Ken rescues her and her powers awaken. She can extend spiritual hands from her body and use them to interact with things and people both living and departed.

Despite everything, you can tell that Ken starts to grow on her. At first, she didn’t think much of him but the more she hung out with him, the more her feelings began to grow and he became rather precious to her. Of course, she can’t admit her feelings but she is often wondering and worrying about him. This shows a nicer, softer side to Momo and ensures that her character isn’t just bouncing off the walls and yelling at the top of her lungs every five seconds. It also prevents her from being a one-dimensional character and when you mix everything together, you quickly begin to understand why the internet has elected her Best Girl of 2024 (although, like each anime season, I’m sure this is just a passing phase.)

Ken “Okarun” Takakura

I’ve been calling him Ken this whole time but if you watch the show, Momo calls him Okarun. How did he get that name? Well, Momo had a crush on a TV celebrity named Ken Takamura and when she finds out that he shares the same name as him, she can’t stand seeing some wimpy dweeb have the name of a hot celebrity so she opts to give him the new name of Okarun. When Ken accepts the name without much of a fight, you begin to wonder if he’s spineless, and, to a point, he is.

So, you’re thinking… uh oh… another spineless wimpy MC, right? Well… yes and no because when he becomes possessed with Turbo Granny’s powers, he has the ability to transform, and his personality completely changes. He speaks with lethargy in his voice, and thinks everything is a pain in the rear, but also charges head-first into danger without a second thought and just becomes this hyper-cool guy. Over time, you get to see some of that personality ever so slightly seep into Ken’s and it leads him to want to try and better himself to impress Momo… not from some macho standpoint but from a usefulness standpoint. It makes him realize that he needs to become a man that Momo can rely on without his powers because he loves her, cares about her, and wants to protect her properly. When you, the viewer, realize this, it’s so easy to see why Momo started to fall in love with him.

Aira Shiratori

Aira is a stuck-up snobby girl at school who acts so cute and innocent when she’s around others but is just an egotistical jerk. She toys with Ken’s feelings and when Momo finds out, she uses her psychic powers to drop a wash tub on her head! What Momo doesn’t know is that Aira thinks that she is the chosen one to purify the world of monsters and she suspects that Momo is one of them. When she goes out to investigate a monster, she makes a shocking discovery and it transforms her from one of the most hated characters in Dan Da Dan to one of the most loved. There’s no way you can feel sorry for her once you see her backstory and you might even shed a tear or two.

Once the feelings and emotions are over, Aira transforms into a comedic character who has an unhealthy obsession with Ken, thus becoming a love rival for Momo. The difference is that Aira isn’t shy about letting her feelings known. Luckily, Ken doesn’t sway his heart in her direction otherwise, Momo would be SoL with how hard she pours it on sometimes. Aira, like Ken, also gains the ability to transform thanks to how her introductory story ended which makes her an enemy/ally of Momo and Ken’s. I say she’s both because while she does help them out from time to time, she also declares Momo as an enemy and feels that she is one of the demons she is meant to defeat as the chosen one who will save the Earth. Yeah… she has a few screws loose in a fun way!

Jin “Jiji” Enjouji

Jiji is introduced in the second-to-last episode. He is a childhood friend of Momo’s and her first crush. He came to Momo’s grandmother for help because his house is possessed by a spirit and both of his parents ended up in the hospital because of it. Plus, out of the five spirit mediums he hired to cleanse the house, three committed suicide! So, it’s up to Momo’s grandmother to save the day…. By sending Momo to do the exorcism!

Jiji is… well… an idiot. He’s WAY too flashy, always trying to impress the girls, and uses some of the cheapest, dumbest, and childish pick-up lines. It’s like his body grew up but his mind got stuck on being five. I kind of find him annoying but I think that’s the point. He still loves Momo so now he’s become a love rival for Ken which causes the two of them to develop and love/hate friendship. It also doesn’t help that Jiji is also into the occult and thinks Ken is cool because of it.

Turbo Granny

Aside from being a ruthless location-bound spirit, we learn that she has a bit of a soft side. She is also a protector of lost spirits who wander aimlessly. She cares about seeing them being taken care of while stuck in a purgatory-like state and wishes to see them move on and be in peace. Outside of that touching side to her, she’s batcrap crazy… especially since she wanted to eat Ken’s weenie and have him grope her boobs. She gets the Turbo nickname from the fact that within her domain, there is no spirit faster than she is. Once she’s defeated, she just turns into a cranky old woman stuck inside of a cat but she does, at the very least, agree to help get back what she took from Ken so there is some decency within her.

Seiko Ayase

Finally, we have Seiko, Momo’s grandmother who doesn’t look a day over 25. Yeah… we have one of THOSE grandmothers. She’s a sarcastic, gives-no-f’s woman who commands respect but doesn’t give any back. She’s also a powerful and famous local spirit medium but she’s limited by the fact that she can only use her powers within the city. Outside of the city’s limits, she’s completely useless. Outside of performing exorcisms, she likes to lounge around the house, drink, and, watch television.

Art, Animation, and Sound

Science SARU really outdid themselves with Dan Da Dan. The art style is rather unique despite the fact that the characters are pretty plainly designed with a few unique features but it’s unique enough to keep them grounded in reality while subjecting them to a supernatural world. Under normal circumstances, everything looks like a typical setting you would find in a slice-of-life show; however, whenever they encounter a spirit, their usage of different color pallets matches the mood of whatever danger they find themselves trapped in.

Whether it’s a creepy hospital room filled with aliens who want to harvest banana organs, underwater serpents who can swallow water and covert into a powerful laser beam, or having to outrun a massive crab monster through the city, the scenes become filled with different hues to make you realize that the world just changed for both the viewer and the characters. It drives home the danger they are in and creates a situation with tremendous gravity. From there, the characters’ personalities finish out the scene by balancing drama and humor.

Then, if the environments weren’t impressive enough, the animation during the fight scenes was a thing of beauty. While I wouldn’t place it completely into the sakuga category, the use of speed, action shots, camera angles, and music all combined to create thrilling and heart-stopping fights. The best part was that while the fights were amazing, other aspects of the show felt so good that the fights felt on an equal plane to everything else the show had going for it.

As for the soundtrack… who else skipped the opening? Not a single hand raised? Good! That’s the correct answer. Creepy Nuts returns and delivers, yet, another banger of an opening track, and Science SARU went HAM creating the matching visuals to go along with the song. Easily one of, if not THE best opening of 2024… and there have been a lot of good openings this year.

The OST is pretty good as well and the music plays into every scene and enhances it perfectly. Sometimes, the usage of silence in moments of suspense is masterfully used, too. All around, just a great atmosphere

Overall Thoughts

Dan Da Dan was excellent from beginning to end but I can understand if some people didn’t make it past the first episode. That first episode was one of those types that either made you want to keep watching or made you drop it in an instant but it was the perfect showcase of the type of humor and situations that you could expect from the rest of the show; however, what the first episode didn’t prepare you for was the heart-warming relationship that blossomed between Momo and Ken. While it’s not The Dangers in My Heart levels of amazing, it was amazing enough to get the reader to stop caring about aliens, spirits, missing testicles, and banana organs and care about whether or not Momo and Ken will end up together.

That’s one of the things I loved about this anime. Even though it’s a show that doesn’t take itself seriously, it also does by giving weight and importance to all the different facets that it presents. Whether it’s the dangerous world of combating spirits, the need to defeat Turbo Granny, the character development and backstories, the love between Momo and Ken, searching for Ken’s testicles, helping Jiji cleanse his house, the rivalry between Aira and Momo, and everything else is all given equal attention and it makes you care about every situation.

Not one aspect of this show stands head and shoulders above another. Everything is on an equal plane and everything feels important as a whole. That’s very tough to do and Dan Da Dan made balancing all the aspects of what makes a show great look easy and effortless.

Whether you need a laugh, want some great action, see a cute romance, or just be weirded out, Dan Da Dan gives you all of that in one neatly wrapped package. Will it win Anime of the Year? It just might considering that it’s a great show airing late in the year and will be fresher in people’s minds come February versus anything else that aired earlier in 2024… but whether or not it does, I think we can all agree, that this was a great show that should be on everyone’s watch list.

And to think we’re getting a second season in July 2025… because that ending wasn’t really an ending. It was just “On the next episode…” except the next episode is seven months from now. Oof.

Access to view this anime was provided by Crunchyroll.
Watch Dan Da Dan on Crunchyroll here: https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GG5H5XQ0D/dan-da-dan