The Fall 2024 Anime Preview Guide

DAN DA DAN

Ken "Okarun" Takakura, an occult maniac who doesn't believe in ghosts, and Momo Ayase, a girl who doesn't believe in aliens, try to overcome their differences when they encounter the paranormal.

DAN DA DAN is based on the manga by Yukinobu Tatsu. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll and Netflix on Thursdays.

As far as the quality of the animation goes, this episode makes me have trouble believing that any other show this season will top DAN DA DAN. It's exactly what I'd expect to see out of Science SARU at its best. It's fast, fluid, and wildly imaginative. No complaints.

On top of this, the story is no slouch, either. We have a pair of opposites—the outgoing, popular gyaru and the supernatural-obsessed otaku. Yet, they share a commonality. They each have an interest they are embarrassed by—a belief in aliens and ghosts, respectively. Moreover, each of these has a deeper connection to their true wants. Ken wants to believe in alien life because that means he just might be capable of making friends with them since he can't seem to be with other humans. For Momo, her belief in ghosts is tied to her love for her grandmother, a traditional shaman—and if ghosts are real, her grandmother isn't a fraud.

It also helps that both characters are inherently kind at their cores. As angry as Momo is in the early parts of the episode after being dumped, she channels that anger into protecting Ken from bullying. Later, when she accidentally directs it at him, she apologizes and does her best to atone—even as they continue to clash. Once the two find themselves caught up in a supernatural phenomenon, both become focused on helping the other—protecting each other to survive the clash of ghosts and aliens.

So if the first episode is so good, why not a full 5 out of 5? All the sexual assault stuff—be it the old woman yokai aiming for the balls of young boys or the aliens stripping, restraining, and trying to impregnate teenage girls. I get that this is all for comedy—and it doesn't ruin the show for me or anything—but it is a bit much. Regardless, I don't see a future where I don't watch this anime all the way to the end.

In the interest of full disclosure, I first saw this episode in a movie theater. While I don't think I would rate it any lower under different circumstances, seeing this incredible work of animation on the big screen absolutely enhanced the experience. Director Fūga Yamashiro may be relatively untested, but (as I found out in the pre-screening interviews with the staff) he's made a lifelong study of film techniques and shot composition. He's applied them here to great effect while also taking advantage of the unique properties of animation, using his knowledge of the medium to replicate the feeling of the manga rather than trying to recreate it panel-for-panel.

This is not to say that this is a style-over-substance situation at all. The story features Momo Ayase, a violent gal who believes in ghosts and whose celebrity crush is the rugged actor Ken Takakura; and Okarun, a nerd who has been bullied his entire life and wants nothing more than an alien encounter. When the two, following an argument, make a bet over whose beliefs are real, they get more than they bargained for when it turns out it's all real. The connection between the two feels wonderfully authentic as they, in turn, offer one another support and then bicker about their disagreements. It's always a pleasure to hear from the ever-reliable Natsuki Hanae, who plays Okarun, but Shion Wakayama is also fantastic as Momo. She plays her with a tough-girl growl, shifting between confidence and vulnerability on a dime. I could not adore Momo more, and when my husband remarked that she reminded him of me, I felt honored.

The episode does come with heavy-duty content warnings. Okarun is at the receiving end of some pretty nasty bullying, as his classmates plan to add a heavy-duty magnet to the projectiles aimed at him. Furthermore, without spoiling what exactly happens, Momo is threatened with sexual assault in the episode's climactic scene. It's treated with the gravity it deserves rather than for audience titillation, but it's also violent and violating enough to carry the potential of triggering people who can't handle seeing such depictions. However, if you can stomach the scene, I've been assured that it's a nonissue from that point on, despite some pretty bawdy comedy.

When they screened DAN DA DAN in the theater, they showed the first three episodes. It was great, but now I'm a little sad that I have to wait so long to get to new material. Trust me, you won't be disappointed.

Are you sensitive to sudden bright lights or flashing images? Do you have a difficult time with shows where ninety percent of the dialogue is spoken in a scream? Then I urge caution with DAN DA DAN because it has both of those things, and that made it challenging to watch. Don't get me wrong, the animation is gorgeous, and a lot of care and thought clearly went into each and every visual decision (I'm less sure about the audio choices), but it also came perilously close to giving me a migraine. And that has nothing to do with the screeched dialogue, which made my skin crawl as I kept turning the volume down.

The other warning this episode comes with is for sexual assault – two of them, three, depending on your definition. Both involve series heroine Ayase, and both are more or less played for laughs. The first is when her now-ex-boyfriend refuses to take no for an answer, for which she gives him a much-deserved kick in a sensitive area; it's not particularly drawn out. The second is much more upsetting. It comes after Ayase has been kidnapped by aliens known as Serpoians, who are intent on using her to reinstitute sexual reproduction among their people.

Although they oh-so-thoughtfully attempt to induce arousal through psychic methods, the fact is that they've got a high school girl stripped down and tied to a chair, legs splayed, and they're going to rape her with their robo-penises. (Which look sharp and pointy, like the worst speculums ever.) There's a real sense of danger to the scene, and Ayase's struggles are equally real; it's not until she manages to activate her own psychic powers that she escapes, and the sight of her desperately trying to pull her legs together while tied to a chair is horrible. The third and final (for this episode) instance is that her companion in all of this, Ken, has his “weenie” stolen by a yokai known as Turbo Granny. Again, it's played for laughs, but your mileage may vary.

Obviously, I did not enjoy this episode, mirroring the way I felt about the first volume of the manga. If the animation had not been so good and the episode had not been so well-designed (flashing lights notwithstanding), I would have rated it lower. The basic idea is interesting, with a boy who believes in aliens but not ghosts and a girl who believes in ghosts but not aliens, learning that they're both right and wrong and that aliens and ghosts all absolutely exist. Their team-up stands to make them a crackerjack supernatural duo, presumably staving off invasions and exorcising ghosts. But the hurdles are too high for me to clear, and I'm done with this series.

Oh, readers, how tempted I was just to use that picture of the “Sickos” guy going, “YES…HA HA HA…YES!” for my entire review. There was never any point where I doubted Science SARU's ability to bring one of my favorite modern manga to life with their signature aplomb, and my faith has been duly rewarded. The premiere of DAN DA DAN was everything I could have asked for, and I cannot wait to devour every last second of this upcoming season.

For those of you who aren't in the know, DAN DA DAN is a manga that was handcrafted for me, specifically, and I know this because it mixes rom-com tropes with horror and science-fiction trappings like if Edgar Wright was an incredibly talented Japanese artist with a penchant for 1970s crime dramas and battle-shonen tropes. It's got a feisty female protagonist who can roundhouse kick a douchebag punk or a molesty alien in the face with her latent psychic powers, even as she pines for a chance at her dream romance (aka an exact clone of screen legend Ken Takakura, circa 1984). It's got an adorably nerdy co-lead whose name is literally Ken Takakura, except, instead of being a suave model of mid-20th-century Japanese masculinity, he's a dweeb that obsesses over the alien abduction tales and conspiracy theories that fill the pages of his trashy tabloids. You might think these two couldn't be more diametrically opposed, but that's where the rom-com goodness comes in! Not only is his name literally Ken Takakura, but our boy is also the kind of chivalrous hero who would never leave his new (and first and only) friend to be forcibly inseminated by freakish invaders from beyond the stars, even after his body has been stolen by the necrotic, penis-devouring tunnel spirit known as Turbo Granny.

That right there, folks? That's real love, and I can only hope that each and every one of you reading this can discover something you love as much as Ken Takakura loves protecting his new best friend or as much as Turbo Granny loves hunting down men and greedily slurping up their severed genitals. That's the kind of adoration that the artists at Science SARU clearly have for their craft, as they fill every frame of DAN DA DAN's premiere with the kind of obsessive, borderline psychotic devotion to the expansive possibilities of the art form that would make even Turbo Granny herself blush. If you like things that are Fun and Entertaining and Good (and also Completely Deranged), then you owe it to yourself to bask in the glory of DAN DA DAN this fall. It is bound to be one of the season's standout hits.