Dandadan

Reeling from her recent breakup, Momo Ayase, a popular high schooler, shows kindness to her socially awkward schoolmate, Ken Takakura, by standing up to his bullies. Ken misunderstands her intentions, believing he has made a new friend who shares his obsession with aliens and UFOs. However, Momo's own eccentric occult beliefs lie in the supernatural realm; she thinks aliens do not exist. A rivalry quickly brews as each becomes determined to prove the other wrong.

Despite their initial clash over their opposing beliefs, Momo and Ken form an unexpected but intimate friendship, a bond forged in a series of supernatural battles and bizarre encounters with urban legends and paranormal entities. As both develop unique superhuman abilities, they learn to supplement each other's weaknesses, leading them to wonder if their newfound partnership may be about more than just survival.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Ayase, Momo Main

Wakayama, Shion Japanese

Takakura, Ken Main

Hanae, Natsuki Japanese

Shiratori, Aira Supporting

Sakura, Ayane Japanese

Ayase, Seiko Supporting

Mizuki, Nana Japanese

Turbo Granny Supporting

Tanaka, Mayumi Japanese

Enjouji, Jin Supporting

Ishikawa, Kaito Japanese

Mr. Mantis Shrimp Supporting

Seki, Tomokazu Japanese

Rokuro Supporting

Nakai, Kazuya Japanese

Chiquitita Supporting

Oozora, Naomi Japanese

Acrobatic Silky Supporting

Inoue, Kikuko Japanese

Iwakami, Atsuhiro Producer

Kamei, Hiroshi Producer

Aoi, Hiroyuki Producer

Ishikawa, Tatsuya Producer

Reviews

Dec 7, 2024

penchoco

Recommended

Preliminary (10/12 eps)

I waited a whole year for this anime to release and they come out with ONLY 12 episodes!!!!!!

Anyways, this anime is hilarious. The story follows a boy who believes in the aliens, but not ghosts. And a girl who believes in ghost, but not aliens. And they become friends through a series of events that they become involved in. And apparently both ghost and aliens exist in this word. 🤷🏻‍♀️✨

The art is amazing and so is the animation. I would highly recommend picking up the manga because this artist is soooo good. I was blown away by the art at NY Comic con last year ... and since then I have been following it.

I started watching this anime, knowing that there are a lot of sexualized situations so I wasn’t taken aback watching that in the anime. But I totally understand if some people are thrown off by it. Even when I went to buy the manga, the shopkeeper was like, “are you sure you wanna buy this?” And I was like, “Yeah I’m buying it for the art and the story is great.”

So if you watch this anime and can appreciate how absurd and hilarious it is, with great storytelling and endearing characters, you will really enjoy it. It’s like a fun version of Jujutsu Kaisen, with no stress and no one dying (well not in the present). There is no other anime like this one out there. Definitely give it a try else you’re missing out. 😉

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Dec 11, 2024

MrSlamboni

Mixed Feelings

Preliminary (10/12 eps)

Massive disappointment. The first three episodes were great even though they had their faults. After that, it just kept getting worse. The concept was cool. Momo and Ken get into an argument on whether ghosts or aliens are real. After daring each other to go to certain places, they discover that both of them exist and are chased by them.

The animation is great. It's very fluid and the colors just pop out. Ken is the only nerdy character archetype which I didn't find completely annoying. I found it funny how he sometimes acts pathetic and then just throws an out of pocket insult. Momo and ... Ken had very good chemistry as friends and it was funny seeing them cooperate. Sometimes the humor was too vulgar to be funny, but I was willing to forgive that.

Where did it all go wrong?

Shounen writers are allergic to having friends of the opposite sex. So they shoehorn a romance plot literally around 2 days after these characters meet. It makes completely no sense. For starters, they are of completely different social standing. It makes sense for them to be friends, but not lovers. Second, Their interactions are way cooler and funnier as friends. That great chemistry is sacrificed just so we can have moments where they awkwardly twiddle their thumbs and look away. Third, it's too soon to start teasing a romance subplot. Momo and Ken just met 2 days ago for fucks sake.

After that, they immediately add another love interest for Ken because why not. Every braindead shounen these days has a love triangle so go for it. Then they add a romantic interest for Momo so we can go further have a love square. Keep in mind that Ken in this universe has as much charisma as a flea, but now has 2 girls fighting over him.

Dandadan sacrificed everything good about it just so it can chase after stupid tropes, turning it from a genuinely enjoyable show into the average shounen slop.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Dec 8, 2024

Flowering

Not Recommended

Preliminary (3/12 eps)

My rating system for media can be loosely articulated as being defined by three categories:

Ambition

Does the work strive to mean something beyond itself? How did the author think of the project during its inception?

Execution

How well were the ideas executed on?

... Enjoyment

Overlap with the first two. This also accounts for factors that may have been missed, such as story, which is often independent of self-conception/ambition (its a byproduct).

For Dandadan:

Ambition: 1

This was a pathetic project from its inception as a manga. It tried its best to cover up its identity as a cookie-cutter, mass-produced shounen by stealing devices from Chainsaw Man, but the end result were techniques that unanimously fell short of the mark. It was a lifting of scenes with no understanding of intent, like a rando repeating lines of philosophy in a foreign language without knowing the meaning of the words they say, and while trying to come off as a professor. Absurd.

Instead of challenging shounen tropes, as Chainsaw Man does, Dandadan further perpetuates those same tropes, one of those being that shounen is a category with almost no artistic merit, where the artists are either unintelligent, or such incels as to be fulfilled with shallow escapism. Dandadan makes for a good case-study of the difference between art and entertainment. It is the `Circus’ in `bread and circus,` but allows their shallow audience to delude themselves into thinking that they are not at the circus, but at school, by attempting to verbatim mimic dialogue from Chainsaw Man. Instead of contributing to that dialogue, it has become just another example of the shortcomings and the shame inherent in shounen, an example of how the genre, while increasing popularity, ultimately is a disservice to anime and to society itself by its enablement of our baser habits.

The animation saves this from being a zero. Science Saru does take risks; it’s their MO. But I have to assume that their taking using Dandadan as source material without diverging meaningfully to have been driven by commercial interests. Their folly was in thinking that artistic merit could save an adaptation that is faithful to garbage. Dandadan itself is just so disgusting as to have the animation's artistic merits (which are not negligible) barely raise this score.

Execution: 4


The animation is higher quality than normal shounens. There was originality. It wasn’t as stylistically unique as Masaaki works, but it still had merit. Im not going to go into details because:

1) I’m not going to hate watch a series that I do not like for the sake of writing a review.

2) The animation wasn’t incredible to the point of deserving a watch purely for itself.

Enjoyment: 1

This is not a zero because my reptile brain derives some dopamine from junk food/drugs. This category is rated in regards to amount of dopamine I think that my brain produced while consuming the media. My disgust with the misleading dialogue surrounding this anime overwhelmed any meaningful enjoyment that I could have derived from the show. The fact that people deluded themselves into thinking that this had merit—that it had a chance at transcending the genre it was operating in—leads to depressive thoughts about the animation community and its relation to the rest of society. The depression and disgust overwhelmed the amount of dopamine that would normally have been derived from a show like this.



This was a shallow, quick review written on my phone. I wrote this because I’m interested in the community’s relationship with this show rather than the show itself, and I wanted to make my thoughts on this subject public. At the end of the day, the show is just another unremarkable shounen, an even more forgettable JJK. The more interesting discussion is just how brain dead this community is, as evidenced by their reception of this show (if the community’s vapidity isn’t made clear to you by just reading the positive reviews for this show, then I do not know what to tell you).

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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	What was she about to say? kingsley_017 - Dec 11	20 replies	by DylP1ckl3n »» 3 minutes ago
	Poll: Dandadan Episode 7 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Softhenic03 - Nov 14	1,213 replies	by bangpumpam »» 2 hours ago
	Poll: Dandadan Episode 10 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) IzanaSolos - Dec 5	174 replies	by Radical_Orion »» 9 hours ago
	Poll: Dandadan Episode 5 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Softhenic03 - Oct 31	287 replies	by fabiandewa19 »» 9 hours ago
	Poll: Dandadan Episode 6 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ) Stark700 - Nov 7	217 replies	by traed »» Yesterday, 11:59 PM