Review of Dan Da Dan

Like Hell's Paradise, Dandadan gets a lot of attention amongst recent shonens because both authors were former assistants to Chainsaw Man's Tatsuki Fujimoto and there are some mildly novel touches: HP has an unusual setting and, yeah, that's probably about it; meanwhile, Dandadan, well, uh... is basically a battle shonen that takes the standard otaku-pandering incel romance you'd find in school-based romcoms and pushes it into becoming the ultimate piss-take snub of self-insert pandermancy and cuck romance shippers that has increasingly become the norm in anime. There's a lot of humor, and almost all the punchlines hit below the belt, which probably won't go wellfor those who aren't too keen on lowbrow jokes centering around, in this case, dick jokes—"Give me your banana" (please don't). The whole series is simply one humongous dick joke (likely a petite one, if we're talking about the MC and his 5 cm kintamas that just dropped), and there probably isn't any other kind of media that sorely needed this passionate kick to the nuts more. The series effectively plays a savage South Park-styled game of Roshambo with self-inserters, as Dandadan's motto when it comes to our MC is "Give us your balls, your dick, we'll make you a eunuch." If you're not "too mature" for a few dick jokes, it can be amusing, but other attempts at humor aren't as smoothly integrated, such as milking the "I finally noticed she's cute" trope.

What might appear at first to be a mere acknowledgement of the average anime functioning as a feel-good waifubait simulator for unwashed otakus who skitter about in the shadows, where a 10/10 moeblob who is way out of his league will throw herself upon him without any effort, for she has seen his true inner beauty and manages to look past surface details like BO, and he'll sweep her off her feet, whispering arcane lore into her ear about the intricate plot developments of the final arc of LotGH, becomes a surprisingly hilarious mockup of these kind of series. Instead of just making jokes about being neutered or spayed or presenting a pathetic low-t dweeb with his balls in the usual vice-grip, the series literally emasculates him by having almost the entire plot revolve around a high-speed chase to recover his stolen family jewels, with his dutiful gyaru love interest checking every nook and cranny, searching high and low, to recover his missing balls! In a way, it almost resembles a demented sexual misadventure version of Dragon Balls, with various characters vying for control of the protagonist's balls, which grant them power! One episode is even titled "Like, Where Are Your Balls?" The thing about a lot of shonen is that that's often one of my burning questions about the protagonist, but Dandadan does its own ball count, allowing one to save valuable mental energy.

While not especially deep and just as accessible as most shonen, Dandadan at least foregoes one of the mistakes of its mature™ seasonal peer, Orb: My God Heliocentrism, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?, a series so inept as to pose the question "DUUUUHHH, what be subtext?" and then proceeds to turn all of its subtext into straight-up dialogue and double down on making sure the audience doesn't miss a single thing. Dandadan doesn't feel the need to shamelessly go balls deep down that scandalous hole (kind of hard when they're missing), even if it's waving its influences right in our face in the same way an exhibitionist might flash his private parts. To get the balls rolling, there is blatant influence from the Egyptian Osiris myth (which also influenced Dionysus and various other repackaged gods and syncretized religions). The MC can be seen as Osiris and the FMC as Isis. Seth kills and dismembers Osiris, splitting his body into 14 pieces (in reference to the Orion constellation), leading to what could be referred to as the Mystery of the Missing Phallus (sometimes Mystery of the Missing Balls in the case of Dandadan, though the Phallus gets misplaced often as well). Each piece of Osiris has a partial amount of power, much as a few characters in Dandadan unlock dormant powers by fondling one of the MC's golden balls. Isis tracks down all the pieces of Osiris, except for the phallus, which was eaten by either a fish or crab, depending on which version of the story you read, with Turbo Granny being associated with a crab. Isis reconstructs the body, and there are different accounts of what happens: She usually uses her powers to craft him a new penis, fashions a foreign object into one, or even constructs a literal lady boner out of her own flesh and grafts it onto Osiris. Soon after, they give birth to Horus. Since she's a dickball stealer, Turbo Granny could loosely be seen as a Seth-like character, and there is even a part in the legend where Horus and Seth race each other on boats, much like how she challenges tunnel trespassers to a race; though she does have a more interesting dynamic with the main characters in this story, starting as an enemy, becoming a comic relief mascot, and maybe even something like a friend, though always scheming, not unlike Ekubo/Dimple from Mob Psycho 100. There's also, of course, the fixation on occultism and the sky (aliens), with the ancients being deeply invested in the sky and many of their practices now falling under what we call the occult. Anyway, this lengthy digression is meant to showcase that the author put a surprising amount of effort into presenting his NTR fetish.

Admittedly, some of the cuck pandering can become hardcore, even cringe-inducing. At first, it doesn't seem all that heavy because after the alien-obsessed MC and the ghost/supernatural-believing FMC send each other off on a dare, the series plays out like a balls to the wall boss rush for several episodes, as the characters try to harness their powers and are attacked by one enemy after another. But once we finally have some downtime, like in episode 5, the MC goes back to his pity party lines, hoping his mommy—I mean, waifu—will save him. When the MC transforms he'll do some kind of clownish self-deprecating rap, but then he'll be moping at school and dropping lines like, "Is it so embarrassing to be friends with me? WAAAAAAH!" There's also an over-reliance on downer internal monologues around this time, and during the oddly synchronized yin-yangish bit between the couple, she'll be thinking stuff like, "Ungh, I'm so bored. I wish Okarun would teach me all about aliens, especially the anal probing part. *____*" Feels ridiculously pandering and almost out of tune with the blue balls pit that the show tends to dive headfirst into otherwise. That aspect of the series feels better motivated or smoother in earlier episodes. Of course, once we realize his balls are missing, his pathetic behavior kind of seems justified. You have to wonder if the author planned it a bit where the MC is subtly more or less pathetic depending on those circumstances. Probably not, but using his balls as a plot device allows material that would be far more embarrassing in other anime to roll far more smoothly here. It's also worth noting that the MC is not a total doormat and will insult the FMC when she insults him, instead of just taking abuse, like too many MCs for me to name.

Thankfully, Crappa, the most hardcore corner-cutters in the industry, having churned out Chainsaw Man, Jujutsu Kaisen, Hell's Paradise, and many other extremely popular shonen in the last few years, didn't get their grimy hands on this series. I had read up to about episode 2-3 in the Dandadan manga back when it had first surged in popularity, and, while it seemed alright, there wasn't anything about it that kept me reading it over whatever else. Science SARU, handling the series instead, is a company that tends to have impressive animation or a distinct aesthetic but has put out a lot of mediocre or questionable titles and has been disconcertingly cozy with Netflix. One of their biggest manga adaptations a while back, Devilman: Crybaby, was a travesty for quite a few fans of Go Nagai's work or the earlier OVAs and probably not to the liking of those who were more interested in SARU for artsier titles either, like Inu-Ou. But SARU were actually a great choice for adapting Dan, appearing to be faithful where it counts, and featuring far more lively animation than we can usually hope to get from most seasons, with the first episode being quite inventive and even "trippy," and the chase with the crab having a frenetic energy, as they run around and swing across buildings, struggling to survive. There are some disappointing stills that are occasionally used and expected dips in quality from time to time, but how polished it generally is is an indicator that SARU might actually be able to pull off the dream of adapting decent commercial work with their own unique style to generate revenue, while creating more artistic and experimental work along the way, as seemed to be the intention back when Masaaki Yuasa founded the company. This is an adaptation that mostly elevates the material, though there is a dubious ghettoization habit on display, which SARU has likely developed from being so close to Netflix (see the oddly placed rap in Japan Stinks 2020 and Devilman: Crybaby), rendering the audio component less than satisfactory.