Review of Dan Da Dan
Rent-a-girlfriend but directed by Diddy As a manhwa/manhua reader there is something obvious about Japanese authors and their obsession with minors. I wish I'd speaking about particular cases, but in this scenario the decent ones are the exception. Dandadan just follows this norm: make middle school characters and portray them like adults, having the same amount of sex jokes and harassment scenes as Nanatsu no Taizai. All this hype and good animation spent on something that would fit the tastes of the author of Samurai X. But whatever, if you pretend this is just for comedy and ignore what makes 40% of the plot, Dandadan Schneider isstill a terrible anime, poorly written and just an overestimated copy paste of teenage romance cliche, worthy of being in kpop wattpad stories or Brazilian and Mexican telenovelas.
I read somewhere that Dandadan "is an original story that breaks tropes" and I don't know which anime those people were watching, because it's not this one. I've watched a lot of romcom anime in the past and I'm comfortable to say that the only thing that makes this one better is the animation. In fact, as for "breaking the romcom genre" aspect, that is a trashy seasonal 12-episodes anime called Gamers that does this well for a few episodes, making a hilarious and unpredictable story about miscommunication and fake love triangles.
Dandadan is nothing but predictable, from the beginning to the end. Two girls fight for an absolute loser of a guy they just met, there are scenes worthy of telenovelas like accidental kisses, being caught in a misunderstanding situation, jealousy, female and male rivalry, people who barely know them shipping, and that's the plot. Some will pretend this is an action story for whatever reason, but all the plot revolves around this cliche romance. Even the villains will be brought in for this reason, or for more sexual harassment scenes.
Not giving this a 1 because of the good animation and some enjoyable scenes that made me laugh. There was also a good side story for one episode, but good side stories don't matter that much if the main plot is garbage.