Review of Dan Da Dan

A teenage frenzy of absurdity, filled to the brim with vibes of lovely and horny. The characters may not break the stereotypes, but don't remain cardboard cutouts either: the shy nerd turns out to be not as spineless from the get-go, the cheeky gal is genuinely kind—and genuinely willing to kick her enemy's ass. Both of them go wild the instant adrenalin hits, matters ghostly and alien intertwine into a bizarre cocktail, everything (& everyone) goes insaneo style, and the hyperactive troupe gradually grows in numbers—not just with teenagers, but lively grandmas, too. I so want to shake the hand of whoever picked the wizardsof Science SARU to adapt this unbridled story—the drive of their animation is so explosive it makes you feel like it will fly out from the screen in a moment, very so in the spirit of the manga.

And yet, behind the acid cover of a pubertal trash lies teenage romance, gentle and awkward. The relationship is approached rather atypically, in a sense that the almighty static high school harem does not occur. A silent love triangle seems to be forming by a later part of the season, but it quickly gets destroyed by hormonal warfare, which is fresh and quite bold for mainstream anime. The Japanese media critically needs a living contact between boys and girls, and I want to believe the Land of Rising Sun will keep embracing unfiltered teenage cringe instead of running away into the demographic pit.

It doesn't even need to be as extreme as in this anime. This one hits the gas to the max, with absurd layered upon absurd, but it's the core of the story that matters—a truly teenage story cannot escape the teenage cringe. As for Dandadan? It rushes right towards the cringe, rushes with speed of a cheetah and imagination of a middle schooler—and, upon crashing into it, slows down and lets their protagonists' relationship blossom. Slowly and genuinely. And then gets rushing again, with acceleration of morbillion jokes about balls per second squared.