Review of Dan Da Dan

Rating this anime is very hard. Some episodes were amazing; but it can't hold a mood for more than 5 minutes. If perhaps it tied things together a bit more and actually respected the themes it tries to introduce instead of just cutting it off and straight up not exploring the theme more for the rest of the anime, maybe I'd be more accepting of it. For all I know, they might try in future episodes if there's a second season, but it really feels like the focus is on laughs and holding interest by constantly throwing words about genitalia into the mix. It's got areally cute school romance. The characters are relatively believable and the emotions they're going through is relatable enough to a first romance; I've found myself rooting for the characters. They're all a little annoying at times, and their growth feels a bit slow, but the change over time is there.

However, I can't really put aside that there's some very dubious consent themes throughout, which definitely turned me off initially and it re-appears a few times. I stopped after the first episode because of it (the worst of it) and eventually decided to come back since the ratings were generally pretty good. Usually I'm pretty open, and they somewhat try to get away with it being aliens and demons and that they don't really seem to "win", but still... it's a major issue for me with this anime. I know they use it as a plot device a lot of the time, but could probably be done in a different maybe more conscious way to similar results.