Review of Dan Da Dan

🟠Fall 2024 Dandadan, probably the most popular anime in 2024, does it meet expectations and does it deserve all the hype it had when it was broadcast?...... In this story we actually follow two protagonists, one believes in aliens but does not believe in ghosts, the other the other way around, believes in ghosts but does not believe in aliens, both want to prove to themselves that what they believe in exists and eventually it turns out that both exist, then one of the protagonists is cursed and gets cool transformations, the plot from now on will consist of striving to remove the curse and fighting variousmonsters and in between we will get something in the style of a school romcom.

Well... The plot is quite generic, as standard we have teenagers with powers who fight monsters but here this anime does not take it all 100% seriously, the plot is deliberately fast/chaotic and although it often does not work very well, it gives a bit of a sense of freshness.

BUT...after all, we've already had demons, curses and kaiju, time for aliens and ghosts, although unlike the others, here there are two types of monsters, so what does it matter? in this and that case we just fight fancy monsters but here it's a bit more diverse and there's a hint that the main threat is aliens who come from another world and want to invade Earth (of course not all of them), and ghosts were once human and ultimately their existence in this world serves the good of humanity.

So yes, we have a typical world filled with monsters that need to be defeated, these monsters often have some cliched sad backstory but despite everything it is presented a bit differently and more interestingly, in theory there are more possibilities here and it has greater potential than other series of this type.

Back to not taking itself 100% seriously and intentional chaos...
This anime seems to be a bit of a parody of other battle shounen series that involve fighting monsters, the antagonists are mostly not portrayed seriously, the things they say and do even though they are evil/cruel are more laughable, the cool transformation of the MC (where the MC suddenly starts acting like an emo) is also comically exaggerated, thanks to which we don't roll our eyes when we see the same motif again, plus unlike other anime, this transformation doesn't make the MC OP, he still needs a second protagonist and doesn't do everything himself.

But not taking himself seriously in this anime is not always a plus, sometimes some of the tricks are really annoying, it's often the case that we get a scene where Okarun suddenly says something emotional and serious only to suddenly forcibly reverse expectations and make a loud comedy out of it, after a while it was just tiring.
However, the balance between goofy comedy and something serious was quite good.

Overall, the pace may be too fast for many, as I said this anime wants to be fast and weird but in this formula not everything has the opportunity to resonate properly, it is hard to get emotionally involved, and in general getting involved in this anime is made more difficult by the fact that it is really an anime "about nothing" the goal is to get the MC's eggs back but the plot boils down to random fights with monsters and a fairly predictable/boring romance between the protagonists (where both got along as if they were close friends from the very beginning which makes the romance a bit shallow) even though this anime has a goal, it does not seem important, things happen and you really don't know where it is all going.

Characters...
They are definitely funny and charismatic, it's really fun to watch their interactions, but there's probably a big problem with the main characters, for the first 12 episodes this anime wasted time on a lot of pointless stuff, but didn't spend enough time developing the characters.
The characters don't really have any interesting backstory, it's more about the here and now, we know why Momo and Ken believe in aliens and ghosts, which is the most important thing we need to know, but it feels neglected, we know that but it doesn't really develop the larger story of the characters, these characters just are.
We didn't even see where Ken lives or what his family is like, we mostly focus on the main couple's regular romance and we don't show their backstories in depth or their struggles with anything.

World building...
It has some cool elements but then again, this anime wastes time on pointless action that doesn't result in much but not on deepening the world, in these 12 episodes we should learn a lot more about the world, e.g. in a world full of dangerous spirits, are there no other people with powers apart from Momo's grandmother? It gives the feeling that the world is not alive and nothing apart from the main characters is important in it.

It seemed that I complain more but overall I liked this anime, it was rather time well spent even though I stopped thinking about this anime immediately after the end of the last episode and only returned to it for a moment in my thoughts just to write this review haha

The most important anime of 2024 but for me it's just "watch it and forget it"

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐❌❌❌❌❌