In the blink of an eye, Dan Da Dan‘s second season wrapped up with the same unpredictable swagger that made its anime series debut impossible to ignore. Studio Science Saru didn’t just keep the pace—it doubled down on its creative bravado. If season one proved the studio could conjure anime magic from one of Shonen Jump’s most eccentric ongoing manga series, season two confirmed it’s not merely riding the wave of the manga-to-anime pipeline—it’s reshaping the tide.
Now that the second season’s complete, Science Saru’s trajectory feels truly limitless because it, against all odds, captured lightning twice.
That such high praise surrounds a show whose inciting incident involves a teenager losing his testicles to a yokai—launching a Dragon Ball-style quest through aliens and demons—might sound ludicrous, because it is. Yet, in an era where creators often default to cynical and snappy dialogue that dulls the surreal, Dan Da Dan could’ve easily become another hollow exercise in self-aware spectacle in lesser hands.
Science Saru resists that impulse, grounding its chaos in emotional authenticity—allowing scenes to breathe, characters to respond with genuine feeling, and refusing to deflate tension with throwaway jokes. The result is a show that doesn’t just revel in spectacle but earns it.
Picking up from season one’s cliffhanger finale, season two follows Momo Ayase (Abby Trott) and Ken “Okarun” Takakura (AJ Beckles), whose magnetic romcom dynamic anchors the show’s madness as they stumble through one bizarre battle after another. Rather than leaning on a repetitive quest narrative, the show continues to infuse its wacky premise with heartfelt storytelling and jaw-dropping visuals, making it anime’s two-peat talk of the town.
This season saw a creative collaboration between director Fuga Yamashiro and Abel Gongora, the visionary behind the season one opening theme, whose alternating episodes formed a cohesive symphony of emotional weight and visual flair. Even with its offbeat tone, the series manages to find space to deepen its heroes as well as its villains, giving them emotional texture that lingers beyond their euphoric defeat—a hallmark of Dan Da Dan that remained intact in its second outing.
Trying to define Dan Da Dan is like trying to grasp smoke. Each week, it slips through genre boundaries with gleeful irreverence, refusing to settle when it can have it all. At its core, the show is a bursting grab bag of pop culture riffs and reverent nods to cryptids and cinematic icons. It fuses sci-fi lunacy with yokai mysticism in a way that’s both nostalgic and strikingly novel. Embedded in its DNA is the kinetic energy of kung fu cinema, with battles that stretch and explode in ways only animation can deliver.
In a time when audiences scrutinize their screens for signs of AI quietly siphoning the soul of art, Dan Da Dan wears its humanity on its sleeve. Conversely, Dan Da Dan has evolved into more than just a show, transforming into a weekly phenomenon that proudly showcases its work.
Its artists gleefully share mind-bending storyboards from its ensuing episodes, and its social media presence cleverly spoofs tabloid conspiracy magazine covers to tease the next X-Files-flavored escapade of its superpowered anime Scooby-Doo ensemble.
Beneath its psychic slugfests, space kaiju invasions, and shamanic showdowns lies the show’s emotional core: a refreshingly grounded romance amid the chaos. Within the same breath of the lovey-dovey romance between its leads and their ensuing love rectangle with their newer, equally goofy and depthful arrivals, Jiji Enjoji (Aleks Le) and Aira Shiratori (Lisa Reimold), the show routinely highlights how, even in a world this unhinged, emotional truth is the spoke that keeps its wheels turning.
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