DAN DA DAN Season 2

Episode 19

There are three sequences in “Feeling Kinda Gloomy” that exemplify everything that makes Science SARU's adaptation of DAN DA DAN so consistently excellent, even when we're still in the middle of a series of “downtime” episodes like the past few have been. The first is the montage of Momo's first day at work following her screamingly embarrassing encounter with Okarun and the Gyaru Parus. Being an eminently relatable teenager, Momo is of course too mortified to tell Okarun anything other than to please go home and do not wait several hours for her shift to wrap up so he can walk her home, even though she obviously really wants Okarun to wait several hours for her shift to wrap up so he can walk her home. The twin poles of Crippling Embarrassment and All-Consuming Lovey-Doveyness are, as always, the driving forces behind 99% of adolescent anguish.

So, we switch perspectives from Okarun to Momo and watch as our girl slowly but surely conquers her first day as a cafe maid, with the many shots of moe hand-hearts and perfectly poured teas being intercut with Momo anxiously eying the clock on the wall. Because DAN DA DAN has so deftly laid the groundwork of our hero's motivations and personalities, we instantly understand that Momo is just as anxious to find out if Okarun will be waiting for her outside of the cafe as she is simply done with this agonizing embarrassment. When she finally steps out into the night, she pauses, looks to the right, and then looks to the left. Seeing nothing, she mutters, “I guess I'll go home…”, which is exactly when Okarun arrives. It's not exactly a subtle story beat, since absolutely nothing about achingly earnest teenage romance could ever be described as “subtle”, but it is a masterfully executed slice of intimacy, which is what really counts, here. DAN DA DAN's genius is that it would work just as perfectly if it were a straightforward romantic coming-of-age story without any of the golden testicles, alien probes, evil giant worms, or subterranean death cults. This scene right here is proof of that.

The second sequence that shows off DAN DA DAN's skills has nothing to do with our teenaged protagonists at all; at least, not directly. After Aira's idiotic handling of her boba tea leads to another near-death experience with the Evil Eye, Seiko and Manjiro have a grown-up debriefing about the situation. Manjiro understandably thinks that letting Evil Eye live inside Jiji is just asking for trouble, to which Seiko bitterly muses about how the “fantasy” of Jiji's wish to protect his parasitic spirit is a burden that adults must bear to see through. You can hardly blame Manjiro for shooting back that an adult's real job is to get kids like Jiji to face reality, even when it feels impossible to handle, but that doesn't devalue Seiko's position, either. I love Seiko as DAN DA DAN's requisite mentor figure because she occupies the “aloof and humorously eccentric master of exposition and training” role while still feeling like a very real human being (her absurd, sexy character design notwithstanding). There isn't one character in DAN DA DAN that has been cast aside as a mere plot device, so far, and I love the show for that.

Finally, I really love Turbo Granny's impromptu school break-in/training session for Okarun and Aira, because it's where DAN DA DAN embraces its battle manga instincts in a way that works really well with my sensibilities, in particular. I have made no secret of how frustrating I have found the needlessly complex and yet somehow simultaneously underwritten power systems of shows like Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen, and I am almost always bored when those shows stop the action in its tracks to monologue about random nonsense that doesn't meaningfully contribute to my understanding of the story at all. I tend to favor more chaotic, emotionally fueled setups like what we get in Chainsaw Man, though I think DAN DA DAN strikes a good balance between the two extremes. Turbo Granny explains how Okarun's problems are not related to a deficiency in speed or raw strength, but rather in how his movement and fighting techniques square up against opponents like the Evil Eye, and the show uses its score and its top-tier editing to illustrate the point so that it makes perfect sense. Okarun can't just punch and kick his way to the next level of power; he needs to rethink how he choreographs the bursts of violent dance that are DAN DA DAN's action scenes.

It's all just such wonderful stuff, and the lunatic transition to a sudden battle with the angry ghosts of a bunch of famous Classical composers is the icing on the cake. Obviously, all of this careful plotting was building up to Aira and Okarun facing the ghostly wrath of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Schubert, and Leonard Bernstein. Haven't you all been paying attention?

Rating:

DAN DA DAN Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Netflix.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.