DAN DA DAN Season 1 Review | The Wildest Anime of 2024 (And Why You Should Watch It)

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"That's lame." — One throwaway line from an awkward teenage boy, and it stuck in my head for days.

Aliens, ghosts, Turbo Granny, and — yes — stolen testicles. On paper, DAN DA DAN sounds like it shouldn't work. The ingredients are absurd, contradictory, and borderline juvenile. But here's the thing: Science SARU's animation turns this chaos into art. While most modern anime wins you over with beautiful still frames, DAN DA DAN takes the opposite approach. This is a show that only works in motion. If you've ever felt that anime has become too polished, too "screenshot-friendly," too safe — this is the antidote. And if you've never watched anime at all, but you love the kinetic energy of an Edgar Wright film or the tonal whiplash of Everything Everywhere All at Once, this might be the one that converts you.

🎬 Trailer

📌 The Elevator Pitch

📖 What's It About? (Spoiler-Free)

Momo Ayase is a high school girl from a long line of spirit mediums. Ken Takakura — nicknamed Okarun — is a lonely occult nerd in her class. She believes in ghosts but not aliens. He believes in aliens but not ghosts. To settle the argument, they split up: Momo visits a UFO hotspot, Okarun heads to a haunted tunnel.

Both of them turn out to be right. Momo is abducted by actual aliens. Okarun is cursed by an actual ghost — the terrifying Turbo Granny, a yokai based on a Japanese urban legend about a spirit who chases cars at impossible speed. In the chaos that follows, Okarun loses something precious: his, well, "Golden Balls." The rest of Season 1 is a race to get them back — a premise so ridiculous it loops right back around to being brilliant. Along the way, the show delivers spectacular action, genuine scares, surprisingly deep emotional beats, and one of the most endearing romances in recent anime.

✨ Why DAN DA DAN Deserves Your Time

Animation That Lives and Breathes

I first watched DAN DA DAN during a weekend binge in late 2024, expecting background noise. By the end of Episode 1, I had put my phone down and was leaning into my screen.

The current wave of hit anime — Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, Oshi no Ko — tends to win audiences over with lavish, screenshot-worthy stills. Beautiful paintings that happen to move. DAN DA DAN does the opposite. Its power is in the motion itself. Freeze any frame and you might think the art is rough. But press play and the screen explodes with a fluidity that most anime studios don't even attempt.

Science SARU was founded by Masaaki Yuasa, the legendary animator behind Ping Pong: The Animation and Mind Game — two works that redefined what animation could do. That DNA courses through every fight scene in DAN DA DAN. Director Fuga Yamashiro, a protégé from the Yuasa school, takes the baton and sprints. The Acrobatic Silky battle in Episodes 5-7 is a masterclass in editing rhythm, where the camera doesn't just follow the action — it is the action. If you've ever watched an Edgar Wright sequence — the pub crawl fight in The World's End, the bass battle in Scott Pilgrim — and thought, "I want more of that energy," this is your anime.

(For the record, Kensuke Ushio's score deserves its own paragraph. The man behind Devilman Crybaby and A Silent Voice brings electronic textures that feel like they're vibrating inside your chest. Track after track refuses to be background music.)

A Crash Course in Japanese Pop Culture

Even if you've never heard of tokusatsu — the genre of live-action special effects shows that includes Ultraman, Godzilla, and Kamen Rider — DAN DA DAN serves as a surprisingly fun introduction. The opening sequence is packed with visual nods to Ultra Q and Ultraman, right down to Momo's earring mirroring Ultraman's iconic eye shape. It's a show that celebrates Japan's monster-and-ghost storytelling tradition while blasting it into the 21st century.

Turbo Granny, the show's first major villain, is based on an actual Japanese urban legend about a ghostly old woman who chases vehicles at terrifying speed. Acrobatic Silky draws from haunted-doll folklore. The Serpo aliens reference a real conspiracy theory. For viewers outside Japan, this is a gateway into a rich subcultural world — and the show handles it with enough context that you never feel lost, just curious.

Episode 7: The One That Breaks You

Here's where I have to be honest. For the first six episodes, I was having fun but keeping my distance. The show was entertaining, technically impressive, occasionally juvenile. I was enjoying it the way you enjoy a great roller coaster — thrilling but disposable.

Then Episode 7 happened.

The Acrobatic Silky arc reaches its conclusion, and the show peels back the ghost's backstory to reveal something devastating. Without spoiling the details: a spirit that seemed like a simple monster turns out to carry a deeply human grief. The resolution, where she finds peace in "a kinder world," hit me in a way I didn't expect. I wasn't ready. The show had lulled me with fart jokes and alien invasions, and then it ripped the floor out from under me. IMDb users rated this episode 9.8 out of 10 — the highest of any episode, by a wide margin. It deserves every decimal point.

The day after watching it, I found myself thinking about the people in my life I'd taken for granted. That's not something I expected from a show about stolen testicles.

🎭 Scenes That Stay With You

"That's lame."

Okarun's signature line — a Ken Takakura tribute that doubles as a teenage boy's entire emotional vocabulary. He says it when he's scared. He says it when he's heartbroken. He says it when the world is ending. It's funny, then sad, then funny again. Watch the show and try not to adopt it as your own catchphrase.

And then there's the moment Momo and Okarun start using each other's names. Not their surnames — their nicknames. "Okarun." "Momo." In Japanese culture, switching from a family name to a first name (or nickname) is a significant step in a relationship. The show knows this and milks every ounce of awkwardness from it. Two kids who can fight interdimensional monsters but can't handle eye contact with each other. It's adorable, and it's real.

💭 How You'll Feel After Watching

The dominant emotion after finishing Season 1 is withdrawal. Twelve episodes, no filler, pedal-to-the-floor pacing — and then it just stops. The final episode ends mid-arc, mid-journey, mid-conversation. "Wait, that's it?!" is the universal reaction across every review forum I've seen. It's the kind of cliffhanger that makes you immediately reach for the manga or start counting the days until Season 2 (which has already aired) and Season 3 (confirmed for 2027).

You can continue the ride right now — Season 2 is streaming on Crunchyroll and Netflix.

😅 Where It Falls Short

Style Over Substance (Sometimes)

This is where I have to pump the brakes a bit. Each episode delivers spectacle, but when you zoom out and look at the season as a whole, there's not much connective tissue. The Turbo Granny arc, the Acrobatic Silky arc, the Serpo arc — they're great individually, but they feel more like a highlight reel than a novel. If you're the kind of viewer who needs a grand overarching plot to stay invested, DAN DA DAN might frustrate you.

There's also the energy problem. The show operates at a constant 11 out of 10. Characters are always shouting, always running, always fighting. It's thrilling for three episodes. By episode nine, some viewers will need a breather that never comes. And then there's the ending — or rather, the lack of one. Episode 12 dumps you in the middle of a new arc, mid-sentence, as if the show forgot it was supposed to stop. I understand the business logic (read the manga!), but it left a sour taste.

🎬 If You Loved DAN DA DAN, Watch These Next

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

Studio TRIGGER's Netflix original shares DAN DA DAN's commitment to animation that refuses to sit still. Set in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe, it delivers the same cocktail of insane action, devastating emotion, and a doomed romance that hits harder than it has any right to. If DAN DA DAN's tonal whiplash hooked you, Edgerunners will finish the job.

Read our Cyberpunk: Edgerunners review

Mind Game

This is the origin story. Masaaki Yuasa's 2004 debut feature is the creative wellspring from which Science SARU — and by extension, DAN DA DAN — flows. Mind Game is a 103-minute celebration of being alive, told through every animation style imaginable. It's chaotic, vulgar, psychedelic, and profoundly moving. If you liked DAN DA DAN's energy, this film will show you where it all started.

Read our Mind Game review

Ping Pong: The Animation

Another Masaaki Yuasa masterpiece, and the purest proof that animation style is substance. Through the simple sport of table tennis, Ping Pong delivers one of the most emotionally rich coming-of-age stories in any medium. The unconventional art style might take an episode to adjust to — but once you do, you'll realize it's not "rough," it's alive. The same philosophy that powers DAN DA DAN's best moments was perfected here first.

Read our Ping Pong: The Animation review

📺 Where to Watch DAN DA DAN Season 1

📊 Streaming Comparison

Service	Availability	Dub	Region
Crunchyroll	Streaming	Sub & Dub	Global (excl. Asia)
Netflix	Streaming	Sub & Dub	Global
Hulu	Streaming	Sub & Dub	US only

📝 Final Verdict

DAN DA DAN is not a perfect show. Its narrative is more fireworks display than novel, and its pacing occasionally mistakes volume for depth. I wrote all of that above, and I stand by it.

But here's what I keep coming back to: it reminded me why animation exists. Not as a delivery system for beautiful stills, not as a cheaper alternative to live-action, but as a medium that can do things no other medium can. The way a body moves through space in a Science SARU production, the way a fight scene can transition from comedy to horror to heartbreak in the span of thirty seconds, the way Kensuke Ushio's score makes you feel like the bass is inside your ribcage — that's animation fulfilling its promise.

I watched the finale on a Tuesday night and immediately started Season 2. The next morning, I caught myself humming "Otonoke" by Creepy Nuts on the way to work. That's not a critical analysis. That's just what this show does to you.

⭐ Rating Breakdown

Category	Rating
Animation & Visuals	★★★★★
Story & Narrative	★★★☆☆
Characters	★★★★☆
Music & Sound	★★★★★
Pacing	★★★★☆