January 14, 2025

A pretty fun watch

This review contains light spoilers.

Story review: On the surface it isn't quite that different from other shounen. However, Dandadan puts quite a unique spin on it all. The absurd humor with the ridiculous situations the main characters find themselves in makes the show feel quite fresh. Like that the main driving force of the plot is for Okarun to find back his balls, absolute gold. Along with that, the series doesn't fall into certain cliche's shounen typically have, for example having a weak female lead that needs to be saved and lacks in development. That brings me to the characters, the characters (in personality) are great. Their interactions especially, they are always fun to watch and that brings a lot of charm to the show. The animation and opening are superb too. Those things make it very easy to get through.

That being said, as a standalone season it doesn't hold up as much (it's still good though). The season ends at an abrupt point and has no finale to it and the characters don't really develop that much throughout the 12 episodes. It doesn't feel like the story has really progressed yet from it's first fight scene. Sure the situation and humor might be different each scenario, but the rest is pretty much the same. Find enemy or enemy finds them, defeat enemy and repeat. I get that's the formula of the show and it works well, but it doesn't really expand from its basic formula (yet?). It seems that the second season is planned to be more like a second cour of the first season, which in that case it's totally understandable that this first season is incomplete, however I don't get why both seasons are not just being marketed as being 2 parts of 1 season. I'm sure that when the second season drops those issues will go away.

Difficulty: The start was especially difficult for me. The characters talk fast and it's often hard to make out what they're saying when they're mumbling, angry or they're just an alien with a weird voice vilter on. The ost is pretty loud too, which doesn't make it easier. There were also a bunch of words I'd never heard before. That being said the second half gets a lot easier, along with getting more used to the voices, the dialogue is more simplistic. Additionally the female lead Ayakashi uses うち instead of other pronouns, I didn't even know it could be used as such, was pretty confusing at first lol. I did watch it without subs though, so for those who do use subtitles I'm sure stuff like intonation, speed and such won't be a problem as much.

Gradings:6
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easier than呪術廻戦 S1L31
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similar in difficulty toとらドラ! S1L25
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on January 14, 2025