Dandadan Season 1 has bid us goodbye with Episode 12, and we can’t deny that we miss Okarun and Momo already. The manga series was already popular before the anime, but now, we can confidently say that it will attract new readers after they finish watching the adaptation on Netflix.
The story made the series worth giving a shot, but the way Science SARU animated the show surely contributed heavily to the first season’s success. Dandadan Season 1 is over, and the second season has already been greenlit. This means there are many more chapters left to adapt, so if you want to know where you can start reading the Dandadan manga after Season 1, let’s talk about it here.
Dandadan season 1 Review
It’s hard to summarize the quality of a show like Dandadan in any way that it didn’t already articulate within the first few minutes of its bombastic, charming, and well-paced premiere. Of all 2024’s delights in the realm of anime, few shows were as anticipated as this new-age shōnen brimming with attitude and heartfelt romance, and to the surprise of no one, it was a blast.
Animated by Science Saru and directed by Fuga Yamashiro, Dandadan is the story of a boy who believes in aliens but not ghosts and a girl who believes in ghosts but not aliens. When they dare each other to go to paranormal hotspots, they realize to their dismay that they’re both right and find themselves the targets of entities beyond even their weirdest beliefs.
Soon, the boy’s penis is stolen by a ghost and the girl’s psychic powers are inadvertently awoken by pervy aliens, prompting the two to join forces to fight back and save the former’s freshly-nicked knob. It’s an absurd premise, but one far too inspired and interesting to be dismissed, and that’s only the lure. The hook lies a bit deeper.
The Controversy Behind Dandadan’s Season 1
Image Credit: Science SARU (X/@animeDANDADANen)
The controversy surrounding Dandadan’s season 1 finale stems from the final scene with Momo. In the finale, Momo decided to relax at a hot spring after she, Okarun, and Jiji failed to locate the spirit haunting Jiji’s house, and all of a sudden, a group of adult men known as the Kito family entered the hot spring, as well. The men looked and acted very creepily toward Momo from the moment they appeared, and sure enough, Dandadan season 1 ended on an uncomfortable cliffhanger of the Kito family trying to rape Momo.
Ending on a cliffhanger with that sort of subject matter is bad enough, but the specific way it was formatted makes it even worse. Not only does it drag the moment out more than the manga did, but it ended like that with season 2 not premiering until July 2025, meaning Dandadan ended with Momo about to be raped knowing that it wouldn’t resolve anything for over half a year with season 2. The scene is one thing, but to many people, that aspect makes it even worse, and it’s drawn in an incredible amount of criticism because of it.
Dandadan’s Most Controversial Element
The controversy surrounding Dandadan’s sexual content is plenty warranted, but at the same time, it does miss an important detail. Dandadan, like many shonen anime, is at least partly a coming-of-age story centered around the ups and downs people go through as they grow up, and a common part of that is the confusing and often terrible sexual experiences people go through when they’re young. As such, Dandadan’s constant use of aggressive sexual content works because it ties into the coming-of-age elements of the story, giving it far more depth than regular fanservice.
Dandadan’s fanservice works even better with how it’s contrasted with Momo and Okarun’s relationship. As early as the first episode, whenever Momo has a bad sexual experience, Okarun is always there to bring Momo back to a state of normalcy and remind her and the audience that things are better than they seem, so Dandadan’s aggressive sexual content also works because it highlights how people sometimes have to struggle with relationships before finding a good one like Momo and Okarun’s. There’s an argument to be had that it still goes too far with it, but even that doesn’t change why it works so well.
Understanding Dandadan’s Greatest Strength
Image Credit: Science SARU (X/@animeDANDADANen)
At first glance, this is the kind of story characterized by its chaos and that is a byproduct of how unabashedly weird this story is. It is a love letter to the supernatural and – in equal parts – the fascination and skepticism inherent to such topics. Visually, the animation and artwork labor to present these oddities as boldly as possible, a task few studios are better suited toward than Science Saru. Were that all, however, Dandadan’s charms would have worn thin quickly.
The secret to this story’s success is its command of pacing and tone, and it’s barely a secret at all. Ask the creative staff behind the anime, as we did, and they’ll stress it as one of the most crucial ingredients to adapting the machinations of author Yukinobu Tatsu. Dandadan is hectic and bombastic, but it must also be quiet, to let the feelings of its characters linger and to turn a script that is silly into one that is also frequently relatable and occasionally very real.
Is there ‘DanDaDan’ Season 2?
Despite its immense popularity, animation studio Science Saru is yet to announce if DanDaDan is coming back for more episodes. The numbers suggest that the show’s renewal is a no-brainer, but there might be other elements that come into play that we are not aware of. We do know that DanDanDan’s animation style is pretty ambitious, and that translates to a high cost of production, as well as an extended production length. So, even if the show gets picked up for another season, we could be waiting a while for those new episodes to come.
There is still a lot for the DanDaDan anime to explore, though. The manga is currently in chapter 177, and Season 1 corresponds to about 30 chapters from the story created by Yukinobu Tatsu. This means that the show can keep going, and fans will certainly show up for more.
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