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.
And Dan Da Dan doesn’t just gesture at depth—it commits to it, letting its cast react with genuine emotion, refusing to undercut sincerity with ironic detachment or tension-breaking quips. The result is a narrative that moves forward not just through spectacle, but through its conjoined, emotionally resonant connection to it.
This season delivered a powerful blend of storytelling that included a captivating villain backstory underscored by a raucous power-metal exorcism, a shojo-inspired romantic reverie that many shonen anime can’t come close to matching, and hilarious culinary absurdities that redefined anime food gags. Additionally, it showcased a steady stream of slapstick brilliance as a diverse cast of eccentric teens confronted both spiritual and extraterrestrial threats with unconventional cleverness and heartfelt determination.
Throughout the season, both the English and Japanese dubs offered distinct tonal experiences, each capturing the show’s madness and charm in its own unique way, making it worthwhile to revisit from both perspectives.
In lesser hands, Dan Da Dan could’ve easily spun its wheels as an aimless romp, its unserious premise paling in comparison to the existential stakes and moral crusades of its contemporaries’ heroic calls to action. Instead, Science Saru crafts a world where sci-fi conspiracies and yokai folklore crash-land in the middle of a refreshingly earnest romance, resulting in a show that never feels like it’s coasting but effortlessly soars above its genre peers while maintaining the whimsy that makes it such a delightful anime.
With every episode, Science Saru proved that creative ambition and emotional realism aren’t mutually exclusive, even in a world teeming with yokai, aliens, and hormonal teenage chaos. Dan Da Dan doesn’t just adapt its source material—it detonates it, remixing familiar tropes into something unmistakably its own. And thankfully, fans won’t have to sit on their hands waiting for a season three announcement for weeks because, in record time, Science Saru wasted no time following up its season finale to tease that it is in production.
DAN DA DAN Season 3 is CONFIRMED!
Thank you to all the fans for your support, and we hope you look forward to what’s in store. Stay tuned for #DANDADAN Season 3! ✨ pic.twitter.com/waCLb6e3C2
— DAN DA DAN Anime EN (@animeDANDADANen) September 18, 2025
All that said, Dan Da Dan season two isn’t just an anime standout of last year or this year—it’s a genre-defying masterclass in what anime can be when artists are trusted to go full throttle.
All episodes of Dan Da Dan season two are streaming on Netflix, Hulu, and Crunchyroll.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
Read the full article here
