Dandadan arrived in Fall 2024 and immediately split anime fans into two camps: people who were confused by the first episode, and people who could not stop talking about it. After watching both seasons I am firmly in the second group. This is one of the most entertaining, creative, and emotionally honest anime to come out in years, and it deserves more attention than it sometimes gets outside of dedicated anime circles.
The premise sounds like it should not work. High school student Momo Ayase believes in ghosts but not aliens. Her classmate Ken Takakura believes in aliens but not ghosts. They make a bet. Both encounter the thing they refused to believe in during the same afternoon. From that moment the show never slows down.
The Core Dynamic
Everything in Dandadan is built around Momo and Okarun as a duo. They are both outcasts in different ways — Momo is the straightforward, confident girl who gets involved in fights she did not start, Okarun is the awkward, earnest nerd who has never really had a friend. The show is interested in what happens when two weird people find each other, and it handles that with more genuine warmth than you might expect from something that also features alien robots and malevolent spirits.
The romantic tension between them is real and the show is honest about it without making it the entire point. Most episodes are not primarily about the romance. They are about supernatural threats, strange mysteries, and the growing found family around Momo and Okarun. The romantic element is flavoring, present throughout, developed slowly and naturally.
Momo is a genuinely excellent female lead. She is not the love interest who gets captured so the male protagonist can save her. She is powerful, brave, and has her own set of abilities separate from Okarun's. When she fights, she is competent. When she is scared, the fear makes sense. She is defined by her own personality rather than by her relationship to the person next to her.
The Supernatural and the Comedy
Dandadan operates in a specific tonal space that is harder to maintain than it looks. Horror comedy is a genre that usually collapses in one direction — either the scary elements stop being scary because the comedy undermines them, or the comedy stops being funny because the horror is too intense. Dandadan navigates this better than almost any anime I can think of.
The first real villain, Turbo Granny, is introduced with genuine dread. There is a sequence early in the show where she is chasing characters through a dark building that is effectively terrifying before it becomes funny. The show earns its comedy by making you feel the stakes first. That pattern repeats throughout both seasons. You care about what happens to these characters, so even the absurd situations feel meaningful.
The supernatural enemies in Dandadan are among the most creatively designed in recent anime. The show draws from Japanese folklore, urban legends, and apparently pure invention to create entities that are weird, disturbing, and often grotesque in ways that are also somehow hilarious. There is a specific creativity at work here that separates Dandadan from shows that just reuse familiar demon or spirit designs.
Animation Quality
Science SARU produced Dandadan and the result is one of the best-looking anime of the past several years. Every action sequence is treated as an opportunity to show something you have not seen before. The fighting style is fluid and kinetic in a way that rewards pausing on specific frames — there is genuine craft in every action scene, not just technical competence.
The color design is distinctive. Dandadan uses saturated purples, acid greens, and hot pinks in combinations that most anime would never attempt. The visual identity of the show is immediately recognizable after just a few minutes of footage. Science SARU previously worked on Devilman Crybaby and Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, and Dandadan belongs comfortably alongside those productions in terms of visual ambition.
Season 2
Season 2 aired in 2025 and builds on everything Season 1 established. The supernatural threats get stranger. The main cast expands in ways that work. The emotional stakes of the story become clearer as the season goes on, and the ending sets up what should be a compelling third season. It is, in my opinion, at least as good as the first season and arguably better in its final stretch.
Content Warnings
Dandadan contains some ecchi humor, particularly in the early episodes. The anime tones down what the manga does in this area but it is still present. The violence is stylized and not particularly graphic. There are horror elements that could be disturbing for younger viewers. Think of the overall package as a hard PG-13 — appropriate for older teens and adults, probably not for children.
Who Should Watch Dandadan
If you watched Jujutsu Kaisen for the animation quality and supernatural energy but wanted something with more humor and better romantic chemistry between the leads, Dandadan is exactly that. If you like anime that commits fully to a specific weird vision rather than trying to appeal to everyone, this is the show for you.
The first episode is intentionally disorienting. The show does not explain itself immediately. If you make it through the first three episodes you will understand what it is doing and you will be invested.
