DAN DA DAN Season 2 ‒ Episode 19

There are three sequences in “Feeling Kinda Sorrowful” that exemplify all the pieces that makes Science SARU‘s adaptation of DAN DA DAN so consistently pleasing, even after we’re still in the center of a series of “downtime” episodes love the previous few were. The first is the montage of Momo’s first day at work following her screamingly embarrassing bump into with Okarun and the Gyaru Parus. Being an eminently relatable teenager, Momo is of course too mortified to indicate Okarun one thing else as an alternative of to please shuffle home and stop no longer wait plenty of hours for her shift to wrap up so he can dawdle her home, though she clearly in actuality wants Okarun to wait plenty of hours for her shift to wrap up so he can dawdle her home. The twin poles of Crippling Embarrassment and All-Difficult Lovey-Doveyness are, as frequently, the riding forces on the back of Ninety 9% of adolescent disaster.

So, we swap views from Okarun to Momo and explore as our girl slowly but completely conquers her first day as a restaurant maid, with the plenty of shots of moe hand-hearts and completely poured teas being intercut with Momo anxiously eying the clock on the wall. Which implies that of DAN DA DAN has so deftly laid the groundwork of our hero’s motivations and personalities, we in the present day realize that Momo is proper as anxious to search out out if Okarun shall be waiting for her outside of the cafe as she is merely completed with this agonizing embarrassment. When she at final steps out into the night, she pauses, looks to the real, and then looks to the left. Seeing nothing, she mutters, “I bid I’m going to shuffle home…”, which is strictly when Okarun arrives. It be no longer exactly a subtle story beat, since completely nothing about achingly earnest teenage romance could per chance ever be described as “subtle”, but it completely is a masterfully executed gash of intimacy, which is what in actuality counts, right here. DAN DA DAN‘s genius is that it could perhaps well work proper as completely if it had been a easy romantic coming-of-age story with none of the golden testicles, alien probes, defective huge worms, or subterranean demise cults. This scene correct right here is proof of that.

The 2nd sequence that shows off DAN DA DAN‘s talents has nothing to forestall with our teenaged protagonists the least bit; at least, circuitously. After Aira’s idiotic going by of her boba tea results in a single other shut to-demise ride with the Execrable Investigate cross-check, Seiko and Manjiro absorb a grown-up debriefing in regards to the downside. Manjiro understandably thinks that letting Execrable Investigate cross-check are dwelling inside of Jiji is proper asking for grief, to which Seiko bitterly muses about how the “fantasy” of Jiji’s would prefer to defend his parasitic spirit is a burden that adults have to endure to look for by. Which it is doubtless you’ll well presumably most incessantly blame Manjiro for shooting back that an adult’s exact job is to opt up kids love Jiji to face actuality, even when it feels no longer doable to manage with, but that does no longer devalue Seiko’s put, both. I love Seiko as DAN DA DAN‘s requisite mentor opt on story of she occupies the “aloof and humorously eccentric grasp of exposition and coaching” feature while still feeling love an awfully exact human being (her absurd, fascinating character rep however). There is now not any longer one character in DAN DA DAN that has been solid apart as a mere plan instrument, thus some distance, and I love the display for that.

In a roundabout way, I in actuality love Turbo Granny’s impromptu college damage-in/coaching session for Okarun and Aira, on story of it be the put DAN DA DAN embraces its struggle manga instincts in a reach that works in actuality wisely with my sensibilities, in explicit. I absorb made no secret of how worrying I absorb stumbled on the needlessly complicated and but by some means concurrently underwritten energy systems of shows love Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen, and I am almost frequently bored when these shows terminate the action in its tracks to monologue about random nonsense that does no longer meaningfully make a contribution to my working out of the story the least bit. I are inclined to favor extra chaotic, emotionally fueled setups love what we opt up in Chainsaw Man, though I judge DAN DA DAN strikes a appropriate balance between the 2 extremes. Turbo Granny explains how Okarun’s problems are no longer connected to a deficiency in shuffle or raw strength, but rather in how his circulation and combating ways square up towards opponents love the Execrable Investigate cross-check, and the display uses its assemble and its high-tier editing for instance the level so as that it makes superb sense. Okarun can’t proper punch and kick his reach to the following stage of energy; he needs to rethink how he choreographs the bursts of violent dance that are DAN DA DAN‘s action scenes.

It be all proper such pleasing stuff, and the lunatic transition to a unexpected struggle with the exasperated ghosts of a bunch of wisely-known Classical composers is the icing on the cake. Clearly, all of this careful plotting used to be constructing up to Aira and Okarun going by the ghostly wrath of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Schubert, and Leonard Bernstein. Have not you all been being attentive?

Ranking:

DAN DA DAN Season 2 is for the time being streaming on
Crunchyroll and Netflix.

James is a creator with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-custom, which is able to even be stumbled on on BlueSky, his weblog, and his podcast.