It seems there’s a bit of a debate going on in critical circles about the state of Dandadan Season 2. What nobody is disputing is that this was originally planned as two consecutive cours, so the six-month break was an unscheduled one. What I don’t think one can reasonably deny is that the first season ended awkwardly as a result – not even really with a proper “FU” cliffhanger, but just in the middle of something. And that something happened to be a bit squicky, what with Momo’s situation with the crocodiles.
But what of the production itself? Well, I guess I’m something of an agnostic on that. I don’t see the disaster some are seeing, but there were a lot of moments this week that felt under-animated and awkward to me. Science Saru has a bad reputation in terms of scheduling and working conditions – and that’s in an industry that’s so draconian that you really have to be awful to stand out. Dandadan has turned into a blockbuster, with all the baggage that carries – and that spells danger. Overall the production side is still working for me, because I like the direction and most of the stylistic choices. But if there really are big problems under the hood, they’ll likely only get worse as the season progresses. Something to watch.
This week kicked off what’s actually one of the best and most important stretches in the manga. The story goes very dark, as this series does from time to time. The Mongolian death worm is the obvious MacGuffin of the piece, but it’s transparently more a sidebar than the main event. This is a story of human cruelty, make no mistake. That doesn’t mean the MDW isn’t a major problem, swallowing sacrifices for all those centuries and holding a village in its sway. And now it’s sending out psychic waves (thank goodness Turbo Granny is along to provide commentary) which promptly cause Okarun and Momo to try and kill themselves. Jiji, for some reason, seems to be immune.
“Some reason” is in fact the Evil Eye (Tamura Mutsumi). It was pretty important that the anime get this backstory right, and I think they mostly did. Suicide has often been a third rail in anime (understandably), though it seems to be all over this season so far. I was a little afraid the adaptation would try and soft-pedal these chapters, though frankly it would have been a disaster if it had. Evil Eye’s entire arc is built around the theme, and then you have the MDW and its psychic waves on top of that. It’s unpleasant, but that’s this arc plain and simple.
Momo and Okarun had the stage largely to themselves in S1, albeit with plenty of help from the likes of Turbo Granny and Seiko. But among the supporting cast in Dandadan, Jiji is probably first among equals. At times he shifts into being a third main character, and this arc is really his story. His manic side annoys some fans – I don’t mind it myself – but that’s mostly on the shelf here. Now we get a chance to see the karmic pain Jiji has been carrying with him that’s the cause of his overcompensatory behavior in the first place.
When we first see Evil Eye, he cuts a pretty hideous figure. But that ain’t the half of it. He has the power to cancel out the worm’s psychic waves, that we see for sure. Granny warns the kids not to look him in the eye or that, too will drive them to suicide. She and Jiji have a profound disagreement about just what Evil Eye is and whose side he’s on. That he’s caused numerous tragedies and in fact caused Jiji specifically serious distress is indisputable. But Jiji sees what no one else does, the pain that Evil Eye his endured, what made him this way. Jiji can’t see him as an enemy – but the evidence on the ground (well, under it) suggests that Granny may be right about this one.
Dandadan does serious and dark very well – Acrobatic Silky is ample proof of that. It doesn’t shy away from the darkness, and thankfully the adaptation has been faithful to that. But irrespective of the pain Evil Eye has endured, he’s a huge threat in the here and now. He takes over Jiji’s body, and in the process demonstrates why Seiko kept calling him a “genius”. Beat the crap out of the worm? Damn straight – but EE shows no inclination to stop there, and it’s Momo and Turbo Granny who’re on the wrong end of his soccer skills. We still don’t know the full extent of Evil Eye’s powers, but with the weight of countless generations of wronged souls crying out for revenge at his disposal, his punches pack a serious wallop.
sonicsenryaku
July 12, 2025 at 10:36 amI do feel bad for Dandadan’s production climate: it’s a show with character designs animated with a volumetric approach similar to something like Heavenly Delusion or My Dress up Darling; that kind of direction requires time and skill to maintain on an episode by episode basis. Then you have the compositing, which necessitates careful fine tuning due to the color filters the show likes to implore on top of its busy layouts. Combine that with the high profile animation the staff aims at achieving to helm all of this together and you have an ambition that under no circumstance, should ever be attempted with the allotted production timeline and crunch Dandadan has had (like……what da fuck you thinkin’?), let alone even conceive that it could be maintained for 24 consecutive eps…….and yet it tried anyway, so here we are, so now we have no choice but to stare at of the convert but still noticeable cracks. Like, why the hell even attempt a production of this kind with all of the conditions against you? Do you genuinely think with just 1 year + of actual production time, you could wrap up 12 episodes before air date, and then do another 12 with such ambitions to follow up with such a short interval in-between?? I’m not gonna getting on the doom ship right now, but I can understand why people in knowledgeable places of animation are concerned
Attempting to produce a gainax-styled show on a visual scale like Heavenly delusion, with stylish action setpieces similar to something like Mob Psycho within THAT KIND OF TIMEFRAME????….Yea that ain’t happening. Welcome to the real world; there are gonna be consequences for attempting that; this is JJK S2 all over again
Also, if people needed more evidence that this ain’t no season 2; or to go even further, that there probably was never supposed to a “season 2” to begin with, I actually was able to watch the first 3 eps in theaters and watched the director’s interview they attached to the end of the proceedings. During it, Fuga Yamashiro elaborated a bit on why certain directorial choices were made in episodes 11 and 12 both aesthetically and staff-wise, explaining that some of those were decided on because they’d already planned out how they were gonna handle the following 6 episodes by that point; that’s the kind of shit you do either when your show’s production continues with a split-cour break for a single season in mind, OR if your show was always meant to be a 24 ep long season to begin with
All that being said, I thought this was still a great episode of Dandadan: when the show is hittin’, it’s hittin.’ Even when there are production woes, the style and energy of the visuals do not fail. Glad they didn’t hold back on the darker stuff as I’m a firm believer that it’s better to talk about and depict things that make us uncomfortable (within reason of course) through the blanket of storytelling so we become better with dealing with it. Also, i think episode looked better than last week. Some of the looser animation with EE kicking around the cursed ball and juggling it around was sick.
sonicsenryaku
July 12, 2025 at 10:38 am*so here we are; now we have no choice but to stare at the covert but still noticeable cracks*
Guardian Enzo
July 12, 2025 at 10:49 amUnfortunately Saru has a growing reputation as a black company with no clue about managing a production. As long as they can bid on the cheap they’ll probably continue to gain traction, just as MAPPA did.
sonicsenryaku
July 12, 2025 at 12:48 pmIt sure seems that way; with Dandadan being one of science saru’s best works, it’s just a shame it’s got all this production drama weighing on its back. Ah well; hope we get at least one episode this cour with Yamashiro as both storyboarder and ep director like with ep 1; that’d be really nice.
Simone
July 12, 2025 at 4:37 pmTBF I don’t feel like JJK S2 ever completely fell in disrepair. There are a couple weak points – notably, the Dagon fight episode was obviously sacrificed on the altar of the more important later stuff, and Sukuna vs Mahoraga’s original TV version had a lot of rough stuff in it which got fixed for the BD release. But putting that aside, it otherwise still held up. Which isn’t to say that Mappa’s work conditions were good (as far as the stories go, they very much were not), just that somehow the poor schedule didn’t catastrophically collapse the entire production in an avalanche effect like it sometimes happens. If that is all that happened with Dandadan it would be far from the worst possible outcome.
sonicsenryaku
July 13, 2025 at 1:55 am*If that is all that happened with Dandadan it would be far from the worst possible outcome.*
Oh I absolutely agree; which is why I mentioned not being onboard the doom and gloom ship in a way the vocal minority seems to be, even if I do understand the feeling. The poor working conditions underpinning JJK S2 is kinda the point I’m getting at, right? Like that kind of ambition in TV anime shouldn’t be attempted if you don’t have the proper time, staff numbers, or overall planning; it just leads to people working under unsavory conditions and a product that doesn’t reflect the quality of work they’d like to have out there (or ones fans would be mostly satisfied with usually). I understand that’s just the state of the anime industry on the regular, but in the cases like JJK S2 or Dandadan, I think it’s even sillier to constrain productions to unsuitable work conditions whose committees want the visual splendor of those adaptations to be the sales pitch: “Wanna make a high-fidelity animated work that would reasonably take 3 years to do?? Yeaaaa me too, but too bad; I need you to do it in a year and 3 months; NOW GO AND MAKE IT LOOK GREAT SO PEOPLE BUY OUR MERCHANDISE”
But to your point: Yes; JJK S2 was still poppin off visually despite the couple weak spots, and if Dandadan is in a similar boat, that’s not the worst thing that could happen cuz it still ended being one of the most visually creative action shows in the last decade. We’re nowhere near the kind of production collapse something like Hell’s Paradise went through (now that’s a good example of a catastrophic collapse both behind the scenes and product-wise); I just don’t think any piece of media should be made to attempt ambitious standards in what are obviously unsuitable conditions, like ever.
On the topic of JJK S2, while I don’t think it completely fell in disrepair either, it did experience what would be described as a production collapse, as its rippling effects cascaded throughout the season in a compounding way to the point where certain staff members needed to come in clutch to finish the work of other people a day or two before episodes would air. This also just meant episodes would run with certain visual components unfinished (despite the high-caliber of the overall episode) as seen with the infamous tv version of ep 17, and sections of episodes like 13 that would unfortunately not be addressed in a blu-ray release. Then you have the handful of episodes that struggled on the whole to maintain their artistic direction: Ep 8 had that infamously mediocre action scene, Gosso’s ep 9, while cool as hell, had its moments of jank; ep 10 was a bit on the visually conservative side; ep 11 had a lack of proper flow in the animation in some of its action; and backgrounds took a hit in the compositing department during the last stretch of eps.
Keep in mind that the production pressures on JJK S2 could be felt very early in its run; it just happened to have (by some unnatural force of the universe) the raw sigma energy to continuously pump out spectacular cuts and even full episodes of visual awe despite it all; like, it’s genuinely impressive how it held itself together despite the odds, even if you could see the cracks in the armor building up. which is exactly what’s been happening with Dandadan since its early days.
Dandadan’s baseline is supposed to be really high-tier stuff like episodes 1 and 4, with the occasionally godly flex like episode 7 peppered throughout: with 3 and a half years of healthy production, it MIGHT have been possibly to do that for 24 consecutive eps; but instead, the show is struggling to maintain the very floor it set up. Dandadan still looks very good, but that’s ultimately because of the talent at hand capable of making that possible under these stupidly limiting conditions, which rear their ugly head ever so often.
Simone
July 13, 2025 at 3:10 pmHm, fair analysis. Truth is, I probably have a worse eye than most, because I hadn’t even noticed anything off with this episode. Obviously it wasn’t a stand-out peak like episode 4 of S1, but I didn’t see that as abnormal (I guess maybe the flashback felt a bit underwhelming direction-wise?). So it takes quite a bit of jank to really become noticeable for me. Or stuff like Sakamoto Days, which was dramatically uninspired from episode 1, though that’s a different kind of problem, and for all we know, the actual production and working conditions were healthier there.
Sonicsenryaku
July 14, 2025 at 2:42 pmThere’s nothing too off about this episode specifically; it’s more so the last ep that wasn’t quite up to the baseline standards of the series. Nothing bad, but you could kind of tell the visual quality was a bit more conservative; and with as many AD’s and in-betweeners as there were working on such a low-intensive episode, you just know something ain’t right; that, compounded with the struggles from the last cour are what’s motivating these scrutinizing critiques.
This week was a much better effort: color design and composition was keeping up with the vision of the episode, but there were some awkward spots here and there, like the way EE jiji was composited in the foreground while summoning his evil death ball of death and some in-betweening stuff that’s harder to notice on initial watch.
I will say: I think some people are under the impression some of the looser animation of EE jiji while he was kicking around the ball was rushed or unfinished animation, but that’s most likely the style of the animator who handled those cuts and not an issue of the craft, so don’t think otherwise
Overall, this week’s episode was a stronger outing than last week’s(despite the staff credits still looking concerning); and nothing too glaring to be immediately noticeable/offputting; it’s just that once again, you can see the show struggling to hit its true baseline (ep 1&4) due to the crunch
Nadavu
July 12, 2025 at 6:29 pmSo far the biggest downgrade I see in season 2 is the OP.
Simone
July 12, 2025 at 10:01 pmIt’s not as good but it’s not bad either, it’s still a very good OP, just had the bad luck of coming right after one of the best bangers of the last years. This season, Witch Watch had a much bigger drop, from a genuine masterpiece of an OP to a pretty mediocre one.
sonicsenryaku
July 13, 2025 at 1:58 amAgree on Witch Watch’s second OP (the countdown part is fun, though), but I was mentally prepared for it because……………..I mean, come on: just look at that first OP.
Simone
July 13, 2025 at 3:11 pmOh yeah, I had no doubt it would be worse, that was a given – the first IMO is literally among the top 10 best anime OPs I’ve ever seen. But it didn’t have to be THIS MUCH worse. It even got showed up by the joke Uron Mirage OP that aired the week after.