Let’s grade the season preview entry for this series:
- “We could be in the “that niche” contender category here, though Reiwa no Dara-san might be a little too boisterous for that” – check
- “It’s the story of a brother and sister in the inaka who stumble into a divine realm and cross paths with the titular “malevolent” deity” – well yes, but…
Reiwa no Dara-san was one of my sleepers for the season, so it’s fair to say I had decent expectations for it. Basically there are two requirements for a series to be a sleeper – I have to have a vibe without having direct knowledge of the source material (or it’s an original), and it has to be flying under the radar. Dara-san safely checks both those boxes. It’s a pretty well-regarded seinen manga, which is a good start. Has a Shinto-based premise, and all the previews and promo material implied a pretty strong sense of irreverence. And if anyone was talking about it they weren’t doing so where I could hear or read it.
The premise here finds two young siblings living in the inaka, where there gramps warns them never to go past the fence and up into them mountains. Through narration we get the idea that some sort of terrifying snake Kami lives up there, sealed in a shrine. Kids being kids Hinata and Kaoru love to poke around up there, and when they do so during a rainstorm, they discover their grandfather freaking out after a landslide has knocked down the fence and broken the shrine. And the reason introduces itself to them, only to be very disappointed in their blasé reaction.
For starters yeah, I totally had no idea that Hinata (the older) was a girl and Kaoru (the younger) was a boy. She’s in middle school and he in fifth grade. She likes to dress comfortably and he wears whatever his mother buys him, and she likes to dress him up in frilly clothes. As for the Kami it’s a she (very obviously) and has (unsurprisingly) had many names, but Yamatagi-madara is the oldest she remembers. This character design is about as uncensored as you’ll see in a mainstream anime – the detail on those was striking. Not least to Kaoru, who will eventually bring the Kami one of his mother’s bras (and she’s clearly a bit of a wild card herself).
Mostly this is just the two kids being total goofs, and Madara being bemused by that. The deal here is she was a Tatarigami – a curse God – fused out of a priestess who was betrayed by by her sister and a snake god who lived on the mountain. But she exacted her revenge long ago and now all that cursing and being angry stuff seems like more trouble than it’s worth. She also has a bit of experience with the modern world having chased off a hiker with a flip phone and confiscated his pack. Hinata has a strong spiritual affinity and can see her even when she’s “invisible” – Kaoru not so much. It’s he who decides that since she’s no longer the same being she was, she needs a new name. And comes up with “Dara-san”.
I wouldn’t describe the story so far as profound or anything, but it’s solidly entertaining. All three main characters are quite likable, and the two kids are kids in a very believable way. This unlikely friendship is obviously going to be at the heart of Reiwa no Dara-san, but Dara interacting with the modern world is going to be a part of it too. I could see it going in a few different directions tonally – including being another Kaya-chan wa Kowakunai, where it ends up being something much darker than it first appears. I suspect though that irreverence and absurdist comedy is mainly the lane here, and judging by the premiere this show is pretty good at that.
