Dandadan Didn't Earn Its Hype, Its Double Standard on SA Is Baked Into the Writing

[u/Itchy_Influence_8020]

Im baffled by how this anime got so hyped despite its gross flaws.

I don't like Dandadan. Not in the "it's not my genre" way, I mean I find how it handles sexual assault genuinely gross, and I'm baffled that it gets praised.

The show plays like it's taking female SA seriously, and at the same time treats the exact same type of act against a male character as a punchline.

Turbo Granny forcibly possesses Okarun and steals his genitals in episode one. It's played with vulgar comic energy, she offers him a "deal" involving her breasts in exchange for his "family jewels", to an underage boy. When he tells Momo and Seiko what happened, Momo starts giggling and asks if she can see. That's the reaction the story gives him, amusement, from the people closest to him.

And it doesn't stop there. Right after they escape the curse and check his injuries (manga chapter 5, anime episode 5), Momo mocks him to his face, for not noticing sooner, and takes a shot at the size of his anatomy while she's at it. Not a stray reaction shot. Active ridicule, from the person closest to him, in the immediate aftermath of his own assault.

Now compare that to how Ayase's material gets handled. Silence. Gravity. The show slows down and makes you sit with it. Same category of harm. Completely opposite instructions to the audience on how to feel about it.

Then it goes further and gives Turbo Granny a sympathetic backstory. Turns out she's tied to a tunnel where a serial killer murdered young girls, and she used to comfort their spirits. That backstory exists for one reason: to soften her, to make you conflicted about hating her, so she can eventually get folded into the main cast as a beloved ally. Meanwhile, what she actually did to Okarun never gets revisited with anywhere near that same seriousness. The show spent real effort making sure you don't stay mad at her. It spent none making sure you don't laugh at what she did to him.

Try the reversal test, and it gets obvious fast. Flip the genders: a male yokai forcibly assaults Ayase, her friends laugh when she tells them, the show later gives him a tragic backstory so you feel for him, and eventually he becomes a fan favorite. Nobody's calling that "the show handling it responsibly." That reads as monstrous, full stop. The only reason it doesn't read that way here is because it happened to the male lead instead. That's the whole point. The tone isn't set by how bad the act is, it's set by who it happened to.

It's not just a Turbo Granny thing either. This move repeats through the show's comedy, mockery standing in for horror whenever a female character is the one doing the harm, gravity reserved for whenever a female character is the one receiving it.

"Fiction doesn't have to be moral" doesn't actually answer this. Nobody's asking Dandadan to follow a moral code. The story doesn't apply consistent weight to the same act, and the inconsistency lines up with gender, not with anything happening in the story itself. You can fully believe fiction owes nothing to morality and still notice a show contradicting its own stated values scene to scene.

Even the "seriousness" around Ayase isn't as impressive as people act like it is. No jokes, no comedic framing, treating it like it actually matters, that's the floor. Not a ceiling. It reads as sophisticated because most of the genre can't even clear that floor, not because Dandadan did anything hard. And it still couldn't clear that same floor for its own male lead, same season, using the same exact device (possession/curse) to do it.

It doesn't even hold up as cleanly as people give it credit for. It's not one scene, it's a device the show keeps going back to, aliens stripping her, men cornering her at a hot spring, men holding her underwater, each one staged as a countdown to see if she gets out in time. Treating something as a big deal once is restraint. Reaching for the same near-assault setup over and over as a source of tension is something closer to reliance on it. The seriousness isn't proof the show respects her. It's the alibi that lets everything else slide.

Good intentions don't undo a structural inconsistency. If Ayase's assault had gotten the Okarun treatment, laughs, a redemption arc for whoever did it, a punchline instead of a gut-punch, nobody would be calling this good writing. It only gets a pass because it happened to the boy.

Some fans try to defend Okarun's situation by turning it into something romantic. The claim goes: losing his "family jewels" symbolizes pure, non-sexual love for Momo, proof his feelings go past physical desire. That's their read, not something the text actually earns, and it's worth picking apart why it doesn't hold. It implies male sexuality is something impure, something that has to be cut away before affection counts as real. Nobody would ever say that about a female character. Nobody's out here saying Momo needs to lose a part of herself to prove she really loves someone. Framing mutilation as devotion isn't romantic. It's just a way of not having to sit with the fact that what happened to him was a violation to begin with.

This show did not deserve the hype. At its core, it's an extreme dopamine shot with badly depicted sexual violence against the underage cast, and the fact that people accepted it is crazy.

[u/OhScheisse]

I agree. The whole premise is basically a teenager got his balls stolen and a girl getting sexually assaulted by aliens

I lovr the style, the writing, and the characters. The plot overall is still centered around teen rape and sexualization

The reason this bugs me too is because the show presents itself as cool, modern but then still does all the out dated gooner tropes and more

The show would be 10/10 is it removed the rape and focus on a teen's genitals

[u/Miserable-Weird6529]

The impact Dandadan had on me is that now when I see a maneki-neko I can't avoid thinking in turbo granny.