I read Lookism and found the very beginning absolutely abominable and then got really good pretty quickly, I should really check out how the anime handled that
I finally got around to watching some Dandadan season 2 and.... I'm kinda underwhelmed. The reason I started watching Dandadan was because of trailers I kept getting served about the Evil Eye movie playing in theatres near me and the trailer got me so hyped, everything about it felt stylistically perfect. But actually getting these episodes haven't really lived up to my expectations.
Spoilers up to S2E16 -
Most of the stuff with the Evil Eye did end up being really great stylistically, the music cuts and the transitions were all great. The cult family was fine on their own, but that's kinda where it all starts to fall apart - this arc really didn't come together with every element. The cultists don't follow the Evil Eye, they follow this other random monster that ALSO causes suicides in the basement. There just happens to be TWO suicide inducing monsters down there, and I don't feel like these two elements really meshed well together. Then once Momo gets back up to the surface, all the running around up there felt... pointless? It's like we just left the meat of the arc behind for a completely unrelated catastrophe to solve. I didn't really enjoy any of that.
The Evil Eye's backstory had some potential but they hinted at it early on when Jiji showed up, but then it was non existent until he shows up to block the worm and gives his entire backstory to Jiji. I feel like this should have been spread out a bit more - and then Jiji completely being absent the second he talked to it that one time and it possessed him took away a bit from the emotional impact of whatever it would try to do if it were to succeed and escape. Even if the Evil Eye possessing Jiji was a great boss monster. Using his soccer skills was really fun.
I feel like one of Dandadan's biggest strengths is how everything is lolsorandom but somehow cohesively ties everything together in a pretty compelling narrative thats both hype and emotional. It didn't really pull that off here.
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The batman villians all seem to be one big joke that batman refuses to laugh at - SantaRPG