Produced by Science Saru and airing in summer 2025, Dandadan continues picks up immediately after what I consider one of the worst and the most abrupt endings to a season I think I've ever seen. While it continues on to deliver on and even eclipse it's mind bending animation, expanding it's colourful cast, it fails to reach the emotional highs it did in the first season

Art

Starting with the visuals, It's stunning. The visual direction for this movie is some of the best I've seen 4C do. The colour palates and the art style were absolutely magnificent, every other background frame taking my breath away. I don't think I can say that about the character designs as much though, They served their purpose well and they were incredibly animated, courtesy of the incredible animation staff that 4C have, but they just didn't stick to me as much visually. To go on about the character animation, the volume of the characters was so well represented that it genuinely felt like 3d characters being rotoscoped and then drawn over by hand. Which considering the designs in this movie, is some truly stellar stuff. Some of the visual effects in this movie were some of the coolest stuff I've seen an anime do ever, with the "return by death" effect, when prominently shown on screen being some of the coolest shots in the movie. The climax also had some incredible VFX work complimenting the incredible animation that the animators put out. just incredible work overall. To end this section, the world design itself was really well done too. The background art and the conversations going on in the back with the extras in the back really made it feel like a world that was actually lived in. It easily lives up to the 4C tag that it's come with

Story

Now talking about the substance of the movie - Being completely new to this franchise, neither watching the LA movie "Edge of tomorrow" or reading the manga, I didn't know what I was gonna get from this movie. The premise itself is as inviting as one can get, but what it did with it isn't really something that I enjoyed as much as I thought I would. The story felt like a dish that just doesn't taste that good. It's been presented to me in this extremely beautiful format with jaw dropping visuals, but the taste of the story itself isn't that moving. The character progression, while decently significant, does not move me much. The interactions between the two main leads don't have enough chemistry to make me feel some way about them. I know that they've basically relived something together for months at this point, but the movie doesn't really convey the development between them all that well. I guess at least it's more of a story about friendship than love, because that would genuinely piss me off. My final point here would be that the climax felt a bit underwhelming personally. Considering the scale of the "thing" we're going against, it felt a bit underwhelming - but, it was a pretty decent plot point, so I don't think I can complain there much

Sound

The VA direction being pretty middling doesn't help either. I guess the way they're made to sound fits their characters well, but that just doesn't move me at all. Good voice acting performances can elevate scenes, but here, it felt like it was there just to tick a box off. On the other hand the soundtrack is pretty decent. I wouldn't say any of it is all that memorable, but it works well when played in context with the movie. Nothing of note here tbh

Final thoughts

It truly is a 4C movie. Amazing visuals paired with a decent enough story that's barely enough to make this a movie worth a watch. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but if asked for an opinion, I'd say it's pretty decent

Overall: 8/10