We need to talk about DAN DA DAN’s alien strip scene

Coming into not just the fall 2024 season, but 2024 as a whole, there was no anime I was more excited for than DAN DA DAN. I’ve been actively looking forward to it all year. But there was one scene in episode one I really struggled with, and while I have faith the show won’t dip so low again, I’m having a hard time simply dismissing it.

There’s so much about DAN DA DAN to be excited about. The production would be handled by Science Saru, my favorite anime studio, the same one behind Scott Pilgrim Takes Off and Keep Your Hands Off Eizoken. The manga has been enthusiastically recommended to me by everyone I know with impeccable taste. What’s more, the manga is written by Yukinobu Tatsu, who used to be to Tatsuki Fujimoto’s assistant for Chainsaw Man.

And, to top everything off, we knew from the very first announcement of the series that Mayumi Tanaka and Kazuya Nakai, who respectively voice Monkey D. Luffy and Roronoa Zoro in One Piece, would be cast as the villains. The series need not be sold to me any further, I was already so in. I was so in that I bought theater tickets for DAN DA DAN: First Contact in September, which amalgamated the first three episodes of the series. And overall, I loved what I saw. DAN DA DAN was the witty, wacky, eccentric, heartfelt sci fi anime I was promised.

Except for one scene. And even a month later, I’m still struggling to get fully over it.

Why must we strip search?

Spoilers ahead for episode one of DAN DA DAN

The alien abduction is a trope, I know. Even the “strip search” sub-genre is a trope. That doesn’t make watching a high school girl get stripped down to her bra and underwear, strapped to a chair, and very nearly raped any easier. Momo endures all of this in episode one of DAN DA DAN. The aliens come towards her, stripped down and strapped into a chair, asking for her “banana.” Until this point, Momo’s bra-and-panties attire is perhaps sigh-worthy, but you could point to a whole bunch of other examples of this same trope.

But then, one of the aliens forces her legs further apart apart, and a sharp, mechanical, metallic spike menacingly arises slightly above where you’d expect the a penis to be. To be fair, it’s a moment of genuine peril. The audience definitely feels intense fear for Momo’s safety. At the same time, why does this have to be here? What real narrative purpose does having an alien force Momo’s legs open like that, making the audience genuinely feel they might be about to witness a rape, serve to the larger narrative of DAN DA DAN? Especially considering the character in question is in freaking high school?

The “banana” thing makes it seem like maybe part of this is supposed to be funny. But what is happening to Momo isn’t funny at all. I don’t know how I was supposed to feel, and so I felt distraught. And honestly, a little betrayed. Maybe it’s a shocking scene from the first chapter of a new manga meant to draw attention to the series. But surely, there are other ways to do that, right?

Moving forward

Fortunately, the alien abduction scene takes a quick turn. Momo’s new pal Okarun interrupts everything with a phone call and then supernaturally crawls through the phone, giving Momo the opportunity to resist her captors and awaken as a psychic. Once she gets her powers, she’s in control not only of her situation, but Okarun’s as well.

It’s a welcome shift. But considering the prior scene, it’s also a bit of a jarring one. Momo spends the rest of the first three episodes with the upper hand. Okarun largely has to rely on her powers to maintain his literal humanity. It’s great, I love it. But why the strip search, for real?! If the answer is “because people are horny” … that just bums me out.

It’s genuinely bizarre to me that most reviews of DAN DA DAN have avoided talking about the abduction strip entirely. A few others have actively praised it for being, say, “unflinching.” Both tracks leave people like me to mutter in our private anime circles, feeling isolated and confused.

I’m writing all of this because I want not only to like DAN DA DAN, but to love it. I move to be able to move past these icky feelings and enjoy the rest of what this wild, highly-praised series has to offer. But goddammit, that’s a hell of a hurdle to put in episode one.