If you’re looking for the biggest surprise hit anime of 2024, Dandadan could very well be it, with the show continuing to hold a huge audience on Netflix.
Anticipation was high for Dandadan, coming from the incredibly popular manga by Yukinobu Tatsu. So far, the anime show has managed to capture the glorious eccentricities of the ghosts-meets-aliens story about two teens who start investigating bizarre events to prove each other wrong.
Being on Netflix gave Dandadan some strong backing, as the company continues to invest in anime big and small. Nobody could’ve foreseen just how well it’s doing though, going up against Dragon Ball Daima and Demon Slayer Season 4 and winning.
The latter is particularly impressive, given that Demon Slayer is comfortably one of the biggest franchises going at the moment. According to the Netflix Top 10 chart, Dandadan has accrued 7,800,000 hours watched in five weeks.
That’s the same amount of hours as Demon Slayer Season 4, but Tanjiro and the Demon Slayer Corps needed twice the time to get there, currently at ten weeks in the chart. Meanwhile, Daima has been completely left in the dust, at just 2,300,000 hours watched.
These are all popular TV shows, but the freshness of Dandadan will be the game-changer here. It’s new, stylish, and has a concept that’s easy to understand, sharing similarities with The X-Files and Supernatural.
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Dragon Ball Daima is another installment in a property that’s almost 40 years old, and although it’s Akira Toriyama’s swansong after his untimely passing, there’s baggage for new viewers.
Similarly, Season 4 of Demon Slayer is right in the middle of the narrative, and the eight episodes really just serve to set up the big finale in Infinity Castle.
But whatever the case, Dandadan is clearly another breakout show that people are loving. There was similar excitement earlier this year for Solo Leveling, and it’s encouraging to see new stories emerge and find fans – especially in a year where Jujutsu Kaisen and My Hero Academia mangas ended.
Have a look at our guides to Lazarus and Sakamoto Days for other up-and-coming releases.
