By the end of 2024, Dan Da Dan became the talk of shonen town. From the chemistry of his two leads to his banger opening and offbeat styleScience Saru’s adaptation of Yukinobu Tatsu’s supernatural romcom has captured the hearts and minds of animation fans, who tune in every week to see how crazy Momo Ayase and Okarun will be caught next.

In early December, io9 spoke with Momo and Okarun’s respective dub actors, Abby Trott and AJ Beckles, who approached the material through different means. Beckles had already read the manga before auditioning, while Trott only found out about it through the audition. They were both impressed, and so surprised that they booked the parts—and how specifically the dub was chosen that it was great in its own right.

“Seeing some of the comments about how some people enjoyed the dub, and moved it, was great,” Beckles said. The “sub v. dub” war has existed since the dawn of time, but he said Dan Da Dan avoided being looped due to heavy marketing for its dub, and the actors had accurate recording time. That’s not always the case in anime, and according to him, the show is better for it: if there are no preconceived notions surrounding Japanese or English voices, viewers are free to either version. they want

While viewers have been singing the show’s praises for months now, some viewers were turned off by the second half of the first episode, where both Momo and Okarun find themselves in danger. of otherworldly beings. While Okarun is being chased and possessed by the demon Turbo Granny, Momo ends up in a more terrifying situation where she is kidnapped by aliens called Serpo, who strip her to her underwear and prepare to steal her reproductive organs. It’s a sudden tonal change, not helped by the hints of comedy as Serpo calls the organs “bananas.”

When asked, both actors were quick to acknowledge how “bad” the scene was to watch, and neither blamed anyone for jumping off the show because of it. For Trott, the scene was an important moment for his character, because Momo’s psychokinetic powers were there. Once he realizes what he can do, he goes on the offensive, and several of the season’s big action beats involve Momo handling things better. his abilities—so that getting him that power and immediately using it to “kick Serpos’s butt” is satisfying.

“In that scene, we’re not saying the Serpoians are good, quite the opposite. There are a lot of dynamics in this anime, and definitely some difficult parts to get through,” Trott said. “But the good is more in hard-to-see moments.”

Beckles shared a similar sentiment, and pointed to how Momo uses her grandmother’s advice and gets a surprise help from Turbo Granny as examples of how the girls support each other throughout the story. As a reader of the manga, he indicated that things will improve in the future, saying that viewers “will see, as the show goes on, that it takes moments more seriously.” The two actors also emphasize Okarun’s presence and “healthy vision” of women, allowing the show to contrast him with the more invasive Serpoians.

After its fourth episode, Momo and Okarun’s slow-burn romance is starting to take shape. Their growing relationship is all the more remarkable because other shonen usually have romance as an addition to their stories rather than the core. Tatsu famously revealed that while pitching Dan Da Dan, her editor Shihei Lin recommended that she read shouja (or “girl”) manga, which focused on personal and romantic relationships. If Lin hadn’t given the advice, the series might not be what it is today, and probably lack the same impact and excitement around it. The audience likes it well love storyand they know when it doesn’t hit. But because they’re so well-written and clearly defined—and can’t be normal to each other, especially in public—it’s hard not to root for Momo and Okarun.

Although the pair caught some TAME things, their feelings for each other informed almost everything they did. Knowing it was a love story didn’t change the actor’s handling of the material, but Trott said the scene where Okarun and Momo fight for the first time made it clear where things were headed. For Beckles, some of his favorite scenes for his character are when Okarun is “just trying to figure out how to talk to a girl for the first time,” or telling Momo how he is. cares what he thinks.

The dynamic between the leads is just as important as the booth. When it came time to record, the actors both said they preferred it when one of them went first, because it allowed them to feed off each other. Trott said she gets “so much” from her co-lead, especially since Okarun always “prompts a certain response” from Momo which makes her adapt her responses. The same is true for Beckles, who admits that the more intimate, romantic scenes are misleading for him because Okarun tends to speak from his heart.

Where Momo’s encounter with Serpo helped trigger her psychic powers, Okarun’s experience with Turbo Granny left her with a partial essence of spirit powers, allowing her to transform into a faster, smoother, and more. laid back emo version himself. As Beckles explained, finding a default voice for Okarun—which he would then use when the character was more expressive or in his Turbo mode—took several recording sessions. In the early stages, Okarun was “always yelling or whispering, and there was too much going on back and forth” to establish a baseline. Beckles credits voice director Alex von David for guiding him to moments to make his voice “more nerdy or more endearing. Alex has a vision, and he knows where to go. Okarun. I really trust him at points where it’s hard, but it’s good when it’s a challenge to try and do something the right way.

One specific challenge he cited was the fourth episode “Goodbye” scene between Okarun and Momo, which he called one of his most “upsetting moments” on record. Since he was the first to enter the booth that day, it was difficult to imagine Okarun’s thought process, what Trott was going to do during his recording, and the meaning behind every “goodbye” uttered. “Once (Abby) first recorded the next day,” he said, “the pieces of the puzzle started to connect. I can play with his emotions, and it can be like that. I don’t think we would have had that beautiful, childlike reading without her ‘See you later!’”

During our talk, Beckles and Trott chimed in with what many others have done by Dan Da Dan adaptation a success. Along with fans and von David, they gave glowing praise to their fellow dub actors Lisa Reimold (Aira) and Barbara Goodson (Turbo Granny), and their own characters to the individual performers. in Japan, Natuski Hanae and Shion Wakayama. (Trott calls Wakayama’s Momo one of his favorite anime shows ever, and a “perfect embodiment” of Japan’s gyaru subculture.) Going on this journey was a tough one for both of them. , so it’s good that we can hear them again on Netflix and Crunchyroll with season two in July 2025.

And while they haven’t said anything about what’s to come, Beckles teased that where things left off “compared to where the show is going later.”

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