By: Peggy Sue Wood | @pswediting

Let’s just get this out of the way: I didn’t walk into Dan Da Dan: Evil Eye expecting a good story. I watched the anime, after all, and I already knew what kind of chaotic energy and uncomfortable sexualizing of minors that this franchise brings to the table. Beyond aliens, ghosts, telekinesis, and the prior mentioned assaulting of underage characters… well, beyond that were low expectations and what I found was an evil, red flag.

SPOILER WARNING, this franchise got way worse.

Read more: [Movie Review] Dan Da Dan: Evil Eye (2025) is A GIANT RED FLAG (SPOILERS)

Let’s start with the BAD, because I feel like no one else is going to point this out early enough. If you plan to watch this [recap] movie—or the upcoming Season 2 (which is apparently releasing in July)—prepare yourself for a few deeply uncomfortable and vile scenes. There’s two depictions of children, probably under ten, who are tied up in their underwear, and left to die. One is left to die by fire/lava and another is left underground by a group of adults who essentially abandon him to die from starvation or being devoured by a yokai. That’s right, child death and disrobing happens not once, but twice.

This isn’t an accidental or overlooked moment by the creators—it’s intentional. In the scene before the child left to starve underground was shown, the child was fully dressed, making it clear that the filmmakers deliberately chose to depict these children suffering in these ways. Not only do we witness the deliberate torture and death or near-death of a child, but it’s all presented with a shocking lack of sensitivity.

I don’t want to hear that it’s “artistic” or any other excuse—because I know there are going to be fans of this series who probably love the movie BUT LET’S BE REAL. THAT WAS MESSED UP.

The scenes of teens randomly undressing in Season 1 (and, I guess, now in this movie and Season 2) are already bizarre. As one of my friends pointed out when we were talking about Season 1, maybe you could argue it’s similar to characters like Tamaki Kotatsu in Fire Force or Gray Fullbuster in Fairy Tail, where it’s meant to be a running gag rooted in cultural tropes—but seriously. Come on. Now they had to do this to children under ten? That’s not comedy. That’s not impact.

It’s there for shock value, and the film tries to gloss over it by shifting the focus to a child yokai’s emotional journey, as if that makes everything else okay because people probably won’t notice it. And the worst part is that people probably won’t.

It’s really messed up how that gets glossed over in the movie and it’s difficult to explain how it happens because you almost need to see it for yourself to understand. The best way I can put it is that it is sort of like “The Monkey Business Illusion” that we all tend to learn about in school. Video below:

The focus is on something else, specifically the perspective of the first child’s ghost (if it really was a child and not some lying monster as the Turbo Granny-cat seems to imply).

Oh, and I almost failed to mention: the story picks up where Season 1 left off, in which Momo Ayase was on the verge of being sexually assaulted by a bunch of creepy old men. They get beaten up and eaten by a monster… but ultimately live unharmed.

To be honest, I don’t think I can talk about the good parts right now. I’m still trying to process what I noticed—especially since the people I watched the movie with didn’t seem to pick up on it until I mentioned it.

For context, I went to see the movie with some friends and had been open to giving the series a second chance after discussing it with a few other friends who are fans. To the movie’s credit, it was rated R, which meant teens couldn’t see it without an adult in the U.S.—and that gave me some reassurance, since one of my main issues with Season 1 of the show was how it seemed to be marketed to teens.

I had also recently had a conversation with a friend who suggested that the show’s depiction of teens undressing might be influenced by characters like Gray or Tamaki—implying that this kind of fanservice has precedent and should maybe be overlooked (which I mentioned above). However, I still believed this series crosses a line and continues to normalize inappropriate content when I went into the showing. So when something new and glaring happened in the movie, it stood out to me like a blazing red flag.

Meanwhile, the friends I went with didn’t really notice it. It was glossed over—just like so many other things often are when you’re used to seeing them in anime. It’s like how fan service becomes background or how overly veiny-handed male leads in romance manhuas stop standing out after a while. Honestly, this was exactly what I was worried about in my original post on the series.

Outside of these troubling things I mention above, the movie was great in almost every other part. It was funny, it was well directed, it had a great soundtrack and solid voice acting. It was, honestly, a perfectly fine movie if you ignore the depictions of the two children mentioned above and that’s what makes me so sick about it.

Evil Eye? No. It’s just evil.

Watch Season 2 and/or this movie at your own risk.

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Copyedited by: Katherine Cañeba | @kcserinlee