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There are certain dangers of getting so excited for an anime that you decide to read ahead in the manga. Sure, you suddenly get loads of insight into where the story is going and have even more of the characters you love, but sometimes that isn’t always a good thing. The story might go in some disappointing directions, killing your interest in future seasons of the anime. Or, in the case of Dan Da Dan, it reveals the ultimate danger of a weekly release schedule that many manga have – the dreaded pacing issues.

I’ll clarify at the start of this piece that I still love Dan Da Dan. The anime has been one of the highlights of the most recent anime season, and it is still in that wonderful balance between a battle shonen and romantic comedy story. However, as soon as the first season aired, I needed more. The abrupt cliffhanger as Jiji and Okarun discovered the dark secret of the Evil Eye house, doomed me, and I had to read what happened next. And, like the weak fool I am, I couldn’t stop until I got caught up.

But a funny thing happened when I reached the most recent chapter at the time – I was getting bored. Maybe it was because I wasn’t feeling the story at the time, which focused on a miniaturized Momo flying on a plane and fighting a typhoon (this series goes places, folks), but the excitement of realizing that there was a new chapter out was replaced by a malaise. Not anger or frustration, but a general lack of interest in a story that had captivated me for nearly 200 chapters.

The problem wasn’t that I didn’t still love the characters. I realized that the actual pace of the story had crawled to an excruciating drip, with multiple two-page splashes in every chapter to take up space while the mangaka gave themselves time to figure out what was going to happen next. It turned an arc that I was only vaguely disinterested in into one that made me question if I even wanted to continue reading Dan Da Dan at all. Maybe I would just have to wait until the third season of the anime comes out to fix some of the pacing problems in the upcoming arc.

I compare this feeling to how I approach Spy x Family, which has consistently kept my interest over the years, delivering great storylines for all the characters throughout. While I don’t have any clue what the endgame for Spy x Family is any more than I do with Dan Da Dan, I’m still enjoying the ride because it still feels like it is going somewhere, and I think that is because it releases monthly, with the occasional buffer chapter of a few pages to tide us over.

Again, I’m not really criticising Yukinobu Tatsu here. He and his team are still producing incredible artwork every week. Those two-page splashes I complained about earlier? They’re always remarkably detailed and gorgeous, with plenty of action. But as much as I enjoy looking at them, I am always keenly aware that they’re not moving the story forward. They’re filler to keep the page count consistent without having to write more dialogue.

Spy x Family’s monthly schedule and Chainsaw Man’s alternating weekly and bi-weekly release schedule have kept them from falling into this trap, which usually ends up catching pretty much every mangaka who sticks to that brutal weekly release schedule. The only one I’ve read that hasn’t suffered from these pacing problems is One Piece, and that is because Oda has magic in him and has the power to tell Shueisha that the chapter will be late and not lose his job. Writing the best-selling comic book of all time gives him a bit more power, and even then, the Fishman Island arc really dragged, didn’t it? So, there are limits even to Oda’s power.

I’m going to keep reading Dan Da Dan for now because there is still enough that I’m enjoying to keep me coming back, but I’m wavering. More than anything else, it is making me second-guess picking up any manga with a weekly release schedule until it has completed its run or has enough chapters published that I feel like I’ll never catch up. The pacing issues that this release schedule comes with have led me to frustration too many times.

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