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Every season, a fresh set of anime comes out, giving fans a whole new way to experience some of the most popular manga in publication. Sometimes an anime will wait until the manga has finished before it goes into production, but often it is an ongoing series that gets the anime treatment. According to one of the producers of Dan Da Dan, sometimes all it takes is one amazing opening chapter to bring a manga to life as an anime.

“When the first chapter of the manga was released, it generated significant buzz on social media,” Dan Da Dan anime producer Hiroshi Kamei explained to us. “And upon reading it myself, I found it to be an incredibly captivating work.” That first chapter became the first episode of the Dan Da Dan anime, complete with bizarre imagery and ridiculous transformations. “As the story progressed through chapters two and three, the developments became even more intriguing and by the time the first volume was published, I knew I wanted to adapt it into an anime.”

However, that kind of hype around the manga meant that adapting Dan Da Dan into an anime was more daunting than most other projects Hiroshi had worked on. “I understood that the quality required for such an adaptation would be high, but with its expanding cast of characters and continuous battles unfolding, I felt it was a manga perfectly suited for animation.”

Clearly, you can sometimes that a series has potential from the very first chapter, as the Dan Da Dan anime has become one of our favorites of the season.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

• Why the finales of My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen, and One Piece feel like the end of an era in manga
• Why is One Piece more popular now that the anime is 25 years old? We asked around and found out
• Dan Da Dan is weird, profoundly inappropriate, and the perfect anime this season
• Why One Piece's Monkey D. Luffy is the perfect anime hero for the dark times ahead
• 40 years after its debut, Dragon Ball is a pop culture force like few others
• Dan Da Dan's most emotionally devastating sequence proves that sometimes words aren't necessary
• Gnosia, the "Among Us meets Everything Everywhere All at Once" visual novel is getting an anime adaptation that needs to be as weird as possible
• Assassination Classroom is a Shonen anime well worth revisiting, ten years on
• Sony is making big moves to own the anime industry by buying Kadokawa, publisher of Oshi no Ko, Sword Art Online, and Konosuba