Ahead of the premiere of DAN DA DAN: EVIL EYE and DAN DA DAN Season 2, we had the incredible opportunity to sit down for an interview with Abel Góngora, co-director of Season 2 alongside returning director Fuga Yamashiro. Góngora is a Spanish-born animator and director based in Japan, known as the creator of the opening credit sequence for Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, director for an anime adaptation of the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels, and the brilliant mind behind the opening credits sequence for DAN DA DAN Season 1.
Just a few short months after the conclusion of Season 1, The DAN DA DAN: EVIL EYE movie premieres in theaters today in North America and the anime begins streaming July 3. We asked Góngora about his approach to Season 2 and its characters in comparison to Season 1, the challenges and merits of working with a co-director, and his overall approach to direction writ large.
Portions of this interview have been lightly edited for clarity. This article contains minor spoilers for DAN DA DAN Season 2 and DAN DA DAN: EVIL EYE.
Q: From a director’s perspective, what is the most significant difference between the approach to Season 2 versus the approach to Season 1?
A: Well, Season 1, I wasn’t the director, but for Season 2, we are having a very similar approach. I wanted to keep all the concepts from Season 1 and make it smooth. Follow the same storytelling, same concepts. So the difference, maybe, is that the tone is a little bit darker and slightly less comedic. And also, I think, the love story between Okarun and Momo is kind of evolving a little bit and more clear. Those would be maybe the main differences.
Q: Compared to the beginning of Season 1, Okarun and Momo have a lot more experience with the supernatural as they go against enemies in the next arcs. How did you showcase this continuous growth throughout the second season?
A: Well, besides what you see in the manga, when we have the chance to add something extra, we want to show them collaborating more. And so maybe Momo can use her power at the same time that she and Okarun are running away. Like Okarun is carrying Momo but she also helps using her powers. Things like that. Maybe it’s a scene we don’t have in the manga, but if we add something extra, we want to use that scene to show collaboration because it’s very important. It can be even with other characters. Sometimes maybe they are fighting a common enemy like with Aira or Jiji too later in the season, and then they also have more chemistry or more communication, and they can also be more powerful. We wanna show that.
Q: My next question has to do with the dual director situation. How did you divide directorial responsibilities with Yamashiro-san? And how did that collaboration work to bring out different elements of the story?
A: We share the season and we each have our own episodes. For example, I have the Evil Eye Arc. I directed, but it’s coming from Season 1 and is the same setting. They start in the onsen town. The Kito family were already decided, so I’m kind of trying to follow what was already decided. Many, many things were already started before. And so I want to keep — this is Yamashiro-san’s decision — so I want to keep that. I don’t want to do something completely different. And then once we get deeper in the in the arc, I get to make more decisions on my own.
And still, I need to check with him on what he thinks. And then we check many things together, especially if the character or setting is appearing later, because it’s probably gonna be in his episode, or it’s gonna be maybe in the future. And then we want to make sure we both agree and that we like the new ideas or new colors, for example. So we work together all the time, even if it’s not our episode. And then we also give opinions on many things like the music, things like that. But it’s difficult to have too many opinions. So the production team tries to make clear the differences. But yeah, basically, we have our own episodes, like half and half.
Q: You mentioned color just now, and I wanted to ask you about the color choice for Evil Eye. Director Yamashiro noted that you were responsible for the ultimate choice of that sort of bluish purple. How did you land on that color, and what was the inspiration behind it for you?
A: Oh, well, Evil Eye was already in the official illustration, like on the cover of the manga, and he had this almost black, but he was a little bit purple, so I thought that would be a good reference, a good starting point. And the thing is that Yamashiro-san imagined more white and purple. But I wanted the arc to look very dark and mysterious, almost like horror movie darkness — because they are underground. I really wanted to push the darkness. I thought that the purple and black is the color I really wanted to use. And then still we use the the bright — the white would be the the bright side. That is the Evil Eye kid, because he’s like [a person with albinism]. And then when we see the flashbacks that are showing the kid before he became evil, then we are using more of a bright color. But when he’s becoming more like Evil Eye, then everything gets really dark.
Q: Like you mentioned, a lot of this season — a lot at least of the DAN DA DAN: Evil Eye episodes — takes place in this giant underground space. Were there any difficulties in directing how things needed to play out, or how lighting needed to be, or anything like that in this particular space?
A: Yeah, it was very challenging because I wanted it to be really dark. And because I I wanted more of a realistic approach. Anime usually don’t want to do too dark, because some people might not be able to watch. So I wanted to push to the limit. Make sure people can watch it, but it has to be dark. Some people on the team were really afraid, because there were some problems with other anime. At that time there were people complaining online that it was too dark and they couldn’t see, so it was difficult to find the balance. But then we had this idea of the worm having the light that helps in seeing what is happening. And then we also imagine our eyes are getting used to the darkness, and that we see better as the episode keeps going. And then, for example, the 3rd episode is a little bit brighter. They’re still in the underground, but we imagine we just got used to the darkness.
Q: That’s very, very cool. And how much did fan responses or fan reviews of the first season affect the way you approached the second season?
A: Not that much, I think. I will talk with the director and see what are his ideas, and that’s most important. If they worked in Season 1, then we probably should keep doing something similar. And also for the the logic of the project we cannot change too much. But yeah, I don’t think too much about what people say.
Q: My next question is about Jiji. So obviously, Jiji is a newer character. But we still have Momo and Okarun and recurring characters. How did you make sure to give Jiji enough attention while not taking away too much attention from recurring characters like Momo and Okarun?
A: For me, Jiji was the main character of this arc. But, for example, we decided that when Okarun appears we want to show him having equal power as Jiji. While in the manga Okarun seems a little bit weaker, using camera angles we wanted to show how equal they are and the fight is. We don’t know what’s gonna happen, because the power is really in the middle between both. We thought about making things more balanced, more half-and-half. For example when they kick with the legs — instead of having one closer to the camera that looks more powerful, we will put them more symmetric. For example, things like that. We wanted to give Okarun — still he’s a main character. Even though we are following Jiji now, don’t forget Okarun’s the main character. And I think the scenes with Momo are also important. When she tries to escape to the outside, and then she burns the house. All this is showing how very clear how Momo is, making a lot of decisions and helping everybody.
Q: Looking toward the full season, did the introduction of any of the new yokai, or different monsters, or kaiju or aliens lead to any new techniques being used in the direction?
A: Yeah, I think we are using more 3D than before. Still similar, but sometimes with the rendering style we are trying new things about rendering and more technical things compared to before. I think that’s it. We didn’t have a lot of 3D in Season 1, we are using more now. Yeah, at the end.
Q: And as far as things that you want fans to focus on, or things you want fans to turn their attention to, are there any particular themes or emotions you wanted to emphasize more in this season?
A: I’m interested in — I mean, I hope the the audience can feel like Jiji when they watch all these flashbacks, and how he connects with the Evil Eye. I think this is a very dramatic moment, and very powerful, because we see Jiji was supposed to be just a cool guy, and athletic and clumsy, and then a little bit stupid sometimes, and then we start to see that he has a big wound — a trauma. And it’s very dramatic, and it’s very sad, like the the story with his parents, and then how he connects with the Evil Eye kid. That is also a very sad backstory. So I think that’s kind of beautiful, and I hope with the storytelling we could make the audience feel like Jiji. That’s what I’m looking for.
Q: Did you personally have any kind of connection to any of the characters that you were feeling as you directed?
A: In my personal life? Maybe not. I mean, they all have something that might remind you of you, or something like being a geek or being getting bullied, things like that. I think we all had something. But no, especially not like Jiji. No, I didn’t have those big traumas in my life.
Q: As far as collaboration with Tatsu-sensei, what has that process been like from your end? What kinds of interactions have there been as you planned out the season?
A: I think he’s more involved in the script part — he checks all that, and after that he gives us a lot of freedom. Still, of course, he’s going to check all the storyboards and direction and all the design settings and things like that. But we don’t usually get a lot of retakes or notes. He’s really amazing and very open to trying new things and new ideas.
Q: And one thing that he definitely did a lot of is referencing other series like Ultraman or things like that. Did you have to engage with or watch any older series to keep up with the references that the source material makes?
A: Yeah, before I started directing, that came more from like Yamashiro-san. He gave me some homework, like I have to watch, of course, Ultraman. And I try to understand better vintage Japanese TV shows that I never watched before. And then I also watched like Shin Ultraman, Shin Kamen Rider. The new versions that are also very authentic because they take the best part of the old thing and then they they make it modern. And I think they’re really great films. Even Shin Godzilla, for example. So I watched a lot of Kaiju movies that I didn’t know of before, yeah, stuff like that.
Q: Would you say those kinds of things affected your style a lot? Or is the style that you direct with still pretty similar to what you usually do.
A: We try to get ideas from those. And Yamashiro-san is really interested in how these old shows have monsters with the lights inside. So he thinks a lot like, “Okay, this monster is gonna have light in the eyes, because inside it’s like an old TV show. There is a light, like an actual light inside.” And that’s the way he thinks. So I try to also use those ideas in my episodes.
Q: Looking more toward the antagonists of the Evil Eye episodes. Obviously they’re colored a bit differently. They’re kind of dark. They’re a bit nasty, for lack of better word. How did you approach having so many more human or humanoid antagonists versus having more yokai antagonists? A: So we have the worm that is more like a monster. And then the Evil Eye. Yeah, I think it’s the same approach. The difference with the Evil Eye is that he stays because he, even though he’s defeated, he’s gonna come back. So this makes it so that we need to be more precise with the color direction, because sometimes he awakens. But we don’t want to have the screen in purple all the time in all the episodes. So we need to find when is important, when he’s an enemy, when he’s a friend. This is gonna beAnswer contains a fairly significant plot point from later in Season 2.
challenging from now on, because it’s gonna be always in the story.
In Season 1 the the color change was a little bit more random and kind of more artistically decided, like we can do this here or here. We can try in a different way, it wasn’t like a logic. But now it’s being repeated more and more. So we needed to decide — okay, what do we do with the color with this enemy and how it’s gonna change in this situation is becoming more scientific. Of course, we can experiment. But we need to think a lot about it. But it’s also fun.
Q: You mentioned in the interview during the movie episodes that the music is a bit different. It’s a bit more upbeat and techno. Was that a choice that you and Yamashiro-san made? Or is that just more of a coincidence?
A: It was a choice. Normally for every big scene or every important character we have music that goes with them. And then I was thinking, what could we do with the Jiji? Because we had the Kito family, and it was more like a traditional old style song. And then with the worm it was more — I I wanted something with Mongolian influence, like folklore and a little bit like experimental, kind of weird. So I I was thinking, what should we do with Jiji? And I thought, “Okay, he’s gonna be in a lot of fights. What about having electronic? Push the electronic part.” And because the composer, Ushio-san, is really good with electronic music. I think it fits completely when I hear the song. They were really cool, and I love how they look with the animation.
We’d like to thank Abel Góngora for taking the time to speak with us and the fine folks over at GKIDS and 42West for arranging the interview. DAN DA DAN: EVIL EYE premiered on May 30 in Asia (excluding Japan), premiered today, June 6, in North America, and will premiere in Europe on June 7.
Season 2 begins streaming July 3. For those planning to attend Anime Expo 2025, a panel featuring director Fuga Yamashiro from Science SARU and Abby Trott (Momo), A.J. Beckles (Okarun), & Aleks Le (Jiji) from the English voice cast takes place Saturday, July 5 from 4:30PM to 5:20 PM PT at Peacock Theater.
©Yukinobu Tatsu/SHUEISHA, DANDADAN Production Committee
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