Dara-san of Reiwa – Episode 1

Content warning: nudity, brief scenes of physical violence and mutilation

What’s it about? Legend says that a vicious, vengeful spirit called Yamatagi-Madara dwells in the mountains and will curse anyone who comes near her shrine. Siblings Hinata and Kaoru don’t think she’s that scary, though—they think she’s pretty cool and want to make friends!

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Allow me an interlude to talk about snake-god breasts. I promise it’s important.

For the first half-ish of the episode, Yamatagi-Madara, later nicknamed Dara-san, is naked except for the bells around her neck (and her big snake tail, which naturally censors some of what’s below her waist). And the storyboarding doesn’t mind showing you that her chest is bare—no carefully placed shocks of hair, no tasteful yet convoluted censoring by the scenery, just multiple rather matter-of-fact shots of her nude breasts. After so much exposure to contrived fan service where the rule seems to be that any amount of cleavage is acceptable as long as you don’t show nipple, it was a genuine pleasant surprise to see this. Not only that, but they droop as if gravity is realistically acting on them, and her nipples are proportional in size! It might sound silly, but given how nudity is stigmatized and how easily animated or drawn breasts can reject the laws of physics and biology, Dara-san’s vaguely naturalistic bare bust is genuinely kind of significant.

Ironically, the human kids make her put on underwear, and covering her up with a lacy bra makes the imagery feel far more fan-servicey than when she was simply hanging out natural-style. And frankly, I feel bad for her—don’t confine this poor ancient spirit to underwires and elastic just because of modern-day ideas of modesty! Let her be loose if she was comfortable like that! Free the snake nipple!

This moment, unfortunately, nicely highlights my key issues with this premiere: it’s ability to present something kind of cool and then ruin it with its own sense of humor. I’ve only known her for one episode, but Dara-san has quickly made my list of “interesting female characters I wish could escape to better TV shows”.

Her backstory is genuinely harrowing: betrayed, mutilated, and murdered, then left to fuse with an angry snake entity and morph into a vengeful, curse-flinging spirit for centuries. The ancient horrors of Dara-san’s life and afterlife stand in stark contrast to the goofy energy brought by Hinata and Kaoru. Which, yes, I get it, the juxtaposition and the subversion of expectations is part of the joke. It’s the entire joke that the series hinges on. But when you interrupt her somber explanation of how she’s bound to the mountain with a cutaway to tween-age children tittering about bondage, I can’t help but get the sense you’re… not taking any of this as seriously as you should. It seems more than a little crass to give your female lead such a gnarly, bloody backstory only to make it the butt of a joke, no? Especially when that joke’s not very funny?

I’m equally not laughing at the comedy around the siblings, an uncomfortable amount of which leans on their gender presentation. See, Hinata is the older sister, but she keeps her hair short and dresses like a tomboy, and Kaoru is the younger brother, but he keeps his hair long and presents feminine. How oddball and confusing for our long-suffering snake-lady!

It’s not as bad as it could be, I suppose, but I’m never impressed when “this character isn’t the gender you thought they were!” is a punchline. I’m sure there’s a way to do it that’s actually inclusive and fun, but most of the time these gags rely on the kind of normative standards that cross over with transphobia very easily, and involve a degree of skeevy weirdness about the characters’ bodies. For example, Hinata feels the need to demonstrate that she’s really a girl by lifting up her shirt to show off her sports bra, which is frankly an odd and gross thing to write a pre-teen character doing, even if you’re trying to characterize her as so blasé that she doesn’t mind hanging out with a scary mountain god. It adds an unnecessary layer of voyeurism to something that doesn’t need to be a visual gag in the first place. It’s weird, man, you made it weird.

Dara-san of Reiwa’s premise is honestly pretty fun, but its execution leaves a lot to be desired, and this first episode brings in enough skeevy humor that I’m not compelled to stick with it. If the opening credits are anything to go by, the rest of the show is going to double down on Dara-centric fan service (not only is it putting her in a bra, it’s putting her in maid outfits and sexy costumes) rather than alleviating it, and if it’s built gender-non-conformity into the comedy around the siblings, I imagine it’s going to keep bringing up dumb jokes about how confusing it is, showing off their bodies in the process. I give this episode one gold star for the refreshing depiction of breasts, but then I snatch it back for the… everything else.