DNA2 is one of the few anime I can think of that improve upon the manga. There are two reasons for this:
Okay, okay, I lied. That last picture isn’t from DNA2. And that scene actually happens in the manga, so this isn’t one of the two reasons that the anime is better than the manga. Well, actually technically I guess it is: in the manga, she’s about to get gang raped, and then farts. Yes, that’s right: one of the reasons that the anime is better than the manga is because it removes half of the scenes where one of the female members of the main character’s harem is about to gang raped (and there is at least one scene like that for each of them!) Unfortunately, this by extension means that the anime leaves in the other half of the scenes.
The other reason is that it changes the structure of the manga somewhat. For the most part, DNA2 is supposed to be a harem comedy. It’s also a pretty good one, and unlike so many others, actually comes up with a (decent) reason for both why the lead character is irresistible to women despite being a complete schlemiel, and a good reason why he needs to be constantly cockblocked: it turns out that the lead, Junta, has a gene in his DNA which makes him a “mega-playboy” who is so irresistible to women that he and his descendants end up single-handedly overpopulating the planet. This causes the future to send a female terminator soldier back in time to alter his DNA to take away that gene. But like any good Terminator story, this initiates a time paradox where she accidentally activates the dormant gene; until she shot him, he was such a nebbish that even the thought of anything sexual would cause him to barf. Yep, Girls Bravo blatantly lifted its premise from DNA2.
Anyway, after about one volume in the manga (which mainly consists of some introductions to the characters along with a dash of ecchi humor), there’s a scene where she tries to shoot him with a new vaccine bullet, but misses and hits his classmate instead. This ends up giving that guy super powers. At the same time, apparently the vaccine also gave Junta super powers, and the manga then goes off onto a DBZ-type battle for literally hundreds of pages. I think almost half the series is taken up by this one battle. Then once that’s over, it’s back to some harem hijinks before ending with another time paradox-y ending.
Fortunately, the anime truncates this to about half of an episode, rather than about half of the series. Additionally, this gets placed at the end of the series, providing for a much more reasonable climax. There’s then a 3 episode OVA, which takes place immediately after this and then gives the anime the complete manga time paradox ending. This is much better than manga’s approach, where that fight completely took over the series to the extent that I started to think that the entire series was basically just going to be some big-hair-and-fireball-fest.
Would I watch it even if I weren’t forced? I actually had wanted to see this one after reading about it in BFI Screen Guides: 100 Anime a few years ago.
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