Unless you followed the success story of its manga and the surrounding buzz from diehards, the quality of supernatural anime Dan Da Dan may have caught you off guard in last year’s fall season. Suddenly, as one of the leading lights of the medium’s sizzling summer lineup, the pressure is on.

Speaking ahead of the release of the Dan Da Dan: Evil Eye film, co-director Abel Gongora says he’s acutely aware of increased attention on the kooky series, which sees a pair of students – Momo and Okarun – become closer, despite initially being sceptical of the other’s interest in different supernatural entities.

“Expectations are high and we have to keep up,” Gongora tells GamesRadar+. “That’s a concern I have, but I’m lucky. I have [Fuga] Yamashiro, the director of season 1. He is there, and he’s helping a lot. We are trying to make a better season, but we’ll see. We are still [working] on it.”

On his working relationship with Yamashiro, Gongora remains in-sync with his fellow director – a result of the pair working together at Science SARU for several years.

“We divided the episodes. It’s not exactly half and half, but we are not directing the same episodes,” Gongora explains. “We check many things together; we decide many things together. We are also learning a lot from each other – I hope he’s learning too! … We have similar points of view in animation and cinema, so it’s smooth, yeah.”

Dan Da Dan: Evil Eye is out in theaters now. Dan Da Dan season 2 is streaming on Crunchyroll and Netflix from July. For more, check out the rest of the new anime coming out this year, plus all the best Crunchyroll anime you should be watching right now.