YMMV / Dan The Man

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Does the Resistance really care about the peasants, or are they just a bunch of anarchists who wanted a reason to destroy the King and his subordinates? Were they always evil or just slowly taking more drastic measures in an attempt to destroy the King and his Corrupt Corporate Executives?
• Angst? What Angst?: While this could just be because he's the player character, Dan doesn't react at all when the Resistance Leader kills Josie and the Geezers in Stage 8.
• Awesome Art: Say what you will about pixel art, but this series has a lot of unique stuff going for it.
• Awesome Music: The series has a good amount of foot tappers to enjoy and listen to.
• Crossover Ship: Since Barry Steakfries is a Guest Fighter in the video game version, shipping him with Dan or Josie was inevitable.
• Die for Our Ship: Stage 6 has not been received well by Dan/Josie shippers due to the introduction of Ana. Thankfully, she only appeared in that particular stage and hasn't made another appearance since then.
• Fridge Horror: If Dan didn't have an extra life in Stage 8, he, Josie, the Geezers, and any other major characters would have most likely been Killed Off for Real and the series would have ended right then and there.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!:
  • The main criticism of Stage 9. It came out 5 years after the previous stage, and had all of its conflict resolved in two and a half minutes, being the shortest video in the series at the time.
  • The follow-up Stages are even worse in that regard, each getting progressively shorter. Stages 14 to 17 tried to rectify this, becoming longer over time instead, except the first 35 seconds of each of them (sans 15) are now covered by a "Previously on…" segment. This makes 14 shorter than 13 anyway, while other Stages being closer to 9 in length.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Due to being available as an alternate playable character, with her and Dan even swapping places if the game is played as her, nobody believed that Josie would be Killed Off for Real in Stage 8. Sure enough, her death gets undone thanks to an extra life Dan had.
• Moral Event Horizon: If he hadn't crossed it when he killed the King and one of the Geezers, the Resistance Leader definitely crossed it when he kills Josie (and the other Geezer) right in front of Dan in Stage 8.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: Given that it's based on a Web-Animation, the mobile game is wonderfully-made. The fact that when Halfbrick Studios removed many of its games from mobile stores in 2018, it was one of the few games to stay says a lot about it. It was also good enough to receive a sequel.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Don't let the cutesy pixel art fool ya; it's rather mature. Stage 3 has Dan discovering that the drunkard he beat up in the start of the video had an abusive childhood, Stage 4 has Dan impregnating Josie, and Stage 5 has Dan getting drunk and vomiting then soiling his underwear. And the series gets more violent as it goes on.
• The Woobie:
  • Poor Josie just can't catch a break throughout the series as each hardship slowly turn the chipper and happy girl into cynical and sad one in the process, with Dan casually dumping her for Ana and witnessing his apparent death in particular took a major blow on her. She deserves a hug after all that...
  • The child peasant introduced in Stage 12 deserves a special mention, he has to take care of his sickly parents, with his mom in particular is constantly glitches out while running the farm all alone. If that isn't enough, the cultists shows up to kidnap him alongside the other peasants and burn his crops and house away, while his parents still in it. All that topped off with him almost being sacrificed for the chicken god's summoning ritual by those cultists.
• Writer Cop Out: Stage 8 was initially advertised as the conclusion of the series. Unfortunately, the video game ends on the "Everybody Dies" Ending, which is immediately averted by Dan's extra life pushing him back to the beginning of the Stage and beating up the Resistance. And that's it. The video version is even worse, with Dan not remembering anything that happened over the course of the Stage and siding with the Resistance again. Many were not pleased with neither of those endings, since they don't resolve any of the plot points this Stage was built up to conclude, such as the Advisor still being in charge of the kingdom and Dan's attempts to reconciliate with Josie after their relationship went downhill in Stage 6. Because of this, many wanted for the series to continue with Stage 9, which eventually happened.

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