Space Dandy! He’s a dandy guy… in space. He combs the galaxy like his pompadour on the hunt for aliens. Planet after planet he searches, encountering new beings both friendly, and not. These are the spectacular adventures of Space Dandy and his brave space crew. In space.
Series at-a-glance:
Genre: Sci-fi, Comedy, (occasionally) Drama
Creators: Watanabe Shinichirō and Natsume Shingo
Studio: Bones
Length: 26 episodes, Baby
Year: 2014
Highlights: Adventure, comedy, and pompadours... IN SPACE!
Genre: Sci-fi, Comedy, (occasionally) Drama
Creators: Watanabe Shinichirō and Natsume Shingo
Studio: Bones
Length: 26 episodes, Baby
Year: 2014
Highlights: Adventure, comedy, and pompadours... IN SPACE!
Somewhere in a distant galaxy in the far future lives a man named Space Dandy (yes, that’s his real name). Dandy is the coolest, most suave, and best looking guy in the entire universe; at least, he likes to think he is. Dandy works as an alien hunter, tracking down the rarest and most exotic aliens to bring into the Alien Registration Center to earn some cash and flying around in his Hawaiian-themed space ship, the Aloha Oe. He is aided in this endeavor by his fearless crew: a hapless robotic copilot and vacuum cleaner, QT, and a cat-like alien from Betelgeuse called Meow (who claims he is not a space cat, despite fulfilling all the requirements of being a space cat). Dandy is a simple guy, who wants nothing more than to get paid and then spend his hard-earned woolongs at his favorite restaurant, BooBies, a thinly-veiled parody of Hooters. But Dandy tends to get involved in numerous misadventures, frequently due to his own incompetence. Furthermore, Dandy himself is being hunted down by the mysterious evil genius Doctor Gel because he is “The Chosen One”...
From the mind of Watanabe Shinichirō, the man who brought us the science-fiction epic Cowboy Bebop, comes a new and decidedly less serious science-fiction adventure. Where Cowboy Bebop was frequently melancholy and tear-inducing, Space Dandy is a careless romp through space featuring everything from a search for the best space ramen in the galaxy to a comedic take on the zombie apocalypse. The show is very self-aware, with the narrator frequently addressing the viewer directly and sometimes even exchanging insults with the cast due to their frequent failures. The show lacks pretty much any continuity, cheerfully killing off characters in one episode only for them to reappear completely fine in the next.
Space Dandy is a highly episodic series, and (almost) completely lacks a cohesive plot. Furthermore, while the series is a comedy for the most part, the tone and style of each episode can vary greatly; this is mostly due to each episode having a different director while Watanabe acted as the overall director. Many episodes stick to a comedic and light-hearted style, such as “I Can’t Be the Only One, Baby”, where Dandy and crew meet versions of themselves from a series of alternate dimensions, many of which are references to other anime series. Others can occasionally become serious; “Even Vacuum Cleaners Fall in Love, Baby” details how QT comes to fall in love with a coffeemaker. A few are highly surreal; “A World With No Sadness, Baby” is the story of Dandy’s adventures in the afterlife. The series is also fond of referencing and parodying other series and movies; “A Race in Space is Dangerous, Baby” is an homage to the anime film Redline, “The Transfer Student is Dandy, Baby” is a parody of Glee, and “A Merry Companion is a Wagon in Space, Baby” is a whole-plot reference to the 1973 film Paper Moon.
The visual style of Space Dandy is a throwback to the Raygun Gothic look popular in the 1950s and 1960s. Space ships are shiny, robots are rounded and as unrealistic as possible, and everyone has ray guns (of course). The series also takes many elements from classic Space Operas such as Star Wars, but also gleefully subverts many of its common tropes. There is an epic war going on between two immensely powerful interstellar empires… but it takes place almost entirely in the background and hardly ever effects the main characters. Dandy is being hunted by evil scientist Dr. Gel because he is supposedly “The Chosen One”… but through a combination of his own and Dandy’s incompetence the two of them never seem to actually encounter each other. This stacks with the series’ lack of continuity and frequent breaking of the fourth wall to create a show that is both a parody of and love-letter to classic science fiction.
So if you need an expert alien hunter to track down that super-rare Alpha-Centauri blue wolf-beetle… honestly, you probably should call somebody else. But if you want a cool, suave, and utterly incompetent idiot whose bizarre misadventures are sure to bring a smile to your face… then Space Dandy is your man.
From the mind of Watanabe Shinichirō, the man who brought us the science-fiction epic Cowboy Bebop, comes a new and decidedly less serious science-fiction adventure. Where Cowboy Bebop was frequently melancholy and tear-inducing, Space Dandy is a careless romp through space featuring everything from a search for the best space ramen in the galaxy to a comedic take on the zombie apocalypse. The show is very self-aware, with the narrator frequently addressing the viewer directly and sometimes even exchanging insults with the cast due to their frequent failures. The show lacks pretty much any continuity, cheerfully killing off characters in one episode only for them to reappear completely fine in the next.
Space Dandy is a highly episodic series, and (almost) completely lacks a cohesive plot. Furthermore, while the series is a comedy for the most part, the tone and style of each episode can vary greatly; this is mostly due to each episode having a different director while Watanabe acted as the overall director. Many episodes stick to a comedic and light-hearted style, such as “I Can’t Be the Only One, Baby”, where Dandy and crew meet versions of themselves from a series of alternate dimensions, many of which are references to other anime series. Others can occasionally become serious; “Even Vacuum Cleaners Fall in Love, Baby” details how QT comes to fall in love with a coffeemaker. A few are highly surreal; “A World With No Sadness, Baby” is the story of Dandy’s adventures in the afterlife. The series is also fond of referencing and parodying other series and movies; “A Race in Space is Dangerous, Baby” is an homage to the anime film Redline, “The Transfer Student is Dandy, Baby” is a parody of Glee, and “A Merry Companion is a Wagon in Space, Baby” is a whole-plot reference to the 1973 film Paper Moon.
The visual style of Space Dandy is a throwback to the Raygun Gothic look popular in the 1950s and 1960s. Space ships are shiny, robots are rounded and as unrealistic as possible, and everyone has ray guns (of course). The series also takes many elements from classic Space Operas such as Star Wars, but also gleefully subverts many of its common tropes. There is an epic war going on between two immensely powerful interstellar empires… but it takes place almost entirely in the background and hardly ever effects the main characters. Dandy is being hunted by evil scientist Dr. Gel because he is supposedly “The Chosen One”… but through a combination of his own and Dandy’s incompetence the two of them never seem to actually encounter each other. This stacks with the series’ lack of continuity and frequent breaking of the fourth wall to create a show that is both a parody of and love-letter to classic science fiction.
So if you need an expert alien hunter to track down that super-rare Alpha-Centauri blue wolf-beetle… honestly, you probably should call somebody else. But if you want a cool, suave, and utterly incompetent idiot whose bizarre misadventures are sure to bring a smile to your face… then Space Dandy is your man.
This article is part of the Guide to AnimeLand series. Recent articles have included Redline, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and Kill la Kill.
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