Recap

Dandy and co. have captured a new type of alien, but they have no memory of how.

Zigg’s Thoughts

After what was by Space Dandy standards a pretty straight-ahead episode, we step back into weird and wonderful territory here, and it’s delightful to experience. Although the mystery here is never really presented as grim or truly dangerous, there’s a fine sense of distant foreboding throughout, mostly from the exceptional art style. It’s almost vaguely noirish, and though there’s very clearly a limited amount of movement, it’s once again a god example of contrasting styles used to great effect to make the whole thing seem a little more otherworldly.

In the meantime, the plot is sort of a mess, but it’s at the very least an ambitious one. There’s a lot of premise in the memory manipulation idea that the episode doesn’t really take full advantage of, but what we do get is cool and actually pretty clever. A different sort of show could have built an entire mystery around the idea, and as it is Space Dandy uses it mostly to set up some funny jokes and a highly amusing ending. not that that’s a bad thing of course. I am mildly intrigued by Dr Gel’s proclamation that he’s found the source of Dandy’s ‘incredible power’ however. It could be a one off joke, but on the other hand they could be planting the seeds for an actual plot to emerge. What if Dandy’s incredible power is in fact the same as the show’s sheer ignorance of continuity? What if he has the ability to simply skip to alternate timelines or something like that?

Really though, I do hope they don’t take that path. I’m having way too much fun with the show’s current scattershot format, and I’m loving the offbeat invention that permeates each fresh take. You can tell the creativity poured into a production when they take care to embellish even the smallest moments with terrifically funny flourishes, like moe book or Bea’s adorable power trip. This is nowhere near as good a character piece as last week, but the beauty of Space Dandy is that it doesn’t have to be – it just has to be something different.

Random Observations

• Here’s a really really deep cut for you – the red box gave me Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro flashbacks.
• Dandy’s firing of the Aloha Oe cannon is a blatant, almost shot for shot reference to Space Battleship Yamato.