Recap

Dandy teams up with a kindred spirit named Johnny, and together with Meow and QT the duo form a band.

Zigg’s Thoughts

For a while now Space Dandy has had an interesting problem, and it’s something we touched upon last week. The show can be extremely funny, but it generally only becomes super funny when it gets wrapped up in its own weird fantasy world. The episodes which have just been straight up spoofs or parodies have tended to land a little flat. Happily, I’m here to tell you that that streak has ended, as this episode is a fast, funny look at the music industry and at following your dreams, albeit with the show’s usual bizarre skew.

Once again, it’s a good highlight at how Space Dandy‘s unique presentation can take a well worn idea and make it fresh again. ‘Two losers form band’ is one of the oldest comedy scenarios in the book, and even the twist of ‘one of them actually is leading a double life’ is pretty familiar at this point. What the show does to make everything funny again though is amp up the craziness of everything. So it’s not just that Dandy and Johnny have ‘creative differences’, it’s that they fight about EVERYTHING. It’s not just that Johnny leads a double life, it’s that his ‘real’ job is COMMANDER OF A GALACTIC EMPIRE. Everything gets turned up to an absurd degree – the fighting, the dramatic return, the inevitable cock-up that leads to the bands downfall. It’s little surprise that a show helmed by Watanabe would relish ploughing through musical cliches and there are some great flourishes of style throughout, particularly the constant use of freezeframes.

One interesting thing to note is that this is probably the closest the show has gotten to being an out-and-out satire through its run. Space Dandy is too wacky, to fabulous at heart to ever really have much of a cutting edge, but there’s definitely a sarcastic undertone to the band’s instantaneous rise despite their total lack of musical talent, and their equally rapid descent into nothingness. Still, it’s more of a reflection on the dysfuntionality of the band itself and it’s pretty notable that the promoter is presented as a pretty straight-up guy rather than the utter slimeball it would have been easy for him to be. I guess you can take away as much commentary as you want to from the whole thing – it’s definitely no scathing indictment of the music industry, but there’s perhaps a slightly knowing wink there, and that’s enough for me. What’s important is that the episode manages to be funny from start to finish, and do it in a fashion that had largely eluded the show up to this point.

Random Observations

• Amazed (but loved) that the show just straight up used the Galaga music and referenced the game by name.
• One thing I didn’t really like in this episode are the random super provocative shots of Honey lying on the table. We don’t need that guys, come on.
• Ian Sinclair continues to show surprisingly good singing skills as Dandy, and the song is certainly catchy enough to pass as a one hit wonder.
• I would pay considerable money for a Dropkix shirt that had ‘Space Budokan’ printed on it
• By far and away my favourite joke this episode is when Johnny emerges from a lion’s head which emerges from his robot’s chest. It’s a spectacularly dumb visual and also a nice shout out to the golden age of super robot shows.