Recap

Dandy and crew travel to the deserted planet Grease where they agree to help organise a dancing competition to revive the local economy.

Zigg’s Thoughts

After last week’s stunning art piece, Space Dandy does what it usually does in the wake of its ‘serious’ episodes and retreats to completely nonsensical comedy. That’s almost certainly a wise move, but there’s an inevitable slight deflation which comes with that shift. When combined with an episode that’s best described as ‘patchy’ it makes for an uneven viewing experience. We were howling with laughter one minute and then just sort of baffled the next.

I think one of the reasons why I’m conflicted about this episode is that there’s so much good material that they ultimately do nothing with. A planet called Grease! A galaxy-wide dancing contest! Dandy and crew having to revive a stalled economy! There are the seeds of a great (albeit much more conventional) comedy episode that are planted. Instead, there’s sort of an absence of any real zip to much of the show. The middle segment is almost dull, what with the lacking chemistry between Dandy and the old couple, and the comedy that’s present is noticeably less sharp and cutting than it normally is. It’s one of the few times that the show has used its always-considerably audiovisual assault to hide basic scripting issues.

Having said that, it really is quite an assault. As little energy as there is in the opening, the ending makes up for it with aplomb. Everything from the landing of the (fake) Dancingian onwards is visually lush and packed with fantastic tunes. I’ve never seen a show before that was so good at managing to make going off model into a legitimate part of its style. That is to say, the animation is very loose but that fits the fluid, dance-orientated style of the show, and to be honest it also just makes the funny bits funnier. The visual flourishes come thick and fast, and the entire aging sequence is a great example of the flair and detail that the team constantly bring to their work.

All of which is to say I both hugely enjoyed the utterly insane ending to this episode and found it pretty unfulfilling. Sure, the revelation that the Dancingians are actually gigantic flying Onion rings is unexpected, and the blitz of hallucinatory weirdness that follows is supremely funny. But it’s also kind of a pointless twist, one that serves no real purpose other than to launch us into Pepperland. It’s certainly not narratively satisfying or the payoff to any major plot arc. It just sort of is a thing which happens. That’s not to undersell the hilarity or the fantastic artistic endeavour that was on display here, but this was definitely somewhat of an aimless episode, although still highly enjoyable.

Random Observations

• The fake Dancingian is dangerously close to an uncomfortable racial stereotype.
• Once again, the music in this episode is outstanding. It wouldn’t work without a funky soundtrack and we definitely got that.
• In case you doubted that this was a Shinchiro Watanabe show, this is the third musically orientated episode.
• If Meow is the record needle, where does the sound come from? Or don’t I want to know?
• Writer Keiko Nobumoto also wrote episode 15 and episode 19, both of which resemble this one in a lot of ways – interesting ideas with too little plot to support them and not enough pizazz from the supporting cast.