26 episodes of alien-hunting, space-racing, singing-and-dancing, waterspout-surfing, booty-appreciating, death-defying, universe-hopping action later, the Glorio crew reflect on the spectacular adventures of Space Dandy and his brave space crew. In space.

Zigg’s Thoughts

The really tough thing to do when summing up Space Dandy is knowing where to start. After all, this is a show which prided itself on its diversity, on never being the same twice. Really, aside from some very basic characterisation and some recurring visual cues these 26 episodes could almost be 26 different shows. I don’t know about you, but trying to recap 26 different shows at once doesn’t sound like something I can do. But let’s try anyway shall we?

Really, the vast depth and breadth of the stories on display is one of the reasons I love the show so much, and also one of the reasons why it works so well. Unpredictability and variety are vital ingredients of comedy, and they’re so rare in the anime space, where a lot of ‘comic’ shows have come to rely on stale punchlines and recycled cliches of the genre. Instead, Space Dandy had a feeling of wild anarchy, a show where anything could happen and it frequently did. By using the few established character tropes it had and then throwing them into a wild, weird mix of situations, the show was able to generate some fantastic laughs, particularly since the better episodes possessed a keen sense of comic timing and remembered to offer a knowing glance towards their pulpy origin.

What was really exciting about the open format though was the chance for so many unique authors, directors and artists to flex their creative muscle in a way we very rarely see in anime. As such, each episode was not only a self-contained plot, but also basically a feature in miniature, an artistic statement that stood apart from all the others. It wasn’t just the plots that varied – the show fluctuated tonally, emotionally and even visually as different hands took the reigns, ranging from wild sitcom hijinks to somber medititation to outrageously surreal farce. More than perhaps any other anime I’ve seen, Space Dandy feels like it’s consciously trying to be art, that the passion of the production team is being put onscreen for reasons that aren’t as petty as to sell DVDs or move merchandise. That individuality gives it personality that flows from story to story despite their lack of traditional continuity.

Prioritising boldness and a willingness to experiment over basic storytelling competence can be a dangerous game to play however, and it’s true that the show’s bitty nature generally prevents it from telling any sort of long form story or having much of a message beyond its individual capsule episodes. That’s regrettable, but also something that’s an inevitable tradeoff of opting for variety over monotony. While it’s true that the quality level of the episodes fluctuates quite considerably, even the worst are generally entertaining. The best meanwhile, manage to tell a complete story within the bounds of their 20-odd minute runtime, bringing more pathos, honesty and humanity to their cast than many shows manage in their entire run. There’s weight and meaning to the more ‘serious’ episodes that’s shocking considering the overarching premise, and a delightful playfulness to the ‘silly’ episodes that makes them incredibly amusing even when they aren’t gut-bustingly funny.

The show’s mission is aided to no end by its extraordinary audio-visual clout. BONES finally are paired with creative directors who can leverage their undoubted talent and the result is an exceptional looking show. The studio does a great job of maintaining the basic retro-futuristic look and then layer beautiful variations upon it depending on the episode, from wistful dreaminess to frantic Looney Tunes-eque energy to knowing style-parodies of other popular shows. The soundtrack has always been outstanding, creating the perfect mood to accompany whatever’s onscreen and likewise showing it’s depth and breadth, from funky pop to ambient electronica. On the audio front it’d be criminal not to commend the outstanding dub, whose day-and-date presence did a huge amount enhance my enjoyment of the show every week and also to present the comedy as snappy, sharp and slightly more tailored to our western sensibilities.

At the end of it all, what Space Dandy does is give me hope, hope for the future of anime. It reminds me of how many talented people still work in the industry and how in the right environment they can still produce something unique and extraordinary. It reminds of the reason that I started watching anime in the first place – the seemingly unlimited possibilities of the medium, the beauty and the strangeness, the willingness to be weird and go beyond what’s normal. Space Dandy is all of that. It’s funny. It’s stupid. It’s beautiful. It’s pervy. It’s profound. It’s shallow. It’s wonderful. It is everything that makes anime special, all in one place. In space. Baby.

Iro’s Thoughts

One of the things that attracted me to anime in the first place was its willingness to do continuous serial stories, but Space Dandy ignores that concept, taking advantage of its weekly format to practically be a different anime every episode. I couldn’t help but be enthralled by the show’s ability to morph its tone between emotional, comedic, and plain weird at the drop of a hat, while making them all feel cogent in context. A musical, a romance, a comedy, a courtroom drama… Space Dandy is all of these things and it never felt out of place.

When the first episode involves self-destructing the Aloha-Oe and killing the entire main cast, the second a search for the fabled Phantom Space Ramen, and the third fighting a boob monster in a giant robot, what else is there to say? Every week, I looked forward to seeing what crazy thing would happen next. Space Dandy had its ups and downs, but the willingness to try something new every episode made it endearing despite its penchant for booty. It’s an instant classic in my mind, and I’d say we’d be lucky to see anything else like it within the decade.

Gee’s Thoughts

Space Dandy is an undeniably special show. As the others have already mentioned, between its wacky hijinks, ability to keep things spontaneous, and a real sense of fun, it almost never failed to be entertaining throughout its run. And there’s something to be said for an anime that attempts such a thing. In a medium dominated by the need to sell merchandise or financially justify itself, Space Dandy happily exists as a proud outlier to the trend. The news of Space Dandy’s poor sales in Japan does not surprise me in the least. Considering how terrible the average Japanese otaku’s taste is in their domestic media, I have a feeling Watanabe himself likely knew that this was the inevitable conclusion.

And yet despite that, Space Dandy proudly wears its distinct flair on its sleeves. With the sheer number of guest directors, different key animators, and the overall artistic shift from episode to episode, it ends up as less a serial narrative and more a 26 episode showcase of a variety of different directors’ and animators’ approach to the medium of animation. It’s so easy to see between episodes how much an animator’s style can shift from one to the next. Regardless of the show’s actual content, it was an artistic achievement for the medium and truly one of the most visually impressive things I’ve watched this year. And even more than its likeable cast and entertaining antics, I think this is Space Dandy’s strongest contribution to the medium. I love anime, but so often, I feel it disappoints me. Not to say anime is unique in this regard, many mainstream entertainment media disappoint me. But anime, despite its niche value, still manages to fall into stagnation and tired trends. Not Dandy though. Every week, even if it doesn’t entertain me, it impresses me in its willingness to do new things every episode.

I’m not sure I can call Space Dandy an instant classic, but its sheer devotion to being interesting is worthy of praise. More than anything else this season, I will truly miss Space Dandy.

Marlin’s Thoughts

Looking at it from a whole, I doubt I’ll be calling Space Dandy my favorite show of the year. Sure, it had some absolutely dynamite episodes, and I love what the anthology style allowed the show to do, but that doesn’t forgive the system for when it made a lackluster episode. Thankfully, there was a lot of good talent working on this, so most disappointing episodes were merely average rather than outright terrible, and there was definitely a lot more good than mediocre throughout the entire run. I also go back and forth on whether I wished Space Dandy was always a goofy comedy. True, some really pretty and poignant episodes were made when the creators were able to do whatever they wanted, but to me the heart and soul of Space Dandy was always its off the wall brand of humor, and any episode that didn’t include that was just missing out on its true potential.

Still, Space Dandy was a lot of fun to watch over this past year. There was certainly a lot to like, from the amazing visuals to the top notch jokes, to the novel process of giving us western fans a dub alongside its japanese release. I can’t properly describe how much I believe the Space Dandy experience is improved by its stellar dub cast. It helps that the Narrator was basically transplanted from another show with a similar premise, but the voices we got for the main crew were spot on as well, giving a lot of life to these already outrageous personalities. Space Dandy is the kind of thing that we may only see once in a decade, something where its creators were given free reign to create the episode they wanted. Whether this lead to good or ill, we were always ready to be given another ride in Dandy’s wonderful world.