DESCRIPTION

CAST

ANIME ComedySpace☆Dandy 2
SPECIAL ComedySpace☆Dandy Picture Drama
MUSICViva Namida
MANGA ComedySpace☆Dandy

REVIEWS

• 

  LightSeed

  50/100
  A colorful and great-looking show with sometimes boring execution.

  Space☆Dandy is a middle of the road anime. It tells the story of the daily lives of Dandy and his crew traveling through space searching for rare species of aliens for good money so they can go expend some time in BooBies, a intergalactic restaurant chain full of beautifully barmaids. Even with some incredible animation throughout it and an excellent soundtrack that accompanies the most memorable scenes couldn't make me love the show. But how Space☆Dandy manage to fail at engaging me in it’s story and characters?

  First of let’s take a look in the characters: The protagonist which is in the name of the anime is Dandy, he is the eccentric, pervert and lazy captain of Aloha Oe. He's also a bad alien hunter who wants to visit all the BooBies restaurants and dreams to buy the chain. On top of that he’s overconfident and have little consideration for the lives of his friends. Dandy is basically that, he has little to no development throughout the course of the show. He doesn’t change at all. His dream, passion and profession, besides supposedly have the key of the whole universe are all we know about him. Aside from that he’s your good-looking shallow action hero.The only time he does something that show us a bit more of his personality is in the only really good episode, but we’ll get to that. Now let’s take a look to the other members of the crew.

  QT is Dandy’s outdated vacuum cleaner robot. It’s main purpose in the show is to clean the crew’s trash, be the mechanic of the spaceship and make comic relief scenes. It doesn't help much in the field because it isn't made to fight, so it spends the majority of the time taking care of the ship when the place they land is dangerous, communicating with the others via the bracelet that Dandy and Meow have. Aside from the cute design and voice, QT also doesn’t have much to offer in terms of development. It gets the entire last episode for that end but have little impact on me because the episode isn't that interesting and throughout the series i couldn’t care for the robot enough to like the ending and be confident to say that QT changed as a character, even with facing its difficulties and losses in that episode.

  Lastly we have Meow, my least favorite character of the trio. He’s a Betelgeusian, the only alien of the crew. He’s introduced right after the beginning of the first episode and is as pervert and lazy as Dandy. He claims to have information about the rare aliens and join them in the hunt. Meow stays with Dandy the majority of the time outside of the spaceship but he doesn’t add much to the series. Like QT, he serves as comic relief and not much aside. His backstory episode develops his character a bit more than QT’s but even with that i couldn’t care about him. He just doesn’t do enough, he's kind of just there to have another character in the show.

  Before continuing to the next part i will quickly speak about some minor aspects of the anime.

  I believe that the Aloha Oe deserves a quick mention in this review because it's hawaiian decoration is memorable and unique, besides the spaceship with its colorful and inviting design helps with Dandy's characterization, and his room exemplifies even more so.

  Also, something that bother me in the course of the series is the insertion of a narrator. Apart from a joke here and there and the breaking of the fourth wall that happens a few times, his inclusion is just plain stupid and adds nothing to enhance the series.

  Lastly, speaking of breaks of the fourth wall, in some episodes the narrator and characters makes jokes about the situation the crew is in using this feature for good effect. It's a small detail and show up very little but it's an interesting nonetheless.

  So with all that out of the way we can talk about the plot. Well, there is no plot. This is a episodic series and the closest it gets to introduce a plot is with it's terrible villains, Dr. Gel and admiral Perry. They are members of the useless Gogol empire, one of the two great powers fighting for the control of the universe. Aside from the cool spaceship designs the empire is a joke throughout the show. Admiral Perry sends Dr. Gel to chase Dandy because he states as I said before that Dandy has the key of the Universe. All the scenes that involve this guys are useless.They serve as another source of comic relief but none of your jokes are fun, nothing they do works and nothing they say is interesting or meaningful. They could be removed entirely from the show and nothing that matters would be affected.

  One more thing about this plot issue is that some of the episodes don't matter. For example, in the first episode something happens that would affect the anime permanently, but in the next one that fact is ignored. Same thing happens in episode four, which brings me to question if there’s tension at all in the series. In an interview, director Watanabe Shinichiro said he wanted his team to be free to do whatever they wanted without being limited so they could be free to use their imagination and create something unique. I understand the intentions of the team but even if the anime is more of an experimental project and so we as an audience aren't supposed to take the show seriously, the vast majority of boring and uninteresting episodes indicated to me a failure of execution and undermined my enjoyment of the series.

  Now let’s talk about some of the episodes, i humbly ask of you to forgive my preferences in this segment, you may had enjoyed other episodes and that's fine. If you want to avoid as many SPOILERS as possible feel free to skip through to the conclusion. The best episode for me is five, where Dandy goes out alone to capture a rare alien, whose name is Adélie. Her species has the ability to transfer the minds of their target into dolls they carry with them. It’s a fun little adventure episode in which we, together with Dandy, get to know more about Adélie. We see the progression of their friendship while they have fun together and we discover the serious and kind side of Dandy. The other interesting episode is the ninth. It's a different experience from the rest of the show, the visuals and music are interesting and the epilogue, the way it is directed, might get you to think for a moment, but not too much. Likewise episode eleven is visually interesting but tells another boring story. We have some fun episodes like episode six, ten and twelve, the potentially emocional ⅔ of episode eight and episodes like the first which delivers fantastic animation worth to seeing just for that fact alone, but really that’s about it. Space☆Dandy isn't particularly bad but it isn’t consistently good or fun either.

  Space☆Dandy is a middle of the road anime, it has some good moments but overall there’s nothing special about the first season. Although i look forward to see if the second season manages to deal with the problems of the first, expand the world as the setting needs some work, and to develop their characters.

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• 

  Identifiy

  70/100
  An anime that is quite different but yet not progressive.

  Space Danny

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  Overview :

  Hey, this is going to be a review on anime that is not commonly watched on the side of anime so it's going to be difficult to have others agree with me but that's why I want to see what people agree and disagree on. Meaning what I should be focusing on when I write my own review time by time.

  Also, this is a warning my grammar and English should be doubted on so beware when reading this review. :<

  

  Introduction :

  I'm going to talk about why Space Danny is not watch compared to most anime commonly that are watching in today's society, this would be pinpointing at the cool animation it has and how empty the story can be without a story, to begin with. Though the anime is something different, so I'll start with my first point :

  Story

  Now I watch this anime only once and I recall it being really different when watching other anime. As I go on I consider it very funny as dialogue goes through with the randomness that occurs in the anime it didn't really make sense (till the end) although it does use its comedy greatly keeping the viewer keeping on track. I can say that not all anime a terrible without a story. Although it does bore me sometimes with its randomness as it progresses.

  I don't see any reason to say that the anime is bad yet. Good, it has its own cool parts of scenes though the story isn't a strong point for it. I love how they use space as its theme which isn't use that much, many times they just use Japan or something but that's just really cool they use space at the time.

  Animation/Characters

  The animation is quite entertaining at times and can be considered alright when the time comes. It isn't that sloppy but it's wonderful at the time. Impressing my enjoyment and creativity into the show. I don't really have anything to say about the animation but I do have a lot to say about the characters.

  The characters are somewhat boring and aren't use to talk to the characters. Although that isn't that bad if you think about looks, they are highly awesome and different which is nice. It changed up my views on anime in a whole when I first saw a different type of aliens and such. It gave me amazement upon watching the different characters.

  Theme/Genre

  Now, this is one of the strong points about Space Danny. It uses its theme Space and during its time it was Harem Simulator which can be boring at times when it really shows. But this show didn't take the root of Harem but fun and funny show. Trying to be different on compared. Chooses a different route which made it really different on a story base and theme type of anime.

  Conclusion
  The animation itself is astonishing but on compared to the characters and story it is not used well... Although it makes it up for being different using a Space Theme and not being a harem. Which was amazing and a change of paste. The characters look really were the next step giving me hope in the light in the darkness showing that there are potential in the future that other anime can replace their weakness, instead of what mistakes Space Danny did I think there are other anime that fill the holes to make a whole great anime.
  
  Last bit!

  I thank you for reading this... I put my time into it and effort to express what I think about the anime.

  Please consider trying to give me feedback by adding (Roses#4073)

  This would further help me improve on my skills in writing on reviews in the future.

  
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• 

  waty

  90/100
  Reviews can be Dandy too, baby!

  A spoiler free look into

  Space Dandy

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  ---

  Shinichiro Watanabe is considered a mastermind by many. He is behind two of the most legendary anime out there, Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. Of course, he's done more than that. Kids on the Slope and Terror in Resonance were both directed by him, but these were not as big, so I'll refrain to mention them for now. Both Champloo and Bebop were revolutionary, thanks to their amazing characters, music, animation, and overall vibe and aesthetic. Champloo and Bebop have a very chill and laid-back feel to them, being episodical shows with little continuity, that sometimes devolved into more somber themes. Mugen and Spike are iconic. You can see their similarities in their demeanor, and once you get to know them more, you realize more of why they are alike, but their differences as well. Both absolutely bad-ass, but with this obscure and mysterious aura. Analyzing these shows you start to notice what makes a Watanabe work. Then, there is one question that many people started to wonder about...

  What the hell was Watanabe thinking when he directed Space Dandy?!

  I mean, a show about an extremely flamboyant alien hunter, who is fixated on women? The vibe of the show is vibrant, it heavily fixates on comedy rather than the introspective nature of his earlier works, the music choice from the chill and calm tunes of jazz in Bebop and hip-hop/lo-fi in Champloo to the disco tracks in Dandy. This must have been some sort of mistake, right? I mean, how can you go from two top-notch, well thought and structured series to a simple-minded show based on boob and ass jokes? Well, let me tell you that Dandy offers a lot more than what meets the eye. Dandy is also a very Watanabe-style anime in its own way. Let me tell you why this is one of my favorite anime, and why it stood out among the rest.

  ---

  

  At its core, Space Dandy is a show about a crew of three alien hunters and their misadventures through space. But in reality, one could say that this show is about directors having fun doing whatever they want with the characters and simple plotline they were given. Every episode (or almost every episode) is directed by a different director, for which, every episode is a different experience on all different levels. And that is one of the coolest parts of this series, its originality. The aliens often break the norm of what you'd expect, the rich world is beautifully built and expanded on, and with so much to offer, it is bound to have an episode that is your cup of tea, whether it be for where it takes our main crew, what themes they decide to expand on, what side characters we encounter, or even what type of animation style they use. It uses to its advantage the simple idea of three dudes going through space with the fact that the writers vary so much, to put Dandy and friends through all types of scenarios, from absolutely unique, to scenarios full of tropes but with that Dandy touch that is inherent to the aura of this series.

  One reason people don't seem to be interested in checking out Space Dandy would have to do with the fanservice. For some, of course, it's bonus points, but for others, it just feels like it's way too over the top and will taint the watching experience. Before watching Dandy I also felt this way, because let's be real, the promotional art and teasers do not help. But, in reality, it is not as bad as one would imagine. I'd say that the first half of the first season has some noticeable fanservice, but after that, it's never really prevalent, though it doesn't disappear altogether, which is not a bad thing because there is actually some meaning to it. I never really thought about this while watching, but after I read a post about it, it makes sense. The absurdity of the fanservice is ridiculing how we, in real-life, may use it as a selling point for marketing or something to get traction with little to no effort for whatever it may be. Heck, one of Dandy's main motivations is a bar chain called "Boobies" which is just giant breasts floating on space served by voluptuous women from all kinds of species. It's truly ridiculous. But even then, when you may see Dandy as a series with purely comedic episodes which mostly center on boob jokes, that is not really the case.

  It may surprise you, but one of the things that Dandy does the best is how it manages to maintain and change its tone, and never feeling forced at all. It knows exactly when to get serious. Going from really goofy episodes to heartwarming tearjerker episodes, or stories that talk about very somber or existentialist topics. Season two tends to do a better job at doing this, but season one has its few shares of episodes that go way off from what you'd expect Dandy to be. Some episodes are just comedic for the sake of it throughout, sure but you'll be surprised with the outliers of the comedy and immature formula some episodes seem to have. And the fact that the comedy for the sake of comedy is prevalent in many episodes just makes all that much better those clever and thought-provoking ones.

  The comedy as well is something that for me hit every or almost every episode. It's never something you'll die laughing at, but it consistently made me chuckle or smile while watching it.

  In a similar fashion to Bebop or Champloo, it also has its Watanabe style to it, with the vibe being setting this series to be absolutely memorable. And the little continuity between episodes makes it all that more special considering the bizarre nature of it, that later on becomes much more impactful in how the episodes are interconnected with one another.

  ---

  

  Dandy, well, he's just a dandy guy in space. But he's also a very interesting character, nothing like what the stereotype of the protagonist could portray. The guy's a jerk, for sure. He is self-centered, selfish, bratty, and incompetent at most things. He's downright flawed. But for that, he's very human. He undergoes many struggles, and he's not always like he portrays himself to be. I really like characters that actually feel real and human, and Dandy is an easy-going and chill guy that could actually be out there. And despite all of his flaws, he is also a very considerate guy, who actually cares for those around him even when he may be too proud of himself to admit it. When he wants to, he is actually a very nice guy that I'd actually appreciate as a friend.

  His two companions Meow the Beetlejucian (he's basically just a cat), and the vacuum cleaner QT. Meow has a very is very similar to Dandy, but they often differ in their ideals. They are a great pair together, and he likes Boobies, so bonus points for him. As for QT, he is the only competent member onboard. I never really loved QT but he is a great and necessary addition to the crew, and he has his moment which I very much liked to see.

  Apart from Dandy, for me, the character aspect of the series shines in the side characters we meet along the way. It is easy to fall in love with them and hope that they eventually come back down the road. All the aliens have something meaningful to add, and sometimes they just downright steal the spotlight in a single episode. It is easily one of the things that makes this show so memorable. You grow to miss 'em as the series carries on, and there never is one that feels out of place, especially because the world in Space Dandy is that rich and vast.

  ---

  

  Art and animation-wise, it's fantastic. The backgrounds are stellar, and the art differs from all kinds of styles going from abstract levels of animation to vivid cheerful and colorful, or even dark and pale when the episode calls for it. The movements are incredibly fluid, and actually feel real. The action is super well done with the most simple of moves being animated incredibly, it really shows how much passion went into making this show. I love how it's animated, and even though I know nothing of animation or drawing, I can still see the beauty and the conquered ambition to create a vibrant atmosphere through its fluid motion and stunning views.

  What I can't seem to understand, however, is how godlike the soundtrack is. I can't begin to explain how amazing it is, you should listen to it for yourself, but the music hits every single time. Having pure disco and funky tracks, rock, melancholic tunes, chill, and everything in between, the OST for Space Dandy is absolutely on point, and it's always used at the right time. There are songs like Hoshikuzu no Pipeline or I want to know that just really accentuates the emotion on the scene, and leave you with a distinct feeling of pleasure, whether sad or upbeat. The opening is an absolute banger and a song I'll never get over, and the ending not content with only being an amazing song, it is also very meaningful to the story. You'll see what I'm talking about when you finish watching it.

  ---

  All in all, Space Dandy is a misunderstood piece of media that I very deeply fell in love with. Although not everyone will actually share that emotion, I know it, and I can live with that. But I hope that I made my point across on why I found this show to be one of my favorites. With all of these seasonal anime that look like I've seen them before hundreds of times, Dandy is a series that definitely tries a lot harder than most, and I'll always appreciate that.

  
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