Shinichiro Watanabe’s ‘Space Dandy’
We love outer space. It’s what we dreamed about since “landing” on the moon.
Star Wars,
Star Trek,
Alien (ok, not so much
Alien unless you equate ‘love’ with ‘fear’). We also love space men. It’s the new frontier filled with lawless men, space babes amongst other things to be conquered. I guess that would make us Earthlings the ‘Europeans of the Galaxy’. Anime loves space men too. You have Spike from
Cowboy Bebop, the vagabond bounty hunter nomad with charming wit in search of that illusive love. And then you have Space Dandy.
Shinichiro Watanabe’s (he did Cowboy Bebop too) Space Dandy‘s Space Dandy is a dandy guy. He doesn’t objectify women by goggling at their breasts. Because he’s an ‘ass’ man. He enjoys the simpler things, like visiting the intergalactic version of Hooters, a ‘breastaurant’ by the subtle name of ‘Boobies’, where ‘boobs’ go to get their eye and stomach-full of 3-breasted aliens and generic questionable fast-food.
Boobies: A fine selection of intergalactic… stuff.
Space Dandy also has a job, cataloguing new alien lifeforms across the cosmos. A mundane job he somehow manages through ineptitude transform into sprawling adventures, being chased by Dr. Gel of the Gogul Empire. But in the good news department, his hair is absolutely immaculate.
Flanked by a robot called QT, Dandy’s intellectual superior despite being near obsolete, and stray talking alien cat creature thingy called Meow, be prepared for episodes of total narrative-near-absent chaos. Space Dandy is pulpy, full of colour and lithe animation, and with Season 2 even more outrageous than season 1, we can’t seem to get enough. It however seems we’ll have to settle for that as there may not be a Season 3, but a feature length film according to creators is a strong possibility.
In any case, this space opera of the misadventures of Space Dandy weirdly enough makes for good, wonderfully-weird lazy sunday viewings.