With the way that anime is aired these days there are usually two seasons of a show with a break in between them (unless said show only gets 12-13 episodes). If a lot happens in both seasons then I will take the time to review the seasons individually (much like I’m doing with Valvrave the Liberator. Season 2 review comes later this year folks). If the story just continues to the point you can’t tell when the new season starts then I’ll simply review it as a whole. Today’s series fits right into the later category. A series that takes place…IN SPACE.

I’ll just let the opening narration do the job of summarizing the series.

Space Dandy. He’s a dandy guy in space. He combs the galaxy like his pompadour on the hunt for aliens. Planet after planet he search, discovering new creatures both friendly and not. These are the spectacular adventures of Space Dandy and his brave space crew in space.

Space Dandy is best described as being random. Each episodes focuses on him with his pals QT (a cleaning robot) and Meow (a cat alien who loves his phone) looking for rare aliens. The characters experience a lot of random and often character changing events including being turned into zombies and destroying the universe they were residing in. These changes never stick though and the characters reset every episodes as if nothing happened at all. It makes it a series you don’t really appreciate as a whole but more appreciate for its individual parts. There are single episodes that are fun and memorable such as the one where Scarlet and Dandy go on a date or when the team meets alternate versions of themselves from different universes.

The series does fall under the category of mecha as Dandy does a space ship that turns into a giant robot wearing a Hawaiian shirt. You read that right. Of course thanks to the randomness that the series experiences it crosses the lines of a lot of different genres including high school life and time travel.

The series is the one of the latest (found out about the series Terror in Resonance as I was writing the review) from Shinichiro Watanabe the legendary director of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. Does Space Dandy measure up to the director’s previous work? Yes and No. No, it isn’t as ground breaking as Cowboy Bebop or as dramatic as parts of Samurai Champloo but that doesn’t mean its terrible. It seems like it has a purpose. Some of it feels like Watanabe was using Space Dandy as an experiment. As if he was trying to figure out which genre he liked most so he know what type of story he wants to tell next. Worst series have been produced by directors being experimental Let us not forget Shoji Kawamori’s Earth Maiden Arjuna. Wait, most of the fans already forgot about that. 

Space Dandy is fun at the very least. It’s not a total failure from a great director or his finest hour but it is entertaining. We can only hope that this experiment has helped to train him to deliver another masterpiece that will be stored forever in the halls of anime fandom. Hopefully something with Giant Robots in it.

RATING: B