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Space Dandy |OT| We're up all night to... ASK D-N-A... again, baby!

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Mistouze

user-friendly man-cashews
It's obviously at least a little tongue in cheek though. I mean when you talk about a character like Dandy and his flowing tears or whatever... it's funny!
The shot of Dandy shedding glittering tears in slo-mo during the OP always crack me up. ALWAYS.
 

striferser

Huge Nickleback Fan
Why no love for Shalalula and Viva Namida? T_T


QT final dandy joke make me lol.
Awesome episode, and the animation look great
 
Didn't care much for the plot of episode 11, there's been a lot of silly stories but this one I didn't ask for. I enjoyed episode 12 a lot more and it seems the S1 finale is going full WALL-E.
 

duckroll

Member
Yeah ep13 was pretty good. I'll avoid posting anything about it here until after the Toonami broadcast though. No fun to talk about it alone!
 

Envelope

sealed with a kiss
i7Shc1Xj3hG7V.gif

Otaking weeps with joy
 
>.<

cant wait for the show to come back my friends mad the Japanese one came out earlier hes a dub over sub guy
this ep reminded me of the end of the first which was maybe almost my favorite, things are best when they get out of control as much as possible.QT
being the one to handle business was awesome
 
Just watched 11? The book one. Yeah that was pretty out there. The animation was great and then ending just had me shaking my head in disbelief with a grin on my face.
 
So im guessing the show got better?
My fave was the Ramen ep. After the boobmonster ep. i havent watched.

I don't know how to sell this series... I just probably like low brow comedy more than the average gaffer here. But, it seems to be an even mix of that and some of the more artful style things that people here prefer.
My thoughts are that something like ep 12 is the perfect rythm for this show. You got your dumb humor, and your arty high concept stuff perfectly mixed together... with a healthy dose of the show's best character just killing.
Compared to that plant and the paper eps that a mouth breather like me is just bored by, and the giant robot fights with boob monsters that send the more mentally matured here running for the hills, the rest of the show is somewhere in the middle, and I think that's a good place to be.
 
The official soundtrack was released 2 days ago.

Hoshikuzu no Pipeline (&#26143;&#23633;&#12398;&#12497;&#12452;&#12503;&#12521;&#12452;&#12531;, from ep. 6) is the last song I want to hear before I die.
 

BBboy20

Member
I’ve officially given up on expecting any sort of continuity in Space Dandy as far as the story goes and am starting to enjoy the show for what it is – a wacky space themed comedy with stellar animation that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Speaking of the animation, it seems like every week something new makes me sit back and say “Wow, these visuals are extremely impressive.” The big action sequences obviously stick out but I find myself appreciating the little things, like how Scarlett’s garments wrinkled and moved in a realistic fashion last weekend. The facial expressions are also..well, expressive! This is some god tier animation at work here; we’re truly being spoiled even though the script doesn’t always live up to the eye candy.

As for the actual episode content, this was a confusing one to say the least but I’ll try to make sense of it. From what I gathered Dr. Gel was given a book by Admiral Perry (skeleton guy) that he checked out from the planet Lagado which happens to be a massive library of sorts for the universe. This book, known as ‘the librarian’, happens to be sentient and takes over his mind in order to solve a formula about time space distortions. This makes sense considering Dr. Gel is a gifted scientist, as confirmed by Admiral Perry during the episode, and happens to have the resources of a massive space empire at his disposal. Due to Dr. Gel’s preoccupation with the formula, Bea is given control over the attack on Lagado which Perry has authorized because he doesn’t want to pay a fee for the overdue book. What a cheapskate.

Anyway, somehow the librarian is separated from Dr. Gel and finds its way into Dandy’s hands thanks to his ‘unique energy’ the Gogol Empire keeps mentioning; I took this to be confirmation that Dandy is the key to this multiverse theory the show relies on to explain how characters die and come back the next week with no repercussions. Is this power what the Gogol and Jaicro empires are fighting over? Hmm, looks like we’re slowly unraveling that mystery, although I don’t expect it to be fully explored until season 2.

Eventually the ticket found at Boobies, who also happens to be a sentient being from Lagado, decides it’s time to go home and manipulates the crew into traveling to its home world through Honey as a coupon advertising free food. Dandy and the crew warp to Lagado as Bea and the Gogol Empire prepare to attack it. Upon noticing Dandy’s arrival Bea attempts to capture him but he escapes, vanishing into thin air before they can pull him in with the tractor beam. Dandy and crew, unaware of the danger posed by this massive fleet of ships, assume they were at Lagado for the free food.

Dandy and company make their way through the planet to a chamber where they are introduced to the Librarian and ticket that led them there. Here they confirm that the book is an alien who uses other people’s brains to think because according to the duo, “doing so is much easier than thinking for oneself, afterall.” The Librarian is revealed to have the power to alter memories at will which explains why nobody can remember anything; she uses this as a form of mind control due to the inability to move her physical body unassisted. Dandy and the crew go on a number of adventures with her over the span of 6 months because she wanted to explore the universe and saw Dandy as her best option to get home after being checked out by Admiral Perry. Think of the name “Secrets of the Cosmos for Dummies”. Remember when the librarian said that it uses other people’s brains to think because doing so is so much easier than thinking for yourself? This is actually some pretty deep stuff although viewer has to travel a convoluted road to get to this point. I think the overall theme of the episode is that knowledge is a powerful tool that can consume a person if used for the wrong purpose. True knowledge resides within those willing to discover the truth rather than be handed it on a silver platter. This kind of reminded me of Plato’s cave allegory in The Republic, that may be a bit of a reach but I can see some parallels, I wonder if portions of the book served as inspiration for this episode?

Probably not. This is reach of Mr. Fantastic proportions but let me have my moment.

As a thank you to Dandy and crew for letting her waste 6 months of their lives the librarian wipes their memories and gives them a box as a souvenir. The only thing the crew remembers after this is that they came into contact with a rare alien and that this mysterious box has something to do with it so naturally they try to cash in on their discovery. Then the episode takes a left turn and the world is destroyed in a format war or something? Yeah..this was a weird, overly complex episode that I don’t fully understand even after multiple viewings.

The whole film noir vibe was pretty cool but left me wishing there was less dialogue a la Samurai Jack, and that the writers let the atmosphere and soothing tunes take over. The Librarian’s planet was very haunting and reminded me of a Metroid game for some reason but I guess that direction doesn’t mesh well with the comedic overtones of the show.

Overall this was a really odd episode that I’m still trying to figure out. The noir look was definitely a jarring change of pace; I personally prefer the more colorful episodes we had been getting the last couple of weeks but can appreciate the switch. Dandy has been aces for me the last 4 or so episodes but this one was meh, it seemed way too complex for its own good and the story could have been structured better in my opinion. It didn’t need to be dumbed down, just made easier to follow because the confusion comes from a lack of structure and pacing in my opinion.

Sorry for the long post
HurrjOo.gif
 

Ninjimbo

Member
So that was a great episode. It was a fairly straightforward story, but it had the Dandy twist that I've come to expect.

The show settled into a nice, eccentric groove after that disastrous first episode. I can't wait for season two.
 
Thought they were gonna kill QT with that coffee.
Whew!

Damn, they were channeling Wall-e,
Eva and FLCL
HARD in the last half of the episode. This was probably the best
action
episode yet. And it was between a
giant pacifist vacuum cleaner an a junk monster!

Also, I get the feeling that this wasn't meant to be the actual final episode. They probably pushed that one to later on in season 2.

I think meow was doing something related to hatsune miku... I don't know... Hmm.

LovePlus waifu parody maybe.
 

Shergal

Member
Thought they were gonna kill QT with that coffee.
Whew!

Damn, they were channeling Wall-e,
Eva and FLCL
HARD in the last half of the episode. This was probably the best
action
episode yet. And it was between a
giant pacifist vacuum cleaner an a junk monster!

Also, I get the feeling that this wasn't meant to be the actual final episode. They probably pushed that one to later on in season 2.

"season 2" was planned from way before the show started airing. It's a typical split-cours anime, so I'd say that yes, the "final" episode in terms of dealing with any kind of plot (if there'll even be one) will be in the next batch of episodes.
 

Shergal

Member
Oh. I was under the misconception that they had a good amount of the first 13 done before CN/Funimation brought in the money train.

They did, but I don't think all 13.
Even if they did, I recall Watanabe saying the show could go on for as much episodes as the sales/interest/funding allows, beyond the initial 13.
 

Branduil

Member
Thoughts on Space Dandy after the first cour


The show didn't get off to the strongest start. The first ten minutes of the series were spent on a not particularly funny joke about a restaurant called "Boobies," and although the second half of the episode was amazingly animated, it wasn't the best of narratives. The second episode was much stronger in that regard, although it felt a little bit longer than it needed to be. The third episode was probably the weakest in the series. So it's not surprising if lots of people soured on it after that.

However, with the fourth episode, things changed, and for the first time the show started to live up to its potential, embracing the full possibilities of the episodic and self-rebooting structure. Ever since that episode's humorous and novel take on the zombie apocalypse, the series has found its voice and become consistent in its inconsistency, with every episode presenting an individualistic interpretation of the Space Dandy universe and its character. We've had episodes with heart and genuine emotion, episodes with outrageous comedy, and episodes where I go need to ly dow for a while(sometime all three at the same time). That's not to say every episode has been consistently great(and that would be nearly impossible in series where each episode's creative staff is given as much freedom as they are here), but the difference pre- and post-episode 3 is like night and day.

Through it all, Space Dandy has had some really amazing animation from stars like Yutaka Nakamura, Bahi JD, and countless others; beautiful layouts and backgrounds from inventive artists like Kevin Aymeric; and excellent tracks from musicians like Yoko Kanno, Yasuyuki Okamura, etc. There's no denying Shinichiro Watanabe's sense of style, or his talent for finding and collaborating with other talented people.

No, Space Dandy isn't as good as Cowboy Bebop, but that's an unfair standard to hold a show to. Taken on its own, it's been a pretty fantastic anthology of short stories about a certain group of characters in a certain universe, and with its strong finish I very much look forward to it continuing in three months.

Episode ranking:

12>13>9>10>4>5>7>11>8>2>6>1>3
 

Branduil

Member
I could probably go back and forth on 12 or 13 being the best episode so far depending on what I'm in the mood for. Either way, the season ended on a great note.
 

TheOGB

Banned
After tonight I'd rank the season like so:
12 > 10 > 13 > 11 = 9 > 7 > 4 > 2 > 8 = 5 > 6 > 1 > 3

These last few episodes have been great.
 
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