English Dub Review: Space Dandy”Other-dimensional Tale, Baby”

 

Spoilers Below

This episode was focused largely on a depressing part of Dandy’s past. Although it had some light points, it was a lot more somber than the show’s usual fair.

Of course the primary focus was on Dandy. The storyline with Katherine, the fourth dimensional love from his past was a more personal look into Dandy as a person. Not only was he very quiet and stoic during almost all the episode, but it made the episode itself seem more low key and even depressing. I take out of it this was more than just a fling or something Dandy was having a flight-of-fancy for. Looking at this, Dandy must have really had something for her, especially since she was just a translucent box with a heart in it. You almost felt bad for the guy when that someone he cared so much about, turned around and ended up with another guy, let alone a guy from the second dimension. He tries to take it in as much stride as he can, but it still bothers him. This point has been made before, but Dandy isn’t a heartless sleaze as he sometimes can come across. Just like in the high school musical episode and other, he actually cares about people and to have that come back on him like that must have been really painful for him.

The other part of the show followed Dr. Bea and Dr. Gel. As usual they got caught up with the short end of things in their pursuit of Dandy. Sometimes this comes off as a real time waster but they actually devoted a good amount of time to them, mostly showing the effects of what is going on with the 2D dimension (and later the 1D and 0D dimensions). It wasn’t just a flat bit of comedy (pardon the pun) to lighten up a dreary episode. We got to see a bit more of the personality difference between them as well. Dr. Gel wasn’t at all phased by the 2D dimension nor the idea of possibly dooming them all forever. It was the scientific thrill of the unknown that drove him, possibly the reason he’s after Dandy so bad. Dr. Bea on the other hand was a lot more cautious and fearful of things going even more berserk than they were. I think this may be the most personality I’ve seen out of Dr. Bea. They may be totally incompetent, and kinda suck as villains that only serve to be comic relief, but they are characters after all, they have motivations too. It would be nice to know what those motivations are more clearly.

Another aspect that was touched on that I found interesting was the talk of the different dimensions as well as the question Katherine asked Dandy. Although the joke of a 2D dimension has been done before (Futurama did a great episode on it),  this wasn’t bad either. It played out like an old 8 bit video game which was a nice touch, and Paul being nothing more than a rectangle (much to Honey’s dismay) was a good bit of humor. The truth of warping was an interesting reveal. That is deep and well thought out by the show’s creators, or at least the English voice director to come up with.

This episode wasn’t a typical Dandy goof-fest, but it struck a more emotional note with me. Even Dandy can have the things in his life that are not really pleasant and stuff that affected him. I got out of it that this was something he REALLY didn’t want to deal with, but knew he had to and didn’t freak out to much about it. He just handled things like he always does to make sure things went back to normal with the 2D dimension invading the 3D world. It was tearing him up inside to have Katherine and Paul enter into his life again, but he did what he had to do and just took it as it was. They even got a bit of closure as Dandy found the answer to Katherine’s question from years before when they split up.

The pacing was very good with this episode, especially with how Dr. Gel and Dr. Bea were handled. Instead of their usual brief cut scenes that serve little purpose, a lot more time was devoted to them and it wasn’t a bunch of rapid fire nonsense. There was a point to having them there this time, even if it was largely just to show what happens in the lower dimensions. As depressing as the subject was, a rapid fire show would not have worked at all. It fit the tone and mood and came together quite well.

The animation was good, especially in the lower dimensions but also how the 4th dimension character Katherine was done. I could be over thinking it but she (with the exception of the beating heart) looks a lot like Carl Sagan’s diagram of what a fourth dimension would look like from the original Cosmos series. Good work there.

I liked this episode. It was a change of pace but nothing to out of the norm. Although it did have some humor elements it didn’t beat you entirely over the head with it, especially since it really would have been out of place with such a down and sullen mood with Dandy. As said before it didn’t have the rapid fire cut scenes of some previous shows and that went a long way with this. I’ll even give it bonus points just for the flashback at the very beginning of the show that set the mood perfectly for the rest of the 30 minutes. This is how a more serious Dandy episode should be structured.