Review: Space Dandy ”The Gallant Space Gentleman, Baby (Season 2 Episode 6)”

 

Spoilers Below

 

A look in a slightly different aspect of the Dandyverse is the best way for me to describe this episode. Although the over all story focuses on Dandy and crew’s attempt to go after a race of aliens called Cloudians, it really had a lot of focus on the side characters of the show. We saw Dr. Gel and Dr. Bea, Scarlett the registration center worker, and Boobies waitress Honey more in this one episode than we have in the rest of the season combined.

A big part of this week’s story was Honey. We found out more about her personality as well as her background more than any part of the series before. Away from the restaurant we find her enjoying a wrestling match (and a fan of “Misawa” a tribute to the late Japanese Wrestling legend Mitsuharu Misawa) and cruising around on chopper. She ends up captured by Dr. Gel and Dr. Bea where they try to scan her brain for info on Dandy. Here we find out she actually is half Cloudian. Cloudians are a race that goes around the universe and collects data, collecting them in clouds. In other words Honey knows a LOT more than she ever let’s on. We get to see her capable side as she also manipulates Dr. Gel into freeing her from her handcuffs and after she sends a distress signal to Dandy she kicks his ass and escapes to do her chopper and another shift at Boobies. We find her real name is Lady Noble and she is the half sister of the focus of Dandy’s pursuit, Gentle Noble.

Another focus was put on Scarlett, the red haired clerk at the registration office that Dandy often reports to. For the first time we see some of her co workers and one of them takes her to an alien mixer with a free buffet. Turns out Scarlett is rather lonely and wishes for a gentle Dandy would come along. At the mixer we see her stuff herself and get totally plastered. She is totally cynical and doubting, especially of the Cloudian, but she puts that aside because this was the attention she’s wanted for a long time. She explains that it is her job to be doubting and at the end of the day it’s hard to turn off. You really start feeling bad for her, especially when Dandy not so tacitly mentions that she’s not a spring chicken anymore. He get to see the other side of Scarlett in this episode, the one that has to live with being so cynical and angry all the time as part of her job. She knows Gentle Noble is just taking her for a ride, but she doesn’t care. She’d never get this kind of attention otherwise so she goes with it anyway. After finding out how much her life sucks, you don’t blame her for getting bombed a number of times in this episode.

Dr. Gel and Dr. Bea finally got some serious screen time as well. For once they actually had a good idea to try to catch Dandy, find someone who is familiar with him and try to scan their brain for info on him. It’s literally blows up in their face but it sure beats every appearance this season where they were barely a part of the story or at best were a rather contrived plot point during a moment of action. Dr. Gel’s back up plan didn’t work out much for him either with Honey beating him down before running off, and neither did plan C for following the Cloudian. Ever have one of those days where nothing seems to go right?

I got to say that this episode was right up my alley. I’m always a fan of giving the side characters more depth in a series.  While of course it didn’t make the characters super deep like say Harry Potter’s universe does, it shouldn’t be expected with a format like this. Honestly that they gave these characters any kind of depth at all is a welcome surprise. While this stuff may never get mentioned again aside for a running gag about how lonely Scarlett really is, it was nice to see the writer’s for the show shift a part of the spotlight away from the main characters a bit. We even got introduced to some new character’s like Honey’s half brother Gentle Noble as well as Scarlett’s co worker Pine-Pine who very well could turn up again in the future.

Aside from the characters, the animation was the normal Dandy style and didn’t either go the cheap route or go super artistic so it didn’t jump out as either better or worse. The jokes were clever, I especially got a chuckle out of Noble’s invisible aliens laughing like a bad sitcom laugh track to the point where Dandy mentions it. The pacing on this episode was perfect as everything actually fit into the story and there weren’t any unnecessary quick cuts or wasted scenes.

So I would best describe this episode as solid. It wasn’t a horrendous train wreck but it wasn’t something that would make someone sit up and awe over. Depending on your view of side characters getting some screen time you might find this ep to be a bit meh, but I happen to like what this episode accomplished. It was more a character driven episode it seemed than a plot driven story, but I’m more than happy with that. Sometimes a show like this needs to shine a little light on side characters to keep things interesting. Personally I’d like to see more of what Honey is capable of. It’s obvious she’s no idiot but just how does she know? She mentions she lost her cloud a long time ago, so there must be some back-story to her we don’t know about. Whether we get any more insight into her mind (literally) or not will remain to be seen.