English Dub Review: Space Dandy “Plants are Living Things, Too, Baby”

Find out what the word for last night’s episode of Space Dandy is after the jump!

Spoilers!

The Aloha-Oe is coming up to Planet Planta, looking for a new alien for the Code-D. I’m going to crack the code here, and say that this planet is inhabited by plant aliens. There is a magnetic field surrounding it, so getting a ship in there is impossible. Luckily, QT refurbished the transporter to be fifty times faster than the original 30 minute transport time. So, Dandy and Meow get transported to the surface, but QT forgot to mention that even though it’s faster, the accuracy may have suffered. They get it, though, because they are falling into the surface. After he crashes, Dandy is eaten by a weird sack plant, and is being carried to the more colorful side of the planet. He is placed in a smaller sack, and tied up.

Back at the plant prison, it turns out that Dandy is about to be a science experiment. Dandy breaks free, and decides to activate his translator. After talking to Dr. H, Dandy is treated to some good hospitality. He also meets the doctor’s daughter, 033-H, who is like a high school girl who just met their celebrity crush. The Narrator tells us about the social evolution of Planta, from overgrowth, to how they made 18 states. Vegims are a highly intelligent plant that occupies the northern hemisphere, and are the brains behind this plant republic. Mostly kept to the southern hemisphere are the Movins. They are of a lesser intelligence, and they have Meow. Back with the Vegims, Dr. H finds Dandy gone, who went with his daughter to explore. She can find Code-D, which makes Dandy ecstatic. That is, until, he hits an invisible wall that 033-H can go through. She runs back through, and they both are being chased by a legion of microbes. They get sucked into a huge plant, and make it through that wall. Turns out that the wall  was a special membrane that keeps out microbes.

Meow is still with the Movins, stuffing his face. The doctor tells him more about Code-D. It seems that Code-D is what caused the massive evolution in these plants. Dandy and 033-H are back in their big plant transporter to the Energy Center at the North Pole to grab this guy. I think we end up going through all 18 of the states of Vegia during this montage. One thing that they have in common is that they are all beautifully drawn. It reminds me of a better Avatar. While they’re camping, they see a giant caterpillar has eaten some of the non-sentient foliage at the campground. As the caterpillar was about to eat Dandy, Cocamuka (who seems like an officer) forbids the doctor to go to the northern energy center.  Cocamuka arrests all of them, just before we get to see a fully fat Meow.

So, Dr. H and Dandy are in a real plant prison, and we get some backstory on who Cocamuka is. He is the president of the Vegims, and he wants Code-D to stick around, because the plants need it to live. After the story, a giant plant named Nini shows up, hypnotizes all of the microbes and plants outside of the prison, and breaks out the Doctor, Dandy, and the Doctor’s daughter. On their escape, we get more exposition of Nini, who is a plant entertainer. I should have guessed from the singing. For the second montage, we get a song and visual that’s even more trippy than the first. We have dancing hills, plants, and even some pollinating plants, as well. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have plant porn on Space Dandy.  Meow, on the other hand, is about to have a very bad time. The Movins fattened him up to get fresh foie gras.

Meanwhile, Dandy and the group made it to the North Pole. Dandy goes on ahead with 033-H, which can potentially be a very bad idea. Also, this isn’t very good parenting on the part of the Doctor. Anyway, as Dandy makes his way through to Code-D, 033-H is getting exponentially bigger, to the point where she actually clogs up the pathway. Dandy starts to take Code-D, but he ends up losing it, and the plants start to devolve back into regular plants.

What is the first thing you see with this review? It’s freaking long! First, when it comes to anime openings, I generally like the Japanese ones over the American ones. But hot damn, this was the first boring moment. The American intro captures Dandy’s character, where the Japanese one is just a J-Pop intro. For the episode, there was so much damn exposition. Dandy gets injected with some juice? We get exposition. The narrator talks, and we get more exposition. Dandy and the Doctor get arrested, so we get more exposition. Dandy and the doctor break out, so of course we get more exposition.

Because of all of this, I just got bored. If there was less exposition, and more interaction with Cocamuka and his plant police, there would have been something. Unfortunately, we get more exposition. 033-H was funny, and Meow becoming really fat, just to get eaten, was great as well. Unfortunately, those are just the dressings in this boring salad.