English Dub Review: Space Dandy: ‘A World With No Sadness, Baby’

Shocking…

Spoilers Below

I…what?

Am I trippin’ balls?

Seriously, I asked myself this out loud no less than two minutes into the episode. This was like something from Satoshi Kon or the original EVA. To say the direction and art for this episode took a different turn is like saying you wanted to visit the Grand Canyon and took a wrong turn… to Neptune.

This surreal episode focuses solely on Dandy as the strange creatures he meets on an unfamiliar world. The writers and artists do well establishing this world that is very bleak but also having a lot of interesting characters as well. Although this episode is filled with a lot of interesting background characters the main characters that we meet don’t lay all there cards on the table right away. Dandy’s guide Ferdinand mentions he is a medium and makes hints that Dandy is dead, but doesn’t flat out say so until halfway through the episode. The Night Porters are said to be a problem but we don’t find out why immediately. And the girl that seems to be watching Dandy all during the episode doesn’t reveal herself until nearly 20 minutes in. The ending does a great job of bringing order to this surreal experience. Dandy died as his ship flied into a dark Nebula and ended up on Limbo, a planetary purgatory. The girl is in fact the living embodiment of Limbo’s curiosity and the Night Porters are it’s logic, explaining why they said Dandy didn’t belong there. Although Dandy is supposed to be sent to another dimension (one where he does not die) the last scene is very ambiguous as Dandy arrives back on the planet where he is met by the girl in a fancy dress and he in a suit. I’m not sure if this is Limbo’s wish to have Dandy stay (The girl explained she did love him), if this is the Dandy of this dimension that did die, or what. Everyone seems happy to see him though so I guess it’s a happy ending for everyone.

The crew and animators obviously wanted something very colorful and surreal and they gave it to us in SPADES. The animation was very different from Dandy thus far, sans for the brief scenes where we were in “reality” with QT and Meow. Even though it took quite a long time to getting around to telling us what was going on, you know SOMETHING had to be up as Dandy walked around, The colors were vibrant, the creature designs were really out there and making Dandy not like himself (visually anyway) added to the mystery of it all. I guess this would be the one time changing the animation from the norm was entirely reasonable and really added to the show (instead of taking away from it).

The story, well let’s just say is was very subtle. Most of the episode revolved around Dandy experiencing this purgatory and you were just keeping one step ahead of Dandy in finding out what was going on. The show’s tone is very soft and peaceful, as Death is supposed to be I guess. The scene where Limbo explains what is going on is rather touching and make you feel bad for her and the planet, having been so lonely for so long to finally meeting Dandy. The last scene is ambiguous as hell but knowing Dandy is going to be alive and seeing the smile on the Limbo inhabitants means that it ends well for everyone, even if we don’t entirely get what is going on.

The focus here was mostly on the visual but they did a good job of making the story flow and bring everything together. It kept it’s tone very well, never truly leaving it’s calm and gentle demeanor.

Trying to grade this episode made me really think. It basically did everything I have railed on this series for doing. It changed the art style for most of the episode drastically, it spent most of the time meandering around, what humor there was, was really dark (QT and Meow think Dandy is just sleeping not knowing what is going on), and left some unanswered questions in the end. I shouldn’t like this episode and should give it a bad rating for committing every sin I hold this series to.

But I can’t.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the best episode either. I had to watch it twice to fully understand it and even then I’m still foggy on the ending. But the way in which the producers went about this actually worked. Dandy is DEAD, it’s not supposed to be nice and shiny and make any sense. It’s supposed to be strange and surreal. The calm and gentle tone of the show was a change sure, but it needed that divergence to make it’s point and really set the mood. That is what they aimed for and hit the target on the dot. So I actually think this episode was a positive. It certainly grabbed my attention and kept it there. It was entertaining, not necessarily in the traditional Dandy way, but in it’s abstractness it has something close to the previously mentioned Satoshi Kon or Hayao Miyazaki. Maybe not the kiddish charm of Studio Ghibli but it had the surrealness to keep your attention without going totally overboard. So I’ll look at this as a strange but overall positive experience.