English Dub Review: Space Dandy ‘There’s Music in the Darkness, Baby’ (Season 2, Episode 2)

Spoilers below

Tonight’s adventure starts with an marionette like alien with a red and white face playing the Ukulele from inside a strange looking tree. He tells that he is “frozen” and that despite the fact that he is a personable and friendly guy, no one seems to like him because he is not able to show emotion with his un-moving face. He has tried many things, but nothing seems to work. He thinks he has found the answer and holds up a picture of our friend Dandy.
We join Dandy, QY, and Meow at of course, Bobbies. Dandy and Meow are arguing about what song a alien guitar player is performing while at their table. Meow makes the remark that if there was a contest, Dandy would be the King of misunderstanding. QT does a search and actually finds a Mr. Misunderstanding Gran Prix contest. Dandy, feeling insulted, announces he is disbanding the crew and starts to walk off. Meow and QT are more worried about the contest entry form and eating pancakes.

As he sulks in the ship, Dandy receives an invitation from his “biggest fan” who wants to see Dandy’s smile at a party and that Dandy is the guest of honor. Of course Dandy is picturing a hot woman, but the invite is signed only with “A Rare Alien”. Dandy takes the escape ship from the Aloha Oe and takes off.

We then get the first appearance this season of Dr. Gel. He goes on about missing his mother while looking at an old picture of the two of them before venting his frustrations about not catching Dandy. After a mention of turning back time from his flunky Dr. Bea, Gel sets a course for the River of Time.

We find that Dandy has crash landed on a heavily forested planet where he meets a rodent woman. She explains Dandy may have passed through The River of Time that flows in the upper atmosphere of the planet. The announcer explains that the River of time is affected by a gravitational pull that causes an endless wave, making the past repeat itself. He goes on to explain that the flow is like the flow between and man and a woman when he is interrupted by the rodent woman.
As this is going on QT and Meow find out that Dandy actually won the Mr. Misunderstanding Grand Prix but has to claim his prize in person. They track him down on the planet and try to use the teleporter to beam themselves right to him. This of course doesn’t work and they find themselves in worse and worse circumstances from different dangerous aliens. The get themselves out of trouble and are talking about the aliens trying to get them when the mysterious puppet Alien shows up. He pulls out his ukulele and stats to play, paralyzing QT and Meow and forcing them to smile.

Dr. Gel arrives to the planet and although he has yet to explain how, he vows that the River of Time will be the way he captures Dandy. He and Dr. Bea share a laugh before taking out for the planets surface in a scout ship.
Dandy arrives and the mansion and is met by the mysterious puppet Alien, known as Ukulele Man. Dandy keeps misunderstanding the aliens emotions but Dandy passes it off as having a great poker face. Ukulele Man explains that he is a rare alien that is the only living example of his race as they are born alone. Dandy is mad that there is not a hot alien girl as he thought and begins to leave. He leaves the house and find the yard is full of statues. Dandy finds QT and Meow and the alien says he has them because he collects smiles. The alien then admits he wants Dandy for his collection of smiles. Dandy gets mad saying he won’t smile after what happened to his friends. The alien tries to use his powers but Dandy refuses to smile. He grabs his still friends and runs to find the Aloha Oe being chewed up by the rodent woman’s children. He figures out that he can put them in the River of Time to reverse Ukulele Man’s powers and takes off. Dr. Gel arrives and tracks the Aloha Oe as it flies to the River of Time and take chase.

Dandy launches his friends into the space river and literally surfs the waters waiting to find his friends again. Dr. Gel tries to catch him but his ship is flattened by a large nuclear submarine that hits the massive wave in the river and is turned into an old pirate schooner. Knocked from the ship Dr. Gel finds his long departed mother and reaches out for her, only for her to smack him a number of times, sending him away in the water.
Ukulele Man shows up and tries to pull a Dandy out of the past that would smile for him. As he pulls a version of Dandy out, he pulls out QT and Meow out as well. Dandy starts to fade as pulling a Dandy out of the past will make him disappear. Dandy socks the alien right in the face and shatters his mask, causing Ukulele man to burst into flames. He laments that a smile wouldn’t look good on him, but Dandy tells him he is smiling, and it looks good on him. Ukulele Man then burns away.

As with the last episode I’m seeing that the show kept very much on point during the entire show and didn’t meander around like some of the first season episodes did. It kept clear reasons why everyone ended up in the same place and had a purpose for what everyone was doing. The biggest drawback to this ep was that up until the climatic scene, it jump cut way to much between the different characters. Before you could even digest what you just watch the show jumps to another character’s narrative and it can b hard to keep up until the last third of the show. Granted everything flows and makes sense, but having scenes that are only a minute or two sometimes before jumping to something else gets real distracting and makes you lose track of things rather quickly. I’d have preferred if they took the middle part of the show and just put a bunch of those scenes together instead of chopping them up into random one minute scenes.

The story is an interesting take on another anime troupe. The “Friends spilt up/ friends get frozen” plot-line has been done before in stuff like Sailor Moon and Dragonball, but the solution was an interesting twist. Dandy didn’t necessarily have to defeat the villain to get his friends back, he just used the river of time to solve his problem. An interesting concept.
All in all It’s a good episode, even if the jump cuts get a little annoying. The way the three perspectives came together in the end though worked out well and told an interesting story.