English Dub Review: Space Dandy: “Lovers are Trendy, Baby.” (Episode 10 season 2)

Spoilers Below

In this episode we are off to planet Trendy. A vacation spot for lovers and couples. Why? Cuz Scarlett needs herself a man! A Dandy man! And she’s paying!

The plot revolves around Scarlett, our favorite alien registration clerk. She hires Dandy to pretend to be her boyfriend for a week because her ex boyfriend Dolph is stalking her. He is also delusional and crazy (complete with eye twitch). This episode really shows off Scarlett more as a person than just a bit player and foil for Dandy at the registration office. We get to see her both literally and figuratively let her hair down in this episode, something that I enjoyed. This also referred to something brought up a number of episodes ago that Scarlett has horrible luck with men. We also get to see she is a total fan of “Chuck”, and two guesses who that refers back to (Think martial art movies). In fact it’s a point that her and Dandy actually bond over. Of course the whole point of picking Dandy was that she thought she would never fall for him (and the fact she knew he wasn’t doing anything that week), but inevitably she actually does start to develop feelings for him. She laughs off when Dandy blows up her house, she gets slightly mad when Dandy talks to Honey when they are at Boobies, and when Dolph shows up and tries to blast Dandy to bits, she doesn’t hold Dandy to the contract that said no kissing. Sadly this doesn’t last as she ends up going to the bar she had planned for the last night, even though Dolph had been hauled off to jail and the contract was over. Due to Dandy’s bad timing and a passing train, they just miss each other and things seem to return to normal.

We actually get to see a different side of Dandy as well. As all this is occurring he too starts to fall for Scarlett, not in his usual cocky somewhat leering and sleazy way, but in a way where he actually feel like he wants to be with her. He tries helping her get her shoe unstuck from the pavement, and when it breaks he offers to carry her home. Of course this being Dandy they were already there anyway. At first he seems like his usual self, “barrowing” from kids and even finding rare aliens to cash in (a giant squid, Santa, a snow man, and what appeared to be a Japanese nature goblin). As things go on you see he starts getting more attached to her. You can sense he really wants to help her out by the time Dolph shows up, and not just for the money. He really thinks about going to the bar to see her, even passing up a trip to Boobies for it. It shows a more human side of Dandy as well that for all he swagger he still has a heart.

It’s hardly a new plotline in anime, let alone television in general. The “pretending to be boyfriend/girlfriend” troupe has been around as long as television itself. You knew how this story was going to end and roughly how it would play out; but that doesn’t mean this show was a bad one. The producers injected a lot of things to take this tired cliché and make it more Dandy. Dandy finally catching some aliens, blowing up the house , and a creepy ex piloting a giant mecha were just some of the ways that the producers took this idea and made it there own. It still had the Dandy humor in it and it was a well done job of what otherwise could have been a very predicable plot and episode.

Animation wise I think it worked out perfectly. The only time you saw the animation change was the arrival of the “big spider” in Scarlet’s house

The reaction shot was perfect and also they used the “lower the quality during the action”  cheat anime has been using a lot lately (Naruto being the big offender) it was only for one very brief scene. This was a case where keeping as much of the episode looking like Space Dandy really saved the show. As enjoyable as it was having such a troupe for a plot would have been murder if the animation quality blew during the entire show.

I found this episode really enjoyable. We got some character enhancement for both Dandy and Scarlett that didn’t stray far from what we are used to. This episode didn’t force the theme or make either act out of character to get this to work. The story has been done a bazillion times, but it worked here. Even if you knew things weren’t going to work out in the end, it was still an enjoyable story with these two. Best of all it didn’t have a ton of jump cuts, nor did it do unnecessary things like bring in Dr. Gel and Dr. Bea to do nothing but take up time. It was also kind of nice seeing things turn out well for both Dandy and Scarlett. Sure, her house was leveled, but insurance will cover that. Her ex is in jail and has a restraining order. She had a lot of fun, even though she was left alone during the last night, she didn’t seem to hold it against Dandy too hard. Dandy got aliens, got a boatload of cash, and even got to fight a dude. He didn’t seem to heartbroken or mad ad Scarlett either and everything went back to normal. When you watch a series like this about characters that never seem to catch a break, if great to see things work out once and a while.