Of all the qualities that make up great anime, there’s perhaps none more critical than imagination. This has been quite the challenging week. Fighting a full-on Japanese viral infection while having to play tour guide to two sisters on their first trip to Japan has left me desiccated and exhausted. […] Read more
Twelve angry… what, exactly? I would say “that was a Space Dandy episode like none that’s come before” right here, but it seems rather redundant by now. Still, even by Dandy standards that was a pretty singular episode – an interesting combination of outrageous alien designs and a murder trial […] Read more
The well of imagination just never seems to run dry. I have a suspicion that history is going to be kind to Space Dandy. Long after most anime are forgotten I think this one is going to be remembered as one of the watershed moments of the medium, and not […] Read more
If Santa Claus and a Setsubun Oni aren’t symbolic of the multicultural identity of Space Dandy, I don’t know what is. The writer/director team of Ueno Kimiko and Mukai Masahiro brought us the excellent premiere of Space Dandy S2, and they’re reunited here for a somewhat less surrealistic and frenetic […] Read more
The soundtrack of our youth continues to influence us, long after youth is but a memory. In a sense, this was the perfect follow-up to last week’s tour de force episode of Space Dandy. There was no realistic chance any ep could compete with that one on its own terms, […] Read more
I’m officially floored by that one. This is one of those occasional anime episodes that’s so perfect and profound and beautiful that I instinctively don’t want to diminish it by analyzing it. Thank goodness for Space Dandy – that’s really about all I got. Thank goodness for a show that […] Read more
To take the familiar and make it fresh is a rare ability, and one which Space Dandy has demonstrated over and over. We’re on familiar (you might even say hallowed) ground with this episode of Space Dandy, both in general and series-specific terms. Parody is the bread and butter of […] Read more
That kind of ambience I can do without. It’s not every anime that’s going to fit Lucha Libre and a laugh track into the same story (or any story). In fact this is the first time I can recall a laugh track being inserted into any anime episode, which makes […] Read more
Where there’s BONES, there’s hope. It’s quite appropriate that on today of all days we got a Space Dandy written, directed and storyboarded by Oshiyama Kiyotaka. Why? Because on his sterling resume are several Studio Ghibli credits, and the Ghibli influence can be felt in “The Big Fish is Huge, […] Read more
Space Dandy is the anime embodiment of Heraclitus’ saying, “You can never set foot in the same river twice.” It would probably be fair to say that while the first three episodes of Space Dandy’s second season were generally brilliant, they were a little light on the comedy side of […] Read more