Review by Gino Vega

Anime director Shinichiro Watanabe is probably best known to Western audiences for his work on the series Cowboy Bebop, but in the years since Bebop he’s also been directorially responsible for the shows Samurai Champloo, Kids and the Slope, and most recently Space Dandy.

All of these shows are linked by a common theme: in each, a group of troubled individuals find themselves drawn together into an unlikely alliance, and-as a team-achieve a fuller, more real sense of themselves than they ever could have reached on their own. We saw this process occur against a hipster, futuristic-noir background in Cowboy Bebop, as a pseudo-historical hip-hop/samurai mashup in Samurai Champloo, through the soap operatic realism of Kids on the Slope and, in Space Dandy…well, Space Dandy is a different beast altogether.

Let me preface my review of Space Dandy by saying that, while I enjoyed the show, it’s beyond “not for everyone.” It’s not that Space Dandy is an acquired taste, but rather a taste than one will either “get” or reject immediately, and either response seems perfectly reasonable. Space Dandy is, as the opening segment tells us, a dandy in space. And that sums up the show nicely. Dandy is a well-coiffed male airhead with a sweet pompadour, a Luau-themed spacecraft (the Aloha-Oe), and an obsession with “Boobies” (an intergalactic, Hooters-esque theme restaurant) and females in general. Continue reading →