Review of Space Dandy

***This review is for the entire 26 episode full series, not just season one*** Space Dandy for me was a textbook example of all style, no substance. It does a lot of things really well- it's one of the most flashy and colorful anime I've ever seen (especially in its retro-arcade inspired first season), it has upbeat original bops that just about anyone can jam out to, it's intelligently written and has no shortage of witty humor and the creativity here from the variety of episodes and scenarios to the never-recycled and highly varied alien designs to the plethora of futuristic objects sprinkled throughout the worldseemingly knows no bounds. So why then, after all that praise, was Space Dandy a 7, at best, for me? Because, frankly, I just wasn't all that entertained.

The humor, while intelligently written, almost universally fell flat for me. It was witty and sometimes got me to smirk or snicker, but I virtually never laughed, nevermind choked on my laughter, at any point throughout the show. Humor is, of course, extremely personal and subjective so I'm not about to give the humor here a "grade", but speaking only for myself I just didn't find this show to be all that funny. Amusing? Maybe. Funny? No. For me I see a clear distinction between the two.

Likewise, episodic anime (and make no mistake- this is almost COMPLETELY episodic) is just not my cup of tea in general and in this case, as with almost all episodic anime, the quality of episodes definitely varied. A couple of them were fairly engaging and had me thinking maybe I actually do like this show, but just as many of them felt slow and outright uninteresting to me. I also felt the animation quality in the second season was not consistent throughout the episodes. It definitely felt like a different person/team of people had drawn/animated the main cast in some of them.

Character development here definitely lacks. The main cast consists of only three characters and the two secondary characters have one episode each devoted to them and that's more or less it. By and large, Dandy is the ONLY character, and while he's plenty likable I had the same problem with him that I had with the program as a whole- I just didn't find him all that interesting.

I also found it rather curious that the art direction took a pretty big shift from season one to season two. The seizure-inducing flashing neon lights and retro arcade thing season one had going on completely vanishes in season two, as does the introduction at the beginning of each episode as to why it's called Space Dandy. There are also random episodes in season two that use a different ending song, but there doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason to this, and then it just goes right back to the same ending song it'd been using all along. Each of these things, individually, are small, but the bigger picture issue is an overall lack of consistency and cohesion throughout the entire program.

At the end of the day, I APPRECIATED this anime more than I liked it. It simply wasn't my cup of tea and didn't entertain me the large majority of the time. That doesn't make it objectively bad, and indeed you'll see in a moment that my objective rating for this program is higher than my personal enjoyment rating, but I can tell you definitively of the Cowboy Bebop/Outlaw Star/Space Dancy trio (all from the same people), Space Dandy is, by a wide margin, my least favorite. Honestly I'd have very little interest in the supposedly upcoming season three if and when such a thing comes to fruition.

OBJECTIVE RATING- 7.5
PERSONAL ENJOYMENT RATING- 6-6.75