Review of Space Dandy

I have long Google Docs that have these bullet point lists of media that seem interesting to me and I want to mark down and come back to it later. A backlog of stuff to consume really, and they're broken down by media from movies to books to TV shows which include an anime section. The TV shows doc is one of the shortest and I have quite a bit of anime on there, but it does not have a crazy amount that would take a decade of dedicated effort to get through. And yet, on a relatively short list in a relatively short section, SpaceDandy appeared four different times under various categories or sources from where it was recommended. That is basically unheard of across any of my docs to appear four different times and it pretty much guarantees that it will be at least good. I'm pretty sure I saw an episode with my sister once on adult swim in a hotel while we were on a trip years ago. We liked it and thought it was funny, and I was happy to finally get down and see this show that had gotten so much positivity from as close to trusted and known sources as I could get. Not to mention how great Shinichiro Watanabe is as a director. Cowboy Bebop is great and I liked Samurai Champloo and Kids on the Slope

But as you can probably guess from the buildup, I didn't like this show too much. A famous director not having a great creative outing as he tries to make a free-flowing comedy with an emphasis on lack of structure and creative freedom is fine, but this show really failed to grab me in ways that it didn't to a bunch of people. Space Dandy was alright but didn't have much going on and Meow and QT (I didn't even know he was a guy until the last episode) have their moments but did not make any real impact. I don't mind the lack of a plot or goal or sitcom-like episodic structure, but none of it came together well enough to be actually funny. It all sounds good on paper and I don't know what exactly was missing to make this show interesting but the humor was not connecting and repeated itself a lot.

I don't know the intimate details, partly because I binged the last half of it which did improve a bit over time, especially with the more expressive art style, but for most of these episodes I was almost dragging myself to finish them. The music is ok, but didn't stand out besides the jazz flourish during the commercial title cards, which almost feels like a crime for a Watanabe anime. I will watch the next season because in 13 episodes, I didn't see the one that made me laugh years ago, and am curious if it improves at all, but also if I get a better idea of why so many people or opinions I trust see something in this that I just don't. It's not offensively bad, but can just be boring.