The end of episode 13 showed us the standard “Tsudzuku”, or “to be continued”. You’d better keep your words, Space Dandy!
But still, what a ride, what a ride. Space Dandy is a series that was totally worth it, and even the final three episodes pushed all of the right buttons with me. Again, vastly different stories, again everything comes together in every episode, and again we get to see lots of hilarity and artistic licenses being pushed.
I read the comments that you all posted for my previous entry on this series, and it just goes to show that you can’t please everyone. I was criticized for criticizing Kill la Kill for expecting something it is not, and at the same time I was criticized with Space Dandy for enjoying it for exactly what it advertised to be: a very silly series. Ultimately, this shows that things just boil down to one thing: did you enjoy it. And different people really look for totally different things in a series.
One big example is that I find storylines to be overrated. Sure, a good storyline is amazing to have and all, but I don’t find it the most important aspect of a series: it’s just one of a collection of equally important ingredients, and I’m much more interested in whether it works in combination with everything else. Sure, it can make or break a series, but there are plenty of gray areas inbetween: a series like Space Dandy has no clear cut storyline other than what happens in the individual episodes; but that works wonderfully. Although I do have to be honest here: episode 13 did not really feel like the ending of the series. It was just another episode, and even though it was a very good one, I do feel like the creators missed an opportunity to give closure. Again: you’d better have that second season actually planned in order to make up for this…
This really reminded me of why I originally became such a big fan of anime: Space Dandy gets it for me. It takes the viewer across a fantastic ride full of creativity and charming characters, great music, stories that stretch the concept that the setting originally started with, and animation that gets used at exactly the right times. What I mean by that is that the animation is used to make the characters expressive. When characters talk, they talk with expression. During the action scenes, you can feel the characters move. Too often I just see this done wrong, even with equally big budgets. Too often I just see animation way too focused at looking crisp (I also hate the practice of highlighting animation flaws using only screenshots; I mean, come on people, use your head), or animation that is too busy at looking flashy, rather than focusing at movement.
Episode 12 for some strange reason made me laugh the hardest out of the entire series. Episode 11 meanwhile was just the most surreal one of the series. The creators really did something very special here, because with this they added even more episodes to the growing list of stand-out episodes in this series. There are so many that make this worth watching. Episode thirteen was a bit of a step down, but still very adorable for what it was.
I’m not sure whether I’m going to write a review for this series, because I also again want to be able to cover the new season. I’m also doubting whether I should still use ratings. I originally used them for my own administration: to catalog which ones I prefer over others in an easy way. However I noticed that people on the internet for some reason take these ratings way too seriously. I’ve seen so many people get their panties in a twist because I rated something one point too low, or gave an “unfair” potential rating. I mean really guys: they’re only numbers.