Space Dandy: Space, Yes; Dandy, Not So Much

This statement won’t win me many fans, but I don’t particularly like Space Dandy.

I understand this is an unpopular position, at least based on the amount of love the new anime series gets on my Facebook wall. Everyone seems to enjoy the comedy action anime featuring the adventures of Space Dandy as he searches the universe for undiscovered alien species, so he can get a bounty for the discovery, and immediately take that money to the far future’s version of Hooters, the restaurant chain called Boobies.

With that description alone, you would think it would be right up my alley. I love aliens and science fiction, and boobies — animated or otherwise. But you would be wrong.

The show features some pretty absurd episodes, but it isn’t absurdist enough to be funny. The main character is a self-infatuated incompetent jerk, but not enough of one to be funny like Sterling Archer. The two supporting cast members, the cat-like Betelgeusian Meow and the antiquated robot QT, are supposed to fill out a comedy trio like the Three Stooges, but the two supporting characters are so dull as to make them not even as funny as the Three Amigos.

If anything, the series seems like Will Ferrell attempting to make a Monty Python movie about Muppets in Space —  and failing miserably. Of course, you may have gathered I am not a big fan of Will Ferrell when he does that one-note same character in every movie — the moronic jerk that has succeeded despite being a complete asshat. That is Space Dandy in a nutshell — a sad Will Ferrell knock-off.

And that is particularly shocking when you consider the director, Shinichirō Watanabe, created one of the coolest characters in the anime universe, Spike Spiegel of the series Cowboy Bebop. So far there has been two episodes in which Watanabe’s touch seems to be in evidence — one in which Dandy befriends a young alien girl, and the most recent one in which Dandy discovers what may be the first dog in space, Laika.

To be fair, I am still watching the series and will continue to, not just for the appearances of the Boobies waitresses. I am hoping that more of Watanabe’s touching sensibilities come to fill out the series, pushing the failing absurdist and Ferrellesque humor to the side. But how someone who has done such influential, outstanding work can produce something as dull as Space Dandy still baffles me.