Seriously, who has a blog nowadays?
- Last week on Space Dandy, Dandy went to great lengths to unknowingly return an intelligent alien in the form of a book.
Summary of Space Dandy Episode 12
- After a bout of unsuccessful finds, the crew tries to search for the elusive Chameleonian for a hefty 100 million woolongs. The crew then fishes for the Chameleonian, and eventually unknowingly caught it. It then starts to mimic the crew members, making it hard for them to determine who it really is. After they eventually capture it after it mimics QT, they take it to the registration, only for it to sneak away, which leads to Dandy being banned from the registration center. The Chameleonian then takes on the form of Dandy. As this is going on, Dr. Gel is planning to use a device to capture Dandy across the universe. He tries to do so, but accidentally captures the Chameleonian instead.
My Take
- Talk about an improvement. Last week’s episode was a huge let down for me, but this week’s episode was quite pleasant. It wasn’t confusing, the art wasn’t minimalistic, and the colors weren’t monochrome.
Uh-oh. Do I sense a montage coming on?
- It’s a classic setup: Dandy needs to find an alien that’s impossible to find. The alien he’s looking for, the Chameleonian, is a being that can change its form at will, so nobody knows what exactly it really looks like. And of course, after minimal effort with a seemingly stupid plan, the crew finds the Chameleonian. Yeah, that formula isn’t the most original, I admit. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work with these characters.
Porn can be watched on phones in the distant future? Wow, who would have guessed?
- It works here because of how witty and cocky the Chameleonian is. It plays off of the characters and taunts the hell out of them by changing into them right in front of their faces. And even though it’s painfully obvious to the viewer which one is the Chameleonian when it changes, that doesn’t make it less humorous. This is where the majority of the humor actually comes from in the episode, especially when a character says something then walks off screen, only to return and say the exact same thing. This happened both with Meow and Scarlett, and both times it came as a slight surprise.
- Speaking of humor, there’s this one specific scene where the Chameleonian turns into Dandy, and both QT and Meow both decide that the only way to find which one is the real Dandy is to hold a quiz show with facts only the real Dandy would know, only to yield no definitive results because the score is constantly tied. It’s exactly what I would have expected from a scene like that, but it was executed in a good way.
A classic maneuver!
- I kind of liked that fishing montage. It perfectly illustrated infatuation with a new hobby.
- I’ve said previously that I enjoy the more serious episodes more than the ridiculous ones. Although that’s still true, this episode reminded me that it doesn’t have to be completely serious for it to be a great episode. It wasn’t off-the-wall craziness or tear-jerking tragedy. It found a middle ground. It was tame. It gave me time to digest all the jokes and situations that the crew got into.
- You know, that part where they’re chasing the Chameleonian through the ship reminded me a lot of episode 8 where they were chasing the microscopic aliens through the ship. Only this time, Dandy doesn’t kill anything. Also it’s funny here.
- My favorite part was the ending. I loved how Dandy just accepted that he could be the Chameleonian and just forgot about his past and eventually embraced the Chameleonian, only to have it accidentally taken by Dr. Gel. I sort of feel bad for Dr. Gel now, having to deal with a duplicate of himself that further questions his sanity. But maybe he deserves it for never revealing why he’s after Dandy.
Either Dandy has very low standards or he’s very multicultural. The sad thing is that I can’t decide which one it is
- There’s nothing particularly special about “Nobody Knows the Chameleon Alien, Baby”, yet at the same time, it just seems so captivating. It’s not my favorite episode so far, but it’s definitely not my least favorite. It’s almost like a return to the feeling of the first couple of episodes in the series that made me fall in love with this anime in the first place. And for that, it at least deserves some sort of recognition.
