Groovy, baby
- Last week on Space Dandy, Dandy and his crew accidentally caused a black hole because of an upset in the gravity of the planet they were on.
Summary of Space Dandy Episode 8
- After beaming down to a planet where Meow says there’s a rare alien called “Code D”, Dandy gets separated from Meow and gets discovered by an intelligent plant organism named Dr. H, who is a species known as a “Vegim”. Dandy tells Dr. H about his search for Code D, and Dr. H agrees to help him find it.
- After an expedition to Code D goes sour, we learn that Code D isn’t an alien at all; it’s actually an object that is the sole reason for the existence of the Vegims as well as other species of plants on the planet Planta. Dandy then finds a way to where Code D is and uproots it from the planet, causing all life on the planet to decay back their normal states.
My Take
- Man, what the hell? Did somebody just spike my tea with LSD? I guess I’ll have to assume what I saw in this episode was intended to be shown. It’s just…what did I watch?! Somebody who worked on this episode wasn’t quite right in the head. If anything, I can at least say that Dandy gets a little...Spaced out in this episode (groan with me, it was cheesy joke).
Budget cutbacks have really taken their toll on the animation department
- Taking out the fact that this episode was incredibly strange and random, I kind of liked it. The story was pretty thin, but that’s to be expected for this anime. Basically, Dandy is searching for a supposed alien named “Code D” on a planet called “Planta”. But he discovers that the planet is made up of hyper-intelligent plants who call themselves “Vegims”, specifically one named “Dr. H”. So the whole episode basically revolved around Dandy trying to cooperate with the native species to find Code D. That was alright. But then the episode got really, really weird.
- It was said that Dandy was the first human that the natives had ever seen, yet nobody took any sort of interest in him except for Dr. H’s daughter, 033H. And even then, it was mild curiosity that a young child would have with, say, a puppy. And that was actually pretty funny. Dandy has been downgraded to “puppy status”. I like that. But why would a doctor who studied the effects of the Code D extensively not care about alien life such as humans? He just kind of accepted that he met a new species, as did Dandy.
Yeah, Dandy, how did that teleporter accident not kill you?
- As all this was happening, Meow was being fattened up by some of the less-intelligent “Movies” who had the intend of eating him (then why not just eat the food you’re fattening him up with?). That was pretty funny, but it didn’t ever really amount to anything and there wasn’t any payoff. He just got fat. He didn’t have to really escape in a comical way. That was a bit disappointing.
- Then there was some trippy montage of the colorful vegetation being super wondrous. It was like Dandy just took a bunch of drugs and mellowed out. I sort of liked these visual spectacles because they were neat and they didn’t drag on too long, but they were definitely random. This montage was nothing like fantastic and heartfelt one in episode 5 (A Merry Companion Is a Wagon in Space, Baby), almost so much that it seems unfair to compare the two. But that doesn’t make it unwatchable.
Kids; don’t do LSD. If you do, you might end up like Dandy
- However, my main gripe with this episode is how everything was so fast paced. The Vegims want to go get rid of the Code D so that they can revert back to ordinary plants, but then some of them don’t want to, then Dandy, Dr. H, and 033H get put in confinement, then they get busted out, then they go to Code D…and this all happened in like two minutes! Slow down! Plus, it was hard to tell who was saying what because it was hard to differentiate any of the Vegims from one another… wow, in hindsight, the last third of this episode was sort of a mess.
- One aspect to this episode that I actually enjoyed quite a bit was the suspense it built up. Yeah, this episode actually had suspense! Mainly from the mystery surrounding the Code D. This whole time, I thought that it was going to be some sort of enriched fertilizer that was seeping into the planet and causing the plants to become intelligent. Even though it was just a meteorite, the concept was the same.
- I don’t know what happened to the artwork on this episode, but it just seemed very off. Actually, it sort of reminds me of Gatchaman Crowds with it’s vibrant color pallet and over-exaggerated design. It was kind of cool, but any more of this style will probably give me a headache.
After watching this episode, I am too, Dandy. I am too
- “Plants Are Living Things, Too, Baby”… what can I say about you? You’re trippy and nonsensical, but that’s part of your charm. Sure, it’s not the best episode, but it stands out as one of the most memorable.
