ONGOING ANIME: SPACE DANDY EPISODE 4

When you’ve got a show like Space Dandy that intends to take multiple genres and flip them on their heads, apparently you get space zombies. Ridiculous, unexpected, and definitely not something you’d find in outer space- yep, that sounds like Space Dandy alright.

After procuring what appears to be a new alien species, Meow is bitten by their seemingly sickly prisoner, and begins to show signs of suspicious behavior. Dandy and QT decide to take him to the local Galaxy Hospital, and leave him there overnight to get some treatment. What could possibly go wrong? Apparently, everything. The next day, when the two return to the hospital to check up on Meow (and hit on the nurses, Dandy) the entire clinic body has been turned into zombies. After giving up on trying to rescue the long-dead Meow, Dandy and QT decide to book it out of there like an old 80’s horror flick. Did they manage to escape? ….Not really.

Honestly, the first half of this episode was decently funny. The writers took a typical zombie flick and threw it into space. While we’re sure people have thought of it, or even made movies like this already, we’ve personally never seen anything quite like it. As extremely ludicrous as the concept of space zombies is, that’s what makes the idea such a perfect fit for this show, and we doubt we’ll ever see such a story occur outside of Space Dandy again.

However, it was the second act of the episode that slightly disappointed us. The entire last half described the aftermath of the zombie incident, and how Dandy and the crew attempted to continue their daily lives despite being part of the undead. Again, hilarious! But, after a few minutes the episode began to unfold and release our attention. After all, the main conflict and rising action of episode 4 had concluded during the first 15 minutes- after that, all you’ve got is resolution, which loses its interest after a while. Its the simple structure of fiction writing, people. Still, we enjoyed the segment involving zombie bounty hunters, and how Dandy’s stupidity levels prevented him from getting shot multiple times. And as for how the episode concluded, we weren’t surprised. Considering how episode 1 ended, we kinda saw it coming. 

Overall, not a bad episode- the concept itself was certainly genius and fit the Dandy vibe oh so well. But it could have been better if the first half had been dragged out a bit more (which would’ve been easy), and the second half dimmed down to a short epilogue instead. Regardless, Zombie Dandy will be remembered fondly as we move on to the next episode involving what appears to be a run in with a mysterious little girl. Hope to see you there on Toonami this Saturday night!

-The A7 Team