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In 2014, Toonami felt like a celebration, with the block having survived its first full year revived on Adult Swim at that point, where it would go into 2014 quite strong despite what many may have thought beforehand. People may have forgotten this, but Toonami’s revival was never guaranteed. I remember the online discourse back then, with many dismissing its revival and saying it would be gone before the end of the year. That discussion came from a pocket of anime fans who had access to services that showed anime; platforms like Crunchyroll, Funimation, Neon Alley, Netflix, Hulu, etc. The argument being “Why would I or anyone want to watch a show that has been readily available for years elsewhere?” which I think is a fair argument to have, since for those fans who are in the know, Toonami probably isn’t really appealing, especially when they likely either cut cable years earlier or already have a service like Crunchyroll.
However, I think for myself and many others, not everyone keeps up or knows what’s out in a given season. The anime industry has been pumping out so many different shows over the past decade, perhaps too many, that watching everything is impossible. On top of that, watching anime on TV does two things: first, it exposes a series to a wider audience and may get some interest in the medium from more viewers. Toonami acts as a trojan horse where they can acquire the most popular and well-known series and load them upfront, but every now and then, they like airing shows that are outside of normal conventions. Something smaller, shorter, and, for the most part, good. These are the shows that fly under the radar, at least to the casual viewer tuning in; shows like Food Wars, Michiko and Hatchin, Parasyte, Hellsing Ultimate, and so many more. The second thing anime on TV does is boost sales of an anime’s physical media. Some viewers who may be invested but aren’t interested in waiting a week to see the whole story may buy a Blu-ray to watch ahead, and the person who watched from beginning to end on TV may buy it as well if they enjoyed the show. Someone else might pick up the manga and maybe explore more from that same author, or perhaps they watch more from the director of the series. It’s a domino effect. I can remember when I first got introduced to anime and it was watching Dragonball Z as a kid on Cartoon Network and watching Pokemon on Kids WB. I’m sure that’s the same for most of us Toonami faithful. Even now Toonami is still exposing shows to audiences; one of our staff members, Samster299, was brought into Toonami with DBZ Kai. He had watched it on Nicktoons Network when it aired there, but when it re-ran on Adult Swim, it made him curious to check it out. Not only is he a fan of Toonami now, but he began checking out more anime because of them. Needless to say, Toonami has a place in the market, and to be honest, they do a lot of good for the anime industry.
If I can circle back to talk about 2014 for a second, that year was Toonami’s best for a number of different reasons, but I think it stands as a strong year because they grabbed a great mixture of old, obscure, new, and popular titles that made for an amazing lineup that featured shows like Gurren Lagann, Beware the Batman, DBZ Kai, Hellsing Ultimate, and Naruto Shippuden, among so many others. But the start of this incredible year would come right at the beginning of 2014 with the January premiere of Shinichiro Watanabe’s latest series, Space Dandy.
On October 25th, 2013, Toonami would drop a big bombshell of an announcement. On their now inactive Tumblr page, they announced that Space Dandy would be premiering on the block in January and the block would begin a half hour earlier with it now beginning at 11:30p! But that wasn’t all. Not only would it kick off the block at 11:30p but it would be premiering first on US TV before anywhere else! I wasn’t active on Twitter back when Space Dandy was first announced, but I was shocked and surprised to hear that Toonami’s revival had landed a world premiere show, and a series that would premiere in the United States first and the sub would be up on Sundays on Funimation’s streaming platform at that time. It was a monumental moment for the block as this is a very uncommon thing to happen in anime, but it came about thanks to Adult Swim having a well-established partnership with Bandai. Apparently, one of the producers who worked on Space Dandy managed to get in contact with Adult Swim and the team at Toonami and asked if they would be interested in airing the show. Obviously, a new Shinichiro Watanabe series was a no-brainer for them, so they worked out an agreement where they acquired the broadcast rights from Bandai directly.
I remember being excited that Toonami was moving earlier on Adult Swim’s schedule, as I think I had some vague hopes that Toonami would take over all of Saturday night. While it’s obvious to anyone familiar enough with Adult Swim’s schedule earlier in the night that such an “all-Toonami” schedule will never happen, yet, the block moving into the 11:30p slot was exciting. Toonami was already at a record six hours long at that point, but expanding further beyond to an earlier time slot was unheard of. Adult Swim liked to keep that time for reruns of their comedy stable, be it Family Guy or The Boondocks, so to see them give up that half hour just to run anime at a semi-earlier time was amazing to see, even if it would only be expanding to 11:30p and nothing more.
With the January premiere fast approaching, Adult Swim did everything they could to promote Space Dandy, with a simple short teaser in late November followed by a full trailer during the final weeks of the block’s Month of Movies in December. I will always remember watching those on repeat on one-time Toonami archivist Junior’s (formerly known as CabooseJr) YouTube channel and being so excited, getting goosebumps waiting for this new show that I knew nothing about other than those couple of trailers. Back then, I knew little to nothing about the anime industry and how it worked, the talent that was a part of it, and especially how anime distribution worked. I was basically a casual viewer tuning in because I was curious about a brand-new show that would be airing first on US TV rather than elsewhere. When Space Dandy’s first season premiered January 4th, 2014, I was expecting a new action series from the mind of the creator of Cowboy Bebop. Instead, he subverted my expectations by delivering a comedy. Not a comedy drama or comedy action, just a straight up comedy, which in hindsight was brilliant. Up to that point, Watanabe’s shows familiar to Adult Swim’s audience were serious in tone and action focused. However, Space Dandy would buck that trend, instead presenting a show that has stand-alone episodic elements that offer little continuity between episodes. For the most part, you do not need to sit through every episode in order; in fact, one could watch this show at random and not feel like anything had been missed because each episode effectively “resets” by the end of its runtime. Discussing Space Dandy’s story is almost worthless because the show itself treats it as an afterthought. Unlike Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bebop before, where those shows had a story to tell and would have episodic elements to tell a singular story while growing the characters in this series, Dandy’s episodic nature serves as a backdrop for different artists and directors working on each installment. It’s a different approach from the more controlled presentation of Bebop, which clearly has its story to tell and doesn’t want to fully deviate from that path. Meanwhile, Champloo made it easy to detour and take time getting to its final destination, but it was still interested in having a more different art style and direction than Bebop. Looking back now, Dandy was unique, and it was a special series for it.
If you are that curious about the “plot” of Space Dandy, it follows…you know, I’ll just do my best announcer impression and let the intro to the show speak for itself. “Space Dandy! He’s a Dandy guy… in space. He combs the galaxy like his pompadour on the hunt for aliens. Planet after planet he searches, discovering bizarre new creatures both friendly and not. These are the spectacular adventures of Space Dandy and his brave space crew in space!” If you couldn’t gather just from the opening narration, from the outset, the show sets its tone and makes it very clear that this is a wacky comedy that’ll be full of jokes. Unlike the cyberpunk-ish designs and art direction of Cowboy Bebop, Space Dandy goes for more of a pulp sci-fi serial look, one not too far off from something like Flash Gordon, bringing a very charming aesthetic that enhances the jokes the series is trying to tell. Character designs are top notch, being easily recognizable and standing out in scenes while also acting to serve as support for comedy. Not to mention, the crew of Dandy’s ship, the Aloha Oe, stand out from other Watanabe shows. If the design and character of Spike Spiegel was to be cool, calm, but badass, then Space Dandy is the complete opposite of Spike. Dandy is more of a piggish, womanizing, idiot who is less than capable of handling a bounty let alone capturing a rare alien. The crew of the Bebop were more than capable of capturing their targets; it’s just unfortunate circumstances that would prevent them from cashing in on said bounty. Meanwhile, the crew of the Aloha Oe are just a ragtag group of idiots who can’t do anything right. One of the best observations I saw back in the day was Youtuber PanPizza calling the show “anime Johnny Bravo in space.” A comparison so apt that someone made a great edit of such a thing: Dandy Bravo (Space Dandy feat Johnny Bravo)
As mentioned before Toonami only aired the first thirteen episodes of Space Dandy and labeled it as “season one” at the start of 2014. I couldn’t tell you why they did it like that, but perhaps the second cour of Space Dandy wasn’t ready and had a lot of incomplete episodes, or maybe Funimation at that time was ill equipped to handle a dub production where they had to dub the episodes as they came to their studio. Toonami may have even believed that splitting it up would draw out their acquisitions and premieres for that year. Whatever the case was, season one of Space Dandy aired first so let’s talk about that before we dive into season two.
