Forum - View topicWhy Wasn't Space Dandy the Next Cowboy Bebop?
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5897 Location: Virginia, United States |
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Kinda of agree. Other than the space and crew thing, they are very different shows. |
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Lemonchest
Posts: 1771 |
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Dandy is Johnny Bravo in space. I liked Bravo when I was 9, but it hasn't aged all that well. Dandy's main characteristic is that he likes ass, so it's hard to be more engaged by him as a character beyond the cool, rockabilly aesthetics. The series lacks particularly memorable side characters (I can't name the cat-mongoose thing or the vacuum cleaner) or standout episodes (beyond their visuals). It's a fun comedy anthology, but that's about it. But it was pushed as the triumphant return of Watanabe & of anime targeted at an American audience (English dub released before the Japanese version). It was sold as oldtaku catnip, but all it is is an entertainingly self-indulgent anachronism - not unlike Toonami.
Speaking of returning Watanabe's, I'd say Nabashin's comeback was better. |
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Scalfin
Posts: 249 |
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I can think of several larger factors:
It was a pure comedy, and a foreign-language situational one at that. Cowboy Beebop is remembered because it got audiences strongly invested in the characters and then gave the dominant one one hell of an exit. FLCL similarly mixed its comedy with a character arc that made us care what happened to its cast. Comedies, on the other hand, can run incredibly hot but tend to leave little nostalgia or memory, and that memory is mainly in quotes. Seinfeld was the most important show of the 1990's, but now it's just "NO SOUP FOR YOU." Rick and Morty still has pull because it's still going, and I expect it to disappear from the public consciousness fairly quickly when it ends. How many people here regularly remember Venture Bros? Hell, maybe the reason the next season has taken so long is that the animators forgot about it, too. It was on the same year as Kill la Kill, No Game No Life, Parasyte, Psycho Pass, Barakamon, Mushishi (s2), and this little show called Sword Art Online (II). As for identifying with the character, I tend to think that the character resembling the viewer's self-image is overestimated. While identifying on tribal lines is a cheap way to score investment, just having an audience insert doesn't really work unless part of the point is showing what happens if a character does what the audience is thinking (basically, if his thinking wasn't limited by genre conventions). The only time shows led by cipher characters seem to do well is when they're not the point and kind of just there to hold the plot together and maybe act as straight men, with the big example being harem anime made with an awareness that the whole appeal is the personalities of the girls. Dandy was too lazy to gain likeability through being funny or antics and never really had any personal stakes or concerns for the audience to worry about, such that we'd laugh at him but not really remember him. |
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explosionforgov
 Posts: 80 Location: United States of America |
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I still need to get around to watching both Space Dandy and Kill La Kill. I was brought up in a very closed-minded, prudish household, so I tend to avoid fanservice-y shows. I still have a lingering fear that my parents will find out what I'm watching and get royally upset, even if I'm an adult.
I also wasn't watching much of anything in 2014, since I was finishing up college at that point. I first encountered Bebop in middle school, when I had much more spare time. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5420 |
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To quote the show itself
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Zhou-BR
Posts: 1447 |
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As much as I love Space Dandy, I think the biggest knock against it is also its most distinctive quality: the fact that each episode is an experimental stand-alone tale by a different team. That made the show's first half very uneven, but I thought the second half was great all the way through. The last time I saw a show deliver so many hilarious, imaginative sci-fi adventures in a row was when I watched the third season of Rick and Morty, so it didn't surprise me to see it mentioned by Jacob.
Last edited by Zhou-BR on Wed Mar 07, 2018 3:18 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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mastix
Posts: 4 |
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The big thing for me was just that the comedy and plots for certain episodes were so hit or miss. It tended to be really nostalgic of 1995-2005 era comedy where just saying the word "booby" was supposed to be hilarious. Really clever episodes were phenomenal, like the High School Musical parody, where I think the premise propped up the otherwise lame jokes, while other episodes just weren't that interesting and the comedic writing couldn't support the show on its own. Overall I rarely found myself laughing at Space Dandy, more pondering this strange feeling that the show thought it could bring back a bunch of old jokes that still weren't all that funny.
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Sahmbahdeh
Posts: 713 |
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This was an interesting article, and really breaks down for me why more people just weren't into the show like I was. The fact that it's so experimental, and where anything can happen, with basically no limits, is what I like about it, from both an aesthetic point and a story telling point. It's best episodes remind me of the best episodes of Rick & Morty, in that they take a wacky sci-fi concept and just run with it for the whole episode. What's also great, and something that I feel is under-acknowledged, is that Space Dandy isn't just a comedy, as the freedom of the format allows for any kind of story to be told, and it takes advantage of this on numerous occasions to tell emotionally affecting stories, or have genuinely emotional moments in addition to the comedy, or have episodes that aren't actually supposed to be comedic at all. Also, I was astonished at how much I cared about the characters by the end of the show, or even halfway through it, as the entire structure and premise seems to rebel against that happening, and yet it did.
For me, Space Dandy is one of my favorite anime comedies, even though it's main strengths are not actually its comedy, which might be part of the problem for people, but I think being open-minded about what kind of shows you watch may help in this regard. Space Dandy also struck me as simply too weird and experimental for most audiences, so it's not really a surprise that it never achieved the same level of popularity that Cowboy Bebop did. |
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zawa113
 Posts: 7358 |
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I'll admit, I only saw maybe 1-2 eps back when it aired initially on Toonami. I was definitely excited and had some hype for it, but I think that Dandy was way too unlikeable for me, and I think that's probably what drove me off so quickly. I cold probably have dealt with the weird format, but I think Jake hit the nail on the head: American nerds don't find Dandy enjoyable to watch.
Of course, I'll also freely admit that I'm not big into anime comedy. I feel like so much gets lost in translation that, since I've found and adore my Cromartie High School, I don't even feel the need to watch more comedy anime. Sure, I'll give one a shot here and there, but I generally don't like them (no, not even Osomatsu-san or Pop Team Epic did anything for me). But I love Rick & Morty a whole lot! Not a big fan of when it bleeds too far into reality at times (the whole Szechuan sauce thing needs to just die at this point), but I feel like that's usually the fan bases' fault for being awful. But I also like how R&M is building a whole lore, and while a lot of episodes can be just fine standalone, there actually are some plots that come up and are mentioned again, so yeah, continuity is important these days and I like it! I just wish the 2 year wait between seasons wasn't also a reality. |
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brankoburcksen
Posts: 126 |
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I think one of the biggest impacts Space Dandy left in the West is proving that SimulDubbing is a viable option for distribution. Only a year after Space Dandy debuted, Funimation launched their SimulDub project with just two shows and now easily boasts over twenty series at any given time even going to so far as to replicate same day dubs for hits like My Hero Academia for much longer than they initially thought. Space Dandy pushed anime toward casual and mainstream viewers in unexpected ways long after the initial buzz died.
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Takkun4343
 Posts: 1529 Location: Englewood, Ohio |
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But Space Dandy did start a phenomenon: FUNimation's Broadcast Dubs initiative.
Next time, try saying that in a way that doesn't sound objective as all hell. 
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Marzan
 Posts: 518 |
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I enjoyed Space Dandy. I thought some of the episodes were outstanding, both visually and aurally. Good job by Watanabe.
That said, comparing it to Cowboy Bebop is a disservice to Dandy. Bebop was a unicorn, a one time only deal the likes of which cannot be reproduced. While similar genre shows with better storylines or characters might appear, you cannot match the overall package thatWatanabe, Nobumoto and Yoko Kanno put together. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11454 |
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Almost everyone thinks that. Just like almost everyone considers themselves a better driver than the average person. I think Dandy's unlikability is probably the most important factor in the series' lack of success. The main thing that saved SD for me was Ian Sinclair's Dandy, which managed to make him tolerable enough to stick with the series to enjoy its other positive attributes. At least it was better than Terror in Resonance. I don't even know what Watanabe was thinking with that mess. |
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Kougeru
 Posts: 5540 |
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This article makes it for more complex than it really needs to be.
The reason it wasn't a huge success is simply because it wasn't that good. It's comedy is tailored for a very specific audience (commonly considered immature) such as the young teens and college kids that love weed who Traditionally watch Adult Swim. It was too over the top for more casual audiences and many also wanted a more connected story. It really just wasn't a great show. Great animation, great direction, but average writing for most of it's run. The only people I can imagine that really think it was the best of 2014 are people that didn't watch a lot of other shows. That's generally what I see from ANN critics and readers - most only watch half a dozen shows or so a year. Hard to trust that when they haven't seen most of what else is up for offer. Most annoying to me personally was that Adult Swim removed the Yoko Kanno +Etsuko Yakushimaru song that was pretty much the best thing about the show. |
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Kougeru
Posts: 5540 |
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I won't argue that it's not a success but it's a bad thing as far as I'm concerned. There's noticably more localization errors and (horrible meaning-changing) liberties taken thanks to simuldubs. The acting of dubs was always ranging from terrible to just average but simuldubs very often sound rushed (because they are) and have vocal mistakes that rarely (never?) Get fixed in home releases. I wouldn't care as long as they got fixed on home releases but I've personally never seen that happen, so I can only hate "simul"dubs for rushing. Sorry that I prefer quality. Dubs were already subpar and rushing them doesn't help at all. All that said, Dandy did have a good dub. They clearly put more care into it than they do most their shows - especially Maid Dragon....where they outright changed a character's sexuality in the dub. |
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