Space Dandy is one of those anime that has a bit of everything for everybody. Produced by Bones and helmed by Shinichiro Watanabe as its chief director, the series adopts the episodic format of a space adventure anime like Cowboy Bebop and gives it a comedic twist with diverse storytelling beats.  

Space Dandy’s episodes often range from space-faring epic adventures to love stories, zombie apocalypses, and even a long monologue droning about one’s own existence. The anime has a knack for balancing clever parodies and comedic stories with an engaging connective narrative involving the three crew members of the Aloha Oe: the captain Dandy, the robot QT, and the local stowaway Meow. Dandy is on a mission to discover new aliens across a vast galaxy and encounters several different beings, environments, and planets on his long journey. 

Today, I want to focus on the show’s 17th episode “The Transfer Student is Dandy, Baby.” It centers on Dandy transferring into an American-styled galactic high school called Baberly Hills High at Andromeda Academy on the Planet Clipon. He is searching for a rare female alien that has a flower blooming on its head whenever it falls in love. The high school is known for its performing arts and is hosting an upcoming prom, where Dandy believes he can find the rare alien. He meets a bespectacled red-head named Freckles, who is considered one of the school’s outcasts. Ahead of the prom, he transforms from a plain, nerdy, shy student to a beautiful bombshell of a lady. 

The 17th episode pays homage to the standard American musicals, showcasing the common trope of the outcasts becoming as cool as the popular kids in the end. It borrows a lot of similar narrative beats from musical films like Grease and High School Musical, and also incorporates the high school cliques and social hierarchy of the queen bees, jocks, nerds, and slackers. 

Sofia is one of the characters I love to hate in this episode. She’s your typical blonde bombshell who’s at the top of the school’s caste system and is the antagonist in the episode. She asserts her superior skills in singing and choreographic performance by giving a cartoonishly vain song on why she and the jocks should be respected as the most popular students and everyone else is beneath them. It’s not my favorite song, but I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit at seeing her obnoxious attitude on full display.  

The episode’s big musical number is tied to the song “All is All (Viva All),” which serves as the catchy climatic conclusion to Dandy’s time at Baberly Hills High. It’s a very layered musical and dance performance because it’s presented in several distinct phrases. Each phase is short, but does enough to portray each character’s personality and the subtle changes they’ve gone through. 

Sofia begins the prom with another self-absorbed song proclaiming herself to be “all in all” and the one queen bee. It starts out as a funky disco tune that suddenly shifts when Dandy becomes involved by praising the shape of Freckles’s bottom. It is then followed by musical contributions from Qt, Meow, and the two nerds Dandy befriends. All of them affirm who they are and what kind of things they like such as electronics, salmon flakes, the Internet, and studying. There’s also this one random moment in the middle where this one alien was praising his wife as his “all,” but is betrayed when she mentions another alien as her “all.” It’s a small part in the musical that felt a little out of place, but I still found it a bit funny in the end. 

Freckles then enters the fray as the lights turn off and changes the tone of everything with a soft vocal solo accompanied by a piano. The music then transitions to an energetic tune that has Dandy and Freckles repeatedly singing “Viva Viva Viva All.” It’s here when everyone suddenly become friends with one another and sing together on a catchy chorus to close out the prom. The episode then ends with Dandy and his crew forgetting their original purpose of finding the rare alien. It leaves us with the reveal that Freckles was the alien with the blooming flower on her head. 

Although there may be better episodes of Space Dandy, “The Transfer Student is Dandy, Baby” is still the most memorable one to me. The episode has a lot of heart that appeals to my desire of seeing more anime musicals. It also sets a fun tone with catchy songs to make me want to rewatch it again, along with many other of Dandy’s adventures.