Dandy (Space☆Dandy)

Dandy is the titular main protagonist of the Space☆Dandy anime and manga.

Dandy is a young man with a sweet pompadour, a junk bucket spaceship, and no greater aim in life than to make money identifying unknown alien species so he can spend it at every BooBies restaurant in the galaxy.

Appearance

Dandy is a tall man with a somewhat lanky yet athletic build (in the episode We're All Fools, So Let's All Dance, Baby, he was shown to be muscular underneath his shirt and jacket). He has jet-black hair, messy sideburns, brown eyes, black eyebrows, a slender nose, an angular face, and an X-shaped mark on his chin. His hair is styled into a Regent pompadour, which is his most striking feature as well as his pride and joy.

Dandy sports a red shirt under a grey-blue and white sukajan jacket with navy blue dress pants, a black belt with a triangular golden buckle, and a gold communicator bracelet on his left wrist. Around his neck is a talisman. He also has large brown boots with metal soles. His jacket has a large gold star on his upper back and a smaller one on the left side of his chest.

When hunting aliens, Dandy wears a white full body suit, with blue rings around the shoulders and a blue line down the middle of the torso. This suit also has white gloves, and white boots.

Dandy is usually seen standing with a slouch with his hands in his pockets.

Personality

Dandy (or "Space Dandy" as he sometimes calls himself) is the anti-hero protagonist of the series and has a matching personality to go along with his looks; a delinquent and a dimwitted alien-hunting amateur. Dandy is not above shoving menial tasks to QT like cooking and cleaning up his Aloha Oe and grumbling how useless Meowis, and often neglects their thoughts and opinions.

Dandy is also shown to be a callous man and does not hesitate to sacrifice his crew for his own life, like abandoning Meow to the Deathgerian. Despite his boorish attitude and lax exterior, Dandy has a big heart, ready to help any female in need, though occasionally he does help males, within his interests. Examples include assisting Adélie in searching for her remaining relatives and helping Dr. H in locating Code D. He also comforts Ukuleleman as he is about to die, even though he was his enemy.

Dandy is superficial and he tends to contradict himself. In one episode, he claims to not like porn, yet in the first episode, he was seen reading an erotic magazine full of scantily-clad women. Whenever someone brings this up (usually Meow or QT), Dandy will either ignore it or blame it on something (either his poor memory, his teammates, or some other external factor).

Abilities

While a poor combatant and an inaccurate marksman (even when confronted with multiple targets at close range), Dandy is quick on his feet and is shown to improvise, which benefited the Aloha Oe crew more than once. When piloting either the mecha pod Little Aloha or the Aloha Oe's mecha form Hawaii Yankee, Dandy is revealed to be a good pilot as well as a decent shot. When piloting, Dandy could take out aliens larger than his mecha and even won a race by date.

Dandy is also shown be a pro surfer, shown in his escape from the Undian and Vestian's planet by navigating through the debris easily. However, he is said to have retired because no waves could "stir his heart."

Dandy is also more perceptive of things than he lets on; he knows the secret to warping, which is that warping is actually the movement of one's consciousness betweeen universes and doesn't really exist. It is hinted that he might not be human at all; in the Season 2 episode "Dandy's Day in Court, Baby", a simple DNA scan revealed that Dandy's body has no DNA whatsoever - instead, his body is made of Pyonium, an extremely rare and godlike particle.

It is possibly due to his biological nature that Dandy is the only one who possesses the extremely rare ability to traverse between multiple dimensions and still retain his identity. Dandy's power over space and time are heavily implied to be the reason why he (and possibly the rest of his crew) seemingly died in the explosion from "Live with the Flow, Baby", only to be found alive and well in the next episode. It is also implied that he also has awareness of his alternate selves as well as the dimensions they live in.

Because of these powers, Dandy is coveted by the Gogol Empire, who plan to use him as a tool to gain control over all existing universes, and constantly targeted by the persistent Dr. Gel. However, it is also possible that Dandy's memories are wiped every time he travels to a different dimension, and thus is unable to remember his previous adventures, which also explains his poor memory. Yet despite this, he seems to know that he cannot die.

The final episode reveals that Dandy was chosen to be the God of a new universe by the Narrator, but he turns down the job after learning that he would have to forfeit his body, which would make trips to BooBies boring and leave him unable to personally indulge in his posterior fetish.

Trivia

• Dandy sports a Regent pompadour, a hairstyle often sported by Japanese delinquents and bōsōzoku gang members. Space Dandy's character design art even depicts him as one, with the typical slouching-yet-intimidating posture.
• During Dandy's "live with the flow" rant, one bit has the background as the word "Muda" (useless) repeated endlessly. This is a reference to the manga JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
• Dandy's religious charm could mean the Naritasan Temple or Shinshō-ji.

Gallery

External Links

• Dandy at Space Dandy Wiki