Space Dandy (Shinichiro Watanabe)

Adorably goofy yet somehow still badass, just how I like my characters.

"Space Dandy" is a new Japanese animated directed by Shinichiro Watanabe (Known for the critically acclaimed "Cowboy Bebop" and "Samurai Champloo") and produced by Bones (A Japanese anime studio known for its quality animations). It is especially known to be the first Japanese animated series with a world-wide premiere (Starting in America first on the 4th of January, even before Japan).

The series follows Dandy, who is a rather incompetent alien hunter who… well, makes a living by hunting aliens (And is so far not doing so well), along with his robot assistant (Also vacuum cleaner) QT and a dim witted space cat whom they nickname Meow (Seeing that his real name is near impossible to pronounce).

For an animation with a typical TV budget, the quality of the entire animation is absolutely phenomenal (As always you can't expect any less from Shinichiro and Studio Bones). The visuals are also really stunning with surprisingly fluid and dynamic animated sequences (The exaggerations of their movements, poses and expressions are also enjoyable, without them having to resort to the usual over-the-top 'anime' facial expressions), making it near impossible for me, the viewer, to look away for even just a brief moment (Unless a commercial comes on or if I just pause the video).

It is just awe inspiring to see such a quality product, considering the budget and amount of time given to have each episode produced, planned and executed.

Studio Bones is a Japanese anime studio founded in 1998 and located in Igusa, Suginami, Tokyo, it has produced numerous series including "Wolf's Rain", "Darker than Black", "Soul Eater", both "Fullmetal Alchemist" anime series, and recently for games such as "Professor Layton Vs Ace Attorney" and "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destines".

 Thanks to another favorite artist of mine, I was able to keep track of the behind-the-scene process for this anime, it is interesting to see how it is all still animated on paper (Which might be saying that the traditional method of animating won't be dying out just yet), for both the pre-production and main production stages (Also an interesting thing to note is that most studios outside of America animate their TV shows, while the rest of the studios in American usually rely on flash/compositing programs to animate their shows).

"It's about the masters, not the tools." as quoted by LeSean Thomas.

And of course it's also great seeing some of the crew having fun during the process.

QT's voice actress, Uki Satake checking out the main character design reference print outs. 

Veteran seiyuu/voice actor Junishi Sawabe cosplaying his own character.