Space☆Dandy - Episode 13

What on Earth (or beyond Earth, more importantly) could drive a robot to drink coffee?  As somehow who loathes the stuff, what would possess anyone to drink coffee?  One of these questions, at least, is proffered by the season finale of Space Dandy.

Of course, the robot in question is QT who, having spent some time bemoaning his colleagues wasteful human traits, finds himself entranced by a sleek, beautiful and slightly clumsy coffee maker with a velvety voice (Aya Hirano's, in fact) named... well, Coffee Maker, of course.  In robot terms this is love at first sight, and so QT spends day after day visiting the cafe in question to meet his Maker, and it seems as if the feeling might be mutual.

Unfortunately for those concerned, this is a planet where any kind of emotion expressed by an AI is frowned upon, and one night both Coffee Maker and her cash register work colleague are rounded up and taken to the landfill site which serves as a graveyard for machines who have committed the sin of feeling.  The denizens of this junkyard have used their time to together to discover two things - firstly, how to hold a decent rave, and second, the technology required to overthrow and destroy humanity.  It's something neither QT nor Coffee Maker want to see, but can our vacuum cleaner hero do anything to stop them?  Maybe he can, thanks to another of Dr. Gel's bungled experiments.

For all of its episodes that failed to hit the mark, it was great to see Space Dandy close out its first season with a terrific episode that was delightfully funny in places but also carrying an undercurrent of continual amusement that served it in good stead throughout.  Once again, this week's instalment was also sumptuously animated, and it's this element of the series that has really made Space Dandy stand out as a show worth watching, as every single week has been a feast for the eyes.  It's a shame that the same can't quite be said of its episodic story content, which hasn't always hit the mark as it intended to, but it can at least boast some wonderful standalone episodes to its name - perhaps the show would have been better served sticking to thirteen episodes and offering up only the best of the best of the content in its cache, but we'll see what the continuation of the show can offer in the summer; I'll certainly be watching it with interest, if only to drink in its visuals some more.