HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Soul Eater and Kakurenbo!

Happy Halloween everybody! For this special day I have chosen not one but two appropriate anime, the first being Soul Eater. Soul Eater is a very weird anime to be sure, it really doesn't make very much sense at all until about maybe halfway through, and yet, it is still very enjoyable, you just have to be patient and stick with it. The main premise of the story centers around living weapons and their wielders, or meisters. Living weapon is no some mere metaphor, every weapon is a person who can transform into an inanimate object that can be used as a weapon. Of course, weapons can wield themselves, so they are paired with a meister, a person who does not have the ability to transform but does practice wielding the weapon until their souls resonate and become even mre powerful together than either could ever be alone. The premise comes from a concept that comes up a lot in anime and Japanese folklore, the idea that a warrior's soul resides in their weapon, or that the weapon has a soul of it's own, and that a true warrior must learn to be at one with this weapon. Soul Eater simply takes it a step further by claiming that the weapon actually is a person entirely unto himself. In the first episode all we get to know about this is that weapon/meister teams work together to fight kishin so the weapons can consume their souls and after consuming ninety-nine kishin souls, they pursue a witch for an even hundred souls and then the weapon becomes a Death Scythe, a weapon worthy of Lord Death himself, capable of actually operating solo with partial transformations so that they can serve their master who is unfortunately anchored in one place and can not travel to fight kishin and witches abroad. The Title character is an actual scythe who is teamed with Maka Albarn, the daughter of the currently reigning Death Scythe, Spirit Albarn. They are good friends with Black Star and Tsubaki, a ninja and his versatile weapon who is uniquely capable of taking multiple forms including a chained pair of sickles, a knife, a shuriken, and eventually the legendary katana Masamune. They also become friends with Death the Kid, the son of Lord Death, and his weapons Liz and Patty Thompson who are a pair of identical guns, an important detail for Kid who is obsessive compulsive and chose these weapons because of symmetry. Kid is potentially the most powerful character, but he is held back by his own neurosis which plays off as hilarious. Similarly, Black Star is funny because, as a ninja, he is supposed to be a master of stealth, and yet his pride causes him to constantly announce his presence with so much flare that he loses his element of surprise. By comparison, Soul and Maka are the most efficient team out of the three, simply because they never let anything get in the way of their objectives. The story eventually reveals why weapons exist, 800 years ago a witch named Arachne bound souls of other witches to weapons, forcing the weapons to come alive as magiacal weapons. The sacrifice of witches that she made to create these weapons made her an enemy of witches and she was made an outcast among her own kind, making her easy pickings for Lord Death who elected to ue her own weapons against her, preferring a scythe. Arachne shattered her soul into a swarm of spiders and dispersed around the world waiting for a time when she would have the upper hand. Meanwhile, one of Lord Death's underlings, Asura, went mad and swallowed his weapon partner so they could forever be one, and thus Asura became a kishin, a human so corrupt they feed on the sous of others and become inhuman monsters. The only way for Lord Death to defeat Asura was to seal him underground and bnd him with his own soul, building a city around the site where he was stuck and never able to leave because he must constantly attend to the prison lest Asura escape. The weapons eventually had children with mortals producing offspring that inherited the ability to transform into weapons who were in turn paired with meisters for generation after generation leading to the current situation. Several subplots and minor characters come up, but the most worthy of mention are Crona and Excalibur. Crona is the androgynous child of Medusa, the younger sister of Arachne, and she has used Crona as an experiment in black blood to create a demon sword, a weapon that is one with its meister, literally. Crona is interesting because he starts out as a villain,but is redeemed thanks to Maka. Exaclibur on the other hand is just plain ridiculous and stupid, but manages to make a strong enough impression that even though he is largely irrelevant ot the plot, he still demands attention. Excalibur is the legendary sowrd of King Arthur, though unlike other living weapons, he does not have a human form, but rather takes on the odd shape of...well I don't know what, a walking banana in a tuxedo and tophat I guess. "Fool!" is his catchphrase, as he calls out anyone and everyone he considers lesser, which is everybody. Excalibur is supposed to be the most powerful weapon of all, but because he is so annoyingly arrogant, nobody can stand to be partnered with him so shortly after being discovered he is promptly placed back in the fairy cave for the next unfortunate soul to dare to accquire him. In the series, there is exactly one time someone other than King Arthur is able to partner with Excalibur,  but he ends up displeased with a minor quirk in spite of everything and puts him back like everybody else. As for the rest of the series, obviously it comes down to an epic showdown between the protagonists and Arachne, Asura and Medusa, but what makes the showdown intersting is who pairs off for the final matches and exactly what the aftermath entails. Check out the series at Funimation to see how it all unfolds.

Now for the bonus anime, Kakurenbo. This one shot short film was significant in airing on Halloween night one year, and although I did not watch it then because I mistakenly thought it was a series and didn't want to get involved in another one at the time, I did get to se it eventually on YouTube, and let me tell you it seriously one of the most creepy things you'll ever watch. Kakurenbo follows a game of "otokoyo", hide and seek played between a group of children who for no apparent reason are playing in an otherwise abandoned town and are all wearing disintctive kitsune masks. One of the children is Hikora who is looking for his sister Sorincha who has been missing since the last game of Otokoyo. The kids all seem to think it's just a game, but very soon, four demons appear and capture the children one by one, removing them from the game until Hikora is deemed the winner as the last one standing. He finds his sister and the shockign truth behind Otokoyo. I know that's a short synopsis that doesn't seem to tell much, but it's only a half-hour and much of it is simply a visually impressive detailing of the story leading up to a conclusion that will keep you up all night.

Don't forget, there's only a few more weeks left for the 7th Moon anime Kickstarter, please contribute here.

Blood+, the story of Saya and the Chiropterans

I figured this close to Halloween I needed to do some Halloween themed posts and what works better than a series about vampires? Blood+ is part of the Blood Franchise including Blood:the last Vampire and Blood C, but since I haven't watched either but know that niether of them relate to this series oher than the main character being a sword wielding vampire slayer named Saya, we'll ust ignore them for now. Saya is at the center of the series, a seemingly normal sixteen year old girl-until she realizes she's been sixteen for two hundred years and is humanity's greatest weapon against vampires because she is one herself. The nature of vampires, or as they are referred to here, chiropterans, is so complicated I will have to dedicate about half of this post just to trying to decipher what exactly they are. Chiropterans, like ants and bees, are separated into different castes biologically, but they are even more complicated in how they form. The only true natural chiropteran is a queen, and every queen is born as one of a set of twins with opposing blood types, meaning that if either sister ever has contact with her sister's blood, she will die, specifically she will petrify and crystallize. A queen will reach maturity around age sixteen at which point her body will cease to age, instead she will undergo hibernation in a cocoon for a period of about thirty years, then awaken and remain active for an indeterminate amount of time before resuming hibernation, the cycle only ending when she becomes pregnant and then apparently she becomes mortal and her blood loses all its potency as it passes into the next generation. But there is more, particularly regarding how she becomes pregnant in the first place, in order for a queen to become pregnant, she must mate with a chevalier, which is a male human that has consumed the blood of a queen. Once a man consumes the blood of a queen, usually offered freely by the queen specifically totrigger the transformation, the chevalier stops aging. The chevalier also inherits the blood type and weakness of his queen meaning that if he comes in contact with his queen's sister's blood he will petrify. In addition he also develops the ability to transform into a monstrous creature with enhanced strength, claws, wings, sometimes tentacles, practically whatever is necessary to protect his queen, which is exaclty what the chevalier does for the rest of his life, which lasts exactly until he is killed in the way described earlier, as he is otherwise immortal, not only does he not age, he regenerates like all chiropterans and never hibernates so he watches over his queen while she sleeps. Chevalier are important to the life cycle because they must mate with the sister of the queen that created him in order to recombine the blood types and produce the next generation of chiropterans. In addition to queens and chevalier, there is also a third type of chiropteran that does not remain human in appearance but rather reveals the reason why they are referred to as chiropterans, they appear to be giant vampire bats. It is never explicitly explained how they happen other than the fact theat they make more of their own kind by biting humans like vampires traditionally do. My hypothesis is that they are the result of queens giving blood to females or chevalier trying to give their blood to anyone and ultimately resulting in an abomination. In the series, this last type are the shock troops that Saya cuts down on a regular basis. There's also a fourth type that is created artificially called Schiff, only a few appear, they retain human form and have superhuman speed with limited shapeshifting (never more than their hands turning blue and revealing claws) and they suffer from a weakness they call the Thorn which is that they slowly petrify and it gets worse with any exposure to the sun, and direct full exposure to the sun will cause them to ignite in flames and die in minutes.

Now that you know what they are, it's time to hear who they are. Saya and her sister were found by a man named Joel Goldsmith when he extracted them from the womb of their dying mother who was herself in a state of stasis and fully transformed as a chiropteran(an ability we never see the current queens ever exhibit themseleves). Joel raised Saya as his daughter and adopted a boy named Haji to be her companion, at first acting like it would be her brother but secretly hoping they would mate and he could study their offspring. Although Joel seemed to be a loving father he was actually running an elaborate experiment and allowed his assitant Amshel to care for the sister to study her more in depth. The sister was isolated and abused in the name of science. Eventually Saya discovered her and noticed her one defining trait, a surprisingly beutiful singing voice for which she was named Diva. Saya allowed her sister to be free, not knowing the consequences. One day, while she was out with Haji, he fell off a cliff. Saya had needed a lot of blood transfusions, and although she did not understand the importance of blood for her (all chiropterans feed on blood) she instinctively gave her blood to Haji turning him into her chevalier. When they returned home the Goldsmith estate had been burned to the ground, the only survivors were Diva and her chevalier Amshel and his brother Solomon who had also been made a chevalier. Saya realized her sister was a destructive force that had to be stopped and pursued her with vengance. In time, Saya joined forces with Joel Goldsmith jr. who formed a group called Red Shield, consisting of anyone who lost someone to the chiropterans and sought vengance. Saya became the key to their objectives when it was determined that Saya's blood is the only thing that can destroy Diva and her brood. Diva manages to stay out of harm's way along with her chevalier which grows to include Nathan, Carl, and James. Nathan in particular is strange because nobody remembers Diva converting him and he may in fact be a chevalier from a previous generation who has outlived his queen. Amshel assumes leadership and proceeds to use the chiropterans as an army to try to take over the world, though the unintelligent masses get cut down quickly by Saya, prompting him to experiment to create better versions, leading to the Schiff and later the Corpse Corps, a refined form of schiff that have no Thorn but are also mindlessly obedient to the chevalier. Meanwhile Saya uses a special sword that is shaped so that she can easily cut her finger to draw her own blood which then runs through the blade and can cut down any chiropteran. At one point during the Vietnam War, Saya flies ito such a blind rage she cuts off Haji's hand, which regenerates but is forever disfigured in the shape of a third class chiropteran's claw. All of this occurs over a period of about two hundred years leading to Saya awakening from hibernation with no memory of her past. She is found by a man who adopts her and tries to convince her that she is part of his family along with his sons Kai and Riku. The series actually starts at this point with Saya believing she's normal. Then the chiropteans come for her and Haji helps her by giving her the sword which she reflexively uses to kill a few chiropterans. Eventually the truth comes out, her "father" is actually a member of Red Shield and he has been trying to protect her, but now she must finish what she's started. Kai and Riku attempt to follow Saya, resulting in Riku being killed by Diva, and Kai joining Red Shield to help stop Diva once and for all. They also ally with the Schiff, although the Schiff are murdered in a test run of the Corpse Corps and only one remains, a girl named Lulu who joins Red Shield as well to avenge her brethren. The whole thing ends up in a dramatic showdown where everybody-and I mean everybody who was inroduced in the series and didn't already die yet-fights for the fate of the world.

Blood + is a pretty good anime, I mean, vampires and sword-wielding slayers, it's the horror action genre at its best. The only weakness is that you will need to take notes on the bizzare biology of chiropterans to figure out just what the hell is going on. Other than that, enjoy!

Revolution, why the show failed

I know I'm a bit late on this one since the show ended months ago, but I feel I just have to discuss why it ended for the benefit of sci-fi writers who should avoid this mistake. The problem is, like many other sci-fi before it, it got way too complicated, but in this case I can narrow down the complications to the fact that the second and final season diverged into two vastly different stories, either of which would have made  agood show, but trying to do them both at once just left me feeling like, "why do we care about both of these conflicts when obviously only one matters?"

Let's start at the beginning with season one. The power goes out across the world, nobody knows why, chaos ensues, fast forward fifteen years, just long enough for a new generation to grow up and know the world in a completely different way. The story focuses on the citizens of the Monroe Republic, a new nation formed in what used to be the Northeast US that stretches as far west as at lest Chicago. In particular the story focuses on Charlie Matheson who lost both of her parents and her brother was kidnapped by Monroe who wanted their father and uncle Miles, but since their father was killed, Charlie's brother is being held in ransom for Miles. Charlie sets off with the help of her stepmom and Aaron, a former computer nerd who went from millionaire to nobody instantly and seems to be lacking in survival skills, but he has been entrusted with a pendant that allows electricity to work again. Aaron does not seem to be important at first and really seems to be dead weight, but we'll get back to him later..like next season, until then he's an albatross. Any way, Charlie finds Miles and hey prepare to rescue Charlie's brother. Note that I didn't bother to check the names of her stepmom or her brother, because like Charlie's dad, they die just to prove how fragile life is in this post-apocalyptic world. Miles does end up being very important because it turns out Sebastian Monroe was his best friend and they built the Republic together after anarchy broke out after the blackout, but after Monroe turned out to be a megalomaniacal tyrant, Miles went into hiding and only some primal urge to protect his family brings him out to fight again, and of course he is the only one who can do it. In season one, the story was standard post-apocalyptic fare, which was good enough because no network television series had touched this in years, and I personally feel that certai genres need at least one representative on the air at any given time, and if nobody else is doing it, whatever does get on the air is better than nothing. Revlution followed the formula of destorying civilization and making our heroes fight among the rubble, and it's goodif you like that sort of thing, and I do.

Season two is where things went wrong by explaining the blackout. Now, understand writers, it does make perfect sense to explain your apocalypse, in fact it is strongly encouraged, especially making it relevant. However, Revolution decided to do something wierd that I have never seen before and hope never to see again, they followed the origin of the apocalypse and created an entirely spearate story, making the orginal plot largely irrelevant, and yet still tried to follow the original plot as if it still mattered anyway. It turns out Aaron was actually one of three computer programmers who wrote the code used to operate nanotechnology that is/are currently draining electricity from everything on Earth and shutting down all electronics. Charlie's parents actually developed the nanotechnology, which explains the relevance of the Matheson family, as they were the ones who started the blackout and presumably they are the only ones who can stop it. However, the nanites recognize the coders as their parents and begin communicating with Aaron. Aaron is consequently separated from the rest of the cast as he goes on his own journey to figure out what the nanites want. Meanwhile, after a brief break from the blackout allowed two nuclear warheads to destory the capitals of the warring nations of the Monroe Republic and Georgia, POTUS and the former US govenrnment come out of self-imposed exile to try to reclaim the country. Monroe was chasing after Miles and was consequently nowhere near home when Philadelphia got nuked, so he survived but now he has nothing and wants to rebuild, but first he has to stop the US government. Why would we root for the US government to be undermined? Because they hired the Mathesons to make the blackout happen and set all of these events in motion. In fact, that the nanotechnology could cause a blackout was an accident, they were actually trying to create medical tech that could save their son from asthma and possibly create an energy supply, but there was a glitch and when the government found out they forced them to weaponize technology that was otherwise beneficial, because that's what governments do. But as awesome as the whole revolution is and all of the many people who are dragged into the web of political deciet and war and other post-apocalyptic action I usually love, it's all rendered moot by Aaron discovering that the nanotechnology is now basically God. The nanites are capable of anything and for some reason, presumably the recoding in the season one finale, they have become sentient and now have free will. I'm sorry, but if Aaron is now in a battle with an artificial god, why do I care about the petty squabbles of people that could be crushed in an instnat by omnipotent tech? I don't have an answer, but for some reson the showrunners decided to focus on the plot of Charlie, Miles, and Monroe fighting the president old school. Now, in my rather vast experience with post-apocalyptic fiction with god-like antagonists(Final Fantasy, etc.) once you realize who the biggest threat is, the main cast unites against that threat. Never does one guy go off on his own, fight god single-handedly, and then come back to gather his allies after failing miserabl while they fight a futile and comparably irrelevant war that takes center stage, and yet that's exactly what happened here.

In conclusion, if you are going to make a post-apocalyptic series, well any story I guess, decide on one threat and put everyone on the same team to fight it. If you have people going in too many directions, it's too complicated and never works. Unless you're George R. R. Martin, but that's another story.

Redwall

I get a lot of flack for how unoriginal and formulaic my book, 7th Moon, is, so I feel it's time to point out a very successful book series that, in my opinion, defines formulaic unoriginality, Redwall by Brian Jacques. Now, don't get me wrong fans, I don't hate the book series, I just realized after reading a few that they are all the same story. It's a good story the first time, but seriously, it's amazing it went on for so long considering how by your third book, you should be able to predict the outcome because everything happens the same way everytime.

First of all, every book takes place in Mossflower Country and features some key characters, including Skipper, the leader of the otters, Foremole, leader of the moles, and Log-a-log, leader of the GUOSIM, or Guerilla Union Of Shrews In Mossflower. I would suppose these are titles rather than names as they are not truly the same character, but they might as well be because they act the same in every story, and if they have other names, they are never revealed. In fact, that's part of the problem, the variety of species is offset by the fact that each species seems to embody an archetype that they fit so uniformly that as soon as the species is mentioned, you know exactly what this character will do for the rest of the story. The two most hardcore typecast species are badgers and foxes, both of which are usually only represented by two individuals in all of Mossflower. The badgers have the Badger Mother and the Badger Lord, the former staying at Redwall Abbey and watching over everybody, the latter staying at Salamandastron and leading the Long Patrol, composed entirely of hares, to protect the west coast of Mossflower. The Badger Lord is uniformly stoic, the Badger Mother tends to be a bit more laid back, but their roles as guardians come before anything else. The foxes are always the same, mytics, often gypsy like, they are fortune tellers and healers, they are sneaky, but their roles are so pronounced that only one or two is ever needed in a story because, like the Sith, they can't stand being in large numbers because they invariably kill each other until only the most powerful is left standing.

This is also a driving factor in many stories, to stretch the story out and develop the villains as bad guys, there is almost always a mutiny among the vermin in which the leader is threatened and either gets usurped by the next wiliest creature or proves his own wickedness by killing his rival first.This stretches the story because not only is the villain dealing with a new problem bfore getting to Redwall, but this also leaves time for the protagonists to complete their quest, usually involving the sword of Martin the Warrior. The vermin themselves are a mix of sea rats and corsairs, usually stoats, ferrets, and weasels, all three of with are related species of the mustilidae family. The leader varies by species, but the personality is always the same, a ruthless tyrant, bent on conquering Redwall simply because it's there and mistakes their kindness for weakness.

The basic story starts out with a prologue during which an elder tells a child about some battle that happened when they were the age of the child they are speaking to.  Afte the prologue the story begins in earnest, often with a name day celebration. In Mossflower, time is measured by the season which gets named rather than a number of years as we measure time. The day the season gets named, there is a great feast, the one moment of enticing creativity when Jacques makes up a mouthwatering menu of different foods and cordials, to this day I still want to eat a honeymole(a raspberry and a  blackberry arapped in a pastry chell and glazed with honey, the mole part comes from the fact that moles invented it but the pastry itself bears no resmeblance). There is such a variety of food that the only item that gets repeated from one book to the next is the otter's signature shrimp and hot root soup, which, if you ask the otters, is the only food worth repeating. Meanwhile, there is a group of vermin that approaches Redwall, knowing the legacy of how it has remained unconquered and each vermin leader believes he will be the first to succeed where others have failed because he is more ruthless than the others. Somehow or another, some quest comes up for young members of Redwall Abbey to go looking for something which invariably leads to the revealing the warriorbeast, the one who wields the sword of Martin the Warrior. The warrior beast doesn't formally discover his or her identity as such until the end of the story, but in an abbey of pacifists, be assured that whoever is doing most of the fighting is the one who will take this particular honor. The quest usually involves the warrior beast and immediate friends to become accquainted with the Badger Lord and the Long Patrol a well as the Guosim and unite them for a triple battle cry"Redwall! Eulailia! Logalog!" respectively which is importnat when they all storm the enemy, the well-armed hares coming from the west, the shrew berserkers coming from the east, and Redwallers proving that you don't mess with mice who are friends with sling wielding otters, squirrel archers, hedgehogs with spikes and moles that can dig strategic tunnels under enemy lines. All of this leads to the showdown between the warriorbeast and the leader of the vermin, which is hyped up but invariably, the warrior beast wins. There, you now know the plot of every novel of Redwall, you don't actually have to read any of them.

Another common element  is accents, particularly hares and moles. Hares have a slight cockney and frequently refer to others as "sah" which is clearly "sir" in dialect and finish sentences with "wot wot" so that it feels like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Still, the hares are refined compared with the moles who have such a thick accent that not only can I not imagine what it's supposed to sound like, even Jacques provides translations knowing that readers can't understand them. The mole dialect is somewhere between the Swedish Chef from the muppets and a drunk scotsman. Otters have a bit of a salty sailor dialect hich makes them the most similar to vermin in speech patterns. Occasionally, other species pop up and have even stranger dialects, sparrows speak in pidgin english and reptiles and amphibians seems to have their own languages and speak the more common tongue as a second langauge, though this is more extrapolated from their thick accents rather than actually having any lengthy dialogue in other languages. The dialects can break up the monotony, but it also helps cement the characters in their roles because you never hear anyone break the mold.

In fact, the main reason why I'm writing this post this way is because of two books that held hopes of breaking th mold and failed, and these are Outcast of Redwall and Taggerung. Each one presents an individual who is raised by the opposite group of animals, the former a ferret raised in Redwall, the latter an otter raised among vermin. Sadly, the nature vs nurture debate lands squarely on nature as the ferret, despite being raised from infancy with love, becomes a brat and then begins poisoning good beasts, while the otter, despite being raised from infancy among the worst vermin, still feels noble enough to wield the sword of Martin the Warrior in defense of the Redwallers who he never met until the day battle is upon them. Jacques stayed too true to his rules and roles for his characters and it made the books sorely lack any kind of depth.

Despite my complaints, the story Jacques spins is good enough for at least one go around, and I recommend Mossflower. I know Redwall was the first and namesake, but all of the books revolve around the legacy of Martin the Warrior, founder of Redwall Abbey, and Mossflower is that story, so reading that story will give you the necessary background to fully embrace every other book in the series. I did like this book and I hope one day it will be made into a movie, and I believe it has great otential as an action movie for all ages.

Space Dandy

He's a dandy guy...in space! He combs the galaxy like his pompadour searching for aliens both friendly and not with his space crew... in space!

Just last week, Space Dandy concluded its run on Toonami, notably one of the few anime to air in Amaerica before it airs in Japan due to some crazy marketing scheme. That is probably the one redeeming quality of this ridiculous show that makes little to no sense.  There are a few standout episodes that are good like when he helps a little girl find her grandfather, when he dates Scarlet, and when we meet Honey's half-brother Gentle the Cloudian. Mostly though, this series is just ridiculous and appears to have no continuity whatsoever. It's the anime version of Red Dwarf, an idiot travels space with a robot and a feline and tests the limits of physics. However, the finale makes sense of it all. The reality is, every episode takes place at the same time, but in different alternate universes. The common point of divergence is the moment Dandy meets Meow the Betlegeusian at Boobies. The meeting is only shown in the first episode when Dandy, desperate to collect the reward for registering a rare alien attempts to pass off Meow as a new mutant subspecies, only for his plan to be foiled when the alleged mutation turns out to be merely a promotional sticker. After Scarlet rejects Meow, he tries to make it up to Dandy by directing him to an unexplored planet. This is the point of divergence, in the first episode Dandy goes to the planet and everybody dies. It isn't explicitly stated, but every subsequent episode is actually just this same day, except that instead of going to the planet that Meow suggests in the first episode, Dandy, Meow and Dandy's vaccuum robot QT go off and do somethign else, which varies significantly from simply finding a rare alien on a planet where some relatively mundane hijinks ensue, to crossing dimensions and going so far off the rails the audience is completely lost. Some episodes have happy endings, many end up with the main cast dying, one actually starts with Dandy dying and being resurrected, and the last two episodes explain that while all episodes feature the converging fates of Dandy, QT, Meow, Scarlet, Honey(a waitress at Boobies, Dandy's favorite breastaurant), Dr. Gel, and Bea(members of the Gogol Empire who are tasked with locating Dandy for reasons unclear through most of the series but tend to be obliterated in some ridiculous way that is never-the-less integral to the plot of the episode), Dandy alone is the only one who is actually a constant being from one episode to the next, the only one who is the same individual in all of the universes. Somehow, Dandy is actually able to simultaneously exist in every world. No it doesn't make any sense, especially when Dandy refuses the opportunity to become God simply because he'd rather feel up Honey and the other waitresses and omnipotence just isn't worth giving up a physical form. Yes, that happened, and so did everything else. Yes, everything, including the entire universe turning zombie, and a bizarre convergence of universes in which e meet all of the ways Dandy, QT and Meow could possibly manifest, with the bizarre twist that every single universe they visit, no matter how different they are, always features these three forming some sort of crew.
My favorite is the one where Meow is a Schoedingerian, a cat who exists in a box and may be living or dead, but you can never be sure until you open the box and look inside. You really only need to watch the first episode and the last two because they are the only ones that are actually connected in any way. The rest of the episodes are optional, but the real draw was the fact that Toonami got them before anyone else, so if you haven't seen it already, you're way behind, but it was clearly a wild ride, and if you're into that sort of thing, go back and check it out on AdultSwim.com.