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.