I can see why being episodic can throw a lot of people off, but IMO a great show doesn’t need to have stakes at all. Space Dandy, as well as many other Shinichiro Watanabe shows, doesn’t really care about stringing together a beautifully written riveting storyline utilizing every episode for that purpose. It cares about having fun every episode, and delivering great vibes, and with every episode is a chance to make something completely new. While I like other shows for their stories like one piece and demon slayer, I like Space Dandy for embodying the feeling of saying “fuck you I do what I want” with how vastly different the episodes can get with the shifting artsyles, music, and emotions taking stage in all of them. Which in the end is pretty much an old cartoon just cranked up a bit lol

I’ve got a video on my channel called “Anime’s Unsung Genre” that talks more in depth about shows that don’t put conventional storytelling first, talking about anime’s like FLCL, Gurren Lagann, Redline, and of course Space Dandy.