This is the strength of StarTripper!!: it is fantastical, adventurous, fun, just like a Saturday morning cartoon, and coming from a place of needing to form positive connections with and provide something uniquely good for the wider community, not just for the sake of itself existing.

“Ever since I joined the working world, you see the effects more accurately…when the strain builds up and the stress it too much, it can be a huge problem. The driving force behind the show is of giving people a refuge or, not an antidote, but a palliative, something to relieve that tension because we are bombarded by it… I wanted to give people something that would nourish them and me.”

Mundy is inspired heavily from growing up with Toonami, as well as his love of anime, like Trigun and Cowboy Bebop, and his desire to join the list of shows like Steven Universe, Brooklyn-99, Parks and Recreation, and Kekkai Sensen. These are all shows about “a group of people whose best episodes are when they’re all invested in each other and really pushing for each other to succeed. There’s adversity because that’s how you make the best stories, but the reason everybody is invested to the extent that they are is because there’s no sarcasm in the support that is offered, even in the cases that it’s begrudging support.”

“The best openings are the ones that give me goosebumps.”

The music in StarTripper!! reflects the sheer delight Feston has in the universe and the people in it. But unlike what I thought, the music here was not composed specifically for the show, but curated from one artist: Ketsa. Ketsa’s music that Mundy and Stanton selected for the show are varied, linked by an intrinsic bubbly quality, and run a large gamut of references to other music, such as a calypso feel in one awed storytelling scene and the callback to something like arcade racing games during a high-speed action scene.

“We wanted the music to be more of a presence than we’ve gotten to have in our other shows, which tend to be more diegetic… People told me that we should think about making it have that presence, because in everyone’s favorite movie, they’ve got that track that kicks in and they’re there, in one of those moments they remember forever.”

And it’s not just the music that’s incredible, it’s all of the sound design brought to us by Mischa Stanton. I keep thinking there’s nowhere else in the upward direction for Stanton to go and I keep being wrong. They’ve designed sound effects that drive home exactly what’s happening, as much as you need it — the heights of which can be heard in Feston’s mysterious ship race — and carefully balanced music and voices so their presence are complimentary, not eclipsing. I can’t wait for future episodes of StarTripper!! and what they bring us next in terms of alien life, its sounds and music, and the song of the cosmos.