Spy x Family Review

“A spy, a telepath, and an assassin. The three decided to live under one roof for their own reasons while concealing their own identities, and so their less-than-mundane family life continues on.”

Of the ten anime I followed this season, Spy x Family is one of only three that I didn’t prepare a First Impressions review for. This isn’t because it flew under my radar or anything. Given its prominence in the anime community, that would be like failing to notice a nuclear detonation. Suffice it to say, the show wasn’t exactly playing things quiet. The actual limiting factor was that the show aired relatively late in the season, and was released alongside several other comedies, so frankly, I got burned out on writing before I had the opportunity to sample it. However, of the comedies from this season, Spy x Family was the most polished and featured the strongest emotional core to fall back on. Love Before World Domination was occasionally funnier, and Shikimori-san had more… pink hair with blue shading, but it was Spy x Family that was arguably the best comedy of the season. Despite that, I can’t help but feel like something of a contrarian here. The show is good, certainly, but the hype and praise which have been heaped on its shoulders seem excessive. Regardless, Spy x Family is a charming comedy that blends clever writing with striking slapstick, even if it struggles to maintain tonal consistency.

Without a doubt, Spy x Family takes the award for “Most Heartwarming Comedy,” of the season. The show follows a trio of peculiar individuals who find themselves bound together in an unlikely family environment. The first is our titular spy from the country of Westalis, Twilight (…He never knew just what friendship could be), who also goes by the moniker Loid Forger. He is sent to the country Ostania to gather information from a prominent party member. The only avenue for contact is via a prominent children’s academy. Ostania has been diligent in trying to root out spies, so Loid is forced to enter the country on his own, and adopt a child in order to try and get close to the party member. This is where Anya Forger comes in. Adopted from an orphanage by Loid, Anya is secretly a telepath created via Ostania’s science experiments who uses her abilities to help ingratiate herself with Loid. Lastly, we have the “wife” and “mother” of the family, Yor Forger, who is an assassin who gets drawn into the fake family due to Loid requiring a full family unit as part of the admissions process for the academy, and who is amenable to the situation due to her fear that being an unmarried woman in a police state may make her the target of suspicion. Therefore, we have a bizarre family dynamic in which the only character who’s aware of everyone’s secrets is the young child. This opens the door to a myriad of comedic opportunities from Loid’s tendency to approach everything with the analytical mind of a spy, to Yor’s inability to perform tasks that don’t involve violence or cleaning, to anything that Anya does. There is a reason that Anya is the mascot of the show, as her blend of shocked reactions to the thoughts she hears and her childish logic of how she will accomplish goals are a perfect formula for heartwarming laughs.

As I said before, tone is where Spy x Family becomes uneven. The show is willing to treat the emotions of its characters with a level of seriousness that is admirable, and for all its comedic elements, there are moments where the spy and assassination elements of the show are used to evoke tension. However, this creates an altered level of suspension of disbelief which is then decimated when the series decides to go particularly wacky. Sure, the set-up requires a moderate amount of hand-waving, and the first 4 episodes were pretty zany, but I thought I had an idea of how wacky the show would get. There were definitely some excessively wacky elements sprinkled in there, like a plot involving proof that a politician wears a toupee, but that seemed like upper bounds of the show’s ridiculousness. However, every so often the show will have a section that simply breaks all suspension of disbelief, both in terms of the family drama and the espionage antics. The most notable instance of this is probably episode 5, which is a level of silliness that I might abide if it was coming from Love Before World Domination, but here had me wondering if it was some demented dream sequence. Even comedies establish a persistent tone, and as Ctrl+Alt+Del famously learned, tonal departures can be jarring to the audience when the lead-in isn’t sufficient. Now this isn’t a problem that significantly detracts from the show as a whole, but it does make some episodes more challenging to get through and results in the overall experience being a less cohesive.

It comes as no surprise that a co-production between Wit Studio and CloverWorks would look spectacular. CloverWorks has had a bit of inconsistency as of late, and it’ll take a while for fans to forgive them for the mess that was The Promised Neverland – Season 2, but when they devote their time and effort efficiently they can produce truly great works of art, as was the case with last season’s My Dress-Up Darling and last year’s Horimiya. Artistically, I don’t think I’d put this on the same level as Horimiya mind you, but Spy x Family still exhibits the quality the studio is capable of. Wit Studio has also produced some quality titles even if they’re not up my alley. I may not have found Vinland Saga interesting, but I can’t deny it looked good. Together, the studios capture the visual comedy of this series with hilarious reaction shots and well implemented quick cuts. The OP and ED are good and memorable enough, I suppose, but I doubt I’ll remember either of them by the end of the year. I also found myself skipping them more often than not so any lapse in memory may be my own fault. The show does encounter a bit of a problem with its conclusion, namely in the fact that it doesn’t have one. It’s not uncommon for an adaptation of an ongoing manga to leave things open, but the last episode of the season literally feels like a one-shot. This could work fine with a comedy series, but the penultimate episode had just dropped hints of what would be coming up next, and that falls by the wayside completely with the finale.

Before I wrap up, a few Notes and Nitpicks:

•  Director Furuhashi Kazuhiro’s filmography is starting to look… odd. His last three works have been Spy x Family, Dororo and Neo Yokio. If that isn’t a dissonance of quality, I don’t know what is.
• Wit Studio doesn’t appear to be producing anything for the summer season, and the only thing CloverWorks has on their plate is a second season of Shadows House. Given I didn’t watch the first season, it seems I won’t be encountering either studio in the coming weeks.
• The other two series I was following this season, but didn’t write First Impressions reviews for were Shikimori-san’s Not Just a Cutie and Ao Ashi. By the time they rolled around I was burnt out on writing reviews for comedies and sports series respectively.