And that's a shitty opinion. SPY×FAMILY is the first mainstream anime to come out in a very long time that I can confidently say is worth the hype. I mean, it might be a bit overhyped, but what isn’t these days? I expected a generic, uninteresting, gimmicky piece of shonen-action trash, and what I got was a clever and oh-so-endearing slice-of-life with lovable characters, fantastic visual set pieces, a brilliant setting, and, if you can believe it, a genuinely funny sense of humor and gut-busting comedic timing. It’s way more simplistic and tensionless than I expected it to be, and that is a good thing. I recently wrote a review for 86 that went deeply misunderstood, and not just by the people who read my reviews solely to hate them. It was a tedious, four-paragraph review that takes three paragraphs to make even a single point, and while you’re probably falling asleep just listening to me describe it, I thought the tedium was worth it at the time of writing, because the point I was making was quite particular. My whole argument against the show was how poorly considered its presentation was; to quote everyone’s least favorite Greek snob, “86 plays out like a soap opera written by and aimed at teenagers who don’t really know anything about real war.” It’s horrible CG action, simpleminded social commentary, and unbelievable, generic characters were all legitimate issues, but what made the show truly unwatchable was its incongruous presentation that wanted you to view it as a serious war drama while also boasting the same moe fanservice and child-like, immature characters you’d see in any average highschool anime. SPY×FAMILY is the ultimate response to this critique.
This is, if you haven’t figured it out by now, a show about a family of spies, but despite the gravity of their situations, the show does not take itself serious at all, and its presentation is consequently perfect. Twilight, our protagonist who I will henceforth be referring to by his alias, Loid, is a spy working for West German intelligence, and he’s tasked with making contact with a certain East German official who plans to turn the Cold War into a hot one. However, the only public appearances made by this individual are at his son’s school, where High Honor students are admitted into a fraternity where their parents can meet for pleasantries. In light of these circumstances, Loid is now in a position where he’s forced to find a wife and child, manage a believable appearance for this new fake family, and mold his new child into someone capable of earning their way into the fraternity and thereby handing Loid a meeting with his target. I know this premise already sounds a bit silly on its own, but only after you’ve actually sat down and watched the show will you be able to fully wrap your head around the true extent of its low-stakes, intentionally contrived, and often hysterically funny presentation and appreciate what makes its formula so entertaining and fun. Loid is a jack of all trades, but he is by no means a master of none, yet despite being comically proficient at everything, he’s limited by the fact his mission is totally out of his own hands, as he cannot rely on his usual wheelhouse of skills for this particular mission. It’s no longer a matter of stealth or brains, but rather a matter of your wife and child staying on script, and this is obviously far easier said than done.
Loid’s wife, Yor, is not only a completely air-headed idiot, but she’s also secretly an assassin—think Mr. & Mrs. Smith—and his new daughter, Anya, is not only a completely bumbling incompetent, but she’s also secretly an esper who can read minds. This set-up of having Loid and Yor oblivious to one another’s true dealings while Anya knows literally everything despite having none of the agency nor ability to actually effect any meaningful change is exquisitely balanced and, at least so far, has proven to be a Haruhi-level premise, only with less legendarily memorable characters. If we’re going to stick with the Mr. & Mrs. Smith comparison, it would be like if Brad Pitt had little to no understanding of human intimacy and connection, and Angelina Jolie was pretending to be a retard, while also being a genius…but then also…was a retard. The show is fucking funny, and every character is delightfully lovable almost instantly. There’s no stupid melodrama, and any serious emotional developments the series does contain are genuinely wholesome. One episode ends with a six minute long scene of two adult characters having a human conversation, reflecting on their personal memories and life choices, and while watching it I thought I had died and gone to Heaven. Meanwhile, another episode ends with a ten minute long sequences of Loid playing Total Wipeout against an army of BND agents trying to reenact Anya’s favorite spy cartoon in a conveniently placed theme park castle right outside East Berlin, displaying what was perhaps the best action animation of the season on a literal, in-universe joke. And BOTH scenes worked marvelously.
Speaking of the animation, the production of this series is probably its biggest downside, despite being well above average. There’s CG pedestrians, CG cars, and the usual, but the real continuous issue is the art direction. I understand the story is supposed to be taking place in East Germany, so there was clearly a vision to realize this drab, post-war, communist shithole, and in that sense the colors work perfectly, but I just wish they would’ve prioritized consistent detail. The backgrounds are just so empty sometimes, and it really undercuts how much effort the series puts in elsewhere. As for the actual artwork and animation, let’s just say you don’t have to wait until the credits roll to figure out which episodes were done by WIT Studio and which ones were done by Cloverworks. I mean, when one episode is mostly lip flapping and still characters storyboarded shot/reverse shot, and the next one immediately opens with the same scene of the same characters smacking each other across the room, moving all over the foreground and the background of shots, and being animated with multiple times the frames from needlessly difficult angles, then it’s not exactly a coincidence. I would describe the soundtrack the same way I would describe every other anime soundtrack that (K)NoW_NAME has done: fun, energetic, and, when necessary, absolutely badass. The character designs are excellent, and I’m not surprised this manga is a best-seller with these designs on the cover. Pretty much every major character has the ability to become an iconic design, and the artists behind this series fucking know it, because some of the facial expressions they pull out are priceless.
It’s not just the designs, though. I keep failing to go in depth and really paint a picture of how charming this cast truly is, because they’re what really sells SPY×FAMILY and all that really matters within it. Loid feels like he was created in a laboratory designed to synthesize the most perfect heartthrob anime husbando imaginable, while also being a well-rounded, introspective, likable protagonist; Yor is equally perfect to carry the collective attention span of new-seasonal-waifu-seeking male otaku while simultaneously just being a good character; and Anya is simply irreplaceable. Everyone is familiar with the phrase, “a character is only as smart as their author,” right? Personally, I’ve always loved this phrase and agreed with it’s sentiment, but I’ve also found the inverse to be weirdly true as well. This is to say, a character can only really seem as stupid as their author is willing to make themselves, and it’s this phenomena which I think makes Anya such a perfect character. She is a child, and she’s written to act like a child and process things in a convincingly childish manner, but sometimes she’s strangely conniving, observant, and aware in a way that feels way too mature for the character she’s been sold as. Again—deliberate presentation, yada, yada, yada—this all works for aforementioned reasons, and it just makes her character so hilarious, because the author never hesitates to give Anya the punch line for a set-up no real child would have the social acumen to catch. I know I’ve been swearing by this show’s comedy insistently without providing anything to back up my claims, but I simply refuse to spoil any of the jokes in this review.
I’ve recently gotten a few comments on my profile page from people telling me they’re anticipating my thoughts on this, and while sentiments like this always make my cold, icy heart flutter with the bliss of a true attention whore, they’ve also made me feel rather guilty, because I haven’t really done anything special with it, and this final paragraph won’t be making any effort to change that fact. I’ve had this issue over the course of the last few weeks with Paripi Koumei as well, where, after seeing the OP and hearing about the show second-hand, I had all these ideas of how I wanted to approach my eventual review, but when I actually went to watch the show, I was betrayed by its simplicity. It was just good—simple as that—and the reasons why it was good were very easy to say, so all my hollow drafts completely caved in on themselves, and I had to settle for a much more laid-back, two-paragraph review that covered everything it needed to cover in a fairly unexceptional manner, and I’m afraid the simplistic charm of SPY×FAMILY has left me in a similar situation. If you think slice-of-life is a worthless genre made for human sloths whose own lives are more boring than watching paint dry, then I guess I could recommend steering clear, but if anything I’ve described has sounded even remotely entertaining, then please remember the show itself is certainly going to be many times more enjoyable to you than reading my shitty writing will ever be. Yes, it’s been overly praised, so maybe don’t be expecting the next classic anime masterpiece in the making, and there’s nothing terribly revolutionary about its humor, but its formula is fresh, and its characters are the absolute dearest.
"Hey incel - why do you like Spy x Family?" - are you a creep?!"
