ANIME: Spy x Family

SCORE: 7.6/10

Reading Time: 11 minutes

Spy x Family is unfortunately a very typical conundrum for me. It’s a show that has such incredibly intelligent foundational writing and ideas that are so creative and well thought out but fails to utilize them in very meaningful ways. Like, no dumbass Hollywood executive could ever come up with such a great idea as this yet Tatsuya Endo chooses to not do anything too risky. Which is fine, I would rather a creator choose to do what’s in their wheelhouse rather than promise me the world and fail to deliver on it. The show is alright but nothing special.

I just haven’t been okay since Wonder Egg Priority alright? It was an anime original by Cloverworks and had beautiful animation and ideas and everything why did it fuck it up why did it fuck it up why did it fuck it up.

Anyways, I just wanted to preface my review with my expectations of Spy x Family going into this since I generally have wildly different perspectives than the average person. I can be quite hard on things I genuinely enjoy because I feel like they could have done more or that they failed to commit to certain ideas. Like I just hate when I see potential go to waste. Now, this is exactly what my parents, teachers, and coaches always told me growing up and they treated me just as harshly which is probably why I am the way I am. Don’t worry, I’ve gone to therapy for this and have sorted it all out and plan to release a video or even a whole show about this concept of potential and pressure! But, back to your irregularly scheduled review.

SETUP

You will rarely see an anime with this level of intricacy and flexibility in its setup. What seems like it will be functioning in a “found family” archetype ends up going full-blown nuclear family and questions the nature of what it means to be a family. Now, there are reports that Shinzo Abe actually worked with Tatsuya Endo to write this story as a psyop in order to fix the declining Japanese birthrate by portraying families in a positive light.

For legal reasons, this is a joke.

A lot of media has become very overly obsessed with the idea of found family due to increased awareness and action against problematic family structures and the decline of nuclear families. And not that it’s wrong for found family plots to be given the spotlight, it just feels like a Hollywood exec is breathing down my neck saying “Oh yeah I bet you come from a fucked up family, don’t ya? Oh yeah, you want to see friends become inseparably close and reliant on each other you dirty little wh-”

It’s just a trend I noticed that’s it. Found family stuff is usually really cool when it’s not ham-fistedly shoved down my throat and is just a facet of the story that is highlighted when appropriate. It’s been omnipresent for years now so I was shocked to find out that no, Spy x Family isn’t actually about found family. That’s right, I as a reviewer have lied to you. The failed foundations of Spy x Family are not about found family! But the show really makes you THINK that it’s gonna be with how it’s set up.

While Anya, Loid, and Yor are all strangers at the start of the show, their easily definable traits seemingly allow them to get to know each other very quickly. And sure, Anya being telepathic helps with that but whategever. It’s not like the Forgers know every single Dirty Little Secret by The All American Rejects about each other but you can say that they become very familiar with the idea of each other. Which makes sense, that’s kinda how families work. You get to know someone quickly simply because you live with them. But, the setup still leaves enough distance between the Forgers so that they can find moments to grow closer to one another in the show, at least that’s what is seemingly planned. Not maybe as much as I would like but we can get to that later.

However, the real money made in this whole setup is the alternate identities each family member works as. Loid working as a spy works as a lovely metaphor for the work/life split that a father faces as a member of the family, where his two worlds seem impossibly far apart yet ultimately interconnected. Anya being a telepath makes sense with how children tend to be more perceptive than we give them credit for despite being children. And Yor being an assassin is a bit of a stretch but it works out as a mother needing to have a killer instinct and will do anything to protect her family from the outside dangers of the world. 

It’s not perfect but it was surely unexpected for me. A show that seemingly was all about fun and wasn’t going to take itself too seriously delves into difficult questions about real family issues. Found family is so much easier to make light-hearted and fun with a side of trauma due to it being less traditional but what Spy x Family goes for is very loaded. What would have been much simpler to have as a show that just focuses on the characters being goofy and incredibly unfamiliar with each other is replaced by a narrative that seriously questions what it takes to be a family.

I know I probably shouldn’t be spending so much time on background stuff but I think the context of Spy x Family cannot be overstated. I am not going to pretend to be an expert on Japanese culture but from someone pretty familiar with Asian family ideas, I want to comment on some stuff. Family is a touchy topic in general, Japan has a declining birth rate for a reason. Societal expectations and family pressures occur for many reasons and vary from region to region in Japan. So needless to say, people don’t always have a great experience with their parents and family. I’m being vague here because I plan on going into it more in a video and maybe some other blog posts, but the life of many Asian/Japanese children can be quite harsh. The fact that a show like Evangelion can be so widely successful despite how fucked it is has to mean something.

In addition to this, Japan appointed a Minister of Loneliness for a period of time during the pandemic in 2021 because of mental health issues and how isolated people felt. Obviously, the pandemic is a whole other topic that I may or may not get to at some point, but it’s important to understand how separated people felt as well as how “family” and starting a family didn’t seem like it was going to be the answer for many people.

So here comes Spy x Family, pushing what might be seen as more Western nuclear family ideals in a setting that is much more European 1950s onto a Japanese audience. And yet, people love it. And I think a lot of that comes from the aesthetic which I’m going to talk about for a bit.

Aesthetics

As I mentioned, Spy x Family goes for a very distinct 1950s kinda postwar Europe aesthetic. It leans heavily into the spy stuff cause ya know, it’s in the name of the fucking show, and has a somewhat jazzy soundfont. The aesthetic is very well-defined which I like. I can get very overly critical of shows or games that don’t commit to their aesthetic identity because that’s a large part of why we view audiovisual media and not just sit around reading fucking books. Not that books are bad but again, another topic for another post.

The animation and presentation of the show are also just really stellar overall. The art in the manga is already quite high quality (probably because it comes out on its own schedule and not weekly but again another topic for another post) and WIT/Cloverworks, as per usual, slams it home with this one. The way WIT does eyes has me feeling some type of way and that way is too incriminating to go into detail about so I won’t but it’s just crazy how clean their style is. There’s a lovely shininess to everything and they use a dynamic camera when appropriate. Like sure they aren’t Hideaki Anno or Shaft when it comes to the directing but WIT and CloverWorks have consistently made some of my favorite shows and I want to recognize that here. Just really phenomenal work.

As for the weird European postwar stuff, it feels oddly out of place. While I think it is integrated in a neat way to give Loid the motivation to protect the world from the imminent danger lurking in the shadows, it makes the show feel a bit too cartoonish for me.

Mainly with how the characters are very stereotypical designs and incredibly straightforward narratives, compelling postwar stuff usually more complicated than this but I’ll get to that soon enough. And, while I deeply enjoy the spy aesthetic and have a bias towards it, it does feel weird for it to be used as yet another anime narrative about World War 2, but also kinda about the cold war. It’s more precise than whatever the fuck is going on in Chainsaw Man but it’s less about war and more about the fear of war and the tasks necessary to prevent it. However, I feel like the balance between Spy and Family gets lost pretty early on as the show’s Spy aspect feels very background and gimmicky in comparison to the family narrative. This doesn’t collapse the aesthetic or anything it just takes away some power from it. Like, all of this work to craft such a refined aesthetic for a narrative not to truly match it feels wrong. Narrative and aesthetic need to work together to same something bigger and Spy x Family struggles to do that.

Narrative and Failed Foundations

The narrative of Spy x Family is presented in a very clear manner, Twilight aka Loid Forger is a spy sent on Operation Strix, a mission where he starts a fake family in order to interact with and get information on a famous politician who potentially could send the world into war. The show reinforces that narrative along with the aesthetic by having a narrator present this information before numerous episodes. The narrative is so clear and direct that you can probably pick it up from any random episode and things will make sense and that narrator spiel is almost reflecetive of the creators knowing that people might end up doing that.

Typically when I say a show is “easy to pick up” that’s a bad thing. Whether it’s because the subject matter is incredibly light/unimportant or because the show doesn’t actually build upon itself quickly. Now, this isn’t always the case. I compliment a lot of shows for this such as Hyouka, Horimiya, and Lycoris Recoil. It’s not an inherently bad thing. But, more often than not a show that is easy to pick up is too light and doesn’t carry much weight that I would struggle to recommend it. What surprised me about Spy x Family so much was about how clear and heavy the setup was that I thought “Wow, this show might be something else and have a very weighty narrative.” No, that’s not the case. The best way to describe Spy x Family is “a fun show with serious moments” as opposed to “a serious show with fun moments.” Typically I prefer the latter, but both can be done incredibly well. However, I think Spy x Family really overprioritizes having fun over anything else and is willing to sacrifice meaningful moments and narratives for that.

I’m not going to pretend I could tell this story better or that it needed to be a particular way, but it really felt like I was watching a cartoon more than I was watching an actual story. Each episode of the show is just incredibly formulaic and predictable. You can expect Loid to be wearing a disguise, Yor to fuck up some food, and Anya to say “waku waku.” Where Chainsaw Man was too fast with its narrative and ended up being predictable, Spy x Family has been incredibly slow and stagnant and remains predictable but in a different way. Spy x Family feels like a cartoonish sitcom almost functioning on a “monster of the week” schedule. It’s not that there are actual monsters of the week or that it is always restricted to only one episode, but each short arc feels very similar to the last and fails to really progress the plot or characters in any meaningful way. Character moments aren’t really built up to and just kinda happen whenever the show feels like it hasn’t had one in a while. Don’t get me wrong, the character moments of Spy x Family are quite good! They are directed beautifully and have great music, lighting, and framing. But, as opposed to a better show which builds a character moment up over episodes or seasons to then have it ring as an overwhelming emotional crescendo, Spy x Family tends to fall flat for me.

And I mean, this is expected. When one of the main characters is a literal child I find it hard to press the show for more meaningful moments. And there could have been more powerful moments such as by utilizing Anya more as device to give Yor and Loid more complex development. I hate how Anya is mainly relied on for her humor to give the show a childlike perspective that is lighthearted and fun. This easygoing mood is occasionally interrupted by more important family moments that do question what it means to be a family but not enough to truly impress me. I’ve read through the manga up to this point and am severely disappointed with how underdeveloped the show’s ideas are.

Like I said this show has incredibly complex and intricate relationships and ideas related to both family and war hidden just beneath the surface. And yet it has refused to elaborate further on those ideas. The handler has a moment in the show where she abuses some wannabe terrorists for trying to start a war by expressing the truth of what war is but that is dropped quite quickly. We only get bits and pieces of brilliance that aren’t really connected together. Like watching the idea of Loid doing his job as a Spy for the sake of not only protecting the world but for this fake family is great. He doesn’t realize he cherishes them and that is very reflective of how fathers often act. It’s complicated to keep secrets from family but necessary to keep everyone safe. Anya does have genuine worries and Yor’s desire to be a worthwhile partner pulled emotion out of me, but these ideas work in isolation and not as a cohesive product. It’s not like that without these moments of brilliance the show is bad, it’s just very unexciting without them. I wouldn’t say cute child humor is really enjoyable for me and all of the show’s gimmicks get boring after the 3rd/4th usage.

I still genuinely enjoyed the show and had an occassional laugh and felt warm fuzzies, it’s just so incredibly frustrating to me see a lot of potential tossed aside for something far simpler and mass appealing. I’m not a personal fan of the nuclear family or its implementation in narratives but I would have loved to have seen a creative expression of what it takes to maintain a family through the lens of Spy x Family. Watching Loid have to try and balance the chaos of Anya and Yor trying to maintain her secrets seemed really cool until you see it again for the 5th time and ask when there will be more development. Spy x Family is the kind of safe show where you can only expect major development at season start and season end and everything else is just filler that happens to be canon. 

Spy x Family isn’t a failure despite what my title may allude to but where a more daring creator may have tried to engage with the concept of what it takes to be a family more, Tatsuya Endo and WIT play it safe and just cash in on their brilliant style, ideas, and sparse but great character moments. Despite what I have said about Spy x Family I find it to be a very enjoyable show but something very replaceable. Years from Spy x Family will find itself lost by the wayside as another pretty good slice of life anime that will be forgotten nonetheless. I will be left wondering what could have been if only the show respected itself more and took itself more seriously but I am fine, not impressed by, what we have now.

…I hope I’m wrong about that though.

– Jared/Zeph