At times I have a… complex relationship with shows that get a lot of hype. On one hand, where there’s smoke there is often fire, and while I don’t find every heavily hyped show to be a winner, they do probably have something to them more often than shows that didn’t get much attention. On the other hand, the hype can also be hard for a show to live up to. Yeah, it’s good, but if it’s been built up as the best thing since sliced bread it’s going to be inevitably somewhat disappointing when it’s… just kind of nice. Back to the first side, though, not every show that gets a lot of attention gets unmetered praise above and beyond what it actually deserves.
There’s also something of a split decision when it comes time to review a show that everybody and their brother has talked about. On one side, everyone has already talked about this one, people know it, it’s not as though it needs more attention brought to it by me. But then again, sometimes it has to be addressed specifically because it’s such a big name; I need to have my thoughts on record and have it in the stable of things that I can reference for comparisons later. I probably didn’t say anything really new about Neon Genesis Evangelion but I need to say what I can about Eva if I’m going to talk about the many properties that inherited something from it in terms of their relationship with their predecessor.
For a more recent show, Spy x Family is certainly one that’s more on the “well known” side than the obscure, and one that most people seem to react to in a positive manner. With a second season that will be running when this review goes live, it seems like as good a time as any to take a look at it.
Spy x Family begins with a super-spy in a world that appears to be cold war Europe with the serial numbers filed off. This spy, Twilight, is given a new mission: in order to secure peace in the world, he needs to get close to a foreign politician. However, this politician is notoriously reclusive, and essentially only appears at his son’s school affairs. Because of that, Twilight (taking up the name “Loid Forger” for the mission) will have to acquire a child, pass said child off as his own, get them enrolled in the elite private school, and from there access the private events to get his foot in the door with the politician.
Loid goes to an orphanage to pick up what would hopefully be a fairly intelligent and trainable six-year-old. Instead, he gets Anya. She says she’s six, but that might be because she’s actually a telepath, and read Loid’s mind, discovering both his need for a six-year-old and that her new father could be a super cool super spy, which is far too good to pass up. She also manages to pass all Loid’s intellectual tests by reading his mind for the answers, so that seems to be squared away.
I’ll just say it now, Anya makes this show in a big way. Child characters, especially very little child characters like Anya, who is six and most and Loid thought was more likely four before she spoke up, are incredibly dangerous characters on which to predicate a show. Even good shows can have trouble managing characters who are supposed to be notably younger. It’s very tempting to either make them little savants, who are if not miniature adults than at least miniatures of how you would write middle school or high school kids – in part because failing the other way, and having a character who is a barely functional proto-person, is a less forgivable failure state. At least the wonderkids aren’t as reliably annoying.
Anya manages the balancing act of being a decidedly childish buy still fairly written child character well. She’s reasonable, after a fashion, but she’s not logical as adults see it – she’s looking in the world a different way and registers, in general, a separate cause and effect from someone like Loid. But we get to see enough of her thought process to understand that, as arbitrary as it may look to other characters, there is a cause and effect there, what Anya believes, and why she believes it. When she has an outburst, you get why (even if the characters often don’t because of how many of her behaviors are predicated on the fact, which she keeps absolutely secret, that she can read minds). You understand her as a character and a person, but she still acts in ways that are very childish and show a child’s comprehension of the world.
And she’s a colorful character as well. Too many youngsters are one-noted. Because kids often fixate on a quirky or “random” thing at a time, it’s perilously easy to write them as having one detail that’s their “thing”, and that’s it. Not Anya. She likes spy stuff, thanks to a spy cartoon she watches, which could have done the job but is mercifully not allowed to rest at that. We get to understand what she feels during an outing, how she regards and interacts with her (super cool) adopted family, things that make her happy, and things that get her down. We see she simultaneously has degree of disrespect for authority, but also tends to heed it when someone she does respect tells her something (or thinks it where she can pick up on it), often beyond the point where she actually should.
In ant case, Loid’s family gets more complicated when he receives a notification that, for an admissions interview, both parents must be present, no exceptions. This means that Loid needs to find a wife on short notice. This leads Loid to scout out Yor Briar, a demure young civil servant looking for love, in part because unmarried women fall under suspicion and in part because she lied to her coworkers about having a boyfriend and is all set to be put on the spot in a way that would get back to her beloved little brother. Oh, and also because in addition to her day job, Yor is a legendary assassin known as the Thorn Princess, and really doesn’t want that fact to get out.
The two end up finding each other and, given their respective problems, agree to some appearances as a couple. Loid, however, has a side job the night he’s set to meet Yor’s peers and thus arrives late and flustered, and in that state introduces himself as her husband, rather than her boyfriend. Yor rolls with it, and after they leave the party and get embroiled in a chase scene (with paper thin excuses from Loid about the gangsters being mental patients under his care), the two of them agree to a marriage, at least on paper, to keep up appearances. Anya, of course, recognizes that assassins (and therefore new mom) are pretty cool too, and the three of them become a strange family, each with a massive secret about their true natures.
At this point, the show takes something of a shift. We still get some spy or assassin action now and then, but it’s more about the mundane side of getting Anya into a good school, including studying for the entrance exam, preparing and then taking the interview, and then what Anya has to go through at school in order to bring daddy Loid closer to his goal. The family has a bizarre, spectacular, and fairly impressive set of skills, but they apply those skills more or less to mundane problems for the majority of the show.
While Spy x Family is more Slice of Life than anything else, it does go big enough for me to consider it a comedy as well. More than anything, it’s hilarious how badly the characters cover their many secrets while still getting away with it on the grounds that the truth is absolutely absurd
The entrance interview turns out to be a harrowing prospect, with the school putting several barriers in the way of families even headed to the interview. Loid and Yor handle each crisis far ahead of expectation, impressing Henry Henderson, an impressive fellow of the faculty who desires elegance in all things (“Elegant” is, in a sense, his catchphrase). However, another faculty member at the interview is in a sour mood and determined to fail the Forgers by any means necessary, mercilessly ripping into Yor and even making Anya cry.
Yor and Loid may be fake partners (though they have a lot of chemistry) and fake parents to Anya, but their affection is very real, and Yor is likely only restrained from murdering that man outright when Loid loses his temper and delivers a table-shattering punch, to an unfortunate mosquito rather than the crass jerk in a moment of restraint, and a scathing lecture on how the school now seems to treat children, before storming out with Anya and Yor, mission be damned.
Henderson, mercifully and elegantly, decks his horrid colleague personally. He also informs the Forgers that, as mosquitos are notorious killers with all the diseases they carry, that he is considering Loid’s actions a merit, and will put in a good word. Anya ends up on the wait list, and gets in despire her parents deciding to not kill their way through proper applicants.
Once at school, Anya is placed in Henderson’s class, along with a girl, Becky, she quickly makes friends with, plenty of extras… and the second son of Loid’s target, Damien, complete with his own Crabbe and Goyle style sycophantic goons.
We also learn that there are two ways for Loid to get the foot in the door that he needs for his mission: either Anya needs to earn eight Stella (awarded for high placements in exams and noble acts), which would mark her as an “Imperial Scholar” like the elder son of the target, and get Loid invited to the right events… or else she needs to make friends with Damien, so that they can end up meeting personally. Anya, mind-reader that she is, knows her dear dad’s mission and wants to support him, but between Damien being a would-be bully, Anya’s fake smile being poor, and a series of misunderstood lessons from her parents (particularly Yor) being applied, Anya ends up punching him out on the first day instead. This earns her a Tonitrus Bolt – eight of those, and she’ll be expelled, which would be the end of the line for Loid’s operation and presumably the family that Anya enjoys.
In the following episodes, we mostly follow Anya at school as she tries to make up with Damien (On the surface, it’s staggeringly unsuccessful, but the audience can tell that he develops a crush on her, as first graders would have it) and earn Stella (also largely unsuccessful, though she manages to get one for, with Loid’s help, saving the life of a drowning boy off-hours, which is legitimate.).
There is one other major rub in this time, though: Yor’s little brother finally comes calling. However, much like Yor herself, her brother is secretly not a mild-mannered civil servant. Neither she nor he know the other’s true profession, but he is actually a member of the Secret Police, and presently doing his best to root out the legendary spy known as Twilight at that.
Loid, aka his mark, catches on to what the brother must be surprisingly quickly, having more updated intelligence on the true situation behind some “small talk” topics that are used as standard boilerplate to cover for espionage activity. Thus, Loid realizes that a visit from the brother that very much doesn’t want to hive away his big sister all of a sudden (to be fair, it is extremely sudden) could be a matter of life and death.
While at work a cold-blooded torturer with an affable demeanor, in person little brother is clearly dependent on or protective of his sister, and also something of an immature goof, so while he does present quite the potential threat to the Forgers, it isn’t realized just yet. Still, this manages to use a couple of episodes up fairly well.
And, as for content… that is basically Spy x Family season 1: getting the Forgers together, getting Anya into school, dealing with Damien, dealing with Yor’s brother, and dealing with Damien/school (again).
There’s a clean simplicity – elegance, if I’m to steal Henderson’s favorite term – to Spy x Family. There’s never a dull moment, but the show is disinclined to get distracted by a million subplots. It lets its colorful characters carry the day, Anya in particular, even if the exceptional side of their scenarios is often not fully indulged in. You do see Loid as master spy Twilight or Yor as the Thorn Princess, but you see much more of them as Loid the concerned father or Yor the slightly scatterbrained but incredibly warm (step)mother to Anya. In a way, it reminds me of The Addams Family or The Munsters, shows that operated on the premise of some extremely exceptional characters doing ordinary things, but with a theme that is radically different.
Another difference is that Spy x Family, while only really getting warmed up in Season 1, seems to be telling a story with a clear beginning and end. It doesn’t exist in a universe where status quo is god and order doesn’t matter. Everything carries forward, attempting to get Twilight closer to completing his mission. At which point… well, it’s impossible to say what happens then because the show hasn’t gotten there.
Because of that, despite thinking it important and relevant to talk about the first season of Spy x Family, it’s difficult to give it a grade for the time being. It’s absolutely a strong show, but seeing how the first season can’t be easily looked at as an element on which the book is closed. It’s highly competent; in my mind clearly good, but I need to reserve the right to reassess how good based on how the material continues.
Right now, I will give the show a tentative A-. It has potential, quite a lot of it, but it hasn’t actually done all that much yet. If it navigates having a plot fairly well, I’d expect that grade to rise to at least an unblemished A. If it stumbles and falls, it could drop slightly or significantly.