Category: Spy X Family

Welcome everyone, to the grand finale of SpyXFamily! This week was a massive surprise for me. The jokes were minimal, the pacing slow, the subject matter serious. This episode is perhaps the most serious across its 26 episode run. And for me, that’s a good thing. Now lets jump into it!

So in case it wasn’t obvious, this was a serious episode and I loved it. I’ve long wanted SpyXFamily to treat it’s premise with the severity it deserves. Even just a one-off side episode would have been enough! Just anything to remind us, and to make use take seriously the fact, that the backdrop of this cutesy family friendly Slice of Life is the freaking Cold War. And what I got wasn’t just some random side episode with wacky tennis spectacle. Instead it was 20 minutes of Loid finally meeting the central villainous figure of the series: Donovan Desmond. And you know what? I loved it. This was easily my favorite episode of the season, which is funny considering how little actually happens in it. It’s just a meeting, a first contact if you will. Nothing more. But I loved it anyways. Lets talk about why.

Continue reading “Spy X Family – 13 [First Contact]” →

Welcome everyone, to a super late SpyxFamily episode! Apologies for that. I didn’t get back from a wedding until Monday, and then had to get the Seasonal Preview and Hikaru no Go review out. Not to mention the end of year Anime of the Year post we have coming up. Suffice to say, this is a busy time of year in every sense. Now without further ado, onto the episode!

Starting off, the first half of this episode was all about Loid and Yor, and it was great. My big issue with SpyXFamily has always been how few and far between its moments of character progression are. How the same jokes become stale and it becomes afraid to change the status quo. And in a way, even with this segment, it still isn’t changing the status quo. The very end of the segment has Yor saying she forgot what happened because she was drunk, though it did sort of walk that back by saying they had the conversation again. But it doesn’t change that, on some small level, progress did happen in these two’s relationship. Loid opened up and let Yor in, telling her about his own childhood. Not some WISE story, his actual parents and his experience growing up in a war. It’s slow, glacially slow, but still progress.

Continue reading “Spy X Family – 12 [The Role of a Mother and Wife]” →

Welcome everyone, to another episode of Spy x Family! This week is another example of the perfect Spy x Family episode experience. We got great action, incredible wholesomeness, poignant spy moments and fantastic animation. Despite my criticisms of some of the recent episodes, this is the stuff I watch this show for. So without further ado, lets dive into it.

Right off the bat, it’s obvious that this episode looked fantastic. Not just in it’s wild full-body movements during the tennis match, though those were great as well, but also the interesting camera angles used to frame them as well as the great effects work during Yor’s scene at the end. Touches like angling the shot through the sniper scope, closeups of the racket as we follow the balls path, etc etc. Simply put, this was one of, if not the most, visually engaging episodes Spy x Family has had across it’s 24 episode run up to this point. I know it’s not good to hope for this on every episode, it’s just an unreasonable demand. But god damn when Spy x Family wants to it becomes just as much a visual treat as Chainsaw Man and Mob Psycho this season.

Continue reading “Spy X Family – 11 [The Unwavering Path]” →

Welcome back, to another episode of SpyxFamily! This is late, I know, I’m really slowing down this holiday season and I apologize for that. Lots of irons in the fire at the moment. Still, the show must go on, so lets dive into it!

First up, the animation. SpyxFamily is a very… inconsistently animated show. Some episodes look absolutely gorgeous, from how they are directed down to the individual cuts. I’m talking stuff like Yor running through town to the dog park with Bond. When it wants to, SpyxFamily can be one of the visually strongest anime of the season. But only when it wants to. The rest of the time it looks simply average, with nothing particularly impressive to catch the eye. Luckily for us this week they cared. Because these tennis shots look great. The direction it pretty standard, but the way Fiona and Loid move, the posing, the effects work on stuff like the rocket rackets, it all more than makes up for it. This isn’t the best looking SpyxFamily episode, not by a long shot. But it’s definitely a good one.

Continue reading “Spy X Family – 10 [The Underground Tennis Tournament: The Campbelldon]” →

Hello, and welcome to this weeks episode of SpyxFamily! This is an interesting week, as it introduces a whole new character to act as Yuri’s counterpart, just for Loid. Is she any good? Do the jokes land? Did something happen? Lets dive in and find out!

So starting off, overall I think this was a decent week for SpyxFamily. For the first time in a while we got an entire episode dedicated to a singular storyline, and I think it paid off. Sure, there was that extra bit after the ED, but that’s more like a cute excerpt to me, its fine. As for the storyline in question? The introduction of Fiona Frost! As far as introductions go, we’ve had a lot worse. Considering her character archetype, Yuri immediately comes to mind, as they share so much in common. She’s not perfect, and we will talk about why, but I think she has far more potential than Yuri did. Partly because this one isn’t incestuous, but also because she has more going on than just this love obsession. Or at least it feels like it.

Continue reading “Spy X Family – 9 [Nightfall]” →

Welcome everyone, to another week of Spy X Family! This is another pretty slow week all things considered, another pair of jokes without much going on. While rather cute in execution, I continue to want something a bit more from the series. I’m ready to have my heartstrings pulled again, you know? Anyways, without further ado lets jump into the episode, shall we?

So like I said, this week was another pair of gag episodes, with the first half being all about Anya exploring Loid’s job. This was cute! There were some fun gags in here, a cute Sherlock Holmes outfit, some spy shenanigans. As far as comedy goes, I think SpyXFamily nailed a lot of the jokes here. Perhaps my favorite was Yor’s imagination of taking Anya out and showing off her own job. Not working at the capital building, but being an assassin. The little ninja run, Anya’s smaller version of the outfit, the brightly colored blood. It was a great sequence, with some good action animation for Yor. Beyond that though? There wasn’t really anything of substance. Nothing narratively noteworthy or important. Just a bunch of amusing jokes for a wholesome episodic experience. Like I said last week, for some that’s going to be great. But I need something more.

Continue reading “Spy X Family – 8 [Decipher the Perplexing Code]” →

Welcome everyone, to a (very) late episode of SpyXFamily! Apologies for that, I had to finish the His and Her Circumstances review, checking it over until I was happy. Still, that’s done and ready to go up Thursday so it’s time for some good old family fun! So without further ado, lets dive into the episode.

Overall this was a pretty slow week for SpyXFamily, with neither episode really furthering anything plot wise. Instead they were just 2 cute, longform gag sequences. This is fine enough, it was certainly cute. But there was nothing really… noteworthy. Nothing particularly heartwarming nor narratively important enough to get invested in. I’m sure for most this is fine, I want to be painfully clear that this was still a fun episode. But I’ve heard some gripes from friends and colleagues about how they found it to be rather dull, and I can’t bring myself to disagree. Still, every now and then this kind of break from the serious stuff is good. You can’t keep your audience tense all of the time. So long as this doesn’t become the new status quo, I’m sure it’ll be alright.

Continue reading “Spy X Family – 7 [Operation Revenge on Desmond]” →

Hello everyone, and welcome back to SpyXFamily! Apologies for missing last week, had a bit of a family emergency. Don’t worry though, everything is going much better! Enough with real life problems though, let’s just dive right into our weekly anime.

Right off the bat, this is a bit of an odd (double) week for SpyXFamily. Both episodes have a singular, larger plot to them, like a normal episode should. But neither of these plots are enough to fill an entire episode on their own. So what do you do? Drag it out, or fill the space with something else? In this case, SpyXFamily has chosen the latter. Rather than drag out two perfectly paced stories, it instead added a miniature “filler” story to the end of each episode. As a sort of epilogue to these episodes, mini-sodes meant to show us small parts of these characters daily lives, this is fine. But for me, as someone who isn’t big on Slice of Life, they certainly weren’t my favorite of the things SpyXFamily has done. What I’m saying is, they were cute but lets not do them to often, you know?

Continue reading “Spy X Family – 4/5 [Yor’s Kitchen/Carry Out the Griffin Plan]” →