The Dark Herald Recommends: Spy X Family – Code White
I have made no secret of my fondness for the anime series Spy X Family. A TV show that is at its heart about some lonely and broken if hypercompetent people forming a makeshift family works for me on just about every level. If you throw in James Bond-style early 1960s aesthetics then I’m hooked and in the net.
From my review:
Spy X Family takes place in a world that is very much Cold War Cool Sixties. The nations of Westalis and Ostania had a very nasty war not too long ago and tensions are running high again.
Westalis’ best secret agent is code-named Twilight (as yet we don’t know what his real name is) and has been assigned the task of spying on Ostania’s National Unity Party. The problem is that it’s head, Donovan, is such a recluse that the only way in that Twilight can find is to enroll his child in the same private school as Donovan’s and hope to force the camel’s nose under the tent that way. His new cover identity is psychologist Loid Forger.
Problem: He doesn’t have a kid. Or a family. He is a sixties spy after all.
Solution: He’ll have to find a kid and a wife. He’s the best spy in the world, how hard can it be?
Test Subject 007, aka Anya, is a six-year-old (possibly younger) orphan who was raised at a secret facility where she was altered to become a telepath. After escaping she ended up at an orphanage where she was acquired by Twilight as part of his cover. Anya is addicted to a TV spy show called Spy Wars and super excited to be helping her new father’s secret mission. Whatever that is.
Yor Forger is the world’s greatest assassin or at least in the top 5. She’s code-named Thorn Princess. She needed a husband because she lives in a country with a very active secret police and just being single at 27 is too suspicious.
Mutual problems and solutions to those problems is how the Forger family came together. At this point in the story, the Forgers still consider themselves “a fake” family. Or at least Loid and Yor do, they haven’t even kissed yet. Anya for her part is determined to keep her family together. Bond likes that idea too.
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Oh, sorry. Bond is the family dog. A demi-sapient, precognitive Pyrenees Mountain dog. He wears black tie.
Anya and Bond know her parents’ secrets whereas Loid and Yor don’t know each others’ or Anya’s or come to that, the dog’s.
Okay, that’s the over-complicated Japanese setup.
While Loid and Yor are both working for two extremely antagonistic organizations, both organizations share the same overall goal. To prevent another war between the East and West at any cost. What little background information we see about Loid is that as a child, he was left a starving war orphan in the rubble. Yor was in similar straights but was also having to be a mother to her younger brother Yuri. Both are absolutely dedicated to preserving the fragile peace between East and West.
Yuri, by the way, is a secret policeman and functions as a second-string antagonist for Loid. Yuri’s odd fixation with his sister is easy to understand when you remember that she was more his mother than his sister, and he’s quite the Mama’s boy. Yuri wants what’s best for Yor but gets jealous because Loid and Anya have supplanted the priority of his relationship with Yuri. Family will always come first for Yor and now she has one of her own.
While Yor frets constantly about her domestic incompetence, (this mostly relates to her terrible anime chick cooking) she more than makes up for it in the Mama Bear department.
I really love this series. Consequently, I was delighted when I saw there was going to be a theatrical release for a Spy X Family movie called Code White.
Loid’s mission is called Operation Strix, that’s the one where he’s using Anya to get to Donovan, the secretary of the National Unity. Anya and his son (Damian) go to the same prestigious school. Anya is aware of the importance of her Dad’s mission (more or less) and has made it her mission to make Damian her friend. This is severely complicated by the fact that Damian has a crush on Anya but can’t admit it for various reasons in class. If Anya can win eight Stella Stars at her school, she will become an Imperial Scholar and thus will grant Loid some very convoluted access to Donovan.
The movie starts, credits roll, and about ten minutes are spent bringing any audience member that wandered in out of curiosity up to speed, recapping the relationships and the premise. When that’s done Loid is contacted by his handler, who drops the bomb that Operation Strix is going to be canceled. It’s mostly a political thing. Loid suddenly needs to present some positive forward movement on his project if there is to be any kind of argument to be made for him staying undercover. He’s now invested enough that he won’t give up his family unless he has no choice at all.
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As fictional luck would have it, an opportunity for Anya to win another Stella emerges. The principal will judge a dessert competition at her school. The winner gets a Stella. Loid, who has the gift of perfect spy memory, recalls that the principal’s favorite dessert is called Meri-Meri and comes from a small family restaurant in a Nordic setting. The Forgers are going on vacation.
Along the way, Anya accidentally eats a chocolate truffle with a microfilm MacGuffin inside. It’s part of a plot by a special forces colonel to destroy the fragile peace between the two nations.
Spy X Family is something special in the mid-2020s. The story is ultimately a warm and personal one. It’s about the inherent need the human race has for family, no matter how damaged that individual member of it is, as well the foundational drive a man has to be a father and a woman to be a mother.
If you love Spy X Family, you’re already in. The production values are quite a bit higher than in the average episode, and the stakes are bigger than usual.
However, if you are already a fan, I have to caution you to manage your expectations. There is no progress on any of the B-story arcs. None at all. Yor and Loid have yet to admit they are in love with each other even though they obviously are. There are no major revelations despite the fact that some suspicion at this point is warranted on the part of Yor and Loid. I mean, Loid can fly a bomber, and Yor just happened to stow away in it (as you do).
By the end, Anya is no closer to completing either of her missions either. Granted, I think this is the first time Loid has rescued his daughter. That’s always been Yor’s job up until now.
All of the side characters are there, but they are just given things to do, meaning they have no reason to be there.
Just to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with this movie; it has everything you love about Spy X Family but on a bigger budget. However, at the end of the movie, everything resets like a TV episode.
It’s a movie that gets away with its shortcomings by never taking itself too seriously. It’s kid-safe, and adults won’t be bored.
Consequently…
The Dark Herald Recommends with Confidence (⅘)
What do you think about Spy x Family? Are you looking forward to the move or have you seen it? Let us know in the comments!
I do suggest watching it in Japanese audio with English subtitles. Because Crunchyroll’s dub for this movie(and the series as a whole) sounds way too atrocious. Feels like their making casting choices by throwing darts on a board.
Dubbers being too high on their farts after the Vic stuff and the now active collusion to push the M E S S A G E in the english dubs.
Watched the anime a while ago. Loved the concept immediately and the characters. We watched the old Bond films growing up and I am a sucker for “found family” tropes.
Hearing the movie was coming out has me restarting the series over again.