SPY x FAMILY Cour 2

The life of a spy isn’t all intrigue, action and danger. Sometimes, the work can be a lot more methodical and tedious, especially when you’re forging a brand new identity for yourself. This is the case for elite secret agent Twilight, who had to create an entire new life for himself as Doctor Lloyd Forger, a psychiatrist by day, whose secret mission is to befriend and exploit a politician named Donovan Desmond, whose information may be key to preventing a war from breaking out between Ostania and Westalis. To do this, he needed to assemble a fake family, and that’s where things became... Interesting. In searching for an intelligent daughter, he accidentally adopted a quirky mind-reader. In recruiting a generous wife to take care of her, he accidentally married an assassin. With no awareness of any of this, Twilight will be forced to strike a dangerous balance between his challenging assignment, and the family that may mean more to his icy heart than he realizes, especially as the threat of a violent war looms in the distance.

So I have good news and bad news for the production portion of this review. The bad news is, I don’t really have anything new to say about the visuals. This is probably the fourth time I’ve reviewed the first two seasons of an anime back to back, and it’s easily the least changed among them. The two seasons of Clannad were made before and after a major change in its studio’s visual style. The first two seasons of Strike Witches were made by entirely different studios, and the two seasons of The Big O are practically different shows entirely. The first two seasons of Spy x Family, on the other hand, were produced by the same studio and director, and aired less than a year apart, so the lack of a proper season one finale isn’t the only thing that might leave you confused watching this season straight through. Also confusing is the whole ‘cour 2’ thing anime do now, where two halves of one season can air and be logged separately, and my spell-check does not like the word cour.

The good news is, the first season looked pretty damn good, so it should go without saying that season... I mean Cour 2... looks just as impressive. The animation is still just as smooth and graceful as it was previously, with no real budget saving tactics apparent throughout. The backgrounds still feel like the authentic and immersive backdrop for a fictitious European city, and the character designs are still on point. Every single character worth knowing outside of the Forger family is easy to spot and easy to recognize, their actions articulate and full of individuality, and there’s an intense focus on emotions and facial expressions. Yes, I know, you hear that and you’d naturally think “Anya?” And yeah, but it also applies to her classmates, especially deceptively vulnerable Damon, and even more for Yor, whose plight to be the best Mama Anya could possibly have is made even better by her gosh darn sincere countenance when she's around her.

One thing that has changed, at least slightly, is the English dub. Alex Organ has done a much better job fitting into his role as Lloyd, as he seems to have grown in confidence since season one, which is fine, sometimes it takes a little while to find the right voice. Natalie Van Sistine and Megan Shipman are still just as impressive in their roles, and while I didn’t mention this last time, Stephanie Young performs very strongly as Twilight’s handler in the agency, although it’s possible to underestimate her until the moment where she delivers a bone-chilling monologue about the true meaning of dying for a cause to a team of pretentious wanna-be terrorists. Lindsay Seidel joins the cast as one of Twilight’s coworkers, and it’s clear from her acting that she knows just how insane her character is and how corrupted by infatuation she is, and that self-awareness goes a long way. In any case, great dub then, great dub now, highly recommended.

Like with the animation, however, there really isn’t all that much new to say about the writing and the story, because for all intents and purposes, these two Cours fit together perfectly as one twenty five episode season, and the writing quality in both is borderline identical... Which, again, is a good thing, because this is still a very well written series. The only thing that’s really different is that because everything that needed to be established is done and dusted, there’s a lot more time to explore and develop the material and characters, and that’s exactly what Cour 2 does. The family finally gets a dog, giving Anya someone new to interact with, and of course their dynamic is both heartwarming and entertaining... And just so he can hold his own among his new family of societal freaks, he has limited psychic abilities of his own, able to see potential futures that Anya can read his mind to see, and while this connection could be utilized more, it isn’t neglected either. We learn more about the volatile political situation, which the narrative thankfully refuses to allow to become boring, and Anya and her uncle even get to bond when he attempts to tutor her.

Unfortunately we also meet one of Lloyd’s coworkers, who is obsessively in love with him, which for any other anime would be a glaring red flag as this is one of my absolute least favorite cliches... You want to show the audience how sexually desirable the lead male is and add some tension to the main ship? Introduce a female character he knew before the female lead, who would rather die a lonely widow than settle for anything less than main character meat, and ugh gag I hate it. Actually, turns out it’s not so bad here. First off, she’s not his childhood friend, which removes one layer of cringe. Second, the writing is very explicitly self-aware of how unhealthy her obsession is, hell even Anya noped out of reading her mind after a few seconds. Third, once you get over the cliche itself, the episodes she’s in are still(of course) a lot of fun. She doesn’t just show up for no reason, she gets paired up with him to compete in a tennis tournament with so many silly shenanigans involved it would make the sci-fi sports in Battle Athletes Victory blush. And yeah, she wants to replace Yor in the forger family, but that just produces more hilarious interactions.

Other than these new elements, there isn’t much NEW to talk about so to avoid the risk of repeating myself from the last review, I’m going to spend some time going over some points I either forgot to go over before, or feel the need to elaborate on further. For example, I said previously that this anime had one of the best premises I’ve ever heard of, both in terms of originality and potential, but I neglected to mention the most important part of that premise, Lloyd’s status as a spy. You might notice by this point in the story that Lloyd’s secret occupation gets a lot more attention from the narrative than Yors, and that’s probably because between the two, his job offers a far wider range of story options. Generally speaking, at least in terms of fiction, ‘spy’ is a very vague identity, as it could mean a wide range of different tasks. Just this season alone, he gets called on to stop an assassination, resulting in an exciting action story arc, and he gets called on to don a disguise to infiltrate a tennis tournament, and that’s in addition to his ongoing efforts to reach Donovan Desmond.

With that in mind, an imaginative writer could use Lloyd’s background as an excuse to do practically anything, and I mean that in the best way possible. His job could take him anywhere, to perform any activity, in any setting, and there would be nothing stopping him from bringing Yor and Anya along to stir up as much intrigue and/or chaos to keep the entire arc entertaining to the audience. This cast could make a trip to a fucking retirement home fun, and all you would need is Lloyd’s agency to send him there to interrogate an elderly double agent with dementia. True, the story doesn’t utilize all of this potential, but I kind of don’t need it to, as long as I feel confident that it’s aware of its potential, which I think it is. As long as the creator knows just how infinite the possibilities are, I’m perfectly content with letting the story unfold at its own pace, alternating between secret agent action and slice of life melodrama, because by never being boring, it never lets my mind have a chance to wander off towards everything it’s not doing.

But of course, the strongest element of the series has only gotten stronger, and that’s the Forger family themselves. Yes, I know I said previously that Anya was the strongest pillar of the series, and that is true, but this season gave me another chance to examine how I felt about these characters as a unit, and to better explain my findings, I’d like to compare them to another assembled false family, that of Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid. Much like Yor and Lloyd, Kobayashi and Tohru are not romantically involved. In spite of this, they still live together, and are essentially coparenting a little girl, with a hint of a ‘will-they-won’t-they’ dynamic between them. Unlike Kobayashi and Tohru, however, neither Yor nor Lloyd are sexually aggressive towards each other, nor do they make constant inappropriate remarks or try to trick the other one into, well, anything. There are obvious feelings and an attraction between them, but they respect and support each other within the boundaries they’ve set for themselves. Also, comparing them to most will-they-won’t-they anime couples, they’re not fucking annoying about it.

Unlike Kanna, Anya has a very close and unique bond with each of her adoptive parents, and she has a fleshed out, believable best friend who isn’t a walking grade school ahegao. Instead of coming off as the typical precocious dead-fish-eye child who is only given child-like traits when it would be most appealing to the audience, Anya Forger comes off as a genuine child. It’s safe to say most children in fiction feel inauthentic to some degree, as the people writing them are mostly basing their interpretation of childhood from an adult’s perspective, but there are a small number of fictional children that actually hit the mark... In addition to Bunny Drop and Strawberry Marshmallow, Spy x Family is one of the elite few. Morally speaking, you could make the argument that most of what Anya does is for selfish purposes, but not only is she well below the age of accountability, I would think a former orphan has every moral right to selfishly try to keep her happy adoptive family together.

Because at the end of the day, the Forgers are just that: A happy family. Late last year, I finally started watching Bob’s Burgers, and The Belchers did gradually wind up becoming my favorite animated sitcom family. I didn’t get the series at first, but as I made my way through(so far) twelve seasons and a movie, I realized what it was specifically that made that show work. After decades of animated families that were irreconcilably dysfunctional, and should have broken up years ago, Bob’s Burgers showed us a clever subversion of this: Despite how weird and awkward they all are, and despite their differences, they are a functional family who overcome every hurdle that comes their way. I don’t believe the Simpsons, the Griffins, or even the Murphies would stand the test of time, but the Belchers? Oh, I believe in the Belchers.

And it’s by that same exact logic that I believe in the Forgers, who despite their insane differences, possess a powerful chemistry with each other. They may not always be on the same page, but the dedication that they show towards fixing every rift that occurs, patching up every unsightly hole, and finding ways to coexist and meet each other halfway with a compromise shows just how much devotion they have towards each other, even if none of them have quite realized it yet. They're a fake family that doesn't seem to realize that they're only really pretending to be fake. Anya is still working to protect the status quo, enjoying her free time whenever she has it. Yor is still trying to be as perfect a wife and mother as she can, sometimes out of fear of being replaced, although sometimes the sentiment just feels genuine to itself. Lloyd is still the biggest holdout, as he’s still trying to compartmentalize the two sides of his life, but I can’t wait to see him cross that line in season 2 and realize that he cares more about Yor and Anya than his job, that’s gonna be such an engaging dilemma when the other shoe inevitably drops.

Honestly, the only real issue I had with this season is a holdover from the previous season, that being that I don’t think the people adapting the manga to the screen really know how to construct and pace an episode, especially when it comes time to decide what note to end on. It’s not as prevalent an issue as it was in the previous season, but it happens a few times, and more than once, there’ll be a moment halfway through an episode that would have been such a stronger ending than the ending we ultimately got. There are times when I think they would have been better off splitting every episode into two half-length episodes, but like I said, it’s not as big an issue as last season, and this time, the season itself actually manages to end on a satisfying note. I also personally felt this season a lot more emotionally, which I count as a plus, and honestly, it's one of the main reasons that I like this cour slightly more than the previous one. The more I rewatch this, the more lost in it I get, and I can't wait to get to the official second season.

For now, I give Spy x Family a 9/10.