Review: ‘Spy x Family’

Season 1, Part 1 [June 25, 2022]¹

At the start of every broadcast season, the online anime community, based on little information, assigns certain shows to the must-watch trophy shelf and others to the guilty-pleasure dumpster. This spring, the stylish and beautifully animated comedy Spy Family understandably took a spot on the trophy shelf. The show is not at all bad; in fact, it’s quite watchable. It’s just not as interesting as it looks: style over substance.

The premise and the plot are complicated, but the core dynamic is this: the husband is basically serious, and his wife and daughter are silly; thus, the serious character is forced to deal with the others’ silliness. It’s a solid foundation for comedy, but I don’t think the writers built all that much on it, so viewers will enjoy or endure multiple scenes, even episodes, of essentially surface-level fun: cute, silly, mildly amusing filler.

The wife, Yor, the world’s dorkiest assassin, is delightful, but the show can’t wait to write her out of an episode in order to give more screen time to a small child. Unfortunately, children make questionable protagonists: they lack maturity and therefore depth, making them, again, merely cute and silly. More Yor, please.

It’s as if every element of the show, from the stylish look of the characters to the simple structure of the jokes, was designed to be modular fun: you can take it out of context, chop it into short clips, and get a similarly enjoyable experience. On the other hand, this implies that the context, i.e., the plot, isn’t adding much. As a result, even touching scenes feel like short, high-quality clips sandwiched by cute-and-silly.

Spy Family is certainly fun, and I would probably watch another season. I just think it needs to be less pleased with itself and add more depth. We get it: you’re cute and silly. But we can’t eat cotton candy for dinner.

[1] Reposted from my Substack, where I post all my content: https://reincarnatedcritic.substack.com/p/spy-family