To be honest I found this episode to be kind of a snoozer, so I don’t have a hell of a lot to say about it. I had two basic issues with it:
- It wasn’t very funny, at least for me.
- Even within the context of farce, Spy x Family needs to keep a certain tethering to realism, no matter how tenuous. That tether was cleanly snipped this week.
But you know, there’s a reason for that – it was almost all anime-original. Shows like Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san can certainly go a long way towards proving anime material can actually improve on a manga, but they’re the exception that proves the rule. More commonly you get stuff like this – it just feels a little “off”. Kind of disconnected, and lacking the punch of the original material. Inserting original material this early can be (and is, in this case) an indication of an adaptation that knows length will only be a problem in the sense of having too much of it. However many seasons S x F needs to tell its story it will get, so the anime can worry about filler to make a logical stopping point fall where they want it.
I mean, there was nothing essentially wrong with this – apart, as I said, from the way it breaks the suspension of disbelief in a way it shouldn’t be. Silly for the wrong reasons, as opposed to how Spy x Family is usually silly for the right reasons. The castle bit does exist in the manga but it’s much more logically-handled, and of course the whole waiting list part is canon – it’s really the only essential material in the ep. But on the bright side it had some nice moments (albeit swamped by too much Anya vamping), and as you’d expect from Wit working on their top priority series, it looked great. The whole castle and spy game setup was a visual feast, if rather forgettable in narrative terms.
Whatever, it’s all good. This was a blip (hopefully, and probably), ill-advised maybe but certainly not irreparably damaging. And next week we get into the really good stuff, with a couple of new characters who add a ton to the mix and whose presence makes Anya overdose a lot more tolerable. That said, based on this week I rather hope the adaptation sticks closely to the source material going forward.
Simone
May 8, 2022 at 5:04 pmI’ve seen claims that the author actually had come up with this material and left it out of the manga due to constraints. I agree it’s kind of one step up in terms of sheer absurdity than the rest of the manga, and overall, it was clearly not very substantial or plot-relevant, but still, it was fun enough in anime form if only because of how much it allowed the animators to flex (maybe it was inserted in order to have some action sprinkled into an otherwise pretty relaxed arc?).
It may also have been a matter of adjusting pacing to meet some specific stopping point later down the road? Either way, sure, it was “filler” in the good old sense of the word, but then again, as far as filler goes, I’ve seen much worse. It was funny and silly.
Guardian Enzo
May 8, 2022 at 5:43 pmAs I said in the post, “an indication of an adaptation that knows length will only be a problem in the sense of having too much of it. However many seasons S x F needs to tell its story it will get, so the anime can worry about filler to make a logical stopping point fall where they want it.”
hwighting
May 9, 2022 at 2:50 pmI agree with you this ep wasn’t very funny. Also, I’d go further to say spyxfamily is way overhyped and does not meet high expectations. I still enjoy it but it’s not blowing me away.
Guardian Enzo
May 9, 2022 at 2:54 pmI would agree it’s overhyped, but only because the hype level is so ridiculously off the charts. I still think it’s very good – better than KnY, JJK or TR for example. It’s just not some kind of masterpiece or anything IMHO.
ruicarlov
May 10, 2022 at 7:37 amI did find it amusing (probably in part due to the animation flexing), but I had some lingering strange feelings the whole time of that castle event. Feelings that evoked imagens of sharks, water-skis, fridges, nuclear explosions, and also gorillas and guillotines….