OP: “Souvenir” by Bump of Chicken

The biggest anime head-to-head hype battle in years kicks off with the season premiere (for the record I’m going with “Episode 13” here, since that seems to be the official naming convention) of Spy x Family.  It has a head start on Chainsaw Man, already having a cour of anime under its belt.  That propelled the manga – as expected – to huge sales (behind only Jujutsu Kaisen and Tokyo Revengers with 4,835,705 volumes sold – and #1 in per volume average) so far in 2022.  CSM probably won’t match those numbers – I just don’t think it has the same mainstream appeal – but it may eclipse SxF overseas and in terms of general buzz.  It’ll be fun to watch play out.

I think we have a pretty good idea what to expect from Spy X Family at this point.  Mangaka Endou Tatsuya may be CSM mangaka Fujimoto Tatsuki’s former assistant (despite being over a decade older), but his sensibilities could hardly be more different.  There are dark edges to SxF but it’s basically a Hollywood screwball comedy relocated to manga – and a fictionalized post-war Berlin.  It’s Anya pulling faces, lots of antics, Yor being violent, Loid’s stomach troubles both real and feigned.  I’ve never found it a series keen to push many envelopes or peddle serious themes (though the stuff with Damian and his family gets fairly intense).  It just what it does, usually very well.

What could be a more logical addition to that formula than cute animals?  “Never work with kids and animals” may be an actors’ mantra but this is animation, so who’s complaining?  We knew at the end of the first season that the Forgers were planning to add a dog, and Loid’s idea is to use an agency-run front pet shop to add a trained war dog for security.  But Anya is singularly unimpressed, so the gang ends up at an adoption agency which happens to be across the street from the hideout a bunch of right-wing radicals are using to plan the assassination of a visiting Western diplomat.  Using bomb dogs, natch.

As Loid takes the world’s longest bathroom break fighting the plot, Yor and Anya visit the adoption fair.  But the latter is quickly distracted by a huge white pupper who apparently can not only project his thoughts, but see the future.  He’ll be known eventually as Bond, and he’s voiced by the estimable Matsuda Kenichirou (also the narrator).  Anya follows him into the building where the planning for the assassination is taking place, and Bond is one of the dogs pegged to carry out the crime.  Anya having overheard the planning unfortunately comes to the attention of the villains, and their leader Keith (Takahashi Hiroki) deems it too much of a risk to let her live.

The rest of it is your standard Spy x Family shtick, but if that’s not your jam I suspect you wouldn’t still be watching.  Yor gets things all wrong as ever, convincing herself that Anya is being kidnapped to be sold off as a bride, but it doesn’t really matter as long as she saves the day.  It’s no secret that Bond will wind up a Forger, but there’s the matter of dealing with the plot first – which is going to take another episode to sort out.  Bond is a holdover from the “Apple Project” – a plot by the Ostanian military to train animals to be hyperintelligent (and esper, apparently) weapons of war, so he’ll fit right in.

It’s good to be one of the most successful animanga franchises in the world, to be sure.  The production flexes some of that muscle by getting big names Araki Tetsurou and Hirao Takayuki (Pompo the Cinephile) to direct and storyboard the OP and ED respectively.  Spy x Family will never want for budget, you’d think, and is most likely a lock to adapt whatever manga material is produced (though I suspect it’ll need to take a break for a while once this season is finished).

ED: “Shikisai (色彩)” by yama