Tatsuya Endo’s Spy x Family is one of the manga industry’s most recent successes.
I have enjoyed both reading it and watching the anime over the years, even if I never did get around to reviewing the second season.
Well, with the show’s success, it was only a matter of time before it got an anime original movie.
Code: White is the first of potentially many such movies.
Having recently released on Crunchyroll, I decided to give it a shot and, as expected, had a lot of fun.
To recap, Spy x Family is set in a cold war between two rival nations, Ostania and Westalis.
Top Westalis spy Twilight (Takuya Eguchi) has to forge a fake family in the hopes of getting close to a man who could bring both countries back to the brink of war.
Taking on the persona of Loid Forger, Twilight adopts a little girl named Anya (Atsumi Tanezaki), gets into a marriage of convenience with a woman named Yor (Saori Hayami), and adopts a dog named Bond (Kenichiro Matsuda).
However, everyone in this family has a secret, not just Loid.
Yor is an expert assassin named the Thorn Princess, Anya is a telepath, and Bond can see the future.
The only member of the family who has any knowledge of this is Anya, due to her telepathy, resulting in many hilarious moments in the series where she tries to help her adoptive family while keeping up appearances.
This is the setting Code: White emerges from, as Twilight takes the Forgers on a trip to a place called Frigis, where he hopes to find a dessert to give Anya an advantage in a cooking competition, which will also hopefully help his own mission.
But, of course, this simple vacation takes a turn when Anya accidentally eats a chocolate containing a microfilm, which in the wrong hands could start the war again.
Code: White’s story is a pretty standard Spy x Family experience, and is used as a vehicle to bring the audience great animation, fun action and wholesome moments.
The latter takes up at least half the movie, with a large amount of focus being centered on the fun the Forgers get up to before the action takes center stage.
This is most apparent with Yor, whose storyline centers around her concern that Loid has a mistress, leading to lots of great humor.
The comedy also continues into the action portion of the movie, with Anya’s being particularly funny, while Loid and Yor get all the cool fight scenes.
All three of their storylines get fantastic animation, creating an especially fun third act.
The only issue I had with with this is the logic issues.
I know Loid and Yor are pretty dense when it comes to recognizing one another’s true identities, but the plausibility that they would not be at least a little suspicious of each other in this movie is stretched a little.
Still, this is only a minor problem, in a good filler movie.
Throw in a few cameos from Frankie, Yuri, Fiona and other characters, and you pretty much have a Spy x Family episode, only extended to movie length.
Code: White is a fun experience with a lot of good humor and action, along with excellent animation in the third act.
I hope we get more of these.
THE REVIEW MONSTER 