‘Spy x Family Code: White’ Review: The Anime Series Come to the Big Screen with a Fun but Forgettable Flight of Fancy
From “Cooking Papa” and “Food Wars: Shokugeki No Soma” to “Delicious in Dungeon” and every Ghibli film in between, anime has a rich history of wholesome food porn. Yet even so, it might still come as a surprise to some fans of “Spy x Family” that the show’s first theatrical outing would revolve so heavily around a cooking competition.
It’s not just any cooking competition, mind you. After it looks like spy extraordinaire Loid Forger might be taken off Operation “Strix,” the mission that first brought his found family together, he decides to help his adopted daughter Anya win a coveted prize at Eden Academy, thereby ensuring that the Forgers can stay together for at least a little bit longer. The ever-perceptive Loid quickly realizes that the key to victory lies in making the principal’s favorite meal, a rather “elegant” pastry named Melemele. And so off the Forgers go on a family trip to the Frigis region in search of all the secret ingredients needed to win the competition and secure their future together.
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While this might not start out as the hi-octane spy mission fans expected from the franchise’s big screen debut, it’s not long before a surprising chain of events puts world peace in danger when the adorable Anya eats a special chocolate that contains more than just mere truffle filling. There’s something rather admirable about going down this jaunty route in particular. The TV show itself has always been flexible when it comes to balancing cutesy hijinks with more serious spy fare, juxtaposing Anya’s school-based relationships with everything from bloody assassinations to a near-lethal tennis match, yet there could have easily been temptation to stick more with the latter approach on this route to cinemas.
That confidence in the characters and the franchise’s signature tonal shifts comes in large part from the involvement of screenwriter Ichirō Ōkouchi, who wrote season two of the main “Spy x Family” show (as well as various other anime hits including “Devilman Crybaby”, “SK8 the Infinity”, and the new “Kaiju No. 8” adaptation). Following a brief recap of the series — which reminds us that Loid is a super spy named Twilight, Yor is moonlighting as an underworld assassin with almost superhuman strength, and Anya is both super cute and superpowered with her secret telepathic gift — the film opens with a flashy kinetic intro before settling into more casual character beats. This gives all our faves a chance to shine independently as well as together as a unit, including Bond even, the family’s clairvoyant dog. And with the original voice actors back in tow, it’s easy to see why the film was such a big hit in Japan back when it was released there towards the tail end of last year.
Unfortunately, “Spy x Family Code: White” has a habit of relying on the intrinsic draw of Tatsuya Endo’s characters over more substantial writing, an issue that also plagued huge swathes of season two. Sure, Anya is always ridiculously entertaining (there’s a reason why she instantly became one of Japan’s most recognizable exports just one year into the show’s release), and her adopted parents are as charismatic as ever here too. In theory, the Forgers are endlessly watchable, but “Code: White” sure does put that idea to the test at points with an often meandering plot that struggles to hold interest throughout the film’s unnecessarily long runtime.
Like many anime film adaptations of this nature, “Code: White” isn’t based on the source material, which means that the narrative must eventually switch back to the regular status quo in order to fit seamlessly in with the main series. That’s not intrinsically a bad thing. Knowing everything’s going to turn out ok might rob the story of some tension, admittedly, but that’s not to say new insights into these characters can’t be explored, even if the plot itself is ultimately shackled by its very nature as a stopgap feature. The problem is that “Code White” doesn’t do enough to justify its existence beyond TV, prioritizing MacGuffin after MacGuffin in what could have just as easily been a three or four episode arc in season three. In fact, that would have probably worked better, imbuing the narrative with a tighter focus and way less expectations to boot.
One way “Code White” could have really stood out without fundamentally changing the show is in the villain stakes. It’s the characters who make “Spy x Family” the success it is, but Colonel Snidel, the military officer who lusts for war because he doesn’t have anything better to do, is about as generic as they come. Knowing that the Forgers will emerge from this skirmish unscathed, extra efforts could have been made to up the ante with a new recurring arch-nemesis instead, one who could thread future film installments together and increase the stakes without impacting the show itself. “Code White’s” insistence on prioritizing the Forgers above all others is to the film’s detriment in this regard, not to mention how popular side characters like Handler and Nightfall are sidelined this time around as well.
That’s not to say “Code White” lacks charm, or that there haven’t been at least some benefits in upgrading to the big screen. Filmmaker Takashi Katagiri makes his directorial feature debut here after previously working as Assistant Director on “Bubble”, Wit Studio’s gorgeous if somewhat vacuous Netflix anime, and everything is so beautifully shot and framed here too in much the same way. The film’s action scenes, especially in that final third, recall some of the best Wit Studio have crafted in recent years throughout other anime fare like “Attack on Titan” and “Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End”, and Yor is thankfully often at the center of them. The Thorn Princess has a tendency of being overlooked in the show sometimes, the Cruise Adventure Arc aside, but here Yor is a true action star in every sense of the word, fending off gun turrets and cyborg men alike with her trademark intensity and grace.
Then there’s Anya’s hallucination sequence where she imagines a holy visitation from the god of poop after fighting so long to hold her chocolate truffle in and save the world. Yes, that’s a real sentence you just read, just as lines like “Journey with me to the garden of toilets” and “Rest your bum, be free my child” are real lines actually spoken within the film too. Your enjoyment of all this will depend on personal taste more than perhaps anything ever seen on screen, but there’s no denying how gorgeous the animation is here as it shifts into softer brushstrokes that accentuate the relaxation that can only come when it’s time to let go. Never in the history of cinema has a poop scene looked so beautiful, putting even the already stunning food porn to shame that’s seen earlier on in the film.
More ambitious swings like this could have made “Code White” really special, a spy mission for the ages in fact. But as it stands, the Forgers’ cinematic debut is more poop than truffle, albeit an enjoyable one that fills the hole fans are forced to strain with while we wait for season three.
Grade: C+
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