The Best Action-Comedy Anime Just Gave New Fans The Perfect Way To Jump Right In
Action shonen anime dominates the medium, for better and worse. Every big franchise eventually gets an original movie — or a dozen. "One Piece" has 15, "Dragon Ball" 24, and "Naruto" has 11.
The problem is that these mostly tend to be non canonical movies without much consequence. They are cute, fun adventures, for sure. Still, they are more concerned with providing fan service than providing substance. The best ones are those that manage to make the most out of their non canonical status and present truly experimental movies, like the best of the "One Piece" films.
Now comes "Spy x Family: Code White," a movie based on one of the most popular manga, published in Shonen Jump magazine — which makes this technically a shonen anime movie, regardless of its actual genre. The premise is simple. Loid is a spy, Yor is an assassin, and together they fake a family for convenience (and for Loid's spy mission), unaware of each other's secret. The only one who knows is their adopted daughter Anya, who is a telepath. Oh, and their dog can see the future.
Set against the background of a Cold War-inspired conflict, the film takes the whole crew on a cute family trip to find and eat a special dessert so that Anya can replicate it for a school competition. Of course, things get complicated when she also accidentally eats a chocolate-covered treasure sought after by a rogue colonel looking to kickstart a war.
Where most shonen anime films struggle to justify or even properly use their format, "Spy x Family: Code White" cracks the code by embracing one of the oldest TV formats: the sitcom. This is a silly, fun animated movie for audiences of all ages that is also the best introduction to the franchise.
There is always more show
Many shonen animated movies struggle with having to balance their extensive continuity with also appealing to newcomers wanting a standalone film. This means a lot of them feel redundant, unnecessary, and inconsequential. Does this mean "Spy x Family: Code White" is essential to the canon? No. Will it be acknowledged by the following season? Probably not. Is it even canon? Who knows, and none of it matters. That's because "Spy x Family" is anime's answer to the sitcom, with each episode telling a standalone adventure mostly ignored by the next one.
Since every episode is already an inconsequential side-story, the movie's original script fits perfectly within the tone and format of the franchise. It's no different from any of the anime or manga's arcs.
This means "Code White" is also the perfect introduction to "Spy x Family." Given that there's little in terms of continuity, newcomers need not watch the two seasons of the anime before watching the movie, because it spends enough time doing little introductions to the characters and the story. A narrator even explains the characters' relationships to one another, while the story lets every character have a moment to shine, making it so newcomers can fall in love with the world and with this family.
Then there's the story itself, which quickly goes from fun little family outing (or "ooting" as Anya would call it) to world-threatening stakes. It's a contrived story, one with a significant plot element depending on Anya trying not to poop or she'll die. It's over the top, it's silly, and it is perfectly in line with a sitcom movie. "Code White" has more in common with "The Brady Bunch Movie" or the "SpongeBob Movie" than with "One Piece: Red" or "Demon Slayer: Mugen Train."
A family ooting
In "BoJack Horseman," the titular horse once explained the curse of the sitcom: that in order for there to be a show, the characters can't change and nothing can ever be resolved. "If everyone's happy, the show would be over, and above all else the show has to keep going," he says. "There's always more show." That's the key to "Spy x Family" and its gargantuan popularity. It is an anomaly in blockbuster anime shows because it follows sitcom rules and prioritizes having fun little adventures with the characters over actual plot progression.
The film takes this to heart and weaponizes the sitcom format. It doesn't matter that nothing really changes at the end, or that the characters probably won't talk about the time Yor fought a "Resident Evil" boss and burned him alive in the next season. There is always more show.
The lack of consequence and continuity allows "Code White" to go absolutely wild with its plot (like the aforementioned "Anya can't poop or she dies" storyline — Disney would never), which leads to a chase scene of the young girl desperately clutching her butt.
Did this need to be a movie rather than an episode? Probably not, but the animators at WIT Studio and CloverWorks make the most out of their increased budget to do larger scale action — including some set pieces worthy of Tom Cruise in "Mission: Impossible" — and some inventive art style changes. This peaks with a scene where Anya hallucinates a whole musical sequence led by the Poop God.
"Demon Slayer: Mugen Train" showed that taking shorter story arcs and turning them into feature films was a great idea. Now, "Spy x Family: Code White" shows that certain anime franchises are just better equipped to tell original stories than others.