Autumn 2018 First Impressions – Release the Spyce

A lone high school girl named Momo attends a high school in the city of Sorasaki. Unbeknownst to everyone, Momo is an agent who works for the private intelligence agency Tsukikage, that protects the city and its people. Under the tutelage of her senior Yuki, and her other friends, they keep the peace in the city. – ANN

Streaming: HIDIVE

Episodes: 12

Source: Original

Episode Summary: Momo is a high school student with a unique set of talents – not only does she have an excellent sense of smell, but she can tell how people are feeling and if they have any maladies simply by licking them. Her sense of sight and her general perception are great as well. Case-in-point; she spots what she thinks are people running around a factory late one night, even though her mother can’t see any of it. Still, her biggest concerns are social in nature; with the new school year she’s in a class with none of her friends, so she aims to make some new ones.

After a rough first day she’s approached by a couple of outgoing classmates who invite her to dinner at an… unorthodox curry restaurant. It seems like her lonely school year might be shaping up into an opportunity for new friendships after all! It’s only later, after Momo finds a police-officer acquaintance held hostage by some scary-looking criminals that she discovers her new friends have something else up their sleeves – they’re members of Tsukikage, a spy organization that aims to topple the underground criminal group, Moryo. When Momo is given the choice between joining Tsukikage or having her memory erased, she chooses the former – perhaps this will be the opportunity that she’s needed to help build up her own flagging confidence.

Impressions: The title of this anime causes images of Kyle MacLachlan in Dune to prance through my imagination. While any opportunity to enjoy the fair countenance of Kyle MacLachlan is a good one, he has essentially nothing to do with this anime – an action series starring a varied (and very moé) group of teenage girls.

While I’m not normally one to begin a review this way, I think it’s worth it to point out that this series already displays a lot of issues that, to be honest, are pretty obvious based on its key art and opening couple of minutes. This is clearly another example of fiction where “spy work” is defined by flashy gadgets and ridiculous costumes rather than stealth, cunning, or really any other aspect of true-to-life espionage. Tsukikage feels more like a vaguely-underground military force or mercenary group than it does an organization dealing in government secrets or surveillance. Which is fine, but it seems disingenuous to claim that the characters are spies rather than hackers with blunt-force tactics.

That complaint is fairly semantic and in the grand scheme of things doesn’t matter all that much. What I find to be the bigger issue is that the character designs seem inspired more by certain fetishes than anything meant to be remotely functional for the characters. Let’s face it, this is plainly not a series based in reality, so the fact that the girls wear miniskirts and bare their midriffs while fighting ambulatory military robots isn’t a problem in that sense. The broader issue is that the impractical outfits that the girls wear unfairly places them into the role of the Strong Female Character™ – not characters with different types of strength as we would define it for actual humans, but characters who “kicks ass,” look cute (within a very narrow definition of attractiveness), behave in a “charming” way (within a few narrow character categories or archetypes) and give the appearance of sexual availability without actually involving quantifiable romance within the context of the story. It’s a balancing act that’s performed deftly every day in both real-life with idols and idol groups, and within anime moé-type entertainment.

I can already see that this show also has sort of a queer-bait issue. For those unfamiliar with the term, it refers to the tendency of some entertainment to “tease” homosexual relationships for the enjoyment of an assumed-straight audience while never doing the more difficult work of following-through on them in a substantial way (thus frustrating groups that could use a lot more positive representation in the first place). Momo’s ability to “lick” other people (and in some cases, full-on kiss them) to get information about their physical state is a good example of this; it places Momo in compromising, titillating positions with other girls for reasons that can be hand-waved away as plot-related. Some people like to argue that plot-related justification is all the justification something of questionable taste really needs, and they’re welcome to that opinion; to me, much like Strike Witches‘ pants-less heroines so many years ago, it comes across as circular reasoning, something based around a (very understandable!) urge to justify something that we fundamentally just enjoy as result of our base human desires (and yes, even I have those).

All that said, there’s (maybe surprisingly?) a lot I liked about this episode too. While I think this is possibly more due to the fact that the cast is mostly female (there are a couple of bumbling men that are present for literally seconds) rather than some active intent by the creators, this first episode has some good, positive interaction between various girls and women – something I could always bear to see more of. I think my favorite relationship is between Momo and Ayumu(?), the police officer who seems to share a connection with Momo’s late father. Momo aspires to follow in her father’s footsteps and seeing not only women in the local police force, but police women who are able to apprehend thieves and patrol the neighborhood – real police work! – serves as a good way to set Momo on the path to seeing her goal come to fruition. I really like it when these types of relationships are portrayed as formative and important. Coupled with the importance placed on Momo establishing new friendships at school, the way Momo’s mother encourages her, and the way that Yuki helps inspire Momo to pull the trigger and join Tsukikage, I think that there are potentially a lot of very positive, fulfilling character relationships here, ones that might help partly offset the series’ less savory aspects.

To be completely honest, this episode is also just a lot of fun. It’s a very simple story of “good guys” versus “bad guys,” with some ridiculous action, vaguely witty banter, and goofy character antics, and yet it seems to take itself just seriously enough to maintain an entertaining tone. While I hesitate to make the claim that pure entertainment should overshadow blatant sexism (in fact, I always argue the opposite), I do believe the level of unsavoriness that any one fan is willing to permit for the sake of entertainment varies quite a bit. Even I occasionally enjoy some anime that commits substantial social errors, though I try never to ignore those mistakes just to make myself feel better. Release the Spyce seems like the type of anime that occupies that difficult space between error and entertainment; one which each of us has to navigate based on our own tolerance levels.

Pros: The first episode has a lot of action and is generally a lot of fun. There are some good relationships between girls/women.

Cons: The costumes are fetishy and illogical/non-functional. There’s some queer-baiting content.

Grade: C