Manga, light novels, TV series, and now cinema films. SPY x FAMILY CODE: White arrives in Italian cinemas on 24 April 2024. Family and espionage intertwined effectively and brilliantly.
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| Image Credit: Wit Studio |
SPY x FAMILY CODE: White arrives in cinemas, a film adaptation of the successful manga directed by Kazuhiro Furuhashi and brought to our country by Sony Pictures Italia and Eagle Pictures. Family, espionage, humor, and feelings: these are the ingredients of a recipe (anime) supported by growing attention and interest from the public and professionals.
Japanese animation, once a niche phenomenon, has long since stopped measuring its success in the standard terms of box office impact or critical consensus; now, it is popular culture that we talk about, with full reason. How the film fits into the mainstream will depend on the public's willingness to engage with the atmospheres and tones of a story that enjoys mixing high and low, children's dreams and adults' concerns; more the former than the latter. At the center of the story, there is a real and false family, at the same time. Doesn't it seem possible to you? You've never heard of the Forgers.
SPY x FAMILY CODE: White is the story of a family in which no one, not even the dog, is what they seem
They are the Forgers. SPY x FAMILY CODE: White, the film for the cinema, is the last stage of a climb towards success that began in 2019 with the manga created by Tatsuya Endo. Then came the light novel - a prose work with manga-style images designed for a teenage audience - and the animated series, available for streaming on Crunchyroll. What follows is the baptism of fire, the definitive consecration, and the litmus test. The appeal and charisma of the cinema, despite the blows of recent years and the notable decline in takings, are still solid.
Passing the test would mean a lot for SPY x FAMILY CODE: White. Speaking of performance anxiety, things aren't all that different for the Forgers. If there is a family under pressure, it's them we talk about. In the background, a major geopolitical mess is taking place: the balance of power between East and West is fragile and war looms. Loid Forger is an agent of Westalis. He must try to avoid a further, disastrous deterioration of relations with the neighboring (and rival) state of Ostania. Loid, officially, is Yor's husband and Anya's dad. They also have a dog, his name is Bond. This apparently. As in the most consummate spy tradition, the truth is opaque and elusive.
Just another way of saying that nothing is true. Loid is Agent Twilight, his mission is called Operation Strix and it is for professional needs that he built, or rather, was assigned to, the fictitious family. He is not, logically speaking, at least the logic of blood, anyone's father. Nor does an official document certify the marriage with Yor, whose secret identity the fake husband even ignores, and that is bad: Thorn Princess, an implacable killer. As if that wasn't enough, Anya is a telepath – she reads everyone's thoughts, including parents – and the dog predicts the future (!).
The irony of the situation is that the family of convenience ends up being more real than the truth: the need for company and the rejection of solitude prevail over convenience. A trip to the mountains to help Anya with her school career (which, indirectly, would also benefit Loid's plans) drags the Forgers into an international intrigue that shakes the destinies of the world. And it forces them to question the necessity of their bonds. The answer will not surprise the viewer, but the originality of the conclusions is not the intent of SPY x FAMILY CODE: White. Rather, the goal is to offer solid entertainment and play with atmospheres provocatively.
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| Image Credit: Wit Studio |
Espionage with a sentimental heart
While contemporary animated cinema focuses heavily, if only for cash needs, on the transversal proposal - a story which, due to its themes and atmosphere, can speak to the whole family and not just the little ones - SPY x FAMILY CODE: White dares to play slightly with the standard. Slightly, mind you. If the structure, narratively speaking, remains that of the romantic and self-deprecating spy story, the type of humor and the atmosphere deliberately take something away from the transversality of the film; better, they discuss it again.
Kazuhiro Furuhashi's direction manages to isolate two versions of the story, one more blatantly childish, the other more mature, mixing them when necessary, otherwise separating them. A generational divide is all that is needed: there is the story of the adults, the parents ready to do anything to save the unity of the family, between duplicity and half-truths, the daily bread in the life of every spy (or killer) who be respected. And then there is the world as little Anya sees it; on her, on her enthusiastic and restless gaze, the film measures the humor.
Scatological (toilet) humor, satire relating to the sphere of bodily functions, but there was no need for clarifications. Spy, playing polemically with the seriousness of the spy story and inviting the viewer not to take things too seriously. It works, the juxtaposition of opposites, the schizophrenic nature of the film, the continuous ping pong between high and low. At the heart of everything, there is a heartfelt (and sentimentally solid) reflection on the importance and necessity of the family.
Loid and Yor – the somewhat retrograde nature of her attitude towards marriage and family has been noted by many – fight for the destinies of the world but this is the convenient cover for a deeper truth. The fake family, born by chance, between the fear of loneliness and the need for human warmth, has become more authentic and indispensable, in the eyes and hearts of the protagonists, than a family built on blood. And how SPY x FAMILY CODE: White works on the conventions of spy action to tell, about family and surroundings, truths that we know instinctively and for which there is no need for who knows what lessons is brilliant and intelligent. Yet repetition always helps.
SPY x FAMILY CODE: White – conclusion and evaluation
Fast and funny, bold in combining different atmospheres and humorous accents, SPY x FAMILY CODE: White is a transversal but not too much anime film, which speaks to the whole family but with an eye on the little ones. It works on the conventions of the spy story genre to tell about a family in difficulty and the efforts, so tiring and at the same time so necessary, to keep it together.
The detailed opening exposition allows the viewer to enter the story and, more importantly, the universe of reference, even if he knows little or nothing about the manga from the start. In the era of serial cinema (and TV), in which every story is a cog and cog in a bigger picture, this willingness to meet the public, especially the less informed, is refreshing.