Spy x Family Code: White. The review

Entrance door, but also expansion of the world of Tatsuya Endo. The film is a hilarious family adventure that draws from different action models and places them in the typical atmospheres of anime.

From the moment artificial intelligence became part of our daily lives, the process of total memeification which has monopolized the web for some time now has inevitably involved it in a series of playful trends. Beyond legitimate concerns and lofty reflections, AI has in fact begun to appear as the protagonist of posts and reels dedicated to the world of cinema, in which – for example – the revisiting of a specific franchise is imagined according to the most varied fantasies of users – from “What if Harry Potter was set in Sicily?” to “The Lord of the Rings if it were filmed by Tim Burton.” Nice trends subject to infinite and constant reworking, which we want to take advantage of to ask ourselves: what would happen if we combined the main “theater” action sagas in a special mash-up to be reread in anime mode? The result would probably be Spy x Family Code: Whitea Japanese animated film written by Ichiro Ōkouchi and directed by Takashi Katagiri.

The film is a big-screen expansion of the world created by Tatsuya Endo in the shonen Spy adventure.

At the center of everything is the Forger family, made up of Loid (codename Twiight), an undercover agent committed to maintaining the peace, Yor (codename Thorn Princess), an undercover test-killer and Anya, a telepath of just six years old and adopted daughter of this “front” couple. Loid and Yor are in fact unaware of their respective secret identities. The only one who knows the truth is Anya, who is even capable of reading the thoughts of Bond, the family dog ​​with the power of foresight. The four, who in this case went to the city of Frigis for culinary tasks related to the Eden Academy institute (where Anya is enrolled), will however be dragged into a series of amazing adventures, which will force them to use all their skills to succeed to get the better of the enemies on duty.

Spy x Family Code: White it’s all here. In the dynamics of a cheerful but atypical family – between Yor’s love-like concerns and Anya’s school difficulties; in the recognizable Japanese animated tones, as always walking between verisimilitude and grotesque (the sequence relating to the physiological needs of the little protagonist is an example of this). Even in the declared but well-managed relationship with one’s models: from the masks of Mission: Impossible to quotes (not just onomastics) to the atmospheres of 007; passing through the action aesthetic with openly Japanese vibes, which are also linked to some colorful Western experiments (from Leitch to Vaughn).

Spy x Family Code: White it is a reassuring and at the same time lively film, overwhelming in its drifts (think of the clash between Yor and the bionic/mechanical man) and constantly light, although never banal. A film aware of its role as pure family entertainment and perhaps slightly unbalanced in its pace; but which represents a good entry – as well as a successful expansion – into the very entertaining world of Endo.

Original title: Gekijôban Spy x Family Code: White
Director: Takashi Katagiri
Distribution: Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures Entertainment
Duration: 110′
Origin: Japan, 2023