Release the Spyce Series Review

Posted on by Karandi
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Spies Eat Spices And Look Cute Doing It!

Release the Spyce was an anime that from its first episode grabbed my attention with its cute girls doing spy antics but even then there were a few warning flags that made me wonder where this would go. What followed was a series that awkwardly attempted to balance high stakes spy scenarios with a story about cute girls doing cute things at school kind of story and the mix just didn’t work. It isn’t that it couldn’t have worked, however Release the Spyce didn’t have the strength of writing or characterisation to pull it off.

Release the Spyce Episode 5 Mei and Hanzo

Not to mention the logic in the story just never worked no matter how you looked at it. While I get anime, and fiction in general, doesn’t need to be totally true to life (in fact as a fantasy/horror fan I prefer it when it isn’t), I do need to be able to suspend disbelief. Between a training sequence that utterly turned the main character into a nearly unstoppable powerhouse in a matter of weeks, the ‘spyce’ only working on teenage girls for reasons that will never be adequately explained, the villains targeting the one city where they know the opposition are hiding despite being able to carry out their plan more or less anywhere, and the really terrible explanation that the words spy and spice are somehow related (solid no on that one), this anime really worked hard to push me out of the narrative at pretty much every opportunity.

Release the Spyce Episode 3

Persevering in the hopes that we’d get to some decent spy and espionage kind of moments, the results are kind of mixed. On the one hand, the visuals are pretty good. Bold and bright colours dominate and it is all a bit sharper than a lot of the pastel colour palettes that seem to be dominating a lot of the anime I’ve been watching. Every screen cap really stands out in the folder and it isn’t garish (outside of the OP).

Release the Spyce Episode 12 Momo

The action also works reasonably well with fight sequences being pretty tightly controlled in time and scope. There’s a few too many girls fighting hordes of mindless robot fights, but for the most part the actual action sequences deliver decently. Now, I’d like to know why our spies spend so much time in direct combat rather than sneaking about, but that’s probably another one of those questions I just shouldn’t ask.

Release the Spyce Episode 4 Mei and Fu

Interactions between each of the apprentices and their mentor are fairly solidly constructed. Now, this is a blessing and a curse. It means in the episode focusing on that pair, the two get great moments to shine and there’s some solid character work. On the other hand, that pair may not necessarily interact well with the others (or in interesting ways) and in episodes where they aren’t the focus sometimes it is difficult to remember if they actually have a personality. This anime didn’t balance things very well and couldn’t move the spot light from one pair to the next without totally sidelining the rest of the cast. Then it had to awkwardly transition back to the whole group facing a threat and it just didn’t do a very good job of it.

Release the Spyce Episode 10 Momo

Finally, the season ending. It ends. It hits all the usual notes for spy stories. It just isn’t compelling enough. I have nothing against generic stories that follow their genre beats. But you have to give me something and here we had average characters going about an average final mission with no surprises because all the twists were exactly what you were expecting and delivered with very little fan-fare or anything else.

Release the Spyce Episode 1

As I said, not bad, just not really worth the time or effort. Still, you could certainly do worse than this piece and provided the opening song doesn’t give you a headache (it really is flashy for those with light sensitivity), there’s not a lot that this anime does that is actually worth criticising. It just doesn’t manage to do anything particularly well either and given it potentially could have been so much better there was definitely a sense of disappointment as week after week this one seemed determined to be at best average.

  • Release the Spyce Episode 1
  • Release the Spyce - Episode 2 - Momo and Yuki
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  • Release the Spyce Episode 9

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RELEASE The SPYCE T-shirt
RELEASE The SPYCE T-shirt

Sugar and Spyce and All Things Nice

Posted on by Karandi
Release the Spyce Episode Review Title

Release the Spyce Episode 12 Review

And so no-one is actually a traitor and no-one is actually dead, and no-one is actually surprised. This toothless ending fits the tone of the show and allows everyone to be all sweet and nice and become friends and trust in others and it is an utterly flat narrative. Given the characters never really went anywhere, I was hoping the plot would eventually pick this one back up but tragically that hope went unfulfilled as this final episode wraps everything into a neat little package.

Release the Spyce Episode 12

What that means is Release the Spyce has managed to be competent. Nothing more or less. The ending defeats the bad guys, sees the heroes wrap things up, and if the story was primarily Momo’s journey (or at least that is how the series has been book-ended), then that narrative at least is brought to a satisfactory conclusion.

Release the Spyce Episode 12 Momo

Still, there was a lot more potential in this series and these characters. So while what is here wasn’t particularly bad it was a little disappointing that the show could never rise to be more than what it became.

Release the Spyce Episode 12 - Villain

However, brainwashing machine go boom, the city gets a new pretty flower, and the girls all get on with their lives or with spying. Can’t really argue with it even if I wanted more.

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NENDOROID NO. 1041 RELEASE THE SPYCE: YUKI HANZOMON
NENDOROID NO. 1041 RELEASE THE SPYCE: YUKI HANZOMON

Things Are Getting Spycy As Time Runs Out

Posted on by Karandi
Release the Spyce Episode Review Title

Release the Spyce Episode 11 Review

For all that this anime hasn’t really gone as well as expected from its premise, I do have to compliment its sound design this week. That was actually a thing of beauty and the whole series has actually had remarkably good sound effects and a pretty awesome soundtrack. However when I’m reviewing the penultimate episode and my major compliment goes to sound design that probably spells trouble for the rest of the episode.

Release the Spyce Episode 11

Firstly, Hanzomon isn’t dead. Which I guess we all knew. And given Goe hasn’t accepted her mentor as being dead either I’m guessing she’s going to make an appearance soon. So all the dire outcomes of last week are more or less swept away. Particularly if we consider the apprentices escape in about three minutes without all that much effort because the villains are dumb enough to try torturing and breaking their spirits rather than just killing them (and they don’t even hang around to do it themselves but leave it to an underling taking any potential suspense right out of the scene).

Release the Spyce Episode 11

About the only thing that stuck from episode 10 to this one is that Mei is still working for the bad guys. Only I’m still not convinced it isn’t some kind of ruse or that she won’t change her mind again. Given they backed out of every other major plot point I’m pretty sure this isn’t the kind of story where she’s actually going to betray them and that is going to stick.

Release the Spyce Episode 11 - Brainwashing device

And therein lies the problem. Release the Spyce isn’t exciting enough or cute enough or anything enough to be the kind of story that doesn’t commit to its plot on top of that. What we’re ending up with is a fairly watered down affair that has zero tension or stakes and I’m not attached enough to the characters to just buckle in for the ride. While it isn’t bad, not even close, it has become one of the least interesting stories I followed this Autumn.

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NENDOROID NO. 1028 RELEASE THE SPYCE: MOMO MINAMOTO
NENDOROID NO. 1028 RELEASE THE SPYCE: MOMO MINAMOTO

The Disastrous Day The Mentor Character Died

Posted on by Karandi
Release the Spyce Episode Review Title

Release the Spyce Episode 9 Review

This week, Release the Spyce turns its attention to the driven Yuki Hanzomon as she attempts to convey to Momo the story of her mentor. I guess timing wise this makes sense given Hanzo slapped Momo last week for being rash and they never have revealed the story behind Hanzo’s scar so with only a handful of episodes to go, this one feels purposefully placed.

Release the Spyce Episode 9

The problem, I feel at least, is that we really could have skipped a whole bunch of steps between episode one and here without appreciably being any worse off. It just makes some of the episodes earlier really feel more fillery than they did while watching, and some of them felt very fillery while watching.

Release the Spyce Episode 9

I don’t really like to review by comparison, but I can’t help but feel Princess Principal took this basic idea of team of teenage female spies and did a much better job of building them up as characters while continuing to draw the main plot together.  Release the Spyce has a more modern setting but otherwise comes off as a fairly pale imitation, and that may not be what they were going for and it may not be how others see it, but that’s more or less how it has settled in for me.

Release the Spyce Episode 9

Still, that doesn’t really review this episode and to be honest, once we got into the flash back and actually saw the girls and their old mentors parachuting in and doing spy things, it was actually really fun. There was some genuine drama around revealing how Hanzo got her scar and what happened to her mentor and it was perhaps one of the better sequences this anime has given us since its first episode.

However, as a whole, Release the Spyce hasn’t quite packed the punch I’d really have liked from it, and even looking at it from the perspective of a cute girls show where they just happen to be spies, it isn’t overly great.

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RELEASE THE SPYCE: YUKI HANZOMON
RELEASE THE SPYCE: YUKI HANZOMON

Snakes? Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?

Posted on by Karandi
Release the Spyce Episode Review Title

Release the Spyce Episode 8 Review

Following the lead from the flower, the trainees and Hanzomon travel to Okinawa where they pretend to be tourists, meet up with a nearly wiped out group, and then plan and carry out an infiltration of an enemy facility. It all moves rather quickly and on the surface works beautifully. However, looking a bit closer this episode is kind of a rush, there’s limited sense behind a lot of the actions, and much like every other episode ultimately the lead doesn’t pan out and the are back to square one.

Release the Spyce Episode 8 The Team

The first issue comes with the clear laziness of the tourist moments. The girls decide to act like tourists to keep suspicion away from themselves and we are then subjected to entirely still images with panning. They aren’t even low animation scenes, they are stills, and they are definitely pandering to fan service and servicing zero narrative purpose. On top of that, they just aren’t interesting.

Then we get the introduction of the viking girl that we all know is actually going to be working for the bad guys. She’s a fairly ludicrous character walking around in her viking helmet and her fighting against Goe and then making friends and helping them out is a character arc that is delivered with break-neck speed and while it might work on paper it has almost zero emotional impact. 

Release the Spyce Episode 8 Viking Girl
I’m sure they mean ‘precisely’ and not ‘preciously’. Then again, with this show, who could tell.

Throw in a villain with trained snakes to protect him and all and all this is just one bit of silliness after another and I can’t even tell if Release the Spyce is asking me to take it seriously or not at this point. There is one more serious moment where Hanzomon realises that the time the spyce is working for her is lessening, indicating her time as a spy is nearing its end, but otherwise much of what happens here feels largely inconsequential in any kind of grand scheme. 

Release the Spyce Episode 8

Still, it isn’t as though it isn’t fun. It just doesn’t hold up when you think about it. Besides, dropping the floor out from under intruders and having them fall into a snake pit is such a classic move you just have to appreciate the audacity of anyone actually using it.

Release the Spyce Episode 5: My Mentor is Amazing

Posted on by Karandi
Release the Spyce Episode 5

They are really hammering this mentor-student relationship point. Last week we focused almost exclusively on Mei and Fu and this week we shift back to our focus on Momo joining the team and her relationship with her Mentor (and does anyone else find it a little creepy how often Hanzoumon is just kind of hanging around where Momo is. Throw away line or not about mentors always being near their students doesn’t make that less stalkerish.

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However, the episode this week focuses on the girls following up a lead so they actually do something that looks spy like as they infiltrate a lab. Only it kind of looks like the lab is a bust and they end up getting distracted with some petty criminal gang trading drugs. This leads to a fight on a train with the drugged up woman from a few episodes back and they really pushed this one for credibility.

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Stronger and tougher I could buy, but biting through a knife and catching bullets in her teeth is just a little bit extreme. Not to mention, Momo’s attacks did nothing. After all the training she has done I somehow doubt she’s that weak. And then the mentor comes into the fight and quickly ends it. It kind of feels a little anti-climatic given I can’t imagine what would actually hurt Hanzoumon at this point.

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Still, if you want your feel good moments, Momo getting to celebrate her birthday, spending some quality time with her friends from school and with the spies, both give a little bit of cheer to this otherwise fairly by-the-numbers affair. I was wondering if they would figure out they’d been sent on a chase with the drugs but of course Hanzoumon is on it. After all, she’s amazing.

Release the Spyce Episode 4: It’s All About Mei and Fu

Posted on by Karandi
Release the Spyce Episode 4 Mei and Fu

You know, there are secret organisations afoot, drugs being traded, human experimentation, and all kinds of weird, but for whatever reason this anime feels that spending an episode dealing with the mentor-student relationship of Mei and Fu is the absolute best thing it can show us. This episode really does make it clear that despite the trappings of a spy story, at heart this one just wants to be a cute girls in a club kind of thing and the only real difference is occasionally they face life threatening situations.

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That doesn’t make this bad, but it does mean that the threat and the spy side of this story really aren’t to be taken overly seriously. I mean, who cares about all of the secret agent type stuff when there are household accounts to balance?

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If it seems I’m being a little snarky it is probably because I don’t know that either the audience or the characters gained anything from this episode. I mean, sure, Mei and Fu go through a bunch of stuff, end up fighting, after that gets Mei hurt on a mission Fu moves out, but then they reconcile and take down the random token drug dealer Fu had spotted earlier in the episode. Fu realises that her mentor does appreciate her and they all live happily ever…

Wait, why did we need a whole episode to come to that realisation?

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I’ve described this show as average, and realistically it still is. But the bottom line is it isn’t a particularly compelling cute girls in a club kind of thing nor is it a very competent story about a team of female spies, so what we’re ending up with is a tepid serving of both genres and it makes for a viewing experience that is kind of good enough but not particularly memorable.

Release the Spyce Episode 3: It’s All About the Team

Posted on by Karandi
Release the Spyce Episode 3

I was really hoping for more than a work as part of a team and play your part kind of resolution to Momo’s troubles starting out as a spy. I mean, it makes logical sense that she needs to work as part of the team and follow her orders, but it just seems like in the process of getting us to this resolution they jettisoned all of the training that she did last week and took her back to more or less square zero.

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Outside of that minor complaint though, this week we get a series of missions from the team as they close in on small leads of their enemy and work their way up the food chain. Despite Momo’s repeated blunders, the team succeeds at gaining what they need each and every time, though the ease of these missions makes more sense when you realise the enemy seems to just be playing them and waiting to see if the traitor’s information is actually reliable.

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I do think the villains are going to run out of minions if they keep turning all of them into drug test subjects, though that’s a minor worry in a world set up as implausible as this one is in the first place, so not the biggest issue going.

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One thing the show does right is it remains energetic, it keeps things moving, and the interactions between the characters are still pretty fun. All and all, this show remains enjoyable but also pretty average from the plot point of view. Still, average is good enough as long as it is entertaining.

Release the Spyce Episode 2: Preparation Is Key

Posted on by Karandi
Release the Spyce - Episode 2 - Momo

There are a few moments in this second episode that caused me to raise an eyebrow. The explanation that the word ‘spy’ might come from ‘spice’ which is complete and utter rubbish no matter how you look at it and the show throwing out there that it is just one theory doesn’t make blatantly wrong information any easier to swallow. Then there was the ‘no honey’ symbolising a life devoid of sweetness password that really just felt they were laying things on really thick.

Release the Spyce - Episode 2 - Momo and Mei

However, outside of those couple of moments where I was left shaking my head, the second episode of Release the Spyce is actually fairly fun. Okay, the OP is headache inducing and I won’t be watching it again this season (way too many bright flashes), but otherwise I’m done complaining and want to talk about some of the positives.

Momo, who last week was a really wishy-washy and kind of dull potential protagonist, really stepped up this week. She makes the decision to become a spy and she works really hard to achieve that end. That said, she hasn’t had a complete personality transplant, it is more she’s got something she’s determined to do and so she is moulding herself in the direction she needs to go to achieve it. Stretching the training and test period over a couple of months rather than the usual week or ten days characters have in these sorts of shows really works in the episode’s favour as it allows Momo’s transformation to feel a bit more real (even if it is still fairly quick).

Release the Spyce - Episode 2 - Momo and Yuki

I also really just liked the range of training she was subjected to. This wasn’t just physical training but also involved detecting deception, avoiding attack, being able to get close to others, it really felt like they intend to do a range of spy like activities though so far we’ve only really seen them infiltrate and fight. Hopefully these skills get used in later episodes because that could be really cool.

We don’t learn a lot more about the other characters, but the group dynamic is really nice in this episode and I’m looking forward to spending more time with these girls as the series progresses. We also get another couple of scenes with the potential villains who are of course plotting so I guess now that Momo is all trained up we’re going to have some sort of conflict to deal with.

Release the Spyce - Episode 2 - Mome and Mei

This show isn’t amazing, but it is so far pretty entertaining and hopefully it continues to be fun.

Release the Spyce Episode 1: Is Eating the Spices The Same As Releasing The Spyce?

Posted on by Karandi
Release the Spyce title

Let’s not even ask whether or not we’re confusing herbs with spices as I’m sure there was some cross over at some point in this opening episode of Release the Spyce. Anyway, I didn’t have much in the way of expectations going into this which is probably good considering it is fairly average in most regards, but it was still a pretty fun watch and worth another couple of episodes.

The episode starts with an all girl team infiltrating a high security facility with way too much ease, however when they go to leave they are suddenly surrounded by robots. A munch on some spices later and the girls go to town with a nice array of weaponry and destroy the robots, the one guy who runs in to stop them, and then they head on their way. However, they notice a girl on the other side of the river who can amazing see them. Its a fun and energetic opening though fairly standard in its execution and only the fast pace, music and bright colours are really keeping the energy going, but that’s actually enough.

Release the Spyce - Episode 1 - Momo

Jump to the next day and we meet Momo, our pink haired shy girl who wants to be a police officer but freezes in dangerous situations. She in high school of course and is about to make some new friends. She isn’t a great protagonist by any means but again the pacing and everything else in this show helps to keep things moving. I did do a double take when she just suddenly licked the girl she essentially just met and the other girl just kind of thought her sense of taste was good. Not exactly how you should react to being randomly licked but whatever.

Release the Spyce Episode 1

Anyway, Momo has great eye-sight, smell and taste and apparently that’s going to be helpful so she’s recruited into a super secret group that have been around since forever and are fighting some evil organisation (there was an exposition dump here but I kind of just nodded a long and all the names). As always, you would have to wonder how effective they actually are if they haven’t won after all this time, but cool we have our protagonists who have some villains to fight and in the mean time we have some reasonably energetic fight sequences of girls versus robots. We can go with this for a little bit.

Release the Spyce Episode 1

The post credits reveal from the villains isn’t exactly unexpected but it does give us something to look forward to in the coming episodes.

All and all, not great but fairly easy viewing if you are into this kind of story.