English Dub Season Review: Mission – Yozakura Family Season One

Let’s close out the year with one more big look at a season that wrapped up. Shonen Jump has yet another big release and its mission, should you choose to accept it, is to watch it. Taiyo Asano is a regular awkward high school student until his parents and brother are tragically killed, leading to his childhood friend and sweetheart Mutsumi Yozakura taking him in. But he soon learns her family’s dark secret: they’re all highly trained assassins and spies and in order to protect Mutsumi and himself, Taiyo must become one as well. And, spoilers, he DOES! I mean what else were you expecting, there wouldn’t really be a plot otherwise. If you know your typical Shonen Jump plots, you probably know what you’re getting with this one: brightly haired characters all color coded for your convenience, everyone getting specific and increasingly weird and obtuse powers, and also a main hero character who is concerningly obsessed with his little sister. I really wish that were not as frequent a trope as that was and I am seriously worried for what the frequency of it in animated media says about Japan. But THAT LAST PART ASIDE, this show is an example of using a pretty tried and tested formula and doing it well.

Things begin mainly focusing on Taiyo being introduced to this new world of spies that forces him through training and changing his understanding of things around him, as well as giving all of his new in-laws a chance to show off their quirks and unique abilities. However, around the second half, the stakes raise and Tanpopo arrives, an evil organization with sinister machinations and a history with the Yozakuras that unlocks even more of their crazy past. This too is another pretty typical stage in a developing Shonen action story, but again, they follow that recipe pretty well. That’s basically my thesis about this show: it has a lot of what you will expect if you’re familiar with its tropes, but if you like those tropes, it handles them just well enough to keep you interested and watching more, which is probably enough for the people who made it. Time will tell if the eventual second season will continue that trend, but this first season covers everything alright overall that it should at least get you hooked. And with that, have a happy New Year and us at Bubbleblabber will see you in 2025.