English Dub Review: Release the Spyce “First Challenge”

Training montage time!

Overview

Our adorable, open-hearted protagonist, Momo Minamoto, has just been accepted into the elite spy group known as the Tsukikage — a secret crime-fighting organization comprised mostly of young girls. However, she’s not totally in just yet. The gang shows Momo their expansive, an almost city-like underground base that resides under the curry shop, where they inform her she’s going to have to undergo a lot of extensive training if she truly wants to be a member. As she is now Hanzo’s apprentice, Hanzo kick-starts Momo’s training by lying to, deceiving, and poisoning her — a grave warning to Momo that she can’t be so naïve anymore.

After Hanzo and Momo both bond over their mutual love of the city, the intensiveness of the training begins — with sprints around the park, sword fighting, lake swimming, and other draining activities that wear Momo down at school. Just as Momo’s body and spirit are wavering, Hanzo hands her a jam-packed schedule of her new training regime, booked from morning to night. When Hatsume reveals to Momo that Hanzo has always trained this hard — even when she was a younger member — Momo is re-inspired to not give up, and promises Hanzo she’ll be strong.

The challenges also include expanding Momo’s social ability, charisma, and awareness to make her less naïve and more sly in her interactions. Meanwhile, the Tsukikage analyze the data retrieved from their last mission to see that Moryo — the evil crime syndicate — is planning to construct a building of some kind. Switching over to see what the Moryo members are up to, it’s confirmed that there’s a traitor in the Tsukikage giving Moryo intel on their plans (DUN DUN DUN.)

Back to Momo, some time has passed and she’s been acing all challenges thrown at her — mental, social, and physical. After learning that her final test will be to capture the agile Mei in a game of tag, Momo uses her cunning to plan ahead, leading Mei into a dead end she constructed.

Momo is officially inducted into the Tsukikage, and is given a sweet sword.

Our Take

It’s tough to admit, but the episode hits a lot of entertaining bases: excitement, mystery, suspense, action, and a satisfying sense of pride for the protagonist. There’s a lesson to be learned so far when it comes to concept VS execution: if there’s a really odd or objectively bad idea, yet the execution is good, then it could make for a pretty decent story. On paper, the idea that spices give young girls superhuman abilities is undeniably weird and nonsensical, but there’s a lot of credit to be given when a show can make its viewers stay, even with such an off-kilter concept.

That said, there’s still information to be desired about the nature of the spices itself — so far, it seems that in this universe, that’s just the way regular spices are. They somehow give young girls (and only young girls, as explained in the episode) these abilities, and the effect wears off when a girl gets older — from which point they can be decommissioned from the Tsukikage (Kids Next Door, anyone?) If such is the case, how has this not been discovered by scientists everywhere? How has every high school girl’s sports team not known about this? Why isn’t every young girl who eats paprika bouncing off the walls? It would make so much more sense if the spices were genetically modified because at the very least there would be an attempt at making sense of such an outrageous idea.

That said, the characters are beginning to flourish a little more — Hanzo’s voice is starting to compliment her brooding personality, but Fu’s voice still seems just a bit too old for the youngest of the group. The performances, animation, and music have been great so far — not to mention, we finally got an opening theme song in this episode (and it’s pretty poppin’.)

The one gross aspect of the show mentioned previously — Momo’s “licking” ability where she can taste the emotions and personality of anyone she licks — had another dumb anime moment where she had to lick Fu, tackled on the floor. There’s no dancing around it: the “superpower” Momo has is tasteless. Can somebody tell anime that it doesn’t have to do this anymore? That there’s literally no reason to include things like this? Seriously — this is the same reason why nobody likes Mineta in My Hero Academia. It’s 2018: let’s leave weird, objectifying fan service to the adult characters. It hasn’t been prominent at all in the series yet, but it’s something that dances on thin ice and runs the risk of going into some pretty bad territory.

All complaints aside, there’s a lot to look forward to for the future of the story — with its mystery element playing well into the other current aspects of the plot, things are looking promising.

Score
7/10