English Dub Review: Release the Spyce “Golden Spirits”

There’s a whole new spin on who The Spice Girls are.

Overview

Our story begins with a fast-paced, sky-drop heist operation at a factory in the city of Sorasaki. Here, we’re introduced to four hooded heroines, decked with weaponry and clad in skirts (because you can’t fight crime if you don’t look cute.) “Chiyome,” “Fuma,” and “Goemon,” all stand at attention as they infiltrate the building. Their offsite tech-head, “Tsubone,” guides them via speakerphone to retrieve top secret information from within the facility. At the command of their leader, “Hanzo,” the four girls hack into the system, deactivate alarms, and gather their intel. When dozens of security robots surround them, the quartet decides to unleash their secret weapon: some oregano leaves, a stick of cinnamon, and a mustard seed. The girls eat their respective spices while Tsubone explains to no one in particular that eating spices “increases chemical activity in the brain and elevates physical ability.” In other words, spices give these girls superhuman abilities. The group defeats the guards and leaves, while our main character, Momo Minamoto, stands witness to the tail end of the heist.

Momo is a typical second-year student at Sorasaki High School, with two interesting traits: the first is that she strives to be a police officer just like her late father, despite her lack of confidence. The second is that (in addition to her naturally heightened the sense of sight and smell) she can sense the emotions and physical conditions of anyone she licks. While recanting what she saw the night of the factory breach to a friend, students Mei Yachiyo (aka Chiyome) and Goe Ishikawa (aka Goemon) eavesdrop and befriend her to hear what she saw.

Later following some slice-of-life small-talk at a curry cafe (which is a front for the girls’ headquarters) Momo tries to save a local police officer from some criminals. The heroines see this and take her under their wing, revealing to Momo their true identities. They explain that they’re members of a secret crime-fighting organization called Tsukikage — and that their goal is to take down an evil, global crime syndicate called Moryo. After defeating the villains, Momo decides she wants to join Tsukikage as Hanzo’s apprentice, and thus her journey to heroism begins.

Our Take

The last thing any writer wants is for their work to be called “generic.” Having to navigate through swamps of ideas that have “already been done” can be tricky, unless there’s an original spin that could be placed on a trope. It seems the Release the Spyce creator dove headfirst into this swamp, only to resurface with the words “girl secret agent group” and nothing else. The (probably) imaginary conversation that took place at the writer’s desk for this series plays in my mind as follows:

“I have this idea for a story: it’s about a group of girls who are high-schoolers by day, but also live secret lives fighting crime. I really want to put it on paper, you know? But it’s not too original. It needs something. Something new.”

“Yeah, something to spice things up.”

“…Jerry you god damn genius.”

In an attempt to make something original, the show simply winds up just making something a little weird — not to mention, laughable. The pop science of spices “activating” a part of the brain that gives anyone low-key super-strength and agility is almost as bad as the myth that humans only use 10% of their brains. It feels as though the show didn’t think about every possible creative-spin before landing on this one, making it hard to be totally immersive and difficult to take seriously.

There’s a lot of hope that can be held out for the series, though, because despite its odd gimmick, it’s not a boring watch. There weren’t any real dull points in the episode — the animation is enticing, the characters are entertaining, and the music/audio design compliments every scene. On top of that, the voice acting is pretty decent. High school anime characters dubbed in English tend to come in two flavors: An Adult Pretending To Be A Baby, or An Adult Failing To Be A Teen. Release the Spyce seems to find a good medium for this, and Momo’s voice actress (Juliet Simmons) had some impressive and entertaining moments. Despite certain characters sounding a little older than they actually are (specifically Fuma and Hanzo), the performances themselves are generally well done.

It’s pretty to look at, not boring, and has a few great qualities, besides some odd dialogue. However, there are a few fears in mind when it comes to Momo’s “licking” superpower — there’s nothing worse than tasteless fan service and sexualization in an anime, so with all hope, it will remain as innocent as it can be (you know, for a show that puts its crime-fighting heroines in scantily clad clothing. What happened to bullet-proof vests?)

Many things need to be elaborated on — Momo’s ability, whether the spices work on everyone or just the Tsukikage, if the spices are super-enhanced or if anyone can just pick up some cumin at their local supermarket and dropkick the cashier from 6 feet in the air if they so choose — but these are all things that can be answered in coming episodes.

From a writing standpoint, it’s better to be weird than to be boring — but will Release the Spyce be too odd to execute?

It seems evident that only… thyme will tell.