“Spy x Family” Cours 2: Forging The Forgers With A Family Dog [Review]

If Spy x Family cours 1 was all about gathering the Forgers together, then cours 2 is about completing the forging process of this “fake” family. That starts with the Forgers finally getting a family dog. However, just like the Forgers themselves, their new dog is anything but normal.

Spy x Family Cours 2: Details

Spy x Family cours 2 is the second half of the split cours season 1 of the anime (you can read a review for cours 1 here), which itself is the anime adaptation of the action comedy spy manga of the same name by Tatsuya Endo. Wit Studio (Attack on Titan seasons 1-3, The Ancient Magus’ Bride season 1, Vinland Saga) and CloverWorks (The Promised Neverland, Wonder Egg Priority, Bocchi the Rock!) are still the animation studios behind this anime. Kazuhiro Furuhashi remains the director and writer for cours 2 of the anime. (K)NoW_NAME) composed the music for this cours of the anime, same as they did for the first cours. Lastly, Crunchyroll is licensing this anime for its NA release.

Spy x Family cours 2 premiered on October 1, 2022 and ran until December 24, 2022. You can watch this cours and the first cours on Crunchyroll or Hulu. Bear in mind though that only Crunchyroll is streaming the various dubs for the anime at the time of this writing. So if you want to watch the entirety of the English dub for whatever reason, you have to pay for a premium Crunchyroll account.

Warning: spoilers for Spy x Family cours 2 below. If you want to see how the Forger family gets their family dog for yourself, then stop here, and come back once the terrorists are all safely in police custody.

Spy x Family Cours 2: Plot Summary

Spy x Family cours 2 starts us off by introducing us to a group of Ostanian students who have decided that they want to have “terrorist” be their main occupation. Their first job in their new occupation is assassinating the visiting Westalis Foreign Minister. How do they plan to accomplish this? Well, apparently, they managed to catch wind of something called Project Apple. Apparently, it was a project that wanted to increase the intelligence of various animals for military purposes. Some of those animals were dogs, and these students want to strap bombs to the dogs, train them to run toward the Westalis Foreign Minister, and detonate them.

Naturally, Loid and WISE want to avoid this and are on the case. Even more, fortunately, Anya manages to engage in a coincidental meeting with the bomb dogs and the terrorists. With the help of a new nearly sapient capybara-like dog friend (who can see the future to boot) and Yor, Anya manages to defeat the terrorists and prevent Loid’s death. And in the end, the Forgers accept the capybara dog as their new family dog. They even name their new dog Bond on top of it, thus completing this spy family.

The Adventures of the Complete Forger Family

After completing the family, the members of the Forger family then go on various adventures. First, we have Yor learning how to cook properly…or at least how not to be a lethal chef master. Anya manages to get just slightly closer to Damian via a paper-mâché griffin. Anya reveals that her telepathy doesn’t work during a new moon for some reason. Loid has an encounter with possibly the worst spy on the planet (who gave himself the codename of Daybreak) while breaking into Eden Academy to alter Anya’s test scores, only to change his mind about said alteration when he sees that Anya didn’t get a failing grade on any of her tests.

We get introduced to a female fellow agent of Loid’s codenamed Nightfall, who’s madly in love with Loid and is perfectly willing to try and replace Yor as Loid’s fake wife. They even go on a mission together involving an underground tennis tournament (it makes sense in context). Yor accidentally defeats Nightfall in a tennis match with her superhuman strength, but Yor still feels inadequate. Thus, Loid takes her out for a drink at a bar to talk out their differences. It works, even if Loid gets a concussion in the process via a drunk Yor’s antics. To cap off this season, Loid finally gets a face-to-face meeting with his ultimate target: Donovan Desmond. It even results in Damian managing to bond with his father for once. Thus ends Spy x Family cours 2, and by extension season 1 of the anime.

Spy x Family Cours 2: The Good

The story of Spy x Family cours 2 is the best part of this anime. This is fitting really since it takes the story directly from the manga. The story is even extremely faithful to the manga, and even the episodes with storylines not in the manga feel as though they could have come from the said manga. I’m getting this feeling that Tatsuya Endo worked closely with the anime producers for that new content. If he did, then it’s a good thing he did.

Then we have the animation quality for Spy x Family cours 2. Just as it was for the last cours, said animation is through the roof in terms of quality. Seriously, the animation is just plain gorgeous. It’s one of the highest-production anime series I’ve seen in a while, and it shows. Especially in the opening and ending sequences’ animation, where you can just tell that the animators are just showing off now.

Speaking of the opening and ending sequences, they also show off the great music for Spy x Family cours 2. Although personally, I liked “Mixed Nuts” by Official Hige Dandism a bit more (at least partially because of the peanuts in the lyrics), that doesn’t mean “Souvenir” by Bump of Chicken is bad. On the contrary, it’s a pretty relaxing tune to groove to. It’s not even getting into the great music in the anime itself. Seriously, (K)NoW_NAME) did a great job coming up with music that sounds almost period for the 1950’s to 1960’s: roughly during the same Cold War period Spy x Family takes place in. If you’re a fan of such music, then this anime is the anime for you.

Spy x Family Cours 2: The Bad

I’m trying to think up of any criticism to levy against Spy x Family cours 2. Unfortunately, the only thing I can come up with is that, as I mentioned before: I liked the opening song in cour 1 more than the opening song in cour 2. I feel that “Mixed Nuts” just fits the story more than “Souvenir” in terms of tone and lyrics. However, I do think “Shikisai” by Yama in the second ending theme is better than “Comedy” by Gen Hoshino in the first ending, so it does balance out for me. And seriously, if the theme music is the most I can criticize about this anime, that should tell you how much I love it.

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