Mission: Yozakura Family First Impressions

Synopsis

Taiyou Asano is a super shy high school student and the only person he can talk to is his childhood friend, Mutsumi Yozakura. It turns out that Mutsumi is the daughter of the ultimate spy family! Even worse, Mutsumi is being harassed by her overprotective, nightmare of a brother, Kyouichirou. What drastic steps will Taiyou have to take to save Mutsumi?! A spy family comedy – the mission begins!
Anilist

Staff

Storyboard

Mirai Minato

Episode Direction

Mirai Minato

Animation Direction

Mizuki Takahashi, Yuuki Kitajima, Miyako Nishida, NEW ANI, Hangcen Jiang , Hui Han, Yalan Liu, Shiyu Qin, Liyin Peng, Fincrossed

Notable Animators

N/A

Conversation Corner

Mirai Minato, they seem to prove themselves a bit of a problem child with Silver Link, no? Even then, it feels like they’ve only worsened over time as a series director, continuing to move further and further towards some sort of robotic generalization of a production. I’m at the disadvantage (in this case) of having not read the source material, so it’s really hard to pull anything positive from the episode with how Minato presents it. There’s no sense of originality or personality within the episode, despite having such eccentric characters. I mean, there’s a beefcake of a kid with a bucket on his head, and I really have nothing more to say about them than that. It’s hard to find the words to really say anything, aside from that I watched that episode.

Piro

When I first learned that Mirai Minato was the one who had gotten the project, I didn’t really have anything against him but I was a bit worried, as I mentioned to you before. Minato is just so damn busy. From 2021 to now, he directed 10 series and he even handled series composition for some of those shows, including this one. It’s an insane pace of work to maintain and I don’t believe anyone can truly thrive with a schedule like this especially when they’re juggling multiple roles simultaneously. Unfortunately, I do think that played a major role here. He works on so many shows at once that it’s theoretically not possible to give each show the same amount of focus and develop a strong leading vision that the rest of the series can follow. I feel like, unfortunately, this show was somewhat on autopilot, lacking much difference from his direction in, let’s say, “When Will Ayumu Make His Move?” There’s little distinction even in more serious or dramatic moments. It just feels “kind of there”.

BLUEDash

Yeah, there’s really no sense of any sort of tonal shift or an “uh oh” moment in terms of how it shifts from high school slice of life to action-centric spy drama. Another way you can put it is that there was no fluff or padding to Minato’s approach, and even the animation reflects that at times. It’s hard to call it bad, considering some of what we’ve seen before, but there’s more than a few sequences in the episode that are missing a handful of frames that cause them to come off oddly jittery or rough. At the very least though, Silver Link does seem poised to provide good work for the series in regards to action- but you really do have to wonder what can be accomplished under Minato. Their connections with Bofuri staff give them some good tools at their disposal, but so long as the user is inept or disinterested like we saw with this episode, they can’t exactly do all too much good.

Piro

The animation did pull through for the fight scenes, but it’s missing a lot of the personality that I expected from the manga. I mean, look at the characters: bright red and bold blue hair, a white Lolita girl, a literal trash man, and a giant muscular bucket human with a squeaky voice. The cast is the definition of wacky, but so far, this show has come off as anything but. It lacks a lot of flair, which I think is unfortunate for a show like this. Considering just the transfer from the manga art style to the character designs, there was already a huge loss in the uniqueness of the designs, and now I find out that the direction is rather vapid also. It’s the small things that are missing, I feel, that are impacting the lack of an actual feeling to the show.

For example, Mutsumi’s design in the anime looks incredibly plain to me because I think they’re missing what makes a lot of these characters look unique. Her face was changed to like a generic template; she lost her trademark smirkish smile, and her eye placement is totally different. Small features like that being lost doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it really does worsen the overall look of the show for me. This is not to say I think this is a bad adaptation because the production is actually decent; I predict that they will deliver some good Sakuga moments in more pivotal scenes. I’m just somewhat disappointed by the absence of the stylistic elements I had hoped for. I will continue to watch week by week, and I hope to see improvements in that regard, but things like Minato’s style guiding the show (or lack thereof) and the dumb-downed character designs feel like something that’s set in concrete.

BLUEDash

Yeah, that’s quite the difference from manga to anime- unfortunate stuff to see. Really does seem like Minato’s generalization has rubbed off on the staff. After all, series like Bofuri, or even Sasaki and Peeps have had better art direction and composition than what’s been shown off here. Flat and smooth, and without so much as a teeter that could rock the boat, it comes and goes almost like it’s the series that’s trying to not be spotted, rather than the spies that inhabit it. I could definitely see this being a blow to fans of the series, and doubly so when you consider the quality and output of Spy x Family. Unfortunately, I just don’t think this is a series that I’ll be putting much effort into keeping up with each week.

Piro

It reminds me a bit of Dark Gathering’s adaptation. I don’t think either is bad in the objective sense, but something just feels missing that doesn’t elevate the source material but brings it down a little bit. I’ll still be watching it, and I hope to see some changes. This is a 2-cour series, so I’m hoping to see some interesting faces in the storyboard/director chair every now and then. The episode adapted the story fine, if that’s the aspect you’re worried about, but without a lot of the style, I do feel it lands much flatter. I’ve also just been kind of ranting at the episode; it’s really not bad, I just had higher expectations for someone who enjoyed the manga. If you haven’t read the manga like me, this might be a hard one to argue that you need to fit it into your schedule because of how strong of a season this is. That’s pretty much all I have to say about it. It was fine, but nothing special like I’ve hoped for.

BLUEDash

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