RELEASE THE SPYCE After watching Princess Principal, I was looking forward to more anime about girl teams on missions, more in the style of Totally Spies! and less of a magic girl cut (a genre I love, but I was on a break), and so I jumped to watch Release the Spyce just by watching the trailer. An anime that, despite not being perfect and that I remember in large part for having tortured me with high yuri bait content without getting anything canon, delivered an excellent story to pass the time. Without further ado, let's start with this review! The anime shows us Momo, an ordinary girl with a strange ability to tell a person's physical state by licking them. Yes, it's that weird. One night she finds herself in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and gets caught up in a mission to cover for a group of girls. The same girls who happen to be her classmates from her school but are secretly members of Tsukikage, an organization that focuses on keeping the peace in the city in which it operates and whose members, using spices, increase their strength and stamina. She is then given two options: either she is to have her memories of that night erased, or she proves to them that she is fit to join the Tsukikage's ranks. Momo chooses the second option, and with the help of her teacher, Yuki, she strives to become one of the best and supports them by fighting Mojo, a world-scale rival association with sinister plans in the city. In the beginning, I thought the protagonist's ability with her tongue was ridiculous ("Japanese stuff," I thought) and that the whole story would also be just as absurd. Still, those first episodes managed to convince me otherwise because they showed that its story while relying heavily on familiar clichés, does not precisely follow them strictly. The development of it would not go as I imagined. The storyline of how they fight Mojo and protect the city progresses very well, and at the same time, you are told from almost the beginning that a traitor in the group is sabotaging their plans to keep the city safe. It becomes interesting to try to find out who the traitor is among them. And I have to say that at this point of the plot, in particular, I was pretty surprised because it was not the character I expected, but the one who I jokingly said it could be. The outcome of this situation seemed to be the most appropriate, and they did a good job making you get attached to the cast, and it hurts to know that "there is an impostor among them.” But on the other hand, despite the whole plot containing drug trafficking, deception, and conspiracy by higher-ups and even scenes full of violence to assert that certain enemies are dangerously deadly, it ends up coming off as meh. They shout it so much in your face but end up doing so little with it at the moment of truth that it makes the series come across as more of a pretentious one. Our protagonist Minamoto Momo is a classic enthusiastic-looking but insecure character. Those who need a little boost of confidence and will eventually give it all they've got to prove themselves as her mentor in the world of espionage is Hanzomon Yuki, your classic cool and badass girl. Momo has a more than obvious crush on this senpai, but we'll take it as part of the series' in-your-face yuri bait between its characters (something that, despite knowing its bait, you still end up joining the shipping train). The anime proposes to have these mentor/newbie duos within the same organization. This will give us very entertaining interactions between the characters. Despite not being very innovative as far as cast archetypes are concerned, these interactions bring out the freshest side of the characters. However, the villains are a flat addition, despite having economic and political interests behind their actions. Byakko, Theresia Ray, and Dolte, despite trying to give us reasons why they should be relevant to us, end up giving little or no contribution to the plot. In my opinion, the only pertinent villains to the series are Mojo's leader and the tycoons who constantly communicate with her to oversee the progress of her plans. The problem, in my opinion, is that so much attention was given to the main cast that the ideals and development of the villains were neglected. So there is no balance. The animation is up to the standard of a good spy series, paying particular attention to the action moments, in which I didn't notice any drop in animation quality. The use of vibrant colors on the characters is also very pleasing. But it's something that contrasts with both the background characters and the backgrounds used in the series. The latter gives you that feeling of being taken straight out of a Japanese visual novel, not being convincing as an environment, and the lack of background characters moving or making a presence makes it feel empty. The cast characters and those they have to interact with are left as the only convincing humans. In conclusion, Release the Spyce is a reasonably dynamic series, and at all times, we see the characters in a variety of dangerous situations, providing a magnificent action spectacle. However, it does fail in trying to develop too many plot threads ambitiously and make them come together at the end. Still, it doesn't succeed, and it feels awkward and has characters that seem to be unnecessary as a result. A pretty OK anime all in all. Enough for someone who wants to pass the time without too many expectations. But for someone who has already seen series with similar themes, it can be tedious as it doesn't bring something new and relies on the generic.
