Category: Review

 Hey everyone!

I just finished watching the anime Spy x Family recently, and I decided to talk about it here because I’ve been obsessed with it and also why not? 

 Surprisingly, I have not watched very many anime even though I live in Japan, and most people I know have watched far more than I have. I’ve known about Spy x Family for a while but I never sat down to watch it until a little over a week ago. And… yeah, I may have finished both seasons and watched the movie already. I’d heard that it was a really good series, but it was still somehow better than I expected. I’m really surprised it took me so long to watch it since it has some of my favourite tropes mixed together, and the fact that it’s executed in such a charming, entertaining way makes it even better. 

So without further ado, let’s talk about the show!

 Plot: 

 A spy, codename Twilight, is given a mission— create a fake family in order to get close to a political leader named Donovan Desmond, who is a key part in keeping peace between Westalis and Ostania. Twilight takes on the persona of Loid Forger and soon finds a wife and daughter for this pretend family— Yor Briar, who is secretly an assassin known as Thorn Princess, and Anya, a young telepath. All three play their parts in this fake family while attempting to hide their respective secrets from each other and trying to maintain world peace. 

 Like I said above, this show has some of my favourite tropes in it, the most significant one being found family. Loid, Yor, and Anya are all orphans who want to make sure the world is safe, and I love seeing them come together for the sake of their individual missions and their struggles with acting like a normal family. The shenanigans and chaos that ensue provide endless entertainment, especially with Anya being the only one who knows everyone’s secrets. 

 There are a couple questionable things in the show, because it’s an anime so of course they totally had to include it, but otherwise it’s hard to find complaints when it comes to Spy x Family. I love seeing Loid’s different missions as a spy, Yor’s incredible strength as an assassin, and Anya trying to do her best to help while having absolutely no idea how to do so. The characters have fun and hilarious dynamics, and even when the episodes aren’t extremely high stakes they still manage to find ways to keep us interested and entertained. 

 Characters: 

Spy x Family has such a charming cast of characters, side characters included. The characters are so easy to fall in love with and you find yourself rooting for them almost as soon as you meet them. I loved the main three characters instantly, and honestly I’ve loved them even more as the series has gone on. The side characters are also really awesome, but it’s impossible not to have a soft spot for the main three especially. 

 Loid: it’s hard to choose a favourite character on this show, but if I had to I would probably pick Loid. He’s the best spy around and unmatched in almost everything he does, but he struggles with doing his best as a husband and father while staying on top of his missions. I love watching his relationships with Yor and Anya develop throughout the show and seeing how much he genuinely cares for them even if he claims it’s “for the mission”. Seeing someone as prepared and calculated as Loid being unable to keep up with how unpredictable Yor and Anya are is honestly one of the most entertaining parts of the show. 

 Yor: Yor is such an amazing character. I love how even though she’s an assassin with superhuman strength, she’s still one of the sweetest, most awkward characters on the show. Also her inability to cook— or rather her ability to create a poisonous dish out of anything she cooks— never fails to crack me up. I love how quickly and willingly she filled the role of Anya’s mother and how much she dotes on her as opposed to Loid’s stricter parenting style. 

 Anya: Anya is such a chaotic ball of energy and easily one of the most entertaining characters on the show with her mix of telepathy and bluntness. I love how much she wants to help Loid and how in awe (and terrified) she is of Yor and how she interacts with each character on the show. She’s just all around adorable and it’s hilarious watching Loid and Yor attempt to parent the chaos that is Anya. 

 Final thoughts: 

 Spy x Family quickly became a comfort show for me, and it also sparked my interest in anime, which is honestly something I haven’t really considered watching previously. If you’re a fan of anime or found family or just chaos and shenanigans in general and you somehow haven’t watched this yet (yeah, I seriously don’t know why it took so long for me to watch it), I would definitely recommend this. Meanwhile, I’ll be impatiently waiting for season 3 to release with the rest of the show’s fans. 

 Thanks for reading! – Em 

 Hey everyone!

This week I went to the theaters with my family to watch Twisters, the sequel to the 1996 film Twister. 

 I had no idea what to expect going in to watch this movie. I haven’t watched the first movie and I forgot to watch the trailer beforehand. And as you guys probably know, there haven’t been too many good reviews about a lot of recent movies. (That does mean that there haven’t been any good movies obviously, but generally what I’ve heard has been negative). So going into this film without any idea of what it was about besides, y’know, twisters, my expectations weren’t too high. I expected it to be more about the twisters than the characters, and it’d be one of those movies where I’d think “eh, alright”, and then never think about it again. 

 Then I watched it, and honestly I was pleasantly surprised. 

 Obviously it wasn’t the best movie of all time, but it was a whole lot better than I expected it to be. It was an entertaining movie that actually cared more about its protagonist than I thought it would. I’ll try to keep my review (including future ones) spoiler-free, but before I get into it, here’s the synopsis for the film: 

 “Haunted by a devastating encounter with a tornado, Kate Cooper gets lured back to the open plains by her friend, Javi, to test a groundbreaking new tracking system. She soon crosses paths with Tyler Owens, a charming but reckless social-media superstar who thrives on posting his storm-chasing adventures. As storm season intensifies, Kate, Tyler and their competing teams find themselves in a fight for their lives as multiple systems converge over central Oklahoma.”  

 Characters

 I liked Kate as a protagonist. She’s determined, sassy, and confident. She has a natural gift for storm-chasing, but she also has fears and a deeply rooted guilt that drove her away from it. But she also genuinely cares for people and wants to help them. 

 Kate wasn’t exactly a unique protagonist, but she was believable and it was easy to sympathize with her throughout the movie. I liked how they showed her trauma of surviving a massive tornado and the impact it had on her, and how it made her conflicting reluctance to go back to storm-chasing and desire to help those in danger convincing. I appreciate that they didn’t just show her trauma when it was important for the plot, but you could see it throughout the story. 

 Besides a couple others, the movie didn’t focus a whole lot on any of the other characters which was a bit of a shame. But they did well with making you care enough about most of the characters that you’d hope they’d survive. I also liked the relationships in this movie— even though there’s only a couple significant ones worth noting, I thought they were developed pretty well. 

Plot

 I never really thought I’d find a film about people chasing after tornados interesting, but here we are. Honestly I expected the constant threat of tornados to feel repetitive, but it never did. It’s definitely an on-the-edge-of-your-seat movie, but it’s not constant to the point of exhaustion. And it isn’t slow either. It has its intense moments, but it also has its quieter ones so you have enough time to relax and focus on the characters before the intensity crashes right back in. Despite being a two-hour long movie about tornados, it’s paced well enough that it isn’t boring but it also isn’t throwing everything in your face in one tornado-filled blur. 

 Final thoughts

 Besides some strong language and, obviously, character deaths via tornado, this was a pretty clean movie. Honestly I can’t think of any major complaints I have about it. The visuals were impressive, the actors did a really good job, and I enjoyed the soundtrack. 

 But the biggest thing I appreciated about this movie is that it didn’t feel like a cash-grab film. I could tell that the people who made this movie made it because they wanted to, not just for the money or good ratings. They made it to entertain, and in my opinion it did exactly that. And as someone who didn’t watch the first movie, I appreciate that I didn’t have to know what the first one was about to enjoy this one. It felt like its own movie and honestly I keep forgetting it’s supposed to be a sequel.

 So would I recommend it? Yes! It’s worth watching at least once, and honestly I would watch it again. Is it for everyone though? No, of course not. I don’t think this movie was trying to be something for everyone to enjoy. But if you like disaster movies with likable characters and intense scenes that’s fun to watch, I’d definitely recommend giving this a try! 

 Thanks for reading! – Em