What They Say:
The spyce must flow when Momo unknowingly observes Tsukikage on a mission. What will this mean for her confidence and desire to become a police officer?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While they don’t always break free from usual convention, I tend to lean a bit more into original productions since they don’t have to adapt from weekly/monthly manga works or the structure of a novel and can find their own way. That had me interested in Release the Spyce but mostly I just enjoyed being able to make Dune related jokes since it was first announced. Based on an original idea by Sorasaki.f and with Lay-Duce animating it, we get a little something creative with the school-based concept that in some ways feels a little more old school than I expected. So many shows with the school-aged characters tend to be a bit more basic in a way that having something working with a few bigger ideas definitely provides for some interest.
With a strong cold open action sequence that sets the tone for the look and feel of that area as well as the score for the series and the animation, we get a look at how the Tsukikage private intelligence group operates with modern tools and just a little bit more near-future tech. With a familiar slate of cute girls working the team, the mission is fun to watch in its execution both in how they get in and how they escape. When the mission is a bit threatened, however, we see them consuming a Spyce stick that ups their abilities and gets them really moving as a team. The foundations for the show in how this group works in general is set up well here and doing it through the action and the over the top abilities of their opponents is fun – especially with some of the humor mixed into it as well since it lets it be quippy in the right way.
Of course, our eyes and real introduction to this group is through Momo, a schoolgirl who accidentally sees some of that mission at night and is sought out by the girls, which is easy since they’re all in the same school. With Momo unaware of just how many members are around her, there’s some fun with a couple of girls she’s spending some time with at a cafe that lets us get to know all of them better as they try and suss out what it is that she actually knows. Momo’s fun enough in that she wants to do right but has a scared side to her that’s natural plays well but when she tries to stand tall in helping out some police officers that she knows who get caught at the docks, well, it’s a crazy mess from there. While she does try to intimidate them a bit by taking pictures and supposedly contacting the police, the reality is that the bad guys here have some mini-mech material and a bit of strength to deal with her easily.
Which makes the appearance by the Tsukikage gang pretty fun as we see how they deal with this kind of tech and some solidly stronger players. It’s unfortunately brief when you get down to it and I like that the Tsukikage gang have a device to wipe the last few hours of memory, allowing them to go without masks or hoods. You know how it’s going to go with Momo since they don’t wipe her memory and want to have a talk that will lead to her joining. The light touch history that we get of Tsukikage in that it’s been doing this since the Warring States period and is fighting against a crime organization known as Moryo does provide for some scale but it’s an on the run bit of exposition that paints it all more as a trapping at the moment. But that’s fine since it’s designed as a hook alongside the action, designs, and the quality of the animation itself.
In Summary:
Release the Spyce sets up a familiar concept with what it’s doing here but it does it with some good execution. It knows when to slow down and showcase the characters themselves and it knows when to do that amid the action as well, particularly in the final sequence with the slicing of the mech and the jumping back and forth. Momo is a character that might annoy me if she doesn’t firm up in some ways going forward because her skittishness can work for only so long in a group/situation like this. Release the Spyce has some very solid action to it and I really like the designs of it while the execution of the opening episode could have been paced a little differently, but it’s a series with a lot of very good potential to it if it doesn’t stick to the familiar ideas.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: HIDIVE
