English Dub Review: Mission – Yozakura Family “The Cherry Blossom Ring”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Taiyo Asano loses his parents to an accident, with only his childhood friend Mutsumi around to look after him. Unfortunately, Mutsumi’s family is all spies, among them a very overprotective older brother Kyoichiro who plans to kill him. The only solution, naturally, is for Taiyo to marry Mutsumi to make himself off limits from assassination.

OUR TAKE

Another day, another anime that completely warps the idea of being a spy! We’re on to another adaptation of a Weekly Shonen Jump manga, much like the recently finished Undead Unluck anime, as well as one of the last manga in the magazine that started in the 2010’s, among them the majorly popular Jujutsu Kaisen and veteran series My Hero Academia that has recently entered its closing chapters. But Yozakura Family has clearly made its own impact if it has managed to stay in publication for close to five years with no end in sight, which probably explains why it is apparently getting a twenty seven episode anime, which itself is slightly more than the normal twenty four to twenty six episode number. Hopefully this is a good sign for the quality of the show, as if we’re going to be here for more episodes than normal, surely this will mean that the story we’re in for is worth watching for an extended period. And if this first episode is anything to go by, it’s a perfectly fine start to the story, but it also starts on a rather small scale, to the point that I actually could not tell you exactly what the plot will be moving forward.

Right away, especially if you’ve become as well versed in the visual and story tropes as I have over the years, you can tell this was made for the most mainstream manga magazine. Character designs are distinct and unique enough with little touches to stand out but not be distracting, the main cast of characters each have their own signature color to distinguish themselves from each other, the premise is tied to a school romance with a childhood friend, and so on and so forth. Also, it’s unfortunately got the overly obsessive sibling bordering on incest trope that we just can’t get away from for some reason, but you kinda get used to tuning that out after awhile. But that kinda leads to some potential issues, as this story feels almost so paint by numbers just to get its foot in the door that I think we’ll have to wait a bit to see it really become itself, if that makes any sense. That said, I’m absolutely willing to see where things go in the remaining twenty six episodes, so here’s to seeing where that goes. Also, huh, Spy X Family is just on the Shonen Jump app, not the magazine, but came out a couple months earlier. Neat! I guess there was some big trend in spy related manga ideas in the latter part of that decade that’s only now getting much attention in animated form.