Anime Recommendation: Release the Spyce

Spies saving the world with sugar, spyce, and everything nice!!


Every season there is so much anime for me to watch that a couple series end up getting left behind and then there are some that I start watching but get bored with at some point and abandon. While I started watching Release the Spyce when it premiered during the last Fall season of anime, I ended up dropping it around episode five.

Release the Spyce is about a team of spies called Tsukikage fighting against a criminal organization with plans to take over the world. Momo Minamoto is high school student and aspiring police officer, and she is recruited by Tsukikage so that she can learn to be a spy and help the team. What sets the spies in Release the Spyce apart from spies in other anime and film is that the "spyce" that the girls consume gives them temporary super strength and senses.

The first half of the series is about Momo training to become a spy and learning under her mentor, Yuki Hanzoumon. It was fun getting to know the other girls of Tsukikage and seeing the relationships they had with each other, but it was not what I was expecting from a show about spies and I ended up a little disappointed.

I thought that Release the Spyce was going to be action-packed with high stakes and suspense at the end of every episode. So while the first few episodes were charming with cute girls, it wasn't enough to keep me coming back every week and I fell behind. When I finally got around to finishing Release the Spyce, I realized that I made a mistake and the latter half of the series was exactly what I had originally wanted in the first place.

The stakes were always being raised, the villains proved to be ruthless, and there were plot twists galore. Though some moments were cliche and predictable, it was fun to watch. It didn't take me very long to finish Release the Spyce and by the end of it, I had a great time. 

Now, I won't say that Release the Spyce is groundbreaking or a masterpiece. There were plenty of  cliches that can be found in many other action and spy series. There was even one moment that reminded me of a scene from the movie Men in Black. But even despite this flaw, I wasn't really bored with the action or the plot. 

I would recommend Release the Spyce to anyone looking for a fun action anime, or even to anyone looking for an anime with cute girls doing cute things. The design of the characters came from the same person who created Yuru Yuri, so it's easy to think of this anime as a slice of life that just so happens to have spies. 

If you already watched Release the Spyce, let me know what you thought and maybe recommend me some other anime with spies and cute girls. I'm already thinking of checking out Princess Principal, which I often heard Release the Spyce compared to as a spy series.