If you watched the first few episodes of Spy Classroom when they aired in January, you probably thought they were awful, and you were right. The show's attempt to adapt the first novel was among the worst I've seen in recent years. After the 3rd episode, it would have been an extremely reasonable decision to expect the anime to stay that terrible and stop watching it. The episodic character stories it started running through after that point weren't exactly riveting either.
But when it reached the second plot arc in Episode 8, the Spy Classroom anime got surprisingly decent. Then, in the second season, it became genuinely good.
So have a listen as I try to sell you on it. Really, it's an excuse for me to blog about something other than you-know-what for once.
The Premise
Spy Classroom takes place in a thinly veiled facsimile of 20th century Earth, after a long and gruesome world war caused nations to abandon open warfare and focus their military efforts on espionage. It's mainly set against a conflict between two countries, the small Din Republic and the larger and stronger Galgad Empire.
When the Din Republic attempts to steal a deadly biological weapon back from the Galgad Empire, it results in Bonfire—their most elite spy team—being wiped out except for a single survivor, a man named Klaus. But the mission still needs to be done, and Klaus is tasked with assembling a new spy team for the Din Republic, named Lamplight.
For reasons of his own, he decides to recruit several girls that were about to flunk out of their spy academies and train them to be capable of the mission that Bonfire couldn't finish. Here Klaus runs into a major setback: he discovers he's laughably bad at teaching. So he comes up with a new way to educate his students. He challenges them to defeat him, whether alone or together.
The content of the main novels gradually shifts from the girls' comical attempts to beat Klaus (they never succeed, and rarely even get close) to focusing entirely on their espionage missions. There are a few collections of short stories as well, and the anime adapted a bunch of those stories between plot arcs.
It's worth mentioning that despite the "one man and a bunch of girls" character setup, Spy Classroom avoids having harem vibes. Klaus is, in fact, explicitly revealed to be ace/aro later. One of the girls has a crush on him, but none of the others do.
Le Carré This Ain't
To enjoy Spy Classroom on any level, you need to be able to tolerate how over-the-top it is. Spies in its world are superheroes who are capable of impossible feats. In fact, each of the girls has a literal superpower, such as releasing poison clouds from her body, predicting the trajectory of thrown objects perfectly, disguising herself flawlessly as anyone and everyone, reading minds (under certain circumstances) and so forth. The most down-to-earth one is probably the girl who's just really good at training animals.
A few novels in, the girls are each able to hold their own against over ten opponents. Klaus, who is by far the most absurd character, is at one point said to have defeated over seventy trained spies trying to kill him at once. He also does things like work for five hundred days straight with minimal sleep.
The girls and even Klaus do meet their share of worthy opponents, but that's because those opponents have crazy powers too. So if you go in, be prepared for super-spy antics that would make James Bond shake his head at their absurdity and possibly even Batman squint in disbelief.
A Magnificent Experience
If you want to appreciate Spy Classroom to the fullest, I would recommend following these steps:
- Read at least the first novel. (The anime adapted novels 1-4, and I still had a good time during all of it, even knowing everything that would happen.)
- Decide which parts of the anime you want to watch. I highly advise skipping episodes 1-3, but you can watch them if you're morbidly curious: just keep in mind that things get better later. If you only want to watch the "plot" episodes, go with these:
- Episodes 8-11 (novel 2)
- Episodes 13-16 (novel 3)
- Episodes 20-24 (novel 4) — episode 24 doesn't actually correspond to anything in novel 4, but adapts some previously skipped scenes from it as flashbacks, and is IMO quite a good episode in its own right
That said, aside from the ones that adapted the first novel, I don't think any of the episodes are bad. They're just not as important.
- Enjoy, hopefully!
It's more work than watching the average anime. Somehow I seem to be attracted to things like that. But I was a fan of Spy Classroom before the anime happened, at least. And with luck, you'll become one too.
