Quarantine Control #158: Fantastic x Quarantining

DC Staff | April 13, 2023 | Animation, Features, Movies, Reviews, Television | No Comments

This post is, it turns out, the closest to the third anniversary of the first Quarantine Control entry on April 10th. It also happened to be the day in which President Biden signed a Republican-led bill ending the nationwide COVID-19 emergency declaration. Mission Accomplished. Yet, another new highly-transmissible COVID-19 variant dubbed Arcturus is swirling around certain countries as of this writing. There were already plenty of people who thought the pandemic was over before the emergency declaration was ended, and none will be prepared if this variant spreads.

To sum it up: We still need Quarantine Control.

Geoffrey Barnes

I considered doing something special to celebrate the sort-of third anniversary of this feature, but nothing came to mind. Those warnings in the leds and conclusions in the last several Quarantine Control entries about not all of us having plans for the occasion were aimed at one person in particular. The best option here is to continue as I usually would, so I’m talking about a cool anime.

Spy x Family — Season 1 (2022)
Source: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 25

Spy x Family turned out to be simultaneously the series I expected and not what I expected upon going in and finishing the first season. I knew it would be about a small family of spies, because I can read titles, and how they aren’t a real family. I also know that it remains one of the hottest franchises to come out of the manga and anime world in recent years. I was a little disappointed to hear that the series doesn’t lean as far into the spy world as I was hoping given its name, choosing instead to equally focus on humor and the daily largely-normal lives of its characters. Yet it was by the end of the first few arcs that I realized I wouldn’t have wanted its story from author Tatsuya Endo and his assistants, and the creative team that adapted the manga, told any other way.

The series’ start is a bit misleading about its eventual simultaneous embracement of the “comedy” and “drama” genres. It occurs between the fictional countries of Westalis and Ostania, two countries that remain on subtly tense terms after wrapping up a hot war, the first season being largely set in the latter country. The initial focus is on Loid “Twilight” Forger, a skilled spy acting as an informant for Westalis, who needs to establish a family to blend into the country to complete his newest mission. He adopts a young girl named Anya (who claims to be six but probably isn’t), who, unbeknownst to him, can read minds. She’s the one who urges him to stage a fake marriage with Yor Forger (née Briar), who happens to be a vicious assassin. The fun comes in how they need to pretend to be a family with every suspicious person around them, particularly Yor’s brother Yuri, which provides an equal amount of humor and drama.

I’ve watched a bunch of anime that’s balanced comedy and drama well lately, but Spy x Family is the best of them. The series tackles the humor involved with the Forgers initially struggling to present themselves as a real family and Anya’s extremely vivid imagination inspired by her love for show-within-a-show Spy Wars, the latter being the biggest reason why she did her best to get Loid and Yor together. This in a series that occurs in a location aesthetically inspired by early 1900s Germany (complete with some of those elements) and includes characters involved in spying and assassination alongside general themes of jealousy and bullying. It a dazzling mixture on paper, yet it all works together so well that I couldn’t imagine Spy x Family’s story, characters, and world being portrayed in any other way.

My favorite element in the series is how the author and anime storytellers presented a fake family that ends up feeling more realistic than most real families I’ve seen in other anime and manga. Loid is skilled at spying, but immediately panics when his plans go even slightly awry, which Yor and especially the mind-reading Anya pick up on. It contrasts with Yor’s concern about how she’s seen in the eyes of her neighbors and especially some family members, particularly with her lack of skills outside of killing people, and her initial desperation to settle down with someone. Anya, meanwhile, is nowhere near as focused on her studies as she should be at school, partially because of her vivid imagination. She acts very much like a real child would around her parents, especially when Loid confronts her about her studies. It’s a stunning achievement, but also advice that other anime and manga creators should step it up.

One look back over the occurrences in the first season was enough to realize that not much happens across the overall story in the first season. Loid’s key mission in the arc involves getting close to a target by having Anya get close to the target’s son in a prestigious private school, the biggest reason why she needs to maintain good grades and earn accolades. This takes the entire first season to get through. It doesn’t sound like much, but the pacing remains brisk thanks to the solid writing and character development throughout. It’s all wrapped with a beautiful aesthetic and jazzy soundtrack befitting a sort-of spy tale.

There’s much more Spy x Family to come, with the second season and an anime-original film coming this fall. But the characters and world are both so well developed that I didn’t want the first season to end, nor can I stand the mere thought of something happening to the family in the end. There’s no telling when the manga will conclude, and it’s gained all the deserved accolades thanks to the suave fusing of its lighthearted and dark tones. So, everything should end well… right? That’s what I’ll keep telling myself. I can’t remember the last time I cared about anime characters to this extent, but it’s a testament to the series’ quality. I hope future installments maintain that, especially the film.

Angela Moseley

Last week we had a short staff discussion about commemorating or perhaps commiserating the third anniversary of this column, and the third year of this pandemic. Three years in, who knew both would still be going? Things were very different in the beginning.

When the pandemic became a reality in March 2020, the experience was surreal and sharply dividing. A lot of people suddenly found themselves out of work, home from work with pay, or working from home. Students suddenly had to shift from in-person education to remote learning. A lot of areas of everyday life were drastically altered. No restaurants, no salons/barbershops, no public gatherings. Many people like to imagine the American lockdown was a strict as China’s, when in actuality things stopped for about a month, then things slowly opened with restrictions by year’s end. Social distancing and masks became the norm rather than staying home. A year into the pandemic and much of society was back (after lots of varying protests), with more masking and vaccine requirements. By the end of 2022, most of those restrictions were gone.

For me, the work experience was very different in the early days. While many of my friends idled at home and lamented about not leaving the house except for grocery shopping, my job was considered essential. There would be no quarantining. Some of my co-workers disappeared on disability to wait out the pandemic for months. Others became sick and never returned. Others retired. The vast majority of us came to work, as the company provided face masks, hand sanitizer, and management were instructed to wipe down equipment between shifts. Some co-workers who didn’t take Covid-19 seriously, petitioned our union to get the company to drop the mandatory mask requirements. The union agreed, and mask wearing became optional. Most people tried to wear a mask at least for the first year. The vast majority of people were done with them by 2022.

Naturally, making masks optional had the interesting effect of seeing more people disappear for one to two weeks as they fell ill. Longer, if they were seriously ill. The sick tried to keep it under wraps, but like small town gossip, word of someone being sick with Covid almost always got out. Early in the pandemic I changed my lunch break habits. Instead of eating in one of the two break rooms, I ate dinner in my car. The walk to and from my car cut into my hour lunch, and I found myself socializing with people less, but not picking up someone’s illness was a great trade-off. Plus, no need to wear headphones when I could just plug my phone or 3DS into my car’s speakers and relax.

As for masking, I still wear a mask at work and in public places. I haven’t had a respiratory illness in three years. As a side effect, I’ve noticed masking with an N-95 or KN-95 also helps protect from breathing in a lot of the dust at work. Before the pandemic management usually panicked about anyone showing up in a mask– almost as if they didn’t want people to think about the dust raining down on us from overhead conveyor belts. The pandemic largely did away with that panic. A small win if you ask me.

Covid messed up the natural ebb and flow of work for well over a year. March is typically a slower month for processing said work. March 2020 turned out to be incredibly busy. Suddenly, in the early months of the year we had to stay for overtime because there was simply so much to do. When everyone was relying on online retailers for just about everything, someone had to get those packages to people. That was us. On the one hand, the extra hours and work were exhausting. On the other hand, it meant that I didn’t have to worry about my job or even pay, as I found myself with an abundance of overtime pay. Those stimulus checks from the Trump and Biden administrations? They went straight into savings accounts.

Fortunately, the weekends and paid time off were still mine to enjoy. The only problem was that all of my plans for the year had been cancelled. No Otakon 2020 and my attempt to attend my first Furrydelphia was also axed. At the most, I saw family and friends every so often in person. If I didn’t live with my spouse (fiancé at the time), the experience would have been a bit more lonely. On the upside, online was where all the excitement was happening. On Discord, I regularly saw friends via video chat on the weekends from my long-running Balto fan group. As a group we watched Balto and the sequels, Cats, Togo, Spaceballs, and even The Princess Bride. Notice a trend? These Discord voice chats were how I watched a lot of movies in 2020. I also got deeper into Monster Hunter World: Iceborne and finished 13 Sentinels. Even though I was working 40+ hours a week, there was still time to watch a lot of stuff and game.

By 2021, things were looking up as vaccines rolled out, and we had a new president who looked like he and his administration would take the pandemic more seriously. Parts of society had other ideas– especially about vaccines, and eventually everyone pretended that Covid was no longer a big deal.

Pandemic pay, extended sick pay, and even free vaccinations for the uninsured have gone away, but the threat of the virus is still real. Shortages have eased, but inflation persists, and there’s likely a recession coming. Not to mention the disturbing slide into fascism for major parts of the country. Entertainment only offers so much escapism.

This is kind of a bleak way to end on our third QC anniversary and I apologize for that. Next week should be better.

Joseph Daniels

I’m beginning to suspect I’ll be able to keep the Year of the Rabbit going all year in Quarantine Control. I was reminded this week of some rabbits that I overlooked, so today I’m going to start to correct that oversight.

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
Source: Disney+ (Canada), HBO Max (US, unfortunately… sorry to my American friends)
Rabbits?: Several supporting and bit roles

Yeah, I completely forgot there are rabbits in this film. I’m also surprised I’ve never talked about it on the blog before, it’s such a good film. Fantastic Mr. Fox is based on a book by Roald Dahl, the author most famous for writing Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, a novel about the owner of a chocolate factory who wants to eventually give it away when he’s too old to run it, and so he creates a contest to find a child to inherit it. Charlie Bucket is the only child who manages to make it through and not fall for any of Willy Wonka’s obvious traps. The book was made into not just one, but two movies telling basically the same story, but each with their own interpretations.

Roald Dahl also wrote Charlie & the Great Glass Elevator, where Charlie Bucket and Willy Wonka travel to outer space in an elevator made of glass and fight space aliens to save Earth, then have to go to Minusland because one of Charlie’s elderly relatives accidentally reduces their age by several years more than they’d been alive, and so she has to be rescued from wherever people go when their age dips below 0.

You can probably see why no one has tried to film that one yet.

It’s likely similar as to why The Starlight Barking, the original sequel to The Hundred and One Dalmatians, was never filmed. When your first novel has very light fantasy elements and then your second novel featuring the same characters goes hard into science fiction, it likely makes marketing departments panic.

Fantastic Mr. Fox is the story of a war between the titular fantastic fox and three farmers who are rather nasty individuals. Mr. Fox is able to enlist the aid of his family and friends, but it’s more like they’re trapped in the situation with him and it’s better to help him than to just wait for death.

It doesn’t help that the whole situation is his fault in the first place. In the movie version, he promises to stop staging heists in order to protect his mate, Felicity, who is pregnant with their son, Ash. Years later, Mr. Fox is a columnist for a local newspaper, but is feeling unfulfilled in his new life. Eventually, he’s tempted back into the life of a thief, which has unfortunate consequences for not just the Fox family, but for many of the other animals, too. There are some changes to the story for the sake of a tight movie narrative. For example, Mr. Fox only has one son, but Felicity’s nephew comes to stay for a while and brings with him a source of jealousy and conflict for Ash.

I admire just how well the novel was adapted to film. It can be so easy to botch the job entirely, look at what happened to The Cat in the Hat and The Polar Express. I would love to take the time to pick apart why this adaptation works so well despite everything that was added to the story, yet other movies have added a ton to their stories and failed, but I simply don’t have a lot of time for lengthy retrospective articles these days. Maybe sometime in the near future, that could change but for now, I’m just going to say that this is one of my favourite films and if you haven’t watched it yet, you really should.

This Week’s Short Film
Le Phare (2017)

This is (the closest to) the third anniversary of the Quarantine Control series, but there’s every indication that we’ll make it to a fourth. Join us in, uh, quarantining during that time, or something like that.

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