The Winter 2023 Anime Preview Guide

Buddy Daddies

Assassin partners (and roommates) Kazuki Kurusu and Rei Suwa suddenly find themselves forced to take in a four-year-old girl. Is it really possible to balance work and childcare? And will the temporary family find happiness?

Buddy Daddies is a "buddy assassin" television anime from Nitroplus and P.A. Works and streams on Crunchyroll on Fridays.

James Beckett
Rating:

I'm sure that plenty of people have gone into Buddy Daddies expecting a sort-of brazen SPY x FAMILY rip-off, but I'm pleased to report that, as has been the case lately, P.A. Works is simply operating on a higher plane than us common folk. I was actually wondering for the longest time why a January premiere like Buddy Daddies was playing up the Christmas angle so much, but then it all came together so goddamned perfectly that I couldn't help but offer the show a dramatic slow clap of total admiration. A reliance on seasonally inappropriate Christmas cheer, combined with a pair of wacky, borderline sociopathic assassins that slaughter dozens of criminals while protecting an adorable tyke? A seemingly endless supply of paradoxically earnest smarm? This isn't a SPY x FAMILY rip-off at all—this is an anime rip-off of Shane Black's movies!

You know, Shane Black? Writer of classic action flicks like Lethal Weapon, Last Action Hero, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and Predator? The director of all-time buddy-comedy gumshoe farce, The Nice Guys? The dude behind one of the only genuinely great Marvel Cinematic Universe flicks, Iron Man 3? Look, the point is that Buddy Daddies manages to avoid feeling like SPY x FAMILY's lesser sibling by zigging where that show zags and embracing the pulpy vibes of the buddy action capers of yesteryear. SPY x FAMILY is about an emotionally stunted fairy-tale spy who fake marries an equally naïve assassin lady to pretend-but-also-totally-for-real-adopt a cute little psychic girl, and sure, people die and all that, but there is a certain broad charm to the whole world of the show that keeps things feeling mostly light, and old fashioned. Buddy Daddies, though? Our hero is a serial philanderer who cannot help but stick his Glock into whatever holster he can persuade into his bedroom between all of the bouts of killing so many people alongside his equally murderous and dead-eyed best friend. I was halfway convinced that the joke was going to be that Kazuki and Rei only adopted Miri because they accidentally (or totally on-purposely) shot her parents in the face. It's still pretty funny when we learn that the real reason that Miri has ended up in Kazuki's life is that he's such a womanizer that he probably has a half-dozen other cute little cartoon mascots running around out there that he doesn't even know about.

Basically, this show won me over the minute that Kazuki and Rei had to stop right in the middle of an assassination-in-progress to argue about which one is to blame for poor Miri ending up with a cold, only for Rei to casually pop their target in the face for daring to feel a little awkward being stuck in the middle of their odd-couple bickering. It didn't let me down from there, and if Buddy Daddies can keep up to wisecracks, daddy antics, and frenetic killing sprees for the rest of the season, then we might just have a real winner on our hands.

Buddy Daddies is a show that's trying to cast a wide net. On one hand, it's beautifully animated and filled with bloody spy-action set pieces. On the other, it's got two pretty boys acting like a married couple. And even if you're not into the former, it does the latter so well it's bound to hook you.

This is far from the first work of fiction about two men attempting to raise a little girl, but the obvious twist here is that they are hitmen. This lends a whole Pulp Fiction vibe to the work, as we have the dark comedic juxtaposition of two men doing horrible criminal acts while discussing what to do now that their daughter has come down with a cold.

Really, the only issue I had with this episode may or may not have been intentional: Kazuki looks almost identical to their Christmas Eve target. This wasn't an issue during the fight scene between them—I mean, Kazuki was dressed as Santa after all. However, the episode ends on a cliffhanger revealing that either Kazuki or his now-dead target is Miri's actual father, and I honestly couldn't tell which is which. I spent a few minutes rewatching the episode and comparing eye colors (and pondering how much room lighting would affect the color) before finally noticing that the target was wearing the same red earrings at both the party and in the photo. This means the cliffhanger is not that Kazuki is actually Miri's father but that Kazuki and Rei just killed her father—a father who was holding her hostage to try and save his own life.

While it should have been visually obvious to viewers, this is still a great plot hook. It forces Kazuki and Rei to deal with the guilt of their actions, and weigh over whether they should ever reveal this to her. Moreover, they have to somehow get the mother onboard if they want to have actual legal guardianship (though given that she basically abandoned her child by sending her to her father unannounced, that might not be an issue).

In a lot of ways, what we have here is something similar in tone to SPY x FAMILY—though without the psychic twist. So if you enjoyed that show, you'll probably enjoy this one too. I know I did.

“I'm not sure I'll be into this one,” I said as I hit play. “Dad anime have gotten pretty overplayed. It's like, put in some effort beyond ‘hot dad plus cute kid equals success’ pandering, right?” And then Kazuki got a call in the middle of an assassination attempt to come pick up their daughter from preschool because she had a fever, and proceeded to squabble with his partner Rei about the importance of keeping her home when she's not feeling well. And, as a teacher who has made that call many, many times, I laughed and laughed.

It is inarguably a good-looking show, but that was probably inevitable, considering it's animated by P.A. Works with character designs by Katsumi Enami, best known to English-speaking fandom as the designer for Baccano!. If you're a fan of attractive anime men, then that's going to be a big plus for you – Rei and Kazuki are laser-targeted at pulling in fujoshi, much like everything else in this series. Side-shaves in particular seem to be having a heyday this season, between this, the new season of Tokyo Revengers, and Vash's redesign in Trigun Stampede. The gunplay-based action is quick-paced and punchy, with the perfect amount of chaos for a series about assassins, and the character acting in the non-action scenes is just as strong.

There's a good balance between visual and verbal storytelling at work here, especially when it comes to Rei and Kazuki's relationship dynamic. Without it ever being explained outright, it comes through loud and clear that while Rei is financially stable enough to afford a big house with fancy architecture, he's a horrible gremlin who spends his days off playing video games surrounded by his own filth instead of doing anything that resembles taking care of himself. Kazuki, on the other hand, excels at and enjoys domestic work, but his addiction to gambling and girls has left him destitute, homeless, and divorced, even with the rates he gets paid as a hitman. Their squabbling will either charm or repel you depending on how you feel about male friends who are basically a married couple – I cannot emphasize enough how much Rei and Kazuki were designed to bring in the fujoshi crowd. Not that I would know anything about that. Cough. Cough. Sorry, I must have caught that dang cold that's going around.

But boy howdy is Miri obnoxious. I know four-year-olds aren't best known for their self-preservation skills, but children at that age actually have some pretty powerful instincts for situational awareness – it's a survival strategy for when you're smaller than most people. Four-year-olds tend to be scared of loud noises and large people stampeding. Four-year-olds don't wander blithely through a gunfight and the resulting crowd of panicked adults looking for their father like they're a baby bird in a children's book. Whether or not I watch more is going to be predicated heavily on how she's written going forward. Kazuki and Rei may be fun characters, but I can't deal with fictional children written by adults who have clearly never spent time around anyone under the age of twelve.

Man, P.A. Works has been on a tear lately, huh? Between a wonderful adaptation of Ya Boy Kongming! and the whip-smart genre pastiche of Akiba Maid Wars, they delivered some of the most consummately watchable TV of 2022. They've started off this year with another banger. Like the Maid Yazuka show before it, Buddy Daddies is playing with familiar concepts but delivering them in a slick package with a ton of charm and character to stand out all on its own.

This is just a brilliant, well-put-together premiere. Everything we need to know about both our leads is communicated organically, from establishing their jobs as hitmen to their rapport as odd-couple roommates. Action set pieces are fast-paced, complemented by great music, and are marked with clever details that set up later beats and punchlines for perfect little surprises. Even before the pair's adoptive daughter trips into their lives, you can see the show building the proper foundation for the sitcom/action series it's destined to be. The whole episode zips by with an infectious energy that tells you the people making this show know exactly what they're doing and how to do it well.

There are some lingering potential pitfalls, mainly with Miri. While her stumbling haphazardly into the middle of our leads' latest hit job works as an introduction, she's going to need more personality than just being pwecious and oblivious if she's going to carry this show alongside her new dads. Comparisons to last year's SPY x FAMILY are unavoidable, but if Miri is going to capture hearts and memes, she's got a lot of work to do before she can throw down with Anya. Thankfully Kazuki and Rei have an entertaining relationship to build upon. The brief glimpse we see of them as adoptive parents is hilarious, so there's plenty of reason to hope for the best. In all, this is a confident, effortlessly endearing premiere that makes me excited to see more.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

I recognize that this is probably a "me" problem, but this show nearly lost me when Kazuki took the stray kitten and put it back on the street. Yeah, it would be best if you never took in a pet you can't care for, and he did go back to check on it after feeling guilty, but that's my button. Not much I can do about it.

That bothersome seeing aside, Buddy Daddies is promising. Most notable is the way that Kazuki is established as having had at one point a family that he somehow lost; whether that means that she divorced him or that they somehow lost the child she's pregnant with in the flashbacks is unclear; the fact that he is sending money to someone out of every payday indicates perhaps that his family is alive and well and does not want to associate with him because he's an assassin. But whatever the case, he had it all and lost it, and now he's living moment to moment, even though we can see that he's got a serious domestic side. This nicely sets him up to adopt, or at least take in, Miri, the little girl that he meets while on a job on Christmas Eve. Kazuki is a ready-made dad lacking only a child to parent, and he may be an assassin, but he does not want to see a kid get shot. When he dashes out from behind his makeshift barricade, yelling to Miri that he is her daddy, it feels like there's at least a little piece of him that wishes that that was true.

And lucky for both of them, now it is! Kazuki and his human trafficker target look enough alike that at first, I wasn't sure which of them was the father pictured in the snapshots Miri had with her, and this seems to be deliberately done so that the little girl, who looks about four or five, also has trouble telling which is the man in the picture. Is it better to have an assassin for a dad than a human trafficker? Very likely, and we're going to find out throughout the series. Mind you, Miri now has two assassin dads because Kazuki lives with his partner (in the nonromantic sense) Rei, who has been bearing the brunt of Kazuki's paternal instincts. That Rei also has a soft spot is evidenced by the fact that he was the one who brought home a stray kitten. Unfortunately, he also needs to gain the life skills necessary to carry through on his impulses.

This show will probably scratch the same itch that something like Sweetness and Lightning did. It is pretty violent, although not gruesome, and it seems to be banking on the juxtaposition of two dudes shooting their way out of every situation and taking care of an adorable little girl. From this episode, it looks like it just may be able to pull it off, assuming you don't have my problem with the cat scene, which colored the whole experience for me.