Buddy Daddies

Sometimes a family is just two professional hitmen dads and a dead crime lord's airhead kid who doesn't seem to grasp or even care that these two aren't her "real" dads.

Hot on the heels of the release of Spy x Family, Buddy Daddies burst onto the scene as an original anime series not based on any existing source material and quickly cemented itself as "the same but different" from its peer series. Now, I don't believe in pitting two bad bitches against each other, but it does feel kind of inevitable, seeing as the two very similar series basically debuted one right after the other. There are some key differences I want to highlight though, and some important distinctions I want to talk about.

Child endangerment? In my feel-good anime? It's more likely than you think.

Like most idiotic arguments on the internet, the choice of which one is superior (Coke vs Pepsi, Mac vs PC, Battleborn vs Overwatch) is ultimately a matter of opinion, and no matter how hard people try to tout it as fact, it's meaningless without context that applies particularly to YOU and your experience with it. I've seen both Spy x Family (well, season two is still airing) AND Buddy Daddies, and apples and oranges aside, I think it's clear which one made a bigger impact for me.

You can compare and contrast them all you want, but both shows have this exact same vibe, just in different ways.

Buddy Daddies follows the lives of two live-in hitmen partners (Kazuki and Rei) - the brains and the muscle, the bait and the sniper, the golden retriever and the doberman, whatever you wanna call em - earning their pay as professional assassins and definitely not being in a relationship of any kind whatsoever. During one of their high-profile jobs at a party hosted by human traffickers, Kazuki (golden retriever) plans to deliver a special cake with Rei (doberman) hiding inside, ready to bestow unto them the gift of bullets.

I bet her dads can beat up your dads.

The assassination attempt goes wrong when they cross paths with a random child (Miri), who had wandered into the hotel looking for her papa. Seeing as Kazuki is dressed in a Santa suit, Miri immediately trusts him to help her find daddy. Shenanigans ensue, their cover is blown, Miri is taken hostage, and Kazuki has to make a lightning decision. He abruptly rips off the beard and announces that HE is Miri's papa, allowing her to joyfully jump out of the criminal's arms so Rei can emerge from the cake and get a clean shot.

And what reason would a kid have NOT to trust Santa?

Unfortunately, it turns out the actual biological father Miri was looking for was the very target they just assassinated. So now, after a bungled but technically still successful hit, our titular Buddies must become titular Daddies for a bit while they figure out what to do with Miri, while also concealing her from the rest of their world. And that includes keeping her a secret from their handler, the only person with enough connections to be able to research the rest of Miri's family tree, and find out if any surviving family can take care of her.

Technically you can't lie to a child. Whatever you tell them simply becomes the new Truth, and you must accept it with all the consequences attached.

From here, the series walks a delicate tightrope between family comedy and spy thriller, as the Daddies in question learn to raise the child they were technically responsible for orphaning. This means giving her a normal childhood while also keeping her oblivious to the work they do. Good thing one dad knows how to keep a clean house and the other knows how to play video games.

Always remember to double-check your spelling to make sure you didn't accidentally freudian type "Baby Daddies" instead of "Buddy Daddies".

Now, you may assume that with only 12 episodes to its name, Buddy Daddies would be laser-focused on delivering a tight narrative that neatly ties up every loose end it produces, all while providing some solid jokes and fun twists along the way. After all, if Spy x Family is going to spend its 52+ episodes meandering around and making increasingly contrived plots out of its absurdly specific premise, an original miniseries should find a way to make a more frugal use of its limited resources, right?

Keeping a complicated gimmick going forever without eventually burning out from spinning your wheels would be a feat nothing short of Miraculous.

I would say both yes and no. Buddy Daddies has a plot built around finding Miri's surviving family and her two dads reconciling with their own demons, but I wouldn't say the plot is the core of the show. At its heart, this is a comedy that is as bright and cheerful as it is dark and depressing. We spend as much if not MORE time on the slice of life aspects of the show - gearing up Miri for pre-school, shopping for new outfits and toys, playing knock-off Mario Kart, and learning to cook - than on the shady ops jobs or protecting Miri from scary guys with guns (well, you know, OTHER scary guys with guns).

Miri. Honey. Please. My anxiety is spiking over here.

For a show about two professional killers learning how to raise a child, it's surprisingly vibrant and saturated, kind-hearted, unafraid to be goofy, and just the right amount of emotional. It would have been so easy for this premise to teeter into a gleefully violent Adult Swim-style bloodbath show, or be sanded off into a network-appropriate gag-of-the-week Friday evening sitcom, but as an original anime miniseries, it's allowed to walk a perfect center between the extremes, while still following a dedicated story with a satisfying conclusion.

And yet...

Never underestimate the terrifying power of your local All Moms Group Chat.

Even with all this network freedom and fairly clear implications, it's not entirely fair to refer to this as "the gay Spy x Family". As a bisexual, I'm incredibly bi-ased, and can't see Buddy Daddies as anything less than a show about two dudes who are gay-married taking unsavory jobs to raise a kid together. But even I can't give credit for representation where it's not due. The show takes the easy route of showcasing Rei and Kazuki as live-in partners with no hint of romance between them so everything remains squeaky clean for any pearl-clutching conservatives in the audience.

I can already see Republicans analyzing this scene frame by frame looking for the sexual metaphors.

That said, thematically speaking, everything about the show is still written to reflect that these two are definitely in a relationship together, in an unspoken, mature kind of way. Rather than worry about the usual rom-com tropes - wistful pining, worrying about the official status of the relationship, the tired old "but we're both men" nonsense - it feels like a more natural partnership that just exists without the need to clarify. Like they're already past all that entry-level shit, to the point that it doesn't need to be shown.

Even if it's never explicitly said, and part of me wishes it were explicitly said, it still READS that way, and I think that matters for something in a world that continues to rely on plausible deniability when homophobic viewers start demanding an official statement on whether or not a cartoon counts as gay rep. And ultimately, I think it's more important that we recognize media for how it impacts us as viewers than whether or not it statistically "counts" for whatever we're trying to count it for. I think even Alison Bechdel would agree.

This scene doesn't portray anything significant, but just seeing it there, among all the rest of the plot elements, genuinely FEELS like it adds credence to the idea that they're together.

So yeah, that's about all I have to say about Buddy Daddies. Excellent little show, perfect length for something so dynamic in range and tone. At a mere 12 episodes, it's more than worth your time if you're between big series, or aren't ready to embrace a new hyperfixation just yet. And it's not any better or worse than Spy x Family, but if you liked one, you'll almost assuredly enjoy the other as well.

Other follow-up recs for shows about parenting while doing dangerous and thrilling jobs include My Home Hero and a somewhat older series called Solty Rei, especially if you like shows about dads in particular. Still waiting for a seemingly-inevitable "lesbian Spy x Family" variation on this theme, but I guess we'll get there when we get there, eh?

Now if only society was cool with letting dads kiss.