Spy x Family – 25 (Part 2 Fin) – The Front Line

Disguised as a professor, Loid assesses the current situation as the Eden College Social Gathering commences. There is no way to infiltrate the gathering without actually belonging there. Since Anya earning enough Stella to become an Imperial Scholar is probably out, that leaves Plan B.

Like Loid, Damian longs to be in the presence of his father (for obviously very different reasons). But while his older brother says he’ll tell their dad Damian wants to see him, he also tells Damian not to get his hopes up. Damian probably doesn’t need to be told this. But he has to try.

Anya has to try too. She can read Loid’s mind since he’s in range, and doubles her efforts to be close to Damian so that she can face the “final boss.” Of course, this gives both Damian and Becky the impression she’s stalking him. And she’s not not stalking him.

Loid, who is far better than Anya at staying hidden, watches Damian head to the place where he said he’d be waiting for his father. But when Damian reconsiders since he’s so sure his dad won’t show, he can’t do anything about it.

But Anya can. She tells Damian she can tell he’s scared (and he suspects she can read his mind…which he can…) just as she was scared to show her dad her low test scores. But she also knows her dad loves her, even when he’s mad at her, so she’ll keep showing him her tests scores. While he tsunderes Anya off, Damian gets her, and heads to the meeting place after all.

Anya waits with him from afar, and Becky waits with her, assuming she’s in love with Damian and wants to meet his dad. But Anya soon falls asleep. As Becky has Martha carry her to the car to take her home, Loid walks past in his professor disguise, carrying the same keychain she has on her backpack.

It’s that keychain that provides Loid the excuse to speak to Damian. He planted it in the meeting place for Damian to find, then takes the opportunity to take a knee and profusely apologize on behalf of his daughter, being nothing but submissive and deference.

While he’s apologizing, Desmond shocks his son by arriving. Loid then introduces himself formally apologizes. In these first critical moments, he takes as much of the measure of Desmond as he can, while formulating the right conversational path to get the most out of their encounter.

Once, then twice, Desmond cheerfully tells Loid that he needn’t go so far to apologize for a trifling quarrel between children. Loid knows not to push further against such a man as cautious and wily as Donovan, so he doesn’t. But Damian is another matter.

Loid proceeds to elegantly and expertly make use of Damian and his justified daddy issues as a conduit to open a meaningful dialogue and make himself memorable and appealing enough for Donovan to take notice. Damian is angry his dad isn’t angrier, but Loid and Donovan bond over their shared inability to truly know or understand what their kids or thinking.

Loid doesn’t really agree, but Donovan’s comments help him to better understand Donovan’s political philosophy, which is the first step to steering him towards one less likely to lead to the East-West cold war going hot. He even gets a solid dig in by assuming Donovan makes time for Damian when he’s never done any such thing.

Even so, Donovan notes that this is an oversight he hadn’t considered, but acknowledges. After Loid showers praise on Damian for a report about his father that he claims Anya really liked, he prepares to take his leave. His final request to Damian is that he try to be friends with Anya, as she likely wants to be his friend. In an unguarded moment, Damian says he feels the same way…before turning beet red and rejecting the idea.

Once Loid departs, Donovan turns to Damian and asks what he wanted. Damian says it’s nothing, but then remembers Anya’s words about having to show your test scores, and stops his dad to tell him all of the good things that have happened to him so far in class.

Then, to Damian’s surprise and boundless elation, his father says “well done, keep at it.” Simple and boilerplate they may be, hearing his father say them absolutely makes Damian’s year. And if he’s on better terms with his dad in no small part thanks to words from both Anya and her dad, then perhaps in future he’ll be less inclined to call her a stubby-legged uggo stalker.

That helps Loid’s cause. But what’s so great about his discussion with the Desmond is that he’s not simply operating as a heartless agent of the state trying to manipulate an enemy VIP and his son. I mean, he kinda is, but he’s also uses his experiences as Anya’s father, not a spy, to actually improve the relationship between Damian and Donovan.

It works like a charm, and it was thrilling to watch. As for Anya, she must’ve needed to catch up on some sleep, since she’s still out cold when Loid comes home, her having been delivered there like a package by Becky earlier that afternoon.

The long-awaited first meeting of Twilight and his primary target marks the end of Spy x Family Part 2, ending on a high note. Whenever Part 3 comes around there will be plenty to chew on, from the continued development of the Forget family and Anya and Damian’s friendship, to the potential for the family’s mutual secrets to be revealed to one another. I shall eagerly await Part 3—and hopefully not fall asleep on a stoop as Anya did while staking out Damian.

Spy x Family – 24 – Rebuilding the World

Annihilating Fiona in tennis proves not to be a cure-all for Yor’s replacement anxiety. It’s gotten to the point where Loid observes her walking into lampposts while muttering and the neighbors gossiping about adultery.

Taking her out for drinks only heightens Yor’s distress, as she assumes the bar to be the venue where he’ll officially declare he’ll be moving on with Fiona. That’s not what he’s planning to say, but before he can get a word in edgewise Yor champs her fancy cocktail and then chugs his scotch to soften a blow that will never come.

Once Yor’s lips have been sufficiently loosened by alcohol, her rants make Loid realize that this goes beyond her worrying about not being an adequate wife and mother, and passes into jealousy territory. Assuming Yor has developed romantic feelings for him, he turns on his practiced Twilight charm.

But while there’s definitely something to Yor feeling something for him, his advances are far to powerful, and her reduced inhibitions mean she has not problem kicking him in the chin and sending him flying. He manages to to a mid-air flip and land on his feet, but the kick landed, and Loid goes down.

He wakes up from a dream of his mother humming a lullaby to him to find his head in Yor’s lap as she sings the same tune (though with improvised lyrics). The mere fact her song reminded him of his mother, and of a time when he felt happy, safe and loved even in the midst of a terrible war, speaks to Yor’s latent skills.

When she says of course he’d want to move on from a “musclehead” like her, he recounts to her the story of his mother, and sees that same strength in her with Anya. While he, Nightfall, and the other spies have been working tirelessly to rebuild the world, Yor has already rebuilt it in their home: made a place where Anya feels safe, happy, and loved.

That’s why he’s honored to have Yor as a wife and mother, and has no intention of replacing her with Fiona. As for Yor, Yuri was once the only thing she cared about in the world, but now she can add her new family to that short list. It’s a home she and Loid built that she doesn’t want to leave anytime soon.

In the second half, Becky notices Anya watching Damian from afar and assumes she’s in love with the twerp. In reality, she’s trying to befriend him since eight Stella are out of the question. But Becky assumes she’s just being shy, and tells her the best way to get a man’s attention is by looking as good as possible.

To that end, Becky invites Anya on a shopping trip to a department store she rented out in its entirety. A shopping montage ensues, with Anya trying on increasingly avant-garde clothes and Becky cheering her on all the way even though she’s increasingly unsure what’s going on.

All this Fashion exhausts Anya, while Becky realizes that at the dorm party where they’ll be able to be out of uniform, she needs to come up with an ensemble to impress her darling Loid. Moving on from that, the girls keep shopping for shoes, glasses, accessories, and then have some tea and lunch at the store café.

When Anya appears colorless and says she’s near death, Becky asks her if she didn’t enjoy shopping with her. In response, Anya brightens up and assures Becky that she had tons of fun, as this was her first time shopping with a friend. Hearing Anya say “friend” really moves Becky.

As her maid and chaperone Martha drives the tuckered out girls home, we learn why that is: Becky had trouble making friends prior to enrolling at Eden. She came off as an arrogant bully and found socializing with commoners to be beneath her.

Considering her father runs one of the country’s largest conglomerates, it’s not surprising her to-the-manor-born upbringing caused this aloofness. Combine that with her precociousness, and Becky thought she had the entire world and everyone in it figured out before she turned eight.

It was Martha who told her the first step to being a true and proper adult is accepting that she didn’t know all there was to know about everything and everyone. Watching Becky interact with Anya, who may well be her first true friend just as she is Anya’s, Martha can see how far Becky has come since attending Eden and meeting Anya.

It warms her heart to see Becky with a real friend she can be herself with. That genuine happiness is more attractive than any couture outfit, as evidenced by Damian blushing when he sees Anya and Becky the next day, walking and laughing with their matching sheep keychains.

Spy x Family – 23 – The Flames of War

The Campbell siblings have no shortage of dirty tricks to try to stop the Phonys, from a net that moves up and down, a wind machine that affects trajectories, to a hidden sniper firing court-colored rubber bullets. But even they couldn’t have known they’d be up against a couple of elite spies.

Throw adversity at a couple of lunatics like Twilight and Nightfall, and they’re going to keep finding a way around it. Once they’re both in rhythm making impossibly acrobatic yet precise moves, it’s game, set, and match. The Campbells poked a couple of bears, and simply got mauled.

Whether it was Cloverworks or Wit Studio that animated this episode (or both), the “tennis” action was never not fantastic looking, adding a sense of legitimacy to a thoroughly farcical game. When it comes time to claim the painting, Cavi suddenly says it’s the one piece he can’t part with.

But Loid and Fiona prepared for the possibility the secret police would get to Campbell before they got to the painting, so Loid simply disguises himself as Campbell’s valet and pulls the ol’ painting switcheroo, Thomas Crown Affair-style. The mission is a complete success, and the two spies high-five.

Fiona drops Loid off to find Yor in the park with Anya, and decides she needs to challenge and defeat Twilight’s Strix wife right then and there … in a game of tennis. Thanks to Anya, we can witness Fiona’s ridiculous thought about how it’ll go down, as well as Yor’s worry about Fiona replacing her.

Yor also plays the bumbling novice perfectly when she whiffs on what starts off as a badass assassin’s serve. But the thing is, she didn’t whiff; she simply hit the ball so hard it went through the strings of the racket like Play-Doh through an extruder (or human beings in Cube). The concassé’d ball is a little masterpiece of comic timing and trick animation.

Even when Yor holds back on her serve, she hits the ball so hard it goes faster than sound, creates a shock wave that digs into the ground, and lights up like a comet. Fiona tries her best to absorb the serve and volley it back, but her racket simply isn’t up to it, smashing to bits.

Fiona, defeated utterly, runs to her Trabant and races off, not letting Loid or Yor see her mask crack to reveal the seething, churning tempest of emotion within. Yor, who is simply relieved she fought Fiona off this time, very empatically tells Loid that she Won, leaving out the “for Us.”

The punchline of this two-parter is that while the code hidden in the painting indeed leads to finding Zacharis’ Dossier, but it turns out to be a diary filled with photos of pretty young actresses. These are the “dark secrets” that could “re-ignite a war”, not between East and West, but between Zacharis and his wife. I also loved the uncommented-upon sight of the gaudy rings Fiona took from Campbell on Handler’s hand.

But after the punchline comes a moment of realization for Loid when he sees that Zacharis managed to maintain a happy marriage and family after burying away his creepy dossier. Keeping a marriage and family happy isn’t easy, as evidenced by a clearly frustrated-looking Yor at the end.

I imagine she was underwhelmed by Loid’s reaction to her win over Fiona, and still worried about Fiona continuing to try to usurp her. Sure enough, the episode wraps up with Fiona in the mountains strengthening her serve with a racket made from a boulder as the wildlife watches in morbid curiosity.

Spy x Family – 22 – Love Means Nothing

A painting in the possession of the wealthy tycoon Cavi Campbell is believed to contain a code that, if unlocked, could reveal dark secrets about the East or West that could reignite a war. It’s up to Twilight and Nightfall to retrieve the painting. But Fiona doesn’t intend to steal it, she intends to win it.

Cavi runs an underground no-rules, anything-goes tennis tournament called Campbelldon. Fiona dons ojou ringlets and Loid a sporty headband as they pose as an amateur husband and wife team, the Phonys. Secretly, Fiona hopes to show Loid that she’s the only one worthy to be his fake wife.

The crowd bets heavily against them as their first opponents are former pros who went into the mountains to train and are here to seek tougher foes. They get their wish, as both Loid and Fiona mop the floor with them. Despite only “dabbling” in tennis, every one of Loid’s serves is a devastating ace.

Fiona goes above and beyond in trying to look as cool and amazing as possible, her resting stoic face belying the colorful imagery of Loid being so impressed he sweeps her off her feet and proposes they enter the “doubles game of life.”

Loid had previously practiced a bit with Yor and Anya, and I kinda wish we could have seen more of that, especially considering Yor rarely knows how to hold back when it comes to physical exertion. Still, Yor is anxious about the possibility Loid is with Fiona. Anya offers her mom words of comfort … that don’t give away the fact she can read her mind.

Loid and Fiona’s next opponents are a pair of brothers who injected themselves with a new experimental doping cocktail (again, anything goes in Campbelldom). But they are undone by their insistence on trash-talking, which quickly gets under Fiona’s skin and leads her to literally beat them into submission with a flurry of smashes.

Before the final, the spies are taken to a waiting room, where they discuss strategy against their opponents: the son and daughter of Cavi Campbell himself. They’re sure to have more than a few tricks up their sleeve. As Fiona resolves to go even harder for the sake of impressing Loid, he takes her hand.

She initially mistakes him for making a move, unable to restrain himself from her magnificence. But he’s really looking at the cuts, sores, and blisters on Fiona’s hand, and tells her to stop pushing herself so hard, as spies who lose their cool don’t live long.

Fiona pulls her hand away and appears to stare daggers at Loid, but in reality, she’s elated beyond reason that Loid, who once treated other spies as disposable, is so concerned with her well-being. Swooning and slightly risqué sounds ensue.

But then both Fiona and Loid notice that a colorless, odorless gas is filling the locker room. They hold their breath, but some damage has already been done, just when they need all their strength, speed, and stamina.

In addition to not being 100%, Carrol and Kim Campbell have totally legal modified racquets: Carrol’s is jet-assisted, while Kim’s has an extending head that greatly extends her return radius. The Campbell kids ambitions may not extend further than wanting daddy to buy them another yacht, but they win the first set 6-3.

Loid and Fiona regroup and come up with a workable counter to their opponents superior equipment, but then another curveball is lobbed their way when bits of the very court beneath their feet start to shift, causing their shots to veer off-target.

This surely isn’t the last of the dirty tricks they’ll face, but Loid is determined to win that painting for the sake of world peace, and Fiona is just as determined to crush the Campbell kids by his side, and convince him to dump Yor and marry her, both for Strix and for real. To be continued…

Spy x Family – 21 – Not My Mama

WISE agent Fiona Frost, AKA Nightfall (voiced by Sakura Ayane in her lower meter) could just as easily be named Snowfall, seeing as she’s outwardly as chilly as Yor is warm. When Handler tells her she’ll be working on a joint mission with Twilight, Fiona jumps at the chance.

She considers it an opportunity to speed up and improve Operation Strix by getting rid of his fake wife, a position she would have occupied had she not been busy on another mission when Strix began. Fiona is met at the door by guileless Yor, who apparently doesn’t feel any killing intent in Loid’s co-worker from the hospital, even as Fiona’s resting face is a piecing dagger stare

When she realizes that Yor considers being Anya’s mom to be fun, she changes her tack, ready to exploit Yor’s feelings of being a subpar wife, but Loid and Anya return home from walking Bond. No matter how good Fiona’s poker face is, Anya can read her mind, and she’s petrified to learn the extent of Fiona’s infatuation with her Papa. It’s way worse than Becky!

The contrast between the lovey-dovey Inner and frigid Outer Fionas makes for good laughs, as does the secret conversation-via-mouth-movements that she and Loid make while sounding like they’re exchanging mindless small talk. As Loid, Yor, and Anya interact, Fiona is constantly demanding that she and Yor switch in her head, and Anya can hear her.

Turns out Yor was paying attention to Fiona talking about Loid complaining at work, and even though Fiona didn’t get to actually specify anything, the mere mention of him complaining has Yor acrobatically leaping to the conclusion that Fiona is a potential replacement wife, no mind-reading necessary.

It’s when Anya semi-accidentally spills cocoa, and she hears Inner Fiona talking about how ruthlessly she’d whip Anya into an efficiently Stella-winning machine, that Anya runs tearfully to Yor’s side, asserting that she is the one, only, and best Mama she could have. This in turn spurs Yor to promising to Loid that she’ll do better, even though from his perspective she’s already been doing fine.

When she sees Loid’s fake smile, Fiona is heartened, as it means that at the end of the day this is all an act. And yet, at the same time, she can see some of the truth leaking through that fake smile, and the genuine peace and happiness Loid is experiencing with Yor and Anya is just too much, and Fiona takes her leave.

Loid chases her down with an umbrella, which she declines, while thanking the heavy rain for hiding her face full of heartbreak and anguish. Inside, she maintains that she’s the only wife worthy of her beloved senpai, while outside she negs Loid, telling him the new “softer” Twilight better not impede their joint mission.

Fiona is a stylish and welcome addition to the cast; someone who is actively trying to steal Loid while having no idea how to do so, someone with contrasting inner-outer personalities off which Anya can bounce, and a hint of genuine pathos for someone whose fated role by Loid’s side was usurped due to bad timing.

The final fifth of the episode is a little vignette in which Bond is suddenly jealous of her stuffed Mr. Penguin, and assaults it in the night. Loid eventually mends the doll (after Yor utterly failed) and notes that his “scars” are badges of honor for a veteran penguin spy.

A contrite bond offers peace peanuts to Anya, who forgives him, apologizes for saying she hated him, and enacts a peace treaty between him and Mr. Penguin. It’s slight and sweet—almost to the point of cloying—but does make for a nice parallel for the East-West conflict (would that it could be solved so easily) and reminds us that even precognitive flooffers can get jealous.

Spy x Family – 20 – TYDTWD

Anya’s next school assignment will be to go to a parent’s workplace to learn about their job and why they chose it. She asks Yor first, who imagines Anya shadowing her while she’s doing her real job assassinatin’, which is great both for some laughs and another excuse to watch Yor do her thing. Thankfully the blood in her imagining is pink, but both she and Anya deem it best for her to go to Loid’s workplace.

When I was sick but too young to stay home alone, my folks would alternate who took me to work. In both cases, their co-workers were delighted for a cute little kid to be there (their words not mine), and that’s no different for Anya at the hospital. The issue is that she takes careful notes of everything Loid is thinking rather than saying, and also learns about a secret passage she can’t resist exploring.

We finally meet the lady with the short white hair in the OP and ED; we don’t yet get her name but she’s a Westalis agent like Twilight. Anya ends up getting stuck in the ductwork directly over a meeting where doctors are talking about ghosts—and she makes a lot of ghost like sounds freeing herself. Finally, her hasty dumping of all the figures into the “sandbox”  reveals the limitations of the psychiatric tool, as Loid assumes she’s deeply troubled child.

The remaining quarter of the episode consists of Anya taking the idea of coded messages from her spy TV show and running with it. Since her own chicken scratch is illegible to everyone but her (her report—including many of Loid’s thoughts—was quite thorough!) she has Yor write them up, and she then distributes them to Becky, Second Son, everyone.

Even Frankie gets one, and wrongly assumes it’s a love letter handed to Anya by a beauty. When he cracks the code and waits on the bridge at the allotted time in his Sunday best with several dozen roses, Anya’s alarm goes off, but Bond shuts it off, letting Anya sleep right through the meeting time. That’s probably for the best, considering only Frankie showed up and had the wrong idea.

Spy x Family – 19 – The Mysterious Spider Woman

Spy x Family reveals who was trying to crater the Damian brothers’ test scores: George Glooman, son of the CEO of Glooman Pharmaceuticals, who are on the cusp of being gobbled up by the Desmond Group. While Damian managed to escape his father’s frightening looks, George is the spitting image of his dad, with a turnip head and gloomy eyes.

When George learns Daybreak failed, he takes desperate measures, like trying to get a teacher to believe Damian was smoking and shoved him to stop him from reporting it. The teacher doesn’t believe Damian’s lackeys, but when Anya comes forward with the truth, Damian is shocked—and it confirms to Becky who Anya likes best.

With this last desperate attempt to get Damian expelled foiled, George instead plays for sympathy from the class, laying out his story in detail and noting that this is his last day at Eden College, so he only wants to experience some final small joys.

If nothing else, George is extremely good at emotionally manipulating people into pitying him, so he gets juice, a pricey caviar bowl, a class-wide singalong just for him, and armloads of gifts from his classmates urging him not to forget them and the bonds they shared at Class 3.

Naturally, it’s not really George’s last day. His fears about family bankruptcy and being sold into slavery in Westalis were grossly exaggerated. His dad assures him that everything’s fine; Damian’s dad’s company saved Glooman, it didn’t destroy it. George’s walk of shame the next morning is a wonderful bit of comeuppance for someone who squeezed the class for every drop of sympathy … all for a lie.

In the next segment we see just how peaceful and cozy Anya’s room is (especially with Bond curled up in the middle of it) and how hard it must be to get up and start her day. Yor has some free time before work, but when she notices Anya forgot her gym clothes, she panics. Loid did say she’ll be punished by the school if she keeps being late to school and breaking rules. Yor imagines an expelled Anya turning into a Bad Girl and resolves to get the clothes to Anya without detection.

Yor hesitates over whether taking the bus or trolley will get her there faster, but then an old lady accidentally drops a potted plant off her seventh-floor window, and a switch goes off in Yor: neither. After using her superhuman speed and agility to catch the plant and kick it back up to it’s owner, she goes on a parkour tear through the alleys and rooftops.

It’s truly inspiring whenever we see Yor do cool shit, especially when it doesn’t involve murdering people! This is Yor at her best, as when she went into Mama Bear Mode to protect Anya in the terrorist arc. She uses her considerable skill to get to Eden her way—and other than confirming a school legend of a “spider woman”, she largely stays out of sight.

Yet like George when he exchanged heartfelt goodbyes with his classmates, Yor has the wrong idea. Anya didn’t forget her gym clothes, she didn’t take them because she doesn’t have gym class today. Yor breaks out the “SHOCK!” face Anya usually makes (like found daughter, like found mother), and leaves the school in a gloomy mood, feeling like a failure of a mother again.

Loid, who was spying around the school all along and wondering why Yor was there, “coincidentally” bumps into her as she heads home, and learns her reason for being there was perfectly innocent, and she hasn’t discovered any of his secrets. But Loid also sees that Yor is feeling depressed. When he invites her to a choice spot for lunch together, the shot of her face brightening back up is alone worth a Stella.

Spy x Family – 18 – No Leash is Power

Anya attends a school, so it’s not all arts and crafts. There are quiz and test scores, and even though Anya was confident she scored well, she ends up with supplemental lessons—and having to see her smug “friendly” face perfectly imitated by the high-scoring Damian. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Anya decides she’ll simply read Damian’s mind to attain a good score on the upcoming midterm exams—for which the highest scores get Stella and the failing ones get Bolts. But there’s a snag: Anya’s telepathy doesn’t work on the New Moon. To it’s credit, SxF doesn’t bother explaining why. What matters is that Anya will have to study for real.

Enter “Uncle” Yuri as a tutor. Yuri is immediately childishly envious of Loid’s “gremlin” of a spawn for getting to live with his dear sister, but when Yor give him her biggest smile, he resolves to tutor Anya gently but firmly. They study all day, and end up exhausted on the floor.

When Yuri asks Anya how she think she did on the grammar lessons and Anya asks what grammar is, his patience is exhausted and he leaves … but not before sampling some of Yor’s freshly-baked treats, which he chomps down on and then joy-vomits in the hall. When Loid comes home, he’s dismayed to learn that the whole time he was there Yuri tutored Anya in language arts, which are not even on the midterms.

This leads to the second segment of the episode, as he takes drastic measure to ensure Anya doesn’t get expelled due to failing grades. The high security North Tower of the school contains a vault where all the students’ exams are stored. Loid disguises as an instructor to infiltrate the vault and alter Anya’s scores.

However, someone had the same idea, and hired “Daybreak”, Twilight’s self-professed Number One Rival. His methods for infiltrating the tower and vault are about as thoughtful, subtle, and discreet as smashing cans of tomato soup with a sledgehammer at a funeral. And yet somehow he avoids the watching eye of guards and makes it inside without getting arrested.

Loid decides to help Daybreak get in so that his loud boorish actions will mask his own infiltration efforts. Once he opens the vault, Daybreak bonks him on the head and drags him in. Because Daybreak had his spy notes written on his hand, he knows he’s there to alter the Desmond brothers’ exams.

Once he’s done, Daybreak launches into a celebratory monologue, and when he prepares to leave an “autograph” among the scores, Loid can no longer pretend to be passed out and protests against Daybreak’s ridiculously un-spy-like behavior. To this, Daybreak simply asks Loid to tell everyone about how awesome he is.

Upon inspecting the exams, Loid sees that Daybreak doctored the Desmonds’ answers so they’d fail, an assumes one of their father’s business rivals hired the buffoon. He reverts the answers to what they were before moving on to Anya’s exam.

When she passes and ends up ranked 213th (compared to 46th for Becky and 11th for Damian), I assumed Loid only altered her scores a little so as no to rouse suspicion. But while it takes all four of her exam scores combined to exceed 100, the fact is she passed all four on her own; Loid didn’t have to alter anything. So no Stella, but no Bolts either. Meanwhile, Daybreak is fired for failing his mission. I wonder if he’ll cross Twilight’s path again …

Spy x Family – 17 – If You Have Love, You Can Fly (But Jets Work Too)

Anya’s initial attempt to impress Damian with news of her new dog failed, so she’s brought a new family portrait to “accidentally” drop when Damian is passing by, hoping he’ll see it and marvel at Bond’s grand floofiness.

Unfortunately it doesn’t go as planned, as Damian and his toadies ignore the photo. It flies off and is picked up by Becky, who is immediately smitten with the hot guy and asks Anya if he’s “seeing anyone”. A dismayed Anya responds “Papa is married to Mama!”

In a stroke of luck for Anya, she and Damian are paired off for and arts-and-crafts project: making an animal. Becky ends up making a model of Loid with a “battle suit” from her dad’s company, and when substitute teacher Mr. Henderson tells her the assignment was animals, she once again demonstrates her precociousness by stating “In the end, humans are animals too”, something our mustachioed paragon of elegance cannot dispute.

Anya doesn’t fair so well, as she’s as bad at arts and crafts as her Mama is (or at least was) at cooking. When she reads Damian’s mind to make a griffin, the heraldic beast of his family, she magnanimously offers to assist, but proves absolute rubbish, building legs with jet engines and uneven feathers. Damian is so pissed by her uselessness he makes her and another girl cry, inviting a scolding from Mr. Henderson, who exclaims “Not Elegant!”

Henderson understands Damian probably wants to impress his father, but he tells Damian there’s no need to rush; all he can do is what he can with the resources he has. The resulting “griffin”, with Anya’s interpretation of a griffin beside it, looks like a disaster, but it invokes patriotic fervor in one of the bigwig judges, and the pair end up winning first prize.

The griffin is proud-looking despite its sorry state, while what is interpreted as “the corpse of an innocent baby griffin” moved the judge to strong emotion. It’s a great bit of still art.

Unfortunately, Anya doen’t really make any progress in her friendship to Damian, nor does the prize include any Stella. But as big of a jerk as he often is to Anya, I couldn’t help but feel bad when he called home and had to settle with talking to the butler Jeeves, since his father is away in more ways than one, and generally disinterested in his second son.

The episode switches gears to do a brief profile of Sylvia Sherwood, AKA Handler, AKA Fullmetal Lady, so-called due to her flawless performance as a spymaster for Westalis. Varying cinematic shots of her walking down the street create a sense of paranoia, but her tail turns out to be a couple of easily-fooled guys who never considered she’d use the public pool locker rooms to change into a disguise and give them the slip.

We witness two separate meetings between Sylvia and Loid, with the episode underscoring that every meeting threatens both of their lives. So it’s amusing both that Loid makes sure not to tell the Fullmetal Lady that the tag on her dress is still on, and also that his “report” to her on Operation Strix involves Anya’s athletic progress.

The final post-credits skit, basically an omake, is a flashback to when Anya would cook dishes for Yuri to eat (all of which are pixelated and feature worryingly unnatural colors), and Yuri scarfs it down with a smile in between projectile vomiting. When he tells her she’ll make a great wife, she gets bashful and slaps him so hard he bounces off the floor and spins horizontally to the far end of the room.

This combination of being repeatedly poisoned and thrashed about due to his sister not knowing her strength is what makes Yuri the excellent operative he is today. He’s been toughened to such an extent that getting his by a truck is of absolutely no consequence. After all, Yor’s tougher than a truck.

Spy x Family – 16 – The Taste of Family

This episode opens with a dead-serious face, as Yor can barely hide her assassin’s glare from her family when she arrives home late. She definitely can’t hide all the cuts on her hands, which at first I thought might be from a particularly unpleasant client. Anya sees the future through Bond: her mama crying. Alone in her room Yor laments that she could lose her family if this doesn’t succeed. So what’s ‘this’?

I really should have known from all the hand cuts that the mission had nothing to do with assassination, but secret cooking lessons from Camilla, who grudingly agrees to coach Yor when her husband Dominic blurts out at work that she’s a great cook. The bloody bag Yor was carrying was just crushed tomatoes. It’s a great heavy buildup that made you breathe a sigh of relief whenever you figure out everything will be fine.

Dominic invites Yuri to help be the taste tester, but also possibly to preserve his own life. The “smoking, oozing purple/black poison food made by the terrible chef” is an anime cliché that’s been around longer than Truck-kun, and Spy x Family leans into the disgusto-factor of her eldritch creations. It also wisely shows that Yuri’s usual way of eating his sister’s food—while vomiting part of it up—and not keeling over shows that she’s had a poor judge of taste all this time.

Yuri should be commended for basically building up a tolerance and even a love of his sister’s cooking (though part of it is the last thing he wants is for her to be unhappy, or contribute to it in any way). When Camilla suggests they think back to what kind of food the Briar siblings’ mom made, they remember a red southern stew with a fried egg. Yor starts again under Camilla’s close watch, and hey-presto, she’s able to make her first edible, tasty dish!

When Yor returns home in a much better mood, Loid and Anya are understandably worried about her handling the dinner duties. But she sticks to the recipe for her mom’s stew, and after a tentative taste, they discover it’s a really good, soothing flavor. Yor is so happy her family is acknowledging her cooking, she cries tears of joy, not sorrow, into her hands—the very future Bond foresaw.

The final gag is that the dessert she improvise does send her family to the floor. But with about a third of the runtime left, the episode doesn’t let Yor’s cooking epiphany overstay its welcome, but shifts to … Franky’s love life? Ugh…fine, I guess. Turns out Franky is as bad with women as he is good with intelligence gathering. He asks Loid to help him determine the best way to talk to Monica, the pretty woman at the cigar shop.

After Franky demonstrates stalker tendencies with the wealth of intel on Monica and scoffing at Loid’s elaborate conversational flow charts, Loid dresses as Monica, a bit that doesn’t really get any play. Similarly, we don’t get to see Franky being shot down, only the aftermath and Loid buying him a commiseratory drink. It’s a very lightweight segment, but after the excitement of the Mister Dog Trilogy I understand the need for a downshift.

Spy x Family – 15 – A Dog Has Appeared

Keith is finally dealt with when Yor spots him in his car and then kicks said car so it crashes. She then calls the authorities to ask them to come fetch the terrorist. Between Anya saving the future and Yor bagging the baddie, Loid simply doesn’t know how good he has it!

That’s abundantly clear when he finds himself at an intersection with Yor, Anya, and Mr. Dog. Anya says she was worried about her Papa’s pooping situation, while Yor chased after her; plausible deniability is secure for both of them. As for Mr. Dog? Sylvia comes to retrieve him, but Anya decides that he is the dog for her, even threatening to drop out of school if they don’t let her have him. Seeing as how Operation Strix depends on Anya staying in school, both Loid and Sylvia grudgingly agree.

Thus Mr. Dog joins the Forger family, and we see the “good future” he saw take place. My heart soared at the sight of him safe and sound in the Forger home; it’s the least of what he deserves for saving and staying true to Anya. Unfortunately, despite the fact both she and Mr. Dog played a pivotal role in keeping the peace between East and West, she doesn’t earn any additional Stella, which is a terrible shame.

Even so, since Anya is well aware of her role in keeping said peace, she recommits to becoming friends with Damian, and she’s confident that having a dog can only strengthen her position. Indeed, Damian voices genuine interest in her new pet, only for her to blow it by not having a proper name for the pooch, simply referring to him as “Dog”.

That oversight is corrected after an ooting in a dog park. Another dog makes off with Anya’s favorite gloves, and he’s ornery when Anya tries to get them back. All it takes is an intense glare from Mr. Dog for the other dog to drop the gloves. Anya likens Mr. Dog to Bondman from her favorite cartoon, and notes that Mr. Dog has “gloves” in the form of his black paws. Festooning him with a bow tie collar, Anya declares that his name is Bond.

Even though Loid insisted that Anya study that night, when he and Yor find her and Bond sleeping together, he decides to let her insolence slide. Considering Anya and Bond saved the future, it’s the right move, even if Loid is unaware of their contribution. Bond is a most welcome member of the Forger family, and if Damian were to meet him, I can’t imagine he wouldn’t be eminently charmed by him. I mean, he’s so big and white and fluffy!

Spy x Family – 14 – Anya Saves the Future

Yor obliterates Keith’s heavy with a single kick, but he still has a dog. But when he tries to sic the shepherd on Yor and it bears its teeth, Yor out-intimidates it and sends the dog running. Keith runs too, but Yor stays with a still frightened Anya, then hugs and comforts her. The talking-to can wait until they get home. What a good mom.

Mister Dog has another vision that Anya picks up on: one of Papa suddenly no longer being in the family, and Anya discovering Loid’s lifeless body in a  pile of rubble. There’s a clock tower and a bell that tolls just before an explosion. Anya has to stop this future from happening, but she can’t tip Yor off to her powers, so she mounts Mr. Dog and runs off on her own yet again.

Yor calls the cops to arrest Keith’s unconscious comrade, and that tips off WISE, who descend upon all of the student-terrorists but Keith. They thumb their noses at their initial interrogators, but then Handler walks in and asks them what they want. When they say “war”, she delivers a  truly chilling speech about what war really is:

Have any of you actually killed a person before? Have you ever been killed by anyone? Have you ever lost a limb in an attack? Have you ever heard bones being smashed? Have you ever smelled festering flesh? Have you ever seen your parents or siblings crushed in a crumbling building right before your eyes? Have you ever seen a piece of your lover’s flesh stuck to a wall? Have you ever been so hungry, you tried to bite into a tree? Have you ever stewed human flesh in a pot? Have you ever had someone close to you deny your enemy’s humanity so they could continue the killing, only to become so mentally broken after the conflict is over that they weep with regret and shame, vomit, and then eventually…take their own life? Apparently, you’ve learned nothing of war at your university … you utter children.

America has a history of university students protesting recent wars deemed unnecessary that were started by those who don’t truly grasp its costs. My own mom was tear-gassed and four of her classmates killed at Kent State protesting the Vietnam War.

Perhaps out of a sense of national zeal and boredom being on the sidelines, these Ostanian students decided that war would be fun and are trying to start one with Westalis. Well, as Handler makes perfectly plain even to them, there’s nothing fun about war. All the glory and nobility turns to ash and maggots without fail.

That Handler has such a sobering speech like this in an episode where a grade-schooler riding a big floofy dog preserves the peace by scribbling ketchup on the door rigged with a improvised bomb really gets to the heart of Spy x Family’s essential duality. Half of it is family slice-of-life and comedy, but the other half is the very serious, sometimes desperate struggle to prevent war from destroying that family, and millions of other families.

I love how Anya works through the problem, along with obstacles like not knowing how to read an analog clock, or all the wires on the bomb being black, all while Mr. Dog lends a helping paw or boost when needed, even if he’s not 100% wise to what’s going on. It’s entirely likely that smart as he is for a dog, he can’t make as much sense of his future visions as Anya can, making their collaboration vital.

With her ketchup warning heeded and the clock tower explosion prevented, Loid returns to the family in Mr. Dog’s vision, Back to the Future-style. WISE and Loid then turn to protecting the foreign minister from the still-at-large Keith. This is accomplished, like so many other gambits, by Loid disguising himself as the minister and leading an unwitting Keith on a wild goose chase.

Keith, who is unassailably a villain due to his desire to not only start a war, but his willingness to discard his beautiful, intelligent, and loyal dog as a bomb, thinks he’s got the minister right where he wants him, but gets wise to his tail when WISE agents shoot at him (and honestly, really should have been able to hit him, even in a moving vehicle. Those Ostanian cars ain’t that fast).

When Keith catches up to the “minister’s” abandoned car, he sends the dog after him while continuing in the car. He soon finds out that Westalis’ foreign minister is extremely spry for being a “60-year-old geezer”, as he’s able to evade the shepherd.

Eventually, Loid is done running, rips off his mask, and turns his gun on the lunging dog, to whom he apologizes for getting it mixed up in the affairs of humans. Handler AKA Sylvia’s words solidified his resolve to prevent war whenever it threatens to spring up. Loid may never know that Anya saved his life and began the effort to save the peace from these misguided students, but he sure as hell is going to finish it.

Spy x Family – 13 – The Dog Borfs for Thee

After a brief recap of the premise and a nifty, breezy new OP, SpyFam gets right back into the swing of things, as Loid and Yor take Anya on an ooting to adopt a dog as a reward for her gaining her first of eight Stellae. The first pet shop is also the location of his contact, who has a new mission for him. Loid feigns digestive distress and tells Yor and Anya to go ahead while he’s whisked away to meet with Handler.

There’s a plot by terrorists at Berlint University planning to assassinate the Foreign Minister of Westalis in hopes of starting a war, but one of them has already been caught, and Loid barely pulls off the disguise of his leader Keith to get the kid to spill the beans about their operation and hideouts. Turns out they’re going to use…dog bombs, which doesn’t seem like the most efficient means of assassination.

One of these dogs is a gigantic fluffy white dog that doesn’t say “woof” or “bark” but “borf”, which is a lovely bit of onomatopoeia. But this is no ordinary dog, but one with the power of precognition, able to save a running child from a falling sign. Even without some hints that this dog was gong to join the family, it’s clear he and Anya are destined to meet.

That first meeting happens through glass as Anya is in a dog adoption event in a convention area with Yor. But she can tell there’s something about that dog; she sees her family when she reads his mind, and despite Yor telling her not to wander off, wander off is what Anya does.

Her search for the large pup takes her across the street, where she not only finds him (and a host of other poor good boys and girls), but stumbles upon the latest hideout of Keith and his minister-wasting dog bombers. When they realize she’s heard all of their very loud plotting, Keith wastes no time brandishing a pocketknife with which he intends to silence her.

That’s when the ol’ borfer bites through his leash and puts himself between Anya and the bad guys. Yes, he wimps out and later hides behind her, but his precognitive ability saves them both, as he uses the distraction of a phone call (warning the terrorists that someone leaked their plot) to get Anya away.

Anya, who is tiny, is able to ride the great pup like a horse through the streets, and while Yor overhears Anya’s voice and Anya asks the dog to go back to the adoption place, the dog just keeps on running, and Anya starts to revel in the excitement, determined to crack the case as Starlight Anya.

Alas, the dog’s sense of direction is poor, and they end up running right back into the baddies’ clutches. Keith delegates the killing of Anya to his henchman, who tells her no hard feelings and reaches out, presumably to strangle her. That obviously doesn’t happen because Mama Yor arrives and kicks him so hard he pinballs against the alley walls ten times.

Keith is gobsmacked by this sudden feat of strength, while Yor has the wrong idea: in her mind, these aren’t assassins trying to silence a witness to their dirty deeds, but a band of creeps trying to kidnap Anya and make her their bride. No doubt Keith will soon wish he never antagonized the diminutive coral-haired young lady. Or as she might say, he’s in deep shit.