Spy x Family – 37 (S2 Fin) – The Bestest Boy

After a completely unnecessary 1-minute recap of the premise of the show (who is tuning in on episode 37?), Spy x Family’s season 2 finale ends … with a low-key Bond episode. That’s to be expected; the Bestest Borfy Boy was stuck at home with Frankie while the rest of the Forgers were on the cruise. And with Yor’s arc long-since completed, this feels more like an epilogue, one that could have aired at any time during the season.

Bond has his first “Bhorck!” (“Borf!” mixed with “Shock!”) when Anya declines to accompany him and Loid on his walk. She’s too wrapped up in making origami Stella. So Loid takes him, and his precognitive ability enables him to save random strangers from cruel fates, it appears to Loid like he’s being a bad dog.

That is, until Bond leads Loid to an apartment building on fire. While every human is out, he knows someone named Daisy is still in the conflagration. Daisy turns out to be a pug puppy, and Bond and Loid manage to get her out and escape the flames from a window.

When Bond’s fur is singed, a bucket of water is dumped on him, revealing that he’s quite skinny under all that fluff! That doesn’t stop him from seeking out and holding down the culprit behind not just this arson, but a string of them in the city.

When they return, Yor is making Anya make weird faces with her eviscerated paper people chains. Loid says Bond got sprayed with a hose on accident, but Anya “hears” Loid describing all the things they did, and decides to properly reward Papa and Bond with their own crudely-made origami Stella.

After that we get what amounts to a panning slideshow of how everyone else is carrying on their lives, from Damian and his friends and Becky to Yuri, Fiona, and Franky. Then we’re brought back to the Forger family tucking into a supper. It’s a quiet, slice-of-lifey ending to season two, and there’s every indication a season three is on the way.

Spy x Family – 36 – Chefs! Chefs! Chefs!

While sometimes Becky Blackbell seems precocious to the point of acting like she’s six going on twenty-six, at the end of the day, she is every bit six, which means she considers the soap operas on TV to be what real courtship and romance is like. Determined to win the heart of her “Precious Loid”, she invites herself over to Anya’s with a full head of steam that turns into so much blushing and tripping over words.

It only takes an easy smile from Loid for Becky to imagine becoming Anya’s stepmother, complete with new family portrait. Poor Anya is an audience to Becky’s over-the-top delusions, and decides to kick Yor aside and root for Becky to become her new Mama for one primary reason: meals prepared by world-class chefs. Alas, once Yor returns home and Becky tries removing her scrunchies and whips her hair about, she gets zero reaction from Loid.

If Anya had normal adults as a mother and father, one of them would probably be able to see a childish crush when they see it. Instead, Becky and her hair is twisting in the proverbial wind, and all Anya can do is twist along with her.

When Becky decides to go full bore and “collapse” into Loid from being too “drunk”, Yor takes her deadly seriously, picks her up, and rushes to the nearest hospital. Before a car hits her (the car loses), Yor tosses Becky into the air, only to catch her perfectly after absorbing the impact of the accident with nothing but a bloody nose.

It’s after this act of selfless and completely unnecessary bodily sacrifice that Becky finally comes clean: she was only lying because she wanted to court her precious Loid. To her surprise, Yor isn’t upset, but happy that Loid is so loved. Becky, moved by her massive heart, asks her how she won Loid over, and Yor recalls him saying she’s strong.

Becky tries to demonstrate that she’s strong too by trying her hand at the bell-and-hammer game in he park, but the weight of the hammer bowls her over backwards. Yor, believing Becky wants the top prize to give to Loid, picks up the hammer with one hand and obliterates the entire device.

Becky, who is after all the heiress to an arms empire, is suddenly smitten with Yor as well. She now realizes she’s simply not strong enough to steal Loid from her, so she’ll become her apprentice instead. When her maid arrives to pick her up, Yor is giving her some martial arts pointers.

Another woman who loves Loid deeply but knows she isn’t strong enough to defeat Yor is Fiona Frost AKA Nightfall. During Loid’s cruise vacation, she not only completes all of her missions, but all of Twilight’s as well, overworking herself despite Sylvia telling her not to. She even trains herself in the mountains by pulling grizzly bears, riding goats and standing atop alligators.

Fiona doesn’t become a blushing, blubbering mess when she’s in Loid’s presence like Becky; in addition to being an adult, she’s also a spy, and very good at concealing her true feelings. She has almost no reaction to Loid presenting her with a souvenir from his trip, but once she’s alone in the hall she’s skipping along like she’s on cloud nine more in “wuv” with him than ever.

Spy x Family – 35 – Island Time

With the bombs defused and the bad guys eliminated, all that’s left is for the Forgers to enjoy a day together off the ship on a picturesque island. Naturally Anya makes a big deal of alighting from the ship, complete with superhero landing, and gets Loid to run along with her. When he realizes Yor is waiting for them and watching him running towards her, he immediately blushes.

I can’t tell you how nice it is just to see these three people back together again, even if they’re still a long way from being honest to each other about their jobs and abilities, we’ve rarely seen them so relaxed and happy. Even at home there’s a sense of keeping up appearances, but this excursion is all about having genuine moments of fun as a family, and they’ve never looked more real.

That said, between pedaling a tandem bike 50 mph, spelunking, snorkeling, and walking all over the island town, all of Yor’s exertions and complete lack of sleep the last couple of days finally catches up with her. Fortunately, when she passes out it’s right into the safety of Loid’s shoulder. Anya is also tuckered out, which means he has to carry them both back to the ship. But while he initially looks put out, he allows himself a smile, as if to realize hey, this isn’t that bad!

When Yor is back in the office, her dubious sense of taste in souveniers is exposed when her co-workers bristle at their skeleton keychains. It’s the thought that counts, gals—check your attitudes! Yuri is also super-cheerful knowing Yor is back, and makes immediate plans to visit.

Back at school Anya tries to act like a big shot, but when Becky learns she was “just” aboard the Lorelai, then wows the classmates with her break spent with a celebrity, Anya resorts to lies (Octopeople) sprinkled with unverifiable / unbelievable truths (Barnaby is a celebrity … among assassins!).

Anya gets laughed at for her embellishments, but after class Becky has her back, telling her that to be a proper lady she has to live her truth. Damian commented that if nothing else, Anya is never boring, but they could be good friends if they dropped their respective acts and just acted normally around each other.

When Anya reports her bad day to her folks and Yuri, both Loid and Yuri launch into inner-diatribes both promoting proper lying (Loid) and condemning it as the resort of trash people (Yuri) before being much more succinct out loud (Loid: “lying is bad”; Yuri: “liars are trash.” Yor and Bond are stuck in the middle, and the episode ends on a somewhat tense and awkward note, but not so much that it detracted from all the lovely family moments that preceded it.

Spy x Family – 34 – Mission x Vacation

Anya had so much fun watching the fireworks she completely forgot about Mama. Loid overhears some nervous-looking State Security Service officers talking about a bomb on the ship. He drops Anya off at the daycare center, dons the disguise of a crew member who was a bomb difuser in the navy during the war, and gets to work.

Having ditched Loid, Anya ditches the day-care lady and heads to where she heard Mama would be. She finds one of Yor’s hairpin/weapons, but unable to climb up to the deck where Mama is, Anya throws it up as hard as she can. While it doesn’t travel far, it does land exactly where one of the two remaining assassins happens to be running.

He slips on it, then fires a shot into his colleague, who trips and hits the corner of the metal box beneath which is Olka, Zeb, and the kid. Anya has some kind of luck to have been of that much assistance to Yor! You can tell from her facial expression she didn’t really plan for all that to happen.

Yor is locked in a stalemate with katana guy until she discovers her weapon lying on the deck. Now that she can draw closer to him, the two prepare one final pass at each other. Yor ends up winning the duel. However, the coordinator, who had been shot by the Director (who is okay) gets away.

Anya happens to pass him in the hall, recognizes him as a Bad Guy from his thoughts, then also learns the clock mounted on the staircase has a bomb in it. She alerts a member of the crew, who had already been told by Loid to watch out for other bombs, since it will take more than one to sink the ship.

The coordinator manages to hop onto the dinghy the informant was going to ride out of there, and the two proceed to have a difference of opinion regarding the proper way to fulfill their client’s needs. They’re about to kill one another when Loid, who got word of the bomb in the clock, rips it off its pole and hucks it into the water. It explodes right above the two bad guys in their boat, and the last we see them the sharks are circling.

The day-care lady finally tracks down Anya and gives her a stern talking-to, unmoved by Anya’s insistence she was going to poop her pants and marching her back to the daycare center. With all of the assassins defeated, the recovered Director prepares a dinghy for Olka and Zeb.

Olka doesn’t leave without embracing Yor in genuine gratitude. When Yor worries about her dirtied hands, sticky with the blood of others, touching Olka and her baby, Olka tells her that those hands are what connected her son to his future.

The baby takes quite a shine to Yor (who wouldn’t?) as she hugs him. Olka leaves praying that Yor’s family may someday find the peace upon which she and her son are about to embark. The Director reminds Yor not to get sentimental, for they are naught but foot soldiers.

At the same time, the Director announces a reward for Yor completing her mission: Loid was trying to set up a meeting with her on the island where the cruise ship is headed, so he took the liberty of facilitating that plan. Loid picks up a tuckered-out Anya, having no idea she snuck out, or how much she contributed to saving every passenger on the ship.

The next morning, as the ship approaches the island, a sense of excitement and anticipation accompanies the sunrise. Anya runs out to the bow of the ship for the best view of the approaching land, Loid sticking by her side, while Yor in her leisurewear also looks eager to reunite with her family.

Spy x Family – 33 – To the Cleaners

The quick synopsis of this episode writes itself: The fireworks in the sky are no match for the fireworks on the deck. Yor tries to get Okla and Zeb to the rubber dinghy that will rendezvous with their boat out of here, but they’re spotted in the hall by the coordinator of the assassins. So while Yor hopes the fireworks will provide cover, it only ends up being a backdrop for one of Spy x Family’s longest, most intense, inventive, and nerve-wracking battles to date.

The first sign of danger is when Yor is desperately dodging a bullet from a sniper rifle. Dozens of assassins come out of the shadows, none of whom she sensed coming. This means they’re all top-flite killers, but not all assassins are created equal. You get the feeling the first few Yor carves through aren’t the strongest, and Yor gets a key assist from the Director.

Zeb gets shot in the back three times shielding Olka as they tumble into a below-deck hatch, but he’s wearing a bulletproof vest, so Yor’s clients are now out of the way, enabling her to switch off her limiter. She stares down her targets with crazed determination, and gives the Director a lot to mop up as her kills are more florid and bloody than usual.

The direction of this fight ensures we’re never ever bored, and even though Yor seems to have everything under control, the sheer number of opponents keeps the tension that something unthinkable might happen high throughout. There’s also some marvelous match cuts from fireworks to blood splattering to the coins of the gambling off-duty bodyguards.

I particularly liked the comic gauntlet in which Yor felled an assassin before they could even finish introducing themselves, followed by Director mopping up their blood. When assassins start getting hits on her, she simply shrugs them off, and having absorbed their best shot, dispatches them.

The fireworks hit their grand finale just as she strikes a victory pose, but the battle isn’t over. Now that his share has increased significantly, the coordinator offers Yor a cut to walk away from the job, but that ain’t happening. She asks if they can stand down, and that ain’t happening either. Instead, the toughest assassin yet manages to take out the Director in ten seconds flat.

Adorably, one of Yor’s first thoughts is her cover story for her change of hairstyle upon reuniting with Loid and Anya. But as her struggle against the samurai-like opponent goes on and she can only seem to retreat and defend against his attacks, she realizes she’s getting ahead of herself.

First of all, she needs to stay alive, then fulfill her mission, then get back to her family. Even so, when the katana is less than an inch from her throat, she worries she won’t be able to get Loid’s shirts from the cleaners, or return Anya’s library books. Simple little things from the peaceful side of her life.

Everything comes back to why she is doing this. Just as Ms. Olka wanted to give her son a quiet peaceful life, she did what she did to protect Yuri’s. But the fight never ends. No matter how bloody her hands get or if it claims her life or even causes her to lose the Forgers, she’s determined to cleanse the world of threats to those that matter to her. It’s a fight that may never end, but as she declares at the end (and Hayami Saori firing with both barrels)  it’s one she’ll never give up.

The post-credit vignette is about Yuri catching a cold due to Yor being away, then remembering to what lengths she went do make him herbal tea with honey when he was little. In addition to giving us an adorable younger Yor, it reinforces just why Yuri loves his sister so much. She would do literally anything for him, and do it with the biggest smile in the world. I just hope her smile can survive this cruise mission, and she can get back to Loid and Anya.

Spy x Family – 32 – Bread and Circuses

Due to circumstances outside her control, Yor is forced into a fierce battle with Barnaby, who wields an unusual sickle-and-mace weapon that won’t let her close their distance. Worse still, there’s a crowd forming wondering what the heck is going on. And worst of all: Yor spots Miss Anya in that crowd!

Anya saves the day by playing dumb, applauding the “circus performance,” and the rest of the crowd buys it and becomes a rapt audience. Yor, bless her, actually thinks Anya doesn’t recognize her, and decides to not only end this battle quickly, but put on a show doing it.

The result is Thorn Princess at her absolute best. It’s one thing to dodge that ridiculous weapon, it’s quite another to rush at Barnaby like a missile, causing his arm to shake. She anchors the chain in the floor, deflects the weapon back at him, leaps behind him, then leaps over him while tying him up with the chain. She knocks Barnaby out with some well-placed pressure point hits, and ends up right beside him, giving a curtsy to an impressed and entertained crowd.

With Yor victorious, Anya hurries back to the store just as Loid comes out of the dressing room looking as lame as anyone who draws breath has ever looked. He’s dejected for having come so wide of the mark, but the first day of their cruise ends when a punch-drunk Anya smacks her head into a shelf and falls asleep. Loid carries her to their room, looking determined to do better tomorrow.

After inspecting their new room, Yor advises the “Greys” to get some rest. “Mr. Grey” remains gobsmacked at the sheer extra-ness of the assassins going after them, betraying that at the end of the day he’s a bit of a scaredy-cat. But when Olka asks him why he’s even still with her, he remembers a day sometime after the war when he was starving.

The black market run by the Gretchers provided food for those who had none. A cheerful girl, who was none other than a young Olka, gave him a loaf of bread. She’s the reason he’s still alive in the first place, so there’s nothing he won’t do for her, even if he is scared.

And interacting with people like Yor and the director, he’s plenty scared. He should be! He thought the war was over, but the war has essentially been going on ever since in the shadows, and people like the director and Yor are the soldiers. The director checks in, arms himself, and leaves, warning Yor to stay focused or they’re all going to die.

But as Yor guards the door all night while the Greys sleep, it occurs to her she never did contact Loid and Anya or get to spend any time with them. She believes her legs were heavy in her fight with Barnaby because she was afraid of getting hurt, especially hurt in a way she wouldn’t be able to explain away to Anya and Loid.

Yor tells herself (by name) that she needs to “get her priorities straight” … but before she knew it, her priorities had shifted. Instead of soberly considering Loid and Anya nothing but “camouflage”, she’s questioning what she’s even doing in that dark room, away from them, putting her life at risk for strangers. The scene in her mind’s eye of meeting them topside broke my damn heart, because it’s a scene we may not get.

The next morning, 20 hours from the rendezvous, Franky is cursing the fact that he has to be a “kiddositter” and “doggositter”, right up until a cute young lady compliments Bond, chats with him, and departs hoping they’ll meet again. In response to this Franky considers keeping Bond as his pet. What can you say? Bond’s a ladykiller.

Back on the Lorelei, Loid has a very serious monologue like Yor’s, but the great “unknown” of which he speaks and which tests his training to the hilt is nothing more than being able to be a good dad and ensure Anya has fun on Day Two. For her part, Anya is determined to help Mama by keeping Loid occupied, but she ends up getting frustrated with her mini golf game.

After golf the two have lunch, hit the library, do a puzzle, go roller skating, and attend a magic show. It’s a full, fun day, and Loid can tell Anya was having fun, which makes it doubly inexplicable at dinner when she looks so grumpy. The truth is she’s frustrated she forgot about Mama and enjoyed herself. But when she reads Loids mind and knows she’s worrying him with her looks, she reiterates out loud that she’s having a good time … she just misses Mama.

I just hope she doesn’t end up missing her forever. Night arrives, and as the passengers go topside for an imminent fireworks show, an entirely different kind of fireworks are about to go off. Only four hours remain until the rendezvous, and enemies are closing in on the Greys’ new room, so they have to abandon it again.

As they head out in fresh disguises, all of the assassins are looking for them and ready to strike when they find them. I know Yor is the shit, and she dealt with Barnaby without too much trouble, but I’m still extremely anxious, because while I don’t doubt her physical abilities, her head isn’t 100% in the game. Her legs aren’t going to get any lighter.

Spy x Family – 31 – Choppy Seas

The first night aboard the Princess Lorelei seems primed to end without incident, as the “Greys” have a nice dinner in the first-class restaurant. McMahon order Yor to take Shaty and her son back to their room and remain on guard. Shaty, for her part, would prefer to believe there are no enemies on board, and even hopes Yor will be able to see her family, who are availing themselves of the third-class buffet.

McMahon smells a assassin and gets to him first, breaking his arm and leg to get answers and then killing him and tossing him overboard with grim efficiency. There are many assassins aboard, and they know Olka’s alias and her room number. But the next assassin is already at the door before McMahon and Mr. Grey can get there. Fortunately, the Thorn Princess is ready for “room service.”

The remaining assassins aboard, numbering well over a dozen, have a little confab topside, with their ostensible leader suggesting they all work together to take out Olka without commotion and splitting the reward. When one assassin asks why they don’t just kill every mother with a child on board, he is promptly killed. These are assassins, not murderers.

With Room 3048 compromised, Yor leads the Greys to their new second-class cabin, but before that they head to a bustling masquerade ball while wearing masks in order to blend in. Yor can sense the bloodlust from two of the assassins embedded in the party, and knocks one out with a button and the other by pretending to reject his offer of a dance.

The next assassin to approach Yor and Olka doesn’t care about causing a commotion, he simply wants to kill the target and her babe as soon as he sees them. Anya picks up on his thoughts, then spots the owner of those thoughts, “Sickle-and-Chain Barnaby”, approaching Yor with the intent to engage.

While Anya initially begs for a weird skeleton keychain to the point she has Loid wondering what he should do to look more like a normal dad—buy it or refuse to buy it—she’s certain if Loid sees Yor fighting an assassin he’ll divorce Yor and she’ll end up back in an orphanage. So she has Loid try on every article of clothing in the store—which happens faster than she expected thanks to him being a master of disguise!

As for Yor, she only senses Barnaby’s murderous intent a second or two before he strikes, not giving her much time to ensure Olka isn’t beheaded. This guy is strong; perhaps the strongest person she’s gone up against. But as always, my money is on Yor to sort him out.

Spy x Family – 30 – Cruise Control

Yor is assigned a new mission by the “Shopkeeper”—someone with skills comparable to hers and who was possibly her master. He tests her by distracting her with his lovely garden, but by dodging his surprise attack Yor proves that she’s ready to not only defend herself from attacks, but to “end any evildoer at any time.”

In this case, Yor is not being tasked with ending anyone, but with protecting the last surviving member of a mafia family, Olka Gretcher, and her infant son.

Olka is seeking asylum in another country, but the man who took over the crime family is sending all manner of bounty hunters her way. Olka will be traveling via luxury cruise liner, which just happens to be the exact same cruise Anya wins in a raffle by reading the mind of the official who is scamming everyone else.

It’s quite the coincidence; one that has Yor contemplating for the first time whether this will her last job as Thorn Princess.

Yor, Loid, and Anya take a train to the port town from which  the Princess Loreliei cruise liner, pride of Ostania, will depart. It is a massive ship, close enough in size to the much older Titanic, and while Yor, Loid, and Anya are aboard, so are a number of people seeking to find and kill Olka.

Yor must undertake a job in the same venue where her family is taking an ordinary vacation by sheer coincidence. With all the unknown variables in play it already feels like it’s not going to be smooth sailing.

When Yor meets Olka, she’s in full-on disguise as Shaty Grey, wife of a department store magnate. Her “husband” takes one look at Yor and is skeptical that she’s enough to protect his “wife”, but Matt from City Hall assures him that Yor is strong and more than capable of protecting “Shaty”.

That said, Yor is weary of undertaking this mission in such close proximity to her family, which she’s come to see as not fake.

While Yor is aboard the Lorelei under the auspices of “advanced urban planning”, Loid and Anya are simply there because she won a raffle, and accept that Yor will be busy on official business. Olka, meanwhile, dresses Yor in one of her leisure dresses in order to blend in more.

While Yor manages to gain the trust of both Olka and her young son Gram, the cruise ship is essentially a den of vipers, with one particularly focused individual listening in on multiple conversations on the ship via strategically placed bugs. As soon as Yor and Olka are speaking plainly to one another, this person picks up on it and zeros in on “Shaty Grey’s” cabin.

No doubt Yor will have to flex her not inconsiderable skills to defend Olka and her son, while also trying not to expose her skills to Loid and Anya. At the same time, I have no doubt that both Twilight and Anya’s ESP would come in handy for Yor, so we’ll see how successful she is in keeping her mission a secret.

At any rate, I’m just glad we’re finally getting a Yor-centric story that explores whether she even needs to keep killing now that Yuri is largely self-sufficient and she has a fine husband and daughter.

Spy x Family – 29 – Poker Face

This week Spy x Family has just two stories, both of which involve characters trying to avoid lives of solitude. First up is Anya, who learns from Becky that they may soon be separated into different classes if her grades don’t improve. Then they overhear two upperclassmen discussing one of the school wonders: the Pastry of Knowledge.

This year it’s macarons, which if eaten are supposed to make you an Imperial Scholar. But Anya and Becky, as well as Damian and his buds are too slow; the last order goes to George Glooman. In his infinite generosity, he offers four of the five macarons to the others. The only problem is, there are five others: Anya, Damian, Becky, Emile, and Ewen.

The group decides to decide which four get the macarons by playing Old Maid. And while Anya has never played and doesn’t know the rules, she’s a fast learner, which is to say, she can read everyone’s mind and wins her first game with ease. Too much ease, as Damian thinks to himself that if she’s not cheating, then she can read minds.

The last thing Anya wants to do is expose her powers, so she agrees to play a next round to show her first wasn’t a fluke or result of cheating. She picks the Joker on purpose, but is unable to get rid of it until the end, when Damian is ready to take her other card but sees her cute crying face and takes the Joker instead.

While Damian does the chivalrous thing and Anya gets a macaron, despite her intense shounen style reaction to eating it it doesn’t improve her intelligence in the least. While her test scores improve marginally, they’re still pretty dang low, so the threat of being separated from Becky remains.

Franky has always been Mr. Lonely Hearts, and his latest scheme is to locate and retrieve the lost cat of a cute cafe owner he likes named Kasey. When Loid wordlessly refuses to help out, Franky lucks out by running into Yor on the street. She’s all to happy to assist, but after Franky sets off a catnip bomb, she’s tangled up in the horde of cats that comes.

The cat they’re after, Kopi, like your typical cat, knows they’re trying to secure him, and so takes every step to avoid that. Even when Frankie whips out a crude mech suit to close the gap between them, his plan is undone by the need to warm up the suit’s endinge for 15 minutes. So Kopi just wanders away.

But when Kopi is headed for a busy, dangerous street, Yor takes matters into her own hands, destroys Franky’s suit, and tosses the motor backpack ahead of the cat with a mighty heave to redirect it. She then uses her own catlike speed and agility to catch Kopi.

But while Kasey is overjoyed that Kopi is back in her arms, Franky quickly learns he was barking up the wrong tree: she already has a strapping boyfriend. Resigned to living out the rest of his days alone, and now bereft of a mech suit it took ten years to build, he decides to throw himself back into his job.

Speaking of jobs, while Yor is reveling in a co-worker telling her she’s “normal” (even though she was being sarcastic), she gets an ominous call at city hall from one of her contacts who knows her as the Thorn Princess, announcing that there’s a new job for her. Could this be the prelude to the Yor-centric main arc I’ve been hearing about? I hope so … less pathetic Franky, more adorably badass Yor, please!

Spy x Family – 28 – Little Brother is Watching

In keeping with this season darting around hither and thither, this week’s episode focuses on Yor’s brother Yuri as he serves as a gatherer and reporter of information on suspected threats to Ostania in his role as lieutenant in the SSS. After a successful sting operation, he’s immediately assigned to bring down Franklin Perkins, who has taken to writing and distributing anti-Ostania propaganda.

As Yor’s brother, Yuri has demonstrated he’s a tough cookie, and also puts a great deal of care and detail into his work. As he follows, listens in on, and profiles Perkins, it starts to occur to him that his target could be motivated by concern for his family, just like he primarily does what he does to protect Yor. However, after typing this observation down, he promptly pulls the paper out of the typewriter and discards it.

With that crumpled paper, Yuri puts out of his mind any comparison to himself and his prey. This is a cold war, after all; there has to be an other to villify and bring to justic, and it’s Perkins. That said, after catching him mailing his illegal publication at the post office, he doesn’t storm Perkins’ apartment, which he shares with his frail father.

Instead, Yuri waits outside until Perkins comes out, so his father won’t see how pathetic he is. Perkins’ response cuts deep: “who is more pathetic, someone fighting the government, or a government dog?” Yuri again refuses the comparison: what Perkins did will make his dad sad; Yuri would never do anything to make Yor sad.

For his continued solid work, Yuri gets a pat on the back and promise of a fancy dinner from the Chief himself, but it’s instructive that Yuri needs to stop by Loid and Yor’s just to see his sister. Seeing her, and having his head patted by her, soothes a soul that is twisted into knots every day at his job. Even Anya thinks to comfort him after reading his mind…until his mind becomes full of “Yors” and hearts and she’s grossed out!

That’s it for the episode proper, which only takes up about two-thirds of the standard runtime. The rest is given over to a bonus “flirty” episode of Bondman in which he woos every woman he comes across, friend and foe, until he has a harem of eight women following him along missions.

It’s a random but hilarious little mini-ep, and I dug the retro resolution and palette. There are also three little omakes after this involving Anya and Damian, the highlight of which is Anya hearing all the boys in the pool deciding to pee in it, and swearing off pools forever. I’ll give this SxF this: it didn’t lack for variety!

Spy x Family – 27 – Time to Space Out

SxF remains content to play around in its world rather than leap into any new big story arc, and there’s nothing more playful than a segment that’s all about Bond, our big lovable borfer. He starts getting premonitions about his untimely demise, and learns that Yor forgot to buy dog food, so she’ll try her hand at making him some food.

The result of that hand-trying could well be life-taking, so Bond escapes the house and wanders the city trying to pick up Loid’s scent. If Loid is coming home late due to his work, Bond resolves to help him with that work so he can come home early…and feed him.

Loid is initially shocked when Bond shows up, especially on his own (and it’s odd that we never cut to Yor looking for him; surely she could outrun him). Loid’s mission is to steal a vial of truth serum from a lab that just so happened to run the animal experiments Bond was involved in.

Believing Bond wants revenge (not just an edible dinner), Loid allows Bond to help out. Bond proves useful both in being able to find a deserted path to the lab room, alert Loid when people are coming, and aid in the incapacitation of said people when they come in.

It’s cute, and I love Bond’s design and his “borfs”, but if there’s one major takeaway from his segment, it’s that I might be one of the rare people who prefer the dog in smaller portions. The remainder of the episode checks in on Damian, who was absent last week.

Fresh off being praised by his father for the first time, Damian is determined to study hard and gain more Stella so his dad will praise him more. The studying leaves him sleep deprived, and for his lateness he’s sent to the dorm mother for chores.

His friends want to go to the movies with him, but when it’s clear he can’t go, they intentionally get in trouble so they can serve their punishment with him. Henderson notes that this is a most elegant demonstration of friendship; Ewin and Emile aren’t just toadies and suck-ups.

When he sees how much fun they’re having, Henderson assigns them a new “punishment”—going on a nature research trip with the groundskeeper (or “custos), Mr. Green. It starts with a harrowing canoe trip  across “rapids” and down a “towering” waterfall.

But neither turns out to be what it seems when Mr. Green stops paddling, and when after falling overboard Damian learns the water is only knee-deep. Emile and Ewin propping him up in the water at the cost of their own lives was another sign of how much they care for him.

The purpose of the trip is made clear when Mr. Green provides the basic tools for fishing but has the boys actually catch the fish for their picnic. And while the freshly-caught, freshly-grilled fish is tasty and rewarding, Damian can help but feel like he’s wasting time.

However, Mr. Green impresses upon both Damian and the others the importance of “spacing out” while on the journey to academic achievement. All Damian was doing was grinding himself down into a sleep-deprived wreck; it’s not a winning strategy for becoming an Imperial Scholar.

Instead, Damian occasionally has to have days like this, when he and his friends were just hanging out and goofing around on Eden’s very beautiful grounds. I’ll admit, I missed Loid, Yor, and Anya a bit in this segment, but it was a fun enough diversion, and Damian never ceases to entertain with his tsuntsun moments.

Spy x Family – 26 (S2 01) – Burdens of the Butthurt

After a mostly serious encounter between Loid and his target Donovan Desmond closed out its first two-cour season, Spy X Family returns to its spy sitcom roots and shows that Wit Studio x Cloverworks haven’t skipped a beat. The show looks and sounds just as good, and comes with fresh, inventive OP and ED with two suitably bangin’ songs.

It also eases us in with the simplest of premises this week: Yor got shot in the butt on her latest assassin job, and while she (presumably) got the bullet out, it still hurts like hell. When she comes home, Loid mistakenly believes she’s in a bad mood because he made her run an errand, but the next morning her face is even more sour (Yor’s face game is in rare form this week).

As Yor can’t very well tell Loid why she’s making such faces—nor can Anya, who knows because she’s a telepath—Loid believes he needs to improve Yor’s mood in order to shore up their marriage of convenience, and that means a carefully curated date.

He leaves Anya with Franky, but when Anya says she wants to tail her parents, Franky is all for it, as he has nothing better to do. Loid discovers the tail instantly, but pretends not to notice. What he can’t help but notice, however, is that throughout their date, Yor simply won’t sit down. She can’t, because she fears her butt will hurt more than it already does.

At the fancy restaurant where Loid got a reservation for dinner, Yor has to at least pretend to sit at the table while keeping her tookus an inch from the seat. By dumb luck, a new waiter at this restaurant just happens to be the only survivor of Yor’s mission. Anya can sense his intent to kill her from outside, which could lead to her revealing her assassin skills.

The waiter’s first attempt is to use a whole blowfish worth of poison on Yor, but as an assassin she’s built an immunity to most poisons, including this one. But while the poison doesn’t kill her, it does offer extraordinary pain relief. Finally able to sit, focus, and relax, Yor starts to enjoy herself.

His first avenging plot foiled, the waiter is prepared to build a makeshift bomb and blow both Yor and himself to smithereens. Anya, having heard his plans in her mind, dons a new black spy suit, infiltrates the restaurant via the ventilation system, and sets up a Home Alone-style gauntlet of booby traps that defeat him.

Where she got the spy suit so quickly, and how she’s able to follow the bomb making directions so perfectly, hardly matters; we’re dealing with heightened reality here! What matters is that Anya is a complete badass when she warns the waiter to give up trying to kill Yor and get back to his ordinary job and girlfriend.

Of course, if the waiter hadn’t been there, Yor would have never been able to enjoy her dinner, or the walk afterwards which affords a beautiful view of the city and traveling amusement park. The whole reason she sucked it up to go with Loid is that she didn’t want to blow their cover by never going on dates, which would have made her co-workers suspicious.

But now that she’s gone on a date, she had a lot of fun, and wants to do it again if it isn’t too much trouble…when her butt doesn’t hurt. Loid says he’d love to take her on another date soon. Alas, the next morning the blowfish poison has worn off, Yor is back in agony, and Loid once again mistakes her demeanor as being in a bad mood.

Honestly, this episode had me at “shot in the butt”, which is not only an inherently funny situation, but also just funny to say. Hayami Saori’s “butt-hurt voice” is also funny, as are all the date scenes of her standing when she should be sitting. I’m sure things will get more serious again at some point this season, but for now I’m enjoying the silliness.

I’ll close by adding: is Yor’s domestic life starting to adversely affect her assassining? Not only did she get shot in the butt, but the waiter wasn’t the shooter. That means she allowed two people to survive when she thought she was done, both of whom overheard her phone conversation. Seems kinda sloppy for the Thorn Princess!