Welcome everyone, to a super late SpyxFamily episode! Apologies for that. I didn’t get back from a wedding until Monday, and then had to get the Seasonal Preview and Hikaru no Go review out. Not to mention the end of year Anime of the Year post we have coming up. Suffice to say, this is a busy time of year in every sense. Now without further ado, onto the episode!
Starting off, the first half of this episode was all about Loid and Yor, and it was great. My big issue with SpyXFamily has always been how few and far between its moments of character progression are. How the same jokes become stale and it becomes afraid to change the status quo. And in a way, even with this segment, it still isn’t changing the status quo. The very end of the segment has Yor saying she forgot what happened because she was drunk, though it did sort of walk that back by saying they had the conversation again. But it doesn’t change that, on some small level, progress did happen in these two’s relationship. Loid opened up and let Yor in, telling her about his own childhood. Not some WISE story, his actual parents and his experience growing up in a war. It’s slow, glacially slow, but still progress.
On top of that, SpyXFamily still managed to weave some good jokes into the segment as well. Stuff like Loid going for the honeytrap, trying to really seduce Yor, only to think he got rejected because she was so flustered she kicked him with her full strength. Getting knocked out, and then kicked out of the bar, all because Fiona made Yor question her place in the family. It’s the same jokes played again sure, Yor being freakishly strong and Loid doing anything for the mission. But the context surrounding the jokes, Loid and Yor on an actual date, was novel this time. I’d really like to see more dates in fact. Even if they don’t end in character progression they would still be a new and interesting scenario for the same classic jokes to be made. At least until those get tiring to.
The second half meanwhile was just a playdate between Anya and Becky. Cute, but there wasn’t really much substance to it. The main thing I got out of it was some added depth to Becky’s character. We learn how she doesn’t have many friends, how she wasn’t excited to go to Eden, and generally how lonely she was growing up in a position of power. While that doesn’t sound like much, or that we could have inferred that, it makes her clinginess to Anya much more understandable now. She found someone who doesn’t care for her money or her position, who just enjoys hanging with her and having fun. Even Becky’s butler, Martha, noticed this and seem to be happy for her little ward. Now if SpyXFamily could just back away from the “Sexualizing a 6 year old” line, we will be in the clear!
So yeah, all in all a solid, more wholesome episode. I admit, SpyXFamily generally isn’t my groove. Like most Slice of Life’s, there are long stretches where just absolutely nothing happens. No action, no character progression, not even wholesome family antics. Just… nothing. And because of that my interest in the show has gradually waned across its 26 episodes. I’ve just sort of… lost the energy to write these posts. The more the series settles into its core niche/loop, the more obvious it becomes we aren’t going to get any substantial work on the either the Spy or the Assassin stories. They keep getting hinted at, and even the occasional arc. But none of them really have lasting consequences it feels like, except for that one time we got a dog. I don’t know, I need to mull this over before writing the final review.
Throughout the show I have tended to find that Yor gets neglected the most in terms of storylines among the main trio so I was quite happy with the direction they were going with for the first segment. With one exception; for that brief period of time where Loid was going to fake being in love with her I suddenly got really angry at how he could do that to her. She may not get as much screen time as Loid and Anya, but the show has done a good job and making me really like her as a character and wanting her to be happy.
Regarding the overall direction the show is going in (or lack thereof), I long ago came to the determination that I don’t really care about plot movement at all in this show. They could spend several more cours with no movement in Operation Strix and I don’t think I’d mind it. For me its about the comedy and the family stuff; the spy stuff is fun and I’m fine with them doing things like the 2 episode tennis tournament arc we just got where Loid has a mission but it doesn’t necessarily move things along significantly. Of course the assassin stuff is pretty much non-existent. They’ve got their gimmick and I don’t think it needs a shakeup. Maybe I feel differently 30 episodes from now if the plot hasn’t moved along further, but things haven’t gone stale for me. Granted I don’t have the role of writing a post about it every week. I totally can get it losing appeal for that.
Like I keep saying dude the manga gets deeper into almost the stuff you want. An arc for Yor and a big flashback for Loid are coming up. If you want them I suggest reading he manga instead of watching the anime.