Welcome back everyone, to another week of SpyXFamily. This episode Yor struggles with her maternal feelings, Loid has a mental breakdown and Anya finally goes to school! Without further ado, lets dive in.
Starting off with the visuals, I am sad to say that this episode left something to be desired. Filled with a lot of still posing, sliding backgrounds and teleporting characters, it simply isn’t comparable to last weeks effort. This isn’t to say every episode has to be a sakuga fest, last week was a treat. On top of that SpyXFamily definitely tried to be smart with how it used its limitations. Anya teleporting around was used to emphasize cuteness while a lot of the still frames focused on the comedic facial reactions of the characters. This is all fine. I just think that some scenes, such as Yor saving Anya from the kidnappers for example, suffered from this more economic style of production. And that’s a shame.
Moving on to the episode proper, I have to say… I found the first half to be really dull. Nothing much happened, it was basically episode 3 all over again. The jokes were one-note, the activities were just cutesy family time, it’s the exact Slice of Life stuff I fall asleep to. We got to explore Yor and her desire to be more of a mother to Anya, true. I’m always down to develop their relationships and explore character dynamics when you remove another from the scene, in this case Loid. The ending with Yor teaching Anya how to defend herself was a cute punchline, and it paid off in spades in the second half. It’s just that the time spent leading up to that was not as engaging as it could have been.
Speaking of the second half though, this is where SpyXFamily kicked it up a notch. The comedy in particular improved leaps and bounds as Anya went off on her own little adventure. Just take a look at one of my favorite jokes of the episode, Anya smiling at Damian’s taunting. There’s the initial comedy of her smug face appearing on screen, followed by all of her classmates reactions only for the punchline to slide in at the end from Anya herself about how Yor is a liar and it didn’t help at all. There were stages to this joke that simply didn’t exist in jokes from the first half. And these stages apply to everything that happened. Anya ignoring Becky to becoming friends, or presenting the mission of either befriending Damian or becoming a Scholar only to end the episode on both being in the gutter. It’s so much better.
On top of the comedy though, SpyXFamily also brought us a lot of Anya reaction faces. I’m talking a metric boat load of what will, inevitably, become discord emotes or twitter profile pictures. Just to name a few you have: Smug Anya, lying Anya, nervous Anya. bewildered Anya, disappointed Anya, surprised Becky, happy Becky, nervous breakdown Loid, the list goes on. Maybe to some this is a small deal. But I think these are what will keep SpyXFamily in the anime cultural conscience long after the season as has ended. Even when only the manga existed these reaction faces were iconic of the series. With the longer reach of the anime? Well, expect to see them around I guess.
As for plot, this episode introduces us to Phase 2 of Operation Strix! Now that we are in school Anya must become an Imperial Scholar, the most prestigious position one can get at the school. Does this sound like a tall order? Loid thinks so to, instead coming up with a plan b: Befriend the targets youngest son Damian. And of course, all of this falls apart almost immediately. I’ve always liked this setup. I think have multiple routes to reach the goal allows SpyXFamily to throw wrenches or give boons whenever it wants. Allowing the series to keep things fresh. On top of that, having a place for Anya to have her little solo-interactions, her own goals, peers and cast, is really important. Now SpyXFamily can switch between any of the three main plots/characters whenever one of them gets stale and have plenty of material to work with.
So yeah, all in all I think this was one of the weaker episodes since the first half was a wash for me, but the second half made up for it in spades. Anya’s little solo venture was able to stand shoulder to shoulder with Yor and Loid’s own solo-stories, and I think that structure is very important for the long term enjoyment of the series. All of this ultimately resulting in an episode that I think was a decent time and a fine enough change of pace after last weeks action set piece. However, now the question becomes: What will SpyXFamily do to shake things up? Or will it languish in this status quo like so many comedies do. I already know the answer of course, but I’m curious what you all think will happen. Let me know down below and I will see you next week!
An easy to miss detail that made it into the show, is that EVERY student had at least one parent present either during the entrance ceremony or the picture, with Damian being the only exception (there’s a random woman in the final picture without a child, but that can be explained as an oversight by the animators). He was alone the entire time. It’s already been explained that his father rarely leaves the house, but his mother didn’t even show up to be with him.