Hello everyone, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to get back to Spy x Family, which most recently offered some clear strides in precisely the direction I was hoping for. My persistent complaint from the start of this production has been a relative lack of Yor interiority or agency, and episode seven provided exactly that, as Yor’s experiences with her brother informed her current advice on Loid’s parenting. Unlike Loid, Yor actually has some personal experience dealing with a young family member, and her words helped Loid realize he’d been treating Anya more as a faulty machine than a living daughter. That in turn led to Loid affirming Yor’s place in the family, as he told her to stop considering herself an outsider relative to him and Anya.

I’m very much hoping Yor follows that advice, and continues to loudly assert her own perspective. But either way, I imagine we’re in for some delightful chaos at Eden Academy, with Damien’s infatuation likely to cause even more problems than his prior anger. Spy x Family is continuing to find seemingly limitless lodes of comedy within its conceptual framework, and I’m eager to see whatever nonsense comes next. Let’s get to it!

Episode 8

“The Counter-Secret Police Cover Operation.” Jeez, that title’s a mouthful. Seems like we’ll actually be seeing some action on the parents’ end, then!

We open on Anya proudly declaring an entirely wrong answer. Seems like her studying is reaping less than stellar results – though again, it’s not exactly fair to ask a girl two years too young for this academy to keep up with the other students

I also expect this is a joke that worked better in manga. Not that its execution is bad here, but the deadpan comedy of Anya’s confidence slamming into “that’s entirely wrong” seems better suited to the pacing and aesthetic of flatly drawn panels, rather than its somewhat protracted execution here. I frankly only mention it because Spy x Family generally doesn’t fall into this common trap, wherein a manga’s sense of comedic timing is lost due to the screen overly laboring the punchline

This is perhaps most often the fate of panel corner gags, which are originally designed as asides which are funnier explicitly because they’re relegated to the background. When such gags are adapted into screen-filling followups to whatever they’re commenting on, the sense of incidental, fragmentary humor is lost

Elsewhere, Loid is meeting with his handler, who informs him that their contact in city hall was compromised

I like how the layouts of this meeting emphasize the sense of exposure and paranoia. Rather than closer shots designed simply to keep the speakers in frame, the shot is framed from far behind Loid’s shoulder, intentionally including other patrons who might be enemy agents, and fostering an inherent sense of someone surveilling Loid through the bushes

The state’s counterintelligence units look appropriately terrifying, with scars in all the right places

Yor realizes she hasn’t informed her younger brother that she’s apparently been married for a year. To be honest, I could see myself making this mistake, so I can’t be too hard on her

Oh my god, Yor’s brother is a member of the secret police!? I figured this show was intentionally keeping the darker elements of its premise vague in order to maintain a generally carefree tone, but Yuri being a professional torturer kinda makes it harder to ignore the inhumanity of this situation. It’s pretty tough to write a sympathetic Stasi character unless you’re doing some sort of The Lives of Others-type thing

They sort of handwave Yuri’s efficacy as an interrogator by making his breakthrough come as a result of better intelligence gathering, not better physical intimidation

I do like that Yuri and Yor share those same scary eyes when they get serious. Which I suppose points to a potential moral escape route for their characters – that each of them were built into monsters by necessity, as a natural consequence of trying to survive alone in this society

Yuri states that Twilight is his natural enemy. Little does he know

Welp, now we’re getting to the torture. Yeah, hard to feel much sympathy for Yuri

Oh wow, this is great! Anya finally starts to understand fractions, but only in the context of Bondman’s remaining bullets. A genuinely useful lesson for teaching in general: framing the lesson in terms of concepts or activities that the child is already invested in. Children can direct a lot of passion and focus towards things they’re interested in, you just have to find a way to fit the lesson into that framework

“He has two-eighths of his bullets left!” Anya often seems to strike the same chord of charming, self-serious silliness as a character like Yotsuba

Loid’s lovey-dovey couple accessories are terrific. It sort of strains credulity that both of them are so innocent in the ways of romance, but it’s funny and endearing, so I’ll allow it

Great incidental detail here of Loid perusing Bondman Volume 1 as Anya reads Bondman Volume 5. He presumably bought them just for her, but now that he’s realized Bondman is a useful educational tool, he’s catching up in order to better implement classic Bondman moments into future lessons. A quiet expression of him becoming a better father

Yuri having a complex about his sister works for the drama, by setting up a domestic adversarial relationship to match he and Twilight’s professional rivalry, but it still feels a tad beneath this series conceptually. The show elsewise doesn’t really lean into otaku gimmicks for its humor or characterization; it makes actual situational jokes, not just “here’s a concept you like”

Oh my god, Anya’s stuffed animal has little horn caps just like she does

Loid and Yuri immediately set to work sizing each other up. Having him work with the secret police is definitely the best choice in terms of fostering more drama, and playing up the “everyone has a massive secret” series motif

“I could never tell him that I got married so I could continue killing” combined with Yor’s bright smile is just perfect

It seems like each of these siblings have accepted the mantle of monster in order to protect the other, never knowing that they’ve basically made the same bargain. Nice hint of tragedy in that

I like that we get this flashback of Loid actually proposing they tell Yuri something close to the truth (well, at least the truth so far as Yor understands it). Loid rightfully doesn’t trust Yor to be able to maintain a complex lie, and considering the actual truth is relatively harmless, he’d far prefer avoiding lies altogether. He’s embodying one of the key lessons of lying effectively: lying only when you need to, and avoiding the stress or potential for error of unnecessary falsification

Of course, Yor is totally confident she can mislead her brother, the professional interrogator

Yor’s excuse is indeed perfect: “it totally slipped my mind.” Not only is this a version of the truth, it’s also precisely what anyone would expect from Yor

“When it concerns his sister, this man’s sense of logic goes out the window.” Welp, so much for all that professional training

Loid’s excellent cooking makes for a strong opening salvo in his counter-offensive

Yuri starts off strong with some traditional interrogation questions, but swiftly defeats himself over his fear of Yor using any cutesy nicknames for Loid

With Yuri sufficiently drunk, he begins slipping, rattling off default templates of conversations from the Ostanian Intelligence Agency handbook. Love it when this show gets into some genuinely intriguing spy beats, like the importance of sniffing out formalized enemy speeches, and the subsequent counter-importance of making sure your speech patterns are varied when addressing a potential enemy agent. Yuri’s only operating in protective brother mode here, whereas Loid is in full spy mode

Of course, Loid’s already done his research on Yuri, and suspected him long before this meeting. Granted, that raises the immediate question of why Loid is so oblivious to Yor’s behavior, given she’s even less professional than her brother, but we’re not here to nitpick the plausibility of a premise whose true justification is “because the resulting situation is really fun”

“He may be easier to manipulate than I thought.” Yeah, everything’s really coming up Loid at this meeting

An excellent riff on Yuri’s obliviousness when it comes to his sister, as we run through a gauntlet of treasured memories of Yor returning home covered in blood and bearing gifts

“I’m confident that I could protect her from spears, but meteors!?” Yuri is in fact even stupider than his sister. Wonderful

Oh no! Yuri demands a kiss to prove their love!

And Done

Ah, this gloriously ridiculous show. I was seriously wondering how they were going to humanize Yuri after that dramatic introduction, and making him even more of an idiot than his sister just might do it. The two of them are obviously quite similar to each other; both of them have accepted a terrible burden all for the sake of protecting their sibling, adding up to a tragic professional Gift of the Magi-style situation. It’s also just extremely good whenever Loid and Yor are forced to act like a genuine couple, something both Yuri and Anya effectively prodded at here. If Yuri is going to serve as an irritant that pushes the Forgers closer together, I’m happy to welcome him to the cast.

This article was made possible by reader support. Thank you all for all that you do.