Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am eager as heck to get back to the adventures of the Forger family, having finally posted enough of my existing writeups to feel justified in jumping back to the series. Spy x Family has indeed become one of those shows that I can’t help but gorge myself on given the opportunity, and thus I’ve had to ration my viewing as judiciously as possible. Well, the rationing has transpired, and at last we’re here!
Our last excursion with the Forgers proved to be Yor’s finest hour, wherein the basic gag of “Yor can’t cook” was somehow expanded into an exploration of how food, family, and memory are naturally entwined, concluding with Yor finding a crucial link between her time with Yuri and her days with the Forgers. Touching on her core anxieties, her feelings about the past, and her dreams for the future, episode sixteen offered some vital texture to Yor’s personality, while further emphasizing her thematic alignment with the rest of the Forgers.
With Yor’s anxieties assuaged and Bond settling into the family home, I imagine we’re in for some Anya adventures over at the academy. But Spy x Family is full of delightful surprises, so I’m sure I’ll enjoy whatever madness awaits. Let’s get back to the Forgers!
Episode 17
“Carry Out The Griffin Plan.” And apparently the griffin is some kind of flying cardboard contraption? Sounds like school shenanigans to me
Becky catches up to Anya and rambles about last night’s episode of “Berlint in Love,” some romantic drama. A nice offhand reminder of Anya’s age relative to her peers – she doesn’t have the interest in romance of a precocious first year like Becky, she just wants to watch spies fight bad guys
Becky is happy to lord her relative maturity over Anya, as kids tend to. It’s remarkable the precise gradations of “that stuff’s for babies” you’ll come across among young children, many of whom are desperate to prove that they’re actually not young children after all
I’ve said it before, but the process of maturation generally winds from “I like the stuff I like” as a child into a maelstrom of anxious presentation and performed interests as a self-aware adolescent, and then hopefully back to “I like the stuff I like” once you have the self-assurance of an adult. And media follows in its audiences’ stead: shows for both children and adults tend to protest their maturity and seriousness with far less intensity than shows for adolescents
“Previously on Spy x Family, Damian couldn’t appreciate how awesome Bond was, so…” Love the sequences of Anya embracing all the artifice of pulp spy dramas. This show really wouldn’t work if Anya didn’t think spies were the coolest
I appreciate that Anya’s fantasy version of Damian’s house is about as fully realized of a house as she could actually draw
This time Anya has a weapon – a family photo including Bond himself! Love his little bowtie here, he’s such a refined gentleman
Oh god, Becky’s interest in romance means she finds Loid hot as hell. I mean, he is, but nothing good can come of this
Ah, arts and crafts class. That’s how we arrive at our titular griffin
The class will be making animals out of the assigned materials in groups, a challenge that’s presumably mostly designed to foster discussion, compromise, and collaboration between the students. What they make is likely less important than how they conduct themselves while deciding to make it
Speaking of the tension between embracing childhood and storming onward into anxious adolescence, we see the same divide between Anya and Becky playing out between Damian and his minions. His two friends are eager to make a cool animal, but Damian is swift to declare that “this project is for babies”
Ahaha, Damian actually shouts “god damn it” when he’s grouped with Anya
For the moment, it seems like Becky’s crush on Loid mostly just exists to offer some road bumps on the way to Anya revealing Bond to Damian
The headmaster spells out my assumptions regarding the purpose of this task, though he also emphasizes the creativity and uniqueness of the final result
Anya’s sculpture of Bond is some crumpled up paper with three strings taped to it. Yes Anya, surely this marvelous recreation of your dog will bring Damian to his knees
“His name is Bond.” “So you’re into naming garbage?” Absolutely obliterated
Damian is the one planning on making a griffin, as seen in his family crest. So far it seems like almost none of the students are collaborating, so there’s definitely an opportunity for Anya to rally back from her garbage dog
Damian’s fantasies of being praised by his father for creating this griffin inform us in the audience that such praise is an unimaginable treasure to him, and that his father is only interested in how Damian upholds or shames the family name
Incredibly bizarre new Anya face for her graciously agreeing to help Damian complete his griffin. I think she’s going for “a beacon of charity,” but she in practice looks both menacing and a little stoned
And of course, with Becky in total romance mode, she assumes Anya’s charity is a result of her crush on Damian. This is also convincingly childlike behavior – when you’ve just discovered a paradigm-shifting fact like “holy crap, romance and attraction exist,” you tend to interpret everything you’re seeing through that new lens
Damian has absolutely no appreciation for Anya’s badass griffin jet engines
This conflict is serving as an excellent vehicle for teaching Anya about Damian’s own circumstances. I like how the introduction of this griffin as something he might impress his father with gives him something to lose; Damian’s generally all confidence among his peers, but he is desperately insecure about pleasing his father, and that vulnerability will likely make him seem far more sympathetic to Anya. She knows more than any child should have to about performing to please unsympathetic adults, given her time in various orphanages
Damian’s combination of a mangled primary griffin and Anya’s baby griffin corpse wins top prize, and brings the judges to tears with its evocation of a country that’s beaten but not broken. You next-leveled them, Damian!
Unfortunately, Damian is well aware that this creative reading of his work would not impress his father. Their total lack of a bond is made clear through Damian phoning home, and speaking to the butler Jeeves, who is presumably the most sympathetic member of his household. Heck, even his friends at school seem mostly preoccupied with his status – everyone sees him as an extension of his father, but his father doesn’t see him at all
For our next sequence, Handler is introduced as Sylvia Sherwood. I don’t think we’d received her name before, but it is indeed appropriately spy-like. Three syllables that roll into each other followed by two syllables that stand alone often make for impactful, fiction-ready names – “Anderson Blacktire,” “Timothy Pelton,” etcetera. It’s like how names with that Flash Gordon rhythm always end up sounding like space adventurers (hence “Zap Brannigan”)
Her nickname is “Fullmetal Lady”
Jeez, the animation and layouts for this sequence are on another level! Copious fluid movement even of Handler’s clothes and hair, combined with compositions that always lead the eye towards the next cut
And Done
Anya has made a triumphant return to the academy, and achieved a great victory in her Damian friendship project! Well, that may be putting it a little too optimistically, but her psychic snooping of Damian’s motives have at least given her some insight into the very human motives inspiring Damian’s bravado and quest for perfection. Damian clings to his lordly status because it is all he has; outside of the halls of this school, he has nothing to comfort him, and certainly nothing resembling Anya’s warm and welcoming home. If Anya can shift from helping Damian Cause Of The Mission to helping him simply because he needs a friend, Operation Stryx may finally take wing!
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