Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to dive back into Spy x Family, and see if Anya’s skillfully executed Griffin Plan has earned her any points with the dreaded Damian. The end result of their collaboration threaded the narrow needle of impressing school officials while being useless as an offering to Damian’s father, so I imagine Damian’s own feelings are as jumbled as Anya’s collaborative blessing. Regardless, the episode offered us significant insight into Damian’s motivation, with Anya’s powers offering us a window into his sense of alienation and inferiority relative to his brother.
Damian and his family are clearly being set up as a thematic inverse of the Forgers: while the Forgers are a technically fake family that genuinely love each other, the Desmonds are a technically real family that share no personal affection. In fact, it seems like Damian’s closest confidant is the one member of his family who isn’t related by blood, his butler Jeeves. I’m always a sucker for these “families are the people you choose” sorts of narratives, and love the particular disconnect represented by Anya and Damian’s relationship. What Damian truly needs is someone who cares about him for reasons other than his status, and thus teaches him to avoid reproducing his family dynamic in his school life (as he has with his current toadies). Anya isn’t mature enough to realize this, but in her flailing attempts to impress him through stuff like showing off her cool dog, she’s nonetheless offering friendship without strings, and showing him that not all relationships need to be about structures of power. Let’s see how these kids are doing as we return to Spy x Family!
Episode 18
Oh shit, midterm exams are coming! And Anya’s terrible at everything!
They wisely weave the Stella Stars and Tonitrus Bolts into this exam system, offering stars to the top two performers in each of four exam categories, and bolts to all of the failures. This system was well-designed; it provides a clear sense of progression within Anya’s overall quest, giving each of her academic challenges a tangible prize, and ensuring her relationships with her fellow students always feel like a direct competition. Additionally, the fact that you can stack up both stars and bolts, rather than simply gaining/losing stars, means Anya’s success and failure are running on separate tracks, facilitating a situation where she could be inches from either becoming a star student or failing out. Clever way to keep tension high
Excellent Anya face as she receives a failing quiz grade. Anya frequently channels that precocious condescension that makes Yotsuba such a charming character, making sure the adults around her know she’s Very Disappointed In Them
More excellent Grinch-like faces as she contemplates cheating off Damian’s test
“On the day Mister Moon goes away, Anya’s power goes away too.” Probably a necessary modification of Anya’s absurd power; school wouldn’t provide much of a challenge without some limitations, while this condition will allow us to see how Anya acts when she’s not trying to play off other people’s thoughts, and surely come up to facilitate more drama down the line
In an extremely Anya move, she asks Bond to foresee the test answers, learns instead that they’re having steak for dinner, and immediately forgets all about the tests
Loid’s thoughts reveal he’s already given up on four Stellas, and is instead hoping to somehow sneak into the star student event
Yuri comes over to tutor Anya. “So this imp is the child of the accursed Forger!?”
It takes about five seconds for Yuri’s demented mind to make Anya sick to her stomach
Loid and Yuri cross sharp-edged words while Anya has the time of her life, luxuriating in this genuine faceoff between spy and secret police
“You get to stay with Sis every day, you greedy little imp!” Yuri is not a great character on the whole, as his siscon deal is simplistic, unfunny, and tonally out of place in this otherwise non-otaku-oriented work, but him continuously calling Anya a little imp is still good
Anya initially does too well, then says she guessed every answer, which Yuri immediately believes. He is not a good secret policeman
She swiftly realizes the route to Yuri’s heart involves framing all her efforts as for Yor’s sake, and changes tactics immediately. Congratulations Yuri, you have been outwitted by a five-year-old
“The important thing is that you understand why you got it wrong.” Yuri may be a terrible cop, but he actually does seem to be a pretty decent tutor. He has patience, and lacks Loid’s issue of a natural being unable to appreciate the challenges faced by less gifted students
“Do you actually like studying, Unkie? What’s wrong with you.”
And at last, Yuri gets genuinely fired up for a reason other than his sister’s affection, as he reflects on the pride he felt studying in order to become his best possible self. This gamified framing also resonates with Anya, essentially positioning studying itself as a necessary prerequisite to saving the world, rather than an arbitrary punishment standing between her and her actual goals. School doesn’t have to feel like senseless drudgery!
The two share a childlike view of the world that seems to pull Yuri into Anya’s wavelength in spite of himself
In spite of Yuri’s frustrations with Anya, his words strike home, making her think on how more knowledge could have made her more useful during the bomb threat. Anya’s experiencing some critical growth here, learning to see herself as more than just the Anya that currently is, and genuinely assessing the distance between her current self and who she wants to be. That initial burst of self-consciousness can be both terrifying and thrilling, and as long as we keep learning, all of us will experience ripples of that “the world is far vaster than I imagined” revelation time and again
Loid’s doubts facilitate a natural second phase of this operation: sneaking into the school in order to alter Anya’s results. I imagine he’ll succeed, but then see that Anya actually did reasonably well, thus perhaps learning to trust his daughter a little more
His mental image of Anya attempting to study is wildly unflattering. I’m glad Anya isn’t here to see this
Crossing the campus in disguise, he comes across an incredibly suspicious-looking man who apparently has codenamed himself Daybreak, and who is also here to alter a student’s exam. Love how they animate him with lots of purposefully clumsy extraneous movement, like this random barrel roll he does across a campus walkway
Daybreak appears to possess Mister Magoo-style powers of comic agility, which impress Loid in spite of himself. Are we giving Loid a rival who makes being a spy look like the most comically easy job in the world? Brilliant
The contrast between the two of them reflects a fundamental lesson of being stealthy: if you try to hide, you’ll look like you’re hiding something. Instead, act like you belong wherever you are, using your confidence in your behavior as a shield against the doubts of others
Eventually Loid is forced to accept this idiot as his costar, bailing him out before a guard actually calls the police
Loid sees from his poorly-concealed mission notes that this man has been assigned to alter the scores of the Desmond brothers’ literature tests. I like how this implies that when it comes to believing in their children, Loid and Desmond’s father are uncomfortably alike
Loid lets himself get “knocked out” just so he can wait for this guy to go away. Any episode that frustrates Loid this much is a good episode
Even then, Daybreak commits so many crimes against spy decorum that Loid simply cannot help himself, and breaks his cover to yell at Daybreak about taking this more seriously
Actively cackled out loud at Daybreak leaving the room via tumbling, after demanding Loid tell the world about his greatness
As it turns out, Daybreak was actually here to make the brothers fail. Congrats Loid, you’re a worse parent than Damian’s dad
The results are announced, and Damian gets a Stella! God, his smile at this is so heartbreaking, knowing how little it will mean to his father
As expected, Anya succeeds with her own efforts, if only just barely. Her power grows!
And Done
Well, that sure was a bunch of delightful nonsense! Surprisingly, this episode’s most narratively impactful material actually came courtesy of Yuri, with him teaching Anya to see studying as the fundamental practice of self-improvement, rather than just a hurdle placed between her and what she wants. Given her powers, it’s no surprise that Anya is accustomed to cheating, making it all the more valuable that she now feels motivated to study for her own sake. But character development aside, the introduction of Daybreak served as one of Spy x Family’s funniest segments yet, and I dearly hope we haven’t seen the last of Twilight’s destined rival. Your legend has only just begun, Daybreak!
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The Daybreak half was so incredibly funny, but it’s all predicated on his buffoonery playing well off of Loid. Yuri’s siscon gimmick falls flat because they just kind of exist on their own, there’s nowhere for it to go, narratively. It doesn’t service the other characters, much less himself.
It’s a little bit baffling how the writer can have the kids reliably provide pitch-perfect reactions to the adults’ comparatively shoddy gimmicks, but fails to make many of the adult-to-adult interactions land. Most of the adults feel very much less “real” than the kids, like the writer has somewhat bought into the Kool-aid the characters themselves are into. Which, like, he is, as that is the foundation the story premise not instantly falling apart. But the cracks are the opposite of papered over when the majority of the comedy giving the kids stuff real punch is how you can’t have it both ways with the Kool-aid.
Have you tried watching The Americans?