Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to get back into Spy x Family, and see what ridiculous nonsense the Forgers have been up to in our absence. Our last episode proved an intriguingly frictious experience, pushing against the presumed boundaries of Tatsuya Endo’s spy drama sandbox. Spy x Family is a situational comedy first, a found family drama second, and a war drama a distant third, and though it can usually juggle those aspects with relative grace, there are inherent tensions in its premise that will undoubtedly surface again. I’m particularly intrigued to see how Endo handles the characterization of Desmond’s father, whose narrative position naturally draws together all of Spy x Family’s contradictory instincts.
But for now, I assume we’re in for some more immediately gratifying shenanigans, and I’m absolutely ready for them. Genre tensions aside, Spy x Family remains immensely entertaining, Endo having proven himself a master of slapstick, deadpan, and anticlimax. Let’s see what lunacy awaits as we return to Spy x Family!
Episode 20
The cold open affirms that Loid has completed phase one of his operation, presumably priming us for an episode that will focus on his efforts to get closer to Desmond
“Investigate the General Hospital”
Anya’s new assignment is to interview a professional in a field she’s interested in, which feels a little advanced for their age, but will undoubtedly facilitate more Anya Forger: International Superspy shenanigans
“Will you be interviewing your father, Damian?” “If I can talk to him.” Ouch
Becky also states she’ll just talk to her dad. I suppose in an academy that’s largely populated by the children of political and economic leaders, a project like this is mostly just another way to brag about your family’s position – and another way Spy x Family reduces the gap between this academy world and the real world it’s proxying
“I was told to ask why you do your job and how I can get that job too.” I love Anya’s deadpan recitation of directions like this. It is very convincingly childlike of her to be unable to feign enthusiasm for other people’s orders
Also great mini-Thorn Princess outfit for Anya following Yor to work
Yor doesn’t get as much meaningful characterization as the other two, so I’m glad to see her overactive imagination becoming a recurring aspect of her material. It’s a much more expressive, distinctive way of conveying her contradictory personality than simply portraying her as spacey and naïve in a general sense
Excellent animation and color design as we run through Yor’s daily work. They always pull out all the animation stops for the Yor stuff
“What makes this job fulfilling is that I truly feel like I’m cleaning up the filth of this country.” Another dramatic pressure point there – the deliberate vagueness with which Spy x Family portrays the morality and end goals of Yor’s work. We’ve gotten fully in the weeds with Loid because both his and his organization’s motives are relatively noble, but the only really “noble” aspect of Yor’s work we’ve seen is that she began it in order to protect her brother. This could easily be addressed through framing her organization as dedicated to rooting out monsters within their own government, but that would in turn mess with the base tension of Yor and Loid secretly being on opposite sides. It’s a tricky situation!
Having been thoroughly traumatized by these visions, Anya elects to investigate Loid’s job instead
Yep, Anya’s already got her full Sherlock Holmes look going as she arrives at the hospital. “Put Anya in funny outfits” is one of this franchise’s most reliable staples
Like all good lies, Loid’s description of why he became a psychiatrist involves elements of truth, incorporating his general frustration at the senseless suffering of war through a focus on treating veterans
And of course, Anya’s only taking notes on his internal spy reasoning
Apparently Loid is quite popular at work, which makes sense – as he mentally notes, he needs to be sociable but not stand out in order to complete his work. Still, “I’m a respected doctor” is about the hardest cover story I could imagine maintaining; Loid must be working forty hour days to get all his shit done
In spite of his layers of deception, the Loid these people know is about as authentic as it gets. When he’s not in a mask, he’s generally playing a recognizable version of himself – an echo of this show’s general thoughts on family, wherein a performance of family becomes real if you commit to and believe in it
Loid commits a devastating tactical error, leaving Anya alone and unsupervised in his consultation room
We at last meet that white-haired woman from the OP, who is apparently a fellow spy embedded within the hospital
Loid, the lever for your secret passage is like half a foot long! That is not covert!
Some nice employment of variable line width for Anya’s expressions as she spies on this department meeting. With the thicker line width of the eyes combining with aggressive shading, we get a visual sense of Anya’s panic, and also a sense of depth, with her cheekbones and facial structure clear even through minimal linework
Remembering she was supposed to be playing with dolls in the sandbox, Anya hastily dumps the entire box of toys in, leaving Loid to discover a psychological war zone
Loid is an inconsistent father but apparently a very dedicated psychologist, immediately working to address Anya’s assumed mental state. Loid sort of has to be tricked into being his best possible self – his job as a spy demands total calm and a significant degree of emotional detachment from the world around him, but when he is playing a particular part as a spy, he allows himself to embrace the emotions that seem attendant to that particular role. He is best as a father when he is playing the part of father, best as a husband when he is playing the part of husband, etcetera – and of course, this all plays back into the central idea that the performances we choose ultimately become who we actually are
Nice slow-burning payoff for Anya taking all those spy activity-related notes, as Loid checks her notebook and finds she was just drawing a bunch of scribbles
Back home, Yor is still dazzled by Loid’s violence-centric therapy methods. She is somehow even more credulous than Anya
Anya’s ultimate report unsurprisingly earns Loid a parent-teacher conference
Our B part begins with Anya deciding she’ll make a top secret spy code, to the annoyance of Loid. A nice humanizing detail – he’s now lowered his guard enough around Anya to genuinely embrace his annoyance at her demeaning his profession
She gets Yor to make her a legible code, and then of course hands it out to absolutely everyone, announcing “top secret” every single time. Anya being a genuinely believable child continues to be one of Spy x Family’s greatest strengths
Only Franky manages to crack the code, due to him somehow misconstruing it as a love confession. Of course, there’s no way Anya’s actually making an 8 AM saturday rendezvous
And Done
And so Anya continues her reign of adorable terror, making a charming nuisance of herself in all sorts of imaginative ways. Investigating Loid’s hospital served as an excellent opportunity to see how he presents himself outside of the family, which in turn makes things like his willingness to be visibly annoyed with Anya all the more significant. As Anya learns to trust that she will not be rejected by this family, Loid is finding himself able to express a wider range of his own emotions, and genuinely taking interest in Anya’s feelings outside the confines of his mission objective. It is a strange and halting route towards family, but it seems to be working!
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