Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to return to Spy x Family, wherein it seems we’re galloping towards the conclusion of its cruise liner arc. While Anya provides cover and Loid works on his Normal Man impression, Yor has been fending off a procession of devious assassins, each more cunning and lethal than the last. At the same time, her growing bond with her targets has led her to question the meaning of these missions, and whether she still needs this Thorn Princess persona at all.

Granted, I don’t expect her to actually abandon her duties as a result of these questions. Spy x Family’s conceit relies on a delicate balance of comically contradictory circumstances that doesn’t really allow for that much personal reinvention (even the very title is a riff on “spy vs spy”), at least until Tatsuya Endo decides to aim for the endgame. At the same time, its best personal drama tends to involve chafing at the edges of this paradigm – Loid favoring Anya over the “greater good” of his professional duties, Anya risking exposure by flagrantly using her powers, and now Yor questioning whether she has outgrown her Thorn Princess role, as she has found in the Forgers the stable family life she once saw her secret identity as protecting. Regardless of her conclusion, Yor challenging her own unconsidered beliefs has made her feel significantly more substantive as a character, and I’m eager to see how this story ends. Let’s get to it!

Episode 33

“The fireworks will start soon.” That looming fireworks display serves as a neat incidental source of tension, implying a great storm coming merely through its repeated invocation. I’m guessing the anime is actually playing up this event relative to the manga, as I imagine it will serve as another of this production’s animation highlights

We get a brief cut of a quasi-map detailing their escape route. Another flourish that seems to have been borrowed from Hunter x Hunter’s Dark Continent arc – Endo seems to generally conceptualize his arcs as noir films, meaning the cinematography directs the drama, whereas Togashi seems to conceptualize his more ambitious arcs as playing fields or board games, wherein the overall composition of units on the field is always taken into consideration

Not too many who could get away with Togashi’s method on the scale he executes it – even Togashi himself has admitted Dark Continent’s complexity has ballooned beyond the point where he can keep it all together in his head, much less on the page. Most stories involve a great deal of cinematic shorthand; actually realizing everything that’s going on in the background as an organic, ever-shifting internal world is a tall order

Goddamnit Yor. Her strategy for staying inconspicuous as they pass guards is to have the whole family just press themselves against the wall, staring at nothing. I’m sure no one will find that abnormal

Our lead assassin offers an excellent, Kouta Hirano-style deranged face as he locates our group. Hellsing isn’t necessarily a favorite of mine, but Hirano’s deranged faces are second to none

Anya gets a piggyback ride! A great victory for Anya!

“I’m going to have to concentwate to find her.” I appreciate the subtitlers emphasizing that even Anya’s internal voice has a lisp

Oooh, ambitious flyover cut imitating a drone shot here, making use of a full CG model of the cruise liner. The contrast of the CG against the traditionally drawn characters is here softened via the lighting, with the shared glow of the fireworks creating a greater sense of aesthetic unity across the composition

And they’re not letting that CG model go to waste – we swiftly get another impressively composited swooping shot, this time introducing the sniper waiting above them

“Oh no, he dodged it.” The contrast between Yor’s feral intensity in executing her duties versus her “oh shucks, I made a whoopsy-daisy” analysis of those duties remains very entertaining

Yeah, this ship model is really allowing the boarding to get a lot more active, appropriate for an action scene like this. The camera can now consistently follow the flow of blades or kicks, which both adds to the momentum of the action and also helps keep it coherent in spite of the darkness and confusion

Wait, that one guy’s got a spiked mace? How is that an efficient assassination tool. No, you know what, give him a mace, it sounds cool

Zeb bravely takes several bullets for the target as they flee down a hatch. Alright, no complications left, time for Yor to obliterate these assholes

Oh no, it’s grenade man! This fight is frankly reminding me of Anchorman’s pan-network brawl, where did these assassins come from and why do they have such a discordant array of assassination tools

Oh man, the fluidity of these cuts! Love how well they’re conveying the weight of these bodies; you can really appreciate how Yor is using the momentum of these larger opponents against them

They must have put some real Yor sickos to work on this, we’ve never received such an extended, loving portrait of her in full murder mode

The juxtaposition of scenes and match cuts between Yor and the fireworks somewhat lessen the brutality of this whole affair, though it’s still an extremely brutal sequence by Spy x Family standards. She’s gruesomely murdering like thirty people, we’re a fair distance beyond the show’s usual found family shenanigans!

Oh hey, mace guy broke one of her daggers! Hurray for mace guy

At a certain point they just stop bothering coordinating their attacks, and instead get in line to attack Yor one by one with their gimmick weapons. This has to be a demoralizing adventure for the whole assassination community

The use of smears is also fantastic here. They’re used so sparingly you can barely actually see them, which is precisely the point – they’re applied only to the moment before any given strike, creating a sense of impossible speed leading into impactful landing. The whole fight is timed around that contrast of high speed motion leading into the stillness of reaction as a foot caves through a chest

“Those who point a blade at another cannot complain when they have one pointed at themselves. That includes myself.” Unsurprisingly, Yor doesn’t really see any greater moral quandary in the fundamental nature of her work. Killers will kill, living in her world means accepting that base truth

“I’d rather not spill any more unnecessary blood.” Of course, that doesn’t mean she wants to kill people. And that’s consistent with her portrayal mid-combat – though she clearly locks into a focused frame of mind, she never delights in the violence itself. She just acts in such a way as to most efficiently conclude her assignment

“This lot considers war just another way to get paid. If we let them go, they will harm our country in some way.” Yor has the privilege of being an instrument, and weapons do not care about the larger implications of how they are used. In contrast, her handler is looking at the big picture, and judging all of these assassins as future threats that ought to be disabled immediately

“You should learn a thing or two from the West. Money is power. Everyone’s happy if we’re all rich, right?” The final indignity of the Cold War’s conclusion: being forced to adapt to a world ruled by capitalism, where selfish individualism trumps any calls for patriotism or solidarity. As an American, it’s hard to see our current “national values” as anything more than a grotesque parody of their original intention, a thin sheet thrown over the amoral greed of corporate capitalism

“You can regret playing with fire while the sharks are eating you.” A mixed metaphor I’ll forgive because it’s still such a cold line

Just then, a katana-wielding boss enemy appears!

And as her strength fades, it is the thought of the Forgers that gives her a final burst. Could she forgive herself if she disappeared from their lives without a word? Even if it’s just through the end of this mission, she has a reason to fight again

“Now’s not the time to worry about that! If I don’t focus, I’ll be sliced in two!” Echoing Loid’s evolving perspective – being concerned for Anya is both a vulnerability and a source of strength. If they’re preoccupied with making it home safe, they can’t commit as wholeheartedly to their missions – but at the same time, having something to come home to makes those missions worth accomplishing

“You’re just like us. You put food on the table by killing.” The leader offers a direct challenge: what exactly makes your work different from any hired killer, Yor?

“For my country? Have I always been so righteous? What am I doing this for?” A tricky moment for this discussion, but I’m happy to see it nonetheless

“Now I won’t be able to get Loid’s clothes from the cleaners. I also won’t be able to return Anya’s library books.” This is excellent stuff. On the brink of death, Yor is essentially discovering the things that make life worth living – the incidental, often overlooked acts of faith and care that define our shared existence. Yor doesn’t need to fight for the future of her country; all that makes life significant is contained in our shared moments, in the “laundry and taxes” of life, as EEAAO would put it

And through her strength, she can protect those simple moments for others, ensuring at least one more family gets to appreciate normal, carefree days together. That is her reason to fight

After all that brutal violence and cathartic identity-affirming, we end on some delightful nonsense, as a young Yor almost murders her brother in the course of serving him tea

And Done

Goddamn, what an episode! Our crack team of animators were clearly not going to let this Yor-centric spectacle go to waste, and the result is one of Spy x Family’s most brutally beautiful episodes so far. Seeing Yor in full combat mode is as exhilarating as it is terrifying. I’m guessing much of this was anime-original like Loid’s castle infiltration, which meant the boarding was actually significantly more dynamic than Spy x Family’s usual standard, and made excellent use of the ship’s accommodating CG backdrop. Plus we finally reached the personal breakthrough I was hoping for, as Yor came to fully understand what she now lives for, thus providing a clear motivation for moving beyond “I must protect Yuri” and towards “I must protect the mundane happiness all families deserve.” Give ‘em hell, Thorn Princess!

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