After all their preparations, the mission of Strix officially starts with the family going in to undergo Eden’s interview. This episode was as good as I had hoped. Especially since it had some of my favorite moments and they certainly did it justice. Not only that, but this episode was able to capture both the hilarity and the heartfelt moments perfectly. Now that the whole family has assembled, I feel like the series is able to really hit its stride with how the three of them interact together as a unit. I also love how this series always just subverts our expectations.
This episode was an absolute riot. From Loid and them having several different outfit changes to “ELEGANCE.” And then there was Yor taking out the leader cow by hitting its pressure points. But my gosh, the part where Loid and Anya are staring at her in disbelief just tickled me. Like bro, you STILL don’t find anything suspicious about her??? And just the cherry on top had to be the animals moving backwards out of fear XD.
Despite the hilarity, we also got some more character building moments. Most notably from Loid and Anya. To say Loid was nervous would be an understatement. The guy grew to only rely on himself. However, this mission requires him to put a certain amount of trust in both Anya and Yor, who have proven to be very unpredictable in most cases. So trusting them must have been quite the challenge for him. Despite that, it does also show that the two are very capable of helping him and covering his weaknesses. With Yor stopping the head cow’s movements and then Anya goes in to comfort it.
Loid has been changing since the first episode, but I feel like this episode really emphasized just how much of him has changed over such a short amount of time together with both Anya and Yor. Loid usually acts rationally and level-headed, hardly ever reacting emotionally. However, despite their family being fake and having spent little time together overall, it seems that Loid is unintentionally getting attached to them. Not only was he quick to defend Yor from one of the interviewers, but he actually felt irritated over her being unfairly criticized. Even in that short amount of time of knowing her, he’s already starting to get emotionally attached. Just freaking get married for real. And then with Anya, despite telling himself to stay calm and let the interviewer slander them, he chose to the role of a father over his role as a spy by reacting emotionally and nearly punching Swan in the face over making Anya cry with an insensitive question. Which I can hardly blame him for with how malicious that interviewer was being. Props to him for choosing to stick up for Anya and making a very valid statement that if this is the school’s way of handling a child’s feelings, this is the wrong school.
When that D-bag of an interviewer asked Anya if she liked her new or old mom better and then proceeded to call it a “trifling thing” when Anya broke down into tears, I too wanted to take a swing at him. As someone who is very sensitive to that topic, I would not tolerate such a cruel statement and I appreciate how protective both Loid and Yor got over Anya. Even I teared up a little bit when Anya started crying over thinking about her real mom. Just as Loid said, we don’t know anything about Anya’s parents or how she ended up at the orphanage. But it’s most likely safe to assume that they are gone and considering how Anya just started crying over the mention of her mom, something bad must have happened. Hearing her apologize for messing up the interview just hurt my heart because that was in no shape or form her fault. And I’m glad that Loid reassured her that she did nothing wrong. But it just breaks my heart over how desperate Anya is to stay with this fake family. She finally found a place where she feels like she can belong and doesn’t want to lose it. And if she doesn’t get into the school, she knows that their family unit will go separate ways. All a child wants is to feel secure and the fear of being abandoned again must be so ingrained in her that she’s desperate to keep what she currently has. Protect this child. :'(
I love how they initially made out Henderson to be the antagonist of this episode with how he was trying to thwart Loid with different tests. Even his design looks like that of an antagonist with that single eye-piece and mustache/beard he’s got going on. However, this series does a complete 180 on him in the end. Despite his upper crust attitude, he is still a good person at heart. Even he wouldn’t stoop to putting families in danger just to test them, much less make a poor child cry at the expense of their feelings of a dead parent. And I’m so glad that he was the one to punch that slimy interviewer in the face rather than Loid. If Loid had been the one to punch him, he would have set a bad example for both Anya and his conduct. But because Henderson was the one to do it, he was able to have a bit of character growth to not curry favor from the higher ups but to stand up for children in this school if unfair treatment is being given to them. And for that, much respect.
This episode was great with lots of laughs, tears and tender moments. Like I said in the previous post, this series does an excellent job at balancing all of those things all the while keeping the audience entertained and engaged. I just recently bought the second volume of the manga and I am definitely eager to see how more of this family’s misadventures are animated and adapted.
