Spy x Family is back and with the arc in the manga that I mostly skimmed over for… I don’t even have an excuse because I don’t really remember why I did it lol. So I’m less familiar with this arc as a whole so maybe I’ll like this part better in the anime than I did in the manga. Guess we’ll see.
In any case, after that really weird decision to put the penguin chapter as the halfway marker of the first season, we get back on track with the dog arc with the family going to the pet store to find Anya a dog. And MY GOSH, the freaking buff, flexing dogs were HIDEOUSLY hilarious lololol. Like I understand why Loid would want to get a trained dog to help watch over the family, but did he really think that Anya would like any of those dogs??? Her face basically was such a mood lol. On to plan B it seems on the pet mission. But before they could go to the Pet Exhibition, Loid gets called in for another mission and hoo boy, that’s when things actually get pretty serious.
Though as soon as they brought in the “leader” I immediately figured it was just twilight faking it to get him to talk. I want to re-preface that I don’t remember the small little details that happen so I actually didn’t remember this scene at all.
I feel like this series has always had a serious undertone, but all the situations were handled fairly quickly by Twilight. So nothing ever felt like things would go terribly wrong. Everything felt like it was controlled. But seeing the look of dread on Handler’s face when the terrorist they caught told them they were planning to use bomber dogs, things started feeling like this could actually be a really big problem that even they’re not prepared for. Even when Anya was abducted by assailants, Loid was able to take care of them fairly quickly once he got Anya out of the situation. The circumstances for this terrorist group felt so much more serious than the other missions thus far. Especially when a lot of said missions ended on the sillier side. They even foreshadowed how they don’t have everything under control and kind of doing things rather hastily with Twilight not having the perfect disguise and you could hear he was using his actual voice and not the voice of the actual leader. He even said that if these terrorists were professionals, his disguise wouldn’t have worked.
Seeing how young these terrorists are makes me both sad and angry. Sad because as I said before, they’re quite young. But also angry because they have shown to have little care for others besides their mission. When “mister dog” ran off, the guy didn’t even show a hint of concern for the kid that almost got crushed by the fallen sign, only got annoyed that the dog got away from him briefly. It was such a subtle thing, but it did make me angry. And then bumped up to 100 when Keith was just going to immediately kill Anya because she overheard their plans. Granted some of them seemed uncomfortable with the idea of killing a kid, but they were still willing to go through with it for the sake of their mission. Which is absolutely disgusting. I absolutely HATE IT when people drag innocent bystanders into things and seeing the lack of care for those around them definitely rubs me the wrong way. And if “mister dog” hadn’t rescued her, she most likely would have gotten shanked for sure.
“Mister Dog” is… an interesting addition to say the least lol. Considering he appears in the opening, we KNOW he’s going to join the family unit. I’m not the biggest dog fan so I wasn’t immediately taken by the idea of the family getting a dog. But it is what it is and considering this isn’t an ordinary dog, it makes sense I guess. We find out that this dog has foresight abilities and is smart enough to act on it, be it pulling that kid out of the way of danger or knowing when to sneak out when the phone distracts the terrorists. And then Anya is able to see the future by reading the dog’s mind, which definitely makes for an interesting combination. Not only that, but considering a science facility was experimenting on dogs, it’s not a far cry that they could have also have been the same facility that gave Anya her mind reading abilities. Or at least related to that.
And while Anya is on her own little adventure, I felt so bad for Yor. She explicitly told Anya not to run off, but she did. And while it was for the “greater good” that Anya followed the dog, this must have been incredibly traumatizing for Yor. Especially since she’s been suffering from having doubts about being a good mother. She looked like she was on the verge of having a mental breakdown when she realized that Anya wasn’t in the area. Also did NO ONE freaking see her just jump to the ceiling????? I lost it at the guy who was shocked when she jumped down and was just constantly shown in the background staring at her while she paced back and forth XD. Thankfully she was able to spot Anya escaping from the terrorists and successfully smashed that guy’s face in before he was able to hurt Anya. We can always count on Yor to come to Anya’s rescue lol.
I’d say this was a pretty good start to the second half of the season. The stakes have been raised, interesting relationships have been established and the animation is as stellar as always. Also the opening was beautifully done. The only thing that urked me was the fake dog noises since they took me out of the scene a bit, especially in the more serious scenes. I know anime tends to do this, but there are shows like My Roommate is a Cat that actually used cat noises that made it feel more organic. Otherwise, this was a fine episode to jump back into this lovable series. I’m still uncertain about whether I’ll be continuing to cover this series, but we’ll see how I feel about it after a couple more eps.
Possibility of blogging: Medium
Possibility of watching: Guaranteed
