Another pretty tame episode that kinda sets some things up, but overall not particularly eventful. Though it was still pretty funny seeing Anya up to her typical hijinks. Her class was assigned to write a report about an occupation that interests her and visit her parents’ workplace to get ideas or inspiration. I find it hilarious how Yor doesn’t even think to bring Anya to her cover job and immediately just thinks of bringing her along on her assassin job. Yor PLEASE.
Though despite the absurdity of Yor imagining bringing Anya to one of her assassin jobs, we do get a little insight on why Yor continues working as an assassin. We know she took this initially to take care of her brother, she eventually became proud of her profession since she feels as if she is truly helping her country in getting rid of the “filth” that plagues it. There are times when I often wonder if Yor truly cares about her country or is just going through the motions. Though, through how she viewed Anya at the start and how she feels about her now, it has been shown that she ends up getting attached to things over time despite her initial aloofness towards them at first. That said, I can’t tell if she’s gotten attached to her country or her assassin work, or possibly both. Thinking about it, she might be more attached to the idea of protecting the lives of the people rather than the country itself. Even if there’s a contradiction of protecting lives when the first thing she thinks of when trying to solve a problem is murder. Yor is a very contradictive character and I feel like there can be a whole essay just dissecting her, but I digress.
Anyways, back on track, Anya ends up going to Loid’s work instead, er, cover work. I honestly didn’t realize that Loid actually went to work at an actual hospital. I legit thought he never actually worked in one and just did spy work or went to a clinic that was run by spies. No wonder he’s so overworked lol. I can’t imagine how he’s able to balance working at the hospital and doing spy jobs. Or how that even works since he seems to somehow be away spying on Anya a lot of the time. Just like we got Yor’s perspective on why she chose her occupation, we also get a little insight on why Loid chose his profession as a spy while talking about it through the lens of a psychologist. Loid cares a lot towards those who were effected by the war and wants to do everything in his power to make it so others won’t have to go through the same thing. It is interesting to see just how many connections Loid has made at his cover job and how quickly has built up trust with so many people there already. It was really cute to see how taken his coworkers were with Anya and were willing to give her so many different treats and such.
Once Anya was done asking questions about Loid’s cover job and is left alone after finding about a lever in the bookshelf that leads to a secret passage, OF COURSE she was gonna go explore it. This is why you don’t leave your kid alone, Loid. She’s going to get into trouble. -_- Though it was pretty funny how she ended up inadvertently helping patients be spooking the other doctors into taking them more seriously. But when she read her report to the class, I couldn’t help but go NOOOOOOOO. Due to her little kid brain, of course she would mix up a lot of the information she collected and strewn together facts without the correct context. Making Loid look like a complete menace, much to the class’ horror. And I couldn’t help but laugh at Loid’s expense of being called into the school the next day because of that mishap. Thankfully Loid is a smooth talker because his image would have been completely destroyed. I’m sure Anya got an earful after that.
The last part of the episode seemed what I assume to be anime only since I couldn’t find it in any of the chapters. Not much really happened besides Anya being Anya and trying her hand at being a spy by making a code that she copied from Bondman. She passes out copies of the code to a bunch of people, to which I can’t help but wonder if she made Yor make her all of those copies… Pretty sure that was the case unless they have a copy machine, but I kind of doubt it. And out of all the people she gave it to, OF COURSE Franky figured it out since he’s an informant and is probably used to having to deal with decoding things. Unfortunately, he got the completely wrong idea and thought it was a love letter of some kind, not realizing that it was just Anya playing spy. I kind of wish we got to see how it all played out in the end since Anya ended up not waking up to her alarm. Though, is she even allowed to go out by herself??? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS.
Not going to lie, ever since the Dog Arc ended, every episode has been feeling like a bit of a drag. There were some funny parts that made me chuckle, yes, but I really don’t feel like Spy x Family is able to shine at its full potential as an anime. The way this anime adaptation is portrayed feels like it is more geared towards action and story driven circumstances. Which is probably why the Dog Arc felt like the anime shined the most. But now that it’s in this weird in between arc state, I feel like it just doesn’t know what to do with itself and has to add anime only content that doesn’t really do much. Yes, it’s fun to see Anya do silly things, but with how the anime is directed, it just feels like a waste of time. I feel like if they leaned into a more comedy focused series, it could have worked a bit better. But because it tried to make this series more serious than it was in the manga, the silly oneshot episodes just don’t hit as well. Which is unfortunate because I really love this series. And seeing the anime adaptation not able to capture the full charm of the manga is disappointing. Though I’m most likely in the minority on this, which I guess isn’t anything new since I’m just full of controversial opinions.
In any case, we finally met the silver haired lady from the OP and ED who is a fellow spy. I will withhold my feelings towards her until she makes her proper introduction so I can’t really say much about her yet. Though from the preview, it looks like we won’t have to wait long to truly meet her.
