The thick plottens, as Spy x Family reaches into the bag for another club after being solidly the Anya show for a few episodes. SxF is a bit of an odd duck for me in that sense, in that it has impressive versatility yet still sometimes feels a little one-note. Maybe that means it takes the path of least resistance sometimes, but it’s easy to understand when that path is the goose that laid the golden egg. Having a lot of options is good, but it’s even better if you give them all a good amount of use.
Yuri Briar is definitely an important character going forward, even if he has been held back in reserve so far. Like the principals he’s living a lie, the common theme in this series. That’s sly in and of itself, because in countries like Cold War East Germany (on which Berlint is loosely based) many, many people did just that. The Stasi – secret police – was infamous, notorious, and omnipresent. It had eyes and ears in every corner of East German society. Friends ratted out friends, family members ratted out family members. Sometimes the identity of informers was an open secret, sometimes they had even their closest associates fooled. It was a society where paranoia was a constant presence in everyday life.
Yuri being not just a member of the secret police but an interrogations specialist is a bold turn. This is a man who tortures people for a living – he and Loid may be analogs in some sense but we’ve never seen Loid in anything like the situation Yuri was in as this episode began. Of course Yor is a cold-blooded murderer and we’re supposed to find her sympathetic, so it’s not such a stretch I suppose. Yuri is a real piece of work – a full-on siscon for starters but not only that, one with a huge blind spot where Yor is concerned. For someone in his line of work, that’s a bloody dangerous thing.
Even if the actual length of time Yor forgot to tell her brother about her sham marriage was a lot less than a year, it’s still quite the testament to what a scatterbrain she is. She’s quite a piece of work herself – through Yuri’s flashbacks we see that she was coming home covered in her victims’ blood from a very young age. I mean first of all, you wouldn’t clean up before coming home? And then there’s the fact that Yuri never suspected anything – testament to just how big that blind spot is. These two are a real pair, that’s for sure.
Unsurprisingly, Yuri is unwilling to accept Loid. The grounds he gives are the odd nature of this marriage and not being told for a year, but it’s rather obvious that Yuri would never accept any man taking Yor away from him. Loidy, for his part, suspected something was off with Yuri before ever meeting him based on his place of work. And when Yuri dips into the Secret Police script for inventing a fictional trip abroad (in this case to “Hugaria”, an obvious stand-in for Budapest and Hungary) he has his confirmation. Loid now has a leg up on Yuri – he knows the other’s secret – but the question is how to act on it. “Very carefully” is the obvious answer – this man is still his “wife’s” brother – but indeed he could be a valuable source of information.
For the moment, the key is convincing Yuri that this marriage is legit – and that becomes more difficult when Loid and Yor react oddly after their hands touch. One has to wonder – has Loid slipped, or was he always such a flawed spy? To be thrown by something like that is out of character – unless of course the problem is that it’s too in-character, and his feelings for Yor are getting all too real. For a spy as experienced as Loid a fake kiss to convince the enemy should be no challenge at all, right? Right??
Haraga
May 29, 2022 at 5:29 pmI like the show but it works better when it is a straight farce (except for that filler episode). When the writing switches to its serious tone occasionally, cracks start to appear, as if there’s not enough nuance and too much of the narrator overexplaining everything instead of trusting the audience.
And you know, when Aharen-san handles any animanga trope it introduces so well, all other shows look kind of shallow in this regard, don’t they? We had two siscon characters introduced the same week, but what a huge difference careful characterization in Aharen-san makes.
Guardian Enzo
May 29, 2022 at 5:37 pmI agree that Yuri comes off a little over the top, and Eru is more subtly portrayed. But overall I think the balance this week is pretty close to optimal for SxF. This was more serious than average but still peppered with classic screwball comedy touches, like Yuri having Yor come home Covered in blood and accepting that it’s perfectly normal.
Juan Carrillo Nava
May 29, 2022 at 7:17 pmI’m curious if it’s because of his Secret Police background that Yuri is untrusting of Twilight. I mean, he DID try to hook his sister up with someone over the phone on Ep. 2, so either his standards are astronomically high or its a writing inconsistency (as far as I understand, writing a story, specially a long one, is an evolving process. There is a very real possibility the mangaka hadn’t thought of Yuri’s specific personality quirks at the time that chapter was written.).
Guardian Enzo
May 29, 2022 at 7:27 pmI’d forgotten about that from episode 2 (to be honest I still don’t remember it). If that happened it could be that, as you say, his character wasn’t fully fleshed-out yet. Or perhaps he’s OK with it as long as he’s the one choosing who the partner is?
Simone
May 29, 2022 at 11:48 pmI guess the hand thing could be explained by a conflict between the act he puts up for Yor and the one here he’s supposed to put up for Yuri. Right now he’s essentially a dude, playing a dude, disguised as another dude.
Guardian Enzo
May 30, 2022 at 8:21 amThe onion of (self) deception.
sonicsenryaku
May 30, 2022 at 12:10 pmBased reference to Tropic Thunder; Love it
Todd Clawson
May 30, 2022 at 11:57 amTwilight’s reservations with acting intimate with Yor seems to be bothering him as well given that he had to remind himself that this isn’t the first time he has gotten involved with women while undercover before. I think a big part of it is that Twilight is reluctantly growing closer to both Anya and Yor with things developing into an actual relationship and that is making it much harder for him to hide behind his usual spy persona. The entire operation also sounds like it is very much out of his comfort zone given that he apparently normally works alone which undoubtedly contributes to him being so flustered and out of his depth. As for Yuri. I actually like him quite a bit as a character and obstacle for Twilight. The man is a true patriot that believes wholeheartedly in his nation and is more than willing to use any means necessary to crush any threat to it and his sister. That makes him a very dangerous person. Sure his sister is a huge blindspot for him that Twilight can take advantage of, but it also means that a member of the secret police is going to hyper focus on him for being married to Yor. While his sis-con tendencies were also played up for laughs, anyone would probably be freaking out that their sister had gotten married without telling them for over an entire year. As for wondering how the show can make him sympathetic, I won’t post any spoilers, but the manga does do a good job of fleshing out his character beyond just being a sis-con.
Yann
May 31, 2022 at 9:24 amTorturing people is not a sign of a “true patriot.” It’s a sign of mindless obedience and mental illness. I know it’s a blog about anime and we should keep it light, but staying silent when I read outrageous nazi style propaganda like that would make complicit in normalizing U.S. imperialistic jingoism.
Guardian Enzo
May 31, 2022 at 9:47 amI agree with your first statement but I think your last one is unnecessarily inflammatory. This is relevant discussion but as you say, this is an anime site – if this gets too heated I will nip it.
Simone
May 31, 2022 at 8:11 pm> Torturing people is not a sign of a “true patriot.” It’s a sign of mindless obedience and mental illness.
I mean, Ostania being most likely an authoritarian state or military dictatorship, I’m not sure the two things are that distinct…
Todd Clawson
June 1, 2022 at 10:24 pmSorry for the misunderstanding. What I meant was that he was a true patriot by the standards of Ostania meaning he is very loyal to its ideals and is very much in a “my country right is always right” mindset. That is what makes him dangerous is that he will use any means he deems necessary to defend his country uncaring of how ethically horrifying it is. I was not in any way advocating torture as being ok. While I understand how my words may have accidentally come across and apologize for that, I would appreciate it if you didn’t immediately jump to saying I was spreading nazi propaganda and imperialistic jingoism. We are discussing an anime taking place in a East-Germany like place with a secret police so please ask for clarification first if you have concerns instead of hurling accusations.
morganwestridge
June 2, 2022 at 11:44 amI actually got a reverse impression: Yuri says he cares for the country because it is the country his sister lives in. I get the impression that if it became a choice between his sister and his country, Yuri would sell out his country. This could become a significant plot point later on, if Yor (rather than Twilight) ends up being accused of being a foreign agent and it’s a situation where Yuri can’t just blame Twilight. (Have they established whether whoever Yor works for as an assassin is a faction that Yuri’s secret police would approve of or are opposed to…?).
Marty
June 1, 2022 at 2:18 amImma just leave it at this. Yuri is the closest thing to a villain in this series thus far (Desmond is more of a McGuffin at this point), simply because he’s actively looking for Twilight.
Being a comedy, I’m sure its gonna try to keep things lighthearted, but if it ever takes a turn for the serious (shows that are primarily comedies like Gintama show its very possible to turn serious), I expect Yuri to either have a crisis of consciousness or be an outright villain.
Historically-speaking, there’s never been a secret police organization that hasn’t been inherently conservative and terrorized their citizenry in some way, shape, or form.