Having found out (thanks, commenters) that mangaka Endou Tatsuya basically hates Spy x Family because he wanted to do angsty stuff like his former boss Fujimoto sort of colors the way I look at Spy X Family now.  I suspect all that’s probably a little overblown – too much extrapolation from a couple of fan-translated Japanese interviews.  Nevertheless, a look at Endou’s earlier work does suggest that SxF is not his preferred style (and that point seems indisputable in said interviews).  I’m sure he appreciates how fortunate he is to have one of the most popular franchises in animanga (and that he’s talented enough to create it).

That said, stuff like Sylvia’s speech to the four idiot student terrorists does offer a little window into the sort of story Endou might prefer to be telling.  He has to be insanely careful here, because when a series gets as huge as this one it tends to create its own guardrails.  Fujimoto is lucky in that sense – something that’s batshit crazy from day one (and this applies to Dandadan by another of his assistants as well) gives the author the freedom to write whatever he wants, knowing the audience will come along for the ride.  What Endou has created here is much more of a straitjacket, and it wouldn’t be surprising if he sometimes resents that.

I think that applies to Anya more than anything else.  She’s the golden goose here, make no mistake – the heart of the massive marketing around SpyFam and the equally massive demographic reach it has.  That reach is why it will likely always surpass CSM in raw manga sales but it ties the mangaka’s hands.  When we get a couple of episodes of serious Anya moe pandering like the ones that have opened this cour, I realize that I have a tolerance limit for this series.  TBH I started to tune out by about the 15-minute mark this week, and it was only the Loid-centric final act that drew me back in.

Anya being four or whatever she is (five max) makes her exploits here pretty far out where the buses don’t run.  Especially when you consider that she’s not portrayed as a genius or even especially smart – just a normal kid with an abnormal ability.  The caveat to that would be her devotion to spy cartoons, I suppose, which would be the only possible explanation for why a kid who can’t even tell time can figure out the stuff she did.  Bond (the dog) isn’t a magic bullet – he mostly helps things along by sharing visions of the future with Anya (and scary ones, too).

The final bit with Loid and Keith was more believable (though the term is relative).  He effectively steals the minister’s clothes in order to fool the dog Keith is using to deliver his bomb payload, and lures him aways from where the (pantsed) minister is.  Loid is the master of disguise as we all know (suspension of disbelief on that), but he’s playing a dangerous game with Keith here.  If Keith had set off the bomb at any of the time the dog was within a few yards of Loid that would have been curtains.  Presumably the assumption Keith was making was that since he was chasing a 60 year-old bureaucrat he could wait until he was 100% certain of a kill, but he had to have a pretty good idea something was off with said geezer.

The cliffhanger here is a rather interesting one.  Is SxF going to show us Loid popping a cap on a dog, even one with a bomb strapped to it?  Intelligence and military (both “good guys” and bad guys) have been sacrificing dogs and other animals in the name of the national good for decades, so it would certainly be gritty realism.  But there’s only so much gritty realism Spy x Family can insert without alienating large segments of the fanbase, which is one of those elements of the series that’s never far from my mind whenever we get to decisive dramatic moments…