It’s not like the whipsaw effect if the Spy x Family experience is anything new. There’s always been a really big gap between its best material and its worst (though mostly it does fall inoffensively in the middle). But going from its best supporting character to its worst from last week to this really accentuates the problem. Yuri is a lot to take – always has been. But even within that context there are still variable, as this episode showed.
Yuri is never good, but what makes him really awful comes out whenever he’s directly interacting with his sister and her fake family. There actually wasn’t that much of that this week, so thank Heavens for small favors. The first part was all about Yuri surveilling a writer named Franklin Perkin who’s writing nasty things about the state. Perkin is a small-time loser who lives with his father, using his post office job as a front to disseminate his “treasonous” material. But the Stasi spent most of their time persecuting small-timers like him, so in that sense it’s all pretty on-point.
This is not a trivial thing SxF is sending up here, so the matter of tone is somewhat problematic. The whole Perkin thing is pretty restrained by Yuri standards, but that all goes out the window when he shows up at the Forger house after getting Perkin arrested. Again mercifully brief but basically unwatchable – this combination is Spy x Family at its absolute worst. How in the world Endo or any of his editors believes otherwise is quite beyond me.
Finally, there’s a “Bondman” bit which is more notable for being the longest cartoon-in-cartoon segment we’ve gotten with this series more than for the actual content. Some time is saved for omakes after the end credits, two featuring Anya and one Damian. The funniest bit here is Anya demanding to go to the ocean, going to the pool instead, and then finding out that esper abilities in that environment are more trouble than they’re worth. Seems like we’re about due for a meatier episode, but judging by the preview it doesn’t look like it’s coming as soon as next week.
Omake:
Antony Shepherd
October 23, 2023 at 1:31 amYeah, that first part was really off. “Oh, the secret police have a hard time of it!”. Seriously??? Siding with the Stasi analogue?
After that the lengthy ‘Bondman’ skit, taking the whole ‘Bond Girl’ ethos to ludicrous extreme, was something of a palate cleanser.
Guardian Enzo
October 23, 2023 at 10:37 am“Good people on both sides”, eh?
DP
November 29, 2023 at 5:27 amMine was “Down deep, Yuri realizes he is a bad person and that people he’s oppressing are persons with families too. So he makes a token gesture to alleviate his conscience.” This is pretty common in real life. Bad people are human beings, even if they bad and serve evil. Insisting everything should be black and white and the villains kick dogs and eat babies is what leads to extremism and us vs. them. Did this episode make you like Yuri more? No? Then it succeeded.
Christian
October 23, 2023 at 7:43 amI agree about Yuri, his sister loving schtick got old the instant it got inside the room, and it will be the case no matter how many times they do it. I got mixed feelings about the Chihuahua girl nickname for Anya: I laughed, I got annoyed and a bit upset. That was also quite the projection from him, he’s the one who has the soul of a Chihuahua dog.
Guardian Enzo
October 23, 2023 at 10:36 amNot to mention they were kind of trying to make (effectively) the stasi look sympathetic, which is dubious to say the least.
Simone
October 23, 2023 at 4:44 pm“Chihuahua girl” is a reference to her mistake, when she understood “chi wa chikara” as “chihuahua chikara”.
Nicc
October 23, 2023 at 12:57 pmOkay, Yuri-focused episode. Yep, I still don’t like him, just like the Fiona-focused episodes (Those two should just get together already with their own fake relationship). Indeed, at the very least, the siscon stuff is mercifully at the end. It seems that it was an attempt to humanize him and the Stasi. That left enough time for a Bondman-focused mini-episode. Anya learns the perils of having a harem and that’s a good lesson to learn. A few more omakes later, and that’s it. On to next week.
Mercesoul
October 23, 2023 at 3:40 pmNot too surprising that the episode was pretty pro stasi given that our main character literally works for the state as a spy, but can’t say it felt great seeing it so explicitly.
Guardian Enzo
October 23, 2023 at 4:33 pmWell, he works for the West, not the Stasi. Not to say everyone didn’t have dirty hands, but I think it’s reasonable to argue there’s not 100% moral equivalency.
Simone
October 23, 2023 at 4:46 pmPlus it’s still a different job, he’s gathering intel mostly, not torturing dissidents.