I found that ep of SxF disturbing on so many levels and none, I suspect, the way it was intended. One thing about this series – when it whiffs with me, it can whiff hard. Sometimes it’s just abject mediocrity but others I truly feel as if Endo Tatsuya’s worldview is genuinely screwed up. Thee first couple of this arc did a nice job setting up some interesting possibilities, but also opened the door for the sort of dumpster fire we got this week. But at least it looked good.
Yeah, a lot of money was spent on that monstrosity, and I assume this was one of the Wit episodes because the fight scenes and the fireworks were lavishly produced to say the least. But that’s about the only positive thing I have. If I try to be really charitable I could say the show was going for some kind of Tarantino vibe with that killing spree set to music and interspersed with inane cuts from the casino. But in truth I don’t believe that – I think it was just incredibly crass and tasteless. And somehow being as pretty as it was made it all even more distasteful.
Endo seems, over and over, to want to have his cake and eat it too. He wants Spy x Family to be the ATM machine that’s impossibly popular with little kids, but also wants to follow in the footsteps of his cooler ex-boss Fujimoto and his other ex-assistants doing edgier work. And he wants to show both sides of secret police and mob executioners, of the totalitarian East and the West. And this desire seems to impel him to bad choices over and over. Like the ones we saw this week.
In fact I predicted this last week, as the signs were there and history does tend to repeat itself. Yor showing some introspection about her job is certainly progress, but I never felt much optimism about where that introspection would take her. The takeaways here are just so misguided, but that’s not a new problem. It’s my own fault I suppose for expecting a maturity level from Yor (and Spy x Family) that just isn’t there. But as it’s with the Briar siblings that the twisted perspective of the series tends to be revealed, it’s better off when it focuses on other characters.
This is a chance missed, certainly. Yor was desperately in need of fleshing out, as she’s been mostly vestigial in the first two seasons – consigned to the extremes of lowbrow comedy or graphic violence. But if this is the sort of development she gets, it makes things worse rather than better. I don’t have a lot of hope for the character at this point because I don’t see a path out of this pit anywhere in Endo’s writing so far, which leaves my best case scenario being as little Yor involvement as possible. And that’s really a shame.
Simone
November 26, 2023 at 9:53 pmHonestly this manga in general definitely has that “have the cake and eat it too” vibe. It feels completely directionless most of the time, adopting the spy/assassin aesthetic mostly to create a mood and an excuse for a sort of 007 pastiche, with a bit of darkness thrown in here and there as you say maybe just because Endo enjoys it, but far from well-integrated in the overall story. Ultimately it probably would be better if it was just fully cartoonish, because the little moments of “this feels a bit more real” thrown in just create cognitive dissonance and little else. And in general it just refuses to go ANYWHERE with its main plot, which I think is also a symptom of it being a concept milked for success with no particular artistic vision behind it (in fact, I suspect, it’s equal parts “keep it up as long as it prints money” and “how the fuck do I finish this story”).
It’s fun on a short term basis but that’s about it. Overall probably the most soulless of the current major anime blockbusters.
Guardian Enzo
November 26, 2023 at 10:12 pmI think that’s why Damian’s subplot is so resonant, because it’s the one element of the story to which none of those things really apply.
Simone
November 27, 2023 at 7:00 pmTrue, in general I’d say all the Eden stuff is fairly safe because it’s just regular school shenanigans with characters that are relatively uncontroversial; there’s not even anything resembling any serious bullying, just a bit of childish bickering. And as you say Damian is a character it’s easy to empathise with. Though it also does evoke cognitive dissonance when one considers that really he’s still at the centre of all this storm – his father a wannabe fascist dictator, his first crush a grade school telepathic Mata Hari trying to enter his graces to enable her own adoptive father, actually an enemy spy, to get close to him. I do wonder what exactly would the endgame of “Operation Strix” even look like – could Twilight be tasked with assassinating Donovan? Like, realistically, you would imagine stuff like that would be on the cards… It’d be easier if the “everyone is fine all the time” ethos was baked into the series, and in practice all the important characters DO seem to have plot armour, but that just makes the contrast more strident when they’re surrounded by overly realistic atrocities instead.
Guardian Enzo
November 27, 2023 at 8:15 pmThat raises an interesting question: does Twilight kill people? Is that part of his job? Obviously he’d be expected to if circumstances were extreme enough but we’ve never seen him do it that I remember.
To your point, that’s why the finale of the first season really hit home, especially in that moment Loid stared at Damian and you could see in his eyes that he was wondering how far he’d have to (and be willing to) go in order to accomplish his mission. Looking after a child certainly changed his perspective.
Simone
November 28, 2023 at 4:43 amI’d say he probably killed some people at the beginning of S1 (remember the chase that he explained away to Yor as being just a bunch of very rambunctious “patients” he’s treating with “concussive therapy” that ends in glory with him tossing a hand grenade and using the pin as a ring to propose to her?). But that very over the top set piece aside, no, I don’t think we’ve ever seen him do that. Certainly not assassinations in cold blood. The way Wise operates – trying to keep the peace and not stir too much trouble – I doubt they’d try to kill Donovan (that doesn’t sound like the smoothest way to deal with his threat) but it would be an interesting avenue to explore if this show did have the chops to explore it. Which theoretically it may have, perhaps, but it would require being willing to throw the Status Quo off a bit and we can’t have that.
Orion Taylor
November 28, 2023 at 7:22 amOkay, so it isn’t just me. I’m sticking to anime-only for this series, so I don’t know what happens, but it really feels as if plot can never move forward (and the characters can never develop) in any meaningful way. It seems that the spy/assassin/esper setup is just a vehicle for some gags/shenanigans, and any attempt to change the status quo would throw the entire setup into irreparable chaos.
Simone
November 28, 2023 at 7:44 amI’m a manga reader, and yeah, this has long been the major complaint in the fan base. The series just lacks any real courage to go anywhere.
Joshua
November 27, 2023 at 10:14 pmSo basically, it’s one of those shows where you feel like it brings up all of these topical points, but ultimately has nothing to say then? You mean like an MCU film/D+ show? Is this the hill that you’re willing to die on? Dropping this one to instead sit through Tokyo Revengers regurgitating its same story arc beats again?
Guardian Enzo
November 28, 2023 at 8:29 amI’m not talking about dropping anything, and certainly not in favor of TMR. SxF is still entertaining most of the time and the Eden/Damian stuff can reach very good levels. That doesn’t mean I won’ call out BS when I see it, and none of these issues I have are new – I’ve been talking about them pretty much since the beginning.
Cocytus
November 28, 2023 at 12:53 amWhile i could somewhat see the point, i feel like spy x family have always been a series where you need to accept that everyone on the main cast is indisputably good despite the moral grayness of their occupation is.
Yor is a killer who only kills bad guy, yuri is a secret police who only catches terrorist, loid is a spy that doesn’t steals information for his country to get an upper hands on the possible war but instead just want to keep the peace.
It’s always been idealistic like that from the start, even on stuff involving loid
Guardian Enzo
November 28, 2023 at 8:29 amThat’s not idealism, if anything it’s highly cynical.
Orion Taylor
November 28, 2023 at 7:30 amI absolutely hate Yuri Briar. The fact that Yor spent half the episode thinking about him and being proud of how he has grown was an automatic -10 points for me. I agree that the ‘both sides-ing’ of the secret police/garden and the west is pretty bad. It really is hard to reconcile Yor Briar the loving mom/sister and Yor Briar the cold blooded assassin. Objectively, she is a genuinely awful person who is willfully ignorant of being an apparatus of the state (only beaten by her brother who fully embraces authoritarianism), but everything in how they are portrayed screams that we should think of them as (reasonably) good people that are trying their best. Too much clash. I still find SpyXFam pretty entertaining, but I’d never rate this series highly.
Speaking of series with not great ideologies, are you planning on writing a review for the Attack on Titan finale?
Guardian Enzo
November 28, 2023 at 7:46 amEventually!
BenDTU
November 30, 2023 at 7:31 amThis arc is a huge favourite in the manga among the community, but I’ve always felt it was sorta meh. It’s basically just Yor fighting a whole bunch of dudes with any sort of conclusion she comes to about why she’s an assassin being the most predictable and least status-quo changing direction possible.
Also the whole gap moe is *really* not working for me here, she genuinely seems incompetent to the point where you wonder exactly how she’s able to work as a high level assassin when she’s making rookie errors like opening the door to room service that wasn’t ordered.
And yeah it’s been said elsewhere but Yuri is just *the worst*. Him and Fiona are just there to be laughed at, for him it’s just aggressively unfunny and for Fiona it feels genuinely cruel at points, I *despise* the ending of the tennis arc with her driving away in tears played for laughs.