Spy x Family – Episode 34

[Alderis]

Spy x Family – Episode 34

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to dive right into the presumed conclusion of Spy x Family’s action-packed cruise arc, wherein Yor has fended off countless would-be assassins while Loid does his best to be a Perfectly Normal Man. I am proud to say that both have conducted themselves admirably; Yor’s efforts have prevented any harm from coming to her charge, and Loid has (with a little help from Anya) engaged in such profoundly normal activities as miniature golf and wearing everything in the gift shop.

Along the way, Yor has been challenged to find the answer to a fundamental question: why exactly does she fight? Yuri no longer needs her protection, and while she once saw the Forgers as a cover for her actual work, she’s now more committed to their collective life than her original purpose. What she has decided serves as a tidy echo of Loid’s convictions: she must fight to ensure other families enjoy such happiness, using her skills to preserve peace just as Loid fights for all the lonely orphans of war. I’m sure the two would be quite proud of each other, if revealing their secrets wouldn’t immediately put them in mortal opposition – but for now, I’m just happy Yor’s found a meaningful reason to fight, a drive that will hopefully prompt future growth. Let’s see if we can catch the last of the fireworks!

Episode 34

This arc’s gotten so circuitous that we’re actually getting a recap for once. It wouldn’t surprise me if the show continues to trend in this direction; thinking up continuous one-chapter gag concepts is actually tougher than you think, particularly when confined to the relatively specific dramatic constraints of Spy x Family’s premise. The concept is a rich vein of comedy, but no such vein can be mined forever; having already used up so many natural adjacent conceits, it does not surprise me that Tatsuya Endo is embracing more long-form storytelling, which both builds off our existing fondness for the characters, and more importantly facilitates more extended or specific gag concepts (like jokes that would only work on a cruise liner, for example)

Aside from simply ending the sitcom while you’re still on top, one other potential way to avoid diminishing returns is character development – keeping the concept stable, but letting the characters grow, and thereby furnishing the original concept’s flavor with both the added satisfaction of getting attached to a character’s development, as well as the fresh comedic opportunities afforded by wherever that character growth leads them

Unsurprisingly, this recap is like half Anya faces and half Yor crushing skulls. Spy x Family knows what the people need

Excellent goofy walk cycle for Anya as they head back from the fireworks. Apparently gravity does not affect Anyas as strongly as other creatures

Loid overhears several security officers discussing some kind of disturbance, which he believes to be a bomb planted somewhere in the ship. That makes sense; you can easily explain such a device as an emergency measure planted by Yor’s enemies, and more importantly, it gives Loid something spy-like to do in this arc’s last act. Endo has been very judicious in distributing the payoff of “all Forgers united in combat mode,” but the end of an arc like this seems like the perfect time to splurge

Coming up with a few ideas isn’t terribly hard; as long-running works like this demonstrate, the trickier feat is properly conserving comedic and dramatic resources

“Wow, I get to play with a ball!” Love that Anya’s about as convincing at playing a normal child as Loid is at playing a normal man

Loid swiftly recognizes the bomb as being of a type frequently used by eastern terrorists. He also notes his own superiors mentioned nothing about any potential complications on this trip, and the gears start to turn. An odd quirk of worldbuilding versus characterization; Endo can say “Garden is so secretive that Loid’s organization would know nothing of their operations,” but stick an actively thinking Loid in the vicinity of a Garden operation, and you have to work hard to keep him from discovering everything without in some way betraying his characterization

One of the most simultaneously rewarding and frustrating things about fully realized characters is that they’ll often surprise you. You can plot a scene to end however you wish, but when you actually get to writing it, you’ll often find your expected conclusion doesn’t ring true to what the characters would actually do, and you have to adjust

Anya’s powers detect the voice of the assassins’ radio coordinator, who is now making his getaway

“That’s… Mama’s stabby thing!” Translators doing a fine job of conveying Anya’s distinctive vocabulary

Yor’s fight getting so intense it now demands an insert song. Get ‘im, Yor!

And now even Anya’s received her assignment: get the stabby thing to Mama so she can defeat her enemies. Forgers united!

This sequence does suffer a bit from a lack of clarity due to the darkness. The contrast of the fight silhouetted against the fireworks worked very well for the previous episode, but with the fireworks now over, it’d probably have been for the best if some overhead lights went up on the ship’s bow just to help us see what’s happening

Hah, I love how Yor basically billows and glows with energy when she recovers her needle. Look, you can’t activate the powers of the Thorn Princess if you’re not wielding the Princess’s Thorn

Smart use of looser ink tones, somewhat resembling a sort of scratched chalk overlay, as Yor gathers all her energy into one charge

Ah, I see. They withheld the light beforehand to enhance the impact of this sequence, using big flashes of light to connote the power of Yor’s charge. A fair exchange, then

And the final cut is spectacular. I particularly like how the camera movement is tethered to Yor’s momentum – staring towards her as she approaches, then swinging right and actually aligning us in her perspective for the collision, then detaching again as she continues past the theoretical camera positioning. A trick that’s hard to make this graceful, but which ultimately emphasizes both Yor’s incredible speed and her vulnerability in the moment of exchange, as we are at that moment visually attached to her perspective

In the aftermath of the battle, we receive two consecutive gestures towards the instability of this current paradigm: first Loid silently reflecting on what this unexpected bomb means for his intelligence operations, and then Yor wondering how her needle arrived at just the right location. That’s the thing about these group operations; every one threatens the stability of the Forger alliance even as they demonstrate its power

Fortunately, Yor remains too airheaded to actually carry this line of questioning anywhere

Loid informs the other staff that there are surely several more bombs. As a demolition expert who just played through Metal Gear Solid II, I applaud his wisdom

Love Anya putting on her femme fatale scarf and shades to inform a crewmate about the next bomb. A nice unspoken joke in Anya somehow thinking this makes her “less suspicious” of an informant – all she knows about these things is what the character roles are supposed to look like from Bondman

Loid concludes his disarming by flinging the bomb-laden grandfather clock into the ocean. One last flourish using this CG boat they mocked up to facilitate some moving perspective shots

And then on the far end, some nice smears for Anya being unceremoniously dragged back to the playroom

“My hands are all dirty, and…” “Your hands are what connected him to his future.” Yor is unaccustomed to actually being thanked for her work, and her language emphasizes what she considers its unseemly nature. Through this escort mission, she is learning to see it not as a relic of her past, but as an expression of faith in the future she is seeking

Her softening stance is matched by a cut to Loid, who has reached the point of reflexively chastising himself for leaving his family behind

Then a lovely, wordless final sequence, each family member taking joy in the small communal rituals of the following morning

And Done

Ah, that was delightful. After last episode’s absurd demonstration of Yor’s martial prowess, it was nice to see the whole family get in on the game here, and once again demonstrate that when the Forgers are united in purpose, there is no force on earth that can stop them. And this time, all three of them were driven not simply by the desire to survive or complete their assignment, but by the context those assignments exist within – the concern for their family that drives them to ensure other families are similarly untroubled, and that reminds them to ensure they themselves get home safe. Yor is never going to be the most intellectually dazzling of characters, but I was happy to see her grapple with these questions of purpose and identity in her own way, and ultimately find a new purpose to drive her forward. Now hopefully our crew can at last enjoy their goddamn vacation!

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Source: Spy x Family – Episode 34