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Spy x Family episode 31 – Familia

Irina

Oh my, the plot is thickening quite nicely is it not? It’s like a fine gravy by now. I am really enjoying this arc and I think Spy x Family should have more of these multi-episode storylines as they handle them quite well!

We have always known that Yor is an assassin. That’s the base premise of the story. And we now know that she belongs to a prestigious assassin organization. Despite what it may look like at first, Yor is quite good at being an assassin. But so far, Spy X Family has been generally blodeless. Baddies are disposed of in non-lethal ways. Twilight is a master at either incapacitating people or talking his way out of trouble and even when more permanent measures are implied, they are off-screen and you can easily make a case for the antagonists getting arrested rather than dispatched.

That doesn’t really work for assassins now does it. First, we have Yor’s handler (his name is Matthew McMahon by the way. I don’t know why but I find this hilarious) that breaks the taboo by just straight-up torturing a guy and then breaking his legs rather cruelly. And even if yu think he’s alive after the beating, a man with a broken arm and a broken leg being thrown in the middle of the ocean isn’t very likely to make it home. It’s a little shocking to watch. I remember the first time I saw the scene, it felt like Spy x Family had just ramped up the stakes considerably. Like it was a different show. And I had to simply acknowledge that this is an assassin organization, it’s part of the job.

And then we catch up with Yor, and she does the same job…

We’ve seen a lot of scenes with Yor surrounded by a group of collapsed men. It has been implied that in those moments, not all of those men would ever get up again. But once more, these moments are fleeting, the actual violence is off-screen and it’s always implicit. We just turned that page. Yor not only brained a guy with one of her hair dagger pins but we saw the body. They referred to it as a “body”. That guy is dead and there is no way around the fact that Yor killed him and is fine with it.

Don’t worry, I’m not about to go analyzing the morals of a fictional assassin. At least not yet. My point is mostly that up until now, Spy x Family was the type of show that didn’t go there. It was a cheeky little story that allowed the audience to fill in the blanks by themselves and be willfully oblivious if that’s what they wanted. A show that can solidly be described as for “all ages” But this episode tilts that balance. It finally lets a little bit of the grime through and I have to say, I think it works. Maybe that says more about me than anything else, but I find these droplets of brutality add a lot to the story and contrast beautifully with the family slice-of-life moments.

It just opened up another very rich avenue for the story. And we still have a boat full of bloodthirsty assassins to deal with, discreetly!

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