Spy×Family

Episodes 21-22

One of my favorite lines from the film Galaxy Quest is when a character asks the others if they ever actually watched the show they were acting in. It's both an acknowledgement of the campy science-fiction shows Galaxy Quest is making fun of and the fact that characters in fiction very often behave as if they have never ever in their lives read any fiction, and I think that we could pose a similar question to Nightfall: she ever watched the opening theme of SPY x FAMILY? The answer is almost certainly no, but if she had, she would notice what the rest of us have: that the opening theme is primarily from Loid's perspective, implying that he's enjoying his life with his new family, and that they've come to mean much more to him than just a cover story. He has flashes of his old life as the lone spy, but we see how those feed into his new life as husband and father, and that's something that Nightfall really isn't in a position to argue with.

She really desperately wants to be, though. Ever since she was trained by Twilight in spycraft, Nightfall has had aspirations of becoming Mrs. Twilight, and she is furious that she was away on another mission when the Loid Forger persona was created and Operations Strix launched. Given that in episode twenty-two we see that Loid has been informed that Nightfall may be losing her grip on reality a little bit, it might be safe to assume that her absence when Operation Strix began was very much something that was planned. Her sheer desperation at becoming Loid's wife makes her remarkably unsuited for the position, both in terms of what he might actually want in his spouse and a decent cover story, the type he urgently needs if he's going to successfully infiltrate the highest echelons of society.

No one is happier about this than Anya. To say that Nightfall takes a dim view of Anya as Loid's daughter might be an understatement, and Anya's special power of mind reading lets her know exactly what bullet she's dodged. When Nightfall insinuates herself into the Forger household, on what appears to be a very thin pretext, Anya quickly wises up to the other spy's goal, and Nightfall's assertion that she would have turned Anya into a Stella star-earning machine indicates that she is the exact opposite of what the child needs. It also shows that Nightfall doesn't really have a good enough grasp of human nature and psychology to be an effective spy in this sort of mission. Loid is good at this because he is ultimately still human; he understands that he needs to be a good father to Anya if she is going to succeed, and that they both need the support that Yor can provide. That Anya is psychic and Yor secretly a top assassin is really just the icing on the cake here – it's their humanity that brings out his, and actually makes him more likely to succeed in Operation Strix. But Nightfall can't understand that a spy also has to be a human being, and her struggles to reconcile her emotions with her spyhood are basically damning her in her ambitions to replace Yor in Loid's life.

All seriousness aside, this is actually one of the funniest arcs from the source manga, and although it is clearly going to be truncated in its anime adaptation, it still holds up really well. Nightfall actually comes into the story because there's a mission that she and Twilight need to do together: there's a specific piece of artwork that a particular man has in his clutches that needs liberating. Fortunately, the man is offering up a piece of artwork of your choice to the winners of his weird underground tennis tournament. Unfortunately, an underground tennis tournament is just as dangerous as you might imagine (assuming you imagine tennis to ever be dangerous), and walking away with the win is not going to be nearly as easy as it perhaps ought to be. Yes, in this tournament all sorts of things are allowed, from performance-enhancing drugs that turn you from a normal human being to a hulking muscle-clad monster, to enhanced tennis rackets that function as whips or have motors attached. If you hadn't been watching this show, you might assume that puts Twilight and Nightfall, who are masquerading as Mr. and Mrs. Phony, at a disadvantage; clearly such is not the case. Along with allowing Nightfall to show off her excellent Aim for the Ace! cosplay, anyone who has been yearning to get a gander at Loid's gams is going to be very happy this episode, and if we don't get to see quite enough of the zany tennis matches, we do get more than enough to make this feel like “insane tennis” needs to be the next big sports anime thing.

Loid may not really understand what's going on in Nightfall's head, but he does know that she's slipping as a spy. Likewise, Nightfall doesn't really have a grasp of how Loid's changes are actually making him a better person, and while they do work together well, watching them completely miss each other's points is fairly entertaining. It looks like we're going to wrap up this story arc next week, which is a little less time than I might have hoped they devoted to it, but it's still an awfully good time, and while Nightfall's entrance in episode twenty-one may have been more annoying than amusing, she's definitely earning her keep here, while preparing us all for the announced release of the original Aim for the Ace! anime.

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Spy×Family is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.