Since the Spy X Family manga debuted in 2019, the series and its comedic spycraft have been a veritable institution, a reputation that’s only grown thanks to its popular anime adaptation from WIT Studio and CloverWorks. At the core of its appeal is how easily it shifts from one genre to the next, changing faces like a master spy as it delivers espionage action, gut-busting comedy, romantic undercurrents, and perhaps most important of all, wholesome family drama. It’s sort of like a sitcom, but one where Archie Bunker is on an undercover mission to save humanity from World War III.
Set in a fictionalized Cold War-era Berlin (unsubtly titled Berlint), the nations of Westalis and Ostania are in a tentative state of peace. Agent Twilight is a Westalian operative embedded in Ostania with a specific objective: get close to an important politician, Donovan Desmond, a war hawk who is plotting a fresh conflict between the two nations. To do so, Twilight takes on the persona of Loid Forger, a family man with a daughter enrolled in the same school as Desmond’s kid. From here, Loid adopts the young girl Anya and enters a fake marriage with Yor, both of whom have their own secrets. Anya was subjected to experiments that gave her the ability to read minds, and Yor is a deadly, peerless Ostanian assassin similarly eager to hide her true identity. Only Anya, who is very much a child, knows the other two’s secrets. Oh, and there’s also Bond. He’s a dog (who can see the future).
The latest season picks up in the midst of this slow-going mission, with events taking a somewhat more serious turn due to a trio of notable arcs. This includes a hostage situation, a peek into Twilight’s backstory, and a showdown with a rival master spy who threatens to unravel everything. In short, while the series’ overarching pacing remains quite plodding, each of these sequences delivers on more serious subject matter, while still sprinkling in the kind of humor and heartwarming moments that have made Spy X Family so beloved.
Of these arcs, arguably the most important is the one that focuses on Twilight’s past: Although we knew he lost most of his family during the previous war between these two countries, actually seeing this tragedy unfold is a different matter entirely. While the sequence would have benefited from a longer runtime that let us fully settle into this setting, it successfully conveys the loss and ensuing complicated feelings that led Twilight from hating all Ostanians to becoming jaded with the leadership of both nation-states, eventually only coming to believe in the importance of preventing future war at all costs—considering this is his motivation for, well, everything, it’s a crucial bit of backstory that helps enrich the show’s drama.
When it comes to Anya’s dedicated storyline where she and her classmates are kidnapped, these episodes demonstrate the series’ knack for whiplashing between disparate tones without missing a beat, as a bit where a child is strapped into a bomb collar is somehow mined for hilarity without it being mean-spirited. The sometimes grim subject matter is handled gently enough that this tonal contrast comes together, especially when we learn that a perpetrator is driven by an empathetically portrayed motivation (i.e., fighting back against a brutal regime). It certainly helps that Anya is simply the funniest character in the series, as Atsumi Tanezaki’s adorable performance continues to sell overconfidence and hilarious misinterpretations that only a kid could come up with. It is also very funny when she suddenly calls her classmate Damian, whom the entire mission hinges on her befriending, a shithead.
Then, on the much more action-oriented end of the spectrum, the season concludes with an extended game of cat and mouse where Twilight and his compatriots face off against Ostania’s greatest agent, a man who singlehandedly threatens to bring Operation Strix crashing down. Like always with Spy X Family, this collaboration between WIT Studio and CloverWorks conveys the borderline superhuman powers of these operatives as they punch, kick, and juke with an elegance and physicality that conveys their skill, making this final arc feel like a genuine battle to the death; at one point, a character punches with such reckless abandon that they break their own arm, their opponent’s forearm bending with the impact as they’re sent bouncing across pavement. And while Yor doesn’t have quite as much screentime or chances to be effortlessly cool this season, we do get to see her hitting a volleyball at supersonic speeds, which is a decent consolation prize.
Perhaps most saliently, this final arc teases the heart of the series: The Forgers may be in a “fake” arrangement where they unsuccessfully pantomime the stereotypical nuclear household, but their family bonds are genuine. The big bad serves as a classic mirror to the protagonist, representing what Twilight would be like if he abandoned all semblance of humanity for his objective and used his newfound loved ones as props rather than respecting them as people—“it’s all for the mission,” Loid says while painstakingly cooking another beautiful meal for his family.
All that said, while this season largely manages to hit its more serious beats alongside some appreciated comic relief (largely courtesy of Anya), it still suffers from the biggest issue the series has run into since season two: the achingly slow progress of Operation Strix. While there are a few new developments, like Yor becoming more involved in the plan and Anya earning an accolade, it’s only marginal progress towards the ultimate goal, with no end in sight. This problem ultimately traces back to the source material, which very much feels like it’s aiming for a very long serialization, but the adaptation certainly hasn’t sped up events either.
There’s a bit of a paradox here in that the series is often at its best when it’s in an irreverent, more episodic mode, but it has also gone to great lengths to lay out an ultimate goal that it is constantly reminding us about (Anya earning a specific number of Stella Stars at school, which will lead to Loid being able to make contact with his target). While the show’s genre blend works tonally, its wires get crossed when it tries to mix the lackadaisical pacing of a sitcom with the more high-strung plotting of a spy thriller. At its worst, it sometimes comes across like the manga author, Tatsuya Endo, doesn’t have the narrative entirely planned out and is simply flying by the seat of his pants.
But even if the seriescontinues to struggle with how to handle its overarching mission, its moment-to-moment hijinks are so good that this issue mostly proves a background annoyance rather than a true dealbreaker. This time around, it manages to skew towards heavy subject matter without losing its sense of humor or underlying pathos, equally capable of laugh-out-loud moments and genuine thrills. Even with some hitches, Spy X Family remains a smooth operator.
