Spy x Family Season 3 Episode 8 Discussion

Obviously this is the best SxF season so far. But it has to pay high price to be this good, it has to turn itself into a very dark anime.

Family time is over, now it's spy time.

THIS IS WHAT SPY FAMILY CAN DO!!

The music and animation were just as top-notch as we've come to except, but DAMN this episode came with punches, emotional punches that is. The whole story of Billy and his daughter was just so beautifully done. Both the characters are flawed in their own beautiful way and this episode as a whole presents the dilemma between standing up for what's right, and looking after your own well-being. Neither side is truly wrong and the anime does a great job at getting that across. It also shows us how ordinary people like you and me can go against all we stand for and turn to extremism when exploited by extremist groups in our times of weakness; how obsessed we can become with revenge that we see red (literally in this case) and forget about everything else. As always, the comedy was also firing on all cylinders, and it's truly impressive how they managed to balance that with such dark themes in the rest of the episode. This episode also showed further just how brutal the SS is.

I swear, when Billy stepped out to surrender and the woman went out as well, I forgot sure thought that the driver too would step out and the SS would shoot them all.

Episode Rating: 9/10

I can't even imagine how easy it must be to "fight" in the name of "freedom" and "equality" when in reality those words are just justifications for shaping public opinion by spreading a narrative of oppressor and oppressed. Honestly, I laughed when the dead girl appeared; one moment she was talking about dying for valuable ideas implanted in her head by people who are part of the problem, not the solution, and then she died without ever realizing the real truth. Sorry author, but your critique is shallow and extremely cliché—not that I expected anything profound from Spy x Family, of course.

at 9:13, when he's looking at his daughter's body, we're looking through his point of view, and the screen literally goes red

@Desmascarado Geez what a bad take and fundamental misreading of the episode.

@Sgt_General Please don't misuse the word "fundamentally." You can write your nonsense without any flawed arguments, but please, I implore you, don't distort the meaning of the word ("fundamentally").

The problem with touching on themes that are this serious is simply that they cannot be resolved in a way where no price is paid. I commend this show for portraying neither side of this conflict as good, though it still framed this episode's conclusion as a good one, and that I find rather questionable. A better story would have had this arc end by a show of force of both sides, a calamity ensued by two parties unwilling to make compromises, as a tale of how violent rule births violent resistance, an outcome which isn't desirable for anyone involved. But this is still a comedy, and so it settled on a situation too "problematic" for it to handle in a competent manner. Instead, the answer we got was comedy, and that was one joke I couldn't really laugh about.

Was pretty wholesome when Billy saw his daughter in Anya, but then the goofy ass jumping to conclusions about the starving children, while very spy family, did kind of ruin the nice moment. So we get a happy ending, but not really. The government is still corrupt as shit and Billy and his crew are probably getting killed as soon as questioning is done. Just kinda feel sad after watching this arc lol. Which sure is motivation to root for Loid wrapping things up with operation strix, but we all know this series just waffles on as a sol most of the time. Which is enjoyable to watch, but then I feel sad when we get into "the main plot".

@ProofByColor That's the greatest strength/flaw of SxF. It lures you in with family antics, and suddenly guys are getting shot in the head at point blank range in front of Anya (episode 1). It makes you laugh, then you see Yor literally kill people with her fingers. It drops your guard with heartwarming family bonding, then you hear kid Loid screaming after his mother was killed in a bombing. SxF lives and dies on the extremely fine line between comedy and tragedy.

I think this is the case for SxF moreso than almost any other anime I've seen. This line to be walked is very precarious, too far to one side and you lose the reason you started watching the show, and too far to the other and you lose the reason to stick around. I'm not sure what the right balance is, but it seems like the more interesting the world/plot becomes, the more dangerous walking that line gets. I suppose it was so much simpler in season 1. I think episodes 1-9 were so incredibly good and gripping that people (myself included) genuinely fell in love with the show and characters. Yet, due to the nature of the SoL elements and the release schedule of manga/anime it's hard to stay hooked, which is why plot development and the more hardcore elements of the show are necessary. Those elements are indeed very interesting and keep people invested, but the show is still shackled (for better or worse) to the SoL. Granted some people might be watching only for the SoL, but I actually like how the story has been developed thus far. So constantly resetting to a general SoL status quo is actually harder to stomach now than in season 1 - yet, I still like the SoL, and losing that would be damaging to the show.

As I said before, the fine line between meaningful development and SoL routine is the hill that SxF dies on. And It's only getting harder to navigate.

@Lucianael I think this is a fair point and it's a very fine line for the creator to take. I was genuinely very surprised when the show started sympathising with Billy the Terrorist, but I think it was a very brave decision with really emotional results (and, even more impressively, some great comedy to balance it out).

We probably need to see the next episode to properly judge how this arc has ended, but I would personally say that the show already demonstrated that violent rule births violent resistance through Red Circus going from being a student protest movement to an actual terrorist organisation after brutal force was used to stamp out their activism.

It's likely just a matter of taste, but I thought it was quite powerful that we're given a somewhat triumphant ending in which the day is saved and the terrorists are either dead or apprehended, when it's clear that the SSS aren't heroes in any way, shape or form (and Red Circus have themselves crossed a moral event horizon), so we're left with an unsettling feeling that Ostania is still a very messed-up country and nothing has changed in that regard.

@Sgt_General Kinda. The end of the episode is still presented as a happy ending, because a violence was avoided, which, as far as I am aware, only was possible because of this show's comedy logic. There was no greater point here about how we are all equal, but Billy was simply convinced by Anya because she can read his mind and stuff. Of course, she was still in danger in that situation, and thus she really did stand up to authority, but Anya for once knew that the bomb around her neck was fake, and she knew the danger that remained, and only acted because of it. Billy's thoughts of how these children were themselves suffering, thinking that the east had it far worse than he had thought, those were simply played for comedy, but with these being the brats to fill a few with the largest shoes in the country, they shouldn't have been portrayed as all that happy or privileged in the first place.

The problem is simply that the show already carries a lot of baggage at this point, with us already viewing these characters in certain ways, and this limits this its ability to make a political statement of them, when they are at last sorted into the boxes of social class and hierarchy.

Lastly, I don't think that Billy actually presents an ideological struggle here, as his taking hostages does not actually contradict what he is fighting for. He could wholeheartedly believe that more lives would be saved, more suffering avoided, then would occur because of this incident. If this was a struggle of ways of thinking, then he would from the start have been acting towards these hostages as if they were just kids, after all, his intention would not be their suffering. But this is not the story we get, and so the show is less about empathy for terrorists and actors which our systems deem despicable, but about empathy for Billy, who is just one guy, and I think that's just a bit disappointing.

@Desmascarado fear not, I haven't misused the good word 'fundamentally' in any way. The definition of it means 'in a basic and important way' (per Cambridge Dictionary), and in a basic and important way, you have misread the episode.

Getting killed for your beliefs is fine. Getting your family killed in the process, when they are not involved, is not.
Selfish spoiled brat. And dumb father putting other kids at risk.

@Sgt_General A rationale that only exists in your head is not part of the collective imagination or opinion; you would know this if you knew how to use the word correctly (fundamentally).

Perhaps you should read more books and then try again.

@Lucianael I think there is a point somewhere in there about how the young are bold enough to take risks in order to pursue what's right (Biddy striving for equality and free speech; Anya doing her outmost to save herself, her teacher, and her classmates). Billy was rather awestruck by the way that the Eden students were selflessly loyal to each other, which reminded him of his daughter. What we end up with is that it's comically juxtaposed with Anya clutching at straws and doing the right thing while not really knowing what she's doing.

Do you mean that it's difficult to make a political statement through the Eden Academy students because they're generally the children of landed aristocracy and the bourgeoisie? I can see where you're coming from, in that case. There is a lot of historical inspiration in the series and particularly this arc, which I think makes it quite fascinating, even if there may not be a seriously punchy political message coming from it. I would say, however, that if we are to draw some social commentary from this arc, it's that the show is very critical of authoritarian regimes.

I think there is some empathy for the Red Circus terrorists, but it's subtle and nuanced. I felt rather sad for them that they believed they were risking their lives to free their comrades, only for the people on the other side to casually mention that fulfilling Red Circus's demands was impossible because most of the apprehended members of that group had already been secretly killed. Their struggle against an all-powerful state was futile from the beginning, because the deck was stacked against them.

On the other hand, though, we can't overlook that Red Circus did morally reprehensible things: taking children as hostages, using children as human shields, intending to blow themselves and children up... And I think that this is a strength of the busjacking arc. It's riveting to see a clash between two sides who aren't inherently virtuous (Red Circus have the more noble goals, but they are still acting on the dangerous principle that the ends justify the means). Sometimes, both parties are bad for different reasons, even though it's clear that one is worse than the other.

I do see what you mean about how it would be powerful to have a wider depiction of empathy for these terrorists and enemies of the state, but I suspect that the mangaka may have run into trouble if he were to try and push that through. Focalising it through Billy was probably as far as it could go.

@Sgt_General A rationale that only exists in your head is not part of the collective imagination or opinion; you would know this if you knew how to use the word correctly (fundamentally).

Perhaps you should read more books and then try again.

@Sgt_General I want to emphasize that my criticism of this work is solely separate from whomever was involved in its creation, and my pointing out a flaw does not entrail a moral judgement of the person who made this supposed mistake. So I understand that there are limits to what the mangaka was able to write, and equally, there were probably also limits to how the creatives at Studio Wit and Cloverworks could adapt it, but I am not here to judge them, but the work itself. That there are reasons to every minute detail, be they intended or not, I understand, I just don't care about it. I am happy that we got a comparatively nuanced perspective on this kind of topic in an anime this popular, be that only because of how it might change some peoples' view on violence and authority.

Yet I also believe that this could have been done better, either by cutting down on the comedic elements entirely, or making a point of how self-seriousness always comes before the kill, and thus it is comedy that spits in the face of all authority. In the end, this story is not the type to give such lessons, but I think it should be. Obviously it would be quite the tonal shift for it to now leave us with lessons like this, where it previously only went so far in much more personal matters, always keeping at least some plausible deniability when it came to its overtly political aspects (I am not saying that personal and political topics are separate, but they are commonly perceived to be). This is a far larger issue that reaches beyond this arc, though it does sum it up quite nicely. SpyXFamily struggles to mature or evolve and this is apparent both in its lacking plot (the first twelve episodes are awesome, it only starts to fall off after that point), but also, stemming from this, the absence of a more fundamental ideological conflict which could result in stronger themes and lessons. This isn't a bad show and this wasn't a bad episode, but it should have been a great one, and it can't be, be it for tonal inconsistencies or a general lack of direction in the story department.

@Lucianael that's a valid use of Death of the Author; I simply thought it would be useful to view the potential limitations of this story through a meta lens of the roadblocks that may have existed in its creation, but I can understand the importance of focusing solely on the text.

I personally have the overall viewpoint that the comedy is necessary, to an extent, in order to make the contents of this arc more palatable to the show's audience, as it would have been very dark and much more difficult to sit through without the use of humour.

There is one scene where I think this may not have been done particularly well, however. I think that the show aims to generate absurdist humour by having a five-year-old putting herself at risk for the greater good by taking a moral stance, protesting over food that she doesn't necessarily need, juxtaposed against the tragic risk taken by Biddy in joining the Red Circus protest movement for an important cause, and this is a scene that perhaps could have been done differently because (while I found it funny), it somewhat detracts from the severity of the subject matter.

And yet, somehow I still found myself emotionally stirred by the implicit message that daughters have the power to change the world and make a difference. In Anya's case, she was successful, whereas Biddy was brutally stamped down by authoritarian power.

I'm with you that the first 12 episodes of Spy X Family were amazing and then the plot stalled out and it lost something (again, to provide a meta perspective, mangaka are often put under pressure by editors to draw out a series - to the detriment of the story - when they have a certified hit on their hands and I suspect this has happened with Spy X Family). There is definitely the potential for it to be better overall and bolder in its use of ideology, and I understand that it's frustrating for it to be on the cusp of something great without attaining it (although I still feel that it is a very good series).

@Desmascarado ...No, "fundamentally" is not linked to collective opinion at all. Language itself is a process of agreed upon signs, but language for one is not necessarily collectivist in nature, just as I talk a different form of English to my best friends than I do some distant relative, and secondly does "fundamentally" as a term not specifically break from this.

An example for you. During the late nineteenth century, it was a quite common assumption that this world was flat. Yet this belief was still fundamentally false. Though it was not considered as such back then, does not undo this very fact, and even if we once again were to fall into flat-earth obsession on a global (haha) scale, this belief with remain a fundamental falsehood. What you are doing right now is making a semantical argument where it for one does not matter and secondly fundamentally doesn't work, as it assumes that all language exist through universal agreement.

@Lucianael lol what a bizarre interpretation of my comment. I think I'd better stop trying to argue with people on MAL.

Communism sucking ass as always 😂
This little arc was peak Anya.

Wow, and neither Loid or Yor had to come rescue the kids. Pretty good writing.