©遠藤達哉／集英社・SPY×FAMILY製作委員会
It’s really easy to forget that SPY x FAMILY takes place in a dangerous world. Sure, we all know that Loid is a spy and Yor is an assassin, but the peril of those professions typically plays out against a background of good-natured buffoonery and general Anya-ness. That is not the case with this storyline, as this episode goes out of its way to show us. I think there may be more character deaths on-screen here than in the entire thirty previous episodes, and that can be a bit of a shock.
It does make sense, though, because this is the first time Yor has gotten an extended storyline all to herself. Anya’s just there as unseen support and Loid is relegated to the comedic relief, although the fact that he’s noticed all of the bugs is probably going to turn out to be more important than his casual observation would suggest. But this is Yor’s show, and that means that her assassin skills need to rise to the top, because a whole lot of other assassins have also boarded the vessel, and they’re all working counter to her protection mission.
There’s something almost Pratchettian about the assassins in this episode, specifically those who are working against Garden. Before things really get started, they make an agreement to work together to take out Shaty and Yor, and when one assassin suggests just killing all mothers with babies on board, two others take him out, saying that they’re assassins not murderers. (Nil Mortifi Sine Lucre [No killing without payment], as the Ankh-Morpork Assassins’ Guild says.) That makes Yor and the Director’s ruthlessness stand out even more – not because they’re particularly vicious (that one guy whipped out a chain sickle in a crowded hallway, after all), but because they’re all clearly playing according to a hidden list of rules. The others aim to kill. Yor aims to stop them, possibly by killing them. It’s as simple as that.
This is an increasingly tense episode as the sheer amount of extra assassins on the ship becomes clear. We see five individuals – chain sickle guy, fake room service guy, the two at the masquerade, and the one the director takes out – but that’s only a small portion of the would-be killers roaming the vessel. Since we haven’t seen any of the others make a move yet, that could imply that they’re even more skilled than the three we’ve met so far; that they get increasingly competent even within the space of this episode supports that theory. Both chain sickle and room service guys manage to fool Yor at first, which implies a very high level of competence because she spotted the two at the party immediately by the bloodlust they exuded. Yor is amazing, but is she amazing enough to keep Shaty, her fake husband, and her baby alive?
Anya isn’t entirely sure, but she also has a tenuous grasp of the actual situation and seems to think that Loid would divorce Yor if she didn’t like frogs. (I love Anya Logic.) She does, however, have her mom’s back, and if that means tricking her dad into potentially embarrassing situations (and really, can wearing tourist trap clothes be anything but?), well, so be it. It’s fun to see Loid on the outskirts of his sanity as he grossly overthinks parenthood, but there’s also something very real about it because as my mother used to tell us, kids don’t come with instruction manuals. The real question is, does assassination? Because Yor’s going to need every trick in that book to get out of this situation in one piece and with living clients.
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